Sex and Society by William I. Thomas

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A most instructive example of the parallel existence of descent
through females and of male authority is found in the Wyandot tribe
of Indians, in which also the participation of woman in the regulative
activities of society is, perhaps, more systematically developed than
in any other single case among maternal peoples. Major Powell gives
the following outline of the civil and military government of this
tribe:

The civil government inheres in a system of councils and
chiefs. In each gens there is a council, composed of four
women, called _Yu-wai-yu-wa-na_. These four women councilors
select a chief of the gens from its male members--that is,
from their brothers and sons. This gentile chief is the head
of the gentile council. The council of the tribe is composed
of the aggregated gentile councils. The tribal council,
therefore, is composed one-fifth of men and four-fifths of
women. The sachem of the tribe, or tribal chief, is chosen by
the chiefs of the gentes. There is sometimes a grand council
of the gens, composed of the councilors of the gens proper and
all the heads of households (women) and leading men--brothers
and sons. There is also a grand council of the tribe, composed
of the council of the tribe proper and the heads of households
of the tribe, and all the leading men of the tribe....

The four women councilors of the gens are chosen by the heads
of households, themselves being women. There is no formal
election, but frequent discussion is had over the matter from
time to time, in which a sentiment grows up within the gens
and throughout the tribe that, in the event of the death
of any councilor, a certain person will take her place. In
this manner there are usually one, two, or more potential
councilors in each gens, who are expected to attend all the
meetings of the council, though they take no part in the
deliberations and have no vote. When a woman is installed as
a councilor, a feast is prepared by the gens to which she
belongs, and to this feast all the members of the tribe are
invited. The woman is painted and dressed in her best attire,
and the sachem of the tribe places upon her head the gentile
chaplet of feathers, and announces in a formal manner to
the assembled guests that the woman has been chosen a
councilor.... The gentile chief is chosen by the council women
after consultation with the other women and men of the gens.
Often the gentile chief is a potential chief through a period
of probation. During this time he attends the meetings of the
council, but takes no part in the deliberations and has no
vote. At his installation, the council women invest him with
an elaborately ornamented tunic, place upon his head a chaplet
of feathers, and paint the gentile totem upon his face.... The
sachem of the tribe is selected by the men belonging to the
council of the tribe.

The management of military affairs inheres in the military
council and chief. The military council is composed of all the
able-bodied men of the tribe; the military chief is chosen
by the council from the Porcupine gens. Each gentile chief is
responsible for the military training of the youth under his
authority. There are usually one or more potential military
chiefs, who are the close companions and assistants of the
chief in time of war and, in case of the death of the chief,
take his place in the order of seniority.[124]

In this tribe the numerical recognition of women is striking, and
indicates that they are the original core of society. They are still
responsible for society, in a way, but all the offices involving
motor activity are deputed to men. Thus women, as heads of households,
choose four women councilors of the clan (gens), and these choose
the fifth member, who is a man and the head of the council and chief
of the clan. The tribal chief is, however, chosen by males, and in
the military organization, which represents the group capacity for
violence, the women have not even a nominal recognition. The real
authority rests with those who are most fit to exercise it. Female
influence persists as a matter of habit, until, under the pressure of
social, particularly of military, activities, the breaking-up of the
habit and a new accommodation follows the accumulation of a larger
fund of social energy.

The men of any group are at any time in possession of the force to
change the habits of the group and push aside any existing system. But
the savage is not revolutionary; his life and his social sanctions are
habitual. He is averse to change as such, and retains form and rite
after their meaning is lost. We consequently find an expression of
social respect for woman under the maternal system suggestive of
chivalry, and even a formal elevation of women to authority in groups
where the actual control is in the hands of men.

In the Mariana Islands the position of woman was distinctly superior;
even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on
marriage, the wife dictated everything and the man could undertake
nothing without her approval; but, if the woman committed an offense,
the man was held responsible and suffered the punishment. The women
could speak in the assembly, they held property, and if a woman asked
anything of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. If a wife was
unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her property, and
kill the adulterer; but if the man was guilty, or even suspected of
the same offense, the women of the neighborhood destroyed his house
and all his visible property, and the owner was fortunate if he
escaped with a whole skin; and if a wife was not pleased with her
husband, she withdrew, and a similar attack followed. On this account
many men were not married, preferring to live with paid women.
Likewise, in the Gilbert Islands a man shows the same respect to a
woman as to a chief, by stepping aside when he meets her. If a man
strikes a woman, the other women drive him from the tribe. On Lukunor
the men used, in conversation with women, not the usual, but a
deferential form of language.[125]

The discoverers of the Friendly Islands found there a king in
authority over the people, and his wife in control of the king,
receiving homage from him, but not ruling.[126] In these and similar
cases woman's early relation to the household is formally retained in
the larger group and in the presence of an obviously masculine form of
organization.

