cannot demand nor purchase food from a neighbouring tribe; the men cannot cultivate the soil; and the soil of their territory can maintain but a certain number of human beings; and if a rule has been established in consonance with a law of Nature, are we right in rashly and rudely condemning as criminals those who practise obedience to the obligations which the rule enforces? Surely enough is known of the many crimes which our own social laws render inevitable to cause us to regard even infanticide amongst this people rather in the light of a custom which they are compelled to observe than as a crime—a crime which amongst civilized nations is justly considered heinous. No one would attempt to extenuate the practice—the Aborigines themselves are ashamed of it—but it is surely right to tell the truth about it.
It is only after they have been taught the truths of religion, and made acquainted with the solemn obligations which rest on the parents, and when they are provided with necessary food, that we can visit on them punishments for such offences.[1]
Ignorant persons might regard what has been stated by authors respecting the customs of the natives of Australia as an apology for infanticide. They have, however, but made known the facts, and their statements are in themselves only a defence of the Aborigines against the injustice of imputing to them as a crime a practice perhaps necessary to their existence. Infanticide—the whites affect to believe—is a monstrous thing amongst savage and barbarous nations; but every newspaper one reads gives accounts of cases of infanticide, as practised by our own people, far more horrible than any known to the Australians or
- ↑ When twins are born, the Kaffirs destroy one of the children, because they believe the parents would not be prosperous if the two were allowed to live; the Apingi believe that the mother would die if one of the twins was not murdered; in New Zealand, sickly and deformed children are killed; the natives of Savage Island formerly destroyed all illegitimate children; and the Khonds of India, under the guidance of their priests, mercilessly slay children—male and female—if the omens be unpropitious.
The cruel practices of many tribes in Africa, the atrocities perpetrated by the inhabitants of Polynesia, and the still more dreadful human sacrifices of the priest-ridden peoples of India, have no parallels in Australia. Parenticide, the wholesale murder of wives or young girls when a head-man or chief dies, the offering of innocent children to heathen gods, or neglect of the aged, cannot be imputed to the Australian savage. The Australians are children—erring children—but they err because of ignorance or from necessity. They are not naturally cruel to their offspring.
to render the offspring of those who were married as few as possible. When a female infant was born, if her life was preserved (which was very frequently not the case, for infanticide was general), she was promised as a wife to one of the men of the tribe—very often to an old man who was already the possessor of two or three gins. Most of the young and many of the middle-aged men were consequently doomed to remain bachelors, unless they could steal or otherwise procure a wife from another tribe, a thing which was generally an exceedingly difficult matter to accomplish, seeing that unmarried females were almost equally scarce in all the tribes. Either a desire to avoid the charge of too numerous a progeny, or the impossibility of procuring a supply of food suitable for very young children, or perhaps both these causes combined, prolonged the time during which Aboriginal mothers suckled their children to the unusual period of three, four, and sometimes even five years. Other children were often born during this period—for gestation did not in their case interfere with lactation—but these were almost invariably sacrificed. Custom in this case appears to have sanctioned what necessity demanded. The natural food which the mother could provide was barely enough for the unweaned child already dependent upon it, and there was no artificial means of supplementing it so as to render it sufficient for two."—The History of Australian Discovery and Colonization, by Samuel Bennett, pp. 253-4.
