The Australian Dieyerie, we are told, would for a mere trifle kill their dearest friend.[4] In Fiji there is an “utter disregard of the value of human life.”[5] A Masai will murder his friend or neighbour in a fight over a herd of captured cattle, and “live not a whit the less merrily afterwards.”[6] Among the Bachapins, a Bechuana tribe, murder “excites little sensation, excepting in the family of the person who has been murdered; and brings, it is said, no disgrace upon him who has committed it; nor uneasiness, excepting the fear of their revenge.”[7] The Oráons of Bengal “are ready to take life on very slight provocation,” and Colonel Dalton doubts whether they see any moral guilt in it.[8] Some of the Himalayan mountaineers are reported to put men to death merely for the satisfaction of seeing the blood flow and of marking the last struggles of the victim.[9] Among the Pathans, on the north-western frontier of the Punjab, “there is hardly a man whose hands are unstained,” and each person “counts up his murders.”[10]
[4] Gason, ‘Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,’ in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 258.
[5] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, p. 115.
[6] Johnston, Kilima-njaro Expedition, p. 419.
[7] Burchell, Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, ii. 554.
[8] Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 256.
[9] Fraser, Journal of a Tour through the Himālā Mountains, p. 267.
[10] Temple, quoted by Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 343. For other instances of the indifference of savages to human life, see Egede, Description of Greenland, p. 123; Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 177; Holm, ‘Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,’ in Meddeleser om Grönland, x. 87, 179 sq.; Coxe, Russian Discoveries between Asia and America, p. 257 (Aleuts of Unalaska); Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamtschatka, p. 204; Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 294; Boyle, Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo, p. 116 (Malays); Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 262 (aborigines of New Britain); Scaramucci and Giglioli, ‘Notizie sui Danakil,’ in Archivio per antropologia e la etnologia, xiv. 26; Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, ii. 310 (Gowane); Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 286 (Bongo); Arnot, Garenganze, p. 71 (Barotse); Tuckey, Expedition to Explore the River Zaire, p. 383 (Congo natives); Waul, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 105 (Bolobo).
On the other hand, there are uncivilised peoples among whom homicide or murder is said to be hardly known.
Among the Omahas, “before liquor was introduced there were no murders, even when men quarrelled.”[11] Captain Lyon could learn of no instances of manslaughter having ever occurred among the Eskimo of Igloolik.[12] In Tutuila, of the Samoa group, according to Brenchley, there had been but one case of assassination in the course of twenty years.[13] The Veddahs of Ceylon know of manslaughter only as a punishment.[14] The Bedouin of the Euphrates, says Mr. Blunt, “is essentially humane, and never takes life needlessly. If he has killed a man in war he rather conceals the fact than proclaims it aloud, while murder or even homicide is almost unknown among the tribes.”[15] Among the Bakwiri, in Cameroon, Zoller never heard of any person having killed a member of his own community.[16] Murders, says Caillié, “are rare among the Bambaras, and never committed by the Mandingoes.”[17] Among the Wanika “wilful cold-blooded murders are almost unknown.”[18] Among the Basutos perfect safety is enjoyed “on roads where the traveller might have been robbed a hundred times over without the least hope of aid, and in houses where the doors and windows have neither bolts nor bars,” and cases of murder are very rare.[19]