Among the Indians of North America it is the custom of many tribes to refrain from sexual intercourse during the whole period of lactation, as also D’Orbigny found to be the case among South American Indians, although suckling went on for over three years.[201] Many of the Indian tribes have now been rendered licentious by contact with civilization.  In the primitive condition their customs were entirely different.  Dr. Holder, who knows many tribes of North American Indians well, has dealt in some detail with this point.  “Several of the virtues,” he states, “and among them chastity, were more faithfully practised by the Indian race before the invasion from the East than these same virtues are practised by the white race of the present day....  The race is less salacious than either the negro or white race....  That the women of some tribes are now more careful of their virtue than the women of any other community whose history I know, I am fully convinced."[202] It is not only on the women that sexual abstinence is imposed.  Among some branches of the Salish Indians of British Columbia a young widower must refrain from sexual intercourse for a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.[203]

In many parts of Polynesia, although the sexual impulse seems often to have been highly developed before the arrival of Europeans, it is very doubtful whether license, in the European sense, at all generally prevailed.  The Marquesans, who have sometimes been regarded as peculiarly licentious, are especially mentioned by Foley as illustrating his statement that sexual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive peoples except during sexual seasons.[204] Herman Melville’s detailed account in Typee of the Marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt) reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness.  At Rotuma, J. Stanley Gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came sexual intercourse before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prostitution and adultery were unknown.  Matters are much worse now.[205] The Maoris of New Zealand, in the old days, according to one who had lived among them, were more chaste than the English, and, though a chief might lend his wife to a friend as an honor, it would be very difficult to take her (private communication).[206] Captain Cook also represented these people as modest and virtuous.

Among the Papuans of New Guinea and Torres Straits, although intercourse before marriage is free, it is by no means unbridled, nor is it carried to excess.  There are many circumstances restraining intercourse.  Thus, unmarried men must not indulge in it during October and November at Torres Straits.  It is the general rule also that there should be no sexual intercourse during pregnancy, while a child is being suckled (which goes on for three or four years), or even until it can speak or walk.[207] In Astrolabe Bay, New Guinea, according to Vahness, a young couple must abstain from intercourse for several weeks after marriage, and to break this rule would be disgraceful.[208]