434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



treatment makes these relations of the sexes difficult to chanfre; since 

 chronic ill-usage produces physical inferiority, and physical inferiority 

 tends to exclude those feelings which might check ill-usage. Very 

 generally among the lower races the females are even more unattrac- 

 tive in aspect than the males. It is remarked of the Puttooahs, whose 

 men are diminutive and whose women are still more so, that "the 

 men are far from being handsome, hut the palm of ugliness must he 

 awarded to the women. The latter are hard-worked and apparently 

 ill-fed." Again, of the inhabitants of the Corea, Gutzlaff says: "The 

 females are very ugly, while the male sex is one of the best formed of 

 Asia .... women are treated like beasts of burden ; wives may be 

 divorced under the slightest pretense." And for the kindred contrast 

 habitually found, a kindred cause may habitually be assigned ; the 

 antithetical cases furnished by such uncivilized peoples as the Cal- 

 mucks and Kirghiz, whose women, less hardly used, are better look- 

 ing, yielding additional evidence. 



We must not, however, conclude, as at first sight seems proper, 

 that this low statics of women among the rudest peoples is caused by 

 a callous selfishness existing in the males and not equally present in 

 the females. When we learn that where torture of enemies is the 

 custom, the women outdo the men when we read of the cruelties 

 perpetrated by the two female Dyak chiefs described by Kajah 

 Brooke, or of the horrible deeds which Winwood Reade narrates of a 

 bloodthirsty African queen we are shown that it is not lack of will 

 but lack of power which prevents primitive women from displaying 

 natures equally brutal with those of primitive men. A savageness 

 common to the two necessai-ily works out the results we see under 

 the conditions. Let us look at these results more closely. 



Certain anomalies may first be noticed. Even among the rudest 

 men, whose ordinary behavior to their women is of the worst, pre- 

 dominance of women is not unknown. Snow says of the Fuegians 

 that he has " seen one of the oldest women exercising authority over 

 the rest of her people ; " and Mitchell says of the Australians that old 

 men and even old women exercise great authority. Then we have 

 the fact that among various peoples who hold their women in de- 

 graded positions, there nevertheless occur female rulers ; as among 

 the Batta people in Sumatra, as in Madagascar, and as in the above- 

 named African kingdom. Possibly this anomaly results from the 

 system of descent in the female line. For though, under that system, 

 property and power usually devolve upon a sister's male childi'en, 

 yet as, occasionally, there is only one sister, and she has no male chil- 

 di'en, the elevation of a daughter may sometimes result. Even as I 

 write, I find, on looking into the evidence, a significant example. 

 Describing the Haidahs of the Pacific States, Bancroft says: "Among 

 nearly all of them rank is nominally hereditary, for the most part by 

 the female line. . . . Females often possess the right of chieftainship." 



