MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
Supposed war of each against all. Tribal origin of human society. Late
appearance of the separate family. Bushmen and Hottentots. Australians,
Papuas. Eskimos, Aleoutes. Features of savage life difficult to
understand for the European. The Dayak's conception of justice. Common
law.
The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in the
evolution of the animal world has been briefly analyzed in the preceding
chapters. We have now to cast a glance upon the part played by the same
agencies in the evolution of mankind. We saw how few are the animal
species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which
live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing
up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in
common. We also saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between
different classes of animals, or different species, or even different
tribes of the same species, peace and mutual support are the rule within
the tribe or the species; and that those species which best know how to
combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and
of a further progressive development. They prosper, while the unsociable
species decay.
It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of
nature if men were an exception to so general a rule: if a creature so
defenceless as man was at his beginnings should have found his
protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other
animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no
regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea
of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And
yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack
of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of
mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own
limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always
watchful of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more
besides; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose
aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and only
prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority.
Hobbes took that position; and while some of his eighteenth-century
followers endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence--not
even in its most primitive condition--mankind lived in a state of
perpetual warfare; that men have been sociable even in "the state of
nature," and that want of knowledge, rather than the natural bad
inclinations of man, brought humanity to all the horrors of its early
historical life,--his idea was, on the contrary, that the so-called
"state of nature" was nothing but a permanent fight between individuals,
accidentally huddled together by the mere caprice of their bestial
existence. True, that science has made some progress since Hobbes's
time, and that we have safer ground to stand upon than the speculations
of Hobbes or Rousseau. But the Hobbesian philosophy has plenty of
admirers still; and we have had of late quite a school of writers who,
taking possession of Darwin's terminology rather than of his leading
ideas, made of it an argument in favour of Hobbes's views upon primitive
man, and even succeeded in giving them a scientific appearance. Huxley,
as is known, took the lead of that school, and in a paper written in
1888 he represented primitive men as a sort of tigers or lions, deprived
of all ethical conceptions, fighting out the struggle for existence to
its bitter end, and living a life of "continual free fight"; to quote
his own words--"beyond the limited and, temporary relations of the
family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of
existence."(1)
It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and
the eighteenth-century philosophers as well, was to imagine that mankind
began its life in the shape of small straggling families, something like
the "limited and temporary" families of the bigger carnivores, while in
reality it is now positively known that such was not the case. Of
course, we have no direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first
man-like beings. We are not yet settled even as to the time of their
first appearance, geologists being inclined at present to see their
traces in the pliocene, or even the miocene, deposits of the Tertiary
period. But we have the indirect method which permits us to throw some
light even upon that remote antiquity. A most careful investigation into
the social institutions of the lowest races has been carried on during
the last forty years, and it has revealed among the present institutions
of primitive folk some traces of still older institutions which have
long disappeared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of their
previous existence. A whole science devoted to the embryology of human
institutions has thus developed in the hands of Bachofen, MacLennan,
Morgan, Edwin Tylor, Maine, Post, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and many others.
And that science has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not
begin its life in the shape of small isolated families.
Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very
late product of human evolution. As far as we can go back in the
palaeo-ethnology of mankind, we find men living in societies--in tribes
similar to those of the highest mammals; and an extremely slow and long
evolution was required to bring these societies to the gentile, or clan
organization, which, in its turn, had to undergo another, also very long
evolution, before the first germs of family, polygamous or monogamous,
could appear. Societies, bands, or tribes--not families--were thus the
primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors.
That is what ethnology has come to after its painstaking researches. And
in so doing it simply came to what might have been foreseen by the
zoologist. None of the higher mammals, save a few carnivores and a few
undoubtedly-decaying species of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live
in small families, isolatedly straggling in the woods. All others live
in societies. And Darwin so well understood that isolately-living apes
never could have developed into man-like beings, that he was inclined to
consider man as descended from some comparatively weak but social
species, like the chimpanzee, rather than from some stronger but
unsociable species, like the gorilla.(2) Zoology and palaeo-ethnology
are thus agreed in considering that the band, not the family, was the
earliest form of social life. The first human societies simply were a
further development of those societies which constitute the very essence
of life of the higher animals.(3)
If we now go over to positive evidence, we see that the earliest traces
of man, dating from the glacial or the early post-glacial period, afford
unmistakable proofs of man having lived even then in societies. Isolated
finds of stone implements, even from the old stone age, are very rare;
on the contrary, wherever one flint implement is discovered others are
sure to be found, in most cases in very large quantities. At a time when
men were dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in
company with mammals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the
roughest sorts of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of
life in societies. In the valleys of the tributaries of the Dordogne,
the surface of the rocks is in some places entirely covered with caves
which were inhabited by palaeolithic men.(4) Sometimes the
cave-dwellings are superposed in storeys, and they certainly recall much
more the nesting colonies of swallows than the dens of carnivores. As to
the flint implements discovered in those caves, to use Lubbock's words,
"one may say without exaggeration that they are numberless." The same is
true of other palaeolithic stations. It also appears from Lartet's
investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac region in the south
of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their dead. So that
men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship, even at that
extremely remote epoch.
The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the stone
age. Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless quantities,
so that we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great extent. When
the ice-cap (which must have spread from the Polar regions as far south
as middle France, middle Germany, and middle Russia, and covered Canada
as well as a good deal of what is now the United States) began to melt
away, the surfaces freed from ice were covered, first, with swamps and
marshes, and later on with numberless lakes.(5) Lakes filled all
depressions of the valleys before their waters dug out those permanent
channels which, during a subsequent epoch, became our rivers. And
wherever we explore, in Europe, Asia, or America, the shores of the
literally numberless lakes of that period, whose proper name would be
the Lacustrine period, we find traces of neolithic man. They are so
numerous that we can only wonder at the relative density of population
at that time. The "stations" of neolithic man closely follow each other
on the terraces which now mark the shores of the old lakes. And at each
of those stations stone implements appear in such numbers, that no doubt
is possible as to the length of time during which they were inhabited by
rather numerous tribes. Whole workshops of flint implements, testifying
of the numbers of workers who used to come together, have been
discovered by the archaeologists.
