Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 45

The Birria tribe waits a few years longer, but atones for this by a resort to another crime: "Males and females are married at from fourteen to sixteen, but are not allowed to rear children until they get to be about thirty years of age; hence infanticide is general."

The missionary O.W. Schurmann says of the Port Lincoln tribe (223): "Notwithstanding the early marriage of females, I have not observed that they have children at an earlier age than is common among Europeans." Of York district tribes we are told (I., 343) that "girls are betrothed shortly after birth, and brutalities are practised on them while mere children." Of the Kojonub tribe (348): "Girls are promised in marriage soon after birth, and given over to their husbands at about nine years of age." Of the Natingero tribe (380): "The girls go to live with their husbands at from seven to ten years, and suffer dreadfully from intercourse." Of the Yircla Meening tribe (402):

"Females become wives at ten and mothers at twelve years of age." "Mr. J.M. Davis and others of repute declare, as a result of long acquaintance with Australian savages, that the girls were made use of for promiscuous intercourse when they were only nine or ten years old." (Sutherland, I., 113.)

It is needless to continue this painful catalogue.

INDIFFERENCE TO CHASt.i.tY

Eyre's a.s.sertion regarding chast.i.ty, that "no such virtue is recognized," has already been quoted, and is borne out by testimony of many other writers. In the Dieyerie tribe "each married woman is permitted a paramour." (Curr, II., 46.) Taplin says of the Narrinyeri (16, 18) that boys are not allowed to marry until their beard has grown a certain length; "but they are allowed the abominable privilege of promiscuous intercourse with the younger portion of the other s.e.x."

A.W. Howitt describes[158] a strange kind of group marriage prevalent among the Dieri and kindred tribes, the various couples being allotted to each other by the council of elder men without themselves being consulted as to their preferences. During the ensuing festivities, however, "there is for about four hours a general license in camp as regards" the couples thus "married." Meyer (191) says of the Encounter Bay tribes that if a man from another tribe arrives having anything which a native desires to purchase, "he perhaps makes a bargain to pay by letting him have one of his wives for a longer or shorter period."

Angas (I., 93) refers to the custom of lending wives. In Victoria the natives have a special name for the custom of lending one of their wives to young men who have none. Sometimes they are thus lent for a month at a time.[159] As we shall presently see, one reason why Australian men marry is to have the means of making friends by lending their wives to others. The custom of allowing friends to share the husband's privileges was also widely prevalent.

In New South Wales and about Riverina, says Brough Smyth (II., 316),

"in any instance where the abduction [of a woman] has taken place by a party of men for the benefit of some one individual, each of the members of the party claims, as a right, a privilege which the intended husband has no power to refuse."

Curr informs us (I., 128) that if a woman resist her husband's orders to give herself up to another man she is "either speared or cruelly beaten." Fison (303) believes that the lending of wives to visitors was looked on not as a favor but a duty--a right which the visitor could claim; and Howitt showed that in the native gesture language there was a special sign for this custom--"a peculiar folding of the hands," indicating "either a request or an offer, according as it is used by the guest or the host."[160] Concerning Queensland tribes Roth says (182):

"If an aboriginal requires a woman temporarily for venery he either borrows a wife from her husband for a night or two in exchange for boomerangs, a shield, food, etc., or else violates the female when unprotected, when away from the camp out in the bush.

In the former case the husband looks upon the matter as a point of honor to oblige his friend, the greatest compliment that can be paid him, provided that permission is previously asked. On the other hand, were he to refuse he has the fear hanging over him that the pet.i.tioner might get a death-bone pointed at him--and so, after all, his apparent courtesy may be only Hobson's choice. In the latter case, if a married woman, and she tells her husband, she gets a hammering, and should she disclose the delinquent, there will probably be a fight, and hence she usually keeps her mouth shut; if a single woman, or of any paedomatronym other than his own, no one troubles himself about the matter. On the other hand, death by the spear or club is the punishment invariably inflicted by the camp council collectively for criminally a.s.saulting any blood relative, group-sister (_i.e._, a female member of the same paedomatronym) or young woman that has not yet been initiated into the first degree."

