CHAPTER VII: POLYGYNY.

§ 304. Were it not for the ideas of sacredness associated with that Hebrew history which in childhood familiarized us with examples of polygyny, we should probably feel as much surprise and repugnance on first reading about it as we do on first reading about polyandry. Education has, however, prepared us for learning without astonishment that polygyny is common in every part of the world not occupied by the most advanced nations.

It prevails in all climates—in the Arctic regions, in arid burning tracts, infertile oceanic islands, in steaming tropical continents. All races practise it. We have already noted its occurrence among the lowest tribes of men—the Fuegians, the Australians, the Tasmanians. It is habitual with the Negritos in New Caledonia, in Tanna, in Vate, in Eromanga, in Lifu. Malayo-Polynesian peoples exhibit it everywhere—in Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands, Tonga, New Zealand, Madagascar, Sumatra. Throughout America it is found among the rude tribes of the northern continent, from the Esquimaux to the Mosquitos of the isthmus, and among the equally rude tribes of the southern continent, from the Caribs to the Patagonians; and it prevailed in the ancient semi-civilized American states of Mexico, Peru, and Central America. It is general with African peoples—with the Hottentots, Damaras, Kaffirs of the south; with the East Edition: current; Page: [665] Africans, Congo people, Coast Negroes, Inland Negroes, Dahomans, Ashantis of mid-Africa; with the Fulahs and Abyssinians of the north. In Asia it is common to the settled Cingalese, the semi-nomadic Hill-tribes of India, the wandering Yakutes. And its prevalence in ancient eastern societies needs but naming. Indeed, on counting up all peoples, savage and civilized, past and present, it appears that the polygynous ones far outnumber the rest.

Plurality of wives would be even more general were it not in some cases checked by the conditions. We learn this when told that among the poverty-stricken Bushmen, polygyny, though perfectly allowable, is rare; when Forsyth states that among the Gonds “polygamy is not forbidden, but, women being costly chattels, it is rarely practised;” when Tennent tells us of the Veddahs that “the community is too poor to afford polygamy;” when, concerning the Ostyaks, we read that “polygamy is allowed, but it is not common: for a plurality of wives the country is too poor.” And though the occurrence of polygyny among some of the poorest peoples, as the Australians and the Fuegians, shows that poverty does not prevent it if the women can get enough food for self-maintenance, we may understand its exclusion where the mode of life does not permit them to do so.

This natural restriction of polygyny by poverty, is not the only natural restriction. There is another, recognition of which modifies considerably those ideas of polygynous societies conveyed by travellers. Their accounts often imply that plurality of wives is, if not the uniform, still, the most general, arrangement. Yet a little thought makes us hesitate to accept the implication. Turner tells us that in Lifu, “Bula [a chief] has forty wives: common men three or four.” How can that be? we may fitly ask—How come there to be so many women? Scepticism such as is raised by this statement, is raised in smaller degrees by many other statements. We read in Park that the Mandingoes are polygamists, and each of the wives “in rotation is mistress of the Edition: current; Page: [666] household.” Anderson says of the Damaras that “polygamy is practised to a great extent . . . each wife builds for herself a hut.” We are told by Lesseps that “obliged to make frequent journeys, a Yakout has a wife in every place where he stops.” Of the Haidahs, it is alleged that “polygamy is universal, regulated simply by the facilities for subsistence.” Acceptance of these statements involves the belief that in each case there is a great numerical preponderance of women over men. But unless we assume that the number of girls born greatly exceeds the number of boys, which we have no warrant for doing, or else that war causes a mortality of males more enormous than seems credible, we must suspect that the polygynous arrangement is less general than these expressions represent it to be. Examination confirms the suspicion. For habitually it is said, or implied, that the number of wives varies according to the means a man has of purchasing or maintaining them; and as, in all societies, the majority are comparatively poor, only the minority can afford more wives than one. Such statements as that among the Comanches “every man may have all the wives he can buy;” that the Nufi people “marry as many wives as they are able to purchase;” that “the number of a Fijian’s wives is limited only by his means of maintaining them;” that “want of means forms the only limit to the number of wives of a Mishmee;” warrant the inference that the less prosperous men, everywhere likely to form the larger part, have either no wives or but a single wife each.

