[706] Accordingly, it is sometimes regarded as a disgrace to marry without payment of the bride-price; and the girl takes pride in the amount she brings to her father. For examples see WAKE, _op. cit._, 183, 191; BANCROFT, _Native Races_, I, 277, 349, 350; POWERS, _Tribes of California_, 22, 56. [707] KOHLER, "Die Gewohnheitsrechte des Pendschabs," _ZVR._, VII, 227. _Cf._ TUPPER, _Punjab Customary Law_, III, 9, who gives the decision referred to; and LEIST, _Alt-arisches Jus Gentium_, 46, 47. [708] We have here the case of an "appointed daughter." The son of a "brotherless maiden" was sometimes reserved to be the heir of her father, not of her husband. How could a man marry such a brotherless girl and secure himself in the possession of his child, to continue his own hearth-worship? This might be effected by payment of the "official" price of one hundred cows and one wagon (_Wagen_), and this was so even in the later period when the law-books frowned upon wife-purchase: LEIST, _op. cit._, 110 n. 10, 127 n. 3, 130, 131, and the references to the ancient law-books there given. Another fact, sometimes misinterpreted, seems to point clearly to the persistence of original free marriage. It is highly significant that wife-purchase appears never to have existed at all among a certain number of very low races, with which nevertheless marriage rests on the free consent of the parties. Such is the case among the California Wintun, the Alaskan Yukonikhotana, the Andamanese, the Chittagong hill tribes, and certain African peoples. Among the "Pádams, one of the lowest peoples of India, it is customary for a lover to show his inclinations whilst courting by presenting his sweetheart and her parents with small delicacies, such as field mice and squirrels, though the parents seldom interfere with the young couple's designs, and it would be regarded as an indelible disgrace to barter a child's happiness for money."[709] So likewise with the Veddahs[710] either no presents are given on either side, or else the ceremony consists simply in offering some food to the parents of the bride; and elsewhere the proffer of similar "wooing-gifts," without previous stipulation, must be looked upon either as a token of good-will or as an indication of the ability of the bridegroom to provide for a wife, rather than as a means of purchase.[711] The probational marriages of the Seri Indians appear to have a like significance.[712] May we not go a step farther? Is it not probable that the widely diffused custom of bestowing presents of greater value, even where the amount is established by usage or previous agreement, may sometimes be due to like motives? Though, as a rule, the presentation of such gifts represents a "weakened" form of wife-purchase, it does not seem necessary to assign the origin of the practice to a single cause. The same is true of the custom of exchanging presents between the two families. Usually