The Evolution of Marriage and of the FamilyLetourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Science
The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family
Letourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Families; Marriage
Neither is it so among the negroes of Africa; it is even more rare
there than in Melanesia, but there also it does not constitute a
marriage. Women are carried off just in the same way as other things
are carried off. Thus the Damara Hottentots often steal wives from the
Namaquois Hottentots.[222] Among the Mandingos and the Timanis there is
no marriage by capture, properly speaking; already they purchase the
daughter from her parents, without, of course, consulting her; then the
intending purchaser, aided by his friends, carries off his acquisition
in a brutal manner, whether she will or not. It is a simple commercial
affair; the daughter is an exchange value representing a certain number
of jars of palm wine, of stuffs, etc.
Amongst the natives of America brutal rape was, or still is, very
common. In Terra del Fuego, the young Fuegians carry off a woman as
soon as they are able to construct or procure a canoe.[223] From tribe
to tribe the Patagonians at war exterminate the men and carry off the
women. The Oen Patagonians make incursions every year at the time of
“the red leaf” on the Fuegians to seize their women, their dogs, and
their weapons.[224] The Indians on the banks of the Amazon and Orinoco
continually capture women, and thus every tribe is sometimes nearly
without women and sometimes overflowing with them.[225] The Caribs so
frequently procured wives in this way that their women did not often
speak the language of the men.[226] In the Redskin tribe of the Mandans
the rape of young women was a perpetual cause of trouble, of disorder,
and of vengeance, proportioned to the power and to the anger of the
relations of the ravished woman.[227]
We find similar customs among savage or barbarous peoples nearly
everywhere. The Tartars, says Barnes, make their wives of the prisoners
that they capture in battles.[228]
The Code of Manu also mentions this primitive mode of union more or
less conjugal:--“When a young girl is carried off by force from the
parental house, weeping and crying for succour, and those who oppose
this violence are killed or wounded, and a breach is made in the walls,
this mode (of marriage) is called that of the giants.”[229]
The Bible relates several facts of the same kind. Thus the tribe of
Benjamin procured themselves wives by massacring the inhabitants of
Jabez-Gilead and capturing four hundred of their virgins. Another time
the Benjamites practised a Sabine rape in carrying off the women during
a feast near Bethel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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