Among inferior races, he remarks, women are usually coveted as
spoils of war. The captured women become the wives or concubines of
the warriors and thus represent, as it were, trophies of their valor.
Is it not, therefore, inevitable that the acquisition of a wife by
force should be looked on, among warlike races, as the most honorable
way of getting her, nay, in course of time, as the only one worthy of
a warrior? But since, he continues, not all the men can get wives in
that way, even among the rudest tribes, these other men consoled
themselves with investing the peaceful home-taking of a bride also
with the show of an honorable capture.
In other words, Grosse declares on one page that it is absurd to
derive approved sham capture from real capture because real capture is
everywhere exceptional only and is always considered punishable; yet
two pages later he argues that sham capture _is_ derived from real
capture because the latter is so honorable! As a matter of fact, among
the lowest races known, wife-stealing is not considered honorable.
Regarding the Australians, Curr states distinctly (I., 108) that it
was not encouraged because it was apt to involve a whole tribe in war
for one man's sake. Among the North American Indians, on the other
hand, where, as we saw in the chapter on Honorable Polygamy, a
wife-stealer is admired by both men and women, sham capture does _not_
prevail.
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