In the case of those wild tribes which can only use the forces of nature by way of occupation, the small extent of the field of food is filled up by even a very sparse population. And the principal means by which population is there limited are the following: the overburthening and ill treatment of the women,[244-1] by which the simultaneous rearing of several small children is rendered impossible;[244-2] the inordinately long time that children are kept at the breast;[244-3] the wide-spread practice of abortion;[244-4] numerous cases of murder, especially of the old and weak;[244-5] everlasting war carried on by hunting nations to extend their hunting territory, found in conjunction with cannibalism in many tribes.[244-6] Besides, nations of hunters are frequently decimated by famine and pestilence, the latter generally a consequence of never-ending alternation between gluttony and famine.[244-7]
Most negro nations live in such a state of legal insecurity that it is impossible for a higher civilization with its attendant increase of the means of subsistence to take root among them. At the same time, their sexual impulses are very strong.[244-8] Here the slave-trade constituted the chief preventive of over-population. If this traffic were suppressed simply and no care taken through the instrumentality of commerce and of missions to improve the moral and economical condition of the negroes, the only probable but questionable gain would be that the prisoners made in the numberless wars generated by famine would be murdered instead of being sold.
Nomadic races, with their universal chivalry, are wont to treat their women well enough to enable them bear children without any great hardship.[244-9] But the mere use of natural pasturage can never be carried to great intensity. The transition to agriculture with its greater yield of food but with the diminished freedom by which it is accompanied is a thing to which these warlike men are so averse that it directs the surplus population by the way of emigration into neighboring civilized countries, where they either obtain victory, booty and supremacy, or are rapidly subjugated. Such migrations are a standing chapter in the history of all Asiatic kingdoms; they for a long time disturb declining civilized states, finally conquering them, and begin the same cycle in the new kingdom.[244-10] Where nomadic races see themselves cut off from such migrations their marriages are wont to be unfruitful.[244-11]
[244-1] In New Holland they are beaten by their husbands even on the day of their confinement. Their heads are sometimes covered with countless scars. Collins says that for mere pity one might wish a young woman there death rather than marriage. (Account of N. S. Wales, 560 ff.) South American Indian women actually kill their daughters, with a view of improving the condition of women. (Azara, Reisen in S. Amerika, II, 63.) How the women among the aboriginal inhabitants of North America were oppressed is best illustrated by the absence of ornaments among the women, while the men were very gaudily decked, and carried small hand-mirrors with them. (Prinz Neuwied, N. A. Reise, II, 108 seq.) The early decay of female beauty among all barbarous nations is related to the ill-treatment they receive.
[244-2] The custom of killing one of twins immediately after birth or of burying a child at the breast with its mother, prevails extensively among savage nations. On New Holland, see Collins, 362; on North America, Lettres édifiantes, IX, 140; on the Hottentots, Kolb, I, 144.
[244-3] In many Indian tribes, children are kept at the breast until their fifth year. (Klemm, Kulturgeschichte I, 236; II, 85.) Among the Greenlanders, until the third or fourth year (Klemm, I, 208); among the Laplanders and Tonguses, likewise (Klemm, III, 57); among the Mongols and Kalmucks, longer yet. (Klemm, III, 171.)
[244-4] The New Hollanders have a special word to express the killing of the fœtus by pressure. (Collins.) Among certain of the Brazilian tribes, this is performed by every woman until her 30th year; and in many more the custom prevails for a woman when she becomes pregnant to fast, or to be frequently bled. (Spix und Martius, Reise, I, 261.) Compare Azara., II, 79.
[244-5] On the Bushmen, see Barrow, Journey in Africa, 379 ff.; on the Hottentots, among whom even the wealthy aged are killed by exposure, see Kolb, Caput bonæ Spei, 1719, I, 321; on the Scandinavian, old Germans,[TN 77] Wendes, Prussians, Grimm, D. Rechtsalterthümer, 486 ff.; on the most ancient Romans, Cicero, pro Rosc. Amer, 35, and Festus v. Depontani, Sexagenarios; on Ceos, Strabo, X, 486; on the ancient Indians, Herodot., III, 38, 99; on the Massagetes, Herodot., I, 216; on the Caspians, Strabo, XI, 517, 520. Touching picture of an old man abandoned in the desert, unable to follow his tribe compelled to emigrate for want of food: Catlin, N. American Indians, I, 216 ff. We here see how the killing of helpless old people may be considered a blessing among many nations. Death is also sometimes desired by reason of superstition. For instance, the Figians think that after death they will continue to live of the same age as that at which they died. (Williams, Figi and the Figians, I, 183.) The Germans who died of disease did not get to Walhalla! (W. Wackernagel, Kl. Schriften, I, 16.)
[244-6] On the frightful cannibalism practiced on the upper Nile, see Schweinfurth in Petermann's geogr. Mettheilungen, IV, 138, seq. Australian women seldom outlive their 30th year. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, 449. Many are eaten by the men as soon as they begin to get old. (Transactions of the Ethnolog. Society, New Series, III, 248.) A chief of Figi Islands who died recently had eaten 872 men in his lifetime. Lawry, Visit to the Friendly and Fejee Islands, 1850. Even the more highly civilized[TN 78] Mexicans had preserved this abomination. According to Gomara, Cronica de la N. Espana, 229, there were here from 20,000 to 25,000 human sacrifices a year; according to Torquemada, Indiana, VII, 21, even 20,000 children a year. B. Diaz, on the other hand, puts the number down at 2,500 only. Compare Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, V, 103, 207, 216.
[244-7] The usual coldness, so much spoken of, of the Indians, seems to have an economic rather than a physiological cause. At least, it has also been observed among the Hottentots. (Levillant, Voyage, I, 12 seq.), and under favorable economic conditions the Indians have sometimes increased very rapidly. (Lettres édifiantes, VIII, 243.) Whether the practice in vogue among the Botocuds to carry the organ of generation continually in a rather narrow envelope, or that among the Patachos of lacing the foreskin with the tendrils of a plant, is not a "preventive check," quære. Compare Prinz Neuwied, Bras. Reise, II, 10; I, 226.