[109] Ibid. 209 sq.
[110] Gason, ‘Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,’ in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 265.
This extreme disregard of the suffering of guiltless persons is probably not so much due to downright callousness as to a strong feeling of family solidarity. The same feeling is very obvious in those numerous instances in which both the criminal himself and members of his family are implicated in the punishment.
Among the Atkha Aleuts, the punishment for certain offences was sometimes carried so far as to include the wife of the offender.[111] Among the Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, “a person found guilty of having procured, or endeavoured to procure, the death of another through the agency of the gods Huntin and Loko, is put to death, and his family is generally enslaved as well.”[112] Among the Matabele, if a person is declared by the witch-doctor to have caused injury to somebody else by making charms, he “is immediately put to death, his wife and the whole of his family sharing his fate.”[113] Among the Shilluks of the White Nile, “murder is punished with death to the criminal and the forfeiture of wives and children to the Sultan, who retains them in bondage.”[114] Among the Kafirs, in cases of trespasses against the king, the sentence falls not only on the individual, but on his whole house.[115] In Madagascar, the code of native laws, up to recent time, reduced for many offences the culprit’s wife and children to slavery.[116] In some parts of the Malay Archipelago, according to Crawfurd, a father and child are considered almost inseparable, hence when the one is punished the other seldom escapes.[117] In Bali, the law prescribes that for certain kinds of sorcery the offender shall be put to death. It adds, “If the matter be very clearly made out, let the punishment of death be extended to his father and his mother, to his children and to his grand-children; let none of them live; let none connected with one so guilty remain on the face of the land, and let their goods be in like manner confiscated.”[118]
[111] Petroff, ‘Report on Alaska,’ in Tenth Census of the United States, p. 158.
[112] Ellis, Ew̔e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 225.
[113] Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 153.
[114] Petherick, Travels in Central Africa, ii. 3.
[115] Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 445.
[116] Sibree, The Great African Island, p. 181. Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 174, 175, 193.