Mention of the women of the South Sea islands leads to another digression from the main subject, for there are one or two interesting facts to be told about these women. The customs of the Taeehs, one of the most powerful of the tribes of the Pacific islanders, may be taken as typical of the others, though, of course, there are points of variance and even departure. When Porter, the captain of the famous Essex, visited the island of Nookahevah during his celebrated cruise in 1812, he found that island governed by a princess named Pittenee--a fact which shows that among the islanders women were held in some esteem. The lady, potentate though she was, was not above forming a scandalous connection with one of Porter's officers, though she displayed no fidelity to her temporary spouse; but nothing better could be expected of one of a race where the parents urged their daughters to sacrifice their virtue to strangers and even rewarded with presents those who did them the honor to accept that virtue in gift. Indeed, the claims of hospitality required the proffer of the person of wife or sister to the guest, while before reaching marriageable age--about nineteen, very late for such a climate--the young girls were given entire license. There was marriage among these people, though it is difficult to see why; and, strange to say, post-nuptial unfaithfulness was rare. The married women, as usual among primitive peoples, were rather chattels than slaves, being entirely at the disposition of their husbands; indeed, save in the matter of unmorality, the customs of the islanders in regard to their women differed but little from those conventional among barbarous tribes.
It is now time to turn to a consideration of the women of South America as we usually think of them, the product of a grafted Spanish civilization rather than a survival or result of primitive cultures. Yet when we turn to such consideration we find but little that is characteristic or even interesting. It is not to Spanish-founded countries that we must look for the greatest advances in the status or culture of women; in such lands there has ever been stagnation and even retrogression, while there has rarely been any marked individuality of personal or national trait. Nor must it be forgotten that the phrase "the Women of South America," even in the limited meaning of those of Spanish blood, covers an exceedingly broad field.
In noting the history of woman in South America, it is pleasant to relate that one of the first of the sex of whom we have record is chronicled as having performed a vast service to posterity, even though it were one which would have been done by others had she not been the pioneer. It is recorded that the first wheat ever sown in South America was carried to Lima, in the year 1535, by Doña Maria de Escobar, though the quantity was only a few grains. When the crop came to ripeness, the lady called together all her friends to celebrate the first harvest of wheat ever gathered in the New World; and although she was in error as to this,--wheat having been produced in Mexico in 1528 by a negro slave belonging to Cortés, who accidentally found a few grains mingled with the rice supplied to the soldiers and sowed them,--she is none the less deserving of being held in honorable remembrance as the benefactor of generations yet to come. While speaking of benefactors among South American women, one may be mentioned who is remarkable both for her race and for the form of one of her bequests. This was Catalina Huanca, an Indian, who was so rich--being a cacique--that she left at her death much money to be expended in various charitable bequests, among them being the still existing hospital of Santa Ana at Lima; but the extraordinary bequest to which allusion is made was a sum to be used for forming and maintaining a body guard for the viceroy, the guard to comprise both infantry--halberdiers, as the foot then were in such a body and cavalry, and to consist of a hundred men. It is difficult to say whether this bequest was not a malicious hit at the poverty of show among the high Spanish officials as compared with the state held by the Indians in their ceremonials; but the viceroy did not care to inquire too curiously into the donor's meaning, but preferred to accept with gratitude the goods with which the gods had provided him.
It may be broadly said that the characteristics of the Spanish-American ladies of Chili, Peru, and the rest of the greater Spanish-American states were from the first, and continue until now, very like those of the Mexican women. Even physically there is a great resemblance in the races, as indeed there should be, considering the identity of parent stock. Their complexions were and are rarely good; but their hair and eyes are generally fine and their figures excellent, while small feet form a national physical trait of which they, like their Mexican sisters, are exceedingly proud. There has never been any marked racial individuality among the women of South America, and what little there once was has entirely disappeared. Even early in the past century a traveller, in noting the influx of European manners, said: "This spirit of imitation is natural and praiseworthy, but it produces a cloying sameness; it is a leveller, destructive alike of national and personal individuality, and the traveller, tired of seeing continually reproduced the manners, customs, dress, and even ideas with which he has always been familiar, will tarry with pleasure in those spots presenting the freshness of originality. Such spots exist only where a continual jostling with the exterior world has not abraded the salient angles of the national character."
