is for the bridegroom, after
he has secured the consent of his damsel, to send either a
brother or some intimate friend to the parents, offering so
many mares, horses, or silver ornaments for the bride. If
the parents consider the match desirable, as soon after as
circumstances will permit, the bridegroom, dressed in his
best, and mounted on his best horse, proceeds to the toldo
of his intended, and hands over the gifts; the parents then
return gifts of equivalent value, which, however, in the event
of a separation are the property of the bride.[137]

Marriage by capture is an immediate expression of male force. Like
marriage by settlement in the house of the wife, it is an expedient
for obtaining a wife outside the group where marriage by purchase
is not developed, or where the suitor cannot offer property for the
bride. It is an unsocial procedure and does not persist in a growing
society, for it involves retaliation and blood-feud. But it is a
desperate means of avoiding the constraint and embarrassment of a
residence in the family and among the relatives of the wife, where
the power of the husband is hindered, and the male disposition is not
satisfied in this matter short of personal ownership.

The man also sometimes lives under the maternal system in regular
marriage, but escapes its disadvantages by stealing a supplementary
wife or purchasing a slave woman, over whom and whose children he has
full authority. In the Babar Archipelago, where the maternal system
persists, even in the presence of marriage by purchase (the man
living in the house of the woman, and the children reckoned with the
mother), it is considered highly honorable to steal an additional
wife from another group, and in this case the children belong to the
father.[138] Among the Kinbundas of Africa children belong to the
maternal uncle, who has the right to sell them, while the father
regards as his children in fact the offspring of a slave woman, and
these he treats as his personal property. To the same effect, among
the Wanyamwesi, south of the Victoria Nyanza, the children of a slave
wife inherit, to the exclusion of children born of a legal wife. And
husbands among the Fellatahs are in the habit of adopting children,
though they may have sons or daughters of their own, and the adopted
children inherit the property.[139] In Indonesia a man sometimes
marries a woman and settles in her family, and the childre