Part 44 (1/2)
The lives of the women ”are rated as of the less value than those of the men.” ”Their corpses are often thrown to dogs for food” (Waitz, VL, 775). ”These poor creatures,” says Wilkinson of the South Australian women (322),
”are in an abject state, and are only treated with about the same consideration as the dogs that accompany them; they are obliged to give any food that may be desired to the men, and sit and see them eat it, considering themselves amply repaid if they are rewarded by having a piece of gizzle, or any other leavings, pitched to them.”
J.S. Wood (71) relates this characteristic story:
”A native servant was late in keeping his appointment with his master, and, on inquiry, it was elicited that he had just quarrelled with one of his wives, and had speared her through the body. On being rebuked by his master, he turned off the matter with a laugh, merely remarking that white men had only one wife, whereas he had two, and did not mind losing one till he could buy another.”
Sturt. who made two exploring expeditions (1829-1831), wrote (II., 55) that the men oblige their women to procure their own food, or they ”throw to them over their shoulders the bones they have already picked, with a nonchalance that is extremely amusing.” The women are also excluded from religious ceremonies; many of the best things to eat are taboo to them; and the cruel contempt of the men pursues them even after death. The men are buried with ceremony (Curr, I., 89), but ”as the women and children are held to be very inferior to the men whilst alive, and their spirits are but little feared after death, they are interred with but scant ceremony... the women alone wailing.”
Thus they show their contempt even for the ghosts of women, though they are so afraid of other ghosts that they never leave camp in the dark or have a nocturnal dance except by moonlight or with big fires!
WERE SAVAGES CORRUPTED BY WHITES?
Such is the Australian's treatment of woman--a treatment so selfish, so inconsistent with the altruistic traits and impulses of romantic love--sympathy, gallantry, and self-sacrificing affection, not to speak of adoration--that it alone proves him incapable of so refined a sentiment. If any doubt remained, it would be removed by his utter inability to rise above the sensual sphere. The Australian is absolutely immoral and incredibly licentious. Here, however, we are confronted by a spectre with which the sentimentalists try to frighten the searchers for truth, and which must therefore be exorcised first.
They grant the wantonness of savages, but declare that it is ”due chiefly to the influence of civilization.” This is one of the favorite subterfuges of Westermarck, who resorts to it again and again. In reference to the Australians he cites what Edward Stephens wrote regarding the former inhabitants of the Adelaide Plains:
”Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded race, either do not speak from experience, or they judge them by what they have become when the abuse of intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule to which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is found away from the white settlement, the more vicious of the white men are most anxious to make the acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for purposes of immorality. ... I saw the natives and was much with them before those dreadful immoralities were well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all their evils they owed to the white man's immorality and to the white man's drink.”
Now the first question a conscientious truth-seeker feels inclined to ask regarding this ”fearless” Stephens who thus boldly accuses of ignorance all those who hold that the Australian race was degraded before it came in contact with whites, is, ”Who is he and what are his qualifications for serving as a witness in this matter?” He is, or was, a simple-minded settler, kindly no doubt, who for some inscrutable reason was allowed to contribute a paper to the _Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales_ (Vol. x.x.xIII.). His qualifications for appearing as an expert in Australian anthropology may be inferred from various remarks in his paper. He navely tells a story about a native who killed an opossum, and after eating the meat, threw the intestines to his wife. ”Ten years before that,” he adds, ”that same man would have treated his wife as himself.” Yet we have just seen that all the explorers, in all parts of the country, found that the natives who had never seen a white man treated their women like slaves and dogs.
ABORIGINAL HORRORS
If the savage learned his wantonness from the whites, did he get all his other vicious habits from the same source? We know on the best authorities that the disgusting practice of cannibalism prevailed extensively among the natives. ”They eat the young men when they die, and the young women if they are fat” (Curr, III., 147). Lumholtz ent.i.tled his book on Australia _Among Cannibals_. The Rev. G. Taplin says (XV.):
”Among the Dieyerie tribe cannibalism is the universal practice, and all who die are indiscriminately devoured ... the mother eats the flesh of her children, and the children that of their mother,” etc.
