It is a common notion that the negro and negroid races of Africa are peculiarly p.r.o.ne to s.e.xual indulgence. This notion is not supported by those who have had the most intimate knowledge of these peoples. It probably gained currency in part owing to the open and expansive temperament of the negro, and in part owing to the extremely s.e.xual character of many African orgies and festivals, though those might quite as legitimately be taken as evidence of difficulty in attaining s.e.xual erethism.
A French army surgeon, speaking from knowledge of the black races in various French colonies, states in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology that it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. She is rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects she is very unlike the mulatto. The white man is usually powerless to excite her, partly from his small p.e.n.i.s, partly from his rapidity of emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes three times as long to reach emission as the white man. Among the Mohammedan peoples of West Africa, Daniell remarks, as well as in central and northern Africa, it is usual to suckle a child for two or more years. From the time when pregnancy becomes apparent to the end of weaning no intercourse takes place. It is believed that this would greatly endanger the infant, if not destroy it. This means that for every child the woman, at all events, must remain continent for about three years.[213] Sir H. H. Johnston, writing concerning the peoples of central Africa, remarks that the man also must remain chaste during these periods. Thus, among the Atonga the wife leaves her husband at the sixth month of pregnancy, and does not resume relations with him until five or six months after the birth of the child. If, in the interval, he has relations with any other woman, it is believed his wife will certainly die. "The negro is very rarely vicious," Johnston says, "after he has attained to the age of p.u.b.erty. He is only more or less uxorious. The children are vicious, as they are among most races of mankind, the boys outrageously so. As regards the little girls over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chast.i.ty before p.u.b.erty is an unknown condition, except perhaps among the A-nyanja. Before a girl is become a woman it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about 5 years of age."[214] Among the Bangala of the upper Congo a woman suckles her child for six to eighteen months and during all this period the husband has no intercourse with his wife, for that, it is believed, would kill the child.[215]
Among the Yoruba-speaking people of West Africa A. B. Ellis mentions that suckling lasts for three years, during the whole of which period the wife must not cohabit with her husband.[216]
Although chast.i.ty before marriage appears to be, as a rule, little regarded in Africa, this is not always so. In some parts of West Africa, a girl, at all events if of high birth, when found guilty of unchast.i.ty may be punished by the insertion into her v.a.g.i.n.a of bird pepper, a kind of capsic.u.m, beaten into a ma.s.s; this produces intense pain and such acute inflammation that the ca.n.a.l may even be obliterated.[217]
Among the Dahomey women there is no coitus during pregnancy nor during suckling, which lasts for nearly three years. The same is true among the Jekris and other tribes on the Niger, where it is believed that the milk would suffer if intercourse took place during lactation.[218]
In another part of Africa, among the Suaheli, even after marriage only incomplete coitus is at first allowed and there is no intercourse for a year after the child"s birth.[219]
Farther south, among the Ba Wenda of north Transvaal, says the Rev. R. Wessmann, although the young men are permitted to "play" with the young girls before marriage, no s.e.xual intercourse is allowed. If it is seen that a girl"s l.a.b.i.a are apart when she sits down on a stone, she is scolded, or even punished, as guilty of having had intercourse.[220]
Among the higher races in India the s.e.xual instinct is very developed, and s.e.xual intercourse has been cultivated as an art, perhaps more elaborately than anywhere else. Here, however, we are far removed from primitive conditions and among a people closely allied to the Europeans. Farther to the east, as among the Cambodians, strict chast.i.ty seems to prevail, and if we cross the Himalayas to the north we find ourselves among wild people to whom s.e.xual license is unknown. Thus, among the Turcomans, even a few days after the marriage has been celebrated, the young couple are separated for an entire year.[221]
