Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

An exactly analogous custom as regards the bride’s behaviour at her wedding is sufficiently well known; and if it has been correctly interpreted as the survival, in form and symbol, of a system of capturing wives from a neighbouring tribe, there must have been a time when among the Garos a husband could only have been obtained in a similar way. The improbability of this suggests the possibility of some other explanation underlying the reluctance, feigned or real, with which it is common in savage life for a girl to enter upon the paths of matrimony, and for the show of resistance with which her friends oppose her departure with her husband.

In many instances this peculiar feature of primitive life appears as simply the outcome of feelings and affections which are the same, howsoever different in expression, in savage as in civilised lands. The conviction that there is an utter absence of anything like love between children and their parents, or between men and women, in the ruder social communities, is so strong and has been so often dwelt upon, that in speculations on this subject there is a tendency and danger of altogether overlooking the influence of natural affection in the formation of customs. It is needful, therefore, to preface the present chapter with a brief reference to the express statements of missionaries and travellers; for if it can be shown that there is such a thing as affection between parents and children, the inference is fair that neither would parents part with their children nor children leave their parents without mutual regret, when the children are married.

Of the Fijians, so famous for their cannibalism and their parenticide, it is declared to be ‘truly touching to see how parents are attached to their children and children to their parents.’[250] Among the Tongans, who would sacrifice their children cruelly for the recovery of the sick, children were ‘taken the utmost care of.’[251] The New Zealanders were not guiltless of infanticide, yet ‘some of them, and especially the fathers, seemed fond of their children.’[252] The Papuans of New Guinea manifested ‘respect for the aged, love for their children, and fidelity to their wives.’[253] In Africa, Mungo Park says of the Mandingoes: ‘The maternal affection is everywhere conspicuous among them, and creates a corresponding return of tenderness in the child.’[254] Among the Eastern Ethiopians were women who lived a wild life in the woods; yet the testimony is the same: ‘However barbarous these people be by nature, they yet are not devoid of feeling for their children; these they rear with nicest care, and for their provision strive to amass what property they can.’[255] Yoruba ‘children are much beloved by both parents.’[256] Love for their children unites the greater number of the Bushmen for their whole lives.[257] In North America the Thlinkeet Indians ‘treat their wives and children with much affection and kindness.’[258] Among the Greenlanders, says Cranz, ‘the bonds of filial and parental love seem stronger than amongst any other nations.’ Their fondness for their children is great; parents seldom let them out of their sight, and mothers often throw themselves in the water to save a child from drowning. In return ingratitude towards their aged parents is ‘scarcely ever exemplified among them.’[259] Of the natives of Australia, Sir G. Grey says that they ‘are always ardently attached to their children,’ and similar testimony has been borne to the parental affection even of the Tasmanians.[260]

But, lest it should be thought that these evidences are drawn from the higher savagery, let appeal be made to the case of savages who confessedly belong to the lowest known types of mankind, the Andaman Islanders, the Veddahs, and the Fuejians.

In reference to the first it is said that ‘the parents are fond of their children, and the affection is reciprocal.’[261] The Veddahs are not only ‘kind and constant to their wives,’ but ‘fond of their children;’[262] whilst Mr. Parker Snow saw among the Fuejians ‘many instances of warm love and affection for their children;’[263] so that if in the sequel we find daughters at their marriage displaying a real or simulated repugnance to their fate, the fact need not appear to us of such extreme mystery as it otherwise might, nor as one in which natural affection can play no part.

A recent Italian writer on the primitive domestic state says that ‘la passione viva d’amore che suole attribuirsi ai popoli primitivi ... é una pura illusione.’[264] But happily for the primitive populations, their lot is far from being really thus unbrightened by love, though with them, as with the rest of the world, it is a frequent cause of wars and quarrels, interfering especially with the savage custom of infant betrothal, and leading to elopements in defeat of parental contracts. It is peculiar to neither sex. A Tahitian girl, love-stricken, but not encouraged, led her friends, by her threats of suicide, to persuade the object of her affections to make her his wife.[265] The Tongans had a pretty legend of a young chief, who, having fallen in love with a maiden already betrothed to a superior, saved her, when she was condemned to be killed with the other relations of a rebel, by hiding her in a cavern he had found, whence they finally effected their joint escape to Fiji.[266] New Zealand mythology abounds in love-tales. There is the tale of Hinemoa and Tutanekai, which begins with stolen glances, and ends in a nocturnal swim on the part of Hinemoa to the island, whither the music of her lover guided her. There is the tale also of Takaranji and Raumahora—of Takaranji, who, though besieging her father in his fortress, consented to present both of them with water in their distress. ‘And Takaranji gazed eagerly at the young girl, and she too looked eagerly at Takaranji ... and as the warriors of the army of Takaranji looked on, lo, he had climbed up and was sitting at the young maiden’s side; and they said among themselves, “O comrades, our lord Takaranji loves war, but one would think he likes Raumahora almost as well.’”[267]

