Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

In Kamschatka the original etiquette was for women to cover their faces with some kind of veil when they went out, and if they met any man on the road whom they could not avoid, to stand with their backs to him until he had passed. They would also, if a stranger entered their huts, turn their face to the wall or else hide behind a curtain of nettles.[301] Kamschatka, however, being the last place where one would have looked for such prudery, it is possible that the feelings of the Greenlanders were also operative in the marriage customs of the Kamschadals. These were rather extraordinary, the form of capture being anything but a mere symbol for an aspirant to matrimony. Such an one, having looked for a bride in some neighbouring village (seldom in his own), would offer his services to the parent for a fixed term, and after some time would ask for leave to seize the daughter for his bride. This obtained, he would seek to find her alone or ill-attended, the marriage being complete on his tearing from her some of the coats, fish-nets, and straps with which from the day of proposal she was constantly enveloped. This was never an easy matter, for she was never left alone a single instant, her mother and a number of old women accompanying her everywhere, sleeping with her, and never losing her out of sight upon any pretext whatever. Any attempt to execute his task entailed upon the suitor such kicking, hair-pulling, and face-scratching, at the hands of this female body-guard, that sometimes a year or more would elapse before he was entitled to call himself a husband; nay, there is record of one pertinacious bachelor who found himself at the end of seven years, in consequence of such treatment, not a husband, but a cripple. If he were disheartened by repeated failures he incurred great disgrace and lost all claim to the alliance; and if the bride continued obdurate from real dislike, he was ultimately expelled from the village.[302] But, however well-disposed towards him she might be, she had always to simulate refusal as a point of honour, and proof was always required ‘that she was taken by surprise and made fruitless efforts to defend herself.’[303]

The Bushmen, again, generally betroth their daughters as children without consulting them; but should a girl grow up unbetrothed her consent to be married is as necessary as that of her parents to her lover’s suit, ‘and on this occasion his attentions are received with an affectation of great alarm and disinclination on her part.’[304]

If, then, Greenlanders, Kamschadals, Thlinkeet Indians, and even Bushmen, carry their notions of propriety to the extent asserted by eye-witnesses, it is scarcely surprising to find very similar rules of etiquette among the more advanced Zulus of Africa or Bedouins of Arabia in their wedding ceremonials; especially when we are told that in some parts Bedouin women sit down and turn their backs to any man they cannot avoid on the road, and refuse to take anything from the hands of a stranger.[305] ‘The principal idea of a Kaffir wedding seems to be to show the great unwillingness of the girl to be transformed into a wife,’ for which reason a Zulu wife simulates several attempts to escape.[306] Both the Arabs of Sinai and the Aenezes enact the form of capture to the greatest perfection; among the latter ‘the bashful girl’ runs from the tent of one friend to another till she is caught at last, whilst among the former she acquires permanent repute in proportion to her struggles of resistance. And if a Sinai Arab marries a bride belonging to a distant tribe, she is placed on a camel and led to her husband’s camp escorted by women: during which procession ‘decency obliges her to cry and sob most bitterly.’[307] Also, among the modern Egyptians, ‘if the bridegroom is young, one of his friends has to carry him part of the way to the hareem, to show his bashfulness.’[308] So that where the carrying of the bride or bridegroom is not merely due to the same feelings that caused our own ancestors to add solemnity to their weddings by such singular sights as blue postilions, it appears in many cases to be nothing more than a prudish way of saying, that matrimony is and ought to be an estate forced upon reluctant victims, not entered upon by voluntary agents. The early Christian Church said the same; but where the saint and the savage meet in sentiment they differ in expression.

Were it not for some of the concomitant and incidental signs, the bowed or veiled head, the dishevelled hair, it might be said that the positive statements of Cranz, Egede, Burchell, and other writers arose from malobservation or from pure mistake. This objection, therefore, is of little avail; and however difficult it may be to account for the presence of such sentiments among tribes of so rude a type as the Esquimaux, the Kamschadals, and the Bushmen, the fact remains, that in the cases above cited the ‘form of capture’ is explicable as having its origin in primitive conceptions of what is due to delicacy; as being, in fact, the original expression of them in the language of pantomime so common to savages.[309] And the presence of such feelings of delicacy may be often suspected, even where they are not directly mentioned, in the ceremony of capture; as, for instance, in the African kingdom of Futa, where the form of capture prevails in the usual way, but where we have the indirect evidence that for months after marriage the bride never stirs abroad without a veil, and that Futa wives are ‘so bashful that they never permit their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their marriage.’[310]

