in temporary villages scattered over vast surfaces of country, and
move from place to place, as the supply of provisions, spontaneously
provided by the earth, is more or less abundant. Separated as they are
into small isolated communities--rarely numbering more than eighty
members--they resort to the borders of lakes and streams, which dry up
at certain seasons, and force them to seek elsewhere a home. A rude
copy of the patriarchal form of government prevails among them--old men
being the rulers of the tribe.
The condition of women among these primitive savages is extremely low.
They are servants of the stronger sex. In some of their dialects wife
and slave are synonymous. All the labour devolves on her, and, as no
form of agriculture is practised, this consists principally in the
search for the means of life. She collects the daily food, she prepares
the camp or the hut at night, she piles fire-wood, draws water, weaves
baskets, carries all burdens, and bears the children on her back, and
the return for all this willing devotion is frequently the grossest
ill-usage.
There is no form of marriage ceremony observed. A man gets a wife in
various ways. Sometimes she is betrothed to him while an infant--even
before her birth, and sometimes she devolves to him with other
property. The eldest surviving brother, or next male relative, inherits
the women of a whole family. Thus many households are supplied. Others
steal their wives from hostile tribes, and frequent wars arise from
such proceedings. Polygamy is universally allowed, but not by any
means generally practised; for there are few parts of Australia where
the female sex is not outnumbered by the male. Plurality of wives
consequently implies wealth and distinction--each additional one being
regarded as a new slave, an increase of property. Nor are the women
jealous of polygamy. When a man has many wives, they subdivide the
labour, which otherwise would devolve on one, thus lightening each
others’ burdens, and procuring companionship. There can indeed be
little jealous feeling where affection on the part of the husband to
the wife is almost a thing unknown.
The Australian wife when past the prime of life is usually a wretched
object. She is often deformed and crippled by excessive toil--her body
bent, her legs crooked, her ankles swollen, her face wearing an aspect
of sullen apathy, produced by long hardship. When young, however, they
are frequently lively and happy, not being cursed with keen feelings,
and caring for little beyond the present hour. Should a young woman,
nevertheless, be distinguished by peculiar beauty, she leads, while
her attractions last, a miserable course of existence. Betrothed at
an early age, she is perpetually watched by the future husband, and
upon the least suspicion of infidelity is subjected to the most brutal
treatment. To thrust a spear through her thigh or the calf of her leg
is the common mode of punishment. She may, in spite of all precautions,
be snatched away: whether consenting or not, she must endure the same
penalty. If she be chaste, the man who has attempted to seduce her may
strike her with a club, stun her, and bear her to a wood, where she is
violated by force. Still she is punished, and it is, says Sir George
Grey, no common sight to see a woman of superior elegance or beauty
who has not some scars disfiguring various parts of her person. This
period, however, is soon over, for the bloom of an Australian woman
is very short-lived. When the seducer is found, he is punished in a
similar manner, and if he have committed adultery with a married woman,
suffers death.
The jealousy of the married men is excessive, and would be ridiculous
were it not that their vigilance is absolutely called for. A careless
husband would speedily suffer for his neglect. Accordingly we find
the Australian savages practising in their woods or open plains
restrictions not dissimilar to those adopted in the seraglios of the
East. When an encampment is formed for the night every man overlooks
his wives while they build one or more temporary huts, over which he
then places himself as a guard. The young children and the unmarried
girls occupy this portion of the village. Boys above ten years of
age and all single men are forced to sleep in a separate encampment,
constructed for them by their mothers, and are not allowed to visit
the bivouacs of the married men. Under no circumstances is a strange
native allowed to approach one of the family huts. Each of these little
dwellings is placed far from the rest, so that when their inmates
desire to hold converse they sing to each other from a distance. When
the young men collect to dance, the maidens and wives are allowed to be
spectators, but only on a few occasions to join. They have dances of
their own, at which the youth of the other sex are not permitted to be
present.
In spite of this excessive jealousy the idea of a husband’s affection
for his wife appears strange to them. Men return from journeys without
exchanging a greeting with the mothers of their children, but those
children they salute with many endearing terms, falling on their necks
and shedding tears with every demonstration of love. A man has been
known, when his wife was grievously sick, to leave her to die in the
wilderness, rather than be troubled with her on his journey.
Yet the influence of women is not by any means small. In some of the
tribes they obtain a position of moderate equality with the husband,
are well-fed, clothed, and treated as rational beings. Everywhere the
men, young and old, strive to deserve their praise; and exhibitions of
vanity take place, perfectly ludicrous to those European travellers who
forget that the silly dandyism of the Australian savage, with his paint
and opossum skin, is only peculiar in its form of expression. Women
are often present on the field of battle, to inspire their husbands by
exhortations, to rouse them by clamours of revenge or appeals to their
valour; and among the chief punishments of cowardice is their contempt.
