Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 88

[137] See also Merensky's _Sud Afrika_, 68.

[138] As Fritsch says (306) "Kolben found them most excellent specimens of mankind and invested them with the most manifold virtues"

(see also 312 and 328). A person thus biased is under suspicion when he praises, but not when he exposes shady sides. My page references are to the French edition of Kolben. The italics are mine.

[139] Gathered from Hahn's _Tsuni_ and Kronlein's _Wortschatz der Namaqua Hottentotten._

[140] The details given by the Rev. J. MacDonald (_Journal Anthrop.

Soc._, XX., 1890, 116-18) cannot possibly be cited here. Our argument is quite strong enough without them. Westermarck devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove that immorality is not characteristic of uncivilized races in general. He leads off with that preposterous statement of Barrow that "a Kaffir woman is chaste and extremely modest;" and most of his other instances are based on equally flimsy evidence. I shall recur to the subject repeatedly. It is hardly necessary to call the reader's attention to the unconscious humor of the a.s.sertion of Westermarck's friend Cousins that "between their various feasts the Kaffirs have to live in strict continence"--which is a good deal like saying of a toper that "between drinks he is strictly sober."

[141] It may seem inconsistent to condemn Barrow on one page as unreliable and then quote him approvingly on another. But in the first case his a.s.sertion was utterly opposed to the unanimous testimony of those who knew the Kaffirs best, while in this instance his remarks are in perfect accordance with what we would expect under the circ.u.mstances and with the testimony of the standard authorities.

[142] Vid. Mantegazza, _Geschlechtsverhaltnisse des Menschen_, 213.

[143] From an article in the _Humanitarian_, March, 1897, it appears that this "leap-year" custom still prevails among Zulus; but the dawn of civilization has introduced a modification to the effect that when the girl is refused, a present is usually given her "to ease her feelings." At least that is the way Miss Colenso puts it. Wood (80) relates a story of a Kaffir girl who persistently wooed a young chief who did not want her; she had to be removed by force and even beaten, but kept returning until, to save further bother, the chief bought her.

[144] Ignorant sentimentalists who have often argued that the absence of illegitimate offspring argues moral purity will do well to ponder what Thomson says on page 580, and compare with it the remarks of the Rev. J. Macdonald, who lived twelve years among the tribes between Cape Colony and Natal, regarding their use of herbs. (_Journal Anthrop. Soc._, XIX., 264.) See also Johnston (413).

[145] To what almost incredible lengths sentimental defenders of savages will go, may be seen in an editorial article with which the London _Daily News_ of August 4, 1887, honored my first book. I was informed therein that "savages are not strangers to love in the most delicate and n.o.ble form of the pa.s.sion.... The wrong conclusion must not be drawn from Monteiro's remark, 'I have never seen a negro put his arm around a negro's waist.' It is the uneducated cla.s.ses who may be seen to exhibit in the parks those harmless endearments which negroes have too much good taste to practise before the public." To one who knows the African savage as he is, such an a.s.sertion is worth a whole volume of _Punch_.

[146] Westermarck (358), as usual, accepts Johnston's statement about poetic love on the Congo as gospel truth, without examining it critically.

[147] Bleek credits these tales to Schon's _Grammar of the Hausa Language_, Schlenker's _Collection of Temne Traditions_, and Kolle's _African Native Literature_, where the original Bornu text may be found.

[148] _Folk Lore Journal_, London, 1888, 119-22.

[149] Compare this with what I said on page 340 about the behavior of girls in the New Britain Group.

[150] _Revue d'Anthropologie,_ 1883.

[151] See an elaborate discussion of this question by the Rev. John Mathew in the _Journal of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales,_ Vol.

XXIII., 335-449.

[152] See, _e.g._, the hideous pictures of Australian women enclosed in G.W. Earl's _The Papuans_. Spencer and Gillen's admirable volume also contains pictures of "young women" who look twice their age.

After the age of twenty, the authors write, the face becomes wrinkled, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s pendulous, the whole body shrivelled. At fifty they reach "a stage of ugliness which baffled description" (40,40).

[153] _Royal Geogr. Soc of Australasia_, 1887, Vol. V., 29.

[154] _Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Ser_., III., 248, 288; cited by Spencer, _D.S._, 26.

