Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 87

[90] Boas, cited by Mallery, 534.

[91] Mallery, 1888-89, 197, 623-629.

[92] See also the remarks in Prazer's _Totemism_, 26.

[93] _Explor. and Surv. Mississippi River to Pacific Ocean_. Senate Reports, Washington, 1856, III., 33.

[94] See the pages (386-91) on the "Fashion Fetish" in my _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_.

[95] _Jour. Roy. As. Soc_., 1860, 13.

[96] Feathers also serve various other useful purposes to Australians.

An ap.r.o.n of emu feathers distinguishes females who are not yet matrons. (Smyth, I., xl.) Howitt says that in Central Australia messengers sent to avenge a death are painted yellow and wear feathers on their head and in the girdle at the spine. (Mallery, 1888-89, 483.)

[97] Related by Dieffenbach. Heriot even declares of the northern Indians (352) that "they a.s.sert that they find no odor agreeable but that of food."

[98] For other references to ancient nations, see Joest in _Zeitschr.

fur Ethnologie._ 1888, 415.

[99] See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.

[100] See _e.g_. Eyre, II. 333-335; Brough Smith, L, XLI, 68, 295, II., 313; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, 140; _Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W_., 1882, 201; and the old authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 740; cf Frazer, 29. If Westermarck had been more anxious to ascertain the truth than to prove a theory, would he have found it necessary to ignore all this evidence, neglecting to refer even to Chatfield in speaking of Curr?

[101] H. Ward, 136.

[102] Roth, II, 83.

[103] Martius, I., 321.

[104] Boas, _Bur. Ethnol._, 1884-88, 561.

[105] Mann, _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, XII, 333.

[106] Galton, 148.

[107] Dalton, 251.

[108] Waitz-Gerland, VI., 30.

[109] Mallery, 1888-89, 414.

[110] To take three cases in place of many Carl Bock relates (67) that among some Borneans tattooing is one of the privileges of matrimony and is _not allowed to unmarried girls_. D'Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the "_new honor_ his wife was securing by these decorations." (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that they _are married_. (Mallery, 411.)

[111] It is significant that Westermarck (179) though he refers to page 90 of Turner, ignores the pa.s.sage I have just cited, though it occurs on the same page.

[112] Australia is by no means the only country where the women are less decorated than the men. Various explanations have been offered, but none of them covers all the facts. The real reason becomes obvious if my view is accepted that the alleged ornaments of savages are not esthetic, but practical or utilitarian. The women are usually allowed to share such things as badges of mourning, amulets, and various devices that attract attention to wealth or rank; but the religious rites, and the manifold decorations a.s.sociated with military life--the chief occupation of these peoples--they are not allowed to share, and these, with the tribal marks, furnish, as we have seen, the occasion for the most diverse and persistent "decorative" practices.

[113] The advocates of the s.e.xual selection theory might have avoided many grotesque blunders had they possessed a sense of humor to counterbalance and control their erudition. The violent opposition of Madagascar women to King Radama's order that the men should have their hair cut, to which Westermarck refers (174-75), surely finds in the proverbial stupid conservatism of barbarous customs a simpler and more rational explanation than in his a.s.sumption that this riot ill.u.s.trated "the important part played by the hair of the head as a stimulant of s.e.xual pa.s.sion" (to these coa.r.s.e, masculine women, who had to be speared before they could be quieted). An argument which attributes to unwashed, vermin-covered savages a fanatic zeal for what they consider as beautiful, such as no civilized devotee of beauty would ever dream of, involves its own _reductio ad absurdum_ by proving too much.

Westermarck also cites (177) from a book on Brazil the story that if a young maiden of the Tapoyers "be marriageable, and yet not courted by any, the mother paints her with some red color about the eyes," and in accordance with his theory we are soberly expected to accept this red paint about the eyes as an effective "stimulant of s.e.xual pa.s.sion," in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her! The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market. In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery's admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington). Belden relates (145) of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red. He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeb.a.l.l.s, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courtship, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful. Belden himself further points out that "a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment," and on p. 144 he explains that "when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love." I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.

[114] _Trans. Eth. Soc.,_ London, N.S., VII., 238; _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal,_ x.x.xV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, _D.S._

[115] In Fiji fatness is also "a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat." (W.J. Smythe, 166.)

[116] Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark (259), that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are "regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance"!

