It is therefore rather in the individual than in the typical aspect that there may be presented to the notice of the reader the names of some of the more noted women of South American culture in later years. While it is true that during the last half of the nineteenth century, particularly in Chile and the Argentine Republic, the feminine status underwent a marked change, coming into closer touch with the standards of civilization in the more advanced civilizations, the woman of prominence, in anything save politics, is still the notable exception in South America. The most marked advance in this respect is to be found in Chile, where, in 1879, the University and its colleges were, by special statute, opened to women students, and where, in 1903, the Medical School contained thirty-eight women, not a few of whom were taking post-graduate courses after having passed through the regular curriculum. The government of Chile actually sent as a special student to Austria and Germany a woman, Ernestina Perez, who has since taken high rank as a physician.
The advance in the status of women in Chile was doubtless largely due to the influence of Mercedes Marin del Solar, whose writings first extorted from Spanish masculinity a reluctant confession that a woman might achieve deserved fame in paths hitherto thought to be sacred to the feet of men. Born in 1804, when among her countrymen women were considered mere child-bearers, she devoted her life to proving that her sex possessed the qualities requisite for high attainment in literary matters as well as in the graver concerns of life; and she won ample success. Even with the scant opportunities for obtaining an education which were then stingily meted out to women, Señora Solar managed to develop her natural culture; and while still a young woman she became an ardent public advocate for the higher education of her sex. She did not live to see her efforts crowned with full fruition; but they were effectual at last. It is, however, chiefly for her literary accomplishments that she will live in memory; her ode on the death of Don Diego Portales remains a standard, and her Ode to Washington, inspired by the interest taken by its author in the American Civil War, which was then raging, shows breadth of thought and fine philosophical powers, while it is of especial interest to us because of its subject and aim.
Señora Solar was of the earlier age of Chilean feminine culture and was greatly hampered by the conditions existing in her period of largest activities; but a later writer, Rosario Orrego de Uribe, has carried on the work so admirably begun and has added to its range and effect. For years Señora Orrego de Uribe was at the head of a large journal, the Revista de Valparaiso, and thus found a suitable medium for the expression of her theories. Moreover, as a novelist she has attained high rank, and she has written poetry which is above the average. Her influence has been steadily for the emancipation and advancement of her sex, and her work is not yet finished, though she has seen the cause she embraced with such enthusiasm prosper even beyond the highest hopes of its first advocates.
Among the notable women of Chile may also be mentioned the name of Juana Ross de Edwards. As the name implies, she is of Anglo-Saxon descent and has strengthened the blood by marriage. She is noted as a philanthropist, giving largely and wisely to worthy objects, and she is so admittedly a power in the land that she was one of the first to suffer banishment when Balmaceda came into power in 1891. The powerful dictator feared the influence of Señora Edwards more than the plots of the most virulent of his masculine foes.
The Argentine Republic has also some great names to boast among its women. Juana Manso de Noronha was a potent influence in the cause of education. She early came under the influence of Sarmiento, the greatest of South American educators, and she was actually appointed by the government of Argentina to edit the Annales de la Educatión Comun, a paper in the interests of public education, founded by Sarmiento himself. Both in theory and practice, for she conducted a large school at one time, she proved herself a woman of profound thought and eager energy in the subjects to which she devoted her life, and Argentina owes her no small debt for its advance in culture. Her work, since her death in 1890, has been to some extent carried on by Eduarda Mansilla de Garcia, though Señora Garcia is known rather as a writer than an educator. Her novels have won deservedly high repute and one of them found tribute from so absolute an authority as Victor Hugo. Another great influence in the cause of feminine culture was Juana M. Gorriti, an Argentine; but her activities were mainly exerted in Peru. This latter country has hardly kept apace of her South American sisters in the cause of feminine emancipation and culture; yet even Peru has some names of which she may boast, as those of Mercedes Cabello Cabonero, a writer on philosophical and social questions, and Clorinda Matto de Turner, a novelist whose work is rather of the ultra-realistic school. Both women are enthusiastic and influential, nor do they stand entirely alone in the circles of Lima. Yet in that old city the advance in the matter of feminine culture has been very slow; the doors of the University of San Marcos, in Lima, are still shut to women students, and there are no signs that there will soon be encouragement to women to take their modern place among men in the old land of the Incas.
