Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1894 — The Market Price of Wives. [ARTICLE]

The Market Price of Wives.

In the earliest times of purchase, a woman was bartered for useful goods, or for services rendered to her father. In this latter way Jacob purchased Rachel and her sister Leah. The price of a bride in British Columbia and Vancouver Island varies from twenty to fifty pounds’ worth of articles. In Oregon, an Indian gives for her, horses, or buffalo robes; in California, shellmoney or horses; in Africa, cattle. A poor Damara will sell a daughter for a cow; a richer Kaffir expects from three to thirty. With the Banyai, if nothing be given, her family claim her children. In Uganda, where no marriage recently existed, she may be obtained for half a dozen needles, or a coat, or a pair of shoes. An ordinary price is a box of percussion caps. In. other parts, a goat or a couple of buckskins will buy a girl. Passing to Asia, we find her price is sometimes five to fifteen roubles, or at others a carload of wood or bay. A princess may be purchased for three thousand roubles. In Tartary, a woman can be purchased for a few pounds of butter, or where a rich man gives twenty small oxen, a poor man, may succeed with a pig. In Fiji her equivalent is a whale’s tooth or a musket. These, and similar prices elsewhere, are eloquent testimony to the little value a savage sets on his wife. Her charms vanish with her girlhood. She is usually married while a child, and through her cruel slavery and bitter life; she often becomes old and repulsive at twenty-five.