It may be added that such spots have become increasingly difficult to find, and that the romance of South America has entirely disappeared before the march of "progress." Yet few countries have known more of romance, and this in regard to her women, though the chronicle is scanty and must be pieced together from scraps of information. Perhaps the most romantic era of South American women was that of the buccaneers. It was a brief time and one that held much of peril to womanly honor and virtue; but it also held delightful possibilities for the daughters of Spain in their new home. These ladies, even some of noble birth, looked not unkindly upon the "hereticos" who came with fire and sword to gain wealth in the shape of booty and ransom. Do we not read in quaint old chronicle of that paladin of a filibuster, Revenau de Lussan, who, in 1685, put Panama to ransom and then occupied the town of Queaquilla? De Lussan was a freebooter, which is a polite way of writing "pirate," and he was a Frenchman in days when Gallic morals were not on the highest of planes even when judged by the usual standard of their country; but the gentlemanly filibuster was frankly shocked at the state of affairs existing in Queaquilla, where he found the most beautiful and wanton women he had ever encountered. The monks and priests with which the town swarmed took the lead in illicit intercourse with the entirely willing ladies, and there were few children who had the faintest idea concerning the identity of their paternal parents. The people of this place had been told frightful stories about the pirates, and when De Lussan captured a pretty young woman, the maid to the wife of the governor, she begged him with tear-strewn cheeks, Señor, por l'amor de Dios no mi coma! [Senor, for the love of God do not eat me!] It took but a short time, however, for the jovial buccaneers to prove to the ladies that they were not greatly to be feared by the fair sex unless the latter proved unkind; and when the pirates retired to the island of Puna with their spoils they were accompanied by many of the ladies of Queaquilla, who went with them nominally as prisoners awaiting ransom but really as willing mistresses. There the freebooters spent many glorious weeks in high revelry, with music, wine, dancing, and all other amusements most dear to the pirate heart, the Spanish ladies entering most heartily into the spirit of the occasion. In the attack on the town De Lussan killed the Spanish treasurer, and the latter's disconsolate widow fell to the lot of the slayer of her husband. In a few days she developed for the gallant Frenchman a passion that was absolutely embarrassing, insisting that he should remain with her after the rest of the band had departed, should marry her, and should live with her at Queaquilla. She actually went so far as to obtain from the governor a signed pardon for De Lussan for offences committed against Spanish possessions, so that he could be assured that he might safely remain. De Lussan, however, though he tells us that he "was not a little perplexed herewith," could not resolve to settle down and abandon the career of a pirate for that of a private citizen; he may also have had doubts as to the intention of the governor of keeping his fair promises when once he had the famous freebooter in his power; so he further tells us: "Thus I rejected her proposals, but so as to assure her I should retain even long as I lived a lively remembrance of her affections and good inclinations toward me." Thus he extricated himself from his quandary with all the finesse and gallantry of his nation and went his way rejoicing in his liberty. We are not told of the future fate of the lady, of whose name we are indeed kept in ignorance, but it is probable that some Spaniard consoled her for the loss of her lover as readily as had that lover for the loss of her husband.
De Lussan's experience with the women of Central America--which for convenience is here considered as part of the southern continent--was so typical that it has been treated at greater length than it may have deserved. Indeed, there seems to be much light thrown on the impetuous, passionate nature of the Spanish-American woman by her bearing toward the pirates who ravaged the shores of her country yet to whom she frequently gave her heart and virtue. Of course this bearing was not invariable; Morgan, a greater pirate, but not so gallant a gentleman as De Lussan, when he captured Panama against fearful odds, found within its walls a Spanish lady with whom he fell violently in love, but who resolutely refused to listen to his proposals. Finding flattery, pleading, and bribery in vain, he showed the true brutality of his nature by throwing her into afoul dungeon and keeping her there half-starved, until even his rough comrades who delighted in slaughter and made the name of England a stench in the nostrils of the civilized world by their treatment of the Spaniards, remonstrated, and the brutal buccaneer was compelled by motives of policy to release his captive from her cell. She was finally ransomed and allowed to return to the ruins of her home, and here we lose sight of her; but we can remember her as one who was worthy of the best traditions of the Spanish ladies and whose memory may redeem the repute of her lighter countrywomen from their shame.