For this inference we find definite justification on inquiring further. Numerous accounts show that in polygynous societies the polygyny prevails only among the wealthier or the higher in rank. Lichtenstein says “most of the Koossas have but one wife; the kings and chiefs of the kraals only, have four or five.” Polygyny is permitted in Java, says Raffles, but not much practised except by the upper classes. “The customs of the Sumatrans permit their having as many wives by jujur as they can compass the purchase of, or afford Edition: current; Page: [667] to maintain; but it is extremely rare that an instance occurs of their having more than one, and that only among a few of the chiefs.” In ancient Mexico “the people were content with one legitimate wife, except the lords, who had many concubines, some possessing more than 800.” The Honduras people “generally kept but one wife, but their lords as many as they pleased.” And Oveido says that among the inhabitants of Nicaragua, “few have more than one wife, except the principal men, and those who can support more.”

These statements, joined with others presently to be cited, warn us against the erroneous impressions likely to be formed of societies described as polygynous. We may infer that in most cases where polygyny exists, monogamy coexists to a greater extent.

§ 305. The prevalence of polygyny will not perplex us if, setting out with the primitive unregulated state, we ask what naturally happened.

The greater strength of body and energy of mind, which gained certain men predominance as warriors and chiefs, also gave them more power of securing women; either by stealing them from other tribes or by wresting them from men of their own tribe. And in the same way that possession of a stolen wife came to be regarded as a mark of superiority, so did possession of several wives, foreign or native. Cremony says the Apache “who can support or keep, or attract by his power to keep, the greatest number of women, is the man who is deemed entitled to the greatst amount of honour and respect.” This is typical. Plurality of wives has everywhere tended to become a class-distinction. In ancient Mexico, Ahuitzotl’s “predecessors had many wives, from an opinion that their authority and grandeur would be heightened in proportion to the number of persons who contributed to their pleasures.” A plurality of wives is common among chiefs and rich people in Madagascar, and “the only law to regulate polygamy seems to be, that no man may take twelve Edition: current; Page: [668] wives excepting the sovereign.” Among the East Africans “the chiefs pride themselves upon the number of their wives, varying from twelve to three hundred.” In Ashantee “the number of wives which caboceers and other persons possess, depends partly on their rank and partly on their ability to purchase them.” Joining which facts with those furnished by the Hebrews, whose judges and kings—Gideon, David, Solomon—had their greatness so shown; and with those furnished by extant Eastern peoples, whose potentates, primary and secondary, are thus distinguished; we may see that the establishment and maintenance of polygyny has been largely due to the honour accorded to it, originally as a mark of strength and bravery, and afterwards as a mark of social status. This conclusion is verified by European history: witness the statement of Tacitus that the ancient Germans, “almost alone among barbarians,” “are content with one wife,” except a very few of noble birth; and witness the statement of Montesquieu that the polygyny of the Merovingian kings was an attribute of dignity.

From the beginning, too, except in some regions where the labour of women could not be utilized for purposes of production, an economic incentive has joined with other incentives. We are told that in New Caledonia, “chiefs have ten, twenty, and thirty wives. The more wives the better plantations, and the more food.” A like utilization of wives prompts to a plurality of them throughout Africa. On reading in Caillié that Mandingo wives “go to distant places for wood and water; their husbands make them sow, weed the cultivated fields, and gather in the harvest;” and on reading in Shooter that among the Kaffirs, “besides her domestic duties, the woman has to perform all the hard work; she is her husband’s ox, as a Kaffir once said to me,—she had been bought, he argued, and must therefore labour;” we cannot fail to see that one motive for desiring many wives, is desiring many slaves.

Since in every society the doings of the powerful and the wealthy furnish the standards of right and wrong, so that even the very words “noble” and “servile,” originally expressive of social status, have come to be expressive of good and bad in conduct, it results that plurality of wives acquires, in places where it prevails, an ethical sanction. Associated with greatness, polygyny is thought praiseworthy; and associated with poverty, monogamy is thought mean. Hence the reprobation with which, as we have seen, the one-wife system is regarded in polygynous communities. Even the religious sanction is sometimes joined with the ethical sanction. By the Chippewayans “polygamy is held to be agreeable in the eyes of the Great Spirit, as he that has most children is held in highest estimation”—a belief reminding us of a kindred one current among the Mormons. And that among the Hebrews plurality of wives was not at variance either with the prevailing moral sentiments or with supposed divine injunctions, is proved by the absence of any direct or implied reprobation of it in their laws, and by the special favour said to have been shown by God to sundry rulers who had many wives and many concubines.

