as slaves to the Chinooks."[130] Bancroft says of the Columbians:  “Affection for children is by no means rare, but in few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell or gamble them away."[131] Descent through mothers is in force among the negroes of equatorial Africa, the man’s property passing to his sister’s children; but the father is an unlimited despot, and no one dares to oppose him.  So long as his relation with his wives continues, he is master of them and of their children.  He can even sell the latter into slavery.[132] In New Britain maternal descent prevails, but wives are obtained by purchase or capture, and are practically slaves; they are cruelly treated, carry on agriculture, and bear burdens which make them prematurely stooped, and are likely, if their husbands are offended, to be killed and eaten.[133]

In many regions of Australia women are treated with extreme brutality, when their work is not satisfactory, or the husband has any other cause for offense.  In Victoria the men often break their staves over the heads of the women, and skulls of women have been found in which knitted fractures indicated former ill-treatment.  In Cape York the women are beaten, and in the interior an angry native burned his wife alive.  In the Adelaide dialect the phrase “owner of a woman” means husband.  When a man dies, his uterine brother inherits his wife and children.[134]

Where under an exogamous system of marriage a man is forced to go outside his group to obtain a wife, he may do this either by going over to her group, by taking possession of her violently, or by offering her and the members of her group sufficient inducements to relinquish her; and the contrasted male and female disposition is expressed in all the forms of marriage incident to the exogamous system.  Every exogamous group is naturally reluctant to relinquish its women, both because it has in them laborers and potential mothers whose children will be added to the group, and because, in the event of their remaining in the group after marriage, their husbands become additional defenders and providers within the group.  Where the husband is to settle in the family of the wife, a test is consequently often made of his ability as a provider.  Among the Zuni Indians there is no purchase price, no general exchange of gifts; but as soon as the agreement is reached, the young man must undertake certain duties: 

He must work in the field of his prospective mother-in-law, that his strength and industry may be tested; he must collect fuel and deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase and slay the deer, and make from an entire buckskin a pair of moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting, skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and, finally, he must fabricate or obtain for the maiden’s use a necklace