There are, of course, many cases where the habit of association grows into mutual affection, but one rarely notices the sacrificing love between man and woman such as is everywhere apparent between a parent and a child. In the former case the intercourse is always touched with a suspicion of subserviency on the part of the woman. Indeed, one cannot fail to be led to the belief that in their conjugal relationship club-rule is the dominant factor. One must not suppose that the weaker sex always submits to this rule without demur or without any resistance at all. On the contrary, she is usually not backward in making her voice felt in indignation, even in defiance of the punishment, which must inevitably, sooner or later, be meted out to her. Whilst the chastisement is proceeding, the husband prefers to sit aside in dignified silence, with his face turned away from the querulous gin, until the bombardment of obscene epithets becomes so strong that he considers drastic intervention necessary, if for no other reason than in the interests of peace and the restitution of order in his camp.
In spite of the strict marriage laws, it occasionally happens that a man elopes with a girl who is outside the permissible inter-marrying limits. Such elopements are the nearest to a selective love-match that it is possible to find among the aborigines. The couple are well aware of the fact that they are committing a serious offence, and that every effort will be made by the tribe to capture them so that they may be punished. If they are caught, both man and girl will be severely battered about with sticks and clubs, as a result of which either or both may die. If the man survives, he will be called upon to make heavy payments of foodstuffs, implements, weapons, ochre, and many other useful commodities to both the girl’s father and the man to whom the girl would have passed in the ordinary course of events. If such couples manage to avoid detection, the fear of punishment, which awaits them, keeps them from returning amongst their tribe, and so they might roam about alone or befriend themselves with a strange tribe, and keep away from their own people for years, or, perhaps, never return. If the absconding gin has been married to another, the offence is not considered so serious. There are, for that matter, usually one or more women in each tribe who are habitually lax in morals. These women are scorned by the other members of the tribe, and are publicly recognized as prostitutes. It goes without saying that these women are the legal property of some of the tribesmen, and for that reason any other men, who are not in the relationship of tribal husbands to the women but cohabit with them, are more or less ostracized, even to the extent of total exclusion from any consequential council meetings of the men.
Apart from these public profligates, the aboriginal women are laudably loyal to the moral principles which have been taught them. Ordinarily a woman is true to her individual husband, but there are certain religious ceremonies during which other men, who are of the same matrimonial division, may have legal access to her; these are her tribal husbands.
It is an expression of goodwill and friendship towards a visitor to offer him one or two of the young married women, who might live with him during his stay in camp. If the visitor appreciates the hospitality of the tribe, he receives the women and, in his turn, offers presents to the old men and to the husbands of his temporary consorts. A similar consideration is extended to men who, through a scarcity of the opposite sex in their particular group, have remained single. Under extraordinary circumstances, arrangements are very casually made for a man to associate with a gin who is not of his recognized class; but in this case it is compulsory to obtain the sanction of the medicine-man, who, after administering some of his sorcery, generally consents to the union.
An exchange of wives is not an uncommon event among two tribesmen, provided always that relationships on both sides are within the subdivisions allowed to inter-marry by law. This interchange takes place mostly between childless couples; when there is a family of young children one generally finds that the parents remain together until, at any rate, the children have grown up.
Those groups of a tribal class-organization, which are not permitted to inter-marry, usually consider themselves in the position of blood-relatives to each other, that is, as brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers; the forbidden groups of their fathers’ and mothers’ are, however, not necessarily excluded to the children who look upon the members of those groups as the brothers and sisters, respectively, of their parents.
PLATE XXVIII
1. Tooth-rapping ceremony.