made an overture to any of their young women, he was given to
understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by
the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but
when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary to
treat the wife for a night with the same delicacy that is here
required by the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take
any liberties by which this was violated, was sure to be
disappointed." (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, p.
254.)
Cook found that the people of New Zealand "bring the prepuce over
the gland, and to prevent it from being drawn back by contraction
of the part, they tie the string which hangs from the girdle
round the end of it. The glans, indeed, seemed to be the only
part of their body which they were solicitous to conceal, for
they frequently threw off all their dress but the belt and
string, with the most careless indifference, but showed manifest
signs of confusion when, to gratify our curiosity, they were
requested to untie the string, and never consented but with the
utmost reluctance and shame.... The women's lower garment was
always bound fast round them, except when they went into the
water to catch lobsters, and then they took great care not to be
seen by the men. We surprised several of them at this employment,
and the chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered
more confusion and distress at the sight of Actæon, than these
women expressed upon our approach. Some of them hid themselves
among the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they
had made themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they
could find, and when they came out, even with this veil, we could
see that their modesty suffered much pain by our presence."
(Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 257-258.) In Rotuma, in Polynesia, where the women enjoy much freedom, but
where, at all events in old days, married people were, as a rule,
faithful to each other, "the language is not chaste according to
our ideas, and there is a great deal of freedom in speaking of
immoral vices. In this connection a man and his wife will speak
freely to one another before their friends. I am informed,
though, by European traders well conversant with the language,
that there are grades of language, and that certain coarse
phrases would never be used to any decent woman; so that
probably, in their way, they have much modesty, only we cannot
appreciate it." (J. Stanley Gardiner, "The Natives of Rotuma,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May, 1898, p. 481.)
The men of Rotuma, says the same writer, are very clean, the
women also, bathing twice a day in the sea; but
"bathing in
public without the _kukuluga_, or _sulu_ [loin-cloth, which is
the ordinary dress], around the waist is absolutely unheard of,
and would be much looked down upon." (_Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, 1898, p. 410.) In ancient Samoa the only necessary garment for either man or
woman was an apron of leaves, but they possessed so
"delicate a
sense of propriety" that even "while bathing they have a girdle
of leaves or some other covering around the waist."
(Turner,
_Samoa a Hundred Years Ago_, p. 121.)
After babyhood the Indians of Guiana are never seen naked. When
they change their single garment they retire. The women wear a
little apron, now generally made of European beads, but the
Warraus still make it of the inner bark of a tree, and some of
seeds. (Everard im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, 1883.)
The Mandurucu women of Brazil, according to Tocantins (quoted by
Mantegazza), are completely naked, but they are careful to avoid
any postures which might be considered indecorous, and they do
this so skilfully that it is impossible to tell when they have
their menstrual periods. (Mantegazza, _Fisiologia della Donna_,
cap 9.)
The Indians of Central Brazil have no "private parts." In men the
little girdle, or string, surrounding the lower part of the
abdomen, hides nothing; it is worn after puberty, the penis being
often raised and placed beneath it to lengthen the prepuce. The
women also use a little strip of bast that goes down the groin
and passes between the thighs. Among some tribes (Karibs, Tupis,
Nu-Arwaks) a little, triangular, coquettishly-made piece of
bark-bast comes just below the mons veneris; it is only a few
centimetres in width, and is called the _uluri. In both sexes
concealment of the sexual mucous membrane is attained_. These
articles cannot be called clothing. "The red thread of the
Trumai, the elegant _uluri_, and the variegated flag of the
Bororó attract attention, like ornaments, instead of drawing
attention away." Von den Steinen thinks this proceeding a
necessary protection against the attacks of insects, which are
often serious in Brazil. He does think, however, that there is
more than this, and that the people are ashamed to show the
glans penis. (Karl von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern
Zentral-Brasiliens_, 1894, pp. 190 et seq.) Other travelers mention that on the Amazon among some tribes the
women are clothed and the men naked; among others the women
naked, and the men clothed. Thus, among the Guaycurus the men are
quite naked, while the women wear a short petticoat; among the
Uaupás the men always wear a loin-cloth, while the women are
quite naked.
"The feeling of modesty is very developed among the Fuegians, who
are accustomed to live naked. They manifest it in their bearing
and in the ease with which they show themselves in a state of
nudity, compared with the awkwardness, blushing, and shame which
both men and women exhibit if one gazes at certain parts of their
bodies. Among themselves this is never done even between husband
and wife. There is no Fuegian word for modesty, perhaps because
the feeling is universal among them." The women wear a minute
triangular garment of skin suspended between the thighs and never
removed, being merely raised during conjugal relations. (Hyades
and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii, pp.
239, 307, and 347.)
Among the Crow Indians of Montana, writes Dr.
Holder, who has
lived with them for several years, "a sense of modesty forbids
the attendance upon the female in labor of any male, white man or
Indian, physician or layman. This antipathy to receiving
assistance at the hands of the physician is overcome as the
tribes progress toward civilization, and it is especially
noticeable that half-breeds almost constantly seek the
physician's aid." Dr. Holder mentions the case of a young woman
who, although brought near the verge of death in a very difficult
first confinement, repeatedly refused to allow him to examine
her; at last she consented; "her modest preparation was to take
bits of quilt and cover thighs and lips of vulva, leaving only
the aperture exposed.... Their modesty would not be so striking
were it not that, almost to a woman, the females of this tribe
are prostitutes, and for a consideration will admit the
connection of any man." (A.B. Holder, _American Journal of
Obstetrics_, vol. xxv, No. 6, 1892.)
"In every North American tribe, from the most northern to the
most southern, the skirt of the woman is longer than that of the
men. In Esquimau land the _parka_ of deerskin and sealskin
reaches to the knees. Throughout Central North America the
buckskin dress of the women reached quite to the ankles. The
West-Coast women, from Oregon to the Gulf of California, wore a
petticoat of shredded bark, of plaited grass, or of strings, upon
which were strung hundreds of seeds. Even in the most tropical
areas the rule was universal, as anyone can see from the codices
or in pictures of the natives." (Otis T. Mason, _Woman's Share in
Primitive Culture_, p. 237.)
Describing the loin-cloth worn by Nicobarese men, Man says: "From
the clumsy mode in which this garment is worn by the Shom
Pen--necessitating frequent readjustment of the folds--one is led
to infer that its use is not _de rigueur_, but reserved for
special occasions, as when receiving or visiting strangers."
(E.H. Man, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1886, p.
442.)
The semi-nude natives of the island of Nias in the Indian Ocean
are "modest by nature," paying no attention to their own nudity
or that of others, and much scandalized by any attempt to go
beyond the limits ordained by custom. When they pass near places
where women are bathing they raise their voices in order to warn
them of their presence, and even although any bold youth
addressed the women, and the latter replied, no attempt would be
made to approach them; any such attempt would be severely
punished by the head man of the village.
(Modigliani, _Un Viaggio
a Nias_, p. 460.)
Man says that the Andamanese in modesty and self-respect compare
favorably with many classes among civilized peoples.
"Women are
so modest that they will not renew their leaf-aprons in the
presence of one another, but retire to a secluded spot for this
purpose; even when parting with one of their _bod_
appendages
[tails of leaves suspended from back of girdle] to a female
friend, the delicacy they manifest for the feelings of the
bystanders in their mode of removing it amounts to prudishness;
yet they wear no clothing in the ordinary sense."
(_Journal of
the Anthropological Institute_, 1883, pp. 94 and 331.)
Of the Garo women of Bengal Dalton says: "Their sole garment is a
piece of cloth less than a foot in width that just meets around
the loins, and in order that it may not restrain the limbs it is
only fastened where it meets under the hip at the upper corners.
The girls are thus greatly restricted in the positions they may
modestly assume, but decorum is, in their opinion, sufficiently
preserved if they only keep their legs well together when they
sit or kneel." (E.T. Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, 1872, p. 66.)
Of the Naga women of Assam it is said: "Of clothing there was not
much to see; but in spite of this I doubt whether we could excel
them in true decency and modesty. Ibn Muhammed Wali had already
remarked in his history of the conquest of Assam (1662-63), that
the Naga women only cover their breasts. They declare that it is
absurd to cover those parts of the body which everyone has been
able to see from their births, but that it is different with the
breasts, which appeared later, and are, therefore, to be covered.
Dalton (_Journal of the Asiatic Society_, Bengal, 41, 1, 84) adds
that in the presence of strangers Naga women simply cross their
arms over their breasts, without caring much what other charms
they may reveal to the observer. As regards some clans of the
naked Nagas, to whom the Banpara belong, this may still hold
good." (K. Klemm, "Peal's Ausflug nach Banpara,"
_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1898, Heft 5, p. 334.)
"In Ceylon, a woman always bathes in public streams, but she
never removes all her clothes. She washes under the cloth, bit by
bit, and then slips on the dry, new cloth, and pulls out the wet
one from underneath (much in the same sliding way as servant
girls and young women in England). This is the common custom in
India and the Malay States. The breasts are always bare in their
own houses, but in the public roads are covered whenever a
European passes. The vulva is never exposed. They say that a
devil, imagined as a white and hairy being, might have
intercourse with them." (Private communication.) In Borneo, "the _sirat_, called _chawal_ by the Malays, is a
strip of cloth a yard wide, worn round the loins and in between
the thighs, so as to cover the pudenda and perinæum; it is
generally six yards or so in length, but the younger men of the
present generation use as much as twelve or fourteen yards
(sometimes even more), which they twist and coil with great
precision round and round their body, until the waist and stomach
are fully enveloped in its folds." (H. Ling Roth,
"Low's Natives
of Borneo," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1892, p.