It must not be thought from what has been said as to the morality of Spanish-American women in certain periods and places that it is designed to charge the race in general with immorality. That were to utter a slander which would be as baseless as it would be inexcusable. It is unfortunately true that in the history of any country or race it is the women most famous for immorality and wickedness who stand out most prominently; those who were merely good were tolerably sure to be forgotten as unnoteworthy. So it was with South America. We have the word of a keen observer "that any impartial person who shall reside long enough among South Americans to become acquainted with their domestic manners will declare that conjugal and paternal affection, filial piety, beneficence, generosity, good nature, and hospitality are the inmates of almost every house. I have no doubt, too, that these virtues will continue here, until civilization and refinement shall drive them from their abode in the New World, to make room for etiquette, formality, becoming pride, prudery, and hypocrisy from the Old. Then, the children of the first families in Lima (whom I have often seen rise from the table and carry a plateful of food to a poor protege beggar, seated in the patio or under the corridor, wait and chat with the little wretch until he had finished, and return to the table) will look on such objects with disdain, because mamma has subscribed a competent sum to a charitable institution and made that sum known to the world through the medium of the newspapers! I cannot avoid fearing that this modern improvement will supersede their own pure but almost antiquated customs."
This, written about 1825, is a severe arraignment of the blessings of our civilization; but it is also a sincere compliment to the character of South American women and so is worth quoting. Fond of pleasures the South American señorita and even señora has always been; but such fondness, however indicative of volatility of temperament and lack of depth of nature, is not incompatible with many of the virtues which are held in high esteem among women. Another thing worthy of note in the words of our sarcastic critic is the reference to the disappearance, even at that date, of the more characteristic customs of South American ladies. A later visitor to Chile and Peru tells us that the young señoritas often denied that they practised smoking, whereas we know from other travellers that but a short time prior to that period it was considered the height of courtesy for the South American lady to transfer to the lips of her male companion the cigarette moist from her own. Eating sweetmeats from the same plate was also common at one time, in fact, down to the beginning of the last century, among South American ladies and gentlemen; they even sucked mate, the native tea, from a single tube. These characteristic customs have long since passed away, and now the Spanish-American lady sedulously apes her European contemporaries in tastes, dress, and customs. She has retained but little of the individuality which once marked her national place among her sex; yet in one respect she is still unique, and it is to be hoped will long remain so. That singularity is her influence and part in politics.
All of us know the constant political cataclysms that occur in South America. It is said that a Spanish-American lady who not long ago visited New York looked with some surprise upon the arrogance of one of the grandes dames of the city and inquired the reason. "Why, my dear," replied her interlocutor, "she is a Daughter of the Revolution!" "Oh, ça!" replied the charming South American, with a shrug: "Is that all? For me, I am the daughter of at least six!" The anecdote may be apocryphal, but it is none the less pointed; and the constant revolutions of the South American states have become fair matter for jest. In these turbulent ebullitions of racial spirit rather than national liberty the fair señoritas and señoras have had a most prominent part. Not only have they incited and encouraged the men who bore the brunt of the actual combat, but, if those who know most of the inner histories of these affairs of state are to be believed, the women have been the most efficient as well as the most ardent plotters. In fact, it may be said that of late years, say for the latter half of the past century, politics has become with South American women as much a fashion as literature was in France at the time of the great salons. She who had never plotted was at one time--not yet entirely passed away--beyond the social pale, while she who was fortunate enough to include among the visitors to her political salon some especially virulent revolutionist was regarded with as much envy as, in circles of other nationality, is the exhibitor of some literary lion of particularly loud roar. We often hear the expression, "the game of politics"; but certainly it has never been so well applied as to the somewhat dangerous but entirely conventional pursuits of the female plotters and revolutionists of South America. That these women, of whom none has bequeathed to posterity a name worthy of record, have been of some influence in regulating the course of South American events it is impossible to deny; but their methods have not, as a rule, been such as to call forth high eulogium of feminine politics. They have been for the most part on a plane with the female Nihilists of Russia, save that the latter are in deadly earnest, while the South American ladies play at politics as their northern sisters at golf, with intent to win indeed, but after all merely as a diversion.
This aspect of the woman of South America, however, is the only one of characteristic form she has retained after her determined subduing of national individuality to European commonplaceness. The lady of Brazil, Peru, Chili, or the lesser South American states is not characteristic in appearance, in custom, or in thought; she stands simply as a modification of Latin civilization under variant conditions, and is hardly to be distinguished from her European sisters of similar stock. There is of course some individuality left among the lower class of women; but even this is fast disappearing before the inroads of the more insistent culture. As with the Mexican, so with the South American woman: she has ceased to possess racial uniqueness and so has ceased to be nationally interesting, however she may charm as an individual.