CHAPTER XIX.

OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE ABIPONES.

We know that a plurality of wives, or the repudiation of them, was familiar to the Hebrews and other nations, and that it is tolerated even now amongst the Mahometans and Chinese. The Greeks and Romans did not universally, nor at all times object to it. What wonder then that the custom of polygamy and divorce should be common to many savages of America, since it is upheld by the practice of the ancients? You should not however imagine that the whole nation of the Abipones follow after the steps of the other nations in that respect. The major part are contented with one and the same wife, though I cannot deny that divorce is as frequent amongst them as the changing of the dress in Europe; yet I have known many who kept the same wife all their lives. But if any Abipon marries several women, he settles them in separate hordes, many leagues distant from one another, and visits first one, then the other, at intervals of a year. If he keeps many in the same house, which is very seldom the case, endless quarrels, blows, and battles, are sure to ensue, about the prerogative of governing the family, and the favour of their husband. _Nejetenta_, as I said before, is a word appropriated to express a contest between two wives about their husband; any other sort of fight is called _Roélakitápegeta_.

Let us now speak of the reason that occasions divorce. It is very common amongst them to reject wives to whom they have formerly united themselves, at their own pleasure, and with impunity, so that divines have very properly doubted the reality of the marriage of savages, as it seems to want the perpetuity of the nuptial tie. If their wives displease them, it is sufficient; they are ordered to decamp. No farther cause or objection is sought for; the will of the husband, who dislikes his wife, stands in the place of reason. Should the husband cast his eyes upon any handsomer woman, the old wife must remove merely on this account, her fading form or advanced age being her only accusers, though she maybe universally commended for conjugal fidelity, regularity of conduct, diligent obedience, and the children she has born. None of the men of most authority have either the right or the inclination to defend the divorced, or control the divorcer. But, appointing a drinking-party, wherein the memory of injuries is refreshed in the minds of the intoxicated guests, the relations fiercely avenge the dishonour done to the repudiated wife. Often, too, women just cast off by one man are immediately married by another. I have observed elsewhere that the younger women highly approve the law of Christ, and are anxious that themselves and their husbands should be baptized, because the perpetuity of their marriage is thereby secured, and their husbands prevented from changing or increasing the number of their wives. This licence of divorce produces, as I have already related, bloody murders of children, and the incredible diminution of the whole nation.

You will find many things worthy of reprehension, but at the same time not a few deserving of praise, in the married state of the Abipones. I will inform you of those most worthy of mention. Though the paternal indulgence of the Roman pontiffs makes the first and second degrees of relationship alone a bar to the marriage of the Indians, yet the Abipones, instructed by nature and the example of their ancestors, abhor the very thought of marrying any one related to them by the most distant tie of relationship. Long experience has convinced me, that the respect to consanguinity, by which they are deterred from marrying into their own families, is implanted by nature in the minds of most of the people of Paraguay. In this opinion I was greatly confirmed by the Cacique Roỹ, leader of the savages in the woods of Mbaeverà, who, when I was explaining the heads of religion to the surrounding multitude, and happened to make mention of incestuous nuptials, broke out into these words—"You say right, Father! Marriage with relations is a most shameful thing. This we have learnt from our ancestors." Such are the feelings of these wood savages, though they think it neither irrational nor improper to marry many wives, and reject them whenever they like.

Another admirable trait in the character of the savage Abipones is their conjugal fidelity. You never hear of this being shaken, or even attempted. Husbands are many months absent from their homes, whilst their wives remain in the midst of a horde of men without danger or even suspicion. What the Greeks have fabled of Penelope, who continued faithful to her husband Ulysses during an absence of twenty years, is the true history of the Abiponian women. But if an Abipon entertains the slightest suspicion of his wife's virtue, he does not digest it in silence, but takes ample vengeance on the person suspected though not convicted of the injury.

Amongst the other good qualities of the married people amongst the Abipones, may be reckoned the tender affection which they display towards their offspring, in feeding, clothing, and taking care of them. To tutor the boys from their earliest age in the arts of riding, swimming, hunting, and fighting, is the chief care of the fathers. The girls are diligently instructed by their mothers in the domestic duties of females, and early inured to labour and in accommodation. But this is worthy of censure in them, that however disobedient or refractory their children may be, they never have the courage to correct them with a word, much less with a blow. Alaykin, chief Cacique of the town of Concepçion, whenever he visited me, held a little boy five years of age upon his lap. This child, who was as restless as a young ape, would sometimes pull his father's nose or his hair, and sometimes struck his face. The old man, pleased at this, would cry—"Look, Father! can you ever doubt that this fearless boy will sometime come to be a famous soldier or captain, since he is not afraid of me, a leader so victorious and so formidable to the Spaniards?" The same boy would throw bones, horns, or any thing else he could lay hold on, at his mother, when she came to call him home. The warlike father interpreted the child's insolence, which he ought to have punished, as the mark of an intrepid mind, and rewarded it with laughter, and even with praise. The too unbounded love which they bear their children incapacitates the savages from doing any thing to cause them pain. But every one knows that the immoderate fondness of parents is a frequent injury to children in Europe.