Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/780

766 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY authority over the people, and his wife in control of the king, receiving homage from him, but not ruling. In these and similar cases woman's early relation to the household is formally retained in the larger group and in the presence of an obviously masculine form of organization.

But, in contrast with the survival in political systems of the primitive respect shown mothers, we find the assertion of individual male force within the very bosom of the maternal organization, in the person of the husband, brother, or uncle of the woman. Among the Caribs "the father or head of the house-hold exerts unlimited authority over his wives and children, but this authority is not founded on legal rights, but upon his physical superiority." In spite of the maternal system in North America, the women were often roughly handled by their husbands. Schoolcraft says of the Kenistenos: "When a young man marries, he immediately goes to live with the father and mother of his wife, who treat him, nevertheless, as an entire stranger till after the birth of his first child." But "it appears that chastity is considered by them as a virtue .... and it sometimes happens that the infidelity of a wife is punished by the husband with the loss of her hair, nose, or perhaps life. Such severity proceeds, perhaps, less from rigidity of virtue than from its having been practiced without his permission; for a temporary interchange of wives is not uncommon, and the offer of their persons is considered as a necessary part of the hospitality due to strangers." Schoolcraft also says of the women of the Chippeways, among whom the maternal system had given way: "They are very submissive to their husbands, who have, however, their fits of jealousy; and for very trifling causes treat them with such cruelty as sometimes to occasion their death. They are frequently objects of traffic, and the father possesses the right of disposing of his daughter." Indian fathers also frequently sold their children,