hen her
parents or brothers were present to protect her.[226]

When we consider the difficulties in the way of young men in getting
wives at home, we should expect that they would make a practice of
capturing women from other tribes; and, indeed, it is well known that
marriage by capture has been assumed to be at the base of exogamy by
both Lubbock and Spencer. But the importance which has been attached
to this form of marriage in the literature of sociology is due to
the fact that these eminent writers have constructed theories on the
assumption that marriage by capture was widespread and important,
more than to anything else. For, to say nothing of the fact that the
theories of both these writers are too weak to stand even if capture
were found to be very prevalent, the evidence from Australia shows
that capture was comparatively little practiced there, although that
country affords most of the examples referred to by writers on this
subject. Spencer and Gillen say in this connection:

The method of capture which has so frequently been described
as characteristic of Australian tribes, is the very rarest way
in which the Central Australian secures a wife. It does not
often happen that a man forcibly takes a woman from someone
else within his own group, but it does sometimes happen, and
especially when the man from whom the woman is taken has
not shown his respect for his actual or tribal _Ikuntera_
(father-in-law) by cutting himself on the occasion of the
death of one or the other of the latter's relations. In this
case the aggressor will be aided by the members of his local
group, but in other cases of capture he will have to fight
for himself. At times, however, a woman may be captured from
another group, though this again is of rare occurrence, and is
usually associated with an avenging party, the women captured
by which, who are almost sure to be the wives of men killed,
are allotted to certain members of the avenging party.[227]

Curr reports to the same effect:

On rare occasions a wife is captured from a neighboring tribe
and carried off.... At present, as the stealing of a woman
from a neighboring tribe would involve the whole tribe in war
for his sole benefit, and as the possession of the woman would
lead to constant attacks, tribes set themselves generally
against the practice.[228]

It is, of course, not to be