ed a marriageable age at about 16,
17, or 18, and the age for a girl is a few years younger. They do
not as a rule marry before they have received their perineal bands;
but there does not appear to be any definite custom against their
doing so; nor are there any acts which must be performed to qualify
for marriage, nor any indications by dress or ornament or otherwise
that a boy or girl has attained a marriageable age.

Marriages are usually contracted with women of another community,
though sometimes the wife will belong to a village of another clan
in the same community. Very rarely only is she of another village of
the same clan, and still more rarely is she of the same village, clan
exogamy being the rule, and marriages within the clan, and still more
within the village, being regarded as irregular and undesirable, and
people who have contracted them being considered as having done wrong.

There does not appear to be any system of special matrimonial
relationship between any communities; and the mode described below, by
which a youth will by lighting a fire decide in which direction he must
travel to seek a wife, would be hardly consistent with any such system.

They have their prohibitive rules of consanguinity; but these are
based merely upon the number of generations between either party and
the common ancestor. The number of degrees within which prohibition
applies in this way is two, thus taking it to the grandparent; and
the result is that no man or woman may properly marry any descendant
of his or her paternal or maternal grandfather or grandmother, however
distant the actual relationship of the persons concerned may be. [79]
Marriages within the prohibited degree do in fact occur; but they
are discountenanced, and are rare.

Polygyny is usual, and is largely practised. A man will often have
two or three, or sometimes even four, wives; and a chief or rich man
may have as many as six. In the case of an ordinary person the wives
all live with their husband in the same house; but a chief or rich
person may have two or more houses. A man who is already married, and
then marries again, goes through a formality, if it may be so called,
similar to that of a first marriage. Opposition from the first wife
sometimes occurs, but this is unusual.

Infant betrothals are common; but they are quite informal, and not the
subject of any ceremony. The parents in such cases, whether of the same
or different communities, ar