Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/127

 II. Marriage by Servitude.

From all these facts we may evidently conclude that in societies of little or no cultivation the children are left absolutely to the discretion of the parents. The latter, having every possible right over their progeny, consider them as a property, and think it no crime to sell their daughters, pubescent or not, as soon as they constitute a negotiable value. This sale of daughters is even the most widely spread form of primitive marriage, or of what it is convenient to call so. In societies of some degree of civilisation, where exchange-values exist, as domestic animals, stores of provisions, or slaves, the sale of a daughter is argued and debated like any other transaction, and the merchandise is delivered for the price agreed on. In a more primitive state of civilisation, when man subsists chiefly by the chase, or fishing from day to day, and is not always rich enough to buy a wife, the exchange-values considered equivalent of the required daughter are often replaced by a certain amount of labour or services rendered to the parents, and hence results a special form of marriage—marriage by servitude.

This mode of marriage was not uncommon with the Indians of North America. Sometimes the future husband engaged to serve the parents of the girl for a fixed period of time. He hunted for them, hollowed out or constructed canoes, or where agriculture was practised he cultivated the land. Sometimes the husband was not entirely enslaved; he had only to give to his wife's parents a part of the produce of the chase, and he was not exempt from this tribute till a daughter was born to him, who became, by way of indemnity, the property of the maternal uncle of his wife.

Often during the time of his voluntary servitude the husband remained in the family of his wife, and he actually took the position there of a sort of slave.

In the more civilised societies of Central America the custom of marriage by servitude was nevertheless preserved. Among the Kenaï, the future husband went every morning