THE PRIMITIVE WEST AFRICAN 19 



confines of boundless ignorance. That such ignorance 

 should once have touched the hidden springs of life 

 itself is no more discredible than that it should have 

 extended to the cause of death." 



I think we may trace to this period of " Mother- 

 right " the fact that many primitive people in Africa 

 still trace their descent through the mother branch of 

 the family, where the nephew succeeds to his uncle's 

 rights and possessions. And so far as my experience 

 goes " Father-right " is in Africa, comparatively speak- 

 ing, a modern invention due to Mohammedan or 

 Christian influence. So strong was " Mother-right " 

 in the Congo that I can remember a trader's factory 

 being attacked because he had sent his daughter by a 

 native woman to Europe to be educated ; and until 

 quite lately a father among the Bavili could only say 

 he owned those of his children he had redeemed. (See 

 At the Back of the Black Mans Mind, page 41.) It 

 may be well said then of Africa, as Hartland says in 

 Primitive Paternity. "The conclusion seems irresistible 

 that Father-right is traceable not to any change in 

 savage or barbarous theories of blood relationship, but 

 to social and economical causes." 



But there succeeded to this state of hunger, wander- 

 ing, and haphazard propagation, when life, danger, 

 death, and mystery, though experienced, were not 

 thought about, a time when man and woman became 

 companions, and finally found it necessary or con- 

 venient to live together in a more or less settled state. 



c 2 



