" During the procession to the husband's camp
"decency obliges her to cry and sob most bitterly." Among the
Araucanians of Chili, according to Smith (215) "it is a point of honor
with the bride to resist and struggle, however willing she may be."
While conceding that "the manners of the inferior races do not imply
much coyness," Spencer, nevertheless, thinks "we cannot suppose
coyness to be wholly absent." He holds that in the cases just cited
coyness is responsible for the resistance of the women, and he goes so
far as to make this coyness "an important factor," in accounting for
the custom of marriage by capture which has prevailed among so many
peoples in all parts of the world. Westermarck declares (388) that
this suggestion can scarcely be disproved, and Grosse (105) echoes his
judgment. To me, on the contrary, it seems that these distinguished
sociologists are putting the cart before the horse. They make the
capture a sequence of "coyness," whereas in truth the coyness (if it
may be so called) is a result of capture. The custom of wife capture
can be easily explained without calling in the aid of what we have
seen to be so questionable a thing as primitive female coyness.
Savages capture wives as the most coveted spoils of war. They capture
them, in other instances, because polygamy and female infanticide have
disturbed the equilibrium of the sexes, thus compelling the young men
to seek wives elsewhere than in their own tribes; and the same result
is brought about (in Australia, for instance), by the old men's habit
of appropriating all the young women by a system of exchange, leaving
none for the young men, who, therefore, either have to persuade the
married women to elope--at the risk of their lives--or else are
compelled to steal wives elsewhere.
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