matelotage

Updated: July 10, 2026

The cow-killers, as they had neither wife nor children, commonly associated in pairs with the right of inheriting from each other, a custom which was called "matelotage." These private associations, however, did not prevent the property of all from being in a measure common. Their mode of settling quarrels was the most primitive the duel.

Clarence Henry Haring - The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century