Part 45 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+eld, 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