Traces of a more advanced period, already characterized by the use of
some pottery, are found in the shell-heaps of Denmark. They appear, as
is well known, in the shape of heaps from five to ten feet thick, from
100 to 200 feet wide, and 1,000 feet or more in length, and they are so
common along some parts of the sea-coast that for a long time they were
considered as natural growths. And yet they "contain nothing but what
has been in some way or other subservient to the use of man," and they
are so densely stuffed with products of human industry that, during a
two days' stay at Milgaard, Lubbock dug out no less than 191 pieces of
stone-implements and four fragments of pottery.(6) The very size and
extension of the shell heaps prove that for generations and generations
the coasts of Denmark were inhabited by hundreds of small tribes which
certainly lived as peacefully together as the Fuegian tribes, which also
accumulate like shellheaps, are living in our own times.
As to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which represent a still further
advance in civilization, they yield still better evidence of life and
work in societies. It is known that even during the stone age the shores
of the Swiss lakes were dotted with a succession of villages, each of
which consisted of several huts, and was built upon a platform supported
by numberless pillars in the lake. No less than twenty-four, mostly
stone age villages, were discovered along the shores of Lake Leman,
thirty-two in the Lake of Constance, forty-six in the Lake of Neuchatel,
and so on; and each of them testifies to the immense amount of labour
which was spent in common by the tribe, not by the family. It has even
been asserted that the life of the lake-dwellers must have been
remarkably free of warfare. And so it probably was, especially if we
refer to the life of those primitive folk who live until the present
time in similar villages built upon pillars on the sea coasts.
It is thus seen, even from the above rapid hints, that our knowledge of
primitive man is not so scanty after all, and that, so far as it goes,
it is rather opposed than favourable to the Hobbesian speculations.
Moreover, it may be supplemented, to a great extent, by the direct
observation of such primitive tribes as now stand on the same level of
civilization as the inhabitants of Europe stood in prehistoric times.
That these primitive tribes which we find now are not degenerated
specimens of mankind who formerly knew a higher civilization, as it has
occasionally been maintained, has sufficiently been proved by Edwin
Tylor and Lubbock. However, to the arguments already opposed to the
degeneration theory, the following may be added. Save a few tribes
clustering in the less-accessible highlands, the "savages" represent a
girdle which encircles the more or less civilized nations, and they
occupy the extremities of our continents, most of which have retained
still, or recently were bearing, an early post-glacial character. Such
are the Eskimos and their congeners in Greenland, Arctic America, and
Northern Siberia; and, in the Southern hemisphere, the Australians, the
Papuas, the Fuegians, and, partly, the Bushmen; while within the
civilized area, like primitive folk are only found in the Himalayas, the
highlands of Australasia, and the plateaus of Brazil. Now it must be
borne in mind that the glacial age did not come to an end at once over
the whole surface of the earth. It still continues in Greenland.
Therefore, at a time when the littoral regions of the Indian Ocean, the
Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico already enjoyed a warmer climate,
and became the seats of higher civilizations, immense territories in
middle Europe, Siberia, and Northern America, as well as in Patagonia,
Southern Africa, and Southern Australasia, remained in early postglacial
conditions which rendered them inaccessible to the civilized nations of
the torrid and sub-torrid zones. They were at that time what the
terrible urmans of North-West Siberia are now, and their population,
inaccessible to and untouched by civilization, retained the characters
of early post-glacial man. Later on, when desiccation rendered these
territories more suitable for agriculture, they were peopled with more
civilized immigrants; and while part of their previous inhabitants were
assimilated by the new settlers, another part migrated further, and
settled where we find them. The territories they inhabit now are still,
or recently were, sub-glacial, as to their physical features; their arts
and implements are those of the neolithic age; and, notwithstanding
their racial differences, and the distances which separate them, their
modes of life and social institutions bear a striking likeness. So we
cannot but consider them as fragments of the early post-glacial
population of the now civilized area.
The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying primitive
folk is the complexity of the organization of marriage relations under
which they are living. With most of them the family, in the sense we
attribute to it, is hardly found in its germs. But they are by no means
loose aggregations of men and women coming in a disorderly manner
together in conformity with their momentary caprices. All of them are
under a certain organization, which has been described by Morgan in its
general aspects as the "gentile," or clan organization.(7)
To tell the matter as briefly as possible, there is little doubt that
mankind has passed at its beginnings through a stage which may be
described as that of "communal marriage"; that is, the whole tribe had
husbands and wives in common with but little regard to consanguinity.
But it is also certain that some restrictions to that free intercourse
were imposed at a very early period. Inter-marriage was soon prohibited
between the sons of one mother and her sisters, granddaughters, and
aunts. Later on it was prohibited between the sons and daughters of the
same mother, and further limitations did not fail to follow. The idea of
a gens, or clan, which embodied all presumed descendants from one stock
(or rather all those who gathered in one group) was evolved, and
marriage within the clan was entirely prohibited. It still remained
"communal," but the wife or the husband had to be taken from another
clan. And when a gens became too numerous, and subdivided into several
gentes, each of them was divided into classes (usually four), and
marriage was permitted only between certain well-defined classes. That
is the stage which we find now among the Kamilaroi-speaking Australians.
As to the family, its first germs appeared amidst the clan organization.
A woman who was captured in war from some other clan, and who formerly
would have belonged to the whole gens, could be kept at a later period
by the capturer, under certain obligations towards the tribe. She may be
taken by him to a separate hut, after she had paid a certain tribute to
the clan, and thus constitute within the gens a separate family, the
appearance of which evidently was opening a quite new phase of
civilization.
