WHEN SAVAGES MARRY

Evening Star, Issue 20311, 21 October 1929, Page 12

WHEN SAVAGES MARRY

PURCHASING A WIFE AGES-OLD CUSTOM \ . It has just been reported from the South Seas that certain missionary bodies are embarking upon a widespread campaign to induce the natn es to abandon their ages-old custom ot marriage by purchase ami European way, writes Jack M Laren, in the ‘Daily Mail.’ , . This has been tried betorc, and is a most difficult task. For one thing, fathers of eligible daughters object to being deprived of the very .considerable quantities of trade goods—necklaces, tobacco, blankets, sheath knives, and so forth—which it is the _ custom of husbands to pay for their wives. In the Solomon Islands I know an old savage who furnished Ins thatched house and obtained so many shell necklaces and other ornaments that he was the most decorated person in the district, purely from the proceeds ot marrying off his daughters—ot whom he had five. . On the other hand, in the same region I once came across a man abusing his wife terribly because she had given birth to a son—the third in succession. The substance of his_ abuse was that if she went on like this they would have no provision lor their old age. , „ Other natives object to the European marriage ceremony because they consider it sad. As one who had seen a European wedding at a settlement he had visited put it to be in his own tongue: “The men they all had straight and solemn faces, and many of the women they wept ” Certainly there is nothing sad or solemn about the native way of marrying. There is just a mad outburst of dancing and feasting on the beach beneath tho palms, prolonged perhaps all day and night for a week or more. The employer of native labour who allows his men to go to a wedding may as well abandon hope of getting any work out of them for a fortnight. They need at least a week to recover. In one island 1 knew a man who got himself into a dreadful mess through allowing himself to be married in the civilised way. It appeared that he had already three wives he had obtained in the usssi fsshtos, which ladies the missionary declared he must now give up. _ ~ But the three wives objected so strongly and made the man’s life such a misery that he was driven finally to imploring the missionary to undo the marriage. On learning this was impossible, he fled the district, taking a job on a distant plantation, where, 1 understand, h© still is. Many would-be husbands, however, are very much in favour of the civilised way of taking a wife, because of its east and economy. In these days of high prices, it may take a young man two or more years of labouring on a

plantation, the while he carefully saves his wages, before he has money enough to obtain the trade goods wherewith to purchase a wife. But the civilised way means only a trifling present to the missionary who performs the ceremony. This makes a great appeal to the savage mind. Savages have quite an aptitude for economics.