Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/454

438 pursuing wild animals, it is clear that during the child-bearing period their ability to do either of these things is so far interfered with, both by pregnancy and by the suckling of infants, that they are practically excluded from them. Though the Dahomans, with their army of amazons, show us that women may be warriors, yet the instance proves that women can become warriors only by being practically unsexed; for, nominally wives of the king, they are celibate, and any unchastity is fatal. But omitting those activities for which women are, during large parts of their lives, physically incapacitated, or into which they cannot enter in considerable numbers without fatally diminishing population, we cannot define the division of labor between the sexes, further than by saying that, before civilization begins, the stronger sex forces the weaker to do all the drudgery; and that along with social advance the apportionment, somewhat mitigated in character, becomes variously specialized under varying conditions.

As bearing on the causes of the mitigation, presently to be dealt with, we may here note that women are better treated where circumstances lead to likeness of occupations between the sexes. Schoolcraft remarks of the Chippewayans that "they are not remarkable for their activity as hunters, which is owing to the ease with which they snare deer and spear fish, and these occupations are not beyond the strength of their old men, women, and boys;" and then he also says that "though the women are as much in the power of the men as other articles of their property, they are always consulted, and possess a very considerable influence in the traffic with Europeans, and other important concerns." We read, too, in Lewis and Clarke, that "among the Clatsops and Chinnooks, who live upon fish and roots, which the women are equally expert with the men in procuring, the former have a rank and influence very rarely found among Indians. The females are permitted to speak freely before the men, to whom, indeed, they sometimes address themselves in a tone of authority." Then, again, Bancroft tells us that "in the province of Cueba women accompany the men, fighting by their side and sometimes even leading the van;" and of this same people he also quotes Wafer as saying that "their husbands are very kind and loving to them. I never knew an Indian to beat his wife, or give her any hard words." A kindred meaning appears traceable in a fact supplied by the Dahomans, among whom, sanguinary and utterly unfeeling as they are, the participation of women with men in war goes along with a social status much higher than usual; for Burton tells us that in Dahomey "the woman is officially superior, but under other conditions she still suffers from male arrogance."

A probable farther cause of improvement in the treatment of women may here be noted: I refer to the obtaining of wives by services rendered, instead of by property paid. The practice which Hebrew tradition acquaints us with in the case of Jacob, proves to be a