AS A T1<;ST OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 89 



uecessaries of existence, and are themselves slaves to the rigours of the elements, their 

 better feelings are benumbed or perverted, like those of shipwrecked people famishing 

 on a raft. Under such circumstances the weaker members of the community — women, 

 children, the old, the sick — are naturally the chief sufferers. The stories of the subjection 

 of women, and of inhumanity to the feeble and aged, all come from these inhospitable 

 regions. Where plenty prevails, as in tropical or sub-tropical America, and in most of the 

 Polynesian islands, the natural sentiments resume their sway, and women are found to 

 enjoy a social position not inferior, and sometimes actually superior, to that which they 

 possess in some civilized countries. The wife of a Samoan landowner or a Navajo 

 shepherd has no occasion, so far as her position in her family or among her people is con- 

 cerned, to envy the wife of a Grerman peasant. The change which took place in the 

 social condition of the Tinueh women, when their emigration had carried them from the 

 bleak skies and frozen swamps of Athabaska to the sunny uplands and fruitful valleys of 

 Arizona, is thus simply and naturally explained. The change was doubtless the greater 

 because they shared with their husbands the remarkable intellectual endowments indi- 

 cated by the qualities of their common language. 



In another respect the influence of the emigration on the social, or rather the civil, 

 organization of the Southern Tinneh, is not such as, according to the ordinary political 

 theories, might have been expected In passing from the status of savagery to one nearly 

 approaching to civilization, no change has been made in their peculiar and surprising 

 system of government, if such we may term that which is really " no-government." In 

 fact, the only word which can describe it is one which has of late years acquired a grim 

 significance ; it is simple " anarchy." M. Petitot first draws our attention to this Tinneh 

 characteristic, and to the peculiar quality of mind which renders it possible — the utter 

 absence of vindictiveness. " It is," he remarks, " a singular fact, and one which must 

 give a high idea of the gentleness {douceur) of the Dènè-Dindjié, that though they are 

 without any kind of government, of judges, or of laws, we nevertheless do not encounter 

 among them any of those crimes which result from vengeful feelings— only the weaknesses 

 which belong to our nature. The penalty of retaliation, the right of reprisal, that sort 

 of lynch-law recognized as justice and equity among Indian tribes of other stocks, do not 

 exist among this people. Exceptions occur, but they only confirm the general rule." The 

 so-called chiefs, we are told, whom the people assume, or rather whom the Hudson Bay 

 otficials give them, have no other prerogative than that of directing their hunting parties 

 and their trips to the trading posts. 



Mr. Powers makes a singularly like report concerning the warlike Hupâ, those 

 ■onquering Eomans of Northern California. " Politically," he tells us, " the HupA are 

 fatally democratic," — though why th.> expression " fatally " should be applied to this pros- 

 perous tribe is not apparent. '• There is no head-chief," he assures us, " even for war." 

 Every man fights as he chooses, only taking care to keep near the main body of the war- 

 riors. They have, indeed, "well-established laws, or rather usages," as regards both civil 

 rights and personal injuries, but the methods of dealing with these evince the same 

 placability as that which M. Petitot records. " For instance," Mr. Powers explains, " if 

 two Hupâ have a c[uarrel, and it is not settled on the spot, they refuse to speak to each 

 other ; but if after a while one desires to open friendly relations, he offers to pay the other 



Sec. II, 1891. 12. 



c 



