Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/45

Rh Qatu's wife, but had they belonged to the other division their age would have made her count them her children rather than her brothers. It must not be understood that a Melanesian regards all women who are not of his own division as in fact his wives, or conceives himself to have rights which he may exercise in regard to those women of them who are unmarried; but the women who may be his wives by marriage, and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him; and it may be added that all women who may become wives in marriage and are not yet appropriated, are to a certain extent looked upon by those who may be their husbands as open to a more or less legitimate intercourse. In fact appropriation of particular women to their own husbands, though established by every sanction of native custom, has by no means so strong a hold in native society, nor in all probability anything like so deep a foundation in the history of the native people, as the severance of either sex by divisions which most strictly limit the intercourse of men and women to those of the section or sections to which they do not themselves belong. Two proofs or exemplifications of this are conspicuous, (1) There is probably no place in which the common opinion of Melanesians approves the intercourse of unmarried youths and girls as a thing good in itself, though it allows it as a thing to be expected and to be excused; but intercourse within the limit which restrains from marriage, where two members of the same division are concerned, is a crime, is incest. In Florida in old times the man would have been killed, and the woman made a harlot; now that the severity of ancient manners is relaxed, money and pigs can condone the offence, but much more than is exacted if a man is found sinning with one who might possibly have become his wife. In the Banks' Islands, where the divisions of the people are two, if it became known that two members of one of them had been guilty of this disgraceful crime, as they considered it, the people of the other division would come and destroy the gardens of those who belonged to that in which the offence had been committed, and these would make no resistance nor complaint. It was