Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:10:01.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAP. XI - INFANTICIDE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

Get access

Summary

“I HAVE no reason (says Davies, p. 412) to suppose that infanticide existed amongst the aborigines in their former wild state; there is little doubt, however, but that it was common of later years, driven to it, as they in all probability were, by the continued harassing of the whites, … dogs became so extremely valuable to them, that the females have been known to desert their infants for the sake of suckling the puppies.” Laplace's words are very similar (II. ch. xviii. pp. 201-202): “The women are only too happy if … the little beings, who owe to them their birth, are not snatched from their arms; for, in the times of dearth, to which, through a too dry or too wet year, these savages, who are completely destitute of foresight, are exposed, it frequently happens that the children are abandoned in the middle of the woods, because their father dreads hunger, or prefers to keep the dog which aids him in hunting down the game.” Chas. Meredith (pp. 201-202) attributes infanticide to somewhat different causes: “The disappearance of all the young children among the natives compels us to the inference that they were destroyed, doubtless on account of the difficulty of conveying them about in the rapid flights from place to place which the blacks now practised in the perpetration of their murders.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1890

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×