“In the House of Commons papers for 1844 will be found some 350 printed pages of reports, memoranda, and letters, gathered by the standing committee appointed in regard to the treatment of aboriginals in the Australian colonies.  All these have the same unlovely tale to tell of an absolute incapacity to form even a rudimentary notion of chastity.  One worthy missionary, who had been for some years settled among tribes of New South Wales, as yet brought in contact with no other white men, writes with horror of what he had observed.  The conduct of the females, even young children, is most painful; they are cradled in prostitution and fostered in licentiousness.  Brough Smith (II., 240) quotes several authorities who record that in Western Australia the women in early youth were almost prostitutes.  ’For about six months after their initiation into manhood the youths were allowed an unbounded licence, and there was no possible blame attached to the young unmarried girl who entertained them’” (179).

In Lewis and Clark’s account of their expedition across the American Continent they came to the conclusion that there was an utter absence of regard for chastity “among all Indians,” and they relate the following as a sample (439): 

“Among all the tribes, a man will lend his wife or daughter for a fish-hook or a strand of beads.  To decline an offer of this sort is indeed to disparage the charms of the lady, and therefore gives such offence, that, although we had occasionally to treat the Indians with rigor, nothing seemed to irritate both sexes more than our refusal to accept the favors of the females.  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: