“I never see it. The other women never come here. Or if they do come to the house it is as if they were perfect strangers. They have their own house.”
“But you must know that your husband does leave you to go to these other women.”
“Oh yes! But I don’t see it. Besides their children are subject to my children. If my children suffer injury, they fight to avenge them. If my children demand, they stand back of them. It is good to have a large family.”
The logic of concubinage is embraced in this last reply, I think. It is an institution to render the family “strong to demand, and strong to resist demands.”
A strong healthy Kalinga chief has usually two, often more concubines. He gives them rather limited material support: now and then a suckling pig to rear, a little rice to help out the year, work at good wages, yarn to keep them busy at the loom, a little capital for trading trips, and the like. He may help them a great deal, but they rarely cost him much. As indicated above, their children have no inheritance rights.
[1] Myths relate how the Full-Grown Cock overcame the Half-Grown Cock, how the Cobra overcame the Python, how the Hard Stone overcame the Soft Stone.
Glossary[1]
adi, term of negation.