IV. On the Prevalence of the Practice of Capturing Wives, De Facto

The tribes amongst which prevails or has prevailed, the practice of getting wives by theft or force, are both numerous and widely distributed. We shall find them in America, in Australia, in New Zealand, in many of the islands of the Pacific, and in various parts of Asia and Europe.

It is among the tribes of American Indians that the practice is to be found in the greatest perfection. In particular, we find it fully displayed on the Orinoco, on the Amazons, everywhere in fact, from the Caribbean Sea to Cape Horn. The abject Fuegians, as we have seen, have the practice in a modified or symbolised form in the marriages of men and women belonging to groups at peace with one another. But they have the reality as well as the fiction. Between many of their tribes there is a chronic state of war. “Strangers,” reported Jemmy Button to Captain Fitzroy on one occasion, “had been there, with whom he and his people had ‘very much jaw;’ they fought, threw ‘great many stone,’ and stole two women (in exchange for whom Jemmy’s party stole one), but were obliged to retreat.” The Horse Indians of Patagonia also, tribe against tribe, are commonly at war with one another, or with the Canoe Indians, the issues of victory in every case, being the capture of women and the slaughter of men. But the Oens or Coin-men would appear to be the most systematic of these savage marauders, for every year at the time of ‘red leaf’ they are said to make excursions from the mountains in the north to plunder the Fuegians of their women, dogs, and arms. Farther north still than the Oens men, we come successively on the tribes of the Amazons and of the Orinoco, all of which, excepting those reduced into missions, are continually at feud with one another, and in turns rich in women or impoverished; feelings of mutual hate and the desire for means of subsistence being concurring causes of war. Of the tribes on the Amazons the accounts are not very distinct; but the habits of the Manaos in the Rio Negro district—which, as reported by Mr Bates, are similar to those of the Coin-men—may be assumed not to be exceptional. There is no doubt, however, that the primitive habits of most of the Indian tribes have been much changed by the slave-hunting expeditions, at one time fostered by the Dutch and Portuguese. On slave-hunting being introduced in America, as in Africa, a market was found for captives of both sexes, and men as well as women became spoils of victory. No argument is needed to show that when women are systematically captured as in the above cited cases, they are captured with a view to the raising of children—in fact, with a view to their performing the part of wives. The fulness of the idea of a wife, according to our conceptions, is not, we need scarcely say, to be looked for amongst such savages. That idea can nowhere be fully realised till the circumstances of a people enable men and women to enjoy, or at least to look forward with confidence, to a permanent consortship.

Of the tribes of the great Caribbean nation we have happily a pretty full account from the pen of Alexander Von Humboldt. The Caribbees fall into small tribes or family groups, often not numbering more than from 40 to 50 persons; Humboldt, indeed, takes frequent occasion to say that an Indian tribe is no more than a family. Where groups break up into sections, as they tend to do, and live apart from one another, the sections are found, though of one blood, and originally of one language, soon to speak dialects so different that they cannot understand one another. Become strangers, they are enemies except when forced to unite to make common cause against some powerful tribe which has proved a scourge to them all; enemies, and being at least at the time when Humboldt wrote, cannibals, not only disposed to slay but to eat one another. In their wars, we may imagine, that while their male captives furnished means of subsistence, the women were preserved to be wives and luxuries. To such an extent, indeed, did all the tribes of the Caribbean nation practise the capture of women—depend on aggression for their wives—that the women of any tribe were found to belong to different tribes, and to tribes of other nations, and that to such an extent, that nowhere were the men and women of the Caribbean race found to speak in one tongue.

Going northwards—to the wild Indians everywhere, as far as we follow them, the same account is applicable in varying degrees. It would indeed be misleading to omit to notice that in both North and South America tribes are to be found occupying much more elevated platforms of civility than those to which, for obvious reasons, we have given our attention. As among friendly groups of the Fuegians we find marriages of consent and of purchase (by labour commonly), so also among friendly Patagonians; so also with the nations of the Huron tongue and the Attakapas, among whom the position of the women is exceedingly good. Indeed, all the processes have been going on through which every species of marriage would in time be developed. Even the red men of America are far from being primitive. A really primitive people in fact exists nowhere. For many thousands of years now, the various races of men have been in the school of experience, all making progress therein, though under different masters and in different forms. Hereafter we shall see how the old law of the red men, and of the natives of Australia, which counts blood relationship through females only, operates as an agent of civilization, and tends to supersede the barbarous practices of early savagery, and especially to obviate the necessity of capturing wives.

