Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/108

 use it largely, and who, as we have previously seen, are almost always addicted to female infanticide. But has the widely-spread custom of rape the great importance in sociological theory that has been attributed to it? This is a question to which we can only reply after having consulted the facts.

Throughout Melanesia capture has been the primitive means of procuring wives, or rather slaves-of-all-work, absolutely at the discretion of the ravisher. Bonwick, indeed, tells us that in Tasmania, and consequently in Australia, capture was more often simulated only, and resulted from a previous agreement between the man and woman; but the savage manner in which the rape was effected abundantly proves that amiable agreement was exceptional. The Australian who desires to carry off a woman belonging to another tribe prowls traitorously around the camp. If he happens to discover a woman without a protector he rushes on her, stuns her with a blow of his club (douak), seizes her by her thick hair, drags her thus into the neighbouring wood; then, when she has recovered her senses, he obliges her to follow him into the midst of his own people, and there he violates her in their presence, for she has become his property—his domestic animal. The captured woman generally resigns herself without difficulty;[2] in truth, she has, generally, changed her master, but not in the least changed her condition.

Sometimes two men unite to commit one of these rapes. They glide noiselessly into a neighbouring camp in the night; one of them winds round his barbed spear the hair of a sleeping lubra, the other points his spear at her bosom. She awakes, and dares not cry out; they take her off, bind her to a tree, and then return in the same manner to make a second capture; after that they return in triumph to their own people. The captives rarely revolt, for they are, in a way, accustomed to the capture. From infancy they have been familiarised with the fate that awaits them, for the simulation of the rape is one of the games of the Australian