Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded race, either do not speak from experience, or they judge them by what they have become when the abuse of intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule, to which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is found away from the white settlement, the more vicious of the white men are most anxious to make the acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for purposes of immorality.... I saw the natives and was much with them before those deadly immoralities were well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all their evils they owed to the white man’s immorality and to the white man’s drink.[72] [72] _The History of Human Marriage_, p. 68. We are informed that wherever certain vices prevail among the lower races in America, Africa, or Asia, they have been carried to them by the whites. Were it necessary to do so, scores of examples could be adduced going to show that among primitive tribes, until corrupted by our later civilization, chastity is the universal rule. Although many of the writers who have dealt with this subject have discoursed freely on the laxity of the conjugal bond among so-called primitive tribes, and the lawlessness which characterizes lower races in their sexual relations, they have failed to account satisfactorily for some of the customs and usages which appear connected with many of the early forms of marriage,—forms which would seem to indicate a degree of modest reserve on the part of these peoples which fail to comport with the popular theory concerning their lawlessness and innate indecency.