But, in contrast with the survival in political systems of the
primitive respect shown mothers, we find the assertion of individual
male force within the very bosom of the maternal organization, in
the person of the husband, brother, or uncle of the woman. Among the
Caribs "the father or head of the household exerts unlimited authority
over his wives and children, but this authority is not founded on
legal rights, but upon his physical superiority."[127] In spite of the
maternal system in North America, the women were often roughly handled
by their husbands. Schoolcraft says of the Kenistenos: "When a young
man marries, he immediately goes to live with the father and mother
of his wife, who treat him, nevertheless, as an entire stranger till
after the birth of his first child." But

it appears that chastity is considered by them as a virtue
... and it sometimes happens that the infidelity of a wife
is punished by the husband with the loss of her hair, nose,
or perhaps life. Such severity proceeds, perhaps, less from
rigidity of virtue than from its having been practiced without
his permission; for a temporary interchange of wives is not
uncommon, and the offer of their persons is considered as a
necessary part of the hospitality due to strangers.[128]

Schoolcraft also says of the women of the Chippeways, among whom the
maternal system had given way:

They are very submissive to their husbands, who have however,
their fits of jealousy; and for very trifling causes treat
them with such cruelty as sometimes to occasion their death.
They are frequently objects of traffic, and the father
possesses the right of disposing of his daughter.[129]

Indian fathers also frequently sold their children, without any show
of right. "Kane mentions that the Shastas ... frequently sell their
children as slaves to the Chinooks."[130] Bancroft says of the
Columbians: "Affection for children is by no means rare, but in
few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell or gamble them
away."[131] Descent through mothers is in force among the negroes
of equatorial Africa, the man's property passing to his sister's
children; but the father is an unlimited despot, and no one dares to
oppose him. So long as his relation with his wives continues, he is
master of them and of their children. He can even sell the latter into
slavery.[132] In New Britain maternal descent prevails, but wives are
obtained by purchase or capture, and are practically slaves; they are
cruelly treated, carry on agriculture, and bear burdens which make
them prematurely stooped, and are likely, if their husbands are
offended, to be killed and eaten.[133]

In many regions of Australia women are treated with extreme brutality,
when their work is not satisfactory, or the husband has any other
cause for offense. In Victoria the men often break their staves over
the heads of the women, and skulls of women have been found in which
knitted fractures indicated former ill-treatment. In Cape York the
women are beaten, and in the interior an angry native burned his wife
alive. In the Adelaide dialect the phrase "owner of a woman" means
husband. When a man dies, his uterine brother inherits his wife and
children.[134]

Where under an exogamous system of marriage a man is forced to go
outside his group to obtain a wife, he may do this either by going
over to her group, by taking possession of her violently, or by
offering her and the members of her group sufficient inducements to
relinquish her; and the contrasted male and female disposition is
expressed in all the forms of marriage incident to the exogamous
system. Every exogamous group is naturally reluctant to relinquish
its women, both because it has in them laborers and potential mothers
whose children will be added to the group, and because, in the event
of their remaining in the group after marriage, their husbands become
additional defenders and providers within the group. Where the husband
is to settle in the family of the wife, a test is consequently often
made of his ability as a provider. Among the Zuni Indians there is
no purchase price, no general exchange of gifts; but as soon as the
agreement is reached, the young man must undertake certain duties:

He must work in the field of his prospective mother-in-law,
that his strength and industry may be tested; he must collect
fuel and deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his
disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase
and slay the deer, and make from an entire buckskin a pair of
moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a
complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting,
skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and, finally, he
must fabricate or obtain for the maiden's use a necklace of
seashell or of silver, in order that his capacity for long
journeys or successful barter may be established; but if
circumstances prevent him from performing these duties
actually, he may perform them symbolically, and such
performance is usually acceptable to the elder people. After
these preliminaries are completed, he is formally adopted
by his wife's parents, yet remains merely a perpetual guest,
subject to dislodgment at his wife's behest, though he cannot
legally withdraw from the covenant; if dissatisfied, he
can only so ill-treat his wife or children as to compel his
expulsion.[135]

This practice is seen in a symbolical form where presents are required
of the suitor before marriage and their equivalent returned later. By
depositing goods accumulated through his activities he demonstrates
his ability as a provider, without undergoing a formal test. This
practice is reported of the Indians of Oregon:

