Sex and Society by William I. Thomas

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From the house, or shelter, as a base, woman got such connections with
food as she might. For it is an error to suppose that she was in the
most primitive times entirely dependent on man for food. She appears
to have been quite as active in developing food surroundings in her
way as man was in his. The plant world gave her the best returns for
the effort which she could make. She beat out the seeds of plants,
digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen
to grub for most eagerly,[174] strained the poisonous juices from the
cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention
that a southern grass was developed into what we know as Indian corn.
Looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants,
and we are likely to regard it as a more conscious process than it
really was. It was the result of her conversion to her own uses
of the most available portion of her environment. In view of her
physiological habit, the animal environment was, for the most part,
out of the question, and her attention was of necessity directed to
the plant side. While less remunerative in its beginnings than
the animal side of the process, it was, perhaps, at all times less
precarious and uncertain, and we find in consequence that the economic
dependence of man on woman is as evident as her dependence on him.
A dinner of herbs is a humbler resort than a roast of antelope, but
there was less doubt that it would be forthcoming, and primitive man
was often, when in hard luck, dependent on the activities of his wife,
or the females of the group.

The domestication of animals appears similarly to be the following-up
by man of his connections with animal life, when this life began to
be less abundant. It is probable that the practice originated in
the habit of taking the young of animals home as pets, and there is
apparently a point of difference between the attention of the men and
the women given to animals once taken into the household. The men
were interested in these animals as reviving in memory the emotional
situations of hunting life, and also in the clever and inimitable
accuracy of co-ordination and superhuman development of
sense-perceptions, while there was always in the attitude of woman
toward these animals a touch of maternal feeling, such as is still
expended on the "harmless, necessary cat." And, in a small way, woman
also contributed to the domestication of animals by giving them suck,
partly as an economic investment. In Tahiti and New Britain, for
example, the women suckle the pigs, and the old women feed them.[175]
Aside from this, the connections which primitive woman has with animal
life is very slight. Worms and insects, shellfish, and even fish she
may capture, but but after this her relation to animal life is in
caring for the flesh and skins turned over to her by the man.

It was a very general early practice that, when man had killed his
game and brought it home, he was not concerned in the further handling
of it. He did not, indeed, in all cases bring it home, but sent his
wife after it. The Indians killed buffalo only as fast as the squaws
could cut them up and care for the meat, and the men of the Eskimos
would not draw the seal from the water after spearing it. Exhausted
by extraordinary efforts, the man may well have left the dressing of
the animal upon occasion to his wife, and, exhausted or not, he soon
fell into the habit of doing so. It thus turns out that all labors
relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilizations of the
side-products of food stuffs, are apt to be found in the hands of the
women.

Vessels are necessary in cooking, both to carry and hold water, and to
store the surplus of food, both vegetable and animal, and the woman,
feeling the need of these in connection with what she has set about
doing, weaves baskets and makes pottery. Fetching wood, grinding corn,
tanning the hides, and in the main the preparation of clothing, follow
rather necessarily from her relation to the raw products. Spinning and
weaving and dyeing are related closely to the vegetable world to begin
with, and it is to be expected that they would be developed by the
women. But man is very deeply interested in clothing on the ornamental
side, and the farther back we go in society, the more this holds, and
sometimes, particularly in Africa, since the domestication of oxen
there, the men prepare the leather and do the sewing, even for the
women. There is, indeed, nothing in the nature of sewing to make
it a woman's occupation. It involves a relation of the hand to the
eye--similar to that which the man is always practicing and using,
i.e., reaching a given point, perhaps with mechanical aids, through
the mediation of these two organs. It is a motor matter, therefore,
and one of the first industries undertaken by men. There are many
exceptions to the general statement that early manufacture (weapons
excepted) was in the hands of women, but the exceptions may be
regarded as variations due to the fixation of habit through single and
peculiar incidents, or they are the beginning of the later period when
man begins to practice woman's activities.

The primitive division of labor among the sexes was not in any sense
an arrangement dictated by the men, but a habit into which both
men and women fell, to begin with, through their difference of
organization--a socially useful habit whose rightness no one
questioned and whose origin no one thought of looking into. There is,
moreover, a tendency in habits to become more fixed than is inherently
necessary. The man who does any woman's work is held in contempt not
only by men, but by women.

