Note 688 — Chapter IV · RISE OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
Reading edition
Westermarck, op. cit., 216, 9. Captain Musters, At Home with the Patagonians (1872), affirms that the finest trait of the Patagonian "Tehuelches character is 'their love for their wives and children; matrimonial disputes are rare, and wife-beating unknown; and the intense grief with which the loss of a wife is mourned is certainly not 'civilized,' for the widower will destroy all his stock and burn all his possessions,' and possibly become careless of his life." A similar affection is shown among the Eskimo, who are also polygynous: Wake, Marriage and Kinship, 184, 185.
Free courtship exists among the Omahas: Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology," III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 259, 260; and in general there is sometimes individual choice among the Siouan peoples: idem, "Siouan Sociology," ibid., XV, 178.