The suitor never, in person, asks the parents for their
daughter; but he sends one or more friends, whom he pays for
their services. The latter sometimes effect their purposes
by feasts. The offer generally includes a statement of the
property which will be given for the wife to the parents,
consisting of horses, blankets, or buffalo robes. The wife's
relations always raise as many horses (or other property)
for her dower as the bridegroom has sent the parents, but
scrupulously take care not to turn over the same horses or
the same articles.... This is the custom alike of the
Walla-Wallas, Nez-Perces, Cayuse, Waskows, Flatheads, and
Spokanes.[136]

In Patagonia the usual custom is for the bridegroom, after
he has secured the consent of his damsel, to send either a
brother or some intimate friend to the parents, offering so
many mares, horses, or silver ornaments for the bride. If
the parents consider the match desirable, as soon after as
circumstances will permit, the bridegroom, dressed in his
best, and mounted on his best horse, proceeds to the toldo
of his intended, and hands over the gifts; the parents then
return gifts of equivalent value, which, however, in the event
of a separation are the property of the bride.[137]

Marriage by capture is an immediate expression of male force. Like
marriage by settlement in the house of the wife, it is an expedient
for obtaining a wife outside the group where marriage by purchase
is not developed, or where the suitor cannot offer property for the
bride. It is an unsocial procedure and does not persist in a growing
society, for it involves retaliation and blood-feud. But it is a
desperate means of avoiding the constraint and embarrassment of a
residence in the family and among the relatives of the wife, where
the power of the husband is hindered, and the male disposition is not
satisfied in this matter short of personal ownership.

The man also sometimes lives under the maternal system in regular
marriage, but escapes its disadvantages by stealing a supplementary
wife or purchasing a slave woman, over whom and whose children he has
full authority. In the Babar Archipelago, where the maternal system
persists, even in the presence of marriage by purchase (the man
living in the house of the woman, and the children reckoned with the
mother), it is considered highly honorable to steal an additional
wife from another group, and in this case the children belong to the
father.[138] Among the Kinbundas of Africa children belong to the
maternal uncle, who has the right to sell them, while the father
regards as his children in fact the offspring of a slave woman, and
these he treats as his personal property. To the same effect, among
the Wanyamwesi, south of the Victoria Nyanza, the children of a slave
wife inherit, to the exclusion of children born of a legal wife. And
husbands among the Fellatahs are in the habit of adopting children,
though they may have sons or daughters of their own, and the adopted
children inherit the property.[139] In Indonesia a man sometimes
marries a woman and settles in her family, and the children belong
to her. But he may later carry her forcibly to his own group, and the
children then belong to him.[140]

Bosman relates that in Guinea religious symbolism was also introduced
by the husband to reinforce and lend dignity to this action. The
maternal system held with respect to the chief wife:

It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife
a slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at
pleasure, who had no kindred that could interfere for her,
and to consecrate her to his Bossum or god. The Bossum wife,
slave as she had been, ranked next to the chief wife, and was
like her exceptionally treated. She alone was very jealously
guarded, she alone was sacrificed at her husband's death.
She was, in fact, wife in a peculiar sense. And having, by
consecration, been made of the kindred and worship of her
husband, her children would be born of his kindred and
worship.[141]

Altogether the most satisfactory means of removing a girl from her
group is to purchase her. The use of property in the acquisition
of women is not a particular expression of the male nature, since
property is accumulated by females as well; but where this form of
marriage exists it means practically that the male relatives of the
girl are using her for profit, and that her suitor is seeking more
complete control of her than he can gain in her group; and viewed
in this light the purchase and sale of women is an expression of the
dominant nature of the male. In consequence of purchase, woman became
in barbarous society a chattel, and her socially constrained position
in history and the present hindrances to the outflow of her activities
are to be traced largely to the system of purchasing wives.

The simplest form of purchase is to give a woman in exchange. "The
Australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or wives either
as the survivor of a married elder brother or in exchange for his
sisters, or, later in life, for his daughters."[142] A wife is also
often sold on credit, but kept at home until the price is paid. On
the island of Serang a youth belongs to the family of the girl, living
according to her customs and religion until the bride-price is paid.
He then takes both wife and children to his tribe. But in case he is
very poor, he never pays the price, and remains perpetually in the
tribe of his wife.[143] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia
the maternal has only barely given way to the paternal system, and the
form of marriage reflects both systems. The suitor sends a messenger
with blankets, and the number sent is doubled within three months,
making in all about one hundred and fifty. These are to be returned
later. He is then allowed to live with the girl in her father's house.
Three months later the husband gives perhaps a hundred blankets more
for permission to take his wife home.[144] Among the Makassar and
Beginese stems of Indionesia the purchase of a wife involves only
a partial relinquishment of the claim of the maternal house on the
girl; the purchase price is paid by instalments and all belongs to
the mother's kindred in case full payment is not made. A compromise
between the two systems is made on the Molucca Islands, where children
born before the bride-price is paid belong to the mother's side, after
that to the father's.[145]

