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The territory they inhabit is usually allotted between the
different gentes or clans; but the hunting and fishing
territories of each clan are kept in common, and the produce of
fishing and hunting belongs to the whole clan; so also the
fishing and hunting implements.(18) The meals are taken in
common. Like many other savages, they respect certain regulations
as to the seasons when certain gums and grasses may be
collected.(19) As to their morality altogether, we cannot do
better than transcribe the following answers given to the
questions of the Paris Anthropological Society by Lumholtz, a
missionary who sojourned in North Queensland:(20)--

"The feeling of friendship is known among them; it is strong.
Weak people are usually supported; sick people are very well
attended to; they never are abandoned or killed. These tribes are
cannibals, but they very seldom eat members of their own tribe
(when immolated on religious principles, I suppose); they eat
strangers only. The parents love their children, play with them,
and pet them. Infanticide meets with common approval. Old people
are very well treated, never put to death. No religion, no idols,
only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage. quarrels arising
within the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with wooden
swords and shields. No slaves; no culture of any kind; no
pottery; no dress, save an apron sometimes worn by women. The
clan consists of two hundred individuals, divided into four
classes of men and four of women; marriage being only permitted
within the usual classes, and never within the gens."

For the Papuas, closely akin to the above, we have the
testimony of G.L. Bink, who stayed in New Guinea, chiefly in
Geelwink Bay, from 1871 to 1883. Here is the essence of his
answers to the same questioner:(21)--

"They are sociable and cheerful; they laugh very much. Rather
timid than courageous. Friendship is relatively strong among
persons belonging to different tribes, and still stronger within
the tribe. A friend will often pay the debt of his friend, the
stipulation being that the latter will repay it without interest
to the children of the lender. They take care of the ill and the
old; old people are never abandoned, and in no case are they
killed--unless it be a slave who was ill for a long time. War
prisoners are sometimes eaten. The children are very much petted
and loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are killed, the others
are sold as slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no idols, no
authority of any description; the oldest man in the family is the
judge. In cases of adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes
to the negoria (the community). The soil is kept in common, but
the crop belongs to those who have grown it. They have pottery,
and know barter-trade--the custom being that the merchant gives
them the goods, whereupon they return to their houses and bring
the native goods required by the merchant; if the latter cannot
be obtained, the European goods are returned.(22) They are
head-hunters, and in so doing they prosecute blood revenge.
'Sometimes,' Finsch says, 'the affair is referred to the Rajah of
Namototte, who terminates it by imposing a fine.'"

When well treated, the Papuas are very kind. Miklukho-Maclay
landed on the eastern coast of New Guinea, followed by one single
man, stayed for two years among tribes reported to be cannibals,
and left them with regret; he returned again to stay one year
more among them, and never had he any conflict to complain of.
True that his rule was never--under no pretext whatever--to
say anything which was not truth, nor make any promise which he
could not keep. These poor creatures, who even do not know how to
obtain fire, and carefully maintain it in their huts, live under
their primitive communism, without any chiefs; and within their
villages they have no quarrels worth speaking of. They work in
common, just enough to get the food of the day; they rear their
children in common; and in the evenings they dress themselves as
coquettishly as they can, and dance. Like all savages, they are
fond of dancing. Each village has its barla, or balai--the
"long house," "longue maison," or "grande maison"--for the
unmarried men, for social gatherings, and for the discussion of
common affairs--again a trait which is common to most
inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the Eskimos, the Red Indians,
and so on. Whole groups of villages are on friendly terms, and
visit each other en bloc.

Unhappily, feuds are not uncommon--not in consequence of
"Overstocking of the area," or "keen competition," and like
inventions of a mercantile century, but chiefly in consequence of
superstition. As soon as any one falls ill, his friends and
relatives come together, and deliberately discuss who might be
the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are considered,
every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally the
real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has
called it down, and a raid upon that village is decided upon.
Therefore, feuds are rather frequent, even between the coast
villages, not to say a word of the cannibal mountaineers who are
considered as real witches and enemies, though, on a closer
acquaintance, they prove to be exactly the same sort of people as
their neighbours on the seacoast.(23)

Many striking pages could be written about the harmony which
prevails in the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the
Pacific Islands. But they belong to a more advanced stage of
civilization. So we shall now take our illustrations from the far
north. I must mention, however, before leaving the Southern
Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose reputation has been so
bad, appear under a much better light since they begin to be
better known. A few French missionaries who stay among them "know
of no act of malevolence to complain of." In their clans,
consisting of from 120 to 150 souls, they practise the same
primitive communism as the Papuas; they share everything in
common, and treat their old people very well. Peace prevails
among these tribes.(24) With the Eskimos and their nearest
congeners, the Thlinkets, the Koloshes, and the Aleoutes, we find
one of the nearest illustrations of what man may have been during
the glacial age. Their implements hardly differ from those of
palaeolithic man, and some of their tribes do not yet know
fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind of harpoon.(25)
They know the use of iron, but they receive it from the
Europeans, or find it on wrecked ships. Their social organization
is of a very primitive kind, though they already have emerged
from the stage of "communal marriage," even under the gentile
restrictions. They live in families, but the family bonds are
often broken; husbands and wives are often exchanged.(26) The
families, however, remain united in clans, and how could it be
otherwise? How could they sustain the hard struggle for life
unless by closely combining their forces? So they do, and the
tribal bonds are closest where the struggle for life is hardest,
namely, in North-East Greenland. The "long house" is their usual
dwelling, and several families lodge in it, separated from each
other by small partitions of ragged furs, with a common passage
in the front. Sometimes the house has the shape of a cross, and
in such case a common fire is kept in the centre. The German
Expedition which spent a winter close by one of those "long
houses" could ascertain that "no quarrel disturbed the peace, no
dispute arose about the use of this narrow space" throughout the
long winter. "Scolding, or even unkind words, are considered as a
misdemeanour, if not produced under the legal form of process,
namely, the nith-song."(27) Close cohabitation and close
interdependence are sufficient for maintaining century after
century that deep respect for the interests of the community
which is characteristic of Eskimo life. Even in the larger
communities of Eskimos, "public opinion formed the real
judgment-seat, the general punishment consisting in the offenders
being shamed in the eyes of the people."(28)

Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by
hunting and fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes,
especially in the West, under the influence of the Danes, private
property penetrates into their institutions. However, they have
an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a
personal accumulation of wealth which would soon destroy their
tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he convokes the folk of
his clan to a great festival, and, after much eating, distributes
among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, Dall saw an
Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur
dresses, 200 strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs,
200 beavers, and 500 zibelines. After that they took off their
festival dresses, gave them away, and, putting on old ragged
furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that though
they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their
friendship.(29) Like distributions of wealth appear to be a
regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain
season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during
the year.(30) In my opinion these distributions reveal a very
old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of
personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing
equality among the members of the clan, after it had been
disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical
redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all
debts which took place in historical times with so many different
races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that
old custom. And the habit of either burying with the dead, or
destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him personally--
a habit which we find among all primitive races--must have
had the same origin. In fact, while everything that belongs
personally to the dead is burnt or broken upon his grave, nothing
is destroyed of what belonged to him in common with the tribe,
such as boats, or the communal implements of fishing. The
destruction bears upon personal property alone. At a later epoch
this habit becomes a religious ceremony. It receives a mystical
interpretation, and is imposed by religion, when public opinion
alone proves incapable of enforcing its general observance. And,
finally, it is substituted by either burning simple models of the
dead man's property (as in China), or by simply carrying his
property to the grave and taking it back to his house after the
burial ceremony is over--a habit which still prevails with the
Europeans as regards swords, crosses, and other marks of public
distinction.(31)

The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has
often been mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the
following remarks upon the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin
to the Eskimos--will better illustrate savage morality as a
whole. They were written, after a ten years' stay among the
Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian missionary,
Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:--

Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply
colossal. Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea,
and stand naked on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their
endurability, even when at hard work on insufficient food,
surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted scarcity
of food, the Aleoute cares first for his children; he gives them
all he has, and himself fasts. They are not inclined to stealing;
that was remarked even by the first Russian immigrants. Not that
they never steal; every Aleoute would confess having sometime
stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole is so
childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is
touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The
Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he
has made it he will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made
Veniaminoff a gift of dried fish, but it was forgotten on the
beach in the hurry of the departure. He took it home. The next
occasion to send it to the missionary was in January; and in
November and December there was a great scarcity of food in the
Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never touched by the
starving people, and in January it was sent to its destination.)
Their code of morality is both varied and severe. It is
considered shameful to be afraid of unavoidable death; to ask
pardon from an enemy; to die without ever having killed an enemy;
to be convicted of stealing; to capsize a boat in the harbour; to
be afraid of going to sea in stormy weather. to be the first in a
party on a long journey to become an invalid in case of scarcity
of food; to show greediness when spoil is divided, in which case
every one gives his own part to the greedy man to shame him; to
divulge a public secret to his wife; being two persons on a
hunting expedition, not to offer the best game to the partner; to
boast of his own deeds, especially of invented ones; to scold any
one in scorn. Also to beg; to pet his wife in other people's
presence, and to dance with her to bargain personally: selling
must always be made through a third person, who settles the
price. For a woman it is a shame not to know sewing, dancing and
all kinds of woman's work; to pet her husband and children, or
even to speak to her husband in the presence of a stranger.(32)

Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further
illustrated by their tales and legends. Let me also add that when
Veniaminoff wrote (in 1840) one murder only had been committed
since the last century in a population of 60,000 people, and that
among 1,800 Aleoutes not one single common law offence had been
known for forty years. This will not seem strange if we remark
that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough words are
absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never
fight, and never abuse each other in words. All they may say is,
"Your mother does not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of
one eye."(33)

Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to
Europeans. The high development of tribal solidarity and the good
feelings with which primitive folk are animated towards each
other, could be illustrated by any amount of reliable testimony.
And yet it is not the less certain that those same savages
practise infanticide; that in some cases they abandon their old
people, and that they blindly obey the rules of blood-revenge. We
must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to the European
mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just
mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and
gives everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother
becomes a slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages with
illustrations of the really tender relations existing among the
savages and their children. Travellers continually mention them
incidentally. Here you read about the fond love of a mother;
there you see a father wildly running through the forest and
carrying upon his shoulders his child bitten by a snake; or a
missionary tells you the despair of the parents at the loss of a
child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being immolated
at its birth. you learn that the "savage" mothers usually nurse
their children till the age of four, and that, in the New
Hebrides, on the loss of a specially beloved child, its mother,
or aunt, will kill herself to take care of it in the other
world.(34) And so on.

Like facts are met with by the score; so that, when we see
that these same loving parents practise infanticide, we are bound
to recognize that the habit (whatever its ulterior
transformations may be) took its origin under the sheer pressure
of necessity, as an obligation towards the tribe, and a means for
rearing the already growing children. The savages, as a rule, do
not "multiply without stint," as some English writers put it. On
the contrary, they take all kinds of measures for diminishing the
birth-rate. A whole series of restrictions, which Europeans
certainly would find extravagant, are imposed to that effect, and
they are strictly obeyed. But notwithstanding that, primitive
folk cannot rear all their children. However, it has been
remarked that as soon as they succeed in increasing their regular
means of subsistence, they at once begin to abandon the practice
of infanticide. On the whole, the parents obey that obligation
reluctantly, and as soon as they can afford it they resort to all
kinds of compromises to save the lives of their new-born. As has
been so well pointed out by my friend Elie Reclus,(35) they
invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare the
children born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the
sentence for a few hours, and then say that if the baby has lived
one day it must live all its natural life.(36) They hear the
cries of the little ones coming from the forest, and maintain
that, if heard, they forbode a misfortune for the tribe; and as
they have no baby-farming nor creches for getting rid of the
children, every one of them recoils before the necessity of
performing the cruel sentence; they prefer to expose the baby in
the wood rather than to take its life by violence. Ignorance, not
cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the
savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow
the example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age,
crossed the sea of Okhotsk in a miserable boat, or travelled on
dogs among his Tchuktchis, supplying them with bread and fishing
implements. He thus had really stopped infanticide.

