Note 998 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

In islands, as in unproductive highlands where hunger stalks abroad, marriage readily takes the form of polyandry. On the Canary Islands, at the time of their conquest in 1402, polyandry existed in Lancerote and possibly in Fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands; but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictly maintained.998 In Oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevails according to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supply of women. A plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs and the wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the same island. Scarcity of women gives rise to polyandry in Tahiti,999 and consigns one woman to four or five men. In old Hawaii, where there were four or five men to one woman a kind of incipient polyandry arose by the addition of a countenanced paramour to the married couple's establishment.1000 Robert Louis Stevenson found the same complaisant arrangement a common one in the Marquesas, where the husband's deputy was designated by the term of pikio in the native vocabulary.1001 Polyandry existed in Easter Isle, among whose stunted and destitute population the men far exceeded the women, and children were few, according to reports of the early visitors.1002 Numerous other instances make this connection between island habitat, deficiency of women, need of checking increase, and polyandrous marriages an obvious one.1003