The man failing in any great duty of a warrior is so disgraced. Thus,
if he neglect to avenge the death of his nearest relation, his wives
may quit him; the unmarried girls shun him with scorn, and he is driven
by their reproaches to perform his bloody and dangerous task.
Where polygamy exists it is seldom the woman’s consent is required
before her union with a suitor. In Australia it is never required
or expected. The transaction is entirely between her father and the
man who desires her for a wife, or, rather, for a concubine. She is
ordered, perhaps, to take up her household bag, and go to a certain
man’s hut, and this may be the first notice she has of the marriage.
There she is in the position of a slave to her master. If she be
obedient, toil without torture is her mitigated lot; but if she rebel,
the club is employed to enforce submission. She is her husband’s
absolute property. He may give her away, exchange her, or lend her
as he pleases. Indeed, old men will sometimes offer their wives to
friends, or as a mark of respect to strangers; and the offer is not
uncommonly accepted.
Though we have mentioned three ways of obtaining a wife, the system of
betrothal is the most general. Almost every female child is so disposed
of a few days after its birth. From that moment the parents have no
control whatever over her future settlement; she is in fact a bought
slave. Should her betrothed die she becomes the property of his heir.
Whatever her age she may be taken into the hut; cohabitation often
commencing while the girl is not twelve years old, and her husband only
a boy. Three days after her first husband’s death the widow goes to the
hut of the second.
Some restrictions, however, are imposed on the intercourse of the
sexes. Thus all children take the family name of their mother, and a
man may not marry a woman of his own family name. Relations nearer than
cousins are not allowed to marry, and an alliance even within this
degree is very rare. The Australians have, indeed, a horror of all
connections with the least stigma of incest upon them, and adjudge the
punishment of death to such an offence. Their laws, which are matters
not of enactment but of custom, are extremely severe upon this and all
other points connected with their women.
Chastity, nevertheless, is neither highly appreciated nor often
practised. It is far from being prized by the women as a jewel of
value; on the contrary, they plot for opportunities to yield it
illicitly, and can scarcely be said to know the idea. Profligacy is
all but universal among them; it is a characteristic even of the
children. When some schools were formed at Perth, for the education of
the natives, it was found absolutely necessary to separate children
of tender years, in order to prevent scenes of vile debauch from
being enacted. It should be said, however, that though indiscriminate
prostitution among the women, and depraved sensuality among the men,
exist in the most savage communities, disease and vice are far less
characteristic of them than of those tribes which have come in contact
with Europeans. In all the colonial towns there is a class of native
women following the calling of prostitutes, and there the venereal
disease and syphilis are most deadly and widely prevalent. The former
appears to have been brought from Europe, and makes terrible havoc
among them. The latter, ascribed by their traditions to the East, has
been found among tribes which had apparently never held intercourse
with the whites; in such cases, however, it is in a milder form.
Several causes contribute to the corruption of manners among these
savage tribes. One of the principal is, the monopoly of women claimed
by the old men. The patriarchs of the tribe, contrive to secure all
the young girls, leaving to their more youthful brethren only common
prostitutes, prisoners of war, and such women as they can ravish from
a neighbouring community, or seduce from their husbands’ dwellings.
They also abandon to them their own wives when 30 or 40 years old,
obtaining in exchange the little girls belonging to the young man’s
family. The youthful warrior, therefore, with a number of sisters, can
usually succeed in obtaining a few wives by barter. That their personal
attractions are faded is not of any high importance; since they are
needed chiefly to render him independent of labour. His sensual
appetites he is content to gratify, until he becomes a patriarch, by
illicit intrigues with other women of the tribe. Of these there are
generally some ready to sell or give away their favours. The wives,
especially of the very old chiefs, look anxiously forward to the death
of their husbands, when they hope, in the usual course of inheritance,
to be transferred to the hut of a younger man; for, among nations in
this debased state, it is not _the_ woman that is prized, but _a_
woman. Personal attachment is rare. The husband whose wife has been
ravished away by a warrior from a neighbouring tribe may be pacified
by being presented with another companion. Even in Australia Felix,
which is peopled by the most intelligent, industrious, and manly of
the Australian race, the young man disappointed of a wife in his own
tribe sets off to another, waylays some woman, asks her to elope with
him, and, on her refusal, stuns her with his club, and drags her away
in triumph. Marriage, indeed, appears too dignified a term to apply to
this system of concubinage and servitude which in Australia goes under
that name. Travellers have found in the far interior happy families of
man and wife, roaming together, with common interests, and united by
affection; but such instances are rare.
