PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



will kill them. This is a threat which, we learn, " goes 

 perhaps a little beyond the truth." But the husband 

 has the right to enforce it, as well as to inflict the same 

 penalty on the seducer. Yet a native man will not 

 pass a solitary woman, and her refusal of him would 

 be so contrary to native custom that he might kill her. 

 The missionary who reports this assumes that it 

 would " apply only to females that are not engaged." 

 But it is obvious that if the native men act in this way 

 resistance by the women is not common. The 

 husband of a faithless wife cannot return to cohabita- 

 tion until another man has had ceremonial intercourse 

 with her. The identity of the latter man is said to be 

 concealed from the husband, lest from jealousy he kill 

 him. Seeing, however, that his act is a ritual per- 

 formance intended to render future cohabitation by the 

 husband safe, it may be surmised that the real reason 

 for concealment is different. It is a wife's duty to 

 prepare food for her husband. " When a wife has 

 been guilty her husband will die if he taste any food 

 that she has salted " in the course of cooking. Here 

 we perhaps have the real ground of the husband's right 

 to kill the guilty wife : it is the danger to his own life 

 arising from causes usually classed as sympathetic 

 magic, not merely sexual jealousy. A girl who is 

 betrothed but not yet actually married is liable to the 

 same penalty. Infant betrothal is common ; and it is 

 the custom that betrothed girls often cook food for 

 their intended husbands, who must therefore run the 

 same risk as if actually married. Two married men 

 on the other hand will often lend one another their 

 wives. A man who has committed adultery with the 

 wife of another and been found out will compromise 



