Women of America Part 1

Women of America.

by John Rouse Larus.

INTRODUCTION

The present volume completes the story of woman as told in the series of which it forms part. The history of nations is, in its ultimate a.n.a.lysis, largely that of woman. Therefore this series in its wide inclusiveness forms a more than ordinarily interesting history. The present study of the women of America is innocent of theorizing or philosophy and from the nature of the subject the narrative takes the reader into paths generally unfamiliar in historic studies.

Of the North American aboriginal woman the knowledge possessed admits of but broad generalities as to her status and condition. The author of this volume has, however, happily extracted from the available sources what is informing as to the position of the woman so that a better conception of her will be the part of his readers. It will be seen that she has not always been the neglected and unconsidered creature that the popular mind has accepted. Instead, she has held among many tribes a higher place of power than man, and that by custom and in fact she was held in high consideration. The condition of the aboriginal woman before the advent of the white race was not that to which she fell as the consequence of that advent. In the present work notable instances in support of this view will be found. In considering the moral status and the customs of the aborigines it should be borne in mind that morality is standardized by nations or peoples for themselves, and the morality of individuals must be measured by its relation to convention to this respect. In this connection the author concludes that the morality of the Indian woman is of at least average excellence. That contact with the white man arrested--or as the author maintains "degraded"--the progress of civilization, slow as that progress may have been among the aborigines, cannot be doubted, nor that there was "a reversion to a more barbarous type than had before been prevalent."

As we consider the principles of government among the North American tribes we find that the matriarchal system prevailed. The Salic Law, whether in its general or its restricted meaning, was little favored among them. If in the history of these people a Queen Esther stands forth as a cruel monster, did not proud Rome produce a Messalina? Or need we go beyond the records of a later date of the people of one of the most cultured nations of Europe? And yet Esther was among the foes, the despoilers of her people, while Messalina found her victims among her own people. It may not be amiss to recall the incident of Frances Sloc.u.m as an evidence that the life of woman among the Indians was not necessarily distasteful. Altogether, the author of this volume writes sympathetically of the vanis.h.i.+ng Amerinds,--which in no way lessens the value of his study,--and furnishes many little known or hardly remembered anecdotes of their women, while his succinct descriptions of their polity and of the lot and place of woman among them is both highly entertaining and instructive.

The women of Mexico and South America furnish scanty material for the study of woman. Nevertheless, from the records of the Aztec civilization the author has abstracted the salient features of the life of their women. It will be seen that the Aztec woman enjoyed a higher status than was attained by the woman of any other native American race. Her legal rights were carefully protected; the marriage tie was severely safeguarded; the education of girls was committed to the care of priestesses; and in social functions woman was the equal of man.

Domestic life presented a very pleasing aspect and even slaves--slavery was generally confined to those taken in war--enjoyed greater privileges than among any other people. The period of the conquest furnishes a Marina to exemplify the fidelity and devotion of which the native woman was capable. That of the Spanish occupation offers little of interest concerning the womanhood of Mexico, and not until the republic had acquired a distinct nationality, in fact as well as in name, do we find a Mexican type. This period the author regards as the best, but soon the adoption of European and North American fas.h.i.+ons and customs destroyed the characteristic Mexican type. This resultant he claims is further deteriorated by the later "veneer" or hybrid culture borrowed from the same sources. The leading characteristics of the native civilization of South America are traced and the salient features of the life and status of its women are presented. Among the Incas equality with men and a condition for woman as favorable as among the Aztecs is shown to have prevailed.

An interesting account is given of the culture of the Araucanians, the desperate warriors who resisted the Spanish invaders long after the rest of the tribes of Chile had submitted to the conquerors. The status of the women of this tribe, and of the peculiar marriage customs is especially interesting; so is the account of the women of the Gauchos whose preeminent claim to notice in a history of woman is that they are "the most unmoral women on the face of the earth." There is also a brief but none the less informing account of the women of the greatest of South American countries, Brazil, which better than any other southern republic exhibits the advance made in the position and influence of woman in national progress and well-being.

