“While he was in the wigwam he did not leave her a moment.  With his own hands he adorned her with chains, and strings of teeth and pearls, and he found a special pleasure in combing her black, soft, silken hair.  He gambolled with her like a child and rocked her on his knees, telling her stories.  Of his other wives he demanded the utmost respect in their treatment of his little one.”

This reference to the other wives ought to have opened Pajeken’s eyes as to the silliness of speaking of the “touching” tenderness of the Crow chief to his latest favorite.  In a few years she was doomed to be discarded, like the others, in favor of a new victim of his carnal appetite.  Affection is entirely out of the question in such cases.

The Malayans of Sumatra have, as Carl Bock tells us (314), a local custom allowing a wife to marry again if her faithless spouse has deserted her for three months: 

“The early age at which marriage is contracted is an obstacle to any real affection between couples; for girls to be wives at fourteen is a common occurrence; indeed, that age may be put down as the average age of first marriage.  The girls are then frequently good-looking, but hard work and the cares of maternity soon stamp their faces with the marks of age, and spoil their figures, and then the Malay husband forsakes his wife, if, indeed, he keeps her so long.”

Marriage with these people is, as Bock adds, a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.  His servant had married a “grass-widow” of three months’ desertion.  But

“before she had enjoyed her new title six weeks, a coolness sprang up between her and her husband.  I inquired the reason, and she naively confessed that her husband had no more rupees to give her, and so she did not care for him any longer.”

Concerning Damara women Galton writes (197): 

“They were extremely patient, though not feminine, according to our ideas:  they had no strong affections either for spouse or children; in fact, the spouse was changed almost weekly, and I seldom knew without inquiry who the pro tempore husband of each lady was at any particular time.”

Among the Singhalese, if a wife is sick and can no longer minister to her husband’s comforts and pleasure he repudiates her.  Bailey says[123] that this heartless desertion of a sick wife is “the worst trait in the Kandyan character, and the cool and unconcerned manner in which they themselves allude to it shows that it is as common as it is cruel.”

“How can a man be contented with one wife,” exclaimed an Arab sheik to Sir Samuel Baker (N.T.A., 263).  “It is ridiculous, absurd.”  And then he proceeded to explain why, in his opinion, monogamy is such an absurdity: