Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2Grey, George
History
Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2
Grey, George
Natural history -- Australia -- Western Australia; Western Australia -- Discovery and exploration
The crime of adultery is punished severely, often with death. Anything
approaching the crime of incest, in which they include marriages out of
the right line, they hold in the greatest abhorrence, closely
assimilating in this last point with the North American Indians, of whom
it is said in the Archaeologia Americana:
They profess to consider it highly criminal for a man to marry a woman
whose totem (family name) is the same as his own, and they relate
instances when young men, for a violation of this rule, have been put to
death by their own nearest relatives.*
(*Footnote. Volume 2 page 110 quoting from Tanner's Narrative page 313.)
And again: According to their own account, the Indian nations were
divided into tribes for no other purpose than that no one might ever,
either through temptation or mistake, marry a near relation, which at
present is scarcely possible, for whoever intends to marry must take a
person of a different tribe.*
(*Footnote. Ibid.)
The same feeling was remarked by Dobrizhoffer in South America; for,
speaking of an interview with a native tribe to whom he was preaching, he
says:
The old man, when he heard from me that marriage with relations was
forbidden, exclaimed, "Thou sayest well, father, such marriages are
abominable; but that we know already." From which I discovered that
incestuous connexions are more execrable to these savages than murder or
robbery.*
(*Footnote. Account of the Abipones Volume 1 page 69.)
PUNISHMENT OF SECONDARY OFFENCES. ORDEAL AND PUNISHMENT FOR OTHER
TRANSGRESSIONS.
Any other crime may be compounded for by the criminal appearing and
submitting himself to the ordeal of having spears thrown at him by all
such persons as conceive themselves to have been aggrieved, or by
permitting spears to be thrust through certain parts of his body; such as
through the thigh, or the calf of the leg, or under the arm. The part
which is to be pierced by a spear is fixed for all common crimes, and a
native who has incurred this penalty sometimes quietly holds out his leg
for the injured party to thrust his spear through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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