MOTHERRIGHT 301 



for reckoning kinship only through females, and for the 

 disinheritance of a man's children in favour of his sister's 

 children, if only tribes whose conjugal relations were as 

 loose as those of the Nayars reckoned kinship in this way. 

 Motherright, however, is the rule of numerous peoples 

 where there is no reasonable doubt of the paternity: 

 Among the coastal tribes of western Africa from the 

 equator to the Congo the husband buys his wives ; they 

 are taken into his dwelling and belong to him. The laws 

 against adultery are very severe. The punishment is 

 death, and it is sometimes carried out, though now gene- 

 rally commuted for a fine. Severe as the law is, it is in- 

 creased in severity by the exceedingly wide definition of 

 the offence. It is " often only a matter of laying your 

 hand, even in self-defence from a virago, on a woman, 

 or brushing against her in the path." l In Mayumbe, 

 so jealously are the married women guarded that the 

 husband may even put them to death if any other man 

 so much as touch them unknowingly. 2 Yet, as we 

 have seen, motherright is the law ; and at the father's 

 death the children obtain nothing of his property, save 

 what he may have previously made over to them. 

 The Ondonga of German South-west Africa also 

 reckon descent through the mother only, and children 

 inherit nothing from the father. On marriage the 

 husband establishes a werft of his own and takes his 

 wife to live there. Polygyny is practised wherever 

 a man has the means to do so, but on the woman's 

 part strict fidelity is required. Contrary to the 

 customs of many savage and barbarous natives, the 

 woman married for the first time is expected to be a 



1 Kingsley, Trav. 497. 



1 Bastian, Loango-Kuste, i. 168. 



