Where Women Propose

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_ Between the northern extremity of Australia and the southern extremity of New Guinea, about ninety miles wide, lies Torres Strait, discovered by a Spaniard in 1606, and not visited again by whites till Captain Cook sailed through in 1770. This strait has been called a "labyrinth of islands, rocks, and coral reefs," so complicated and dangerous that Torres, the original discoverer, required two months to get through.

WHERE WOMEN PROPOSE

The larger islands in this strait are of special interest to students of the phenomena of love and marriage, for on them it is not only permissible but obligatory for women to propose to the men. Needless to say that the inhabitants of these islands, though so near Queensland, are not Australians. They are Melanesians, but their customs are insular and unique. Curr (I., 279) says of them that they are "with one exception, of the Papuan type, frizzle-haired people who cultivate the soil, use the bow and arrow and not the spear, and, un-Australian-like, treat their women with some consideration."

Luckily the customs of these islanders have been carefully and intelligently studied by Professor A.C. Haddon, who published an entertaining account of them in a periodical to which one usually looks for instruction rather than amusement.[181] Professor Haddon combines the two. On the island of Tud, he tells us, when boys undergo the ordeal of initiation into manhood, one of the lessons taught them is: "You no like girl first; if you do, girl laugh and call you woman." When a girl likes a man, she tells his sister and gives her a ring of string. On the first suitable opportunity the sister says to her brother: "Brother, I have some good news for you. A woman loves you." He asks who it is, and, if willing to go on with the affair, tells his sister to ask the girl to keep an appointment with him in some spot in the bush. On receipt of the message the enamoured girl informs her parents that she is going into the bush to get some wood, or food, or some such excuse. At the appointed time the man meets her; and they sit down and yarn, without any fondling. The ensuing dialogue is given by Haddon in the actual words which Maino, chief of Tud, used:

"Opening the conversation, the man says, 'You like me
proper?'

"'Yes,' she replies, 'I like you proper with my heart
inside. Eye along my heart see you--you my man.'

"Unwilling to rashly give himself away, he asks,'How
you like me?'

"'I like your leg--you got fine body--your skin good--I
like you altogether,' replies the girl.

"After matters have proceeded satisfactorily the girl,
anxious to clench the matter, asks when they are to be
married. The man says, 'To-morrow, if you like.'

"Then they go home and inform their relatives. There is
a mock fight and everything is settled."

[FOOTNOTE 181: _Journal of the Anthrop. Inst_., 1889.]

On the island of Mabniag, after a girl has sent an intermediary to bring a string to the man she covets, she follows this up by sending him food, again and again. But he "lies low" a month or two before he ventures to eat any of this food, because he has been warned by his mother that if he takes it he will "get an eruption all over his face." Finally, he concludes she means business, so he consults the big men of the village and marries her.

If a man danced well, he found favor in the sight of these island damsels. His being married did not prevent a girl from proposing. Of course she took good care not to make the advances through one of the other wives--that might have caused trouble!--but in the usual way. On this island the men never made the first advances toward matrimony. Haddon tells a story of a native girl who wanted to marry a Loyalty Islander, a cook, who was loafing on the mission premises. He did not encourage her advances, but finally agreed to meet her in the bush, where, according to his version of the story, he finally refused her. She, however, accused him of trying to "steal" her. This led to a big palaver before the chief, at which the verdict was that the cook was innocent and that the girl had trumped up the charge in order to force the marriage.

If a man and a girl began to keep company, he was branded on the back with a charcoal, while her mark was cut into the skin (because "she asked the man"). It was expected they would marry, but if they did not nothing could be done. If it was the man who was unwilling, the girl's father told the other men of the place, and they gave him a sound thrashing. Refusing a girl was thus a serious matter on these islands!

The missionaries, Haddon was informed,

"discountenance the native custom of the women
proposing to the men, although there is not the least
objection to it from a moral or social point of view;
quite the reverse. So the white man's fashion is being
introduced. As an illustration of the present mixed
condition of affairs, I found that a girl who wants a
certain man writes him a letter, often on a slate, and
he replies in a similar manner."

