Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/198

192 organization. External difficulties were settled by war. Such a war could end in the annihilation of a tribe, but never in its subjugation. It is the grandeur and at the same time the limitation of the gentile order that it has no room either for masters or servants. There were as yet no distinctions between rights and duties. The question whether he had a right to take part in public affairs, to practice blood revenge or to demand atonement for injuries would have appeared as absurd to an Indian, as the question whether it was his duty to eat, sleep, and hunt. Nor could any division of a tribe or gens into different classes take place. This leads us to the investigation of the economic basis of those conditions.

The population was very small in numbers. It was collected only on the territory of the tribe. Next to this territory was the hunting ground surrounding it in a wide circle. A neutral forest formed the line of demarcation from other tribes. The division of labor was quite primitive. The work was simply divided between the two sexes. The men went to war, hunted, fished, provided the raw material for food and the tools necessary for these pursuits. The women cared for the house, and prepared food and clothing; they cooked, weaved and sewed. Each sex was master of its own field of activity; the men In the forest, the women in the house. Each sex also owned the tools made and used by it; the men were the owners of the weapons, of the hunting and fishing tackle, the women of the household goods and utensils. The household was communistic, comprising several, and often many, families. Whatever