122 Notes on the Customs of Mota, Banks Islands. 



sometimes a wedding-feast is made when the matter is 

 settled, after which, if it be so arranged, the bride stays with 

 her husband. When there is a feast the father of the bride 

 will make a present to his son-in-law, but not equal to that 

 which he has received. In case of divorce — which is at the 

 will of either party — the father gives back what he received 

 if he gets another sum from a fresh son-in-law. In case of 

 widowhood, the widow is at the disposal of her deceased 

 husband's relatives, unless her dower be returned. 



[The Fijian custom is similar. Ses Williams's Fiji and the Fijians. — L.F.] 



(a.) Polygamy. — The usual custom is for a man to have 

 two wives. This seems to be looked upon as a sign of 

 wealth. In Vanua Lava, men are said to have many 

 wives. 



(b.) Polyandry exists but rarely ; never with young 

 people ; but mostly as a matter of convenience, as when two 

 widowers live with one widow. She is wife to both, and 

 any child she may have belongs to both. There are cases in 

 which a husband connives at a connection between his wife 

 and another man. This is not counted adultery, for it is an 

 open transaction ; and it is not polyandry, for the parties 

 are not husband and wife. The practice is not thought 

 respectable. 



[Polygamy was common in Fiji, especially among the chiefs, and led to 

 much political disturbance. When a chief's wives were of equal rank, their 

 sons, also, were of equal rank, and were carefully brought up by their 

 mothers to hate one another with a deadly hatred. There is a word in the 

 language for this " brotherly hate." Hence polygamy has been the most 

 fruitful cause of wars and murders in Fiji. 



Our Government, since annexation, has been sorely but quite needlessly 

 exercised on this subject, and has considered it necessary to pass an ordinance 

 to legalise polygamous marriages which were contracted before a certain date, 

 and were in force at that date. This was done with the avowed purpose of 

 legitim arising the children of such marriages who were supposed to have been 

 illegitimatised by their mothers having been put away when their fathers 

 turned from heathenism. The fact of the case is that these children were not 

 illegitimatised thereby. The son of a chief by a lady of rank was a chief in 

 his own right, and nothirig could make him either illegitimate or more legiti- 

 mate. Divorce was very common, but it had not the slightest effect upon 

 the children ; nor did it bring the slightest dishonour upon the mother if she 

 were properly dismissed. It was even considered decent for the wife to return 

 to her friends after she had borne a few children, and this custom is of wide 

 prevalence elsewhere. Not long ago the wife of a Fijian chief applied to one 

 of our stipendiary magistrates for permission to leave her husband. She had 

 no complaint to make against him, but she thought it high time that she 

 went back to her own kinsfolk. 



Polyandry. — I am inclined to disbelieve in polyandry altogether as a distinct 

 institution. All the cases which have come under my notice, or of which I 

 have read in books, including the Nair polyandry and the American 

 Indian instance quoted by Sir John Lubboek in his Origin of Civilisation 

 (p. 101, 2nd ed.), seem to me to be either cases of communism under difficulties, 

 or survivals of communism. Polyandry is to be seen under our eyes here in 



