NATIVES FROM HERBERT RIVER.
They usually have two, frequently three, sometimes four wives, and I saw one man who had six. All the wives live in the same hut with their husband. He who has many is envied by the others. “No one should have more than two wives,” said my men to me, who had only one wife apiece, and whose highest ambition it was to double the number. The black man usually has a favourite wife, whom he prefers to the others and treats better. Still, polygamy does not give rise to as many family troubles as one would think, though there may be discord enough among the men on account of the women. As a rule, man and wife apparently get on very well, and the women are not constantly being flogged. I have even seen instances where the husband was governed by his wife, and was scolded and corrected by her, and I have also seen husbands ask their wives for advice; but such cases as these are, of course, very rare.
It must be admitted that sometimes the Australian treats his wives well, even in cases where the husband is the boss, and two of the men who were with me on this expedition were exceptions of this kind.
It was an unusually fine trait in the characters of Willy and Chinaman that they saved part of the provisions which they received from me for their wives. One afternoon, when they wanted to go and see their wives, they asked me to lend them a bag, and soon afterwards I saw them starting off with a large amount of provisions which they had saved. This consideration did not imply any self-denial on their part, for I had given them more than they could eat, but I have since learned that they sometimes did make sacrifices for their wives, and in this instance it may be said to their credit that they gave them what they themselves might have consumed at a later time.
Willy and Chinaman’s wives were very young, one of them being a little girl of about twelve years. As long as the wives are so young I think they receive better treatment than they do later on.
Thus even Australian women may have their honeymoon. These two men were proud of their young wives, because it is, as a rule, difficult for young men to marry before they are thirty years old. The old men have the youngest and best looking wives, while a young man must consider himself fortunate if he can get an old woman.
A woman is delivered over to her husband when she is about nine or ten years old. It is simply ridiculous to see a man with a wife whom one would take to be his young daughter. She lives with her husband, who may be said to rear her, the two being at the same time really married. In this respect the custom existing among the more southern tribes, as, for instance, near Rockhampton, where the woman is not married before she has reached maturity, differs from that on Herbert river; even here, however, some respect is paid to her age, for a twelve-year-old wife is not expected to provide as much as a grown woman. “She runs about too much when she is so little,” said Willy and Chinaman, meaning that she was not as capable as the older ones of finding food. I invariably observed that the grown woman performed her work in an earnest and careful manner, and did not permit herself to be disturbed. It is not uncommon for an Australian to inherit a wife; the custom being that a widow falls to the lot of the brother of the deceased husband. But the commonest way of getting a wife is by giving a sister or a daughter in exchange. Marriage may be either exogamous or endogamous. I have previously stated that it is usual to steal one another’s wives; but it should be added that this, as a rule, occurs among the smaller families or sub-tribes, and but rarely among the larger tribes. A beautiful girl from another tribe was maltreated and killed not far from my headquarters. When I asked why they did not keep her rather than take her life in this manner, they said that they feared the strange tribe, to whose attacks they would continually be exposed if they kept the woman alive. Killing her would give less cause for resentment.
Willy and Chinaman always took into consideration the youth of their wives, and did not make them carry the large burdens usually laid upon women. Of course they had to fetch leaves and grass for the hut, run after water, and find larvæ and fruits, and go on errands in general, but upon the whole they had an easy time of it, and their husbands gave them a considerable amount of food. Surely when they received the bag of food I mentioned before, their husbands must have been prompted by higher motives than simply the idea that the food would make them stronger, and therefore capable of doing more work.
In the evening, when Willy and Chinaman came back from their wives, they brought a basket of fruit from the poisonous palm Cycas media, which is called by the natives kadjĕra. When the nut is cracked, the kernel is subjected to an elaborate process of pounding, roasting, and soaking, until all is changed into a white porridge. Although my men were very fond of my fare, which I shared with them plentifully, still they felt a need of their own food. Kadjera constitutes during this season of the year, from October to December, the principal food of the blacks, tobŏla and koraddan, other fruits, being what they live chiefly upon from January to March. When the time comes for harvesting these fruits, the women set out together to gather and prepare them, and they are frequently absent from the camp for several days.
We had now exerted ourselves a long time, and suffered much fatigue from trying to secure a specimen of boongary, when all the men one day suddenly declared that nothing would induce them to hunt the boongary without a dog, and that there was no use in continuing the expedition. Though this was a great disappointment to me, there was nothing else to do but to return to my headquarters to get a dingo and more provisions.