Now, if we take into consideration that this complicated organization
developed among men who stood at the lowest known degree of development,
and that it maintained itself in societies knowing no kind of authority
besides the authority of public opinion, we at once see how deeply
inrooted social instincts must have been in human nature, even at its
lowest stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an
organization, and of freely submitting to rules which continually clash
with his personal desires, certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical
principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes
still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan
organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of
Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts
and the early Slavonians, all have had their own period of clan
organization, closely analogous to that of the Australians, the Red
Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants of the "savage girdle."(9)
So we must admit that either the evolution of marriage laws went on on
the same lines among all human races, or the rudiments of the clan rules
were developed among some common ancestors of the Semites, the Aryans,
the Polynesians, etc., before their differentiation into separate races
took place, and that these rules were maintained, until now, among races
long ago separated from the common stock. Both alternatives imply,
however, an equally striking tenacity of the institution--such a
tenacity that no assaults of the individual could break it down through
the scores of thousands of years that it was in existence. The very
persistence of the clan organization shows how utterly false it is to
represent primitive mankind as a disorderly agglomeration of
individuals, who only obey their individual passions, and take advantage
of their personal force and cunningness against all other
representatives of the species. Unbridled individualism is a modern
growth, but it is not characteristic of primitive mankind.(10)
Going now over to the existing savages, we may begin with the Bushmen,
who stand at a very low level of development--so low indeed that they
have no dwellings and sleep in holes dug in the soil, occasionally
protected by some screens. It is known that when Europeans settled in
their territory and destroyed deer, the Bushmen began stealing the
settlers' cattle, whereupon a war of extermination, too horrible to be
related here, was waged against them. Five hundred Bushmen were
slaughtered in 1774, three thousand in 1808 and 1809 by the Farmers'
Alliance, and so on. They were poisoned like rats, killed by hunters
lying in ambush before the carcass of some animal, killed wherever met
with.(11) So that our knowledge of the Bushmen, being chiefly borrowed
from those same people who exterminated them, is necessarily limited.
But still we know that when the Europeans came, the Bushmen lived in
small tribes (or clans), sometimes federated together; that they used to
hunt in common, and divided the spoil without quarrelling; that they
never abandoned their wounded, and displayed strong affection to their
comrades. Lichtenstein has a most touching story about a Bushman, nearly
drowned in a river, who was rescued by his companions. They took off
their furs to cover him, and shivered themselves; they dried him, rubbed
him before the fire, and smeared his body with warm grease till they
brought him back to life. And when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der
Walt, a man who treated them well, they expressed their thankfulness by
a most touching attachment to that man.(12) Burchell and Moffat both
represent them as goodhearted, disinterested, true to their promises,
and grateful,(13) all qualities which could develop only by being
practised within the tribe. As to their love to children, it is
sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a Bushman woman
as a slave, he stole her child: the mother was sure to come into slavery
to share the fate of her child.(14)
The same social manners characterize the Hottentots, who are but a
little more developed than the Bushmen. Lubbock describes them as "the
filthiest animals," and filthy they really are. A fur suspended to the
neck and worn till it falls to pieces is all their dress; their huts are
a few sticks assembled together and covered with mats, with no kind of
furniture within. And though they kept oxen and sheep, and seem to have
known the use of iron before they made acquaintance with the Europeans,
they still occupy one of the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet
those who knew them highly praised their sociability and readiness to
aid each other. If anything is given to a Hottentot, he at once divides
it among all present--a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin
among the Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls
those who pass by to share his food. And when Kolben expressed his
astonishment thereat, he received the answer. "That is Hottentot
manner." But this is not Hottentot manner only: it is an all but
universal habit among the "savages." Kolben, who knew the Hottentots
well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise
their tribal morality highly enough.
"Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the corruptness
and faithless arts of Europe." "They live in great tranquillity and are
seldom at war with their neighbours." They are "all kindness and
goodwill to one another.. One of the greatest pleasures of the
Hottentots certainly lies in their gifts and good offices to one
another." "The integrity of the Hottentots, their strictness and
celerity in the exercise of justice, and their chastity, are things in
which they excel all or most nations in the world."(15)
Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie(16) fully confirm Kolben's testimony. Let me
only remark that when Kolben wrote that "they are certainly the most
friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another
that ever appeared on the earth" (i. 332), he wrote a sentence which has
continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first
meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of
their life; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a
longer time, he generally describes them as the "kindest" or "the
gentlest" race on the earth. These very same words have been applied to
the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the
Papuas, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also remember having
read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and
several others. The very frequency of that high commendation already
speaks volumes in itself.
The natives of Australia do not stand on a higher level of development
than their South African brothers. Their huts are of the same character:
very often simple screens are the only protection against cold winds. In
their food they are most indifferent: they devour horribly putrefied
corpses, and cannibalism is resorted to in times of scarcity. When first
discovered by Europeans, they had no implements but in stone or bone,
and these were of the roughest description. Some tribes had even no
canoes, and did not know barter-trade. And yet, when their manners and
customs were carefully studied, they proved to be living under that
elaborate clan organization which I have mentioned on a preceding
page.(17)
The territory they inhabit is usually allotted between the different
gentes or clans; but the hunting and fishing territories of each clan
are kept in common, and the produce of fishing and hunting belongs to
the whole clan; so also the fishing and hunting implements.(18) The
meals are taken in common. Like many other savages, they respect certain
regulations as to the seasons when certain gums and grasses may be
collected.(19) As to their morality altogether, we cannot do better than
transcribe the following answers given to the questions of the Paris
Anthropological Society by Lumholtz, a missionary who sojourned in North
Queensland:(20)--
"The feeling of friendship is known among them; it is strong. Weak
people are usually supported; sick people are very well attended to;
they never are abandoned or killed. These tribes are cannibals, but they
very seldom eat members of their own tribe (when immolated on religious
principles, I suppose); they eat strangers only. The parents love their
children, play with them, and pet them. Infanticide meets with common
approval. Old people are very well treated, never put to death. No
religion, no idols, only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage, quarrels
arising within the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with
wooden swords and shields. No slaves; no culture of any kind; no
pottery; no dress, save an apron sometimes worn by women. The clan
consists of two hundred individuals, divided into four classes of men
and four of women; marriage being only permitted within the usual
classes, and never within the gens."
For the Papuas, closely akin to the above, we have the testimony of G.L.
Bink, who stayed in New Guinea, chiefly in Geelwink Bay, from 1871 to
1883. Here is the essence of his answers to the same questioner:(21)--
"They are sociable and cheerful; they laugh very much. Rather timid than
courageous. Friendship is relatively strong among persons belonging to
different tribes, and still stronger within the tribe. A friend will
often pay the debt of his friend, the stipulation being that the latter
will repay it without interest to the children of the lender. They take
care of the ill and the old; old people are never abandoned, and in no
case are they killed--unless it be a slave who was ill for a long time.
