[192] Powers, Tribes of California, p. 410 sq.
[193] Sproat, op. cit. p. 159. Cf. Macfie, Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 468.
[194] Eastman, Dacotah, p. xvii.
[195] Egede, op. cit. p. 124 sq.
[196] Cranz, op. cit. i. 175. See also Dalager, op. cit. p. 69.
[197] Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 335 sq. Cf. Idem, Eskimo Life, p. 159 sq.
[198] Murdoch, ‘Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 41. Seemann, Voyage of “Herald,” ii. 65; Armstrong, Discovery of the North-West Passage, p. 196 (Western Eskimo).
[199] Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, i. 352.
[200] Nelson, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xviii. 293.
The Chukchi[201] and Koriaks[202] consider theft reputable or glorious if committed on a stranger, though criminal if committed in their own communities. The hill people of the Central Provinces of India, whilst observant of the rights of property among themselves, do not scruple to plunder those to whom they are under no obligation of fidelity.[203] The Bataks of Sumatra, who hardly ever steal among themselves, are expert at pilfering from strangers when not restrained by the laws of hospitality, and think it no moral offence to do so.[204] Other tribes in the Malay Archipelago likewise hold it allowable to plunder the same stranger or traveller who, when forlorn and destitute, would find a hospitable reception among them.[205] “The strict honesty,” says Mr. Melville, “which the inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest towards each other is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that, bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal.”[206] In Fiji theft is regarded as no offence at all when practised on a foreigner.[207] The Savage Islanders consider theft from a tribesman a vice, but theft from a member of another tribe a virtue.[208] Of the Sandwich Islanders, again, we are told that they stole from rich strangers on board well loaded ships, whereas Europeans settled among them left their doors and shops unlocked without apprehension.[209] Speaking of the honesty of the Herbert River natives, Northern Queensland, Mr. Lumholtz adds:—“It is, of course, solely among members of the same tribe that there is so great a difference between mine and thine; strange tribes look upon each other as wild beasts.”[210] The aborigines of West Australia “would not consider the act of pillaging base when practised on another people, or carried on beyond the limits of their own tribe.”[211]