Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/781

 RELA TION OF SEX TO PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTROL 767

without any show of right. " Kane mentions that the Shastas . . . frequently sell their children as slaves to the Chinooks." 1 Bancroft says of the Columbians : "Affection for children is by no means rare, but in few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell or gamble them away." 2 Descent through mothers is

n force among the negroes of equatorial Africa, the man's prop- erty passing to his sister's children, but the father is an unlim- ited despot, and no one dares to oppose him. So long as his relation with his wives continues, he is master of them and of their children. He can even sell the latter into slavery. 3 In New Britain maternal descent prevails, but wives are obtained by purchase or capture and are practically slaves ; they are cruelly treated, carry on agriculture, and bear burdens which make them prematurely stooped, and are likely, if their husbands are offended, to be killed and eaten. 4

In many regions of Australia women are treated with extreme brutality, when their work is not satisfactory, or the husband has any other cause of offense. In Victoria the men often break

heir staves over the heads of the women, and skulls of women have been found in which knitted fractures indicated former ill- treatment. In Cape York the women are beaten, and in the interior an angry native burned his wife alive. In the Adelaide dialect the phrase " owner of a woman" means husband. When a man dies, his uterine brother inherits his wife and children. 5

Where under an exogamous system of marriage a man is forced to go outside his group to obtain a wife, he may do this either by going over to her group, by taking possession of her violently, or by offering her and the members of her group sufficient inducements to relinquish her ; and the contrasted male and female disposition is expressed in all the forms of mar- riage incident to the exogamous system. Every exogamous group is naturally reluctant to relinquish its women, both because

1 BANCROFT, Native Races of the Pacific States, Vol. I, p. 35 1.

BANCROFT, loc <*/., Vol. I, p. 219.

s A. HOVELAQUE, Lfs AVfw, p. 316.

VON DARGUN, loc. ft'/., p. 5.

s WAITZ-GERLAND, loc. cit., Vol. VI, pp. 774 ff.