On one occasion we were amused by a Clatsop,
who, having been cured of some disorder by our medical
skill, brought his sister as a reward for our kindness.
The young lady was quite anxious to join in this
expression of her brother's gratitude, and mortified we
did not avail ourselves of it."
De Varigny, who lived forty years in the Hawaiian Islands, says (159)
that
"the chief difficulty of the missionaries in the Sandwich
Islands was teaching the women chastity; they knew neither
the word nor the thing. Adultery, incest, fornication, were
the common order of things, accepted by public opinion, and
even consecrated by religion."
The same is true of other Polynesians, the Tahitians, for instance, of
whom Captain Cook wrote that they are
"people who have not even the idea of decency, and who
gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no
more sense of impropriety than we feel when we satisfy our
hunger at a social board with our friends."
Among the highest of all these island peoples, the Tongans, the only
restriction to incontinence was that the lover must not be changed too
often.
What Dalton says of the Chilikata Mishmis, one of the wild tribes of
India, applies to many of the lower races in all parts of the world:
"Marriage ceremony there is, I believe, none; it is
simply an affair of purchase, and the women thus
obtained, if they can be called wives, are not much
bound by the tie.
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