The capture of women for wives is found to prevail among the aborigines of the Deccan, and in Affghanistan. It prevailed, according to Olaus Magnus, in Muscovy, Lithuania, and Livonia. The form which it assumed among the peoples last named, so closely resembled what Kames describes as the custom among the Welsh, that we must quote the Archbishop’s account of it:—“Quicunque enim paganorum, sive rusticorum, filius suus uxorem ut ducat in animo habet, agnatos, cognatos, cæterosque vicinos in unum convocat, illisque talem isto in pago puellam nubilem versari, quam rapi, et suo filio in conjugem adduci proponit: hi commodum ad hoc tempus expectantes, ac tunc armati, equites suo more unius ad ædes conveniunt, posteaque ad eam rapiendam profisciscuntur. Puella autem quoad matrimonii contradictionem libera, ex insidiis opera exploratorum ubi moretur per eos direpta, plurimum eiulando opem consanguineorum amicorumque ad se liberandam implorat: quod si consanguinei vicinique clamorem istum exaudierunt, ipso momento armati adcurrunt, atque pro ea liberanda prœlium committunt ut qui victores ista in pugna extiterunt his puella cedat.” The difference between the Welsh and the Muscovite practice lay in this, that in Wales, in the celebration of the marriage, betrothal came first, and the (sham) fight afterwards; while among the Muscovites an actual invasion came first, and if the bridegroom’s party succeeded in carrying off the lady, there followed the consent of parents and the sponsalia:—“Nec ante completam hanc celebritatem mutua carnali copula, pacto parentum interveniente, se commiscere solent conjungendi; quia immane cunctis gentibus crimen apparere dignoscitur si ante sponsalia sacra stupri illecebris virgo temeratur; immo summoperé cavent puellæ ne copulam anticepent quia perpetuam cum prole sic suscepta infamiam luent.” The intervention of the sponsalia and consent of parents before the consummation of the marriage, marks this as a transitional form of the practice. But it is none the less a case of actual capture. Another advance and the sponsalia will precede the capture, and the fight be a farce.

According to Seignior Gaya, this transitional form of the practice prevailed in his time in Poland, parts of Prussia, Samogithia and Lithuania. A lad’s father having found where a girl lived, who would make a suitable wife for his son, he assembled his kindred and carried the lady off, after which application was made to her father for consent to complete the marriage.

There is ample reason to believe that the practice was general among the nations in the north of Europe and Asia. Olaus Magnus, indeed, represents the tribes of the north as having been continually at war with one another either on account of stolen women, or with the object of stealing women, “propter raptas virgines aut arripiendas.” His brother Johannes dilates on the same topic, and mentions numerous cases in which the plunderers were of the royal houses of Denmark or Sweden. As did the kings, so did their subjects. Among the Scandinavians, before they became Christians, wives were almost invariably fought for and wedded at the sword-point. In Sweden, even long after the introduction of Christianity, women were often carried off when on the way to the church to be married. A wedding cortege was a party of armed men, and for greater security, marriages were generally celebrated at night. A pile of lances is said to be still preserved in the ancient church of Husaby in Gothland, into which were fitted torches; these weapons were borne by the groomsmen, and served the double purpose of giving light and protection. Such a prevalence of lawlessness existing after the introduction of Christianity and comparative civilization, helps us to conceive what the habits of these people were in a more primitive age.

We find capture de facto coexistent with capture as a form, and not unfrequent, among most of the rude tribes observing the form; its frequency depending partly on the degree of friendliness established between the tribes, and partly on the degree of fixity given by usage to the price to be paid for a bride. Where the parties cannot agree about the price, nothing is more common among the Kalmucks, Kirghiz, Nogais, and Circassians, than to carry the lady off by actual force of arms. The wooer having once got the lady into his yurt, she is his wife by the law, and peace is established by her relations coming to terms as to the price, after the thing has gone so far that they cannot help themselves. It is important to observe, that among these races the capture, though an irregular proceeding, makes marriage, even previous to terms being made between the capturer and the friends of the lady, and whether they are made or not.

That the practice of getting wives by capture de facto, prevails among the natives of Australia, is a fact familiar to most readers. It is not, however, now the sole or regular mode of getting a wife among the Australian tribes; and we do not claim to do more than show that there at present exists among them a practice of capturing wives so common as almost to be a system. And as we shall hereafter show that they are exogamous, and also that exogamous tribes which begin with a system of capturing wives, may progress—consistently with exogamy—to a system of betrothals, we shall ask the reader, conceding to us for the present that we shall be able to do so, to agree with us that so general a practice of capture, subsisting as it does among the Australians alongside of a system of betrothals, points unmistakeably to a previous stage when wives were usually captured.

