Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 48

This most usual method of getting a wife is also the most extraordinary. Suppose one man has a son, another a daughter, generally both of tender age. Now it would be bad enough to betroth these two without their consent and before they are old enough to have any real choice. But the Australian way is infinitely worse. It is arranged that the girl in the case shall be, by and by, not the boy's wife, but his mother-in-law; that is, the boy is to wed her daughter.

In other words, he must wait not only till she is old enough to marry but till her daughter is old enough to marry! And this is "by far the most common method"!

MARRIAGE TABOOS AND "INCEST."

The marriage taboos are no less artificial, absurd, and fatal to free choice and love. An Australian is not only forbidden to marry a girl who is closely related to him by blood--sometimes the prohibition extends to first, second, and even third cousins--but he must not think of such a thing as marrying a woman having his family name or belonging to certain tribes or clans--his own, his mother's or grandmother's, his neighbor's, or one speaking his dialect, etc. The result is more disastrous than one unfamiliar with Australian relationships would imagine; for these relationships are so complicated that to unravel them takes, in the words of Howitt (59), "a patience compared with which that of Job is furious irritability."

These prohibitions are not to be trifled with. They extend even to war captives. If a couple disregard them and elope, they are followed by the indignant relatives in hot pursuit and, if taken, severely punished, perhaps even put to death. (Howitt, 300, 66.) Of the Kamilaroi the same writer says:

"Should a man persist in keeping a woman who is denied to him by their laws, the penalty is that he should be driven out from the society of his friends and quite ignored. If that does not cure his fondness for the woman, his male relatives follow him and kill him, as a disgrace to their tribe, and the female relatives of the woman kill her for the same reason."

It is a mystery to anthropologists how these marriage taboos, these notions of real or fancied incest, could have ever arisen. Curr (I.,236) remarks pointedly that

"most persons who have any practical knowledge of our savages will, I think, bear me out when I a.s.sert that, whatever their objections to consanguineous marriages may be, they have no more idea of the advantages of this or that sort of breeding, or of any laws of Nature bearing on the question, than they have of differential calculus."[177]

Whatever may have been the origin of these prohibitions, it is obvious that, as I have said, they acted as obstacles to love; and what is more, in many cases they seem to have impeded legitimate marriage only, without interfering with licentious indulgence. Roth (67) cites O'Donnell to the effect that with the Kunandaburi tribe the _jus primae noctis_ is allowed all the men present at the camp without regard to cla.s.s or kin. He also cites Beveridge, who had lived twenty-three years in contact with the Riverina tribes and who a.s.sured him that, apart from marrying, there was no restriction on intercourse. In his book on South Australia J.D. Wood says (403):

"The fact that marriage does not take place between members of the same tribe, or is forbidden amongst them, does not at all include the idea that chast.i.ty is observed within the same limits."

Brough Smyth (II., 92) refers to the fact that secret violations of the rule against fornication within the forbidden cla.s.ses were not punished. Bonwick (62) cites the Rev. C. Wilhelmi on the Port Lincoln customs:

"There are no instances of two Karraris or two Matteris having been married together; and yet connections of a less virtuous character, which take place between members of the same caste, do not appear to be considered incestuous."

Similar testimony is adduced by Waitz-Gerland (VI., 776), and others.

AFFECTION FOR WOMEN AND DOGS

There is a strange cla.s.s of men who always stand with a brush in hand ready to whitewash any degraded creature, be he the devil himself. For want of a better name they are called sentimentalists, and they are among men what the morbid females who bring bouquets and sympathy to fiendish murderers are among women. The Australian, unutterably degraded, particularly in his s.e.xual relations, as the foregoing pages show him to be, has had his champions of the type of the "fearless"

Stephens. There is another cla.s.s of writers who create confusion by their reckless use of words. Thus the Rev. G. Taplin a.s.serts (12) that he has "known as well-matched and loving couples amongst the aborigines" as he has amongst Europeans. What does he mean by loving couples? What, in his opinion, are the symptoms of affection? With amusing navete he reveals his ideas on the subject in a pa.s.sage (11) which he quotes approvingly from H.E.A. Meyer to the effect that if a young bride pleases her husband, "he _shows his affection_ by frequently rubbing her with grease to improve her personal appearance, and with the idea that it will make her grow rapidly and become fat."

