Identifier: amongcannibalsac1889lumh (find matches)
Title: Among cannibals; an account of four years' travels in Australia and of camp life with the aborigines of Queensland;
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Lumholtz, Carl, 1851-1922 Anderson, Rasmus Björn, 1846-1936, tr
Subjects: Ethnology Natural history
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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blacks call marking the woman. Frequentlythe woman is killed, particularly if she tries to rij.n away asecond time. When a wife is punished for other errors, the husbandusually gives her a rap on the head with the first object hecan lay his hands on. As a result of this treatment thewomen are often marked or scarred from blows received fromtheir cruel husbands. The punishments are quite informal,and are inflicted in the excitement of the moment, no matterwhether others are present or not. As the women perform all the labour, they are the mostimportant part of the property of an Australian native, whois rich in proportion to the number of wives he possesses. They usually have two, frequently three, sometimes fourwives, and I saw one man who had six. All the wives livein the same hut with their husband. He who has many isenvied by the others. No one should have more than twowives, said my men to me, who had only one wife apiece, andwhose highest ambition it was to double the number. The
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XII NATIVE WIVES 163 black man usually has a favourite wife, whom he prefers to theothers and treats better. Still, polygamy does not give riseto as many family troubles as one would think, though theremay be discord enough among the men on account of thewomen. As a rule, man and wife apparently get on verywell, and the women are not constantly being flogged. Ihave even seen instances where the husband was governedby his wife, and was scolded and corrected by her, and Ihave also seen husbands ask their wives for advice ; but suchcases as these are, of course, very rare. It must be admitted that sometimes the Australiantreats his wives well, even in cases where the husbandis the boss, and two of the men who were with me on thisexpedition were exceptions of this kind. It was an unusually fine trait in the characters of Willyand Chinaman that they saved part of the provisions whichthey received from me for their wives. One afternoon, whenthey wanted to go and see their wives, they asked

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