THE STATUS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. 435 



But leaving these exceptional facts, and looking at the average 

 facts, we find these to be just such as the greater strength of men 

 must produce, during stages in which the race has not yet acquired 

 the higher sentiments. Numerous examples, already cited, show that 

 at first women are regarded by men simply as property, and continue 

 to be so regarded through several later stages : they are valued as 

 domestic cattle. A Chippewayan chief said to Hearne : 



" "Women were made for labor ; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as 

 two men can do. They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep 

 us warm at night ; and, in fact, there is no such thing as traveling any consid- 

 erable distance, in this country, without their assistance." 



And this is the conception usual not only among peoples so low as 

 these, but among peoples considerably advanced. To repeat an illus- 

 tration quoted from Barrow, the woman " is her husband's ox, as a 

 CafFre once said to me she has been bought, he argued, and must 

 therefore labor;" and to the like effect is Shooter's statement that a 

 Caffre who kills his wife " can defend himself by saying, ' I have 

 bought her once for all.' " 



As implied in such a defense, the obtainment of wives by abduc- 

 tion or by purchase maintains this relation of the sexes. A woman of 

 a conquered tribe, not killed but brought back alive, is naturally re- 

 garded as an absolute possession ; as is also one for whom a price 

 has been paid. Commenting on the position of women among the 

 Chibchas, Simon writes, " I think the fact that the Indians treat their 

 wives so badly and like slaves is to be explained by their having 

 bought them." Fully to express the truth, however, we must rather 

 say that the state of things, moral and social, implied by the traffic 

 in women, is the original cause ; since the will and welfare of a 

 daughter are as much disregarded by the father who sells her as by 

 the husband who buys her. The accounts of these transactions, in 

 whatever society occurring, show this. Describing the sale of his 

 daughter by a Mandan, Catlin says it is " conducted on his part as a 

 mercenary contract entirely, where he stands out for the highest price 

 he can possibly command for her." Of the ancient Yucatanese we 

 read that " if a wife had no children, the husband might sell her, 

 unless her father agreed to return the price he had paid." In East 

 Africa, a girl's " father demands for her as many cows, cloths, and 

 brass-wire bracelets, as the suitor can afford. . . . The husband may 

 sell his wife, or, if she be taken from him by another man, he claims 

 her value, which is ruled by what she would fetch in the slave- 

 market." Of course, where women are exchangeable for oxen or other 

 beasts, they are regarded as equally without personal rights. 



The degradation they are subject to during phases of human evo- 

 lution in which egoism is unchecked by altruism, is, however, most 

 vividly shown by the transfer of a deceased man's wives to his rela- 