War prisoners are sometimes eaten. The children are very much petted and
loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are killed, the others are sold as
slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no idols, no authority of any
description; the oldest man in the family is the judge. In cases of
adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes to the negoria (the
community). The soil is kept in common, but the crop belongs to those
who have grown it. They have pottery, and know barter-trade--the custom
being that the merchant gives them the goods, whereupon they return to
their houses and bring the native goods required by the merchant; if the
latter cannot be obtained, the European goods are returned.(22) They are
head-hunters, and in so doing they prosecute blood revenge. 'Sometimes,'
Finsch says, 'the affair is referred to the Rajah of Namototte, who
terminates it by imposing a fine.'"
When well treated, the Papuas are very kind. Miklukho-Maclay landed on
the eastern coast of New Guinea, followed by one single man, stayed for
two years among tribes reported to be cannibals, and left them with
regret; he returned again to stay one year more among them, and never
had he any conflict to complain of. True that his rule was never--under
no pretext whatever--to say anything which was not truth, nor make any
promise which he could not keep. These poor creatures, who even do not
know how to obtain fire, and carefully maintain it in their huts, live
under their primitive communism, without any chiefs; and within their
villages they have no quarrels worth speaking of. They work in common,
just enough to get the food of the day; they rear their children in
common; and in the evenings they dress themselves as coquettishly as
they can, and dance. Like all savages, they are fond of dancing. Each
village has its barla, or balai--the "long house," "longue maison," or
"grande maison"--for the unmarried men, for social gatherings, and for
the discussion of common affairs--again a trait which is common to most
inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the Eskimos, the Red Indians, and so
on. Whole groups of villages are on friendly terms, and visit each other
en bloc.
Unhappily, feuds are not uncommon--not in consequence of "Overstocking
of the area," or "keen competition," and like inventions of a mercantile
century, but chiefly in consequence of superstition. As soon as any one
falls ill, his friends and relatives come together, and deliberately
discuss who might be the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are
considered, every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally
the real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has called
it down, and a raid upon that village is decided upon. Therefore, feuds
are rather frequent, even between the coast villages, not to say a word
of the cannibal mountaineers who are considered as real witches and
enemies, though, on a closer acquaintance, they prove to be exactly the
same sort of people as their neighbours on the seacoast.(23)
Many striking pages could be written about the harmony which prevails in
the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. But
they belong to a more advanced stage of civilization. So we shall now
take our illustrations from the far north. I must mention, however,
before leaving the Southern Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose
reputation has been so bad, appear under a much better light since they
begin to be better known. A few French missionaries who stay among them
"know of no act of malevolence to complain of." In their clans,
consisting of from 120 to 150 souls, they practise the same primitive
communism as the Papuas; they share everything in common, and treat
their old people very well. Peace prevails among these tribes.(24) With
the Eskimos and their nearest congeners, the Thlinkets, the Koloshes,
and the Aleoutes, we find one of the nearest illustrations of what man
may have been during the glacial age. Their implements hardly differ
from those of palaeolithic man, and some of their tribes do not yet know
fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind of harpoon.(25) They
know the use of iron, but they receive it from the Europeans, or find it
on wrecked ships. Their social organization is of a very primitive kind,
though they already have emerged from the stage of "communal marriage,"
even under the gentile restrictions. They live in families, but the
family bonds are often broken; husbands and wives are often
exchanged.(26) The families, however, remain united in clans, and how
could it be otherwise? How could they sustain the hard struggle for life
unless by closely combining their forces? So they do, and the tribal
bonds are closest where the struggle for life is hardest, namely, in
North-East Greenland. The "long house" is their usual dwelling, and
several families lodge in it, separated from each other by small
partitions of ragged furs, with a common passage in the front. Sometimes
the house has the shape of a cross, and in such case a common fire is
kept in the centre. The German Expedition which spent a winter close by
one of those "long houses" could ascertain that "no quarrel disturbed
the peace, no dispute arose about the use of this narrow space"
throughout the long winter. "Scolding, or even unkind words, are
considered as a misdemeanour, if not produced under the legal form of
process, namely, the nith-song."(27) Close cohabitation and close
interdependence are sufficient for maintaining century after century
that deep respect for the interests of the community which is
characteristic of Eskimo life. Even in the larger communities of
Eskimos, "public opinion formed the real judgment-seat, the general
punishment consisting in the offenders being shamed in the eyes of the
people."(28)
Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by hunting and
fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes, especially in the
West, under the influence of the Danes, private property penetrates into
their institutions. However, they have an original means for obviating
the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth which
would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he
convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and, after much
eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, Dall
saw an Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur
dresses, 200 strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, 200
beavers, and 500 zibelines. After that they took off their festival
dresses, gave them away, and, putting on old ragged furs, addressed a
few words to their kinsfolk, saying that though they are now poorer than
any one of them, they have won their friendship.(29) Like distributions
of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take
place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been
obtained during the year.(30) In my opinion these distributions reveal a
very old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of
personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing
equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by
the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the
periodical abandonment of all debts which took place in historical times
with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a
survival of that old custom. And the habit of either burying with the
dead, or destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him
personally--a habit which we find among all primitive races--must have
had the same origin. In fact, while everything that belongs personally
to the dead is burnt or broken upon his grave, nothing is destroyed of
what belonged to him in common with the tribe, such as boats, or the
communal implements of fishing. The destruction bears upon personal
property alone. At a later epoch this habit becomes a religious
ceremony. It receives a mystical interpretation, and is imposed by
religion, when public opinion alone proves incapable of enforcing its
general observance. And, finally, it is substituted by either burning
simple models of the dead man's property (as in China), or by simply
carrying his property to the grave and taking it back to his house after
the burial ceremony is over--a habit which still prevails with the
Europeans as regards swords, crosses, and other marks of public
distinction.(31)
The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been
mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon
the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin to the Eskimos--will better
illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten
years' stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian
missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:--
Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal.
Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked
on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when
at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined.
