Note 271 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.
Reading edition
In Fiji, according to Williams, “polygamy is looked upon as a principal source of a chiefs power and wealth.” And Pritchard says: “The greater the number of wives a man had, the better his social position.… Besides the acknowledged wives, there were attached to the household of the chiefs slave-women, who, though performing the most menial services, were at the same time nothing else than what the odalisques are in the Turkish harem”271.