[117] It is not strange that the human race should have had to wait so long for a complete a.n.a.lysis of love. It is not so very long ago since Newton showed that what was supposed to be a simple white light was really compounded of all the colors of the rainbow; or that Helmholtz a.n.a.lyzed sounds into their partial tones of different pitch, which are combined in what seems to be a simple tone of this or that pitch.

Similarly, I have shown that the pleasures of the table, which everybody supposes to be simple, gustatory sensations (matters of taste), are in reality compound odors. See my article on "The Gastronomic Value of Odors," in the _Contemporary Review_, 1881.

[118] II., 271-74. See also _Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie_, 1887, 31; h.e.l.lwald, 144.

[119] Which even in tropical countries seldom comes before the eleventh or twelfth year. See the statistics in Ploss-Bartels, I., 269-70.

[120] _Alone among the Hairy Ainu_, 140-41.

[121] _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, II, 109.

[122] _Journal des Goncourt_, Tome V. 328-29.

[123] _Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S._, II, 292.

[124] Ross c.o.x, cited by Yarrow in his valuable article on Mortuary Customs of North American Indians, I, _Report Bur. Ethnol.,_ 1879-80.

See also Ploss-Bartels, II., 507-13; Westermarck, 126-28; Letourneau, Chap. XV., where many other cases are cited.

[125] _Trans. Ninth Internal. Congr. of Orientalists_, London, 1893, p. 781.

[126] Details and authorities in Ploss-Bartels, II., 514-17; Westermarck, 125-26; Letourneau, Chap. XV.

[127] For many other cases see references in footnotes 3 and 4, Westermarck, 378.

[128] The poets and a certain cla.s.s of novelists also like to dwell on the love-matches among peasants as compared with commercial city marriages. As a matter of fact, in no cla.s.s do sordid pecuniary matters play so great a role as among peasants. (_Cf._ Grosse.

_F.d.F._, 16.)

[129] _Princ. of Soc._, American Edition, pp. 756, 772, 784, 787.

[130] The proofs of man's universal contempt for woman are to be found in the chapter on "Adoration," and everywhere in this book. Many additional ill.u.s.trations are contained in several articles by Crawley in the _Jour. Anthrop. Inst_., Vol. XXIV.

[131] _Cf_. Ploss-Bartels, I., 471-87, where this topic of infant marriage is treated with truly German thoroughness and erudition.

[132] To demonstrate the recklessness (to use a mild word) of Darwin and Westermarck in this matter I will quote the exact words of Burch.e.l.l in the pa.s.sage referred to (II., 58-59): "These men generally take a second wife as soon as the first becomes somewhat advanced in years." "Most commonly" the girls are betrothed when about seven years old, and in two or three years the girl is given to the man. "These bargains are made with her parents only, and _without ever consulting the wishes (even if she had any) of the daughter_. When it happens, which is not often the case, that a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, her lover must gain her approbation _as well as that of her parents_."

[133] Darwin was evidently puzzled by the queer nature of Reade's evidence in other matters (_D.M._, Chap. XIX.); yet he navely relies on him as an authority. Reade told him that the ideas of negroes on beauty are "on the whole, the same as ours." Yet in several other pages of Darwin we see it noted that according to Reade, the negroes have a horror of a white skin and admire a skin in proportion to its blackness; that "they look on blue eyes with aversion, and they think our noses too long and our lips too thin." "He does not think it probable," Darwin adds, "that negroes would ever prefer the most beautiful European woman, on the mere ground of physical admiration, to a good-looking negress." How extraordinarily like our taste! If a man had talked to Darwin about corals or angleworms as foolishly and inconsistently as Reade did about negroes, he would have ignored him.

But in matters relating to beauty or love all rubbish is accepted, and every globe-trotter and amateur explorer who wields a pen is treated as an authority.

[134] See McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, first and second series; Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, I., Part 3, Chap. 4; Westermarck, Chap. XIV., etc.

[135] Westermarck, 364-66, where many other striking cases of racial prejudice are given.

[136] For instance omal-win-yuk-un-der, illpoogee, loityo, kernoo, ipamoo, badjeerie, mungaroo, yowerda, yowada, yoorda, yooada, yongar, yunkera, wore, yowardoo, marloo, yowdar, koolbirra, madooroo, oggra, arinva, oogara, augara, uggerra, bulka, yshuckuru, koongaroo, chookeroo, thaldara, kulla, etc.