There is, however, no reason to press this explanation too far, nor to account it the only efficient cause. Quite as potent, and perhaps a more natural one, is dislike and disinclination on the part of the bride, which compels the bridegroom to resort to force. The conditions of savage life are a sufficient explanation of this, irrespective of any old custom of capturing wives out of a tribe by reason of a prejudice against marrying within it. A man proposes personally or mediately to the parents or relations of the woman he fancies for a wife; if they consent to accept him as a son-in-law and they agree as to a price, there is a reserved stipulation on the part of the vendor: ‘If you can get her.’ In Tartary, in the thirteenth century, after such a bargain, the daughter would flee to one of her kinsfolk to hide; the father would say to the husband, ‘My daughter is yours; take her wheresoever you can find her.’ The suitor, seeking with his friends till he found her, would then take her by force and carry her home.[311] Here the girl’s reluctance is not so much feigned as overridden, and is only so far formal in that it is entirely disregarded. Often it is no mere ceremony on her part, but a natural and genuine protest—a protest against being treated as a chattel, not as an individual—but a protest which, opposed as it is to parental persuasion and marital force, tends, as far as the husband is concerned, to pass into the region of the merest ceremony.

A few instances will suffice to illustrate the co-operation of dislike and force in savage matrimony. In some Californian tribes the consent of the girl is necessary, although ‘if she violently opposes the match she is seldom compelled to marry or to be sold.’ Among the Neshenam tribe of the same people ‘the girl has no voice whatever in the matter, and resistance on her part merely occasions brute force to be used by her purchaser.’[312] So in the Utah country, where ‘families and tribes living at peace would steal each others’ wives and children and sell them as slaves,’ a wife is usually bought of her parents; but should she refuse, ‘the warrior collects his friends, carries off the recusant fair,’ and thus espouses her.[313] So among the Navajoes ‘the consent of the father is absolute, and the one so purchased assents or is taken away by force.’[314] It is the same with the Horse Indians of Patagonia. There, as elsewhere, it is common for a cacique to have several wives, and poor men only one, marriages being ‘made by sale more frequently than by mutual agreement.’ The price is often high, and girls are betrothed without their knowledge in infancy and married without their consent at maturity. But ‘if a girl dislikes a match made for her she resists; and although dragged forcibly to the tent of her lawful owner, plagues him so much by her contumacy that he at last turns her away, and sells her to the person on whom she has fixed her affections.’[315] In Africa, Yorubas, Mandingoes, and Koossa Kafirs follow the custom of infant betrothal (and it is worth notice as being quite in accordance with the theory that kinship was originally traced through mothers, that Yoruba, Mandingo, and Loango Africans, and some Esquimaux tribes, regard the mother’s consent only as necessary to an engagement);[316] but sometimes a Yoruba girl, when the time comes for her to fulfil her mother’s engagement, preferring some other than the intended husband, absolutely refuses to co-operate. ‘Then she is either teased and worried into submission or the husband agrees to receive back her dowry and release her.’[317] A Mandingo girl must either marry a suitor chosen for her or remain ever afterwards unmarried. Should she refuse, the lover is authorized by the parents ‘by the laws of the country to seize on the girl as his slave.’[318] If a Koossa girl, bound by the contract of her parents, ‘makes any attempt at resisting the union, corporal punishment is even resorted to, in order to compel her submission.’[319]