[155] He adds in a foot-note (320) "Foeminae sese per totam paene vitam prost.i.tuunt. Apud plurimas tribus juventutem utriusque s.e.xus sine discrimine conc.u.mbere in usu est. Si juvenis forte indigenorum coetum quendam in castris manentem adveniat ubi quaevis sit puella innupta, mos est nocte veniente et cubantibus omnibus, illam ex loco exsurgere et juvenem accedentem c.u.m illo per noctem manere unde in sedem propriam ante diem redit. Cui femina est, eam amicis libenter praebet."

[156] F. Muller (212-13) gives the details of West Australian corrobborees which are too obscene to be cited here. See also the testimony in h.e.l.lwald (134-35) based on the observations of Oldfield, Koler, M'Combie, etc., and a number of other authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 754-55. Curr says (I., 128) that at the corrobborees men of different tribes lend their wives to each other.

[157] _Journal Anthrop. Inst_., XXIV., 169. See also Waitz, VI., 774; Macgillivray, II., 8; Ha.s.skarl, 82. They have a peculiar rattle with mystic sculpturing, and Eyre says that its sound libertatem coeundi juventuti esse tum concessam omnibus indicat. Maclennan (287) cites G.S. Lang, who cites the fact that the old men get most of the young women. Connubium profecto valde est liberum. Conjuges, puellae, _puellulae_ c.u.m adolescentibus venantur. Pretium corporis poene nullius est. Vendunt se vel columbae vel canis vel piscis pretio.

Inter Anglos et aborigines nihil distat.

[158] _Journal Anthrop. Inst._, XX., 53.

[159] _Revue d'Anthropologie_. 1882, p. 376.

[160] A.W. Howitt, _Jour. Anthr. Hist._ XX., 60-61. Fison and Howitt, 289; _Smithsonian Reports_, 1883, p. 67. Details are given which cannot be reproduced here. Boys partic.i.p.ate in these orgies.

[161] The details given by Roth are too disgusting for reproduction here. They vie with the loathsome practices of the Kaffirs and the most debauched Roman emperors, while some of them are so vile that it seems as if they could have been suggested only by the diseased brain of an erotomaniac. The most degraded white criminal that ever took up his abode among savages would turn away from them with horror and nausea, yet we are asked to believe that the savages learned all their vices from the whites!

[162] _Mittheil des Ver. fur Erdkunde zu Halle_, 1883, 54.

[163] Westermarck overlooks these vital facts when he calmly a.s.sumes (64, 65) that the guarding of girls, or punishment of intruders, argues a regard for chast.i.ty. His entire ignoring of the superabundant and unimpeachable testimony proving the contrary is extraordinary, to put it mildly. Dawson's a.s.sertion (33) that "illegitimacy is rare" and the mother severely punished, which Westermarck cites (65), is as foolish as most of the gossip printed by that utterly untrustworthy writer. As the details given in these pages regarding licentiousness before marriage and wife-lending after it show, there is no possible way of proving illegitimacy unless the child has a white father. In that case it is killed; but that is nothing remarkable, as the Australians kill most of their children anyway. That a regard for chast.i.ty or fidelity has nothing to do with these actions is proved by the fact cited from Curr (I., 110) by Westermarck himself (on another page--131--of course!) that "husbands display much less jealousy of white men than of those of their own color," and that they will more commonly prost.i.tute their wives to strangers visiting the tribe than to their own people. I have no doubt that the simple reason of this is that the whites are better able to pay, in rum and trinkets.

[164] _South Australia_, Adelaide, 1804, p. 403. The part author, part editor of this valuable book is not to be confounded with J.S. Wood, the compiler of the _Natural History of Man_.

[165] See also the account he gives (I., 180) of the report as to aboriginal morals made in the early days of Victoria by a commission of fourteen settlers, missionaries, and protectors of the aborigines.

The explorer Sturt (I., 316) even found that the natives became indignant if the whites rejected their addresses.

[166] See also a very important paper on this subject by Howitt in the _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, Vol. XX., 1890, demonstrating that "in Australia at the present day group marriage does exist in a well-marked form, which is evidently only the modified survival of a still more complete social communism" (104). Regarding the manner in which group marriage gradually pa.s.sed into individual proprietorship, a suggestive hint may be found in this sentence from Brough Smyth (II., 316): When women are carried off from another tribe, "they are common property till they are gradually annexed by the best warriors of the tribe."