On the island of Tud it often happened that the girl who was first enamoured of a youth at his initiation, and who first asked him in marriage, was one who "like too many men." The lad, being on his guard, might get rid of her attentions by playing a trick on her, making a bogus appointment with her in the bush, and then informing the elder men, who would appear in his place at the trysting-place, to the girl's mortification.

Various details given in the chapter on Australia indicated that if the women on that big island did not propose, as a rule, it was not from coyness but because the selfishness of the men and their arrangements made it impossible in most cases. On these neighboring islands the women could propose; yet the cause of love, of course, did not gain anything from such an arrangement, which could serve only to stimulate licentiousness. Haddon gathered the impression that "chastity before marriage was unknown, free intercourse not being considered wrong; it was merely 'fashion along we folk.'" Their excuse was the same as Adam's: "Woman, he steal; man, how can he help it?"[182]

[FOOTNOTE 182: Macgillivray says (II., 8) that the females of the Torres Islands are in most cases betrothed in infancy. "When the man thinks proper he takes his wife to live with him without any further ceremony, but before this she has probably had promiscuous intercourse with the young men, such, if conducted with a moderate degree of secrecy, not being considered as an offence.... Occasionally there are instances of strong mutual attachment and courtship, when, if the damsel is not betrothed, a small present made to the father is sufficient to procure his consent; at the Prince of Wales Islands a knife or a glass is considered as a sufficient price for the hand of a 'fair lady,' and are the articles mostly used for that purpose." I cite this passage chiefly because it is another one of those to which Gerland refers as evidence of genuine romantic love!]

Nocturnal courtship was in vogue:

"Decorum was observed. Thus I was told in Tud a girl, before
going to sleep, would tie a string round her foot and pass
it under the thatched wall of the house. In the middle of
the night her lover would come, pull the string, and so
awaken the girl, who would then join him. As the chief of
Mabuiag said, 'What can the father do; if she wants the man
how can he stop her?'"

On Muralug Island the custom is somewhat different. There, after the girl has sent her grass-ring to the man she wants,

"if he is willing to proceed in the matter, he goes to
the rendezvous in the bush and, not unnaturally, takes
every advantage of the situation. Every night
afterwards he goes to the girl's house and steals away
before daybreak. At length someone informs the girl's
father that a man is sleeping with his daughter. The
father communicates with the girl, and she tells her
lover that her father wants to see him--'To see what
sort of man he is?' The father then says, 'You like my
daughter, she like you, you may have her.' The details
are then arranged."

Sometimes, if a girl was too free with her favors to the men, the other women cut a mark down her back, to make her feel ashamed. Yet she had no difficulty on this account in subsequently finding a husband.

Besides the existence of "free love," there are other customs arguing the absence of sentiment in these insular affairs of the heart. Infanticide was frequently resorted to, the babes being buried alive in the sand, for no other reason than to save the trouble of taking care of them. After marriage, in spite of the fact that the girl did the proposing, she becomes the man's property; so much so that if she should offend him, he may kill her and no harm will come to him. If her sister comes to remonstrate, he can kill her too, and if he has two wives and they quarrel, he can kill both. In that love-scene reported by Maino, the chief of Tud, the girl gives us her "sentimental" reasons why she loves him: because he has a fine leg and body, and a good skin. The "romance" of the situation is further aggravated when we read that, as in Australia, swapping sisters is the usual way of getting a wife, and that if a man has no sister to exchange he must pay for his wife with a canoe, a knife, or a glass bottle. Chief Maino himself told Haddon that he gave for his wife seven pieces of calico, one dozen shirts, one dozen singlets, one dozen trousers, one dozen handkerchiefs, two dozen tomahawks, besides tobacco, fish-lines and hooks and pearl shells. He finished his enumeration by exclaiming "By golly, he too dear!"

How did these islanders ever come to indulge in the custom, so inconsistent with their general attitude toward women, of allowing them to propose? The only hint at an explanation I have been able to find is contained in the following citation from Haddon:

"If an unmarried woman desired a man she accosted him,
but the man did not ask the woman (at least, so I was
informed), for if she refused him he would feel
ashamed, and maybe brain her with a stone club, and so
'he would kill her for nothing.'" _

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