The record of individual women in this section is scanty; but the general outline of the growth of feminine influence in recent times is noted. Woman in politics, in revolutionary movements, and, still more notably, woman in the social and educational progress that is now making the best history of South America the author discriminatingly presents to the reader, with individual mention of foremost leaders of thought.

Of the American woman proper, the author follows the steps from settlement days when the principles were to be tested which moved the Pilgrims to self-exile. Her influence and her initiative, ill.u.s.trated by characteristic story and narrative of environment, are presented with precision and clearness so that the reader can grasp the subtle power exercised by woman during the formative period. Similarly are the women of the great colony to the South considered, and the points of divergence and their causes and results noted as compared with the northern colony.

The typical American woman is remarkable among women not merely as a type, but also because she is the evolution of only a few generations.

She is without a traditional culture, but, as the author a.s.serts, she inherited the cultures of all the nations. Beginning with the basic culture of the mother country she has grafted thereon the native branches which have sprung from her environment and has absorbed such mental and temperamental characteristics of introduced nationalities as have best suited her conditions, and from all together she has created the American type of womanhood, whose particular characteristic is to _do_.

In the women of these two mother settlements are found the "foundations and matrices of American femininity." So the causes and growth of the American type of womanhood are shown in its evolutionary processes therein along lines mainly parallel until the need of resistance to the mother country brings about a near approach to a national type. The spread of woman's influence to the constantly extending frontier and the new settlements is broadly but clearly sketched and the potency of the foreign settlers considered.

A very interesting part of the volume traces the development of society at the capital, the growth of an aristocracy, the unification of type that followed the establishment of the republic and marked the early growth of the nation. Still more interesting is the history of the dissolution of the courtly influence at Was.h.i.+ngton when the great strife reft the national womanhood and twin hatred ruled where unity was so lately waxing in strength. The author's presentation of this period is lucid and convincing, while fearlessly just to the woman of both sections. His emphasis of the causal misunderstanding as regards the women cannot fail to be appreciated, though it places upon our womanhood a heavy responsibility for the sorrows which befell the nation and struck down the South exhausted and almost destroyed.

A chapter on the Women of Canada affords chief interest for the account of the _habitantes_, the only distinct Canadian type of womanhood, though the author recognizes the advanced position occupied by the woman of British North America.

Of the recent developments of the American woman's activities, the sphere of which is ever enlarging, the author admirably projects on his page all the salient movements. Many phases of activity are of course tentative and their permanency and value are yet undetermined, while others mark the appreciation of the obligations a.s.sociated with wealth or the need of diversion attending the enjoyment of leisure; all, however, are characteristic of the unresting energy of the American woman. If this characteristic is responsible for some illogical and occasionally harmful manifestations, the fact remains that the sum of the results is vastly preponderant for the good of the nation and the advancement, morally, intellectually, and physically of humanity.

The author is to be congratulated for his boldness in undertaking to set forth the broad picture of woman's part in the movements of the last quarter of a century. The task is perplexing, almost terrifying to mere man; conditions are in a state of flux or, more properly speaking, bubbling activity, but a wise discrimination has been shown in the present case. Much of the American woman's history that is unfamiliar will be found in this volume, which is sympathetic throughout, and expresses admiration for the n.o.ble and the good in all the stages of that subtle evolution which we now recognize as the American woman.

JOHN A. BURGAN.

_Hammonton, New Jersey_.

CHAPTER I

THE ABORIGINAL WOMAN

THE attempt to crystallize within the s.p.a.ce of a single chapter even the most salient facts concerning the aboriginal woman of America is one foredoomed to failure. It is true that even in the present advanced state of ethnology there is comparatively little knowledge of the conditions which have obtained, and even of those which do obtain, among the red people of our continent; we can indeed see and record the outer results, but the inner causes are still in great measure hidden from us.