It should be added that in societies characterized by it, this form of marital relation is approved by women as well as by men—certainly in some cases, if not generally. Bancroft cites the fact that among the Comanches “as polygamy causes a greater division of labour, the women do not object to it.” And of the Makalolo women, Livingstone says:—

Initiated, then, by unrestrained sexual instincts among savage men, polygyny has been fostered by the same causes that have established political control and industrial control. Edition: current; Page: [670] It has been an incidental element of governmental power in uncivilized and semi-civilized societies.

§ 306. In contrast with the types of marital relations dealt with in the preceding two chapters, polygyny shows some advance. That it is better than promiscuity needs no proof; and that it is better than polyandry we shall find several reasons for concluding.

Under it there arise more definite relationships. Where the unions of the sexes are entirely unsettled, only the maternal blood is known. On passing from the lower form of polyandry in which the husbands are unrelated, to that higher form in which the husbands are something more than half-brothers, we reach a stage in which the father’s blood is known, though not with certainty the father. But in polygyny, fatherhood and motherhood are both manifest. In so far, then, as paternal feeling is fostered by more distinct consciousness of paternity, the connexion between parents and children is strengthened: the bond becomes a double one. A further result is that traceable lines of descent on the male side, from generation to generation, are established. Hence greater family cohesion. Beyond definite union of father and son, there is definite union of successive fathers and sons in a series. But while increased in a descending direction, family cohesion is little, if at all, increased in a lateral direction. Though some of the children may be brothers and sisters, most of them are only half-brothers and half-sisters; and their fraternal feeling is possibly less than in the polyandric household. In a group derived from several unrelated mothers by the same father, the jealousies fostered by the mothers are likely to be greater than in a group derived from the same mother and indefinitely affiliated on several brothers. In this respect, then, the family remains equally incoherent, or becomes perhaps, more incoherent. Probably to this cause is due the dissension and bloodshed in the households of eastern rulers.

Save, however, where there result among sons struggles for power, we may conclude that by definiteness of descent the family is made more coherent, admits of more extensive ramifications, and is thus of higher type.

§ 307. The effects of polygyny on the self-preservation of the society, on the welfare of offspring, and on the lives of adults, have next to be considered.

Barbarous communities surrounded by communities at enmity with them, derive advantages from it. Lichtenstein remarks of the Kaffirs that “there are fewer men than women, on account of the numbers of the former that fall in their frequent wars. Thence comes polygamy, and the women being principally employed in all menial occupation.” Now, without accepting the inference that polygyny is initiated by the loss of men in war, we may recognize the fact which Lichtenstein does not name, that where the death-rate of males considerably exceeds that of females, plurality of wives becomes a means of maintaining population. If, while decimation of the men is habitually going on, no survivor has more than one wife—if, consequently, many women remain without husbands; there will be a deficiency of children: the multiplication will not suffice to make up for the mortality. Food being sufficient and other things equal, it will result that of two conflicting peoples, the one which does not utilize all its women as mothers, will be unable to hold its ground against the other which does thus utilize them: the monogamous will disappear before the polygynous. Hence, probably, a chief reason why in rude societies and little-developed societies, polygyny prevails so widely. Another way in which, under early conditions, polygyny conduces to social self-preservation, is this. In a barbarous community formed of some wifeless men, others who have one wife each, and others who have more than one, it must on the average happen that this last class will be the relatively superior—the stronger and more Edition: current; Page: [672] courageous among savages, and among semi-civilized peoples the wealthier also, who are mostly the more capable. Hence, ordinarily, a greater number of offspring will be left by men having natures of the kind needed. The society will be rendered by polygyny not only numerically stronger, but more of its units will be efficient warriors. There is also a resulting structural advance. As compared with lower types of the family, polygyny, by establishment of descent in the male line, conduces to political stability. It is true that in many polygynous societies succession of rulers is in the female line (the savage system of kinship having survived); and here the advantage is not achieved. This may be a reason why in Africa, where this law of descent is common, social consolidation is so incomplete: kingdoms being from time to time formed, and after brief periods dissolved again, as we before saw. But under polygyny, inheritance of power by sons becomes possible; and where it arises, government is better maintained. Not indeed that it is well maintained; for when we read that among the Damaras “the eldest son of the chief’s favourite wife succeeds his father;” and that among the Koossa Kaffirs, the king’s son who succeeds is “not always the eldest; it is commonly him whose mother was of the richest and oldest family of any of the king’s wives;” we are shown how polygyny introduces an element of uncertainty in the succession of rulers, which is adverse to stable government. Further, this definite descent in the male line aids the development of ancestor-worship; and so serves in another way to consolidate society. With subordination to the living there is joined subordination to the dead. Rules, prohibitions, commands, derived from leading men of the past, acquire sacred sanctions; and, as all early civilizations show us, the resulting cult helps to maintain order and increase the efficiency of the offensive and defensive organization.

