MARITAL JEALOUSY 105 



descent is reckoned exclusively through the mother 

 paternity is of no importance ; and until at any rate 

 the husband has succeeded in establishing himself in a 

 more secure position than the Sia or the Hopi husband, 

 the question of lawful marriage is quite secondary, or 

 is disregarded altogether from the point of view of the 

 child as well as the mother. It will be convenient in 

 the first place to restrict our attention to matrilineal 

 peoples. 



Among the Hurons Charlevoix reports that the 

 young people of both sexes abandoned themselves 

 without shame to all sorts of dissolute practices, arid 

 it was no reproach to a girl to be prostituted. Her 

 parents, indeed, were the first to invite her to it. 

 Husbands did the same with their wives for a trifling 

 profit. Many men did not marry at all but took girls, 

 they said, to serve as companions ; and all the differ- 

 ence between these concubines and legitimate wives 

 was that with the former no definite contract was 

 entered into. Their children were on the same footing 

 as others, which produced no inconvenience in a 

 country where there was no property to succeed to. 1 

 Their neighbours, the Iroquois, boasted of not being 

 given to the eccentricity of jealousy, though Charlevoix 

 roundly denies their claim, declaring the passion to be 

 equally developed in both sexes. I need only add to 

 what has been said in the last chapter on the subject 

 of matrimonial arrangements among the Iroquois that 

 when the parties were agreed on separation it was 

 perfectly easy without any reason assigned, but good 

 reason was necessary when separation was sought on 

 one side only. 2 



1 Charlevoix, vi. 38, Id. v. 420, 