If such selfish love of obesity for sensual purposes merits the name of affection, I cheerfully grant that Australians are capable of affection to an unlimited degree. Taplin, furthermore, admits that "as wives got old, they were often cast off by their husbands, or given to young men in exchange for their sisters or other relations at their disposal" (x.x.xI.); and again (121):

"From childhood to old age the gratification of appet.i.te and pa.s.sion is the sole purpose of life to the savage. He seeks to extract the utmost sweetness from mere animal pleasures, and consequently his nature becomes embruted."

Taplin does not mention a single act of conjugal devotion or self-sacrifice, such as const.i.tutes the sole criterion of affection.

Nor in the hundreds of books and articles on Australia that I have read have I come across a single instance of this kind. On the subject of the cruel treatment of women all the observers are eloquent; had they seen any altruistic actions, would they have failed to make a record of them?

The Australian's attachment to his wife is evidently a good deal like his love of his dog. Gason (259) tells us that the dogs, of which every camp has from six to twenty, are generally a mangy lot, but

"the natives are very fond of them.... If a white man wants to offend a native let him beat his dog. I have seen women crying over a dog, when bitten by snakes, as if over their own children."

The dogs are very useful to them, helping them to find snakes, rats, and other animals for food. Yet, when mealtime comes, "the dog, notwithstanding its services and their _affection_ for it, _fares very badly_, receiving nothing but the bones." "Hence the dog is always in very low condition."

Another writer[178] with a better developed sense of humor, says that "It may be doubted whether the man does not value his dog, when alive, quite as much as he does his woman, and think of both quite as often and lovingly after he has eaten them."

As for the women, they are little better than the men. What Mitch.e.l.l says of them (I., 307) is characteristic. After a fight, he says, the women

"do not always follow their fugitive husbands from the field, but frequently go over, as a matter of course, to the victors, even with young children on their backs; and thus it was, probably, that after we had made the lower tribes sensible of our superiority, that the three girls followed our party, beseeching us to take them with us."

The following from Grey (II., 230) gives us an idea of wifely affection and fidelity: "The women have generally some favorite amongst the young men, always looking forward to be his wife at the death of her husband." How utterly beyond the Australian horizon was the idea of common decency, not to speak of such a holy thing as affection, is revealed by a cruel custom described by Howitt (344):

"The Kurnai and the Brajerak were not intermarrying tribes, unless by capture, and in this case each man took the woman whose husband he had been the first to spear."

It would of course be absurd to suppose the widows in such cases capable of suffering as our women would under such circ.u.mstances. They are quite as callous and cruel as the men. Evidence is given in the Jackman book (149) that, like Indian women, they torture prisoners of war, breaking toes, fingers, and arms, digging out the eyes and filling the sockets with hot sand, etc.

"Husbands rarely show much affection for their wives," wrote Eyre (II., 214).

"After a long absence I have seen natives, upon their return, go to their camp, exhibiting the most stoical indifference, never taking the least notice of their wives."

Elsewhere (321) he says, with reference to the fact that marriage is not regarded as any pledge of chast.i.ty, which is not recognized as a virtue: "But little real affection consequently exists between husbands and wives, and younger men value a wife princ.i.p.ally for her services as a slave." And in a Latin footnote, in which he describes the licentious customs of promiscuous intercourse and the harsh treatment of women, he adds (320), "It is easy to understand that there can hardly be much love among husbands and wives." He also gives this particular instance of conjugal indifference and cruelty. In 1842 the wife of a native in Adelaide, a girl of about eighteen, was confined and recovered slowly. Before she was well the tribe removed from the locality. The husband preferred accompanying them, and left his wife to die unattended. William Jackman, the Englishman who lived seventeen months as a captive among the natives, says (118) that "wife-killing, among the aborigines of Australia, is frequent and elicits neither surprise nor any sort of animadversion." By way of ill.u.s.trating this remark he relates how, one day, he returned with a native from an unsuccessful hunt. The native's twelve-year-old wife had caught an opossum, roasted it, and, impelled by hunger, had begun to eat it instead of saving it for her master--an atrocious crime. For fifteen minutes the husband sat in silent rage which his features betrayed. Presently he jumped up with the air of a demon,

"scooped his two hands full of embers and burning sand, and flung the whole into the face and bosom of the naked object of his vengeance; for I must repeat that none of the natives wear any clothing, and that she was sitting there as nude as when she was born. The devil of his nature thus fairly aroused, he sprang for his spear. It transfixed his frantic but irresisting victim. She fell dead.... Save by the women of the tribe, the affair was scarcely noticed."