As to the Indian women, they are far from complaining of their
lot. On the contrary, they would despise their husbands could
they stoop to any menial office, and would think it conveyed
an imputation upon their own conduct. It is the worst insult
one virago can cast upon another in a moment of altercation.
"Infamous woman," will she cry, "I have seen your husband
carrying wood into the lodge to make the fire. Where was
his squaw, that he should be obliged to make a woman of
himself!"[176]

That men are similarly prejudiced against women's taking up male
occupations we know from modern industrial history, without looking
to ethnological evidence. Habit was, however, in another regard
favorable to woman, since what she was constantly associated with and
expended her activities upon was looked upon as hers. Through her
identification with the industrial process she became, in fact, a
property-owner. This result did not spring from the maternal system;
but both this and the maternal system were the results of her bodily
habit, and the social habits flowing from this.

When the woman as cultivator was almost the sole creator of
property in land, she held in respect of this also a position
of advantage. In the transactions of North American tribes
with the colonial governments many deeds of assignments bear
female signatures, which doubtless must also be referred to
inheritance through the mother.[177]

Among the Spokanes "all household goods are considered as the wife's
property."[178] The stores of roots and berries laid up by the Salish
women for a time of scarcity "are looked upon as belonging to them
personally, and their husbands will not touch them without having
previously obtained their permission."[179] Among the Menomini a woman
in good circumstances would possess as many as from 1,200 to 1,500
birch-bark vessels, and all of these would be in use during the season
of sugar-making.[180] In the New Mexican pueblo,

what comes from outside the house, as soon as it is inside
is put under the immediate control of the woman. My host at
Cochiti, New Mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a
string of _chile_ without the consent of his thirteen-year-old
daughter, Ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father.
In Cholula district (and probably all over Mexico) the man
has acquired more power, and the storehouse is no longer
controlled by the wife. But the kitchen remains her domain;
and its aboriginal designation, _tezcalli_ (place, or house,
of her who grinds), is still perfectly justified.[181]

A plurality of wives is required by a good hunter, since in
the labors of the chase women are of great service to their
husbands. An Indian with one wife cannot amass property, as
she is constantly occupied in household labors, and has not
time for preparing skins for trading.[182]

The outcome of this closer attention of the woman to the industrial
life is well seen among the ancient Hebrews:

A virtuous woman ... seeketh wool and flax, and worketh
willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships: she
bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet
night, and giveth meat to her household, and their task to her
maidens. She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit
of her hands she planteth a vineyard.... She perceiveth that
her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by
night. She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold
the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; yea, she
reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of
the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed
with scarlet. She maketh for herself carpets of tapestry; her
clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the
gates, when linen garments and selleth them; and delivereth
girdles unto the merchant.[183]

There must come a time in the history of every group when wild game
becomes scarce. This time is put off by successive migrations to
wilder regions; but the rapid increase of population makes any
continent inadequate to the supply of food through the chase
indefinitely. Morgan estimates that the state of New York, with its
47,000 square miles, never contained at any one time more than 25,000
Indians.[184] Sooner or later the man must either fall back on
the process represented by the women, taking up and developing her
industries, or he must change his attitude toward animal life. In
fact, he generally does both. He enters into a sort of alliance with
animal life, or with certain of its forms, feeding them, and tending
them, and breeding them; and he applies his katabolic energies to the
pursuits of woman, organizing and advancing them. Whether the animal
or the plant life receives in the end more attention is a matter
turning on environment and other circumstances.

When the destructive male propensities have exhausted or diminished
the food stores on the animal side, and man is forced to fall back on
the constructive female process, we find that he brings greater and
better organizing force to bear on the industries. Male enterprises
have demanded concerted action. In order to surround a buffalo
herd, or to make a successful assault, or even to row a large boat,
organization and leadership are necessary. To attack under leaders,
give signal cries, station sentinels, punish offenders, is, indeed, a
part of the discipline even of animal groups. The organizing capacity
developed by the male in human society in connection with violent
ways of life is transferred to labor. The preparation of land for
agriculture was undertaken by the men on a large scale. The jungle
was cleared, water courses were diverted and highways prepared for the
transportation of the products of labor.

