The Cornell Reading Courses 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

 NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 



Beverly T. Galloway. Dean 



COURSE FOR THE FARM HOME, MARTHA VAN RENSSELAER and FLORA ROSE, Superrisora 



Published and distributed in furtherance of the purposes provided for in the 

 Act of Congress of May 8, 1914 



VOL. IV. No. 91 



JULY I, 1915 



RURAL LIFE SERIES 

 No. II 



THE LIFE OF PRIMITIVE WOMAN 



Blanche Evans Hazard 



O know how the Eskimo mother keeps house, feeds 

 and clothes her husband and children, teaches 

 her daughters to cook and to dress skins, would 

 be a source of interesting study for any woman 

 in New York, and such knowledge would seem 

 like a veritable treasure-trove to her boy and his 

 comrades. In a small community a boy whose 

 mother knows so much about Indians that vShe 

 can actually help him " play Indian," is one to 

 be envied by his playmates. 



Yet to the civilized woman of to-day, the 

 daily life of the uncivilized or primitive woman of 

 the past or present time is a matter of indifference. 

 She tolerates rather than understands her boy's delight in all things 

 connected with Indians and Eskimos, and is glad that he is not the Fiji 

 Islander he aspires to be. When she has bought him an Indian play- 

 suit, a feathered headdress, and a bow and arrow, she dismisses all thought 

 of primitive boys or men, girls or women. Yet few efforts on her part 

 to please that boy could be productive of more enjoyment to him or of 

 more interest to herself, than the telling of good stories about Eskimo 

 or other primitive boys and their mothers. 



It is not for their children alone, however, that the mothers in farm- 

 houses all over this State are urged to inform themselves as to the life 

 and the achievements of primitive women of all countries and centuries. 

 It is as a citizen and as a probable future voter that she may well take 

 an interest, based on knowledge, in the women of the Indian reservations, 

 which are scattered over the State from Cattaraugus to St. Regis. What 

 are the rights, the hopes, the abihties of these Indian women? What 

 can the New York farmer's wife give to this Indian sister, and what 

 can she receive from her? Will she be ready to welcome the successful 



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