In regions where food is scarce, the effects on the rearing of offspring are probably not better than, if as good as, those Edition: current; Page: [673] of polyandry; but in warm and productive regions the death-rate of offspring from innutrition is not likely to be higher, and the establishment of positive paternity conduces to protection of them. In some cases, indeed, polygyny tends directly to diminish the mortality of children: cases, namely, in which a man is allowed, or is called upon, to marry the widow of his brother and adopt his family. For what we have seen to be originally a right, becomes, in many cases, an obligation. Even among inferior races, as the Chippewas, who require a man to marry his dead brother’s widow, an ostensible reason is that he has to provide for his brother’s children. And on reading that polygyny is not common with the Ostyaks because “the country is too poor,” but that “brothers marry the widows of brothers,” we may infer that the mortality of children is, under such conditions, thereby diminished. Very possibly the Hebrew requirement that a man should raise up seed to his dead brother, may have originally been that he should rear his dead brother’s children, though it was afterwards otherwise interpreted; for the demand was made on the surviving brother by the widow, who spat in his face before the elders if he refused. The suspicion that obligation to take care of fatherless nephews and nieces, entailed this kind of polygyny, is confirmed by current facts; as witness the following passage in Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt:—“I met Hasan the janissary of the American Consulate, a very respectable good man. He told me he had married another wife since last year. I asked, What for? It was the widow of his brother, who had always lived in the same house with him, like one family, and who died, leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not let her marry a stranger.” But though in most rude societies polygyny may not be unfavourable to the rearing of children, and may occasionally check juvenile mortality in societies where philanthropic feeling is undeveloped, yet its moral Edition: current; Page: [674] effects on children can scarcely be better than those of still lower marital relations. Where there is but one household, dissensions caused by differences of origin and interest, must be injurious to character. And even where, as happens in many places, the mothers have separate households, there cannot be escaped the evils of jealousies between the groups; and there still remain the evils caused by a too-diffused paternal care.

On the lives of adults in undeveloped societies, the effects of polygyny are not in all respects bad. Where the habitat is such that women cannot support themselves, while the number of men is deficient, it results that, if there is no polygyny, some of them, remaining uncared for, lead miserable lives. The Esquimaux furnish an illustration. Adequate food and clothing being under their conditions obtainable only by men, it happens that widows, when not taken by surviving men as additional wives, soon die of starvation. Even where food is not difficult to procure, if there is much mortality of males in war, there must, in the absence of polygyny, be many women without that protection which, under primitive conditions, is indispensable. Certain ills to which adult females of rude societies are inevitably exposed, are thus mitigated by polygyny—mitigated in the only way practicable among unsympathetic barbarians. Of course the evils entailed, especially on women, are great. In Madagascar the name for polygyny—“famporafesana”—signifies “the means of causing enmity;” and that kindred names are commonly applicable to it, we are shown by their use among the Hebrews: in the Mischna, a man’s several wives are called “tzarôt,” that is, troubles, adversaries, or rivals. Sometimes the dissension is mitigated by separation. Marsden says of the Battas that “the husband finds it necessary to allot to each of them [his wives] their several fire-places and cooking utensils, where they dress their own victuals separately, and prepare his in turns.” Of the wives of a Mishmi chief, Wilcox writes—“The remainder, to avoid Edition: current; Page: [675] domestic quarrels, have separate houses assigned them at some little distance, or live with their relations.” Throughout Africa there is usually a like arrangement. But obviously the moral mischiefs are thus only in a small degree diminished. Moreover, though polygyny may not absolutely exclude, still, it greatly represses, those higher emotions fostered by associations of the sexes. Prompted by the instincts of men and disregarding the preferences of women, it can but in exceptional cases, and then only in slight degrees, permit of better relations than exist among animals. Associated as it is with the conception of women as property, to be sold by fathers, bought by husbands, and afterwards treated as slaves, there are negatived those sentiments towards them into which sympathy and respect enter as necessary elements. How profoundly the lives of adults are thus vitiated, may be inferred from the characterization which Monteiro gives of the polygynous peoples of Africa.