What has been stated of South American women applies in general to the women of Brazil; nevertheless this country furnishes historic incidents that claim place in an account of the women of South America. Searching the early chronicles we find a few records of Indian women who have gained prominence, and whose descendants have taken high rank in their country. We learn of the romantic marriage of the daughter of the chief Teberyca to the Portuguese adventurer Joao Ramalho, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, from which union sprang the "Mamelucos," the sturdy independent people who brought about the colonization of the State of San Paulo. But a still more interesting record is the story of a Brazilian "Pocahontas," which if not acceptable in its entirety, at least enjoys the credit of a deep-rooted tradition. It is told that Diogo Alvares Corriga was shipwrecked near Bahia in 1510, and, falling into the hands of the Tupinamba Indians, was doomed to furnish a cannibal feast. At the moment when his life was about to be taken, Paraguassú, the daughter of the chief, interposed and secured the victim's release. However much is fiction, however much is truth in this part of the story, it is certain that Diogo married the Indian maiden and that she became the mother of children whose descendants hold influential rank in Brazil to this day. Paraguassú was moreover an enlightened woman and a benefactress, and is greatly honored by Brazilians. In the Chapel of Graca, in the Cathedral at Bahia, the following epitaph perpetuates her memory: "Tomb of Doña Catharina Alvares Paraguassú, Lady that was of the Capitania of Bahia, which she and her husband Diogo Alvares Corréa gave to the King of Portugal, having built this chapel of Nossa Senhora da Graca, which she gave, with the ground annexed, to the Patriarch São Bento, in the year 1582." To the influence of Paraguassú is to be attributed much of the power gained by her husband over the Indians, which enabled him to promote the early colonization of Bahia. Paraguassú may therefore be regarded as one of the great pioneers in the civilization of South America.
In any account of the women of Brazil the story of the Amazons should find place. The early explorers of the Amazon country have generally accepted, or at any rate given prominence to, the Indian narrative of these female-warriors. They are said to have formed a powerful body and to have ruled over a large territory and proved invincible in battle. In appearance tall, robust, and fair they wore their long hair twisted about their heads; their costume was simply a dress of animal skin which they tucked about their loins; their weapons were bows and arrows. Humboldt relates the Indian account that these warrior women once a year admitted to their company for a limited time the men of the neighboring tribe, who at the expiration of their period of leave were sent away with presents. All the male children born to these women were killed in infancy, the female children being brought up by their mothers. The origin of this tribe of female-warriors is clouded with mystery. One explanation is that they abandoned the men of their tribe and sought to establish a settlement in the region of the Jamundá River, but being followed by their disconsolate husbands and despairing lovers, pity caused them to relent to the extent of making a pact with the discarded ones to admit them to their society on sufferance once a year. We have no sufficient data concerning the organization of government of the tribe or other information which would admit of treating this subject otherwise than as a curious historic phase of Brazilian womanhood.
Through the periods of settlement and the Portuguese rule we pass without notice of any woman of such prominence as to secure noteworthy mention, yet woman's influence must have been exerted and felt along each step of the path toward independence; they buttressed with their ambition and patriotism the enlarging spirit of nationality. So in the crisis that followed the declaration of independence in 1822, we need not be surprised to find a woman mentioned for heroism and patriotism. A Bahian girl, Maria de Jesus Medeiros, touched by her father's lament that he had no son to fight in his country's cause, and fired to action, disguised herself as a soldier and fought through the war. Her signal service, however, was on the occasion of the attempted landing of a powerful force of Lusitanians at the mouth of the Paraguassú River. Here Maria stood to resist the invader; at the head of a troop of Bahian Amazons she charged the oncoming soldiers, and, in spite of superior numbers, discipline and equipment, her valor and that of her companions prevailed and the discomfited Portuguese were driven back ingloriously.
In the absence of more specific information we may, moreover, gather that woman's influence was of notable moment in Brazil at the period of the independence, for we find that in 1821, Viscount de Pedra Branca, a deputy from Bahia to the Cortés at Lisbon, a prominent leader of the Liberals and a man of world-wide fajne, advocated that political liberty should be granted to Portuguese women, and the fact that the Cortés ignored his plea does not lessen the force of the presumption that woman in Brazil had acquired pronounced influence in politics at this time.
Among the women of the period of the empire the Crown Princess Isabel stands most prominent, and exception will hardly be taken to her inclusion in an account of Brazilian women. On her shoulders, as regent, devolved the government at intervals for many years. Remarkable for firmness of character, she was moreover imbued with lofty principles. The conspicuous act of her regency was the emancipation of the slaves, the decree for which she signed on July 10, 1888. In this act her courage and devotion were put to the severest test, yet realizing fully that her signing the decree would perhaps involve the overthrow of the empire and certainly lose her much popularity, or, at any rate, much influential support, she did not falter; nor did she content herself with a mere concurrence in the legislative course, but issued a declaration in which she exalted the act and glorified the emancipation. Her strength of character and her fidelity to her trust rose above all personal or party considerations. Soon followed, in fact, the quiet revolution of a few hours and the empire had vanished; a great republic was installed, and in this crisis Isabel again stood dignified and lofty, in her farewell manifesto to the Brazilian people proving her patriotism and voicing her womanly sentiment and unfeigned sorrow.