Again, this refers to the recognition by American courts of foreign polygamous marriages that were valid where they were made.
I've found an additional case involving recognition of a foreign polygamous marriage as valid for some purposes. This also involves Native Americans. It is Compo v. Jackson Iron Co., 50 Mich. 578 (1883). Here the daughter of a polygamous marriage was recognized as legitimate and therefore entitled to inherit from her father's estate. The court wrote:
It is no doubt true that among civilized nations polygamy is very justly discarded, as a barbarous usage which is inconsistent with true civilization. If the Indian tribes were governed by the laws of the State, and their marriages covered by those laws, the result would follow as claimed. But the Indian tribes at the time now under consideration did not derive their right to occupy the country from the State. they were recognized by the United States as tribes capable of making treaties and of regulating their own internal affairs. In the absence of any determination by the United States by treaty or otherwise on the subject, they have as complete power to determine their own domestic relations as any other organzied community would have, and those who were recognized by Indian usage as married persons must be so regarded by us, and the children of such marriages cannot be deemed illegitimate without violating every principle of justice.
Compo, supra at 585.
The opinion also discusses some English precedent:
A still more decisive class of cases is found in the English courts where until Jews were fully emancipated from their former disabilities they were treated as a community of alien people although living in England. It was uniformly held that Jewish marriages with all their incidents and qualifications were to be governed entirely by Jewish usage, and were valid if so conforming.
Id., at 586.
The case Ortley v. Ross, 78 Neb. 339 (1907), mentioned previously, also deals with the legitimacy of a child born to a polygamous marriage.
As an aside, one thing that struck me while reading the Indian tribal law cases is that the judges felt that Indian marriages were not "civilized" because they allowed easy dissolution. This is mentioned in several of the polygamy cases as one of the unusual characteristics of Indian tribal marriage and there are also some cases I came across that deal expressly with this question and whether the divorces and subsequent remarriages should be recognized as valid. How things have changed!
Another thing that struck me while doing my research is that the phrase "polygamous" is usually found in close proximity with "incestuous". Do people really think that polygamy is equivalent to or as bad as incest??
In addition to the Compo case, I found two cases that touch on related issues. The first is Wei See v. Young Sheong, 3 Haw. 489 (1873). This case deals with the estate of a Chinese man who had a wife in China and a native Hawaiian wife. He apparently attempted to devise his property according to Chinese law and custom which considered the Hawaiian wife Kamaka as his concubine, who did not have equal inheritance rights but was entitled to some portion of his estate. The executor of the will filed false documents with the court to conceal the actual amount of money at issue and in so doing denied the Chinese wife and also the mother of the deceased their rightful share. The Supreme Court of Hawaii recognized the Chinese marriage as valid and gave the Chinese widow her share as a widow. It also held that Kamaka had been unaware of the pre-existing Chinese marriage so she received a widow's share as well rather than the smaller amount originally devised to her.
The other case, Royal v. Cudahy Packing Company, 195 Iowa 759 (1923), does not actually involve a polygamous marriage. Instead, the defendants attempted to claim that a marriage made in Turkey was invalid because Turkish marriage law allows polygamy. However, the court did not agree with this view. This is similar to the arguments made against recognizing Indian tribal marriages as valid. That is, the argument is that because Indian tribal or Islamic law allows types of marriage not allowed in American law it should not be recognized at all, even if the marriage at issue is of a type allowed by American law. The courts have never taken this position, but instead will recognize marriages as valid as long as they are of a type allowed by American law. As the cases discussed here show, they are even willing to recognize other types of marriages for some purposes.
I have not yet complete my research of case law in all the states, which I hope to do next week, inshallah.