The American Indian is a peculiar people in the strictest sense of the words; and is not to be judged by the standards that we apply to those races with whose history we are more familiar, nor is he to be measured by their heights or depths. In many ways he is, and always has been, a law unto himself; and although this state of things is pa.s.sing away beneath the influence of a steadily advancing civilization, it has been conquered rather than modified, and the Indian remains beneath the surface the same enigma, the same unique individuality, that he has ever been.

Moreover, there is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with this division of our subject. One is forced to speak almost entirely in generalities, this compulsion existing both because of spatial limitations and because of the dearth of exact knowledge that still exists concerning the conditions of the Amerind in the far past. Yet enough is known to a.s.sure us that only the broadest generalities are inclusively true. The custom which was a rule of life among the Hurons of the North may have been entirely unknown among the Seminoles of the South; the cult which was of deep foundation among the Delawares of the Lakes may never have come to the knowledge of the Navajos of the great plains or the Tehamas who dwelt on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific. For it is a fact which has never received sufficient recognition that the Amerind--to adopt a convenient, though not entirely defensible, nomenclature--had as many national divisions as have the inhabitants of Europe or Asia. We speak of the "tribes" of American Indians, and in so doing we are entirely correct; yet we thus blind ourselves to the significance of the divisions which have always existed, because we are accustomed to give to the word "tribe" a limited meaning which is not strictly its possession. The settlers of our country came far nearer to truth of expression when they spoke of "the Five Nations"; for nations many of these tribes really were, and nations radically differing in all but physical characteristics, and not infrequently, where there existed great divergence of climatic conditions, in physical characteristics also. It is true that the bounds of nationality were not so sharply drawn as they were, for example, between the Gaul and the Teuton, the Slav and the Briton; but they existed, and were discernible in many important matters. Thus the wide divergence of custom and conditions which frequently appears in our study of the Amerind was not mere accident, but was the product of a variant civilization--if we may apply such term to the barbaric conditions which for the most part existed when the race was introduced to the knowledge of Europeans. For this reason, generalization regarding the race is dangerous and usually leads to inaccuracy. Because, for example, a Modoc might kill his mother-in-law without incurring any penalty for the deed, we must not a.s.sume that such a custom was prevalent among all the tribes of the American Indians.

Because among the Tehamas the newborn child was thrown into a stream by its mother immediately after its birth, when if it rose to the surface and cried it was rescued, while if it sank to rise no more its body was left to be carried away by the current, we must not therefore conclude that such a proceeding was common among the rest of the tribes of the Pacific slope. Each nation, and frequently each tribe, in the more limited sense of the word, had its own customs, its own superst.i.tions, its own creed, its own conditions of existence. Yet there were certain manifestations of these circ.u.mstances which could be found among all the nations of the primeval American continent, and it is these things, as they relate to the women of the Amerinds, that it is the purpose of this chapter to discuss, as well as to cast a rapid glance over the general history and progress of the aboriginal woman of the continent of North America.

In order that the reader shall understand the normal position of woman among the Amerinds in their undisturbed civilization, it is necessary to refer to the usual const.i.tution and conditions of the American tribes in general. In the light of modern research, there can be little doubt--though the fact was for long neglected--that the original American society, as met with by the first explorers of the country, was founded upon the gens, the totem or clan, as the social unit rather than upon the family, as was long supposed. Mr. Powell defines the American gens as "an organized body of consanguineal kindred"; and while this const.i.tuence was often modified by the introduction, by adoption, of strangers into the gens, in such cases the tribal conscience was satisfied with the fiction that such adoption left undisturbed the relation of the gens as consanguineous. An indeterminate number of these gentes, whose members dwelt together and were under common obligation to a.s.sist one another, composed the tribe. There were also "phratries," or religious brotherhoods, composed of smaller groups of the gentes; but these need not here be considered. The gens was autonomic, at least to all practical ends; it selected its own chieftain and decided all matters relating to questions of property or blood-vengeance when these concerned its own members. Each gens was represented in the council of the tribe, which council selected the tribal chief. Members of one gens could not intermarry; and, most important of all to our present purpose, it was by the female line that descent was traced and that property descended. Such is a brief sketch of the American tribal organization.

