Twins in Benin 33 it is lawful and customary to destroy the weaker twin child, irrespective of sex."I In some parts of the Benin territory, according to a contemporary of Dapper, the twin-bearing women are treated very badly. According to Nyendael, they actually kill both mother and infants, and sacrifice them to a certain devil, which they fondly imagine harbours in a wood near the village. "But if," says this authority, "the man happens to be more than ordinarily tender, he generally buys off his wife, by sacrificing a female slave in her place; but the children are without possibility of redemption obliged to be made the satisfactory offerings which this savage law requires. In the year 1699, a merchant's wife, commonly called ellaroe or mof, lay-in of two children, and her husband redeemed her with a slave, but sacrificed his children. After which I had frequent opportunities of seeing and talking with the disconsolate mother, who never could see an infant without a very melancholy reflection on the fate of her own, which always extorted briny tears from her. The following year the like event happened to a priest's wife. She was delivered of two children, which, with a slave, instead of his wife, he was obliged to kill and sacrifice with his own hands, by reason of his sacerdotal function; and exactly one year after, as though it had been a punishment inflicted from heaven, the same woman was the second time delivered of two child1 James Dawson, Australian Aborigines. ren, but how the priest managed himself on this occasion I have not been informed, but am apt to think that this poor woman was forced to atone for her fertility by death. These dismal events have in process of time made such impressions on men, that when the time of their wives' delivery approaches, they send them to another country; which makes me believe that for the future they will correct these inhumanities." On the west coast of Africa “twins are killed among all the Niger Delta tribes, and in districts out of English control the mother is killed too," which shows the fanatic point to which a belief, or rather an excuse, founded on the economic desire to keep down the size of a family, may be carried. All Kaffir children are neglected, according to Kidd, 3 but on the birth of twins, "one frequently is killed by the father, for the natives think that unless the father places a lump of earth in the mouth of one of the babies, he will lose his strength." The next provision to keep down the "cost of living" is directed against children with blemishes, a practice that was not easy to check even among civilized peoples. Among the Australian aborigines "it is usual to destroy those that are malformed."4 I Nyendael, Ulricht, 1688, quoted by H. Ling Roth in Great Benin, pp. 35-36. 2 Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 472. 3 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 202. 4 Slaughter, Australian Aborigines, p. 39. "Unlucky" Birthdays 35 Among certain tribes on the west coast, children whose mothers have died are thrown into the bush, "as are all children who have not arrived in this world in the way considered orthodox or who cut their teeth in an improper way." A child born with teeth is put to death, in some parts of Africa; children born in stormy weather are destroyed in Kamchatka. In Madagascar "the superstition of lucky and unlucky days prevailed throughout all the tribes, and the unfortunate infants that came into the world on one of these unlucky days were immediately destroyed. I 3 2 How obvious are the so-called reasons for killing the children may be seen from the fact that according to another authority, the proscribed or unlucky periods and days include all children born in March and April, or in the last week of each month, or on Wednesdays and Fridays. Among the Antankarana tribes of the Amber Mountains in Madagascar, a child that sneezes at or shortly after its birth is exposed. Among the Basuto, when a child is born with its feet first, it is killed, whereas among the Bondei it is killed if it is born. head first. 5 Among the Bondei, the excuses found for killing children are many. If the child is born head M. Kracheninnikow, Histoire du Kamchatka, chap. xii. H. H. Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Völker, vol. ii., p. 257. 4 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 258. s Dale, Journal, Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv., p. 183. first, it is a kigego (unlucky child) and is strangled; if it cries, it is a kigego and is strangled. If the father has not been in the galo (kekutoigwa), or the mother has not been in the kiwanga (kekuviniwa) (initiated), the child is a tumbwi (offence) and is strangled." same. Mental processes the world over are much the The American legislator raising the tariff to keep out competitors is not employing a system entirely dissimilar from that of the barbarians who, finding the first proscriptions fail to keep down the birth-rate, widen the scope of the proscription. And so the customary law grows to include female children among the proscribed. Writing in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Don Felix de Azara declared he had found that among the Guanas in South America it was the custom for the women to bury alive the majority of the female children, and that they never brought up more than one boy and one girl.2 Rude attempts to regulate the number of children next appeared. It has been suggested that this phase of primitive development argues mentality sufficient to foresee destruction of the tribe that does not provide for the future. Doubtless, in the mind of some savage Malthus, the idea that the tribe must allow at least a given Godfrey Dale, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. XXV., p. 182. Felix de Azara, Voyages dans l'Amérique Méridionale, vol. ii., pp. 93 and 115. Importing Male Youths 37 number of children to live, was conceived with the warm glow of discovery. Among the Tokelaus, or Line Islanders, "no married pair are allowed by their law to have or bear more than four children; that is, only four get the chance of life. The woman has a right to rear, or endeavour to rear, one child. It rests with the husband to decide how many more shall live, and this depends on how much land there is to divide."I On Radack Island a woman "is allowed to bring up only three children; her fourth and every succeeding one she is obliged to bury alive herself."2 Two boys and one girl were all that the Australian mother brought up, according to Curr, although the women bore an average of six children. 3 Economic ingenuity-and trepidity-could go no further than the practice in the Solomon Islands, where "a small portion of the Ugi natives have been born on the island, three-fourths of them having been brought as youths to supply the place of offspring killed in infancy. When a man needs support in his declining years, his props are not his own sons, but youths obtained by purchases from the St. Christoval natives."4 Another author says of the same islands that when "it 'Tutila, Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. i., p. 267. Otto von Kotzebue, A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, London, 1821, vol. iii., p. 173. 3 Edward M. Curr, The Australian Race, vol. i., p. 70. 4 H. B. Guppy, The Solomon Islands, p. 42. |