And this testimony harmonizes with testimonies cited by Sir John Lubbock, to the effect that the Hottentots “are so cold and indifferent to one another that you would think there was no such thing as love between them;” that among the Koossa Kaffirs, there is “no feeling of love in marriage;” and that in Yariba, “a man thinks as little of taking a wife as of cutting an ear of corn—affection is altogether out of the question.” Not, indeed, that we can regard polygyny as causing this absence of the tender emotion associated among ourselves with the relations of the sexes; for lack of it habitually characterizes men of low types, whether they have only one wife each or have several. We can say merely that Edition: current; Page: [676] the practice of polygyny is unfavourable to the development of the emotion.

Beyond this resulting inferiority in the adult life, there is abridgment of the life which remains after the reproductive age is passed. Naturally the women already little regarded, then become utterly unregarded; and the men, if in a less degree, also suffer from lack of the aid prompted by domestic affection. Hence an early close to a miserable old age.

§ 308. A few words must be added respecting the modifications which polygyny undergoes in progressing societies, and which accompany the spread of monogamy.

Between the two or more wives which the stronger man among savages secures to himself, there tend to arise distinctions. Here he has an older and a younger wife, like the Australian, and occasionally the Bushman. Here he has wives purchased at intervals, of which he makes one or other a favourite; as does the Damara or the Fijian. Here of the several married by him the earliest only is considered legitimate; as with the Tahitians of rank and with the Chibchas. Here the chief wife is one who has been given by the king. From the beginning the tendency has been to establish differences among them, and for the differences to grow, in course of time, definite. Then there comes also the contrast between wives who are native women, and wives who are women taken as spoils of war. Hence, probably, the original way in which results the marking off into wives proper and concubines—a way indicated even among the Hebrews, who, in Deuteronomy xxi. 10-14, are authorized to appropriate individually the women of conquered enemies—women who, as they may be repudiated without formal divorce, stand in the position of concubines rather than wives. Once made, a difference of this kind was probably extended by taking account of the ranks from which the women married were derived—wives from the superior class, concubines from the inferior; some exempt Edition: current; Page: [677] from labour, some slaves. And then, from the tendency towards inequality of position among the wives, there at length came in advancing societies the recognized arrangement of a chief wife; and eventually, with rulers, a queen, whose children were the legitimate successors.

Along with the spread of monogamy in ways to be hereafter described, the decay of polygyny may be regarded as in part produced by this modification which more and more elevated one of the wives, and reduced the rest to a relatively servile condition, passing gradually into a condition less and less authorized. Stages in this transformation were exhibited among the Persians, whose king, besides concubines, had three or four wives, one of whom was queen, “regarded as wife in a different sense from the others;” and again among the Assyrians, whose king had one wife only, with a certain number of concubines; and again among the Egyptians, some of whose wall-paintings represent the king with his legitimate wife seated by his side, and his illegitimate wives dancing for their amusement. It was so, too, with the ancient Peruvian rulers and Chibcha rulers; as it is still with the rulers of Abyssinia.

Naturally the polygynic arrangement as it decayed, continued longest in connexion with the governing organization, which everywhere and always displays a more archaic condition than other parts of the social organization. Recognizing which truth we shall not be surprised by the fact that, in modified forms, polygyny survived among monarchs during the earlier stages of European civilization. As implied above, it was practised by Merovingian kings: Clothair and his sons furnishing instances. And after being gradually repressed by the Church throughout other ranks, this plurality of wives or concubines long survived in the royal usage of having many mistresses, avowed and unavowed: polygyny in this qualified form remaining a tolerated privilege of royalty down to late times.

§ 309. To sum up, we must say, firstly, that in degree of Edition: current; Page: [678] evolution the polygynous type of family is higher than the types we have thus far considered. Its connexions are equally definite in a lateral direction and more definite in a descending direction. There is greater filial and parental cohesion, caused by conscious unity of blood on both male and female sides; and the continuity of this cohesion through successive generations, makes possible a more extensive family integration.

Under most conditions polygyny has prevailed against promiscuity and polyandry, because it has subserved social needs better. It has done this by adding to other causes of social cohesion, more widely ramifying family connexions. It has done it by furthering that political stability which results from established succession of rulers in the same line. It has done it by making possible a developed form of ancestor-worship.

While it has spread by supplanting inferior types of the marital relations, it has, in the majority of cases, held its ground against the superior type; because, under rude conditions, it conduces in a higher degree to social self-preservation by making possible more rapid replacement of men lost in war, and so increasing the chance of social survival.

But while it has this adaptation to certain low stages of social evolution—while in some cases it diminishes juvenile mortality and serves also to diminish the mortality of surplus women; it repeats within the household the barbarism characterizing the life outside the household.