loz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ferent positions and different kinds of loads : cushions for placing 

 the burden on the head ; cords or straps for supporting it from 

 the head while it is carried on the shoulder or the back. " Away- 

 down in Arizona hay is delivered at the agency by Mojave Indian 

 women, who go out and cut with common house knives the ' grama 

 grass/ put it up in immense sheaves, and bring it to the agency 

 on their backs/' or rather shoulders, a sheaf of hay sticking from 

 each end of a pole that rests on the shoulders, and knapsack con- 

 trivances of different kinds. We generally suppose that the knap- 

 sack belongs to soldiers and schoolboys ; but " if you will get up 

 early some morning and walk around the busy portions of a Ger- 

 man city, you will see upon a box or table a cylindrical basket, 

 holding half a bushel, more or less, with the sticks of the frame 

 projecting an inch or two downward from the bottom, and two 

 broad straps fastened at one end to the rim of the basket and 

 having eyelets or loops at the loose ends. Presently you will see 

 a woman back up to the basket, draw the straps over her shoul- 

 ders, and pass the ends backward around the projecting frame 

 sticks below. She is now hitched up and may walk off with such 

 load as the basket may contain. Perhaps this is older than the 

 knapsack." Women are carriers, too, in France, and a picture by 

 Gioli, exhibited at Venice in 1887, shows that in Italy, also, that 

 work has not been taken off from her. 



" It is not enough, in speaking of savage women, to say that 

 they, as a class, do this or that. It should also be asked how 

 many of these are performed by one woman in short, by every 

 woman. Recalling what was previously said about the user of 

 an implement having to be the maker of it, one sees to what a 

 diversity of occupations this would naturally lead. ... It is not 

 enough to say in any case, as we have seen, that she was food- 

 bringer, weaver, skin-dresser, potter, or beast of burden. This 

 view of her is absolutely misleading. It is not sufficient to say 

 that the modern lucrative employments originated with her. We 

 are bound to keep in mind that each woman was all of these. As 

 in the animal world one part of the body performs many func- 

 tions, in the social world one woman is mistress of many cares. 

 The diversification of duties in well-regulated houses among the 

 civilized nations produces the matron. The savage woman is 

 really the ancestress and prototype of the modern housewife, and 

 not of our factory specialists." 



Savage woman next appears on the scene as an artist ; and 

 her originality and skill in this line are illustrated in every piece 

 of pottery and every basket ; in decorative work of all kinds, and 

 in costumes in a thousand designs of form and color, all of which 

 the maker had to invent, and furthermore to find means and 

 instruments for producing them. 