It appears, therefore, that resistance on the part of the bride in many cases procures her ultimate release, so that her wishes in the matter are always an element to be considered. In all contracts of marriage, to which she is seldom a party, there is accordingly, in the nature of things, an implied covenant that a daughter shall be so far allowed a voice in the matter that if she can make good her resistance she shall not become the property of the intending purchaser. The frequency with which it must have occurred that a girl would defeat a match she disliked by flight, elopement, or resistance, would tend to create a sort of common law right, for all daughters sold in marriage to a certain ‘run’ for their independence;[320] and the amusement naturally connected with the exercise of such a right would help to preserve the custom in a modified form; so that, however slight in some cases might be the modesty of the bride or her dislike of her suitor, her friends, if only for the sport of the thing, would gladly enact the fiction of an outrage to be resented, of a woman to be defended. In all the interesting cases of the form of capture cited by Sir John Lubbock it appears that in eight (that is, among the Mantras, the Kalmucks, the Fuejians, the Fijians, the New Zealanders, the Papuans of New Guinea, the Philippine Islanders, and the African Kafirs and Futas), the ceremony affords the bride a chance of an effectual escape from a match she dislikes. Should she fly, should she hide successfully, or should her friends defend her successfully, the contract between her parents and suitor becomes null and void; or sometimes, as among the Zulus and Bassutos, the price for her is raised.[321] And it is remarkable with what precision the rules of the chase have been elaborated in many instances; as by the Oleepas of Central California, among whom, if a bride is found twice out of three times, she is legally the seeker’s; and the bridegroom, if he fails the first time, is allowed a second and final attempt a few weeks later. ‘The simple result is, that if the girl likes him she hides where she is easily found; but if she disapproves of the match a dozen Indians cannot find her.’[322]

Other feelings would also be present to sustain the pretence of wife-capture. For the savage parent, in parting with his daughter for a favourable settlement, does not act from gratuitous cruelty; he provides for her future as best he can, sometimes in accordance with her wishes, sometimes against them. As a rule marriage for her is a change for the worse; but if she does not dislike the bridegroom to the extent of availing herself of her prescriptive and real chance of escape, her natural feelings for her parents and relations would make it incumbent on her at least to affect a dutiful regret at leaving them (in cases where she does), by a half-bashful, half-serious resistance. It would be difficult to find a case of capture, whether in form or in fact, which is not readily explicable as simply the outcome of the natural affections and their protest against so artificial an arrangement as marriage by purchase; for with marriage by purchase the form of capture always co-exists, so that capture was not necessarily an earlier mode of marriage than that by purchase or agreement. The mock fights between the party of the bride and that of the bridegroom among so many Indian tribes;[323] the dances, lasting several days, during which it is the business of the squaws to keep the bridegroom at a distance from his bride, among the Tucanas of South America;[324] the similar duty which devolves on the matrons of the tribe at Sumatran weddings;[325] the mock skirmishes at Arab weddings, and the efforts of the negresses to keep the bridegroom away from the camel of the bride;[326] these are surely more intelligible, as arising from the rude ideas and customs of savage life, than as being survivals, artificially preserved, of a time when the bride was really fought for or stolen; and if such explanation is sufficient, should it not logically be admitted before resorting to the hypothesis of a practice whose very existence is rather an inference from such ceremonies than a cause observable in actual operation?

To pass to a third and quite distinct class of marriages by capture, in which the essential element is not maidenly bashfulness nor real repugnance, but the voluntary elopement of a girl with her lover, in defeat of a prior contract of betrothal. The large part which questions of profit and property play in savage betrothals can never be lost sight of, in estimating the causes of real wife abduction, either within or without the tribe. The primary conception of a daughter is a saleable possession, a source of profit, to her clan in marketings with other clans or to her parents in their bargains in her own clan. This fact alone militates against the supposition of the wide prevalence of female infanticide in primitive communities, the prejudice being rather in favour of killing the boys than the girls; not solely for the use of the latter as slaves and labourers, but for the price which even among Fuejians or Bushmen is payable in some form or another for their companionship as wives. Abiponian mothers spared their girls oftener than their boys, because their sons when grown up would want wherewithal to purchase a wife, and so tend to impoverish them; whilst their daughters would bring them in money by their sale in that capacity.[327] To raise the price by limiting the supply was also the reason why the Guanas of America preferred to bury their girls alive rather than their boys.[328]

From this view of daughters as saleable commodities comes polygamy for the rich, polyandry, or illicit elopement, for the poor. Among the Hos of India so high at one time was the price in cattle placed by parents on their daughters that the large number of adult unmarried girls became a ‘very peculiar feature in the social state of every considerable village of the Kohlán.’ What, then, was the result? That ‘young men counteracted the machinations of avaricious parents against the course of true love by forcibly carrying off the girl,’ thus avoiding extortion by running away with her. The parents in such cases had to submit to terms proposed by arbitrators; but at last wife-abduction became so common that it could only be checked by the limitation by general consent of the number of cattle payable at marriage.[329]