A HORRIBLE CUSTOM

Suppose this young wife had saved the opossum for her husband. He would then have eaten it and, in accordance with their universal custom, have thrown her the bones to share with the dog. After that he might have rubbed her with grease and indulged in sensual caresses.

Would that have proved his capacity for affection? Would you call a mother affectionate who fondled her child, but allowed it to starve while she gratified her own appet.i.te? The only sure test of affection lies in disinterested actions of self-sacrifice; and even actions may sometimes mislead us. Thus several authors have been led into absurdly erroneous conclusions by a horrible custom prevalent among the natives, and thus described by Curr (I., 89):

"In some cases a woman is obliged by custom to roll up the remains of her deceased child in a variety of rags, making them into a package, which she carries about with her for several months, and at length buries. On it she lays her head at night, and the odor is so horrible that it pervades the whole camp, and not unfrequently costs the mother her life."

Angas (I., 75) refers to this custom and exclaims, rapturously, "Oh!

how strong is a mother's love when even the offensive and putrid clay can be thus worshipped for the spirit that once was its tenant"(!!).

Angas was an uneducated scribbler, but what shall we say on finding his sentimental view accepted by the professional German anthropologists, Gerland (VI., 780) and Jung (109)? Anyone familiar with Australian life must suspect at once that this custom is simply one of the horrible modes of punishment devised for women. Curr says the woman is "_obliged by custom_" to carry her dead child, and he adds: "I believe that this practice is insisted on when a young mother loses her first born, as the death of the child is thought to have come about by carelessness." To suppose that Australian mothers who usually kill all but two of their six or more children could be capable of such an act for sentimental reasons is to show a logical faculty on a par with the Australian's own. This point has already been discussed, but a further instance related by Dr. Moorehouse (J.D.

Wood, 390), will bring the matter home:

"A female just born was thus about to be destroyed for the benefit of a boy about four years old, whom the mother was nourishing, while the father was standing by, ready to commit the deed. Through the kindness of a lady to whom the circ.u.mstances became known, and our joint interference, this one life was saved, and the child was properly attended to by the mother, although she at first urged the necessity of its death as strenuously as the father." "In other parts of the country," Wood adds, "the women do the horrible work themselves. They are not content with destroying the life of the infants, but they eat them."

ROMANTIC AFFLICTION

Here, as in several of the alleged cases of African sentimentality, we see the great need of caution and detective sagacity in interpreting facts. To take another instance: Westermarck (503), in his search for cases of romantic attachment and absorbing pa.s.sion among savages, fancies he has come across one in Australia, for he tells us that "even the rude Australian girl sings in a strain of romantic affliction--

'I never shall see my darling again.'"

As a matter of fact this line has no more to do with the "true monogamous instinct, the absorbing pa.s.sion for one," than with Julius Caesar. Eyre relates (310, 70) that when Miago, the first native who ever quitted Perth, was taken away on the _Beagle_ in 1838, his _mother_ sang during his absence:

Whither does that lone ship wander, My young son I shall never see again.

Grosse, who often sides with Westermarck, here parts company with him, being convinced that

"what is called love in Australia ... is no spiritual affection, but a sensual pa.s.sion, which is quickly cooled in the enjoyment.... The only examples of _sympathetic_ lyrics that have been found in Australia are mourning songs, and even they relate only to relatives by blood and tribal affinity" (_B.A.,_ 244)[179].

A LOCK OF HAIR

A more subtle problem than those so far considered is presented by a courtship custom described by Bulmer (Brough Smyth, 82-84). The natives are very superst.i.tious in regard to their hair. They carefully destroy any that has been cut off and would be greatly frightened to know it had fallen into another person's hands, as that would place their health and life in jeopardy at the other's will. Yet a girl who has a lover will not hesitate to give him a lock of her hair. It seems impossible to deny that this is a touch of true sentiment, of romantic love; and Bulmer accordingly calls this lock of hair a "token of affection." But is it a token of affection? The sequel will show. In due course of time the couple elope, in the black of the night they take to the bush. Great excitement prevails in camp when they are found missing. They are called "long-legged," "thin-legged,"

"squint-eyed," or "big-headed." Search is made, the pair are tracked and caught, and both are cruelly beaten. They make a promise not to repeat the offence, but do not keep it; another elopement follows, with more beatings. At last the girl becomes afraid to elope again.