This, however, was the organization in theory only; when it came to the matter of practice, it is very rarely, indeed, that we find the theory preserved immutable. On the contrary, there were so many exceptions that we must regard the rule only as one to be kept in sight for the purposes of generalization. For example, the law of descent in the female line was very often abrogated, even where the gentile system was in force; and consanguineous marriages, and even incest,--rare though this is among primitive peoples, probably because, as Darwin points out, familiarity is not inducive of affection,--were not unknown. However, there is enough stability in the theory to warrant the deduction of certain general statements dependent upon it.

We are now prepared to take a view of the status of woman among the tribes of primitive America. It is the general belief that she was a mere chattel, having no rights whatever, existing merely upon the sufferance of her husband, and in all ways a slave, a creature without rights or privileges. Such a picture is far from the truth, even though it contain many aspects of partial truth. As a matter of fact, the matriarchal system prevailed in the majority of the American tribes; and this alone is sufficient to show that woman had some rights. These were not precisely personal, but rather gentile; yet they acted in many ways as personal. For example, where the matriarchal system was in force, all property rights, as between husband and wife, vested in the latter; she alone could dispose of property,--and that at her discretion--, and it was to her relatives and not to his that the property pa.s.sed on the death of the pair. Moreover, in the tribes wherein prevailed the theory of maternal descent, the children did not look upon the father as a relative; he was not of their gens, and they owed him no duties whatever. So far was this theory carried in many cases that the children would not provide for their fathers when these became disabled by sickness, accident, or age, but sent their unfortunate sires for a.s.sistance to the gentes from which they came. Again, the life of a woman was in many cases rated as of higher value than that of a man. We have Father Ragueneau's authority for the statement that among the Hurons thirty gifts was considered sufficient compensation for the death of a man, but the blood-money exacted for the killing of a woman was forty gifts. Such a condition of affairs as that mentioned by the old Jesuit is strong argument for the theory that woman was held by the primitive Americans in higher esteem than has been generally thought, while her control of the property must have won for her--judging from modern civilized instances--at least some consideration from her husband.

Undoubtedly there was an obverse side to the picture. Marriage by purchase was a feature of American primitive existence; and, though this also has its modern counterpart, the methods pursued among the Amerinds were not so pleasing to the vanity of the bride as are those of our own day and civilization. The woman herself rarely had anything to say in the matter; sometimes the selection of a wife for a warrior was undertaken by the whole gens, or at least a committee thereof. Among the Hurons, for instance, this selection was made by the old women, and we are told by J. W. Sanborn that these old ladies, in their search for fitting brides for the young men of the tribe, "united them with painful uniformity to women several years their senior." This may have been wiser in tribal polity than agreeable to the warriors; as for the prospective brides, their preferences were not taken into account at all. In view of these facts, it is no wonder that every lake in our country can boast its "Lovers' Leap," where the young Indian pair, fleeing from their cruel parents, cast themselves headlong down--to be afterward "enshrined in song and story."

"Song and story" have indeed lent their potent aid to confuse and blur our view of the primitive American woman. Longfellow's story of _Hiawatha_ is famous for many reasons, but the chief among them is not its fidelity to truth of conditions. Yet so truly has the name of Minnehaha, "The Laughing Water," become even as a household word to many of our readers of poetry that this sketch would seem incomplete were no reference made to it here. All know the poetic story: how the demi-G.o.d Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the Indians of North America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good, protector against all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter of the old Dakota arrow-maker. Here would seem to be a union blessed of the G.o.ds; yet it is foredoomed to bring but sorrow. Not even the power of Hiawatha can save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she pa.s.ses alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."

