Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
POLYGAMY AMONG MODERN AFRICANS
I. ZANZIBAR AND EAST AFRICA
The Island of Zanzibar became a British Protectorate in 1890. It is still ruled by a Sultan, who owns a large harem and lives in great state and magnificence. Mrs. French Sheldon, the well-known traveller, who visited the Island in 1892, gives an excellent description of native customs in her volume "Sultan to Sultan."
From this entertaining narrative we gather that the Sultan regarded polygamous marriage as not wholly a bed of roses. He informed Mrs. French Sheldon that he would give up his costly harem were it not for the risk of losing influence with his Arab constituency. The monarch seemed overweighted with the cares of government and the conduct of his enormous household.
In her account of the harem, to which she was admitted as the Sultan's guest, Mrs. Sheldon tells us that she was introduced to five young princes, all of them loaded with resplendent jewels and decorations. The whole of the sovereign's concubines passed before the visitor in a long procession. Some of the women bathed her feet as a mark of honour, and each one presented her with a ring. She received in all one-hundred-and-forty-two of these mementoes. Many of the concubines seemed to Mrs. Sheldon "sad-eyed and full of sorrow"; others, presumably the favourites, were "defiant and triumphant." The eunuchs of the royal palace of Zanzibar have their tongues removed to ensure their silence and secrecy. Polygamy here appears to survive in a somewhat primitive form.
The Wa-Taveta tribe of the mainland, visited by Mrs. French Sheldon, practise polygamy chiefly for economic reasons. I have referred in earlier chapters to this common primary origin of a plurality of wives; and in this community we have a modern example of the survival. These people are industrious, and the wives are excellent helpmates to their husbands.
Apparently no jealousy exists among the wives, for we are told that when a new wife comes into the family all the women welcome her warmly. But it is instructive to note that the harem system is not strictly followed by these people. The wives are not all thrown together in one house. Each woman has a right to her own hut and her own plantations. The children also belong to her.
There is no double standard of sex-morality among the Wa-Taveta tribe. Mrs. French Sheldon learned that the women are allowed freedom, and may form liaisons with men of their own status, but not with low-bred persons or the enemies of their husbands. Marriage is arranged by purchase, and there is a ceremonial of the mock-capture of brides.
The children are extremely well cared for, and they develop intelligence at a very early age. They are fond of assisting their parents in the fields and in carrying produce to the markets. East Africa strikes this highly-observant traveller as a paradise for children. We have seen that, in almost every polygamous society, the children are carefully protected and reared, and generally much loved by the parents.
Among the Masai Mrs. Sheldon found a more barbaric form of polygamy. These people are militarist; and, as I have pointed out in several instances, women do not attain to equality with men in a fighting tribe or nation. The Masai set a low value upon women. A wife can be bought for five pigeon's eggs, or a few beads, which is less than the cost of a cow. The women of this warlike community possess very few rights.
Mrs. French Sheldon says that the Chaga women are magnificent in form, extremely vigorous and agile, and able to walk thirty miles in a day. They are almost entirely naked, save for the adornment of a few bead-bands. Their status is considerably better than that of the Masai.
Mrs. Sheldon boldly interrogated the chieftain Mireali as to his conjugal preferences. "I asked Mireali, 'Do you not love one wife better than another?' 'Oh, I like them all, but the new one is the best for to-day; in a week I shall go back to the old, the big wife, because she knows me better than the others,' he quaintly responded." Do not errant husbands all the world over frequently return to "the old wife"? Mireali's reply provides a subject for reflection upon the alleged universal inconstancy of men.
The Mang'anja are one of our subject-races of the Central African Protectorate. They have been closely studied by Miss Alice Werner, who has made valuable contributions to ethnology and primitive folk-lore.[1] Their country is watered by the Shire River, which flows out of Lake Nyasa at the southern end. Miss Werner states that Livingstone in 1859 found the Mang'anja tribe "gentle, friendly, and clever people," reminding him of the ancient Egyptians. They were pastoral, and grew tobacco, maize, millet and cotton in their fruitful valley.
The men were skilful ironworkers and spinners of cotton. We have here another proof of the social benefits accruing to the women of a community wherein the men work side by side with them in peaceful labours.
These aborigines are of a bronze-colour, varying in shade. They are tall and well shaped. The several sons and daughters of the chief Masea are described by Miss Werner as handsome.
