The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-12-20
M. A. TAPPAN, 1913 Pa. Ave.
PonYANDRoUs WOMEN.
Conditions Under Which Two Men Have
the Same Wife.

Conditions Under Which Two men have
the Same Wife.
Goldthwaite's Magazine.
In recent letter from member Of the
expedition that is surveying the boundary
line between Alaska and Canada the writer
says he has met tribes on the upper Yukon
River where it is not uncommon for the wo-
men to have two or more husbands. He speaks
of the people as miserably poor, and 1t is an
interesting fact that this is the condition OF
the people in all parts Of the world among
whom the practice of polyandry prevails. Mr..
Rockhill found an opportunity three years
ago to observe this custom, which exists to
considerable extent along his route in Eastern
Tibet and among the Mongols of Tsaldam.
His explanation is that the soil capable OF
culture being very limited, the tribes who live
chiefly by tillage and herding find it impos-
sible to have one or more wives for each man.
1t is, therefore, the custom for the brothers In
family to have one wife among them, and
while one brother goes on trading journeys
and another looks after the live stock, their
wife manages the household, and Is the
general manager and counsellor.
1t is not from choice, then, but from neces-
sity that some savage peoples in all parts OF
the world practice polyandry. Richer and
more comfortable savages have one or more
would expect, therefore, that in far northern
regions where the conditions Of life are most
severe and food Is most difficult to obtain,
polyandry was chiefly to be found; and In
fact, nowhere is the custom more widely
prevalent than In the thinly-peopled northern
parts of this continent, and chiefly among the
tribes of Alaska. AS far as the Hudson Bay,
If polyandry does not exist as an institution,
there is at least promiscuity in the married re-
lation, and the men there, starting on long
Aff
panied by their wives and other members OF
the tribes are loaned for the occasion.
Among the Alaskan Eskimo every man is
entitled to as many wives as he desires, but as
the women are not infrequently in the
minority the men cheerfully accommodate
themselves to the situs lion. and two or three
of them live in hut with one woman. In
the rugged wilderness, Inhabited by the
Koniages, further north, Mr. Bancroft, our
historian of the Pacific Coast, says two hus-
bands are allowed to one woman. One of the
husbands, however, occupies an inferior
position in the household, and is lord and
master then only when the other man is not
around the premises.
The many remnants of tribes which practice
polyandry In the region of the Central African
lakes seem to owe the custom to their mis-
fortunes. They were preyed upon by Arab
slave dealers, or stronger tribes, until they lost
the larger number of their women, the most
highly priced spoils of war, and, being unable
to restore the numerical equallty OF the sexes,
each woman became the wife of several meD,
and the children, calling all the villagers
father or mother, belonged not to the family,
but to the community. The custom Of plural
husbands, originating in violence, finally be
came sort of social law, and is regarded as
praiseworthy.
None of the warke and powerful tribes
practices polyandry, and it may be accepted
as general rule that savage polygamists are
comparatively we'll to do and successful In
war, while the polandrists form the more mis-
erable and helpless communities.