It is all very beautiful in its fancy and imagination, but nowhere in the poem do we find the American primitive woman as we have learned to see her through the calmer eyes of those who have sought her story in lower strata than those of poesy.

Polygamy generally prevailed among the Amerinds, and modern civilization is accustomed to regard this as an evil from the standpoint of the woman. It may, however, be questioned whether in this instance, as in so many others, our pity has not been misplaced. The work of the fields was universally performed by women, their lords and masters confining their contribution to the household work to furnis.h.i.+ng the table with fish and game. Had monogamy prevailed, the lot of the wife would necessarily have been hard; the work which she would have found to her hand would have been more than she could accomplish, and she must have sunk under it.

But the custom of polygamy obviated such necessity, for it brought into the household other servants who should perform the requisite tasks. It is at least probable, though it is not an established fact, that each household had a chief wife, to whom the rest were subservient; in fact, there is reason to believe that the const.i.tution of the Indian household was not unlike that of the Israelites, wherein the added "wives" were little else than concubines, having a legal status but not full rights of wifes.h.i.+p. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that polygamy, apart from its moral aspect, was an inst.i.tution for which the Indian wife had cause to be profoundly grateful. It ameliorated her lot in such wise that she was really subject to no more hards.h.i.+ps than is the European peasant woman of the present day.

On the other hand, it would seem that at least in some instances the husband had absolute rights of life and death over his wife. In the not very edifying--and probably even less authentic--autobiography of James Beckwourth, the white man who was long chief of the Crow tribe, there is related an incident where, his Blackfoot wife having shown disregard to his commands, he coolly took up his war club and struck her on the head, stunning her, and, as was thought at the time, killing her. The blow turned out not to be fatal; but this does not obscure the point of the incident, which lies in the fact that the father of the woman, who was present, told Beckwourth that he had done perfectly right and acted entirely as befitted a great warrior. Beckwourth rather plumed himself upon his conduct,--though it is difficult to see wherein the incident called for the display of any very heroic qualities,--and in his narration almost apologizes for the fact that he did not strike quite so hard a blow as he had intended; but, while the story has its amusing features, our concern in the matter lies in the fact that such conduct seems to have been entirely conventional. This incident occurred in the beginning of the last century; but it is evident that it must have been a survival of custom, and not a novelty introduced by a fresh civilization.

Yet we hear at times of women taking part in the most important councils of their nations, of their even leading warriors to battle, of their exercise of all the functions of a ruler. Women have been made head chiefs; a very notable instance of a woman ruler was the "Queen of Pamunkey," who was the widow of Totapotamoi, a great Indian chief in the Virginias. She came to one of the councils of the Virginia Burgesses in the time of Berkeley, and was the recipient of much attention. She was described as a woman of majestic presence, who entered the council chamber "with a comportment graceful to admiration, grave court-like gestures, and a majestic air on her face"; and through the quaint old verbiage we can descry a woman of carriage and powers of intellect remarkable in her race. Her dress was picturesque; she wore a sort of crown of black and white wampum plaited together, and her fine figure was covered by a robe of buckskin, dressed with the hair outward and decorated with fringes--not impossibly scalplocks--from the shoulders to the hem. She had been summoned to the council to give a promise of help; but she had her own grievances to relate in the fact that her husband had been slain while fighting for the English, and yet she had never received any compensation or acknowledgment of his services. The incident holds for us its chief interest as a proof of the high standing of individual women among the tribes of the Atlantic slope. This female rule was not a pa.s.sing custom; it was evidently of long establishment at the time of the coming of the colonists, and it continued into later colonial and even into Revolutionary times. Of the later instances of women chiefs, Queen Esther furnishes a noted example. This abominable woman, who played such a prominent part in the ma.s.sacre of Wyoming in 1778, was a half-breed, probably the daughter of Catherine Montour, also a half-breed and a fiend incarnate. In the attack upon Wyoming Valley, led by Major John Butler, son of that Walter Butler whose name was so execrated by the colonists,--the Senecas took part, led by a noted chief named Gi-on-gwah-tuh and by Queen Esther, who was probably, though this is not certain, in supreme command of the Indians. However this may be, we know that she led the attack, fighting like a fiend, and that after the action sixteen prisoners were placed in a circle around a large stone, known to this day as Queen Esther's Rock. Striking up a chant, she pa.s.sed around the circle, at each step das.h.i.+ng out the brains of a victim. Two of the prisoners, however, managed to make a dash for liberty and succeeded in effecting their escape, and it is to them that we owe our account of the ma.s.sacre.