During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his
children; he gives them all he has, and himself fasts. They are not
inclined to stealing; that was remarked even by the first Russian
immigrants. Not that they never steal; every Aleoute would confess
having sometime stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole
is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is
touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The Aleoute
is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he
will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a gift of
dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the
departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the
missionary was in January; and in November and December there was a
great scarcity of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never
touched by the starving people, and in January it was sent to its
destination.) Their code of morality is both varied and severe. It is
considered shameful to be afraid of unavoidable death; to ask pardon
from an enemy; to die without ever having killed an enemy; to be
convicted of stealing; to capsize a boat in the harbour; to be afraid of
going to sea in stormy weather; to be the first in a party on a long
journey to become an invalid in case of scarcity of food; to show
greediness when spoil is divided, in which case every one gives his own
part to the greedy man to shame him; to divulge a public secret to his
wife; being two persons on a hunting expedition, not to offer the best
game to the partner; to boast of his own deeds, especially of invented
ones; to scold any one in scorn. Also to beg; to pet his wife in other
people's presence, and to dance with her to bargain personally: selling
must always be made through a third person, who settles the price. For a
woman it is a shame not to know sewing, dancing and all kinds of woman's
work; to pet her husband and children, or even to speak to her husband
in the presence of a stranger.(32)
Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further illustrated by
their tales and legends. Let me also add that when Veniaminoff wrote (in
1840) one murder only had been committed since the last century in a
population of 60,000 people, and that among 1,800 Aleoutes not one
single common law offence had been known for forty years. This will not
seem strange if we remark that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough
words are absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never
fight, and never abuse each other in words. All they may say is, "Your
mother does not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of one eye."(33)
Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans. The
high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which
primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by
any amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain
that those same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they
abandon their old people, and that they blindly obey the rules of
blood-revenge. We must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to
the European mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just
mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and gives
everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother becomes a
slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages with illustrations of
the really tender relations existing among the savages and their
children. Travellers continually mention them incidentally. Here you
read about the fond love of a mother; there you see a father wildly
running through the forest and carrying upon his shoulders his child
bitten by a snake; or a missionary tells you the despair of the parents
at the loss of a child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being
immolated at its birth, you learn that the "savage" mothers usually
nurse their children till the age of four, and that, in the New
Hebrides, on the loss of a specially beloved child, its mother, or aunt,
will kill herself to take care of it in the other world.(34) And so on.
Like facts are met with by the score; so that, when we see that these
same loving parents practise infanticide, we are bound to recognize that
the habit (whatever its ulterior transformations may be) took its origin
under the sheer pressure of necessity, as an obligation towards the
tribe, and a means for rearing the already growing children. The
savages, as a rule, do not "multiply without stint," as some English
writers put it. On the contrary, they take all kinds of measures for
diminishing the birth-rate. A whole series of restrictions, which
Europeans certainly would find extravagant, are imposed to that effect,
and they are strictly obeyed. But notwithstanding that, primitive folk
cannot rear all their children. However, it has been remarked that as
soon as they succeed in increasing their regular means of subsistence,
they at once begin to abandon the practice of infanticide. On the whole,
the parents obey that obligation reluctantly, and as soon as they can
afford it they resort to all kinds of compromises to save the lives of
their new-born. As has been so well pointed out by my friend Elie
Reclus,(35) they invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare
the children born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the sentence
for a few hours, and then say that if the baby has lived one day it must
live all its natural life.(36) They hear the cries of the little ones
coming from the forest, and maintain that, if heard, they forbode a
misfortune for the tribe; and as they have no baby-farming nor creches
for getting rid of the children, every one of them recoils before the
necessity of performing the cruel sentence; they prefer to expose the
baby in the wood rather than to take its life by violence. Ignorance,
not cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the
savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow the
example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age, crossed the
sea of Okhotsk in a miserable boat, or travelled on dogs among his
Tchuktchis, supplying them with bread and fishing implements. He thus
had really stopped infanticide.
The same is true as regards what superficial observers describe as
parricide. We just now saw that the habit of abandoning old people is
not so widely spread as some writers have maintained it to be. It has
been extremely exaggerated, but it is occasionally met with among nearly
all savages; and in such cases it has the same origin as the exposure of
children. When a "savage" feels that he is a burden to his tribe; when
every morning his share of food is taken from the mouths of the
children--and the little ones are not so stoical as their fathers: they
cry when they are hungry; when every day he has to be carried across the
stony beach, or the virgin forest, on the shoulders of younger people
there are no invalid carriages, nor destitutes to wheel them in savage
lands--he begins to repeat what the old Russian peasants say until
now-a-day. "Tchujoi vek zayedayu, Pora na pokoi!" ("I live other
people's life: it is time to retire!") And he retires. He does what the
soldier does in a similar case. When the salvation of his detachment
depends upon its further advance, and he can move no more, and knows
that he must die if left behind, the soldier implores his best friend to
render him the last service before leaving the encampment. And the
friend, with shivering hands, discharges his gun into the dying body. So
the savages do. The old man asks himself to die; he himself insists upon
this last duty towards the community, and obtains the consent of the
tribe; he digs out his grave; he invites his kinsfolk to the last
parting meal. His father has done so, it is now his turn; and he parts
with his kinsfolk with marks of affection. The savage so much considers
death as part of his duties towards his community, that he not only
refuses to be rescued (as Moffat has told), but when a woman who had to
be immolated on her husband's grave was rescued by missionaries, and was
taken to an island, she escaped in the night, crossed a broad sea-arm,
swimming and rejoined her tribe, to die on the grave.(37) It has become
with them a matter of religion. But the savages, as a rule, are so
reluctant to take any one's life otherwise than in fight, that none of
them will take upon himself to shed human blood, and they resort to all
kinds of stratagems, which have been so falsely interpreted. In most
cases, they abandon the old man in the wood, after having given him more
than his share of the common food. Arctic expeditions have done the same
when they no more could carry their invalid comrades. "Live a few days
more, maybe there will be some unexpected rescue!" West European men of
science, when coming across these facts, are absolutely unable to stand
them; they can not reconcile them with a high development of tribal
morality, and they prefer to cast a doubt upon the exactitude of
absolutely reliable observers, instead of trying to explain the parallel
existence of the two sets of facts: a high tribal morality together with
the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same
Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable, fond of
their own children, and so impressionable that they cry when they see a
misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in Europe within a stone's
throw from dens in which children die from sheer want of food, the
savage, too, would not understand them. I remember how vainly I tried to
make some of my Tungus friends understand our civilization of
individualism: they could not, and they resorted to the most fantastical
suggestions. The fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal
solidarity in everything for bad and for good, is as incapable of
understanding a "moral" European, who knows nothing of that solidarity,
as the average European is incapable of understanding the savage. But if
our scientist had lived amidst a half-starving tribe which does not
possess among them all one man's food for so much as a few days to come,
he probably might have understood their motives. So also the savage, if
he had stayed among us, and received our education, may be, would
understand our European indifference towards our neighbours, and our
Royal Commissions for the prevention of "babyfarming." "Stone houses
make stony hearts," the Russian peasants say. But he ought to live in a
stone house first.
Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking into account
all the facts which were brought to light during a recent controversy on
this subject at the Paris Anthropological Society, and many incidental
remarks scattered throughout the "savage" literature, we are bound to
recognize that that practice was brought into existence by sheer
necessity. But that it was further developed by superstition and
religion into the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a
fact that until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in
the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute
scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed upon human
corpses, even during an epidemic. These are ascertained facts. But if we
now transport ourselves to the conditions which man had to face during
the glacial period, in a damp and cold climate, with but little
vegetable food at his disposal; if we take into account the terrible
ravages which scurvy still makes among underfed natives, and remember
that meat and fresh blood are the only restoratives which they know, we
must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous animal, became a
flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty of deer at that
time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic regions, and sometimes they
entirely abandon a territory for a number of years. In such cases his
last resources disappeared. During like hard trials, cannibalism has
been resorted to even by Europeans, and it was resorted to by the
savages. Until the present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of
their own dead: they must have devoured then the corpses of those who
had to die. Old people died, convinced that by their death they were
rendering a last service to the tribe. This is why cannibalism is
represented by some savages as of divine origin, as something that has
been ordered by a messenger from the sky. But later on it lost its
character of necessity, and survived as a superstition. Enemies had to
be eaten in order to inherit their courage; and, at a still later epoch,
the enemy's eye or heart was eaten for the same purpose; while among
other tribes, already having a numerous priesthood and a developed
mythology, evil gods, thirsty for human blood, were invented, and human
sacrifices required by the priests to appease the gods. In this
religious phase of its existence, cannibalism attained its most
revolting characters. Mexico is a well-known example; and in Fiji, where
the king could eat any one of his subjects, we also find a mighty cast
of priests, a complicated theology,(38) and a full development of
autocracy. Originated by necessity, cannibalism became, at a later
period, a religious institution, and in this form it survived long after
it had disappeared from among tribes which certainly practised it in
former times, but did not attain the theocratical stage of evolution.
The same remark must be made as regards infanticide and the abandonment
of parents. In some cases they also have been maintained as a survival
of olden times, as a religiously-kept tradition of the past.
I will terminate my remarks by mentioning another custom which also is a
source of most erroneous conclusions. I mean the practice of
blood-revenge. All savages are under the impression that blood shed must
be revenged by blood. If any one has been killed, the murderer must die;
if any one has been wounded, the aggressor's blood must be shed. There
is no exception to the rule, not even for animals; so the hunter's blood
is shed on his return to the village when he has shed the blood of an
animal. That is the savages' conception of justice--a conception which
yet prevails in Western Europe as regards murder. Now, when both the
offender and the offended belong to the same tribe, the tribe and the
offended person settle the affair.(39) But when the offender belongs to
another tribe, and that tribe, for one reason or another, refuses a
compensation, then the offended tribe decides to take the revenge
itself. Primitive folk so much consider every one's acts as a tribal
affair, dependent upon tribal approval, that they easily think the clan
responsible for every one's acts. Therefore, the due revenge may be
taken upon any member of the offender's clan or relatives.(40) It may
often happen, however, that the retaliation goes further than the
offence. In trying to inflict a wound, they may kill the offender, or
wound him more than they intended to do, and this becomes a cause for a
new feud, so that the primitive legislators were careful in requiring
the retaliation to be limited to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
and blood for blood.(41)
It is remarkable, however, that with most primitive folk like feuds are
infinitely rarer than might be expected; though with some of them they
may attain abnormal proportions, especially with mountaineers who have
been driven to the highlands by foreign invaders, such as the
mountaineers of Caucasia, and especially those of Borneo--the Dayaks.
With the Dayaks--we were told lately--the feuds had gone so far that a
young man could neither marry nor be proclaimed of age before he had
secured the head of an enemy. This horrid practice was fully described
in a modern English work.(42) It appears, however, that this affirmation
was a gross exaggeration. Moreover, Dayak "head-hunting" takes quite
another aspect when we learn that the supposed "headhunter" is not
actuated at all by personal passion. He acts under what he considers as
a moral obligation towards his tribe, just as the European judge who, in
obedience to the same, evidently wrong, principle of "blood for blood,"
hands over the condemned murderer to the hangman. Both the Dayak and the
judge would even feel remorse if sympathy moved them to spare the
murderer. That is why the Dayaks, apart from the murders they commit
when actuated by their conception of justice, are depicted, by all those
who know them, as a most sympathetic people. Thus Carl Bock, the same
author who has given such a terrible picture of head-hunting, writes:
"As regards morality, I am bound to assign to the Dayaks a high
place in the scale of civilization.... Robberies and theft are
entirely unknown among them. They also are very truthful.... If I
did not always get the 'whole truth,' I always got, at least,
nothing but the truth from them. I wish I could say the same of the
Malays" (pp. 209 and 210).
Bock's testimony is fully corroborated by that of Ida Pfeiffer. "I fully
recognized," she wrote, "that I should be pleased longer to travel among
them. I usually found them honest, good, and reserved ... much more so
than any other nation I know."(43) Stoltze used almost the same language
when speaking of them. The Dayaks usually have but one wife, and treat
her well. They are very sociable, and every morning the whole clan goes
out for fishing, hunting, or gardening, in large parties. Their villages
consist of big huts, each of which is inhabited by a dozen families, and
sometimes by several hundred persons, peacefully living together. They
show great respect for their wives, and are fond of their children; and
when one of them falls ill, the women nurse him in turn. As a rule they
are very moderate in eating and drinking. Such is the Dayak in his real
daily life.