But more than this, perhaps, man brought with him to the industrial
occupations all the skill in fashioning force-appliances acquired
through his intense, constant, and long-continued attention to the
devising and manufacture of weapons. Man is relatively a feeble
animal, but he made various and ingenious cutting, jabbing, and
bruising appliances to compensate. His life was a life of strains,
both giving and taking, and under the stress he had developed
offensive and defensive weapons. There is, however, no radical
difference, simply a difference in object and intensity of stimulus,
between handling and making weapons and handling and making tools.
So, when man was obliged to turn his attention to the agriculture
and industries practiced by primitive woman he brought all his
technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear
on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the
earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned
his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a
remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms:
with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the
earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus
creating the conditions of culture.

The destructive habits of the male nature were thus converted
under the stress of diminishing nutrition to the habits represented
primarily by the constructive female nature, and the inventive faculty
developed through attention to destructive mechanical aids was now
applied equally to the invention of constructive mechanical aids.

SEX AND PRIMITIVE MORALITY

The function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated
life so that all may have what we call fair play. It is impossible to
think of morality aside from expressions of force, primarily physical
force. "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear
false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not remove
the ancient landmark;" and all approvals and disapprovals imply
that the act in question has affected or will affect the interest of
others, or of society at large, for better or for worse. And since
morality goes back so directly to forms of activity and their
regulation, we may expect to find that the motor male and the more
stationary female have had a different relation to the development of
a moral code.

As between nutrition and reproduction, in the struggle for life,
nutrition plays a larger role--in volume, at any rate--in the
life-history of the individual. A consideration of the causes of the
modification of species in nature shows that the changes in morphology
and habit of the animal which relate to food-getting are more
fundamental and numerous than those which relate to wooing. In a moral
code, likewise, whether in an animal or human society, the bulk of
morality turns upon food rather than sex relations; and since the male
is more active in both these relations, and since, further, morality
is the mode of regulating activities in these relations, it is to
be expected that morality, and immorality as well, will be found
primarily to a greater degree functions of the motor male disposition.

Tribal safety and the preservation and extension of the territory
furnishing food demand the organized attention of the group first of
all; and the emotional demonstrations and social rewards following
modes of behavior which have a protective or provident meaning for
the group, and the public disapproval and disallowance of modes of
behavior which impair the safety or force capacity, and consequent
satisfactions of the group, become in the tribe the most powerful
of all stimuli, and stimuli to which the male is peculiarly able to
react. This is not like the case of hunger and other physiological
stimuli which are conditioned from within. The individual acts for the
advantage of the group rather than for his personal advantage, and the
stimulus to this action must be furnished socially. Group preservation
being of first-rate importance, no group would survive in which the
public showed apathy on this point. Lewis and Clarke say of the Dakota
Indians:

What struck us most was an institution peculiar to them and
to the Kite Indians, further to the westward, from whom it
is said to have been copied. It is an association of the most
active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by
attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any
danger, or to give way to their enemies. In war they go
forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding
their natural valor by any artifice.... These young men sit,
and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the
nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years
old; and such is the deference paid to courage that their
seats in the council are superior to those of the chiefs, and
their persons more respected.[185]

The consciousness of the value of male activity is here expressed in
an exaggerated degree--in a degree bordering upon the pathological,
since the reckless exposure of life to danger is not necessary to
success at a given moment, and is unjustifiable from the standpoint
of public safety, unless it be on the side of the suggestive effect
of intrepid conduct in creating a general standard of intrepidity.
Similarly, the Indians in general often failed to get the full benefit
of a victory, because of their practice that the scalp of an enemy
belonged to him who took it, and their pursuits after a rout were
checked by the delay of each to scalp his own.

The pedagogical attempts of primitive society, so far as they are
applied to boys, have as an end the encouragement of morality of a
motor, not a sentimental, type. The boys are taught war and the chase,
and to despise the occupations of women. Thompson says of the Zulu
boys:

It is a melancholy fact that when they have arrived at a very
early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such
is the law that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill
their mothers.[186]

Ethnologists often make mention of the fact that the natural races do
not generally punish children; and while this is due in part to a less
definite sense of responsibility, as well as of less nervousness in
parents, non-interference is a part of their system of training:

Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires
him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to
steal or secrete in joke some trifling article belonging
to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more
troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment,
the more they are praised as giving indication of a future
enterprising and warlike disposition.[187]

Theft is also encouraged among boys as a developer of their wits. The
Spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and Diodorus relates
that in Egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to
enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to
him all stolen articles. The citizens who were robbed went to the
captain of thieves and recovered their property upon payment of
one-fourth of its value.[188] Admiration of a lawless deed often
foreruns censure of the deed in consciousness today: there are few men
who do not admire a particularly daring and successful bank or diamond
robbery, though they deprecate the social injury done.

