rather than to the relation of individuals. Thus, men of one group have more or less free access to all the women of a certain other group. Within the rules prescribed by custom, breach of marital relations was severely punished. No one would think of having sexual relations with one in a class forbidden to himself or to those of his own class. It would thus appear that, within the bounds of their own customs, they were extremely upright. When under certain conditions, chiefly ceremonial, wives were loaned, it was always to those belonging to the group within which the woman might lawfully marry.[1] Among the natives of north central Queensland a competent observer (Roth, p. 184) holds that there is no evidence of the practise of masturbation or of prostitution. The camp as a body punished incest and promiscuity. Howitt, writing of the natives of southeastern Australia, says that the complicated marriage restrictions expressed in a very definite way their sense of proper tribal morality. Here also looseness of sexual relations was punished, although at certain times it was proper to exchange wives and at other times there was unrestricted license among those who were permitted to marry (cf. Fraser).
Of the treatment of wives and children there are conflicting reports, the more recent investigators holding that there was less cruelty than was at first represented. There was, however, doubtless much difference in this respect in different tribes. One early observer (Earp, p. 127) affirms that wives were always secured by force, the girl being seized from ambush, beaten until senseless, and thus carried off by her "lover." Others, in like manner, emphasize the brutality of obtaining wives (Angas, p. 225). Lumholtz says that stealing was and is the most common method. The researches of Spencer and Gillen do not confirm these statements as far as the natives of central Australia are concerned, while Roth refers to the commonness of the practise of stealing wives and eloping among the north central Queensland natives. According to Spencer and Gillen, wives may have been so secured, but such was assuredly not the customary method in central Australia at least. They know of no instances of girls being beaten and dragged away by suitors. It is probable that cases of exceptional cruelty more easily came to the notice of the first travelers and they inferred that such cases were characteristic. The last named authors affirm that the method of securing wives among these tribes was definitely fixed by tribal usage and involved no cruel practises whatsoever. Howitt, the authority upon the southeastern tribes, says that cruelty was often practised upon elopers, but this is manifestly because they had themselves been guilty of breach of tribal morality. Looseness of sexual relations among these tribes originally always met with severe punishment.
- ↑ See also Cameron, Journal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 14, p. 353.