36.)
"In their own houses in the depths of the forest the Dwarfs are
said to neglect coverings for decency in the men as in the women,
but certainly when they emerge from the forest into the villages
of the agricultural Negroes, they are always observed to be
wearing some small piece of bark-cloth or skin, or a bunch of
leaves over the pudenda. Elsewhere in all the regions of Africa
visited by the writer, or described by other observers, a neglect
of decency in the male has only been recorded among the Efik
people of Old Calabar. The nudity of women is another question.
In parts of West Africa, between the Niger and the Gaboon
(especially on the Cameroon River, at Old Calabar, and in the
Niger Delta), it is, or was, customary for young women to go
about completely nude before they were married. In Swaziland,
until quite recently, unmarried women and very often matrons went
stark naked. Even amongst the prudish Baganda, who made it a
punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above
the knee, the wives of the King would attend at his Court
perfectly naked. Among the Kavirondo, all unmarried girls are
completely nude, and although women who have become mothers are
supposed to wear a tiny covering before and behind, they very
often completely neglect to do so when in their own villages.
Yet, as a general rule, among the Nile Negroes, and still more
markedly among the Hamites and people of Masai stock, the women
are particular about concealing the pudenda, whereas the men are
ostentatiously naked. The Baganda hold nudity in the male to be
such an abhorrent thing that for centuries they have referred
with scorn and disgust to the Nile Negroes as the
'naked people.'
Male nudity extends northwest to within some 200
miles of
Khartum, or, in fact, wherever the Nile Negroes of the
Dinka-Acholi stock inhabit the country." (Sir H.H.
Johnston,
_Uganda Protectorate_, vol. ii, pp. 669-672.) Among the Nilotic Ja-luo, Johnston states that
"unmarried men go
naked. Married men who have children wear a small piece of goat
skin, which, though quite inadequate for purposes of decency, is,
nevertheless, a very important thing in etiquette, for a married
man with a child must on no account call on his mother-in-law
without wearing this piece of goat's skin. To call on her in a
state of absolute nudity would be regarded as a serious insult,
only to be atoned for by the payment of goats. Even if under the
new dispensation he wears European trousers, he must have a piece
of goat's skin underneath. Married women wear a tail of strings
behind." It is very bad manners for a woman to serve food to her
husband without putting on this tail. (Sir H.H.
Johnston, _Uganda
Protectorate_, vol. ii, p. 781.)
Mrs. French-Sheldon remarks that the Masai and other East African
tribes, with regard to menstruation, "observe the greatest
delicacy, and are more than modest." (_Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, 1894, p. 383.) At the same time the Masai, among whom the penis is of enormous
size, consider it disreputable to conceal that member, and in the
highest degree reputable to display it, even ostentatiously. (Sir
H.H. Johnston, _Kilima-njaro Expedition_, p. 413.) Among the African Dinka, who are scrupulously clean and delicate
(smearing themselves with burnt cows' dung, and washing
themselves daily with cows' urine), and are exquisite cooks,
reaching in many respects a higher stage of civilization, in
Schweinfurth's opinion, than is elsewhere attained in Africa,
only the women wear aprons. The neighboring tribes of the red
soil--Bongo, Mittoo, Niam-Niam, etc.--are called
"women" by the
Dinka, because among these tribes the men wear an apron, while
the women obstinately refuse to wear any clothes whatsoever of
skin or stuff, going into the woods every day, however, to get a
supple bough for a girdle, with, perhaps, a bundle of fine grass.
(Schweinfurth, _Heart of Africa_, vol. i, pp. 152, etc.)
Lombroso and Carrara, examining some Dinka negroes brought from
the White Nile, remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us
first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case
would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the
women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of
one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days
afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these
people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1896, vol. xvii, fasc. 4.)