All the great organized religions have seized on this value of s.e.xual abstinence, already consecrated by primitive magic and religion, and embodied it in their system. It was so in ancient Egypt. Thus, according to Diodorus, on the death of a king, the entire population of Egypt abstained from s.e.xual intercourse for seventy-two days. The Persians, again, attached great value to s.e.xual as to all other kinds of purity. Even involuntary seminal emissions were severely punishable. To lie with a menstruating woman, according to the Vendidad, was as serious a matter as to pollute holy fire, and to lie with a pregnant woman was to incur a penalty of 2000 strokes. Among the modern Pa.r.s.ees a man must not lie with his wife after she is four months and ten days pregnant. Mohammedanism cannot be described as an ascetic religion, yet long and frequent periods of s.e.xual abstinence are enjoined. There must be no s.e.xual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, during suckling, during menstruation (and for eight days before and after), nor during the thirty days of the Ramedan fast. Other times of s.e.xual abstinence are also prescribed; thus among the Mohammedan Yezidis of Mardin in northern Mesopotamia there must be no s.e.xual intercourse on Wednesdays or Fridays.[222]
In the early Christian Church many rules of s.e.xual abstinence still prevailed, similar to those usual among savages, though not for such prolonged periods. In Egbert"s Penitential, belonging to the ninth century, it is stated that a woman must abstain from intercourse with her husband three months after conception and for forty days after birth. There were a number of other occasions, including Lent, when a husband must not know his wife.[223] "Some canonists say," remarks Jeremy Taylor, "that the Church forbids a mutual congression of married pairs upon festival days.... The Council of Eliberis commanded abstinence from conjugal rights for three or four or seven days before the communion. Pope Liberius commanded the same during the whole time of Lent, supposing the fast is polluted by such congressions."[224]
[196]
A. Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, vol. i, pp. 8, 187. As has been shown by, for instance, Dr. Iwan Bloch (Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Erster Theil, 1902), every perverse s.e.xual practice may be found, somewhere or other, among savages or barbarians; but, as the same writer acutely points out (p. 58), these devices bear witness to the need of overcoming frigidity rather than to the strength of the s.e.xual impulse.
[197]
Ploss and Bartels have brought together in Das Weib a large number of facts in the same sense, more especially under the headings of Abstinenz-Vorschriften and Die Fernhaltung der Schw.a.n.geren. I have not drawn upon their collection.
[198]
Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, May, 1896, p. 369.
[199]
Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 188.
[200]
F. Cook, New York Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 1894.
[201]
A. d"Orbigny, L"Homme Americain, 1839, vol. i, p. 47.
[202]
A. B. Holder, "Gynecic Notes Among the American Indians," American Journal of Obstetrics, 1892, vol. xxvi, No. 1.
[203]
Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, 1905, p. 139.
[204]
Foley, Bulletin de la Societe d" Anthropologie, Paris, November 6, 1879.
[205]
J. S. Gardiner, Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, February, 1898, p. 409.
[206]
As regards the modern Maoris, a medical correspondent in New Zealand writes: "It is nothing for members of both s.e.xes to live in the same room, and for promiscuous intercourse to take place between father and daughter or brother and sister. Maori women, who will display a great deal of modesty when in the presence of male Maoris, will openly ask strange Europeans to have s.e.xual intercourse with them, and without any desire for reward. The men, however, seem to prefer their own women, and even when staying in towns, where they can obtain prost.i.tutes, they will remain continent until they return home again, a period of perhaps a month."
[207]
Sch.e.l.long, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1889, i, pp. 17, 19; Haddon, Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, February, 1890, pp. 316, 397; Guise, ib., February and May, 1899, p. 207; Seligmann, ib., 1902, pp. 298, 301-302; Reports Cambridge Expedition, vol. v, pp. 199-200, 275.
[208]
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1900, ht. v, p. 414.
[209]
R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 318.
[210]
Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, 1894, pp. 170, 177, 187.
[211]
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1896, iv, pp. 180-181.
[212]
W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 524.
[213]
W. F. Daniell, Medical Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, p. 55.
[214]
Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, 1899, pp. 409, 414.
[215]
Rev. J. H. Weeks, Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, 1910, p. 418.
[216]
Sir A. B. Ellis, Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, p. 185.
[217]
W. F. Daniell, op. cit., p. 36.
[218]
Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, August and November, 1898, p. 106.
[219]
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, ii and iii, p. 84; Velten, Sitten und Gebrauche der Suaheli, p. 12.
[220]
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1896, p. 364.
[221]
Vambery, Travels in Central Asia, 1864, p. 323.
[222]