It is not too much to say that the Moï seems to attach no importance to feminine chastity. Marriage is only the consecration of a cohabitation of long standing, and sometimes there are several children of the union before either party thinks of putting it on a legal footing.
As a rule, a man must take his wife from the same group, or, in other words, endogamy is de rigueur. The only connecting links with other groups are the alliances with female slaves, to which the woman need not be a consenting party. The consequence is that all the inhabitants of a region are related. We have often tried to decide the vexed question as to whether this consanguinity exercises a good or bad influence on the progress of the race, but it is impossible to say more than that the evidence is inconclusive.
Some European travellers, who, like myself, have resided among the Moï, say that marriages are forbidden between first cousins on the mother's side. They deduce from this fact that the natives consider the part played by the mother in the transmission of hereditary qualities more important than that of the father.
This theory, interesting and valuable as it might be if it applied to a race in a higher stage of development, is probably unsound with regard to the Moï, the phenomenon on which it is based being probably merely the effect of coincidence. There has been an increasing tendency of late years to attribute to half-civilized races scientific knowledge which we have only recently acquired ourselves, and to consider certain customs and beliefs primitive merely because they are ignorant and coarse. Both tendencies are liable to lead to error and require careful watching. In nine cases out of ten such customs are not inspired by any exact knowledge of physiological phenomena at all.
Only a few groups permit exogamy, that is marriages with others than members of the clan, and even where the system persists it does not seem to be due to any defined totemic rule.
Totemism is a semi-magical, semi-religious system which is based on the belief in a bond of relationship between a group of human beings and some species of animal regarded as protector, "totem." It has been noticed that a characteristic feature of totemism is the prohibition of marriages between men and women with the same totem and therefore belonging to the same clan.
The Moï are a strictly monogamous people, for the very natural reason that the males outnumber the females, and this again for the equally natural reason that the men are hardier and more able to survive the manifold mischances of infancy. Another contributory cause to their moderation in the matter of wives is their financial disability to keep more than one. But it is not a matter of principle, and a man would not hesitate to add to his stock if a sudden windfall made it possible.
A woman's commercial value depends on her age and social condition and varies also in different localities. In most cases she is paid for in instalments to her parents, for the future husband is too poor to give the presents which constitute the purchase price, and his only resource is to sell his labour to pay off the debt. Accordingly there is a stage more or less prolonged during which the young man combines wooing and the duties of maid-of-all-work in the home of his beloved. No arrangement could be happier in this country where labour is scarce. The real object, however, of this cohabitation on trial is to make sure that the characters of the two young people will harmonize and that their affections will survive continuous personal contact. Here, as elsewhere, there are cynics who say that familiarity breeds contempt.
If the engagement is broken off the man must pay an indemnity fixed beforehand. He pays his pig and takes his leave.