Among the natives of the Kimberley District in West Australia, if a young man on reaching a marriageable age can find no wife, he is presented with a boy-wife, known as chookadoo. In this case, also, the ordinary exogamic rules are observed, and the “husband” has to avoid his “mother-in-law,” just as if he were married to a woman. The chookadoo is a boy of five years to about ten, when he is initiated. “The relations which exist between him and his protecting billalu” says Mr. Hardman, “are somewhat doubtful. There is no doubt they have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy.”[22] Such marriages are evidently exceedingly common. As the women are generally monopolised by the older and more influential men of the tribe, it is rare to find a man under thirty or forty who has a wife; hence it is the rule that, when a boy becomes five years old, he is given as a boy-wife to one of the young men.[23] According to Mr. Purcell’s description of the natives of the same district, “every useless member of the tribe” gets a boy, about five or seven years old; and these boys, who are called mullawongahs, are used for sexual purposes.[24] Among the Chingalee of South Australia, Northern Territory, old men are often noticed with no wives but accompanied by one or two boys, whom they jealously guard and with whom they have sodomitic intercourse.[25] That homosexual practices are not unknown among other Australian tribes may be inferred from Mr. Hewitt’s statement relating to South-Eastern natives, that unnatural offences are forbidden to the novices by the old men and guardians after leaving the initiation camp.[26]
[22] Hardman, ‘Notes on some Habits and Customs of the Natives of the Kimberley District,’ in Proceed. Roy. Irish Academy, ser. iii. vol. i. 74.
[23] Ibid. pp. 71, 73.
[24] Purcell, ‘Rites and Customs of Australian Aborigines,’ in Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop. 1893, p. 287.
[25] Ravenscroft, ‘Some Habits and Customs of the Chingalee Tribe,’ in Trans. Roy. Soc. South Australia, xv. 122. I am indebted to Mr. N. W. Thomas for drawing my attention to these statements.
[26] Howitt, ‘Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xiii. 450.
In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them.[27] In an old account of that island, dating from the seventeenth century, it is said: “II y a … quelques hommes qu’ils appellent Tsecats, qui sont hommes effeminez et impuissans, qui recherchent les garçons, et font mine d’en estre amoureux, en contrefaisans les filles et se vestans ainsi qu’elles leurs font des presents pour dormir auec eux, et mesmes se donnent des noms de filles, en faisant les honteuses et les modestes…. Ils haïssent les femmes et ne les veulent point hanter.”[28] Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German South-West Africa[29] and the Diakité-Sarracolese in the French Soudan,[30] but as regards their sexual habits details are wanting. Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons.[31] But among the natives of Africa generally such practices seem to be comparatively rare,[32] except among Arabic-speaking peoples and in countries like Zanzibar,[33] where there has been a strong Arab influence. In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequent among the peasants of Egypt[34] and universal among the Jbâla inhabiting the Northern mountains of Morocco. On the other hand, they are much less common or even rare among the Berbers and the nomadic Bedouins,[35] and it is reported that the Bedouins of Arabia are quite exempt from them.[36]
[27] Lasnet, in Annales d’hygiène et de médecine coloniales, 1899, p. 494, quoted by Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 10. Cf. Rencurel, in Annales d’hygiène, 1900, p. 562, quoted ibid. p. 11 sq. See also Leguével de Lacombe, Voyage à Madagascar, i. 97 sq. Pederasty prevails to some extent in the island of Nossi-Bé, close to Madagascar, and is very common at Ankisimane, opposite to it, on Jassandava Bay (Walter, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 376).
[28] de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar, p. 86.
[29] Rautanen, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 333.