The Redskin parents do not always entirely abandon their married daughter, and if she is too ill-treated by her owner, they have the right to take her back, and then of course to sell her to some one else.[303] Socialist customs sometimes co-exist with these gross conjugal ones. The nuptial abode is often prepared by the tribe, or, as in Columbia, the friends join in paying to the father the price of the daughter.[304] The Californian suitors sometimes obtain a wife on credit; but then the man is called “half-married,” and is forced to live as a slave with the parents of the girl until he has concluded the payment, for there is no essential difference between marriage by servitude and marriage by purchase. In America, as elsewhere, morality is simply the expression of habits and needs, and thus the purchase of the wife has ended by becoming an honourable thing; and among the Californian Redskins the children of a wife who has cost nothing to her husband are looked down on.[305]
The Papayos of New Mexico are not content with selling their daughters by private contract; they put them up to auction.[306] As for the inhabitants of those curious Neo-Mexican phalansteries called pueblos, as they are much more advanced than the greater part of their American congeners, their matrimonial customs are less gross; and the suitor, when accepted by the parents, tries to charm his bride by daily serenades lasting for hours—a rare thing in savage countries.[307]
With the half-civilised tribes of Guatemala and Nicaragua conjugal unions were also determined according to the presents made to the parents, and in Guatemala the young people were both kept in ignorance of the affair until the last moment.[308] In Nicaragua, however, there existed a curious exception in certain towns, where at a particular festival the young girls had the right to choose their husbands freely from among the young men present.[309]
With the Moxos and the Guaranis the price paid to the parents is still the decisive reason of the marriage.[310] However, the Guaranis also exact from the husband proofs of virile qualities in the chase and in war.[311] The struggle for existence is still severe, and in order to keep one or more wives a man must be able not only to feed but to defend them.
The Mongols of Asia buy their wives exactly like the Mongoloids of America, of whom I have just spoken.
Among the nomad Mongols, the Tartars of northern Asia, the parents arrange the marriages with absolute authority, and without consulting the parties more especially interested. The bargain is sharply debated between the parents, and the price to be paid by the husband or his family is very precisely settled; the future couple are not even informed of it, their sentiments, their desires, or dislikes, are not considered in the least. The price of the girl is paid in cattle, sheep, oxen, or horses; in pieces of stuff, in brandy, in butter, in flour, etc. Everything being agreed on, the contract of sale is drawn up before witnesses, but the girl is only delivered to the purchaser after the ceremony of marriage, which, as we have previously seen, takes the form of capture.[312]
The Turcomans have customs very similar to those of the Tartars. With them the price of the girl is chiefly reckoned in camels, and it generally takes five to pay for a girl; but as in their eyes the woman is not an object of luxury, as she not only has to manage the housekeeping but to manufacture articles which have an exchange value, and which are profitable to the family, experienced women and widows, provided they are passable, are much more sought for in the conjugal market than young girls. It is no longer five camels, but fifty, or even a hundred, that must be paid for a widow still in good condition.[313] If the suitor cannot immediately get together the price of the woman he covets, he has recourse to marriage by capture, and takes refuge with his bride in a neighbouring camp.
A settlement is always effected, matters are compounded, and the ravisher engages to pay a certain number of camels and horses, which he generally procures by marauding on the frontiers of Persia. It is a veritable debt of honour for him, and he must pay it with the least possible delay.[314]
These barbarous customs of Mongolia are naturally softened in China, but without any essential change in their main features. There, as well as in Tartary, the young girl is considered as the property of her parents, and her training is so perfect that she has not the slightest desire to be consulted before being married, or rather sold, for ready money.[315] In the Chinese family, daughters count for so little value that they are only called by ordinal numbers—first-born, second-born, etc.—to which is added a surname.[316] The price of the daughter when purchased is paid to the parents in two separate portions—the first on the conclusion of the agreement and the signing of the contract, and the other on the wedding-day.[317] Marriage by capture has naturally gone out of use in the old civilisation of China, but the trace of it still remains in the ceremonial, for the bride is lifted over the threshold of the conjugal dwelling, as was the custom in ancient Rome.
It has appeared so natural to parents all over the world to dispose of their daughters as they chose, that many of the aborigines of India do nearly the same as the Mongols. The daughters are sold by the parents among the Kolhans, the Bendkars, the Limboos, the Kirantis, the Moundas, the Santals, the Oraons, the Muasis, the Birhors, the Hos, the Boyars, the Nagas, the Gonds, etc.[318] The price of the girl varies from three to fourteen rupees, or is reckoned in head of cattle or measures of rice. Sometimes female merchandise is rare and dear, for in some countries female infanticide has long prevailed; it may happen, too, that daughters are condemned to celibacy, as with the Hos,[319] or, as with the Nagas, that marriages are delayed, and that the bridegroom must often submit to marriage by servitude.[320] Sometimes, again, the girls are carried off, as happens among the Kolhans, by the impatient bridegrooms, and, after the rape, arbitrators negotiate a settlement.[321] It should be remarked, by the way, that with the Nagas marriage by servitude has its ordinary effect, that of abasing the husband and raising the wife; and, in fact, among these races, although the wife performs severe labour, she is treated as the equal of her husband.[322]