Polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries, where there is always a scarcity of females.  Thus we have polyandry founded on a surplus of males caused by poverty of sustenance.  The female is, in fact, supposed to be the result of a surplus of nutrition; more boys than girls are born in the country districts because the city diet is richer, especially in meat and sugar.  It is notable that the families of the pioneers of western America bore a surprising majority of males.

In the Marquesas, where living was always difficult and the diet poor, there were always more men than women despite the frequent wars in which men were victims.  Another reason was that male children were saved often when females were killed in the practice of infanticide, also forced by famine.  The overplus of men made them amenable to the commands of the women, who often dominated in permanent alliances, demanding lavishment of wealth and attention from their husbands.

Yet—­and this is a most significant fact—­the father-right in the child remained the basis of the social system.

Throughout all Australia, Melanesia, and Papuasis on the east, and America on the west, the mother-right prevailed among primitive peoples.  Children followed the mother, took their name from her, and inherited property through her.  I have known a Hawaiian nobleman who, commenting on this fact, said that the system had merit in that no child could be called a bastard, and that the woman, who suffered most, was rewarded by pride of posterity.  He himself, he said, was the son of a chieftess, but his father, a king, was the son of a negro cobbler.

The father-right, so familiar to our minds that it seems to-day almost the only natural or existing social system, was in fact developed very lately among all races except the Caucasian and some tribes of the Mongols.  Yet in the Marquesas, these islands cut off from all other peoples through ages of history, the father-right prevailed in spite of all the difficulties that attended its survival in polyandry.

Each woman had many husbands, whom she ruled.  The true paternity of her children it was impossible to ascertain.  Yet so tenaciously did the Marquesans cling to the father-right in the child, that even this fact could not break it down.  One husband was legally the father of all her children, ostensibly at least the owner of the household and of such small personal property as belonged to it under communism.  The man remained, though in name only, the head of the polyandrous family.

I seemed to see in this curious fact another proof of the ancient kinship between the first men of my own race and the prehistoric grandfathers of Malicious Gossip and Haabunai.  My savage friends, with their clear features, their large straight eyes and olive skins, showed still the traces of their Caucasian blood.  Their forefathers and mine may have hunted the great winged lizards together through primeval wildernesses, until, driven by who knows what urge of wanderlust or necessity, certain tribes set out in that drive through Europe and Asia toward America that ended at last, when a continent sunk beneath their feet, on these islands in the southern seas.