her a barkcloth in compensation, to cover herself, lest some illness,
such as tremor, should come upon him. The punishment for incest was
death; no member of a clan would shield a person guilty thereof; the
offender was disowned by the clan, tried by the chief of the district,
and put to death.”[91.1]
[Sidenote: Marriage between certain cousins forbidden among some
South African tribes but allowed among others.] The prohibition of
marriage with certain cousins appears to be widespread among African
peoples of the Bantu stock. Thus in regard to the Bantus of South
Africa we read that “every man of a coast tribe regarded himself as
the protector of those females whom we would call his cousins, second
cousins, third cousins, and so forth, on the father’s side, while some
had a similar feeling towards the same relatives on the mother’s side
as well, and classified them all as sisters. Immorality with one of
them would have been considered incestuous, something horrible,
something unutterably disgraceful. Of old it was punished by the death
of the male, and even now a heavy fine is inflicted upon him, while
the guilt of the female must be atoned by a sacrifice performed with
due ceremony by the tribal priest, or it is believed a curse will rest
upon her and her issue.… In contrast to this prohibition the native of
the interior almost as a rule married the daughter of his father’s
brother, in order, as he said, to keep property from being lost to his
family. This custom more than anything else created a disgust and
contempt for them by the people of the coast, who term such
intermarriages the union of dogs, and attribute to them the insanity
and idiocy which in recent times has become prevalent among the inland
tribes.”[91.2]
{92}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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