Formally becoming a man is made so much of in early society, because
it is on this occasion that fitness for activity is put to the test.
Initiatory ceremonies fall at the time of puberty in the candidate,
and consist of instruction and trials of fortitude. A certain show of
the proceeds of activity is also exacted of young men, especially
in connection with marriage, and the youth is not permitted to marry
until he has killed certain animals or acquired certain trophies. The
attention given to manly practices in connection with marriage is seen
in this example from the Kukis:

When a young man has fixed his affections upon a young woman,
either of his own or some neighboring _Parah_, his father
visits her father and demands her in marriage for his son: her
father, on this, inquires what are the merits of the young
man to entitle him to her favor; and how many can he afford
to entertain at the wedding feast; to which the father of
the young man replies that his son is a brave warrior, a good
hunter, and an expert thief; for that he can produce so many
heads of the enemies he has slain and of the game he has
killed; that in his house are such and such stolen goods;
and that he can feast so many (mentioning the number) at his
marriage.[189]

Occasionally the ability to take punishment is even made a part of the
marriage ceremony. At Arab marriages

there is much feasting, and the unfortunate bridegroom
undergoes the ordeal of whipping by the relations of his
bride, in order to test his courage. Sometimes this punishment
is exceedingly severe, being inflicted with the coorbatch,
or whip of hippopotamus hide, which is cracked vigorously
about his ribs and back. If the happy husband wishes to
be considered a man worth having, he must receive the
chastisement with an expression of enjoyment; in which case
the crowds of women in admiration again raise their thrilling
cry.[190]

A very simple record of successful activity is the bones of animals.
McCosh says of the Mishmis of India:

Nor are these hospitable rites allowed to be forgotten; the
skull of every animal that has graced the board is hung up
as a record in the hall of the entertainer; he who has
the best-stocked Golgotha is looked upon as the man of the
greatest wealth and liberality, and when he dies the whole
smoke-dried collection of many years is piled upon his grave
as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth.[191]

And Grange of the Nagas:

In front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up
the bones of the animals with which they have feasted the
villagers, whether tigers, elephants, cows, hogs, or monkeys,
or aught else, for it signifies little what comes to their
net.[192]

The head-hunting mania of Borneo is also a pathological expression
of the desire to get approval of destructive activity from both the
living and the dead:

The aged of the people were no longer safe among their
kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the
grizzly store. Superstition soon added its ready impulse to
the general movement. The aged warrior could not rest in his
grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name; the
maiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not
yet stained with some cowardly murder.[193]

Class distinctions and the attendant ceremonial observances go
immediately back to an appreciation of successful motor activities.
We need only observe the conduct of weaker animals in the presence
of the stronger to appreciate the differences in behavior induced
by the presence of superior motor ability. The recognition of this
difference, as it is finally expressed in habitual forms of behavior,
becomes a symbol of the difference, while the difference goes back,
in reality, to a difference in capacity. This example from Raffles
illustrates the intensity of moral meaning which the appreciation of
achievement may take on in the end:

At the court of _Sura-kerta_ I recollect that once, when
holding a private conference with the _Susunan_ at the
residency, it became necessary for the _Radan adipati_ to be
dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man
was, as usual, squatting, and as the Susunan happened to be
seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes
before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts,
could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach
the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission
on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself
inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were
insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out
of the _dodok_ posture. When it is necessary for an inferior
to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with
his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's
sight.[194]

Drury says that a Malagasy chief, on his return from war,

had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came
out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and
then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the
same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in
the same manner.[195]

An examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times
thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent
and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards
of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude
essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the
representatives of conduct of this type. In the past, at any rate,
there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like
military adulation; and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in
the individual ranks with the fighting quality.[196]

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