The committing of wilful murder is looked on with unutterable horror
in modern civilized communities, yet it took eons of time and the
co-operation of many religious, social, and moral agencies before the
idea of the sanctity of human life became what it is now when it might
be taken for an instinct inherent in human nature itself. How far it
is from being such an instinct we shall see by looking at the facts.
Among the lowest races and even some of the higher barbarians, murder,
far from being regarded as a crime, is honored as a virtue and a
source of glory.
An American Indian's chief pride and claim to tribal honor lies in the
number of scalps he has torn from the heads of men he has killed. Of
the Fijian, Williams says (97):
"Shedding of blood is to him no crime, but a glory. Whoever
may be the victim--whether noble or vulgar, old or young,
man, woman, or child--whether slain in war or butchered by
treachery, to be somehow an acknowledged murderer, is the
object of a Fijian's restless ambition."
The Australian feels the same irresistible impulse to kill every
stranger he comes across as many of our comparatively civilized
gentlemen feel toward every bird or wild animal they see. Lumholtz,
while he lived among these savages, took good care to follow the
advice "never have a black fellow behind you;" and he relates a story
of a squatter who was walking in the bush with his black boy hunting
brush monkeys, when the boy touched him on the shoulder from behind
and said, "Let me go ahead." When the squatter asked why he wished to
go before him, the native answered, "Because I feel such an
inclination to kill you."
Dalton (266) says of the Oraons in India: "It is doubtful if they see
any moral guilt in murder." But the most astounding race of
professional murderers are the Dyaks of Borneo. "Among them," says
Earl, "the more heads a man has cut off, the more he is respected."
"The white man reads," said a Dyak to St. John: "_we_ hunt heads
instead." "Our Dyaks," says Charles Brooke, "were eternally requesting
to be allowed to go for heads, and their urgent entreaties often bore
resemblance to children crying after sugar-plums." "An old Dyak,"
writes Dalton, "loves to dwell upon his success on these hunting
excursions, and the terror of the women and children taken affords a
fruitful theme of amusement at their meetings." Dalton speaks of one
expedition from which seven hundred heads were brought home. The young
women were carried off, the old ones killed and all the men's heads
were cut off. Not that the women always escaped. Among the Dusun, as a
rule, says Preyer,
"the heads were obtained in the most cowardly way possible,
a woman's or child's being just as good as a man's ... so,
as easier prey, the cowards seek them by lying in ambush
near the plantations."
Families are sometimes surprised while asleep and their heads cut off.
Brooke tells of a man who for awhile kept company with a countrywoman,
and then slew her and ran off with her head. "It ought to be called
_head-stealing_ not _head-hunting,"_ says Hatton; and Earl remarks:
"The possession of a human head cannot be considered as a proof
of the bravery of the owner for it is not necessary that he
should have killed the victim with his own hands, his friends
being permitted to assist him or even to perform the act
themselves."
It is to be noted that the Dyaks[7] are not in other respects a fierce
and diabolical race, but are at home, as Doty attests, "mild, gentle,
and given to hospitality." I call special attention to this by way of
indirectly answering an objection frequently urged against my theory:
"How is it possible to suppose that a nation so highly civilized as
the Greeks of Plato's time should have known love for women only in
its lower, carnal phases?" Well, we have here a parallel case. The
Dyaks are "mild, gentle, and hospitable," yet their chief delight and
glory is murder! And as one of the main objects of this book is to
dwell on the various obstacles which impeded the growth of romantic
love, it will be interesting to glance for a moment at the causes
which prevented the Dyaks from recognizing the sanctity of life.
Superstition is one of them; they believe that persons killed by them
will be their slaves in the next world. Pride is another. "How many
heads did your father get?" a Dyak will ask; and if the number given
is less than his own, the other will say, "Well, then you have no
occasion to be proud." A man's rank in this world as in the next
depends on the number of his skulls; hence the owner of a large number
may be distinguished by his proud bearing. But the head hunter's
strangest and strongest motive is _the desire to please women_! No
Dyak maiden would condescend to marry a youth who has never killed a
man, and in times when the chances for murder were few and far
between, suitors have been compelled to wait a year or two before they
could bag a skull and lead home their blushing bride. The weird
details of this mode of courtship will be given in the chapter on
Island Love on the Pacific.