decided whether a man must fight with his wife's people or go back to the clan in which he was born and fight with that. War was oftenest about women or about blood revenge. It was, as among our Indians, a raid and not a persistent campaign; it was mean, cowardly, savage, and marked by base bloodshed.
Much of this seems strange and inverted to us, because our society has long been characterized by the father-family. The state has long been the institution, or set of institutions, on which we rely for our most important interests and our notions of kinship, of rights, of moral right or wrong; and our ways of property, inheritance, trade, and intercourse have all been created by or adjusted to the system of man-descent. We can see what a great revolution had to be accomplished to go over from woman-descent to man-descent. Christian missionaries often find themselves entangled in this transition. In West Africa the native tie between mother and children is far closer than that between father and children, and the negro women do not like the change which white culture would bring about. In native law husband and wife have separate property, so that if white man's law was introduced, the woman would lose her property and would not get her husband's. The man also objects to giving his wife any claim on his property, while at the same time he does not want the children saddled on him. It seems to him utter absurdity that it should be his duty to care more for his wife than for his mother and sister.[1] At every point, in going over to the father-family, there is a transfer of rights and power and a readjustment of social theory.
In the long history of the man-family men have not been able to decide what they ought to think about
- ↑ Kingsley, M. H.: West African Studies, 377.
