Nevertheless, a careful study of the facts makes it almost certain that the significance of wife-stealing as a sociological element has been greatly exaggerated, and its true relation to marriage strangely misunderstood.[476] It is perfectly natural that savage or barbarous races should seize women as a part of the ordinary spoils of war. Everything portable becomes the prey of the victor. "The taking of women," to repeat the forcible words of Spencer, "is manifestly but a part of this process of spoiling the vanquished." They are "prized as wives, as concubines, as drudges."[477]
[476] Such is the view of LETOURNEAU in his able discussion of this subject: "Si pourtant l'on ne peut se dispenser d'étudier spécialement le mariage par capture, c'est qu'on lui a fait jouer en sociologie un rôle capital."--_L'évolution du mariage_, 110 ff.
[477] SPENCER, _Principles of Sociology_, I, 650.
Accordingly, it is not difficult to collect examples of the actual capture of women to serve as slaves, mistresses, or wives at the pleasure of the captor. Among the aboriginal American tribes, we are told, the practice is originally found in its "greatest perfection."[478] From Cape Horn to Hudson's Bay women are regarded as legitimate booty. The Horse Indians of Patagonia fight with each other, tribe against tribe, the issues of victory in every case being the "capture of women and the slaughter of men." The Patagonian Oens, or Coin-men, make systematic excursions every year at the time of the "red-leaf" to "plunder Fuegians of their women, dogs, and arms."[479] It is even reported of the Caribs that they depend so much upon the securing of foreign wives in war that nowhere do the women speak the same language as the men,[480] and a similar statement is made concerning the Brazilian Guaycurûs[481] and some other peoples.[482] But in North America the capturing of women for wives has nearly disappeared.
[479] _Ibid._, 32; LETOURNEAU, _op. cit._, 114; _Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle_, II, 205.
[480] ADAM, _Du parler des hommes_, 2 ff.; MARTIUS, _Rechtszustande_, 55; LETOURNEAU, _op. cit._, 114; MCLENNAN, _op. cit._, I, 33, 34; WESTERMARCK, _Human Marriage_, 383; WAITZ, _Anthropologie_, III, 355; DARGUN, _Mutterrecht und Raubehe_, 82. But see CRAWLEY, _Mystic Rose_, 46-48, who believes the difference of language is one of the results of the fear of evil which causes sex-segregation and sexual taboo.