The last sentence would indicate that these tribes are not so indifferent to chast.i.ty as the other natives; but the information given by Roth (who for three years was surgeon-general to the Boulia, Cloncurry and Normanton hospitals) dispels such an illusion most radically.[161]

USELESS PRECAUTIONS

In Central Australia, says H. Kempe,[162] "there is no separation of the s.e.xes in social life; in the daily camp routine as well as at festivals all the natives mingle as they choose." Curr a.s.serts (I., 109) that

"in most tribes a woman is not allowed to converse or have any relations whatever with any adult male, save her husband. Even with a grown-up brother she is almost forbidden to exchange a word."

Grey (II., 255) found that at dances the females sat in groups apart and the young men were never allowed to approach them and not permitted to hold converse with any one except their mother or sisters. "On no occasion," he adds,

"is a strange native allowed to approach the fire of the married." "The young men and boys of ten years of age and upward are obliged to sleep in their portion of the encampment."

From such testimony one might infer that female chast.i.ty is successfully guarded; but the writers quoted themselves take care to dispel that illusion. Grey tells us that (in spite of these arrangements) "the young females are much addicted to intrigue;" and again (248):

"Should a female be possessed of considerable personal attractions, the first years of her life must necessarily be very unhappy. In her early infancy she is betrothed to some man, even at this period advanced in years, and by whom, as she approaches the age of p.u.b.erty, she is watched with a degree of vigilance and care, which increases in proportion to the disparity of years between them; it is probably from this circ.u.mstance that so many of them are addicted to intrigues, in which if they are detected by their husbands, death or a spear through some portion of the body is their certain fate."

And Curr shows in the following (109) how far the attempts at seclusion are from succeeding in enforcing chast.i.ty:

"Notwithstanding the savage jealousy, _varied by occasional degrading complaisance on the part of the husband,_ there is more or less intrigue in every camp; and the husband usually a.s.sumes that his wife has been unfaithful to him whenever there has been an opportunity for criminality.... In some tribes the husband will frequently prost.i.tute his wife to his brother; otherwise more commonly to strangers visiting his tribe than to his own people, and in this way our exploring parties have been troubled with proposals of the sort."

Apart from the other facts here given, the words I have italicized above would alone show that what makes an Australian in some instances guard his females is not a regard for chast.i.ty, or jealousy in our sense of the word, but simply a desire to preserve his movable property--a slave and concubine who, if young or fat, is very liable to be stolen or, on account of the bad treatment she receives from her old master, to run away with a younger man.[163]

If any further evidence were needed on this head it would be supplied by the authoritative statement of J.D. Wood[164] that

"In fact, chast.i.ty as a virtue is absolutely unknown amongst all the tribes of which there are records. The buying, taking, or stealing of a wife is not at all influenced by considerations of antecedent purity on the part of the woman. A man wants a wife and he obtains one somehow. She is his slave and there the matter ends."

SURVIVALS OF PROMISCUITY

Since this chapter was written a new book on Australia has appeared which bears out the views here taken so admirably that I must insert a brief reference to its contents. It is Spencer and Gillen's _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_ (1899), and relates to nine tribes over whom Baldwin Spencer had been placed as special magistrate and sub-protector for some years, during which he had excellent opportunities to study their customs. The authors tell us (62, 63) that

"In the Urabunna tribe every woman is the special _Nupa_ of one particular man, but at the same time he has no exclusive right to her, as she is the _Piraungaru_ of certain other men who also have the right of access to her.... There is no such thing as one man having the exclusive right to one woman....

Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe."

"Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man attempts to prevent his wife's _Piraungaru_ from having access to her, but this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked upon as churlish. When visiting distant groups where, in all likelihood, the husband has no _Piraungaru_, it is customary for other men of his own cla.s.s to offer him the loan of one or more of their _Nupa_ women, and a man, besides lending a woman over whom he has the first right, will also lend his _Piraungaru_."

