[515] Dorsey, "Siouan Sociology," XV. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 242. Compare McGee, "Siouan Indians," ibid., 178, who says elopements are sometimes sanctioned.
[516] Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology," III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 260, 261.
[517] Xavier Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea (London, 1847), 259; cited by McLennan, Studies, I, 15. Cf. Letourneau, op. cit., 119.
[518] Clarke, Travels, I, 433; McLennan, op. cit., I, 15, 16. Cf. Koehne, "Das Recht der Kalmücken," ZVR., IX, 462; Dargun, op. cit., 89; Lubbock, op. cit., 116, 117.
With the Kalmuck case may be compared the following, communicated by Dawson: "One day in 1872, when the writer was on the Ponka Reservation in Dakota, he noticed several young men on horseback, who were waiting for a young girl to leave the mission house. He learned that they were her suitors, and that they intended to run a race with her after they dismounted. Whoever could catch her would marry her; but she would take care not to let the wrong one catch her. La Flèche and Two Crows maintain that this is not a regular Ponka custom, and they are sure that the girl (a widow) must have been a 'mickeda,' or 'dissolute woman.'"—Dawson, "Omaha Sociology," in III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 260.
[519] Bonwick, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, 65, 66.
[520] McLennan, op. cit., I, 38 ff., maintains the prevalence of capture de facto, especially in the form of violent abduction; and he is followed by Lubbock, op. cit., 111-13. According to Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 343 ff., women are sometimes (1) stolen from kindred groups; (2) seized in war between related clans; or (3) captured from alien tribes, elopement being of more frequent, and marriage by exchange or gift of less frequent, occurrence. But it should be remembered that elopement and purchase often go together. Mr. Curr, The Australian Race, I, 108, states that women are very seldom captured from other tribes, the practice being discouraged for fear of stirring up incessant attacks. Cf. Westermarck, Human Marriage, 384, 385; and Kohler, "Das Recht der Australneger," ZVR., VII, 350 ff.
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Cent. Australia, 104, 105, 554-60, name four methods of obtaining wives among these aborigines: (1) charming by means of magic; (2) capture, being of "much rarer occurrence;" (3) elopement, a form "intermediate" between the method of charming and that of capture, often leading to bloody fights; (4) the custom "in accordance with which every woman in the tribe is made Tualcha mura [prospective mother-in-law] with some man. This relation is entered into while the male and female are in tender years; so that the boy is thus betrothed to the prospective, unborn daughter of his Tualcha mura. This is the usual method of obtaining a wife in the Arunta and Ilpirra tribes.
[521] Fison and Howitt, op. cit., 200.
[522] Ibid., 348-55. Cf. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, 34.