“Comparatively little virtue existed among the unmarried women.  Their chances of marriage were not diminished, but rather augmented, by the fact that they had been great favorites, provided they had avoided conception during their years of general pleasure.”

The wife “was deterred, by fear of public punishment, from the commission of indiscretions.”  “The unmarried women among the Natchez were unusually unchaste,” says McCulloh (165).

This damning list might be continued for the Central and South American Indians.  We should find that the Mosquito Indians often did not wait for puberty (Bancroft, I., 729); that, according to Martius, Oviedo, and Navarette,

“in Cuba, Nicaragua,[205] and among the Caribs and Tupis, the bride yielded herself first to another, lest her husband should come to some ill-luck by exercising a priority of possession....  This jus primae noctis was exercised by the priests” (Brinton, M.N.W., 155);

that the Waraus give girls to medicine men in return for professional services (Brett, 320); that the Guaranis lend their wives and daughters for a drink (Reich, 435); that among Brazilian tribes the jus primae noctis is often enjoyed by the chief (Journ.  Roy.  G.S., II., 198); that in Guiana “chastity is not considered an indispensable virtue among the unmarried women” (Dalton, I., 80); that the Patagonians often pawned and sold their wives and daughters for brandy (Falkner, 97); that their licentiousness is equal to their cruelty (Bourne, 56-57), etc., etc.

APPARENT EXCEPTIONS

A critical student will not be able, I think, to find any exceptions to this rule of Indian depravity among tribes untouched by missionary influences.  Westermarck, indeed, refers (65) with satisfaction to Hearne’s assertion (311) that the northern Indians he visited carefully guarded the young people.  Had he consulted page 129 of the same writer he would have seen that this does not indicate a regard for chastity as a virtue, but is merely a result of their habit of regarding women as property, to which Franklin, speaking of these same Indians, refers (287); for as Hearne remarks in the place alluded to, “it is a very common custom among the men of this country to exchange a night’s lodging with each other’s wives.”  An equal lack of insight is shown by Westermarck, when he professes to find female chastity among the Apaches.  For this assertion he relies on Bancroft, who does indeed say (I., 514) that “all authorities agree that the Apache women, both before and after marriage, are remarkably pure.”  Yet he himself adds that the Apaches will lend their wives to each other.[206] If the women are otherwise chaste, it is not from a regard for purity, but from fear of their cruel husbands and masters.  United States Boundary Commissioner, Bartlett, has enlightened us