HONORABLE POLYGAMY

Turning now from the parental to the conjugal sphere we shall find further interesting instances showing How Sentiments Change and Grow.  The monogamous sentiment—­the feeling that a man and his wife belong to each other exclusively—­is now so strong that a person who commits bigamy not only perpetrates a crime for which the courts may imprison him for five years, but becomes a social outcast with whom respectable people will have nothing more to do.  The Mormons endeavored to make polygamy a feature of their religion, but in 1882 Congress passed a law suppressing it and punishing offenders.  Did this monogamous sentiment exist “always and everywhere?”

Livingstone relates (M.S.A., I., 306-312) that the King of the Beetjuans (South Africa) was surprised to hear that his visitor had only one wife: 

“When we explained to him that, by the laws of our country, people could not marry until they were of a mature age, and then could never have more than one wife, he said it was perfectly incomprehensible to him how a whole nation could submit voluntarily to such laws.”

He himself had five wives and one of these queens

“remarked very judiciously that such laws as ours would not suit the Beetjuans because there were so great a number of women and the male population suffered such diminutions from the wars.”

Sir Samuel Baker (A.N., 147) says of the wife of the Chief of Latooka: 

“She asked many questions, how many wives I had? and was astonished to hear that I was contented with one.  This amused her immensely, and she laughed heartily with her daughter at the idea.”

In Equatorial Africa, “if a man marries and his wife thinks that he can afford another spouse, she pesters him to marry again, and calls him a stingy fellow if he declines to do so” (Reade, 259).  Livingstone (N.E.Z., 284) says of the Makalolo women: 

“On hearing that a man in England could marry but one wife, several ladies exclaimed that they would not like to live in such a country; that they could not imagine how English ladies could relish such a custom, for, in their way of thinking, every man of respectability should have a number of wives, as a proof of his wealth.  Similar ideas prevail all down the Zambesi.”

Some amusing instances are reported by Burton (T.T.G.L., I., 36, 78, 79).  The lord of an African village appeared to be much ashamed because he had only two wives.  His sole excuse was that he was only a boy—­about twenty-two.  Regarding the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, Burton says:  “Polygamy is, of course, the order of the day; it is a necessity to the men, and even the women disdain to marry a ‘one-wifer.’” In his book on the Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush, G.S.  Robertson writes: