_ If the savage learned his wantonness from the whites, did he get all his other vicious habits from the same source? We know on the best authorities that the disgusting practice of cannibalism prevailed extensively among the natives. "They eat the young men when they die, and the young women if they are fat" (Curr, III., 147). Lumholtz entitled his book on Australia _Among Cannibals_. The Rev. G. Taplin says (XV.):
"Among the Dieyerie tribe cannibalism is the universal
practice, and all who die are indiscriminately devoured
... the mother eats the flesh of her children, and the
children that of their mother," etc.
"If a man had a fat wife," says the same writer (2), "he was always particularly careful not to leave her unprotected, lest she might be seized by prowling cannibals." Among the wilder tribes few women are allowed to die a natural death, "they being generally despatched ere they become old and emaciated, that so much good food may not be lost."[154] Would the "fearless" Stephens say that the natives learned these practices from the whites? Would he say they learned from the whites the "universal custom ... to slay every unprotected male stranger met with" (Curr, I., 133)?
[FOOTNOTE 154:
_Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Ser_., III., 248, 288; cited by Spencer, _D.S._, 26.]
"Infanticide is very common, and appears to be practised solely to get rid of the trouble of rearing children," wrote Eyre (II., 324). Curr (I., 70) heard that "some tribes within the area of the Central Division cut off the nipples of the females' breasts, in some instances, for the purpose of rendering their rearing of children impossible." On the Mitchell River, "children were killed for the most trivial offences, such as for accidentally breaking a weapon as they trotted about the camp" (Curr, II., 403). Twins are destroyed in South Australia, says Leigh, and if the mother dies "they throw the living infant into the grave, while infanticide is an every-day occurrence." Curr (I., 70) believes that the average number of children borne by each woman was six, the maximum ten; but of all these only two boys and one girl as a rule were kept, "the rest were destroyed immediately after birth," as we destroy litters of puppies. Sometimes the infants were smothered over a fire (Waitz, VI., 779), and deformed children were always killed. Taplin writes that before his colony was established among them infanticide was very prevalent among the natives. "One intelligent woman said she thought that if the Europeans had waited a few more years they would have found the country without inhabitants." Strangulation, a blow of the waddy, or filling the ears with red-hot embers, were the favorite ways of killing their own babies.
Did the whites teach the angelic savages all these diabolical customs? If so, they must have taught them customs invented for the occasion, since they are not practised by whites in any part of the world. But perhaps Stephens would have been willing to waive this point. Sentimentalists are usually more or less willing to concede that savages are devils in most things if we will only admit in return that they are angels in their sexual relations. For instance, if we may believe Stephens, no nun was ever more modest than the native Australian woman. Once, he says, he was asked to visit a poor old black woman in the last stages of consumption:
"Her case was hopeless, and when she was in almost the
last agony of mortal dissolution I was astounded at her
efforts at concealment, indicative of extreme modesty.
As I drew her opossum rug over her poor emaciated body
the look of gratitude which came from her dying eyes
told me in language more eloquent than words that
beneath that dark and dying exterior there was a soul
which in a few hours angels would delight to honor."
The poor woman was probably cold and glad to be covered; if she had any modesty regarding exposure of the body she could have learned it from no one but the dreadful, degraded whites, for the Australian himself is an utter stranger to such a feeling. On this point the explorers and students of the natives are unanimous. Both men and women went absolutely naked except in those regions where the climate was cold. _