There is a strange class 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 sexual relations, as the foregoing pages
show him to be, has had his champions of the type of the "fearless"
Stephens. There is another class of writers who create confusion by
their reckless use of words. Thus the Rev. G. Taplin asserts (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 naïveté he reveals his ideas on the subject in a passage (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" (XXXI.); and again (121):
"From childhood to old age the gratification of
appetite and passion 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 constitutes 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 Mitchell
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):
"The Kurnai and the Brajerak were not intermarrying
tribes, unless by capture, and in this case each man
took the woman whose husband he had been the first to
spear."
It would of course be absurd to suppose the widows in such cases
capable of suffering as our women would under such circumstances. They
are quite as callous and cruel as the men. Evidence is given in the
Jackman book (149) that, like Indian women, they torture prisoners of
war, breaking toes, fingers, and arms, digging out the eyes and
filling the sockets with hot sand, etc.
"Husbands rarely show much affection for their wives," wrote Eyre
(II., 214).
"After a long absence I have seen natives, upon their
return, go to their camp, exhibiting the most stoical
indifference, never taking the least notice of their
wives."
Elsewhere (321) he says, with reference to the fact that marriage is
not regarded as any pledge of chastity, which is not recognized as a
virtue: "But little real affection consequently exists between
husbands and wives, and younger men value a wife principally for her
services as a slave." And in a Latin footnote, in which he describes
the licentious customs of promiscuous intercourse and the harsh
treatment of women, he adds (320), "It is easy to understand that
there can hardly be much love among husbands and wives." He also gives
this particular instance of conjugal indifference and cruelty. In 1842
the wife of a native in Adelaide, a girl of about eighteen, was
confined and recovered slowly. Before she was well the tribe removed
from the locality. The husband preferred accompanying them, and left
his wife to die unattended. William Jackman, the Englishman who lived
seventeen months as a captive among the natives, says (118) that
"wife-killing, among the aborigines of Australia, is frequent and
elicits neither surprise nor any sort of animadversion." By way of
illustrating this remark he relates how, one day, he returned with a
native from an unsuccessful hunt. The native's twelve-year-old wife
had caught an opossum, roasted it, and, impelled by hunger, had begun
to eat it instead of saving it for her master--an atrocious crime. For
fifteen minutes the husband sat in silent rage which his features
betrayed. Presently he jumped up with the air of a demon,
"scooped his two hands full of embers and burning sand,
and flung the whole into the face and bosom of the
naked object of his vengeance; for I must repeat that
none of the natives wear any clothing, and that she was
sitting there as nude as when she was born. The devil
of his nature thus fairly aroused, he sprang for his
spear. It transfixed his frantic but irresisting
victim. She fell dead.... Save by the women of the
tribe, the affair was scarcely noticed."