This was exactly the status of a household not far from my cabin. Haabuani, master of ceremonies at the dances, the best carver and drum-beater of all Atuona, who was of pure Marquesan blood, but spoke French fluently and earnestly defended the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility,—even coming to actual blows with a defiant Protestant upon my very paepae—explained his attitude.
“If I have a friend and he temporarily desires my wife, Toho, I am glad if she is willing. But my enemy shall not have that privilege with my consent. I would be glad to have you look upon her with favor. You are kind to me. You have treated me as a chief and you have bought my kava bowl. But, écoutez, Monsieur, Toho does what she pleases, yet if I toss but a pebble in another pool she is furious. See, I have the bruises still of her beating.”
With a tearful whine he showed the black-and-blue imprints of Toho's anger, and made it known to us that the three piastres he had of me for the kava bowl had been traced by his wife to the till of Le Brunnec's store, where Flower, the daughter of Lam Kai Oo, had spent them for ribbons. Toho in her fury had beaten him so that for a day and a night he lay groaning upon the mats.
“That is as it should be,” said Malicious Gossip, sternly, while her curving lips set in straight lines. Sex morality means conformity to sex tapus, the world over.
Free polyandry still exists in many countries I have seen, and in others its dying out leaves these fragmentary survivals. I have visited the tribe of Subanos, in the west and north of the island of Mindanao in the Philippine archipelago, where the rich men are polygamists, and the poor still submit to polyandry. Economic conditions there bring about the same relations, under a different guise, as in Europe or America, where wealthy rakes keep up several establishments, and many wage-earners support but one prostitute.
Polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries, where there is always a scarcity of females. Thus we have polyandry founded on a surplus of males caused by poverty of sustenance. The female is, in fact, supposed to be the result of a surplus of nutrition; more boys than girls are born in the country districts because the city diet is richer, especially in meat and sugar. It is notable that the families of the pioneers of western America bore a surprising majority of males.
In the Marquesas, where living was always difficult and the diet poor, there were always more men than women despite the frequent wars in which men were victims. Another reason was that male children were saved often when females were killed in the practice of infanticide, also forced by famine. The overplus of men made them amenable to the commands of the women, who often dominated in permanent alliances, demanding lavishment of wealth and attention from their husbands.
Yet—and this is a most significant fact—the father-right in the child remained the basis of the social system.
Throughout all Australia, Melanesia, and Papuasis on the east, and America on the west, the mother-right prevailed among primitive peoples. Children followed the mother, took their name from her, and inherited property through her. I have known a Hawaiian nobleman who, commenting on this fact, said that the system had merit in that no child could be called a bastard, and that the woman, who suffered most, was rewarded by pride of posterity. He himself, he said, was the son of a chieftess, but his father, a king, was the son of a negro cobbler.
The father-right, so familiar to our minds that it seems to-day almost the only natural or existing social system, was in fact developed very lately among all races except the Caucasian and some tribes of the Mongols. Yet in the Marquesas, these islands cut off from all other peoples through ages of history, the father-right prevailed in spite of all the difficulties that attended its survival in polyandry.