BULL. 30] 



WOMEN 



969 



another in degrees required by such an 

 institution in which woman is supreme, 

 exercising rights lying at the foundation 

 of tribal society and government. Ethi- 

 cal teaching and ob.servances find their 

 explanation not in the religious views 

 and rites of a people but rather in the 

 rules and principles underlying those 

 institutions which have proved most con- 

 ducive to the peace, harmony, and pros- 

 perity of the community. 



In defining the statusof woman, a broad 

 distinction must be made between women 

 who are, and women w ho are not, mem- 

 bers of the tribe or community, for among 

 most tribes life, liberty, and the pursuit 

 of well-being are rights belonging only to 

 women who by birth or by the rite of 

 adoption (q. v.) are members or citizens 

 thereof. Other women receive no con- 

 sideration or respect on account of their 

 sex, although after adoption they were 

 spared, as possible mothers, indiscrimi- 

 nate slaughter in the heat of battle, ex- 

 cept while resisting the enemy as 

 valiantly as their brothers and husbands, 

 when they suffered wounds or death for 

 their patriotism. 



Among the North American aborigines 

 here dealt with each sex had its own 

 peculiar sphere of duty and responsibility, 

 and it is essential to a proper understand- 

 ing of the subject that both these spheres 

 of activity should be considered. To pro- 

 tect his family — his wife or wives and 

 their offspring and near kindred — 

 to support them with the products of 

 the chase, to manufacture weapons and 

 wooden utensils, and commonly to pro- 

 vide suitable timbers and bark for the 

 building of the lodge, constituted the 

 duty and obligation which rested on the 

 man. These activities required health, 

 strength, and skill. The warrior was usu- 

 ally absent from his fireside on the chase, 

 on the warpath, or on the fishing trip, 

 weeks, months, and even years, during 

 which he traveled hundreds of miles and 

 was subjected to the hardships and perils 

 of hunting and fighting, and to the in- 

 clemency of the weather, often without 

 adequate shelter or food. The labor 

 required in the home and in all that 

 directly affected it fell naturally to the 

 lot of the woman. In addition to the 

 activities which they shared in common 

 with men, and the careof children, women 

 attended to the tanning of skins, the weav- 

 ing of suitable fibers into fabricsand other 

 articles of necessity, the making of mats 

 and mattresses, baskets, pots of clay, and 

 utensils of liark; sewing, dyeing; gather- 

 ing and storing of edible roots, seeds, ber- 

 ries, and plants, for future use, and the 

 drying and smoking of meats brought by 

 the hunters. On the march the care of 

 the camp equipage and of the various 



family belongings constituted part of the 

 woman's duties, in which she was assisted 

 by the children and by such men as 

 were incapacitated for active fighting or 

 hunting. The essential principle gov- 

 erning this division of labor and re- 

 sponsibility between the sexes lies much 

 deeper than apparently heartless tyranny 

 of the man. It is the best possible ad- 

 justment of the available means of the 

 family to secure the largest measure of 

 welfare and to protect and perpetuate the 

 little community. No other division was 

 so well adapted to the conditions of life 

 among the North American Indians. 

 Fortified by the doctrine of signatures 

 and by other superstitious reasons and 

 beliefs, custom emphasized by various 

 rites and observances the division of labor 

 between the sexes. Thus, the sowing of 

 seeds by women was supposed to render 

 such seeds more fertile and the earth 

 more productive than if planted by men, 

 for it was held that woman has and con- 

 trols the faculty of reproduction and in- 

 crease. Hence sowing and cultivating the 

 crops became one of the exclusive de- 

 partments of woman's work. 



According to Lewis and Clark (Travels, 

 307, 1806) the Shoshoni husband was 

 the absolute proprietor of his wives and 

 daughters, and might dispose of them by 

 barter or otherwise at his pleasure; and 

 Harmon (Jour. Voy., 344, 1820) de- 

 clares that the women of the tribes vis- 

 ited by him were treated no better than 

 the dogs. Writing of the Kutchin, and 

 of the Loucheux Indians in particular, 

 Hardesty (Smithson. Eep. 1866,312, 1867) 

 says that "the women are literally beasts 

 of burden to their lords and masters. All 

 the heavy work is performed by them." 

 A similar statement is made by Powers 

 (Cont. N. A. EthnoL, in, 23, 1877) in re- 

 gard to the Karok of California. School- 

 craft (Ind. Tribes, v, 167, 1855) declares 

 that the Cree women are subjected to 

 lives of heavy and exacting toil, and that 

 some mothers among them do not hesitate 

 to kill their female infants to save them 

 from the miseries which they themselves 

 have suffered. Champlain, writing in 

 1615, states that the Huron and Algon- 

 quian women were "expected to at- 

 tend their husbands from place to 

 place in the fields, filling the office of 

 pack-mule in carrying the baggage and 

 in doing a thousand other things." Yet 

 it would seem that this hard life did not 

 thwart their development, for he adds 

 that among these tribes there were a 

 number of powerful women of extraordi- 

 nary height, who had almost sole care of 

 the lodge and the work at home, tilling 

 the land, planting the corn, gathering a 

 supply of fuel for winter use, beating 

 and spinning the hemp and the bark 



