Page:Walter Matthew Gallichan - Women under Polygamy (1914).djvu/23

 When the necessity for fighting and hunting begins to wane, men occupy themselves, more often, with the industries assigned hitherto to the women of the tribe; and certain of the marked male characteristics undergo a change. At this stage the position of women is usually raised, and by gradual stages she often becomes supreme in power, as in the Matriarchal Period.

With a cessation of the dangers of combat and the chase, more men survive in the community; and there is a tendency towards equalisation in the number of males and females. Celibacy being abhorred as contrary to nature, every man demands his right to a wife, and every woman claims a husband.

In cases where the women are more numerous than the men, among existing primitive people, the practice of polygamy is regarded as a natural necessity. The Esquimaux man of the present day, being a fisher and hunter, is continually at contest with the forces of nature, and therefore subject to mortality from accidents. Many Esquimaux fishermen lose their lives by drowning, and in conflict with animals. The widows are not left to languish in celibacy. A man is always willing to take the husbandless woman into his own home, and to adopt her children; an arrangement which is never resented by his first wife.

Polygamy arose naturally in the barbarous times, when it became imperative to capture women for the