A large proportion of the young men in Australia can by no means obtain
wives. This arises from the numerical disparity between the sexes,
which is almost universal in that region, and is chiefly attributable
to the practice of infanticide. Child-killing is indeed among the
social institutions of that poor and barbarous race. Women have been
known to kill and eat their offspring, and men to swing them by the
legs and dash out their brains against a tree. The custom is becoming
rare among those tribes in constant intercourse with Europeans, but
that intercourse itself has caused much of the evil. Half-castes,
or the offspring of native women by European fathers, are almost
invariably sacrificed. They are held in dread by the people, who fear
the growth of a mixed race which may one day conquer or destroy them.
Females, also, are killed in great numbers. This class of infanticide
is regulated by various circumstances in different communities. Among
some tribes all the girls are destroyed until a boy is born; in others,
the firstborn is exposed; in others, all above a certain number
perish; but everywhere the custom prevails. One of two twins--a rare
birth--is almost always killed. It may be ascribed to the miserably
poor condition of the people, and the degraded state of the female sex;
for in a region where the aborigines have not yet learned to till the
soil, and where the means of life are scanty, there will always be an
inducement to check the growth of numbers by infanticide; and where
women have to perform all the labour, and follow their husbands in long
marches or campaigns, ministering to every want they may experience,
the trouble of nursing an infant is often saved at the cost of the
infant’s life. Neglect also effects the same purpose.
The population, under these circumstances, has always been thin, and is
apparently decreasing. Among 421 persons belonging to various tribes
in Australia Felix, Eyre remarked that there were in the course of two
years and a half only ten children reared. In other places one child to
every six women was not an unusual average. This, however, is not all
to be ascribed to infanticide. Many of the females abandon themselves
so recklessly to vice that they lose all their natural powers, and
become incapable of bearing offspring. Eyre found in other parts of
Australia that the average of births was four to every woman. In New
South Wales the proportion of women to men appears to be as two to
three; while in the interior, Sturt calculated that female children
outnumbered the male, while with adults the reverse was true. This
indicates an awful spread of the practice of infanticide, which we
cannot refuse to believe when we remember the facts which travellers of
undeniable integrity have made known to us.
To suppose from this that in Australia the natural sentiments of
humanity are unknown, would be extremely rash. On the contrary, we find
very much that is beautiful in the character of its wild people, and
are led to believe that civilization may go far towards elevating them
from all their barbarous customs. Women are known to bear about their
necks, as relics sacred to affection, the bones of their children,
whom they have mourned for years with a pure and deep sorrow. Men have
loved and respected their wives; maidens have prized and guarded their
virtue; but it is too true that these are exceptions, and that the
character and the condition of the female sex in Australia is that of
debasement and immorality.
With respect to the prostitute class of the colonial towns, to which
allusion has been made, it will be noticed in another part of this
inquiry, when we examine into the manners of English and other settlers
abroad.
Of prostitutes as a class among the natives themselves, it is
impossible to speak separately; for prostitution of that kind implies
some advance towards the forms of regular society, and little of this
appears yet to be made in that region. From the sketch we have given,
however, a general idea may be gained of the state of women and the
estimation of virtue among a race second only to the lowest tribes of
Africa in barbarity and degradation[58].
OF PROSTITUTION IN NEW ZEALAND.
In the New Zealand group we find a race considerably elevated above
the other inhabitants of Australasia, with a species of native
civilization--a system of art, industry, and manners. Perhaps the
savage of New Holland is one of the most miserable, and the New
Zealander one of the most elevated, barbarians in the world. By
this we do not mean that he has made any progress in refinement,
or been subdued by the amiable amenities of life; but he is quick,
intelligent, apt to learn, swift to imitate, and docile in the school
of civilization. The Maories, in their original state, are low and
brutal; but they are easily raised from that condition. They have
exhibited a capacity for the reception of knowledge, and a desire to
adopt what they are taught to admire--which encourage strong hopes
of their reclamation. Among them, however, vice was, until recently,
almost universal, and at the present day it is so, with the exception
of a few tribes brought directly under the influence of educated and
moral European communities. The only class which has discarded the
most systematic immorality is that which has reconciled itself to the
Christian religion, or been persuaded to follow the manners of the
white men. The unreclaimed tribes present a spectacle of licentiousness
which distinguishes them even among barbarous nations.
They show, indeed, an advance in profligacy. Their immorality is
upon a plan, and recognised in that unwritten social law which among
barbarians remedies the want of a written code. It is not the beastly
lust of the savage, who appears merely obedient to an animal instinct,
against which there is no principle of morals or sentiment of decency
to contend;--it is the appetite of the sensualist, deliberately
gratified, and by means similar, in many respects, to those adopted
among the lowest classes in Europe. We may, indeed, compare the Maori
village, unsubjected to missionary influence, with some of the hamlets
in our rural provinces, where moral education of every kind is equally
an exile.
