CHAPTER III
THE KILLING OF TWINS—OTHER EXCUSES FOR INFANTICIDE—RESTRICTING THE FAMILY—ECONOMIC REASONS ACKNOWLEDGED—DYING OF DESPAIR.
IT has seemed necessary to dwell thus at length on the conditions among the Papuans and allied tribes as it appeared to me important that the very beginnings of the family should be understood. The general agreement of ethnologists as to the low standing of the Papuans justifies, I believe, our assuming them to be as near the point of culture of our neolithic (or paleolithic) ancestors as it is possible to come.
From now on the course is upward. Strange as it may seem, the lowest tribes are less “human,” both in the matter of offspring and in the matter of sentiment of love for women, than some of the beasts and birds,[36] but having touched that depth, the next step brings us in contact with feelings that, in a way, begin to approximate our own.
In the stages above the Papuans there is some affection for the woman; her position is nearer to that of wife and less that of captive. In consequence there is a more kindly regard for the children that she bears. Now begins the development of the parental affection. It is, however, confined to the female at first; “to this fact, rather than to doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such communities of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.”[37]
Man, no longer relying on his own cannibalistic brute force to do with his progeny as he wishes, invents reasons for doing away with his burdensome offspring.
We have already seen that the Papuans restricted their families to two children, when it was possible. As late as the middle of the seventeenth century, Dapper reported that in Benin no twins were found, as it was regarded as a sign of dishonour for a woman to have twins.[38]
Among the Arunta tribes in Central Australia, twins are “immediately killed as something which is unnatural.”[39] Among northern tribes they “are usually destroyed as something uncanny.”[40] With the Kaffirs, it was found that “when twins are born, one is usually neglected and allowed to die.”[41] Of the western Victorian tribes we learn that “twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weaker twin child, irrespective of sex.”[42]