As is so often the case in matters of colonial record, there is a confusion between Queen Esther and her mother, and most writers allege that the "queen" was herself the Catherine Montour whom others claim to have been the mother of the chieftainess. The latter theory is probably correct. When in 1744 Catherine Montour, who, in her youth, had been captured and adopted by the Senecas, appeared at a council of the Indian commissioners and delegates from the Six Nations, the council being held at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we are told by Stone, in his life of Sir William Johnson, that "Although so young when made a prisoner, she had nevertheless preserved her language; and being in youth and middle age very handsome and of good address, she had been greatly caressed by the gentlewomen of Philadelphia during her occasional visits to that city with her people on business. Indeed, she was always held in great esteem by the white people, invited to their houses, and entertained with marked civility."

It would seem, then, that in 1744 Catherine Montour had already pa.s.sed middle age, and indeed we know from the account of Lord Cornbury that she was born some time before the close of the seventeenth century. It would therefore seem most probable that Queen Esther was the daughter of the Catherine Montour who was a Huron by birth and a Seneca by adoption; but this matters little in the search for the deductions to be made from the story of Queen Esther and the unfortunate Wyoming Valley. Accepting as accurate only that part of her history which deals with the ma.s.sacre, we know that Esther was a war chief of the Senecas and that she had absolute control over them. We also find that the Catherine Montour of Stone's account, whether or not she was identical with Queen Esther, was of such influence with her tribe that she was selected by them as a delegate to an important convention. This, then, furnishes us with a specific instance of the power of women among the Indians.

An incident in this same ma.s.sacre of Wyoming is ill.u.s.trative of a somewhat curious fact with regard to Indian life, the adaptability of their captives to the life of the woods. There was captured by the Indians a little girl named Frances Sloc.u.m, about five years old. For long all trace of her was lost; but in 1835, more than fifty years after the ma.s.sacre, an old woman known as Maconaqua, living in a Miami village in Indiana, was by accident identified as the lost Frances Sloc.u.m. To all appearance she was an Indian; and she was really so in costume, habits, and even in manner of thought. When the events of her childhood were recalled to her memory, she herself was able to give evidence which rendered her identification unquestionably complete. But when pressed to return to civilization and her relatives, she absolutely declined. "I cannot go," she said; "I have always lived with the Indians; I am used to them; I wish to live and die with them. My husband and my boys are buried here, and I cannot leave them. I have a house and land, two daughters, a son-in-law, and grandchildren. I was a sapling when they took me. It is all gone past. I should not be happy with my white relatives. I am glad to see them; but I cannot go."

So she was left with her red brothers by adoption; but when, some ten years later, the Miami Indians were moved West; a bill was introduced into Congress by a Mr. Bidlack, securing to Maconaqua and her heirs a tract of land a mile square, embracing the home in which she had so long lived. But she pined after her red kindred, and in 1847 died from sheer weariness of the new conditions of her existence, and was buried near the confluence of the Wabash and the Missisinewa Rivers.