It would be a tedious repetition if more illustrations from savage life
were given. Wherever we go we find the same sociable manners, the same
spirit of solidarity. And when we endeavour to penetrate into the
darkness of past ages, we find the same tribal life, the same
associations of men, however primitive, for mutual support. Therefore,
Darwin was quite right when he saw in man's social qualities the chief
factor for his further evolution, and Darwin's vulgarizers are entirely
wrong when they maintain the contrary.
The small strength and speed of man (he wrote), his want of natural
weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his
intellectual faculties (which, he remarked on another page, have been
chiefly or even exclusively gained for the benefit of the community).
and secondly, by his social qualities, which led him to give and receive
aid from his fellow men.(44)
In the last century the "savage" and his "life in the state of nature"
were idealized. But now men of science have gone to the opposite
extreme, especially since some of them, anxious to prove the animal
origin of man, but not conversant with the social aspects of animal
life, began to charge the savage with all imaginable "bestial" features.
It is evident, however, that this exaggeration is even more unscientific
than Rousseau's idealization. The savage is not an ideal of virtue, nor
is he an ideal of "savagery." But the primitive man has one quality,
elaborated and maintained by the very necessities of his hard struggle
for life--he identifies his own existence with that of his tribe; and
without that quality mankind never would have attained the level it has
attained now.
Primitive folk, as has been already said, so much identify their lives
with that of the tribe, that each of their acts, however insignificant,
is considered as a tribal affair. Their whole behaviour is regulated by
an infinite series of unwritten rules of propriety which are the fruit
of their common experience as to what is good or bad--that is,
beneficial or harmful for their own tribe. Of course, the reasonings
upon which their rules of propriety are based sometimes are absurd in
the extreme. Many of them originate in superstition; and altogether, in
whatever the savage does, he sees but the immediate consequences of his
acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and ulterior consequences--thus
simply exaggerating a defect with which Bentham reproached civilized
legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage obeys the prescriptions of
the common law, however inconvenient they may be. He obeys them even
more blindly than the civilized man obeys the prescriptions of the
written law. His common law is his religion; it is his very habit of
living. The idea of the clan is always present to his mind, and
self-restriction and self-sacrifice in the interest of the clan are of
daily occurrence. If the savage has infringed one of the smaller tribal
rules, he is prosecuted by the mockeries of the women. If the
infringement is grave, he is tortured day and night by the fear of
having called a calamity upon his tribe. If he has wounded by accident
any one of his own clan, and thus has committed the greatest of all
crimes, he grows quite miserable: he runs away in the woods, and is
ready to commit suicide, unless the tribe absolves him by inflicting
upon him a physical pain and sheds some of his own blood.(45) Within the
tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel of food is divided
among all present; and if the savage is alone in the woods, he does not
begin eating before he has loudly shouted thrice an invitation to any
one who may hear his voice to share his meal.(46)
In short, within the tribe the rule of "each for all" is supreme, so
long as the separate family has not yet broken up the tribal unity. But
that rule is not extended to the neighbouring clans, or tribes, even
when they are federated for mutual protection. Each tribe, or clan, is a
separate unity. Just as among mammals and birds, the territory is
roughly allotted among separate tribes, and, except in times of war, the
boundaries are respected. On entering the territory of his neighbours
one must show that he has no bad intentions. The louder one heralds his
coming, the more confidence he wins; and if he enters a house, he must
deposit his hatchet at the entrance. But no tribe is bound to share its
food with the others: it may do so or it may not. Therefore the life of
the savage is divided into two sets of actions, and appears under two
different ethical aspects: the relations within the tribe, and the
relations with the outsiders; and (like our international law) the
"inter-tribal" law widely differs from the common law. Therefore, when
it comes to a war the most revolting cruelties may be considered as so
many claims upon the admiration of the tribe. This double conception of
morality passes through the whole evolution of mankind, and maintains
itself until now. We Europeans have realized some progress--not immense,
at any rate--in eradicating that double conception of ethics; but it
also must be said that while we have in some measure extended our ideas
of solidarity--in theory, at least--over the nation, and partly over
other nations as well, we have lessened the bonds of solidarity within
our own nations, and even within our own families.
The appearance of a separate family amidst the clan necessarily disturbs
the established unity. A separate family means separate property and
accumulation of wealth. We saw how the Eskimos obviate its
inconveniences; and it is one of the most interesting studies to follow
in the course of ages the different institutions (village communities,
guilds, and so on) by means of which the masses endeavoured to maintain
the tribal unity, notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to
break it down. On the other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which
appeared at an extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves
with witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual
which could be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in
secrecy, and transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies
of witches, shamans, and priests, which we find among all savages. By
the same time, wars and invasions created military authority, as also
castes of warriors, whose associations or clubs acquired great powers.
However, at no period of man's life were wars the normal state of
existence. While warriors exterminated each other, and the priests
celebrated their massacres, the masses continued to live their daily
life, they prosecuted their daily toil. And it is one of the most
interesting studies to follow that life of the masses; to study the
means by which they maintained their own social organization, which was
based upon their own conceptions of equity, mutual aid, and mutual
support--of common law, in a word, even when they were submitted to the
most ferocious theocracy or autocracy in the State.
NOTES:
1. Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165.
2. The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition.
3. Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man
nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in polygamous
families, under the leadership of "a strong and jealous male." I do not
know how far that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But
the passage from Brehm's Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred
to, can hardly be taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general
description of monkeys; but his more detailed descriptions of separate
species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the
cercopitheques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they "nearly always
live in bands, and very seldom in families" (French edition, p. 59). As
to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing
many males, render the "polygamous family" more than doubtful further
observation is evidently wanted.
4. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890.
5. That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists
who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological
Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German
specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of
the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the
French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits
altogether.
6. Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242.
7. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery
through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan,
Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series,
1896; L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These
four writers--as has been very truly remarked by Giraud
Teulon,--starting from different facts and different general ideas, and
following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To
Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal
succession; to Morgan--the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and
a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to
MacLennan--the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt--the cuadro, or
scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in
establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When
Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his
epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization,--both
concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and
maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the
consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration.
