All the Pueblo peoples are more advanced than the greater number of the neighbouring tribes; their matrimonial customs are more refined, their domestic life much happier, and they have an appreciation of love, a rare thing in primitive peoples.[66] Among other tribes purchase of a wife is common, always a sure sign of the enslavement of women. Thus in Columbia what is most prized in a woman is her aptitude for labour, and the price paid for her (usually in horses) depends on her capacity as a beast of burden. Sometimes, as in California, a suitor obtains a wife on credit, but then the man is called “half married;” and until her price is paid he has to labour as a slave for her parents. Here, as elsewhere, morality is simply a custom of habit; Bancroft says that purchase of a wife has become accepted as honourable, so that among the Californian Redskins “the children of a wife who has cost nothing to her husband are looked down upon.”[67] Such customs are in sharp contrast to the liberty granted to the woman among the Pueblos. As an example of women’s power carried to the limit of tyranny, we may note the Nicaraguans, of whom Bancroft states that “the husbands are said to have been so much under the control of their wives that they were obliged to do the housework, while the women attended to the trading.” Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising to find the women described as “great shrews, who would on the slightest provocation drive their offending husbands out of the house.”[68] This is a curious case of the despotic rule of women. Westermarck accounts for their position by the strict monogamy that is enforced, but I do not think this can be the true explanation.[69] [66] Bancroft, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 549. [67] Bancroft, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 277. Power’s _Tribes of California_, pp. 22, 56. [68] Bancroft, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 685. [69] _History of Human Marriage_, p. 500. Among the Guanas the women make their own stipulations with their lovers before marriage, arranging what they are to do in the household. They are also said to decide the conditions of the marriage, whether it is to be monogamous, or if polygamy or polyandry is to be allowed.[70] The Zapotecs and other tribes inhabiting the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, are remarkable for “the gentleness, affection, and frugality that characterises the marital relations. Polygamy is not permitted, which is very remarkable as the women greatly outnumber the men.”[71] [70] Azara, _Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, Vol. II, p. 93. [71] Bancroft, _op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 661-662.