Among the Australasians, according to one account, when a man sees a woman whom he likes, he tells her to follow him, and when she refuses, he forces her to accompany him by blows, ending by knocking her down and carrying her off. The same account (somewhat suspiciously) bears that this mode of courtship is rather relished by the ladies as a species of rough gallantry. The cases must indeed be rare in which a man finds a woman detached from her lord and protector, or the other members of her family; nor is it in human flesh and blood to take kicks and cuffs as compliments, in whatever spirit they may be administered. The following is the account given by Sir George Grey—a good authority:—“Even supposing a woman to give no encouragement to her admirers,” he says, “many plots are always laid to carry her off, and in the encounters which result from these, she is almost certain to receive some violent injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and in the event of her refusing, throws a spear at her. The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females, amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance, but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.” As an Australian woman is always a wife, being betrothed after birth to some man of a different tribe or family-stock from her own, a stolen or captured wife is always stolen or taken from a prior husband. And as men do not readily part with their wives, and their tribesmen are bound to make common cause with them for the reparation of injuries, the capture of wives is a signal for war; and as the tribes have little property, except their weapons and their women, the women are at once the cause of war, and the spoils of victory. The tribes, as might be expected, are exceedingly numerous, and exceedingly small, being a species of family groups, and, chiefly from the causes specified, they are continually at war with one another. The reader may imagine the extent to which, among these myriad hordes of savages, the women are being knocked about, and the men accustomed to associate the acquisition of a wife with acts of violence and rapine.

The native songs make frequent allusion to the practice of capturing wives. Here is the burden of one, sung by a heavy-hearted woman, upbraiding her lord, whose affections some recently acquired captive has drawn away from her,—

Wherefore came you, Weerang, In my beauty’s pride, Stealing cautiously, Like the tawny boreang, On an unwilling bride. ‘Twas thus you stole me From one who loved me tenderly. A better man he was than thee,

Who having forced me thus to wed, Now so oft deserts my bed. Yang, yang, yang, yoh. Oh, where is he who won My youthful heart; Who oft used to bless And call me loved one: You, Weerang, tore apart From his fond caress Her whom you desert and shun; Out upon the faithless one! Oh, may the Boyl-yas bite and tear Her, whom you take your bed to share. Yang, yang, yang, yoh.

Concerning the New Zealanders, it must suffice to say that the theft or capture of women plays a leading part in their popular legends, testifying to the prevalence of the practice, at least in their early history. In New Zealand, and in the Feejee and other islands of the Pacific, the capture of wives appears to have been conjoined with cannibalism—the object of inter-tribal war being at once to procure women for wives and men for food, except in some districts where there was a special relish for the flesh of females.

In the Institutes of Menu we have marriage by capture enumerated among “the eight forms of the nuptial ceremony used by the four classes.” It is the marriage called Racshasa, and is thus defined:—“The seizure of a maiden by force from her house while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage called Racshasa.” Elsewhere in the code it is mentioned as appropriated to the military class. “For a military man the before-mentioned marriages of Gandharvas and Racshases—whether separate or mixed, as when a girl is made captive by her lover, after a victory over her kinsmen—are permitted by law.” The full scope and effect of this provision we shall have to consider hereafter. Meanwhile we notice that we have here the exact prototype of the Roman and Spartan forms, embalmed in a code of laws a thousand years before the commencement of our era; not as a form, but as living substance. This we hold to exclude any hypothesis except that which we are maintaining.

We may notice, as further illustrating the subject, and as being in itself curious, that by the Mosaic Code the military class were, in defiance of the general law which declared that there was no connubium between Jews and Gentiles, allowed to take to wife women whom they captured in war, to whatever races they belonged. In Deut. xx. 10-14, the reader will find forms and regulations provided for the constitution of this species of marriage, and if interested to know the meaning of the rules, he will find a copious and learned discussion of them in the works of Selden.

Thus far we have been dealing with facts. If we are right in our theory of the symbol of capture, it must be held that the Dorians, or at least some of the tribes composing the Spartan nation, and the Latins, or at least some of the tribes forming the commonalty of Rome, long had experience in the capturing of wives by force or stratagem. We leave to our Hellenists to consider how far the Doric legends may have new light thrown upon them by our view of the Spartan custom. How far, for instance, may the slaughter by Hercules of Eurylus and his sons, and the carrying away of Iole to be the wife of Hyllus—of Hyllus, who never occurs in mythology except in connection with the Dorians—be a mythical tradition of a rape of women from another tribe? How far may the genealogies of Doric heroes connected with the taking of Ephyra,—the capture of Astyocheia,—the feat of Hercules at Thespiæ—the stories of Pluto and Proserpine, and of Boreas and Orithya—be but traditions of a quasi Caribbean prowess? It must be kept in mind, too, that the case cited from Herodotus in proof of the custom at Sparta is one of actual violence. At least, the lady was not carried off in terms of arrangement. Farther, to judge by what is reported of Theseus—even accepting the tradition as fabulous—we may conclude that the ancient Greeks generally were very lawless in this matter. To that hero’s charge are laid numerous rapes of women whom he carried off to be his wives—his crimes of this description culminating in the seizure of Helen. Plutarch, indeed, in describing that affair, mentions a compact as having been entered into between Theseus and his companion in the seizure—Tyndarus—to the effect that he who should gain Helen by lot should have her to wife, but be obliged to assist in procuring a wife for the other; which shows that these worthies trusted to their prowess to procure them wives. As to the Romans—upon our theory—the story of the rape of the Sabines must be accepted as a mere mythical tradition of the ancient method of getting wives. The story, as might be expected, is reproduced in the traditions of many tribes, in many places, and in many forms. For instance, in the Irish Nennius there is a tradition of such a rape of wives by the Picts from the Gael. In the very old poem, “The Cruithnians who propagated in the land of noble Alba,” the Irish are represented as giving three hundred wives to the Picts, on the condition that the succession to the crown among the Picts should always be through their females:—

“There were oaths imposed on them, By the stars, by the earth, That from the nobility of the mother Should always be the right to the sovereignty.”

The story of the oaths is no doubt a fable to explain the descensus per umbilicum of the Picts. But, in “Duan Gircanash,” a poem on the origin of the Goedhel, reciting the same event, the Picts are represented as stealing the three hundred wives:—

“Cruithne, son of Cuig, took their women from them— It is directly stated— Except Tea, wife of Hermion, Son of Miledh.”

And in consequence of the capture, the Gael, being left wifeless, had to form alliances with the aboriginal tribes of Ireland.

“There were no charming noble wives For their young men, Their women having been stolen, they made alliance With the Tuatha Dea.”

We have the same story in the history of the Jews. Chapters xx. and xxi. of the Book of Judges contain highly instructive matter on this point, in a story, which, though laid in the time of the Judges, we must hold to be of very old date—a Jewish tradition belonging to the earliest history of Israel. The women of the tribe of Benjamin had been destroyed, and certain of the tribes of Israel had sworn not to give their daughters as wives to the men of Benjamin, who again could not take wives to themselves from the Gentiles, as by law they could marry only into one or other of the tribes of Israel. The difficulty of procuring wives for Benjamin—which Israel made its own difficulty—was solved by the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of Jabez-Gilead, whose population yielded 400 virgins: and next by the men of Benjamin enacting a rape of the Sabines for themselves, each man seizing and carrying off one of the daughters of Shiloh to be his wife, on an occasion when the women met for a festival in certain vineyards near Bethel.

We can now say we have found the capture of women very extensively practised; and there can be no doubt that in most of the cases cited, the women captured were kept to be used as wives. In a number of well-marked cases we have found a system of capture—in the case of the Caribbean tribes of America, a system so general, that the women of a tribe were commonly not only not of the same tribe with the men, but did not even speak the same language. We have seen among tribes in a transition state, in some cases, capture almost systematically practised, alongside of more civilized institutions; and in other cases, the practice of capture in various stages of progress towards a symbolism. We have seen the marriage by capture embodied in the code of India as an institution in favour of the only class which could be benefited by it—the warrior class; and no argument is needed to show that such a rule must have been a generalisation founded upon practice. A similar rule subsisted in favour of warriors among the Israelites. The former of these cases is, perhaps, chiefly valuable as presenting in a distinct shape the ante-type of the form of capture—a description of marriage by an actual capture so vividly recalling incidents of fictitious capture, as practised at Rome and elsewhere, as (in our opinion) to set at rest the question in what way the fiction originated. The latter case shows a provision made for marriage with foreign women, if captured, among tribes which, in no other case, allowed of marriage with foreign women; a provision indicating a very remarkable association between capture and marriage. It is not easy to believe that such a regulation, existing among endogamous tribes, is referable to the feeling that a victorious warrior should have the full disposal of spoils of war; it is much more likely that it was a relic of a time when the tribes—or rather the race from which they sprung—were not endogamous; and, if so, it carries us back to a remote antiquity when marriage and prowess in war were closely associated. We have seen that the mythic legends of various races, of which hitherto no rational explanation has been given, can, with great appearance of probability, be referred to the existence amongst such races in ancient times of a systematic capture of wives.

Farther research, and the observation of tribes hitherto unreported upon—at present we have not been able to say anything that would be satisfactory of the races of the continent of Africa—will, we confidently expect, afford much additional evidence of the prevalence of this practice. But we have done enough to entitle us to affirm that there has existed amongst various races of mankind a system of capturing women for wives.