Dire confusion regarding woman's status has been created in many minds by three distinct ethnologic phenomena, which are, moreover, often confounded: (1) kinship and heredity through females; (2) matriarchy, or woman's rule in the family (domestic); (3) gynaicocracy, or woman's rule in the tribe (political).
(1) It is a remarkable fact that among many tribes, especially in Australia, America, and Africa, children are named after their mother, while rank and property, too, are often inherited in the female line of descent. Lafitau observed this custom among American Indians more than a century ago, and in 1861 a Swiss jurist, Bachofen, published a book in which he tried to prove, with reference to this "kinship through mothers only," that it indicated that there was a time when women everywhere ruled over men. A study of ethnologic data shows, however, that this inference is absolutely unwarranted by the facts. In Australia, for instance, where children are most commonly named after their mother's clan, there is no trace of woman's rule over man, either in the present or the past. The man treats the woman as a master treats his slaves, and is complete master of her children. Cunow, an authority on Australian relationships, remarks (136):
"Nothing could be more perverse than to infer from the custom of reasoning kinship through females, that woman rules there, and that a father is not master of his children. On the contrary, the father regards himself everywhere, even in tribes with a female line of descent, as the real procreator. He is considered to be the one who plants the germ and the woman as merely the soil in which it grows. And as the wife belongs to him, so does the child that comes from her womb. Therefore he claims also those children of his wife concerning whom he knows or assumes that he did not beget them; for they grew on his soil."
Similarly with the American Indians. Grosse has devoted several pages (73-80) to show that with the tribes among which kinship through females prevails woman's position is not in the least better than with the others. Everywhere woman is bought, obliged to submit to polygamy, compelled to do the hardest and least honorable work, and often treated worse than a dog. The same is true of the African tribes among whom kinship in the female line prevails.
If, therefore, kinship through mothers does not argue female supremacy, how did that kinship arise? Le Jeune offered a plausible explanation as long ago as 1632. In the Jesuit Relations (VI., 255), after describing the immorality of the Indians, he goes on to say:
"As these people are well aware of this corruption, they prefer to take the children of their sisters as heirs, rather than their own, or than those of their brothers, calling in question the fidelity of their wives, and being unable to doubt that these nephews come from their own blood. Also among the Hurons—who are more licentious than our Montagnais, because they are better fed—it is not the child of a captain but his sister's son, who succeeds the father."
The same explanation has been advanced by other writers and by the natives of other countries where kinship through females prevails;[29] and it doubtless holds true in many cases.
In others the custom of naming children after their mothers is probably simply a result of the fact that a child is always more closely associated with the mother than with the father. She brings it into the world, suckles it, and watches over it; in the primitive times, even if promiscuity was not prevalent, marriages were of short duration and divorces frequent, wherefore the male parentage would be so constantly in doubt that the only feasible thing was to name the children after their mothers. For our purposes, fortunately, this knotty problem of the origin of kinship through females, which has given sociologists so much trouble,[30] does not need to be solved. We are concerned solely with the question, "Does kinship in the female line indicate the supremacy of women, or their respectful treatment?" and that question, as we have seen, must be answered with a most emphatic No. There is not a single fact to bear out the theory that man's rule was ever preceded by a period when woman ruled. The lower we descend, the more absolute and cruelly selfish do we find man's rule over woman. The stronger sex everywhere reduces the weaker to practical slavery and holds it in contempt. Primitive woman has not yet developed these qualities in which her peculiar strength lies, and if she had, the men would be too coarse to appreciate them.
WOMAN'S DOMESTIC RULE
(2) As we ascend in the scale we find a few cases where women rule or at least share the rule with the men; but these occur not among savages but with the lower and higher barbarians, and at the same time they are, as Grosse remarks (161), "among the scarcest curiosities of ethnology." The Garos of Assam have women at the head of their clans. Dyak women are consulted in political matters and have equal rights with the men. Macassar women in Celebes also are consulted as regards public affairs, and frequently ascend the throne. A few similar cases have been noted in Africa, where, e.g., the princesses of the Ashantees domineer over their husbands; but these apply only to the ruling class, and do not concern the sex as a whole. Some strange tales of masculine submission in Nicaragua are told by Herrera. But the best-known instance is that of the Iroquois and Hurons. Their women, as Lafitau relates (I., 71), owned the land, and the crops, they decided upon peace or war, took charge of slaves, and made marriages. The Huron Wyandots had a political council consisting of four women. The Iroquois Seneca women could chase lazy husbands from the premises, and could even depose a chief. Yet these cases are not conclusive as to the real status of the women in the tribe. The facts cited are, as John Fiske remarks (Disc. Amer., I., 68), "not incompatible with the subjection of women to extreme drudgery and ill-treatment." Charlevoix, one of the eye-witnesses to these exceptional privileges granted to some Indian women, declares expressly that their domination was illusory; that they were, at home, the slaves of their husbands; that the men despised them thoroughly, and that the epithet "woman" was an insult.[31] And Morgan, who made such a thorough study of the Iroquois, declares (322) that "the Indian regarded woman as the inferior, the dependent, and the servant of man, and, from nature and habit, she actually considered herself to be so." The two honorable employments among Indians were war and hunting, and these were reserved for the men. Other employments were considered degrading and were therefore gallantly reserved for the women.