However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of
students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear
traces of having passed through similar stages of development of
marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See
the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous
followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc.
8. None
9. For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim
Kovalevsky's Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his
Lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution
de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an
admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die
Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875.
10. It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin
of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into
groups, similar to Morgan's Hawaian, exists among birds; the young
broods live together separately from their parents. A like division
might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the
prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely
to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of
consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to
avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation
it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in
discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind
that the savages, like us, have their "thinkers" and savants-wizards,
doctors, prophets, etc.--whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon
those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another
almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a
powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may
not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe.
11. Col. Collins, in Philips' Researches in South Africa, London, 1828.
Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334.
12. Lichtenstein's Reisen im sudlichen Afrika, ii. Pp. 92, 97. Berlin,
1811.
13. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also
Fritsch's Die Eingeboren Süd-Afrika's, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and
Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen
Folklore, Capetown, 1875.
14. Elisee Reclus, Geographie Universelle, xiii. 475.
15. P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated
from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333,
336, etc.
16. Quoted in Waitz's Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq.
17. The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the
Kamilaroi language, are best known under this aspect, through the
capital work of Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii,
Melbourne, 1880. See also A.W. Howitt's "Further Note on the Australian
Class Systems," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol.
xviii. p. 31, showing the wide extension of the same organization in
Australia.
18. The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian Aborigines, Adelaide,
1879, p. 11.
19. Grey's Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and
Western Australia, London, 1841, vol. ii. pp. 237, 298.
20. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 652. I
abridge the answers.
21. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 386.
22. The same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a
high reputation of honesty. "It never happens that the Papua be untrue
to his promise," Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen,
1865, p. 829.
23. Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1880, pp. 161 seq. Few
books of travel give a better insight into the petty details of the
daily life of savages than these scraps from Maklay's notebooks.
24. L.F. Martial, in Mission Scientifique au Cap Horn, Paris, 1883, vol.
i. pp. 183-201.
25. Captain Holm's Expedition to East Greenland.
26. In Australia whole clans have been seen exchanging all their wives,
in order to conjure a calamity (Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte
des Familienrechts, 1890, p. 342). More brotherhood is their specific
against calamities.
27. Dr. H. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, p. 26 (Meddelelser om Gronland, vol.
xi. 1887).
28. Dr. Rink, loc. cit. p. 24. Europeans, grown in the respect of Roman
law, are seldom capable of understanding that force of tribal authority.
"In fact," Dr. Rink writes, "it is not the exception, but the rule, that
white men who have stayed for ten or twenty years among the Eskimo,
return without any real addition to their knowledge of the traditional
ideas upon which their social state is based. The white man, whether a
missionary or a trader, is firm in his dogmatic opinion that the most
vulgar European is better than the most distinguished native."--The
Eskimo Tribes, p. 31.
29. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870.
30. Dall saw it in Alaska, Jacobsen at Ignitok in the vicinity of the
Bering Strait. Gilbert Sproat mentions it among the Vancouver indians;
and Dr. Rink, who describes the periodical exhibitions just mentioned,
adds: "The principal use of the accumulation of personal wealth is for
periodically distributing it." He also mentions (loc. cit. p. 31) "the
destruction of property for the same purpose," (of maintaining
equality).
31. See Appendix VIII.
32. Veniaminoff, Memoirs relative to the District of Unalashka
(Russian), 3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1840. Extracts, in English, from the
above are given in Dall's Alaska. A like description of the Australians'
morality is given in Nature, xlii. p. 639.
33. It is most remarkable that several writers (Middendorff, Schrenk, O.
Finsch) described the Ostyaks and Samoyedes in almost the same words.
Even when drunken, their quarrels are insignificant. "For a hundred
years one single murder has been committed in the tundra;" "their
children never fight;" "anything may be left for years in the tundra,
even food and gin, and nobody will touch it;" and so on. Gilbert Sproat
"never witnessed a fight between two sober natives" of the Aht Indians
of Vancouver Island. "Quarrelling is also rare among their children."
(Rink, loc. cit.) And so on.
34. Gill, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 641. See also
pp. 636-640, where many facts of parental and filial love are quoted.
35. Primitive Folk, London, 1891.
36. Gerland, loc. cit. v. 636.
37. Erskine, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 640.
38. W.T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, London, 1866, p. 363.
39. It is remarkable, however, that in case of a sentence of death,
nobody will take upon himself to be the executioner. Every one throws
his stone, or gives his blow with the hatchet, carefully avoiding to
give a mortal blow. At a later epoch, the priest will stab the victim
with a sacred knife. Still later, it will be the king, until
civilization invents the hired hangman. See Bastian's deep remarks upon
this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die Blutrache, pp.
1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor E. Nys,
has survived in military executions till our own times. In the middle
portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of
the twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with
eleven ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never
knew who of them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed
conscience by thinking that he was not one of the murderers.
40. In Africa, and elsewhere too, it is a widely-spread habit, that if a
theft has been committed, the next clan has to restore the equivalent of
the stolen thing, and then look itself for the thief. A. H. Post,
Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Leipzig, 1887, vol. i. p. 77.
41. See Prof. M. Kovalevsky's Modern Customs and Ancient Law (Russian),
Moscow, 1886, vol. ii., which contains many important considerations
upon this subject.
42. See Carl Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, London, 1881. I am told,
however, by Sir Hugh Law, who was for a long time Governor of Borneo,
that the "head-hunting" described in this book is grossly exaggerated.
Altogether, my informant speaks of the Dayaks in exactly the same
sympathetic terms as Ida Pfeiffer. Let me add that Mary Kingsley speaks
in her book on West Africa in the same sympathetic terms of the Fans,
who had been represented formerly as the most "terrible cannibals."
43. Ida Pfeiffer, Meine zweite Weltriese, Wien, 1856, vol. i. pp. 116
seq. See also Muller and Temminch's Dutch Possessions in Archipelagic
India, quoted by Elisee Reclus, in Geographie Universelle, xiii.
44. Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64.
45. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc.
cit. ii. p. 238.
46. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots.