As among most Indian races, polygamy prevailed among the Araucanians. To the women fell the greater part of the work; indeed, it would not be overstating the case to assert that the wife did all the labor in the Araucanian household, even to those offices which the Indian of the northern continent generally performed for himself. Yet the women of the Araucanians were not ill treated as a rule. Marriage by capture prevailed, though there was about it also the elements of marriage by purchase. The friends of the wooer sought the father of the girl and requested his consent to the match; but this was rather a matter of form to even more than the usual extent, since while the father was thus being flattered the lover was searching for his bride. Invading the sanctity of her chamber and plucking her forth, by the hair or heels, as was most convenient,--for the Araucanian was somewhat strenuous in his wooing,--he threw her upon his horse and galloped off with her à la Lochinvar, leaving his friends to sustain the attacks of the women, who always rallied fiercely to the defence of the bride. The latter made it a point of honor, indeed, to scream loudly for help; and, however doubtful may have been her good faith, the other women considered it a duty to their sex to accept her protests as implicit and to visit her rape upon the heads of the allies of the lover, which allies rarely escaped with unscarred faces. Having covered the retreat of the ardent swain, the friends then followed him to the sylvan haunts which he sought for concealment and from which he emerged some two or three days later with his captive, now a willing bride. No other ceremony was needful; but, if the parents of the girl were really averse to the match and rallied in time to prevent the wooer from gaining the shelter of the woods with his captive, there was no marriage; if, on the other hand, the thicket was safely gained, the marriage could not be afterward annulled. After the emergence of the wedded pair from their solitude, the friends of the husband called upon him to congratulate him and to offer him gifts, most of which had been pledged beforehand. These presents were then conveyed in procession to the father of the bride, who, if he considered that he had been paid full value for his daughter, took the bridegroom by the hand and declared his delight at the alliance. The mother, however, was supposed to be so angered with her son-in-law for the robbery of her child that she would not even speak to him or so much as look at him; and though she generally relented so far as to tell her daughter to ask her husband if he were not hungry, and upon receiving an affirmative answer proceeded to cook a feast for the assembled company, nevertheless for years after the marriage she would never speak face to face with her son-in-law, though with her back turned to him she would converse with him with entire freedom. This formal resentment on the part of the mother-in-law seems to indicate a recognized status on the part of the mater familias, since it was theoretically in opposition to the will of the pater familias and therefore in some sense a declaration of independence.
Divorce was known among the Araucanians, and the discarded wife was sent back to her father's house with full liberty to marry whom else she would; but in such case the second husband was compelled to pay to the first the full price which the woman originally cost him. When a man died his widow became independent, except where there were surviving sons by another wife, who in such case could claim their father's widow as a concubine to be held in common. This singular custom doubtless arose from the theory of the woman being a chattel of the estate and reverting by right to the heirs. Adultery was punished on the woman by death, while if the outraged husband took the guilty paramour in flagrante delicto he could slay him without incurring any penalty; if, however, the man escaped, he could not afterward be killed with impunity, but could be made to pay to the injured husband the original cost of the wife. It seems highly probable, however, that among the early Araucanians female virtue was of a high standard, though among their descendants it is not quite so highly esteemed.
A somewhat curious custom, still in force among the Araucanians, was that of borrowing children. A sterile woman was an object of reproach, as has been the case among all primitive peoples, and she was likely to forfeit the consideration of her husband and to be supplanted by a new wife who might bear him children. It was to guard against this as far as possible--as well as for protection, since sterility was cause for divorce--that the barren Araucanian wife would often borrow from some complacent and prolific kinswoman one or more of her children, whom the sterile wife would rear as her own. The exact status of these children in the household is not clear; they would seem to have been attributed by courtesy, as it were, to the wife, but not to have stood as heirs to the husband unless in default of heirs of his body, nor even then except by express testamentary act, or that which bore the value of such act, on his part. Yet the fact that the custom existed and still exists is sufficient to show that it must in some way have assured the position of the barren wife. The Araucanians, by the way, notwithstanding a statement to the contrary by Molinos, swathe their children as do most Indian tribes, and they even tie their infants to a bamboo frame so tightly that the little unfortunates have no control over any portion of their bodies save their eyes, and in this state they are hung upon the walls when it is desirable to get them out of the way an occurrence so frequent that the infants pass nearly their whole existence hung upon pegs like unhappy lares.
One curious Araucanian custom, surviving to the present time among many of the tribes, is that of giving to each wife a separate fireplace, at which she did her own cooking. Of course this was not practicable where the house was small and the wives were many; but so well was the custom established, in theory at least, that the polite manner in which to inquire the number of wives a man had was to ask him, "How many fires do you burn?" The houses, by the way, were often shaped much like an inverted boat, and the interior was furnished with a row of cane partitions which roughly carried out the maritime idea, as they had somewhat the appearance of staterooms. These were arranged on each side, and in the middle ran the row of fires around which squatted the ladies of the household. It must not, however, be imagined that only one family, as we understand the word, inhabited one house; on the contrary, each of the married sons had his portion of the paternal rooftree, and often there were as many as a dozen households under one roof. These matters varied with the geographical position of the tribe, the Indians of the north differing from their southern brothers much as the Indians of the eastern part of North America differed from those of the west; and the household which has just been described was typical rather of those of the south than those of the north, though some of the features were identical in both sections.