The same is true as regards what superficial observers
describe as parricide. We just now saw that the habit of
abandoning old people is not so widely spread as some writers
have maintained it to be. It has been extremely exaggerated, but
it is occasionally met with among nearly all savages; and in such
cases it has the same origin as the exposure of children. When a
"savage" feels that he is a burden to his tribe; when every
morning his share of food is taken from the mouths of the
children--and the little ones are not so stoical as their
fathers: they cry when they are hungry; when every day he has to
be carried across the stony beach, or the virgin forest, on the
shoulders of younger people there are no invalid carriages, nor
destitutes to wheel them in savage lands--he begins to repeat
what the old Russian peasants say until now-a-day. "Tchujoi vek
zayedayu, Pora na pokoi!" ("I live other people's life: it is
time to retire!") And he retires. He does what the soldier does
in a similar case. When the salvation of his detachment depends
upon its further advance, and he can move no more, and knows that
he must die if left behind, the soldier implores his best friend
to render him the last service before leaving the encampment. And
the friend, with shivering hands, discharges his gun into the
dying body. So the savages do. The old man asks himself to die;
he himself insists upon this last duty towards the community, and
obtains the consent of the tribe; he digs out his grave; he
invites his kinsfolk to the last parting meal. His father has
done so, it is now his turn; and he parts with his kinsfolk with
marks of affection. The savage so much considers death as part of
his duties towards his community, that he not only refuses to be
rescued (as Moffat has told), but when a woman who had to be
immolated on her husband's grave was rescued by missionaries, and
was taken to an island, she escaped in the night, crossed a broad
sea-arm, swimming and rejoined her tribe, to die on the
grave.(37) It has become with them a matter of religion. But the
savages, as a rule, are so reluctant to take any one's life
otherwise than in fight, that none of them will take upon himself
to shed human blood, and they resort to all kinds of stratagems,
which have been so falsely interpreted. In most cases, they
abandon the old man in the wood, after having given him more than
his share of the common food. Arctic expeditions have done the
same when they no more could carry their invalid comrades. "Live
a few days more. may be there will be some unexpected rescue!"
West European men of science, when coming across these facts, are
absolutely unable to stand them; they can not reconcile them with
a high development of tribal morality, and they prefer to cast a
doubt upon the exactitude of absolutely reliable observers,
instead of trying to explain the parallel existence of the two
sets of facts: a high tribal morality together with the
abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same
Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable,
fond of their own children, and so impressionable that they cry
when they see a misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in
Europe within a stone's throw from dens in which children die
from sheer want of food, the savage, too, would not understand
them. I remember how vainly I tried to make some of my Tungus
friends understand our civilization of individualism: they could
not, and they resorted to the most fantastical suggestions. The
fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal solidarity
in everything for bad and for good, is as incapable of
understanding a "moral" European, who knows nothing of that
solidarity, as the average European is incapable of understanding
the savage. But if our scientist had lived amidst a half-starving
tribe which does not possess among them all one man's food for so
much as a few days to come, he probably might have understood
their motives. So also the savage, if he had stayed among us, and
received our education, may be, would understand our European
indifference towards our neighbours, and our Royal Commissions
for the prevention of "babyfarming." "Stone houses make stony
hearts," the Russian peasants say. But he ought to live in a
stone house first.

Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking
into account all the facts which were brought to light during a
recent controversy on this subject at the Paris Anthropological
Society, and many incidental remarks scattered throughout the
"savage" literature, we are bound to recognize that that practice
was brought into existence by sheer necessity. but that it was
further developed by superstition and religion into the
proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a fact that
until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in
the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of
absolute scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed
upon human corpses, even during an epidemic. These are
ascertained facts. But if we now transport ourselves to the
conditions which man had to face during the glacial period, in a
damp and cold climate, with but little vegetable food at his
disposal; if we take into account the terrible ravages which
scurvy still makes among underfed natives, and remember that meat
and fresh blood are the only restoratives which they know, we
must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous animal,
became a flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty
of deer at that time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic
regions, and sometimes they entirely abandon a territory for a
number of years. In such cases his last resources disappeared.
During like hard trials, cannibalism has been resorted to even by
Europeans, and it was resorted to by the savages. Until the
present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of their own
dead: they must have devoured then the corpses of those who had
to die. Old people died, convinced that by their death they were
rendering a last service to the tribe. This is why cannibalism is
represented by some savages as of divine origin, as something
that has been ordered by a messenger from the sky. But later on
it lost its character of necessity, and survived as a
superstition. Enemies had to be eaten in order to inherit their
courage; and, at a still later epoch, the enemy's eye or heart
was eaten for the same purpose; while among other tribes, already
having a numerous priesthood and a developed mythology, evil
gods, thirsty for human blood, were invented, and human
sacrifices required by the priests to appease the gods. In this
religious phase of its existence, cannibalism attained its most
revolting characters. Mexico is a well-known example; and in
Fiji, where the king could eat any one of his subjects, we also
find a mighty cast of priests, a complicated theology,(38) and a
full development of autocracy. Originated by necessity,
cannibalism became, at a later period, a religious institution,
and in this form it survived long after it had disappeared from
among tribes which certainly practised it in former times, but
did not attain the theocratical stage of evolution. The same
remark must be made as regards infanticide and the abandonment of
parents. In some cases they also have been maintained as a
survival of olden times, as a religiously-kept tradition of the
past.

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