In the Arunta tribe there is a restriction of a particular woman to a particular man, "or rather, a man has an exclusive right to one special woman, though he may of his own free will lend her to other men," provided they stand in a certain artificial relation to her (74). However (92):

"Whilst under ordinary circ.u.mstances in the Arunta and other tribes one man is only allowed to have marital relations with women of a particular cla.s.s, there are customs which allow at certain times of a man having such relations with women to whom at other times he would not on any account be allowed to have access. We find, indeed, that this holds true in the case of all the nine different tribes with the marriage customs of which we are acquainted, and in which a woman becomes the private property of one man."

In the southern Arunta, after a certain ceremony has been performed, the bride is brought back to camp and given to her special _Unawa_.

"That night he lends her to one or two men who are _unawa_ to her, and afterward she belongs to him exclusively." At this time when a woman is being, so to speak, handed over to one particular individual, special individuals with whom at ordinary times she may have no intercourse, have the right of access to her. Such customs our authors interpret plausibly as partial promiscuity pointing to a time when still greater laxity prevailed--suggesting rudimentary organs in animals (96).

Among some tribes at corrobboree time, every day two or three women are told off and become the property of all the men on the corrobboree grounds, excepting fathers, brothers, or sons. Thus there are three stages of individual ownership in women: In the first, whilst the man has exclusive right to a woman, he can and does lend her to certain other men; in the second there is a wider relation in regard to particular men at the time of marriage; and in the third a still wider relation to all men except the nearest relatives, at corrobboree time.

Only in the first of these cases can we properly speak of wife "lending"; in the other cases the individuals have no choice and cannot withhold their consent, the matter being of a public or tribal nature. As regards the corrobborees, it is supposed to be the duty of every man at different times to send his wife to the ground, and the most striking feature in regard to it is that the first man who has access to her is the very one to whom, under normal conditions, she is most strictly taboo, her _Mura_. [All women whose daughters are eligible as wives are _mura_ to a man.]

Old and young men alike must give up their wives on these occasions.

"It is a custom of ancient date which is sanctioned by public opinion, and to the performance of which neither men nor women concerned offer any opposition" (98).

ABORIGINAL DEPRAVITY

These revelations of Spencer and Gillen, taken in connection with the abundant evidence I have cited from the works of early explorers as to the utter depravity of the aboriginal Australian when first seen by white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to a.s.sume their present extraordinarily complex aspect; customs which form part and parcel of the very life of Australians and which represent the lowest depths of s.e.xual depravity, since they are utterly incompatible with chast.i.ty, fidelity, legitimacy, or anything else we understand by s.e.xual morality. In some cases, no doubt, contact with the low whites and their liquor aggravated these evils by fostering professional prost.i.tution and making men even more ready than before to treat their wives as merchandise. Lumholtz, who lived several years among these savages, makes this admission (345), but at the same time he is obliged to join all the other witnesses in declaring that apart from this "there is not much to be said of the morals of the blacks, for I am sorry to say they have none." On a previous page (42) I cited Sutherland's summary of a report of the House of Commons (1844, 350 pages), which shows that the Australian native, as found by the first white visitors, manifested "an absolute incapacity to form even a rudimentary notion of chast.i.ty." The same writer, who was born and brought up in Australia, says (I., 121):

"In almost every case the father or husband will dispose of the girl's virtue for a small price. When white men came they found these habits prevailing. The overwhelming testimony proves it absurd to say that they demoralized the unsophisticated savages."

