It is a common mistake, arising from insufficient knowledge, to suppose that savage women are specially subject to oppression. Their life is hard as we look at it, but not as they look at it. We have still much to learn on these matters. An even greater error is the view that these women are a source of weakness to the male members of their families. The very reverse is the truth. Primitive women are strong in body and capable in work. Fison and Howitt, in discussing this question, state of the Australian women, “In times of peace, they are the hardest workers and the most useful members of the community.” And in times of war, “they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves at all times, and so far from being an encumbrance on the warriors, they will fight, if need be, as bravely as the men, and with even greater ferocity.”[162] This is no exceptional case. The strength of savage women is proved by reports from widely different races, of which all testify to their physical capability and aptness for labour. Schellong,[163] who has carefully studied the Papuans of the German protectorate of New Guinea, from the anthropological point of view, “considers that the women are more strongly built than the men.” Nor does heavy work appear to damage the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary. Thus among the Andombies on the Congo, to give one instance, the women, though working very hard as carriers, and as labourers in general, lead an entirely happy existence; they are often stronger than the men and more finely developed: some of them, we are told, have really splendid figures. And Parke, speaking of the Manyuema of the Arruwimi in the same region, says that “they are fine animals, and the women very handsome; they carry loads as heavy as those of the men and do it quite as well.”[164] Again, McGee[165] comments on the extraordinary capacity of quite aged women for heavy labour. He tells of “a withered crone, weighing apparently not more than 80 to 90 lb. who carried a kilio containing a stone mortar 196 lb. in weight for more than half a mile on a sandy road without any perceptible exhaustion. The proportion of the active aged is much larger than among civilised people.”
I may pause to note some of the numerous industries of which women were the originators. First of all, woman is the food-giver; all the labours relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilisation of the side products of foodstuffs are usually found in the hands of women. Women are everywhere the primitive agriculturists. They beat out the seeds from plants; dig for roots and tubers, strain the poisonous juices from the cassava and make bread from the residue; and it was under their attention that a southern grass was first developed into what we know as Indian corn.[166] The removal of poisonous matter from tapioca by means of hot water is also the discovery of savage women.[167] All the evolution of primitive agriculture may be traced to women’s industry. Power tells of the Yokia women in Central California who employ neither plough nor hoe, but cultivate the ground by digging the earth deep and rubbing it fine with their hands, and by this means they get an excellent yield.[168] Women have everywhere been the first potters; vessels were needed for use in cooking, to carry and to hold water, and to store the supplies of food. For the same reason baskets were woven. Women invented and exercised in common multifarious household occupations and industries. Curing food, tanning the hides of animals, spinning, weaving, dyeing—all are carried on by women. The domestication of animals is usually in women’s hands. They are also the primitive architects; the hut, in widely different parts of the world—among Kaffirs, Fuegians, Polynesians, Kamtschatdals—is built by women. We have seen that the communal houses of the American Indians are mainly erected by the women. Women were frequently, though not always, the primitive doctors. Among the Kurds, for instance, all the medical knowledge is in the hands of the women, who are the hereditary hakims.[169] Women seem to have prepared the first intoxicating liquors. The Quissama women in Angola climb the gigantic palm trees to obtain palm-beer.[170] In the ancient legends of the North, women are clearly represented as the discoverers of ale.[171]
It would be easy to go on almost indefinitely multiplying examples of the industries of primitive women. There can be no doubt at all that their work is exacting and incessant; it is also inventive in its variety and its ready application to the practical needs of life. If a catalogue of the primitive forms of labour were made, each woman would be found doing at least half-a-dozen things while a man did one. We may accept the statement of Prof. Mason that in the early history of mankind “women were the industrial, elaborative, conservative half of society. All the peaceful arts of to-day were once women’s peculiar province. Along the lines of industrialism she was pioneer, inventor, author, originator.”[172]
There is another matter that must be noted. The primitive division of labour between the sexes was not in any sense an arrangement dictated by men, nor did they impose the women’s tasks upon them. The view that the women are forced to work by the laziness of the men, and that their heavy and incessant labour is a proof of their degraded position is entirely out of focus. Quite the reverse is the truth. Evidence is not wanting of the great advantage arising to women from their close connection with labour. It was largely their control over the food supply and their position as actual producers which gave them so much influence, and even authority in the mother-age. In this connection I may quote the statement of Miss Werner about the African women as representing the true conditions—
“I cannot say that, so far as my own observations went, the women’s lot seemed to be a specially hard one. In fact, they are too important an element in the community not to be treated with consideration. The fact that they do most of the heavy field-work does not imply that they are a down-trodden sex. On the contrary, it gives them a considerable pull, as a man will think twice before endangering his food supply.”[173]
Mr. Horatio Hale, a well-known American anthropologist likewise observes—
“The common opinion that women among savage tribes in general are treated with harshness, and regarded as slaves, or at least as inferiors, is, like many common opinions, based on error, originating in too large and indiscriminate deduction from narrow premises.... The wife of a Samoan landowner or Navajo shepherd has no occasion, so far as her position in her family or among her people, to envy the wife of a German peasant.”[174]
Certainly savage women do not count their work as any degradation. There is really an equal division of labour between the sexes, though the work of the men is accomplished more fitfully than that of the women. The militant activities of fighting and hunting are essential in primitive life. The women know this, and they do their share—the industrial share, willingly, without question, and without compulsion. It is entirely absurd in this work-connection to regard men as the oppressors of women. Rather the advantage is on the women’s side. For one thing, just because they are accustomed to hard labour all their lives, they are little, if any, weaker than men. Primitive women are strong in body, and capable in work. The powers they enjoy as well as their manifold activities are the result of their position as mothers, this function being to them a source of strength and not a plea of weakness.
“They who are accustomed to the ways of civilised women only,” remarks Mr. Fison, “can hardly believe what savage women are capable of, even when they may well be supposed to be at their weakest. For instance, an Australian tribe on the march scarcely take the trouble to halt for so slight a performance as childbirth. The newly born infant is wrapped in skins, the march is resumed, and the mother trudges on with the rest. Moreover, as is well known, among many tribes elsewhere it is the father who is put to bed, while the mother goes about her work as if nothing had happened.”[175]
Another important advantage arising to women, through their identification with the early industrial process, was their position as the first property owners. They were almost the sole creators of ownership in land, and held in this respect a position of great power. This explains the fact that in the transactions of the North American tribes with the Colonial Government many deeds of assignment bear female signatures.[176] A form of divorce used by a husband in ancient Arabia was: “Begone, for I will no longer drive thy flocks to pasture.”[177] In almost all cases the household goods belonged to the woman. The stores of roots and berries laid up for a time of scarcity were the property of the wife, and the husband would not touch them without her permission. In many cases such property was very extensive. Among the Menomini Indians, for instance, a woman of good circumstances would own as many as 1200 to 1500 birch-bark vessels.[178] In the New Mexico Pueblos what comes from the outside of the house as soon as it is inside is put under the immediate control of the women. Bandelier, in his report of his tour in Mexico, tells us that “his host at Cochiti, New Mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a string of chili without the consent of his fourteen-year-old daughter, Ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father.”[179]