[9] Salvado, Mémoires historiques sur l’Australie, p. 279. For other similar statements referring to the Australian aborigines, see Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System, p. 11.
[11] Nieboer, op. cit. p. 17.
[12] Ibid. p. 18.
[13] Roth, Ethnol. Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, pp. 141, 176.
[14] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 50.
[15] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 359. Stirling, Report of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, Anthropology, p. 36.
[16] Hill and Thornton, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 7.
[17] Calvert, Aborigines of Western Australia, p. 31.
Other instances may be added to show that the so-called absolute authority of husbands over their wives is not to be taken too literally. Of the Guiana Indians Sir E. F. Im Thurn observes:—“The woman is held to be as completely the property of the man as his dog. He may even sell her if he chooses.”[18] But in another place the same authority admits not only that the women in a quiet way may have a considerable influence with the men, but that, “even if the men were—though this is in fact quite contrary to their nature—inclined to treat them cruelly, public opinion would prevent this.”[19] Of the Plains Indians of the United States Colonel Dodge writes:—“The husband owns his wife entirely. He may abuse her, beat her, even kill her without question. She is more absolutely a slave than any negro before the war of rebellion.” But on the following page we are told that custom gives to every married woman of the tribes “the absolute right to leave her husband and become the wife of any other man, the sole condition being that the new husband must have the means to pay for her.”[20] Among the Chippewyans the women are said to be “as much in the power of the men as any other articles of their property,” although, at the same time, “they are always consulted, and possess a very considerable influence in the traffic with Europeans, and other important concerns.”[21] Among the Mongols a woman is “entirely dependent on her husband”; yet “in the household the rights of the wife are nearly equal to those of the husband.”[22] Dr. Paulitschke tells us that among the Somals, Danakil, and Gallas, a wife has no rights whatever in relation to her husband, being merely a piece of property; but subsequently we learn that she is his equal, and “a mistress of her own will.”[23] We must certainly not, like Mr. Spencer, conclude that where women are exchangeable for oxen or other beasts they are “of course” regarded as equally without personal rights.[24] The bride-price is a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl, and a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage;[25] it does not eo ipso confer on the husband absolute rights over her. With reference to certain tribes in South-Eastern Africa, the Rev. James Macdonald observes:—“A man obtains a wife by giving her father a certain number of cattle. This, though often called such, is not purchase in the usual sense of the word. The woman does not become a chattel. She cannot be resold or ill-treated beyond well-defined legal limits. She retains certain rights to property and an interest in the cattle paid for her. They are a guarantee for the husband’s good behaviour.”[26] There are even peoples among whom the husband’s authority hardly exists, although he has had to pay for his wife.[27]