One of the most remarkable facts concerning the status of women among the Araucanians was that there were medicine women as well as medicine men, and that the former were generally held in higher repute than their male rivals. While this belief in women as peculiarly adapted to the pursuit of sorcery has been prevalent among many peoples, those of white blood as well as those of black, it is rare among Indian races.
The civilization of the Araucanians, both past and present, is among the most interesting of the social developments of American origin, and is, perhaps, the one which has survived in truest individuality. Little record is found of individuals; but two historical facts may be cited concerning the women of the great Indian race of the south facts illustrative of the spirit which was inculcated into females as well as males and born of the indomitable love of liberty which was the fundamental characteristic of the Araucanians.
When Caupolican, one of the greatest of the Araucanian leaders in their long struggle against the Spaniards, was at last taken prisoner, his chief wife, on learning of his capture, hastened to his side; not, as might be expected by those of less Spartan culture, to alleviate his captivity with her tenderness, but to upbraid him for his pusillanimity in being taken alive. Coming into his presence, she threw at his feet their infant son, saying, passionately and scornfully, No quiero titulo de madre del hijo infame, del infame padre! [I do not wish to be called the mother of the infamous son of an infamous father!] At least, that is what she is reported to have said; but as the Spanish is in rhyme, and the chronicler was one rather given to romance, we may be permitted to doubt the implicitness of the narrative in this respect; yet it is most probable that the incident really occurred, since it would have been in entire conformity with the fierce pride of the Araucanians.
The other woman of whom Araucanian history tells us was called Janaqueo. She was the head wife of a chief who was defeated and slain by the Spanish invaders. As soon as she learned of the death of her husband she organized a band of Puelche Indians, was chosen their chief, and sallied forth against the enemy. She proved herself a most skilful leader in the peculiar fighting which was appropriate to the terrain; she hung on the flanks of her foes as a hound on a clumsy boar, alternately fighting and disappearing, and even in pitched battle defeating more than one noted Spanish general. She was one of the most enterprising and dangerous foes ever encountered by the invaders; and when at last she was conquered through her affection for her brother,--who, having been taken captive and condemned to death, was enlarged on condition that his sister retired to her distant home,--the Spaniards felt that they had won a victory which was most important, even though the forces of the Amazon still held the field against them. There can be no doubt that Janaqueo was a most skilful and valiant general; and she relieves the Araucanian nation from the aspersion of being the only people that cannot claim a national Joan of Arc to play against the French heroine.
Before turning to a consideration of South American women as descended from Spanish civilization, it may be well to say a word concerning a most singular class of natives of South America one which, happily, may be dismissed in a few words, but yet which must be mentioned for the sake of completeness, the Gauchos. There may be a question as to the right of the Gaucho women to occupy even a minor place in a history of the development of woman; for the feminine Gaucho has but one individual characteristic. She is dirty, she is slovenly, she is lazy, she is a mere animal, a slave, a beast of burden, but all these things may be found in other extant or past civilizations,--to give them a term of courtesy,--and it would seem hardly needful to bring to the reader's attention a peculiar people if the qualities mentioned were the only ones to be found among these women. But this is not so, for the Gaucho woman has a preeminence in one respect: she is absolutely the most unmoral woman upon the face of the earth, and she has been so ever since her singular class came into recognized existence. This does not say she is immoral; her depravity is too open, too much a matter of course, too entirely a condition of her existence to be deemed immorality. It has been said that it is a wise child who knows his own father; but among the Gauchos it was a remarkable woman who had any assured ideas as to the father of any particular one of her children. Marriage existed as a form of possession; but as all Gaucho women who had reached maturity had families,--and maturity in that climate came at about the age of twelve,--whether they had gone through the ceremony of marriage or not, it will be understood that few Gauchos, male or female, ever thought of troubling to be formally wedded. Sir Francis Head, who, about the opening of the last century, wrote a most entertaining account of his travels across the Andes and Pampas, tells us that if one asked a young Gaucho señorita who might be the father of the child that she was carrying, the almost invariable and entirely artless reply would be, "Quien sabe?" and though Lieutenant Strain, who followed in the footsteps of Sir Francis some fifty years later, contradicted the latter's account of the surliness and fierceness of the male Gaucho, he did not find it lie in his mouth to defend the virtue of the women.
Such absolute, universal, and unblushing unmorality as this is worthy of chronicle and really is hardly shocking, since it is so perfectly matter of fact that it simply resolves itself into a rule of life alien from our ideas. Yet, on the other hand, it is not as the unmorality of the natives of the South Sea islands, for example, where in their primitive state the retention of that which among us is known as womanly virtue was considered a reproach; for the Gaucho women, though so frankly unmoral, yet were not thus by religion and custom. On the contrary, the Gauchos were usually profoundly superstitious and were apt to be devout members of the Roman Communion. Had they been pagans, they would not have acquired any especial claim to renown for immorality by their customs; but as members, by courtesy, of a Christian civilization the women of the Gauchos deserve to be embalmed in the history of their sex as superlative in their national unmorality.