29 THE KAROK, 
much formality they are conducted with a considerable degree of fairness, 
the friends of the respective combatants standing around them and setting 
them on their pins again when they fall. 
There is no process of courtship, but the whole affair of love-making 
is conducted by the father of the bride and the bridegroom expectant. 
When a young Philander becomes enamored of some dusky Clorinda, he 
goes straight to her father, and without any beating of the bush makes 
him a plump offer of so or so many strings for her. They chaffer and drive 
bargains, for they are an avaricious race. “ My ducats and my daughter”, 
says the old Shylock. A wife is seldom purchased for less than half a 
string, and when she belongs to an aristocratic family, is pretty, and skillful 
in making acorn-bread and weaving baskets, she sometimes costs as high 
as two strings—say $80 or $100. There is no wedding-ceremony, no cake, 
no wine; but the bride follows her lord to his lodge, and they at once set 
up their savage Lares and Penates. 
No marriage is legal or binding unless preceded by the payment of 
money, and that family is most aristocratic in which the most money was 
paid for the wife. For this reason, it stands a young man well in hand to 
be diligent in accumulating shell-money, and not to be a niggard in bar- 
gaining with his father-in-law. So far is this shell-aristocracy carried, that 
the children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no 
better than bastards, and the whole family are contemned. Bigamy is not 
tolerated, even in the chief. A man may own as many women for slaves 
as he ean purchase, but if he cohabits with more than one he brings upon 
himself obloquy. 
Before marriage, virtue is an attribute which can hardly be said to 
exist in either sex, most of the young women being a common possession ; 
but after marriage, when the dishonor of the woman would involve also 
that of the husband, they live with tolerable chastity, for savages. Still, 
no adultery is so flagrant but that the husband can be placated with money, 
at about the rate that would be paid for murder. Virtue therefore is ex- 
ceedingly rare as an innate quality, but is simply an enforced condition ; 
and indeed the Karok language, though rich in its vocabulary, is said to 
possess no equivalent for ‘“‘virtue ”. 