”If a man had a fat wife,” says the same writer (2), ”he was always particularly careful not to leave her unprotected, lest she might be seized by prowling cannibals.” Among the wilder tribes few women are allowed to die a natural death, ”they being generally despatched ere they become old and emaciated, that so much good food may not be lost.”[154] Would the ”fearless” Stephens say that the natives learned these practices from the whites? Would he say they learned from the whites the ”universal custom ... to slay every unprotected male stranger met with” (Curr, I., 133)?
”Infanticide is very common, and appears to be practised solely to get rid of the trouble of rearing children,” wrote Eyre (II., 324). Curr (I., 70) heard that ”some tribes within the area of the Central Division cut off the nipples of the females' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, in some instances, for the purpose of rendering their rearing of children impossible.” On the Mitch.e.l.l River, ”children were killed for the most trivial offences, such as for accidentally breaking a weapon as they trotted about the camp” (Curr, II., 403). Twins are destroyed in South Australia, says Leigh (159), and if the mother dies ”they throw the living infant into the grave, while infanticide is an every-day occurrence.” Curr (I., 70) believes that the average number of children borne by each woman was six, the maximum ten; but of all these only two boys and one girl as a rule were kept, ”the rest were destroyed immediately after birth,” as we destroy litters of puppies.
Sometimes the infants were smothered over a fire (Waitz, VI., 779), and deformed children were always killed. Taplin (13) writes that before his colony was established among them infanticide was very prevalent among the natives. ”One intelligent woman said she thought that if the Europeans had waited a few more years they would have found the country without inhabitants.” Strangulation, a blow of the waddy, or filling the ears with red-hot embers, were the favorite ways of killing their own babies.
Did the whites teach the angelic savages all these diabolical customs?
If so, they must have taught them customs invented for the occasion, since they are not practised by whites in any part of the world. But perhaps Stephens would have been willing to waive this point.
Sentimentalists are usually more or less willing to concede that savages are devils in most things if we will only admit in return that they are angels in their s.e.xual relations. For instance, if we may believe Stephens, no nun was ever more modest than the native Australian woman. Once, he says, he was asked to visit a poor old black woman in the last stages of consumption:
”Her case was hopeless, and when she was in almost the last agony of mortal dissolution I was astounded at her efforts at concealment, indicative of extreme modesty.
As I drew her opossum rug over her poor emaciated body the look of grat.i.tude which came from her dying eyes told me in language more eloquent than words that beneath that dark and dying exterior there was a soul which in a few hours angels would delight to honor.”
The poor woman was probably cold and glad to be covered; if she had any modesty regarding exposure of the body she could have learned it from no one but the dreadful, degraded whites, for the Australian himself is an utter stranger to such a feeling. On this point the explorers and students of the natives are unanimous. Both men and women went absolutely naked except in those regions where the climate was cold.
NAKED AND NOT ASHAMED
”They are as innocent of shame as the animals of the forest,” says E.
Palmer; and J. Bonwick writes: ”Nakedness is no shame with them. As a French writer once remarked to a lady, 'With a pair of gloves you could clothe six men.'” Even ornaments are worn by the men only: ”females are content with their natural charms.” W.E. Roth, in his standard work on the Queensland natives, says that ”with both s.e.xes the privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when in close proximity to white settlements.” With the Warburton River tribe (Curr, II, 18) ”the women go quite naked, and the men have only a belt made of human hair round the waist from which a fringe spun of hair of rats hangs in front.” Sturt wrote (I., 106): ”The men are much better looking than the women; both go perfectly naked.”
At the dances a covering of feathers or leaves is sometimes worn by the women, but is removed as soon as the dance is over. Narrinyeri girls, says Taplin (15), ”wear a sort of ap.r.o.n of fringe, called Kaininggi, until they bear their first child. If they have no children it is taken from them and burned by their husbands while they are asleep.” Meyer (189) says the same of the Encounter Bay tribe, and similar customs prevailed at Port Jackson and many other places.
Summing up the observations of Cook, Turnbull, Cunningham, Tench, Hunter, and others, Waitz remarks (VI., 737):