This incident is here related not merely for the sake of the pathos which it holds, but for the purpose of noting a curious contrast between the sons of the wilderness and the children of civilization. The case of Frances Sloc.u.m is typical; many a captive has been led away by the red men, and has afterward become so completely Indianized that he or she would stubbornly refuse to return to the life of the white race, and, if forced to do so, would pine and die for lack of the breath of the forests and plains. Yet never has there been known an instance where a red man became reconciled to life among the whites; always, when not forcibly detained captive, they fled back to the free life which had been theirs, even if they had known it but as children; if kept in captivity, they broke their chains by death. So that when we vaunt our civilization we must remember that it has no charms for those who have known the life of the woods, and thus we learn some at least of the reasons why we have failed to produce from the Indian a finished product of the civilization of our day.

Uncongenial as it may be to our pride of race to admit the fact, it would seem certain that the Indian character has power of persistence over that of the Caucasian. Many were the white captives whose blood flowed in the veins of succeeding generations of red men, but that blood was never powerful even to modify the traits which were the inheritance of the Indian. It is most likely that the first white child ever born on our sh.o.r.es--that Virginia Dare whose story has been so often told that it is needless here to recapitulate it--was carried captive to the tents of the Indians and in time became the wife of some brave, and that her blood is in the veins of some of the survivors of the red men; but it had no power to make itself known in any persistence of trait. It is certain that a half-breed, whatever the circ.u.mstances of his education, almost invariably shows the dominance of the Indian nature over the white. This fact, which has not received adequate attention by students of ethnology, is worthy of consideration in its significance; but this is not the place for such consideration.

After this somewhat lengthy digression, let us now return to our more immediate subject, the status of woman among the aborigines during their period of freedom from white influence. Enough has been said to show that such status was widely different from that usually attributed to the women of the Amerinds. It is most true that women were hewers of wood and drawers of water--that they performed most or all of the labor which civilization is accustomed to look upon as menial and much that it considers the rightful duty of man; but in this respect the American Indian did not differ from most or all primitive peoples. It is only civilization that has released woman from the tasks which she was accustomed to perform during the days when the chief sources of sustenance were found in the spoils of the chase, the duty of providing such sustenance naturally falling to the men of the community or household. This division of labor if so it can be called has been in all countries and among all peoples destructive to the claims of woman to high consideration. Among primitive peoples there has never been recognized that which is now known as chivalry toward the weaker s.e.x; if only because of weakness, rendering resistance to tyranny and oppression impossible, women in such communities have always been relegated to the position of slaves and chattels. Yet this state of affairs obtained less strongly among the American Indians than among most races in similar conditions of civilization. With the former, woman had many privileges which she was usually denied among other similarly developed peoples.

Not only, as has been shown, did she have the opportunity granted her to make herself a power in her tribe, if her intellect were of force sufficient to enable her thus to do, but she had certain well-defined privileges inherent in her s.e.x--privileges which sometimes were powerful even to overcome the strength of custom or the promptings of vengeance.

One of these peculiar privileges is ill.u.s.trated in the story of Pocahontas, and, notwithstanding the h.o.a.ry antiquity of the tale, it must be set down here in order to ill.u.s.trate this and some other points needful to be understood if we are to comprehend the true position of the Amerind woman among her fellows.

[Ill.u.s.tration 2: THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA.

After the painting by William L. Dodge.

The demi-G.o.d Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the Indians of North America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good, protector against all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter of the old Dakota arrow-maker.... Not even the power of Hiawatha can save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she pa.s.ses alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."]