And again (I., 186),

"It is untrue that in s.e.xual license the savage has ever anything to learn. In almost every tribe there are pollutions deeper than any I have thought it necessary to mention, and all that the lower fringe of civilized men can do to harm the uncivilized is to stoop to the level of the latter, instead of teaching them a better way."[165]

THE QUESTION OF PROMISCUITY

As regards the promiscuity question, Spencer and Gillen's observations go far to confirm some of the seemingly fantastic speculations regarding "a thousand miles of wives," and so on, contained in the volume of Fison and Howitt[166] and to make it probable that unregulated intercourse was the state of primitive man at a stage of evolution earlier than any known to us now. Since the appearance of Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ it has become the fashion to regard the theory of promiscuity as disproved. Alfred Russell Wallace, in his preface to this book, expresses his opinion that "independent thinkers" will agree with its author on most of the points wherein he takes issue with his famous predecessors, including Spencer, Morgan, Lubbock, and others. Ernst Grosse, in a volume which the president of the German Anthropological Society p.r.o.nounced "epoch-making"--_Die Formen der Familie_--refers (43) to Westermarck's "very thorough refutation" of this theory, which he stigmatizes as one of the blunders of the unfledged science of sociology which it will be best to forget as soon as possible; adding that "Westermarck's best weapons were, however, forged by Starcke."

In a question like this, however, two independent observers are worth more than two hundred "independent thinkers." Spencer and Gillen are eye-witnesses, and they inform us repeatedly (100, 105, 108, 111) that Westermarck's objections to the theory of promiscuity do not stand the test of facts and that none of his hypotheses explains away the customs which point to a former prevalence of promiscuity. They have absolutely disproved his a.s.sertion (539) that "it is certainly not among the lowest peoples that s.e.xual relations most nearly approach promiscuity." Cunow, who, as Grosse admits (50), has written the most thorough and authentic monograph on the complicated family relationship of Australia, devotes two pages (122-23) to exposing some of Westermarck's arguments, which, as he shows, "border on the comic."

I myself have in this chapter, as well as in those on Africans, American Indians, South Sea Islanders, etc., revealed the comicality of the a.s.sertion that there is in a savage condition of life "comparatively little reason for illegitimate relations," which forms one of the main props of Westermarck's anti-promiscuity theory; and I have also reduced _ad absurdum_ his systematic overrating of savages in the matter of liberty of choice, esthetic taste and capacity for affection which resulted from his pet theory and marred his whole book.[167]

It is interesting to note that Darwin (_D.M._, Ch. XX.) concluded from the facts known to him that "_almost_ promiscuous intercourse or very loose intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world:" and the only thing that seemed to deter him from believing in _absolutely_ promiscuous intercourse was the "strength of the feeling of jealousy."

Had he lived to understand the true nature of savage jealousy explained in this volume and to read the revelations of Spencer and Gillen, that difficulty would have vanished. On this point, too, their remarks are of great importance, fully bearing out the view set forth in my chapter on jealousy. They declare (99) that they did not find s.e.xual jealousy specially developed:

"For a man to have unlawful intercourse with any woman arouses a feeling which is due not so much to jealousy as to the fact that the delinquent has infringed a tribal custom. If the intercourse has been with a woman who belongs to the cla.s.s from which his wife comes, then he is called _atna nylkna_ (which, literally translated, is v.u.l.v.a thief); if with one with whom it is unlawful for him to have intercourse, then he is called _iturka_, the most opprobrious term in the Arunta language. In the one case he has merely stolen property, in the other he has offended against tribal law."

Jealousy, they sum up, "is indeed a factor which need not be taken into serious account in regard to the question of s.e.xual relations amongst the Central Australian tribes."

The customs described by these authors show, moreover, that these savages _do not allow jealousy to stand in the way of s.e.xual communism_, a man who refuses to share his wife being considered churlish, in one cla.s.s of cases, while in another no choice is allowed him, the matter being arranged by the tribe. This point has not heretofore been sufficiently emphasized. It knocks away one of the strongest props of the anti-promiscuity theory, and it is supported by the remarks of Howitt,[168] who, after explaining how, among the Dieri, couples are chosen by headmen without consulting their wishes,--new allotments being made at each circ.u.mcision ceremony--and how the dance is followed by a general license, goes on to relate that all these matters are carefully arranged _so as to prevent jealousy_.