visited with death as its penalty. Yet, with all this strictness
regarding the sanctity of the marriage tie, where not abrogated by
consent, there was among many of the tribes of the West a singular lack
of respect for female purity in general. In more than one tribe, the
unmarried women were practically held in common by the unmarried men,
though immediately upon marriage the former became strangers to all but
their husbands. Here are contradictions in theory as well as practice,
but such contradictions are invariably to be found among primitive
peoples, nor can the highest civilization yet known boast entire freedom
from them.

While upon the subject of morality, it may be well to glance at the
aboriginal customs concerning divorce. As always, any inclusive
statement must be prefaced by the warning that generalization is
impossible of application to all the nations of North America; only a
few very broad rules can be laid down, and these are tried by many
exceptions. It may be stated as one of these rules that divorce was
general among the Amerinds. As is usually the case where polygamy
prevails, divorce was almost invariably at the discretion of the
husband; but this rule knew some remarkable exceptions, as among the
Pueblo Indians, where, because of the status of the husband as the
perpetual guest of his wife, divorce was chiefly in the discretion of
the women. It is, however, safe to lay down the general rule that
divorce was at the discretion of the husband and rarely needed more than
the expression of his wish to become effective and legal. This facility
of divorce, of course, made for immorality as at present understood,
since it created of marriage little more than a state of concubinage,
where the concubine could be cast off at will and made over to another
master, so that the marriage relation lacked the continuity which is its
most essential feature; but, as a matter of fact, the practice of
divorce was uncommon among most of the Amerind tribes. Whether this was
because of public sentiment overriding the customary law, as is so often
the case among people where law is entirely of custom and not of
legislation, or whether the very lack of romantic affection in most
marriages among the Indians acted as a safeguard against satiety and
disgust, or whether there were other effective but unconjecturable
reasons, cannot be known; but the fact remains that divorce, though easy
of accomplishment, was of rare practic