Part 48 (1/2)

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 relations.h.i.+ps would imagine; for these relations.h.i.+ps 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):