The New Zealanders have been divided into the descendants of two
races, the one inferior to the other; and the Malay has been taken
as the superior. Ethnologists may prove a difference between them,
and trace it through their manners; but these distinctions of race
are not sufficiently marked to require separate investigations. The
social institutions of the islanders are very generally the same,
with some unimportant variations among the several tribes. We are
placed in this peculiar difficulty when inquiring into the manners
of New Zealand--that they appear to have undergone considerable
modification since, and in consequence of, the arrival of Europeans.
The natives refer to this change themselves, and in some cases
charge the whites with introducing various evils into their country.
Undoubtedly this is as true of New Zealand as of every other portion
of the globe whither men have carried from Christendom the vices as
well as the advantages of civilization. But in speaking of European
settlers, a broad distinction must be borne in mind. White is not
more contrasted with black, than are the regular orderly colonies
established under the authority of Great Britain with the irregular
scattered settlements planted by whalers, runaway or released convicts,
land speculators, and other adventurers before the formal hoisting
of our flag. The influence of the one has been to enlighten and to
elevate, of the other to debase and demoralize, the native population.
Gambling, drinking, and prostitution were encouraged or introduced
by the one, Christianity, order, and morality are spreading through
the exertions of the other; and it is, therefore, unjust to confound
them in one general panegyric or condemnation. Nor shall we include
all the unrecognised settlements in this description. Many of the
hardy whalers and others have taken to themselves Maori wives, who,
sober, thrifty, and industrious, submit without complaining to rough
usage and hard work, and are animated by a deep affection for their
husbands. Contented with a calico gown and blanket, an occasional pipe
of tobacco, and a very frugal life, they cost little to support, and
appear for the most part not only willing but cheerful.
The female sex throughout New Zealand is not in such complete
subjection to the male as in New Holland. With the right they have
acquired the power to resist any unnatural encroachment upon their
liberties, though still in a state of comparative bondage. They are
influential in society, and whenever this is the case they enjoy, more
or less, remission of oppression. We find them declaiming at public
meetings of the people, and fiercely denouncing the warriors who may
be dishonourably averse to war, or have behaved ignominiously in the
field. By influencing their friends and relatives they often secure to
themselves revenge for an injury, and thus security against the same
in future. In various other ways their position is defended against
utter abasement. They are not regarded merely as subservient to the
lust and indolence of the male sex. When dead they are buried with
ceremony according to the husband’s rank, and formal rites of mourning
are observed for them. In public and in domestic affairs their opinions
are consulted, and often their hands are obtained in marriage by the
most humble supplication, or the most difficult course of persuasion,
by the lover. All this is evidence of a higher state than that which is
occupied by females either in Africa or New Holland.
Polygamy is permitted and practised by those who can afford it. In
reality, however, the man has but one wife and a number of concubines,
for though the second and third may be ceremoniously wedded to him,
they are in subjection to the first, and his intercourse with them is
frequently checked by her. She is paramount and all but supreme, though
a man of determination will sometimes divorce his first wife to punish
her contumelious behaviour to his second.
It is customary for a man to marry two or more sisters, the eldest
being recognised as the chief or head of the family. They all eat with
the men, accompanying them, as well as their lovers and relations,
before marriage, on their war expeditions or to their feasts. Betrothal
takes place at a very early age--often conditionally before birth. Thus
two brothers or two friends will agree that if their first children
prove respectively a boy and a girl, they shall be married. When it
is not settled so early, it is arranged during infancy, or at least
childhood--for a girl of sixteen without an accepted lover is regarded
as having outlived her attractions and all chance of an alliance.
The betrothal is usually the occasion of a great feast, where wishes
for the good success and welfare of the young couple are proclaimed
by a company of friends. Three varieties of marriage formality are
observed--differing as the girl is wanted to fill the place of first,
second, third, or fourth wife. The first is a regular ceremony, the
second less formal, and the last, which is merely conventional, is when
a slave is raised from servitude to the marital embrace. The highest
is that in which the priest pronounces a benediction, and a hope, not
a prayer, for the prosperity of the married couple. The rest, which is
the most approved and common, is for the man to conduct his betrothed
to his hut, and she is thenceforward mistress of the place. Unless
she be divorced, no one can take away her power, and no inferior wife
can divide it. When they have entered the dwelling a party of friends
surround it, make an attack, force their way, strip the newly-married
pair nearly naked, plunder all they can find, and retire. By taking
a woman to his house a man makes her his wife, or virtually, except
in the case of the first, his concubine. When he merely desires to
cohabit with one, without being formally united to her, he visits her
habitation.