PRIMITIVE FEMININE JEALOUSY

A passion of which such horrors are a possible outcome may well have led Euripides to write:  “Ah me! ah me! to mortal man how dread a scourge is love!” But this passion is not love, or part of love.  The horrors of such “jealousy” are often witnessed in modern life, but not where true love—­affection—­ever had its abode.  It is the jealousy of the savage, which still survives, as other low phases of sexual passion do.  The records of missionaries and others who have dwelt among savages contain examples of deeds as foul, as irrational, as vindictive as Medea’s; deeds in which, as in the play of Euripides, the fury is vented on innocent victims, while the real culprit escapes with his life and sometimes even derives amusement from the situation.  In Oneota (187-90), Schoolcraft relates the story of an Indian’s wife who entered the lodge when his new bride was sitting by his side and plunged a dagger in her heart.  Among the Fuegians Bove found (131) that in polygamous households many a young favorite lost her life through the fury of the other wives.  More frequently this kind of jealousy vents itself in mutilations.  Williams, in his book on the Fijians (152), relates that one day a native woman was asked, “How is it that so many of you women are without a nose?” The answer was:  “It grows out of a plurality of wives.  Jealousy causes hatred, and then the stronger tries to cut or bite off the nose of the one she hates,” He also relates a case where a wife, jealous of a younger favorite, “pounced on her, and tore her sadly with nails and teeth, and injured her mouth by attempting to slit it open,” A woman who had for two years been a member of a polygamous family told Williams that contentions among the women were endless, that they knew no comfort, that the bitterest hatred prevailed, while mutual cursings and recriminations were of daily occurrence.  When one of the wives is so unfortunate as to fall under the husband’s displeasure too, the others “fall upon her, cuffing, kicking, scratching, and even trampling on the poor creature, so unmercifully as to leave her half dead.”  Bourne writes (89), that Patagonian women sometimes “fight like tigers.  Jealousy is a frequent occasion.  If a squaw suspects her liege lord of undue familiarity with a rival, she darts upon the fair enchantress with the fury of a wild beast; then ensues such a pounding, scratching, hair-pulling, as beggars description.”  Meanwhile the gay deceiver stands at a safe distance, chuckling at the fun.  The licentiousness of these Indians, he says, is equal to their cruelty.  Powers (238) gives this graphic picture of a domestic scene common among the Wintun Indians of California.  A chief, he says, may have two or more wives, but the attempt to introduce a second frequently leads to a fight.