[45] Macdonald, Life in Africa, p. 221.
[46] Holub, ‘Central South African Tribes,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. x. 11.
[47] Waitz, op. cit. iii. 100.
[48] Prescott, in Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, iii. 235.
[49] Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile iv. 474.
[50] Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 313. Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 138, 154.
[51] Möller, Pagels, and Gleerup, op. cit. i. 270.
[52] See Payne, History of the New World, ii. 8.
[53] Gumilla, El Orinoco ilustrado, ii. 274 sq.
It is obvious that this strict division of labour is apt to mislead the travelling stranger. He sees the women hard at work, and the men idly looking on; and it escapes him that the latter will have to be busy in their turn, within their own sphere of action. What is largely due to the force of custom is taken to be sheer tyranny on the part of the men; and the wife is pronounced to be an abject slave of her husband, destitute of all rights. And yet the strong differentiation of work, however burdensome it may be to the wife, is itself a source of rights, giving her authority within the circle which is exclusively her own. Among the Banaka and Bapuku the wife, though said to be her husband’s property and slave, is nevertheless an autocrat in her own house, strong enough to bid defiance to her lord and master.[54] Among the North American Indians, Schoolcraft observes, “the lodge itself, with all its arrangements, is the precinct of the rule and government of the wife…. The husband has no voice in this matter.”[55] Many other statements to a similar effect will be quoted below.