The origin and development of the moral ideas

by Edward Westermarck

[118] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 51, 264. Idem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 608. Oberländer, loc. cit. p. 279.

[119] Yarrow, loc. cit. p. 99.

[120] Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 394 (people of Vaté, New Hebrides). Polack, op. cit. ii. 93 (Maoris).

[121] Curr, Squatting in Victoria, p. 252. Oberländer, loc. cit. p. 279. Cf. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 259; Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 5.

[122] Charlevoix, History of Paraguay, i. 405.

[123] Hawtrey, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 295.

[124] See Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, pp. 8, 13, 14, 17.

[125] Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 330. Nelson, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xviii. 289 (Eskimo about Behring Strait). Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. 53; ii. 386 (aboriginal tribes of Australia and Tasmania), von Kotzebue, op. cit. iii. 173 (natives of Radack). Tutuila, in. Jour. Polynesian Soc. i. 263 (Line Islanders). Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 140 (Kandbs of Sooradah). Marshall, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, p. 194. Kolben, op. cit. i. 144 (Hottentots). See also Haberland, loc. cit. p. 26; Dimitroff, Die Geringschätzung des menschlichen Lebens und ihre Ursachen bei den Naturvölkern, p. 162 sqq.; Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 115 sqq.

In the chapter dealing with human sacrifice we shall notice that infanticide is in some cases practised as a sacrificial rite. In other cases infants are killed for medicinal purposes, without being sacrificed to any divine being.[126] Thus in the Luritcha tribe, in Central Australia, “it is not an infrequent custom, when a child is in weak health, to kill a younger and healthy one and then to feed the weakling on its flesh, the idea being that this will give to the weak child the strength of the stronger one.”[127] A curious motive for female infanticide is also worth mentioning. That the victims of this practice are most commonly, among several peoples almost exclusively, females,[128] is generally due to the greater usefulness of the men both as food-providers and in war. But the Hakka, a Mongolian tribe in China, often put their girls to a cruel death with a view to inducing thereby the soul to appear the next time in the shape of a boy.[129]

[126] See infra, [p. 458 sq.]