Note 200 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

Nowhere in all the books and articles we have consulted on the Australian tribes is any mention made of slaves200. Now it is true that, whereas on many of these tribes we are well informed, there are others on which we have little information or no information at all. But here our group-argument may be brought to bear. We have to deal here with an isolated district, inhabited by tribes living in similar conditions and physically and psychically resembling each other, so much so, that some ethnographers201 and theorists202 speak of the Australians as if they were one people, as if all Australians were in exactly the same state of culture. This really is erroneous: there are many differences in several respects between the Australian tribes203. But that they can be treated in this manner, proves that the differences are not so very great; it is unimaginable, that Grosse would have spoken in the same way of the American Indians or the Negroes. What we mean to say now is this: our information on some Australian tribes is not sufficient to prove that just in that district which each particular account relates to, slavery does not exist. But then the several accounts strengthen each other; for taking into consideration the great likeness existing between the Australian tribes, it is a priori unlikely that some of these tribes would have and others would not have slaves. Moreover, if in any part of Australia slavery existed, our informants probably would have found this too remarkable a fact to leave it unnoticed.