[167] In my mind the strongest argument against Westermarck's views as regards promiscuity is that all his tributary theories, so to speak, which I have had occasion to examine in this volume have proved so utterly inconsistent with facts. The question of promiscuity itself I cannot examine in detail here, as it hardly comes within the scope of this book. In view of the confusion Westermarck has already created in recent scientific literature by his specious pleading, I need not apologize for the frequency of my polemics against him. His imposing erudition and his cleverness in juggling with facts by ignoring those that do not please him (as _e.g._, in case of the morality of the Kaffirs and Australians, and the "liberty of choice" of their women) make him a serious obstacle to the investigation of the truth regarding man's s.e.xual history, wherefore it is necessary to expose his errors promptly and thoroughly.

[168] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst_., 1890, 53.

[169] Would our friend Stephens be fearless enough to claim that this custom also was taught the natives by the degraded whites? Apart from the diabolical cruelty to a woman of which no white man except a maniac would ever be individually guilty--whereas this is a tribal custom--note the unutterable masculine selfishness of this "jealousy,"

which, while indifferent to chast.i.ty and fidelity, _per se_, punishes by proxy, leaving the real culprit untouched and happy at having not only had his intrigue but a chance to get rid of an undesired wife!

[170] _Jour. Anthr. Inst._, XII., 282.

[171] Grey might have made a valuable contribution to the comparative psychology of pa.s.sion by noting down the chant of the rivals in their own words. Instead of that, for literary effect, he cast them into European metre and rhyme, with various expressions, like "bless" and "caress," which of course are utterly beyond an Australian's mental horizon. This absurd procedure, which has made so many doc.u.ments of travellers valueless for scientific purposes, is like filling an ethnological museum with pictures of Australians, Africans, etc., all clothed in swallow-tail coats and silk hats. _Cf_. Grosse (_B.A_., 236), and Semon (224). Real Australian "poems" are like the following:

"The peas the white man eats-- I wish I had some, I wish I had some."

Or this:

"The kangaroo ran very fast But I ran faster; The kangaroo was fat; I ate him."

[172] _Roy. Geogr. Soc. of Australasia_, Vol. V., 29.

[173] The reason why Westermarck is so eager to prove liberty of choice on the part of Australian women is because he has set himself the hopeless task of proving that the lower we go the more liberty woman has, and that "under more primitive conditions she was even more free in that respect than she is now amongst most of the lower races."

"As man in the earliest times," he a.s.serts (222), "had no reason ...

to retain his full-grown daughter, she might go away and marry at her pleasure." Quite the contrary; an Australian, than whom we know no more "primitive" man, had every reason for not allowing her to go away and marry whom she pleased. He looked on his daughter, as we have seen, chiefly as a desirable piece of property to exchange for some other man's daughter or sister.

[174] As distinguished from the more common sham elopement, at which the parents are consulted as usual. In the Kunandaburi tribe, for instance, as Howitt himself tells us (_Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XX., 60-61) the suitor asks permission of the girl's parents to take her away. "She resists all she can, biting and screaming, while the other women look on laughing." The whole thing is obviously a custom ordered by the parents, and tells us nothing regarding the presence or absence of choice. See the remarks on sham capture in my chapter on Coyness (125).

[175] The reader will note that here are some additional objects usually supposed to be "ornamental," but which, as in all the cases examined in the chapter on Personal Beauty, are seen on close examination to serve other than esthetic purposes. These _are_ intended to _charm_ the women, not, however, as things of beauty, but by their magic qualities and by attracting their attention.

[176] With his usual conscientious regard for facts Westermarck declares (70) that in a savage condition of life "every full-grown man marries as soon as possible."

[177] We are occasionally warned not to underrate the intelligence of the aboriginal Australian. As a matter of fact, there is more danger of its being overrated. Thus it was long believed that what was known as the "terrible rite" (_finditur usque ad urethram membrum virile_)--see Curr I., 52, 72--was practised as a check to population; but surgeon-general Roth (179) has exploded this idea, and made it seem probable that this rite is merely a senseless counterpart of certain useless mutilations inflicted on females.

[178] _Trans. Eth. Soc_., New Ser., III, 248.