Nor would it be fair to argue, because in most savage tribes the hard work of life devolves upon the women, that therefore there is an entire absence of affection in savage households, whether polygamous or otherwise, during their continuance. It is scarcely a hundred years ago that in Caithness ‘the hard work was chiefly done, and the burdens borne, by the women; and if a cottier lost a horse, it was not unusual for him to marry a wife as the cheapest substitute.’[268] The Fuejians, whose condition Captain Weddell felt compelled to describe as that of the lowest of mankind, and whose women did all the work, gathering the shellfish, managing the canoes, and building the wigwams, are said to have shown ‘a good deal of affection for their wives,’ and care for their offspring.[269] Among the Fijians, who made their women carry all the heavy loads and do all the field-work, and who remonstrated with the Tongans for their more humane treatment of them, not only have widows been known to kill themselves if their relatives refused to do the duty which custom laid upon them—namely, of killing them at their husbands’ burial—but ‘even widowers, in the depth of their grief, have frequently terminated their existence when deprived of a dearly beloved wife.’[270] In India, Abor husbands treated their wives with a consideration that appeared ‘singular in so rude a race.’[271] In America the lot of a woman was generally one of hardship; yet, says Schoolcraft, ‘the gentler affections have a much more extensive and powerful exercise among the Indians than is generally believed.’[272] Carib husbands are said to have had much love for their wives, like as it was to a straw fire, except with respect to the first wife they married.[273] Of the Thlinkeet Indians, characterised by great cruelty to prisoners and other marks of much barbarity, it is said that ‘there are few savage nations in which the women have greater influence or command greater respect.’[274] ‘It is one of the fine traits,’ says Schweinfurth of the cannibal Niam-Niam, ‘that they display an affection for their wives which is unparalleled among natives of so low a grade ... a husband will spare no sacrifice to redeem an imprisoned wife.’[275] Though against this evidence there is much of a darker character to be set, the above instances will suffice to demonstrate the real existence, the real operation, among some of the rudest representatives of our species, of ordinary feelings of love and affection. As in geology so in ethnology it holds true, that the action of known existing causes is sufficient to account for much that is obscure in the past and for all that is strange in the present.

Having so far cleared the ground as to be justified in postulating the existence of ordinary feelings of affection between parents and children, and between men and women, as veræ causæ, or real forces, even in the lowest known savage life, let us pass to the inference that at no time are those feelings more likely to be called into play than at a time when the daughter of a family is about to leave her parents, and perhaps her clan, to live henceforth with a man whom she may not even know, or knows only to dislike.[276] In China, where on the wedding-day the bride is locked up in a sedan-chair, and the key and chair consigned to the bridegroom, who may not see her before that day, a traveller once witnessed a separation between the bride and her family. ‘All the family appeared much affected, particularly the women, who sobbed aloud; the father shed tears, and the daughter was with difficulty torn from the embraces of her parents and placed in the sedan-chair.’[277] It seems more likely in this case that the reluctance and resistance were real, than that they were merely the symbols, conventionally observed, of a system of wife-capture. But in many instances it is impossible to distinguish a real from a feigned grief. A witness of the marriage ceremonies among the Tartars, who describes the bride and her girl friends as raising piteous lamentations beforehand, says that the poor girl either was or appeared to be a most unwilling victim.[278]

Jenkinson, one of the earliest English travellers in Russia, noticed the same custom there, but thought it affectation. On the day of marriage the bride would in nowise consent to leave the house to go to church, but would resist, strive, and weep, only suffering herself to be led there by force, with her face covered, to hide her simulated grief, and making a great noise, as though she were sobbing and weeping, all the way to the scene of her wedding.[279] But a modern French writer ascribes some reality to the custom, mentioning that traditional songs are still sung in which the young bride addresses words of regret and sorrow to her parents in the midst of her preparations for the nuptial feast.[280] Before this last ceremony she is accustomed to go the round of her village, with a woman who calls for the sympathy of her hearers for the young girl whose carefree existence is about to be exchanged for the troubles and anxieties of married life.[281]