"The negro is very rarely knowingly indecent or addicted to
lubricity," says Sir H.H. Johnston. "In this land of nudity,
which I have known for seven years, I do not remember once having
seen an indecent gesture on the part of either man or woman, and
only very rarely (and that not among unspoiled savages) in the
case of that most shameless member of the community-
-the little
boy." He adds that the native dances are only an apparent
exception, being serious in character, though indecent to our
eyes, almost constituting a religious ceremony. The only really
indecent dance indigenous to Central Africa "is one which
originally represented the act of coition, but it is so altered
to a stereotyped formula that its exact purport is not obvious
until explained somewhat shyly by the natives.... It may safely
be asserted that the negro race in Central Africa is much more
truly modest, is much more free from real vice, than are most
European nations. Neither boys nor girls wear clothing (unless
they are the children of chiefs) until nearing the age of
puberty. Among the Wankonda, practically no covering is worn by
the men except a ring of brass wire around the stomach. The
Wankonda women are likewise almost entirely naked, but generally
cover the pudenda with a tiny bead-work apron, often a piece of
very beautiful workmanship, and exactly resembling the same
article worn by Kaffir women. A like degree of nudity prevails
among many of the Awemba, among the A-lungu, the Batumbuka, and
the Angoni. Most of the Angoni men, however, adopt the Zulu
fashion of covering the glans penis with a small wooden case or
the outer shell of a fruit. The Wa-Yao have a strong sense of
decency in matters of this kind, which is the more curious since
they are more given to obscenity in their rites, ceremonies, and
dances than any other tribe. Not only is it extremely rare to see
any Yao uncovered, but both men and women have the strongest
dislike to exposing their persons even to the inspection of a
doctor. The Atonga and many of the A-nyanga people, and all the
tribes west of Nyassa (with the exception possibly of the
A-lunda) have not the Yao regard for decency, and, although they
can seldom or ever be accused of a deliberate intention to expose
themselves, the men are relatively indifferent as to whether
their nakedness is or is not concealed, though the women are
modest and careful in this respect." (H.H. Johnston, _British
Central Africa_, 1897, pp. 408-419.)
In Azimba land, Central Africa, H. Crawford Angus, who has spent
many years in this part of Africa, writes: "It has been my
experience that the more naked the people, and the more to us
obscene and shameless their manners and customs, the more moral
and strict they are in the matter of sexual intercourse." He
proceeds to give a description of the _chensamwali_, or
initiation ceremony of girls at puberty, a season of rejoicing
when the girl is initiated into all the secrets of marriage, amid
songs and dances referring to the act of coition.
"The whole
matter is looked upon as a matter of course, and not as a thing
to be ashamed of or to hide, and, being thus openly treated of
and no secrecy made about it, you find in this tribe that the
women are very virtuous. They know from the first all that is to
be known, and cannot see any reason for secrecy concerning
natural laws or the powers and senses that have been given them
from birth." (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1898, Heft 6, p.
479.)
Of the Monbuttu of Central Africa, another observer says: "It is
surprising how a Monbuttu woman of birth can, without the aid of
dress, impress others with her dignity and modesty."
(_British
Medical Journal_. June 14, 1890.)
"The women at Upoto wear no clothes whatever, and came up to us
in the most unreserved manner. An interesting gradation in the
arrangement of the female costume has been observed by us: as we
ascended the Congo, the higher up the river we found ourselves,
the higher the dress reached, till it has now, at last,
culminated in absolute nudity." (T.H. Parke, _My Personal
Experiences in Equatorial Africa_, 1891, p. 61.)
"There exists throughout the Congo population a marked
appreciation of the sentiment of decency and shame as applied to
private actions," says Mr. Herbert Ward. In explanation of the
nudity of the women at Upoto, a chief remarked to Ward that
"concealment is food for the inquisitive." (_Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, 1895, p. 293.) In the Gold Coast and surrounding countries complete nudity is
extremely rare, except when circumstances make it desirable; on
occasion clothing is abandoned with unconcern. "I have on several
occasions," says Dr. Freeman, "seen women at Accra walk from the
beach, where they have been bathing, across the road to their
houses, where they would proceed to dry themselves, and resume
their garments; and women may not infrequently be seen bathing in
pools by the wayside, conversing quite
unconstrainedly with their
male acquaintances, who are seated on the bank. The mere
unclothed body conveys to their minds no idea of indecency.
Immodesty and indelicacy of manner are practically unknown." He
adds that the excessive zeal of missionaries in urging their
converts to adopt European dress--which they are only too ready
to do--is much to be regretted, since the close-fitting, thin
garments are really less modest than the loose clothes they
replace, besides being much less cleanly. (R.A.
Freeman, _Travels
and Life in Ashanti and Jaman_, 1898, p. 379.) At Loango, says Pechuel-Loesche, "the well-bred negress likes to
cover her bosom, and is sensitive to critical male eyes; if she
meets a European when without her overgarment, she instinctively,
though not without coquetry, takes the attitude of the Medicean
Venus." Men and women bathe separately, and hide themselves from
each other when naked. The women also exhibit shame when
discovered suckling their babies. (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_,
1878, pp.