the father
possesses the right of disposing of his daughter.[129]

Indian fathers also frequently sold their children, without any show
of right. "Kane mentions that the Shastas ... frequently sell their
children 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