"the women in general are slaves of the men, being compelled when on the march to carry everything needed, like beasts of burden; nay, they are even obliged to bring home from the forest the game killed by the men."
Tschndi (R.d.S.A., 284, 274) saw the marks of violence on many of the Botocudo women, and he says the men reserved for themselves the beautiful plumes of birds, leaving to the women such ornaments as pig's claws, berries, and monkey's teeth. A peculiar refinement of selfishness is alluded to by Burton (H.B., II., 49):
"The Brazilian natives, to warm their naked bodies, even in the wigwam, and to defend themselves against wild beasts, used to make their women keep wood burning all night."
Of the Patagonians Falkner says (125) that the women "are obliged to submit to every species of drudgery." He gives a long list of their duties (including even hunting) and adds:
"No excuse of sickness, or being big with child, will relieve them from their appointed labor; and so rigidly are they obliged to perform their duty, that their husbands cannot help them on any occasion, or in the greatest distress, without incurring the highest ignominy."
Even the wives of the chiefs were obliged to drudge unless they had slaves. At their marriages there is little ceremony, the bride being simply handed over to the man as his property. The Fuegians, according to Fitzroy, when reduced to a state of famine, became cannibals, eating their old women first, before they kill their dogs. A boy being asked why they did this, answered: "Doggie catch otters, old women no." (Darwin, V B., 214.)
Thus, from the extreme north to the extreme south of the American continent we find the "noble red man" consistent in at least one thing—his maltreatment of women. How, in the face of these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, a specialist like Horatio Hale could write that there was among the Indians "complete equality of the sexes in social estimation and influence," and that
"casual observers have been misled by the absence of those artificial expressions of courtesy which have descended to us from the time of chivalry, and which, however gracious and pleasing to witness, are, after all, merely signs of condescension and protection from the strong to the weak"[220]
—surpasses all understanding. It is a shameful perversion of the truth, as all the intelligent and unbiassed evidence of observers from the earliest time proves.