So long as a wife remained in her group, she could rely upon her
kindred for protection against ill-usage from her husband, but she
forfeited this advantage when she passed to his group. An Arabian girl
replies to her father, when a chief seeks her in marriage: "No! I am
not fair of face, and I have infirmities of temper, and I am not his
_bint'amm_ (tribeswoman), so that he should respect my consanguinity
with him, nor does he dwell in thy country, so that he should have
regard for thee; I fear then that he may not care for me and may
divorce me, and so I shall be in an evil case."[146] The Hassanyeh
Arabs of the White Nile region in Egypt afford a curious example of
the conflict of male and female interests in connection with marriage,
in which the female passes by contract for only a portion of her time
under the authority of the male:

When the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price
of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week
the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The woman's
mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into
consideration, with a due regard for the feelings of the
family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due
observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to
command for more than two days in the week. After a great deal
of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part
of the relatives of the man to pay more, it is arranged that
the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the
first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz.:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; and, in compliance
with old-established custom, the marriage rites during the
three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which
days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think
proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by
enjoying her freedom and independence from all observation of
matrimonial obligations.[147]

We may understand also that the tolerance of loose conduct in
girls before marriage--a tolerance which amounts in many tribes to
approval--is due to the tribal recognition of the value of children,
and children born out of marriage are added to the family of the
mother. When, on the other hand, the conduct of the girl is strictly
watched, this is from a consideration that virgins command a higher
bride-price. Child-marriages and long betrothals are means of
guaranteeing the proper conduct of a girl to her husband, as they
constitute a personal claim and afford him an opportunity to throw
more restrictions about her. So that, in any case, the conduct of the
girl is viewed with reference to her value to the tribe.

A social grouping which is not the product of forces more active
in their nature than the reproductive force may be expected to
yield before male motor activities, when these are for any reason
sufficiently formulated. The primitive warrior and hunter comes into
honor and property through a series of movements involving judgments
of time and space, and the successful direction of force, aided by
mechanical appliances and mediated through the hand and the eye.
Whether directed against the human or the animal world, the principle
is the same; success and honor and influence in tribal life depend
on the application of violence at the proper time, in the right
direction, and in sufficient measure; and this is pre-eminently the
business of the male. The advantage of acting in concert in war and
hunting, and under the leadership of those who have shown evidence of
the best judgment in these matters, is felt in any body of men who are
held together by any tie; and the first tie is the tie of blood, by
which we should understand, not that primitive man has any sentimental
feeling about kinship, but that he is psychologically inseparable from
those among whom he was born and with whom he has to do. Though the
father's sense of kinship and interest in his children is originally
feeble, it increases with the growth of consciousness in connection
with various activities, and, at the point in race development when
chieftainship is hereditary in the clan and personal property is
recognized, the father realizes the awkwardness of a social system
which reckons his children as members of another clan and forces him
to bequeath his rank and possessions to his sister's children, or
other members of his own group, rather than to his children. The
Navajoes[148] and Nairs,[149] and ancient Egyptians[150] avoided this
unpleasant condition by giving their property to their children during
their own lifetime; and the Shawnees, Miamis, Sauks, and Foxes avoided
it by naming the children into the clan of the father, giving a child
a tribal name being equivalent to adoption.[151] The cleverest bit of
primitive politics of which we have record is the device employed in
ancient Peru, and surviving in historical times in Egypt and elsewhere
in the East, by which the ruler married his own sister, contrary to
the exogamous practice of the common folk. The children might then be
regularly reckoned as of the kin of the mother, indeed, but they
were at the same time of and in the group of the father, and the king
secured the succession of his own son by marrying the woman whose son
would traditionally succeed.

As we should expect, the desirability of modifying the system of
descent and inheritance through females is felt first in connection
with situations of honor and profit. At the time of the discovery of
the Hawaiian Islands the government was a brutal despotism, presenting
many of the features of feudalism; the people prostrated themselves
before the king and before objects which he had touched, and a man
suffered death whose shadow fell upon the king, or who went uncovered
within the shadow of the king's house, or even looked upon the king
by day.[152] But descent was in the female line, with a tendency
to transfer to the male line in case of the king, and among chiefs,
priests, and nobility.[153] This assertion of the male authority was
sometimes resented, however, and was a source of frequent trouble.
Wilkes states that there was formerly no regularly established order
of succession to the throne; the children of the chief wife had the
best claim, but the king often named his own successor, and this gave
rise to violent conflicts.[154]

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