ABSTRACT
The purchase of goods among primitive people is conducted, as a rule, by barter. From a legal point of view it is pre-eminently a question of giving and receiving on the spot, though we may also speak of credit transactions even in the most primitive stages, as in the case of the so-called 'silent trading', the giver laying down an object in the confident expectation that, after a certain interval, the other party will put something of equal value in its place. As a rule, it is only movable objects that are subject to sale and purchase, and of these only such as are not so intimately connected with the life of the sept or tribe that the existence of the community depends on them, as in the case of cattle. It frequently happens that no important object can be bought or sold without the consent of the senior of the sept or the father of the family.