The agriculturists domesticate animals and till the ground. They live in bamboo and grass huts, which are plastered with mud in the cold months. Their hunting weapons are spears and bows and arrows.
"Each wife, if there are more than one, has a hut for herself and her children," writes Miss Werner. "Generally in the less settled parts, as in the West Shire district, the whole collection of huts has a tall reed fence around it as a protection against wild animals. Sometimes two or three of these enclosures are placed close together—as in one case I remember, when you had to find your way through a perfect labyrinth of little winding passages between the fences."
The position of the women is not a hard one. 
KING WAMBUGOO, EAST AFRICA, AND HIS SIXTEEN WIVES.
"Polygamy does not here present itself in a particularly revolting aspect," says Miss Werner. "Three to four wives are sometimes attached to one man, but as a rule the number is two." The chiefs own more. It is interesting to know that harem seclusion is not the custom among these people. Each woman "has her own hut and her separate house-keeping." There is very little of the jealousy and quarrelling that prevail in harems.
"Though scantily clad, the Mang'anja are modest and refined. They have 'a sense of what is fitting to say and do, which would surprise those of us who cannot dissociate the idea of modesty from that of a multiplicity of clothes.'"
Miss Werner never saw a quarrel, nor a child ill-used among these people. They certainly treat their children with greater affection and kindness than the slum-dwellers of Christian England.
The Yaos, or Wa-Yaos, living in the mountainous district between Lake Nyasa and the Indian Ocean, were another tribe visited by Miss Alice Werner. They are described as a hardy, tall, and powerful race. The women wear the lip-ring, and they thread beads on their hair till it resembles a coral wig.
The Yaos are martial and independent. They are intelligent and quick to learn from Europeans. Some of them assist in printing a newspaper at Zomba, and some enter the police force.
What is perhaps most important to note is that the Yaos reckon kinship through the mothers, who also dispose of property. A man who marries is expected to live at the bride's village.
II.—NORTH AFRICA
Letourneau, in an account of the Kabyles, refers to the position of their women as "miserable."[2] Polygamy is legal among these people, but monogamy is the custom of the mass for economic reasons. Wives are literally slaves. Girls are sold by their male relatives, though they may twice exercise the right of choice. The bride-price goes to the parents, and the girl has no share in it. She becomes the property of her purchaser, who may beat her "with his fist, with a stick, with a stone, or even with a poignard."
In Kabyle, says Letourneau, women are "still in the lowest stage of slavery. They are even inferior to the Arabs, although the latter have preserved, almost unchanged, the polygamic régime of the old Islamite and even pre-Islamite ages."
By way of contrast we must glance for a moment at the monogamous Touaregs of the Sahara desert. These nomads are nominally Moslems; but their women enjoy a remarkably high status. They have liberty of action, own their property, give their names to their children, and marry at their own discretion. The women are better educated than the men. These people have an idea of romantic love. "They strongly remind us," writes Letourneau, "of the times of our southern troubadours, and of the cours d'amour which were the quintessence of chivalry."
III.—MOHAMMEDAN NEGROES
The creed of Islam spread from the northern to the western regions of Africa amongst peoples who already practised polygamy. No doubt the sanction for plural marriage appealed to negro converts, and to this day Christian missionaries have had to contend with the Moslem faith. The chiefs of various primitive tribes embraced Mohammedanism with enthusiasm, and the Moslem missionaries won great influence over them.
Almami, king of the Bondou territory, offered hospitality to the explorer Mungo Park[3]; and allowed him to converse with the women of his seraglio. "They were ten or twelve in number, most of them young and handsome, and wearing on their heads ornaments of gold and beads of amber." Park flattered the swarthy beauties, who informed him that "honey mouth" was not appreciated in their country. They were very anxious that the traveller should bleed them for their petty ailments, as they believed him to be an eminent doctor.
Mungo Park states that the Mohammedan negroes treat their wives considerately, and are better husbands than the Moors. They are almost free from jealousy. The women are permitted to take a share in public diversions. They are not given to intrigue, though their social intercourse with the other sex is frank and cheerful. This writer found very little marital infidelity in the interior of Africa.
Quarrelsome wives were sometimes corrected by their husbands by light chastisement. But the wife in a harem could seek redress if her husband ill-treated her, or neglected her for another wife.
- ↑ See three articles, "Our Subject Races," The Reformer, Vol. I., 1898.
- ↑ "The Evolution of Marriage," p. 145.
- ↑ Op. cit.