_ Besides this commercialism, which was so prevalent that, as Dr. Brinton says (_A.R._, 48), "in America marriage was usually by purchase," there were various other obstacles to free choice. "In a number of tribes," as the same champion of the Indian remarks, "the purchase of the eldest daughter gave a man a right to buy all the younger daughters as they reached nubile age." Concerning the Blackfeet--who were among the most advanced Indians--Grinnell says that
"all the younger sisters of a man's wife were regarded
as his potential wives. If he was not disposed to marry
them, they could not be disposed of to any other man
without his consent." "When a man dies his wives become
the potential wives of his brother." "In the old days,
it was a very poor man who did not have three wives.
Many had six, eight, and some more than a dozen."
Morgan refers (_A.S._, 432) to forty tribes where sisters were disposed of in bunches; and in all such cases liberty of choice is of course out of the question. Indeed the wide prevalence of so utterly barbarous and selfish a custom shows us vividly how far from the Indian's mind in general was the thought of seriously consulting the choice of girls.
Furthermore, to continue Dr. Brinton's enumeration, "the selection of a wife was often regarded as a concern of the gens rather than of the individual. Among the Hurons, for instance, the old women of the gens selected the wives for the young men, and united them with painful uniformity to women several years their senior." "Thus," writes Morgan (_L. of I._, 320),
"it often happened that the young warrior at
twenty-five was married to a woman of forty, and
oftentimes a widow; while the widower at sixty was
joined to a maiden of twenty."
Besides these obstacles to free choice there are several others not referred to by Dr. Brinton, the most important being the custom of wrestling for a wife, and of infant betrothal or very early marriage. According to a passage in Hearne (104) cited on a previous occasion, and corroborated by W.H. Hooper and J. Richardson, it has always been the custom of northern Indians to wrestle for the women they want, the strongest one carrying off the prize, and a weak man being "seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man thinks worth his notice." It is needless to say that this custom, which "prevails throughout all their tribes," puts the woman's freedom of choice out of question as completely as if she were a slave sold in the market. Richardson says (II., 24) that
"the bereaved husband meets his loss with the
resignation which custom prescribes in such a case,
and seeks his revenge by taking the wife of another
man weaker than himself."
Duels or fights for women also occurred in California, Mexico, Paraguay, Brazil and other countries.[228]
[FOOTNOTE 228:
Schoolcraft, IV., 224; Powers, 221; Waitz, IV., 132; Azara (_Voyages_), II., 94; von Martius, I.,412, 509.]
Among the Comanches "the parents exercise full control in giving their daughters in marriage," and they are frequently married before the age of puberty. (Schoolcraft, II., 132.) Concerning the customs of early betrothal and marriage enough has been said in preceding pages. It prevailed widely among the Indians and, of course, utterly frustrated all possibility of choice. In fact, apart from this custom, Indian marriage, being in the vast majority of cases with girls under fifteen,[229] made choice, in any rational sense of the word, entirely out of the question.
[FOOTNOTE 229:
A table relating to sixty-five North American Indian girls given in Ploss, I., 476, shows that all but eight of them had their first child before the end of the fifteenth year; the largest number (eighteen), having it in the fourteenth.] _