A similar system with respect to the chief’s authority prevails in the Feejee group. All the young girls in his district are at his mercy; he may take them all as concubines if he pleases. When they are allowed to marry they become slaves, living in complete subjection to their husbands, who flog them at will. They are denied the privilege of entering a temple, and are bought, sold, and exchanged, like cattle. Inclined as they are to licentiousness, they have certain ideas of modesty, and wear a girdle round the loins; any girl seen without this covering is put to death.
In the wild isles of the Kingsmill group in the Western Pacific, polygamy prevails; but more consideration is paid to the female sex than in any other part of that great insular region. All the hard labour is performed by the men; the women pursuing only those occupations which are truly domestic and feminine. Men, indeed, beat their wives, but in a similar manner to the lower classes here. If she be vigorous or bold enough, she returns blow for blow, and there is no appeal for him against her retaliation. Chastity is scarcely esteemed a virtue, nor is it considered essential by a man requiring a wife. After marriage, however, continence is strictly required. The adulteress is either put to death or expelled; but, in spite of these punishments, offences of this class are not uncommon. They are encouraged by the laws which forbid the younger brothers of a chief, who are not holders of land, from marriage; for it may be laid down as an axiom that all restrictions upon lawful intercourse with women multiply illicit connections. The adulteress and the prostitute in the Kingsmill Isles, as elsewhere, form the resources of those to whom celibacy is enjoined.
A wife is not bought, but the parents of both contribute to the household stock of the newly-married pair. It would be indecent in the young man to inquire of the girl’s father what is the amount of her dowry. The marriage ceremony is only a feast, which is continued during three days. Children are sometimes betrothed during infancy, and in this case no marriage ceremony is required: as soon as they are sufficiently old they are sent to live together. When this is not the case, the young man makes an offer first to the girl, and, if accepted, next to her parents; but usually carries her off if they do not consent.
On the neighbouring isle of Maluni all the women who are married have been betrothed during childhood; the rest, without exception, being prostitutes, living with the single men, and receiving payment from them.
This is, as usual, in consequence of the rich men having so many wives that only a few women are left to live in common with the poorer sort. Infanticide is not practised, but abortion is continually procured. A woman has seldom more than two, and never more than three children. After the third is born she invariably calls in the aid of a woman to prevent another birth. This is not attended with any shame, but is, on the contrary, considered prudent; with the unmarried females it is invariable.
In the Samoan or Navigators’ group women now enjoy equal privileges with the men, and no indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes is permitted. Polygamy has been very much checked, but is generally regretted. The people say, with a simplicity which takes away its profanity from the expression, “Why should God be so unreasonable as to require them to give up all their wives for his convenience?” Among the unconverted tribes it still prevails as formerly. Girls are betrothed early, and tabooed until marriage, which preserves the general chastity. Infanticide never occurs. Adultery is severely punished, and seldom committed; the marriage ceremony is only a trifling form of exchanging presents. The power of divorce may be exercised by the husband under certain circumstances, but not by the wife. Altogether their morals are of a superior order; and their libertine disposition exercises itself chiefly in the performance of lascivious dances. Everywhere, however, in these seas, except where the power of the missionaries is supreme, the whaling ships, on arriving at a port, attract numbers of prostitutes, who offer themselves to the sailors at various prices. When Coulter made his voyage, not many years ago, the vessel was assailed at the Kingsmill Islands by dozens of these women, who came, some attended by their fathers, mothers, or brothers, to entice the sailors. Some of them were very beautiful, and nearly naked. When he was in bed, in a house on shore, several young girls came in with scarcely any clothing, and asked him to choose a companion, or “wife.” In other places hundreds of prostitutes swarmed down to the beach, performing the most obscene antics. It was so when La Perouse visited the region; it is so now. It was remarked by Cook, and it was remarked by the most recent voyager.
To pass up and down through that prodigious wilderness of sea, visiting each group in succession, and noticing the peculiar manners of all the various insular communities which there exist, would exceed the limits of an ordinary work. Nor would it continue to interest the reader; for there is an unavoidable monotony in the subject, when extended too greatly in reference to one region. What we have described will show that, among the innumerable islands of the Pacific, the original condition of women, before the partial establishment of Christianity, was pitifully degraded, and that the labours of the missionaries have been fruitful in good results. Wherever Christianity has been received, much outward improvement, at least, is visible. And there is something in this. When crime is perpetrated in secret, it is so because it is dangerous or disgraceful; and in proportion as it is either the one or the other the inducement to it will diminish. There is an immense field open in the Pacific; but the exertions of future missionaries may be encouraged by contemplating the good results which have sprung from the labours of those who have gone before them[61].
Of Prostitution among the North-American Indians.
Various as are the phases of civilization in different parts of the earth, no race is more peculiar than the North American Indian. It is alone. It stands apart from the rest of the human family. It resembles no other. In manners, customs, laws, ideas, and religion, the nation occupies its own ground, related by no tie with any of the innumerable tribes of the human family inhabiting the remaining divisions of the world. It has, indeed, exercised the ingenuity of ethnographical philosophers to trace among the North American Indians an identity of social institutions with the people of ancient Israel; but the comparison appears forced except in a few particulars, which seem rather matters of accident, and by no means the prominent characteristics of the Red or the Jewish race.
Until the complete establishment of a civilized society in North America, and before the settlement of peace, our knowledge of the Indian race was most imperfect. We depended on the relations of certain imaginative travellers, who wrote not so much to inform as to startle the reader—a practice not altogether abandoned at the present day. Carver, indeed, with a few others, brought home honest accounts of what he saw, but was not always careful to separate that from what he heard; and thus, even his picture is strangely coloured in some of its details. Later and more scrupulous travellers, however, have investigated the manners of the Indian race, and our acquaintance with it is gradually becoming familiar. Catlin and the various historians have added to our knowledge; so that a clear outline, at least of their social institutions, may be drawn. There are three classes of writers on the subject:—those who paint the red man as poetry incarnate; those who describe him as a vile and drunken barbarian; and those who have the sense to discriminate between the Indian of the seaport town corrupted in the dram-shop, and the Indian of the woods, displaying the original characteristics of his race. It is from such authorities we shall draw our view of the condition of women and the state of morals among them.