When John Smith--if we are to believe his own account, which in this one instance seems fairly credible--had been taken prisoner by Opechancanough and led before Powhatan for judgment, the matter at issue was summarily settled in this wise: the prisoner was laid upon the ground, his head rested upon a large stone, and a club was poised ready to dash out his brains. Nevertheless, the adventurer's brains, which served him so well afterward when he came to write an account of his perils by land and sea,--being restrained in their flights by no scruples as to the difference between truth and falsehood, were not to be wasted upon the soil of Virginia; for Matoaca, or Pocahontas, as she is more popularly known, the daughter of Powhatan, rushed forward, threw herself upon the body of Smith to s.h.i.+eld him from the threatening club, and claimed him for her own under the custom which permitted Indian women thus to rescue captives taken in fight or by wile. The young princess--as the English inaccurately termed her--being but twelve or thirteen years of age at the time, it is not probable that she claimed Smith for her husband, though even this is by no means impossible, as early betrothals were not uncommon among the Amerinds; but she could just as easily and efficaciously adopt him as her brother, and it is more likely that she chose this less drastic method of preserving his life. At all events, Smith was rescued from the fate which had threatened him; and while it is by no means impossible that the wily old savage, Powhatan, had arranged the whole matter, adoption and all, with a view to establis.h.i.+ng the closest and most favorable relations with such a conjurer as Smith was held to be,--this view is suggested to future historians in their search for the truth concerning John Smith,--the fact remains that Smith was saved, and one of the n.o.blest liars that ever graced the world was preserved to humanity. It is interesting to note that Smith records that at Appomatox, afterward Bermuda Hundred, he found a female _werowance_, or queen, "a fat, l.u.s.ty, manly woman," who was almost smothered in copper ornaments: a circ.u.mstance which tends to confirm the fact of the frequency of women rulers among the Indians.

Pocahontas was not destined to become the wife of the man whom she had saved. Whether or not she regarded him with the eyes of more than sisterly affection is uncertain, but it is entirely certain that Captain John Smith never loved anything but his own valuable person. Some years later, Pocahontas was treacherously captured by one Captain Argall--who bought her from some Potomac Indians whom she was visiting, the price paid being a copper kettle, a valuation which would seem to make strange the pride of those who claim descent from the "princess"--and held as a hostage. Soon after her capture she was married to John Rolfe, though whether willingly or in the role of a captive does not appear. Taken by Rolfe to England, she was visited by Smith, whose account of the single interview which occurred is one of the most cold-blooded pieces of writing that was ever put on paper. It is worth quoting in its display of dignity and pathos on the part of the savage and of ingrat.i.tude and callousness to all decent feelings on the part of the Christian--by courtesy:

"Being about this time about to set sail for New England, I could not stay to do her that service I desired and she well deserved; but hearing she was at Brentford with divers of my friends, I went to see her. After a modest salutation, without a word she turned about, obscured her face, not seeming well contented.... But not long after, she began to talk, and remembered me well what courtesies she had done, saying, 'You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like unto you; you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and by the same reason so must I do you.' (Which, though I would have excused, I durst not allow of that t.i.tle, because she was a king's daughter.) With a well-set countenance she said, 'Were you not afraid to come into my father's country, and caused fear in him and all his people but me; and fear you here I should call you father? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman.

They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakin to seek you and to know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much.'"

The only reason that exists for believing the report of this interview, coming from the source it does, is the fact that it tells heavily against the recounter, though his invariable, smug self-conceit prevents him from seeing this aspect of the matter. The dignified reproach of Smith's neglect, the pathetic appeal to the courtesies which had been lavished upon him, she was too proud to allude to her rescue of his brains from the impending club,--and the proud anger which breaks forth in the determination that she will call him "father," as is her right, form a fine contrast to the petty and selfish att.i.tude of her erstwhile friend, who would have "excused" her using the tender t.i.tle of father, but that she was "a king's daughter" and so might by use of the word place him in a false position toward his patron, Prince Charles. Of course, this was the merest excuse; he knew perfectly well that such a thing was ridiculous; but he needed some excuse for his unmanly att.i.tude toward the woman who had saved his life and whose father had called him friend. It is true that King James had objected to the "presumption" of Rolfe in marrying a "lady of royal birth "; but even that absurd att.i.tude of the king gives no excuse for Smith, since between marriage with a "princess" and the mere use of the formal but affectionate t.i.tle of "father" lay a broad gulf.