Thus the custom of real capture is easily accounted for. What calls
for an explanation is the _sham_ capture and resistance in cases where
both the parents and the bride are perfectly willing. Why should
primitive maidens who, as we have seen, are rather apt than not to
make amorous advances, repel their suitors so violently in these
instances of mock capture? Are they, after all, coy--more coy than
civilized maidens? To answer this question let us look at one of
Spencer's witnesses more carefully. The reason Crantz gives for the
Eskimo women's show of aversion to marriage is that they do it, "lest
they lose their reputation for modesty." Now modesty of any kind is a
quality unknown to Eskimos. Nansen, Kane, Hayes, and other explorers
have testified that the Eskimos of both sexes take off all their
clothes in their warm subterranean homes. Captain Beechey has
described their obscene dances, and it is well-known that they
consider it a duty to lend their wives and daughters to guests. Some
of the native tales collected by Rink (236-37; 405) indicate most
unceremonious modes of courtship and nocturnal frolics, which do not
stop even at incest. To suppose that women so utterly devoid of moral
sensibility could, of their own accord and actuated by modesty and
bashfulness manifest such a coy aversion to marriage that force has to
be resorted to, is manifestly absurd. In attributing their antics to
modesty, Crantz made an error into which so many explorers have
fallen--that of interpreting the actions of savages from the point of
view of civilization--an error more pardonable in an unsophisticated
traveller of the eighteenth century than in a modern sociologist.
If we must therefore reject Herbert Spencer's inference as to the
existence of primitive coyness and its consequences, how are we to
account for the comedy of mock capture? Several writers have tried to
crack the nut. Sutherland (I., 200) holds that sham capture is not a
survival of real capture, but "the festive symbolism of the contrast
in the character of the sexes--courage in the man and shyness in the
woman"--a fantastic suggestion which does not call for discussion,
since, as we know, the normal primitive woman is anything but shy.
Abercromby (I., 454) is another writer who believes that sham capture
is not a survival of real capture, but merely a result of the innate
general desire on the part of the men to display courage--a view which
dodges the one thing that calls for an explanation--the resistance of
the women. Grosse indulges in some curious antics (105-108). First he
asks: "Since real capture is everywhere an exception and is looked on
as punishable, why should the semblance of capture have ever become a
general and approved custom?" Then he asks, with a sneer, why
sociology should be called upon to answer such questions anyhow; and a
moment later he, nevertheless, attempts an answer, on Spencerian
lines. Among inferior races, he remarks, women are usually coveted as
spoils of war. The captured women become the wives or concubines of
the warriors and thus represent, as it were, trophies of their valor.
Is it not, therefore, inevitable that the acquisition of a wife by
force should be looked on, among warlike races, as the most honorable
way of getting her, nay, in course of time, as the only one worthy of
a warrior? But since, he continues, not all the men can get wives in
that way, even among the rudest tribes, these other men consoled
themselves with investing the peaceful home-taking of a bride also
with the show of an honorable capture.
In other words, Grosse declares on one page that it is absurd to
derive approved sham capture from real capture because real capture is
everywhere exceptional only and is always considered punishable; yet
two pages later he argues that sham capture _is_ derived from real
capture because the latter is so honorable! As a matter of fact, among
the lowest races known, wife-stealing is not considered honorable.
Regarding the Australians, Curr states distinctly (I., 108) that it
was not encouraged because it was apt to involve a whole tribe in war
for one man's sake. Among the North American Indians, on the other
hand, where, as we saw in the chapter on Honorable Polygamy, a
wife-stealer is admired by both men and women, sham capture does _not_
prevail. Grosse's argument, therefore, falls to the ground.