CHAP. XI - INFANTICIDE

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.