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Women of America

by John Ruse Larus · English · Gutenberg #32892 · 675,401 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Women of America

Author: John Ruse Larus


        
Release date: June 19, 2010 [eBook #32892]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32892

Credits: Produced by Rénald Lévesque


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF AMERICA ***




Produced by Rénald Lévesque








WOMAN

VOLUME X



WOMEN OF AMERICA

BY

JOHN ROUSE LARUS


[Illustration 1: HUEMAC II. MEETS XOCHITL.
After the painting by L. Obregon.
Huemac II. began to reign in Mexico about 995, in what is called the
Toltec period. Xochitl, accompanied by her father, a nobleman, went to
the court of Huemac, carrying with her as an offering to the king a
beverage which she had invented. The king tasted the wine, and desired
to have more. Later, Xochitl returned to the court, and Huemac, who
already was fascinated with the girl, caused her to be retained, and
sent a message to her father that he had placed her in the care of his
court ladies and would complete her education. Shortly afterward his
queen died, and Huemac immediately made Xochitl his queen.]



Woman

In all ages and in all countries



VOLUME X



WOMEN OF AMERICA

BY

JOHN ROUSE LARUS



ILLUSTRATED



PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS




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
analysis, 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
Slocum 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 vanishing 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 fashions 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, illustrated 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 asserts, 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 Washington 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 associated 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 noble 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 space 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 passing 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 assure
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 shores 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 assume 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 superstitions,
its own creed, its own conditions of existence. Yet there were certain
manifestations of these circumstances 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 constitution 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
constituence 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
assist 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 passed 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
assistance 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-god
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 gods; 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
passes 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 furnishing 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 constitution 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 wifeship. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that polygamy,
apart from its moral aspect, was an institution 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 hardships 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 passing 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 massacre 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 passed around the circle, at each step dashing 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 massacre.

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 passed
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 massacre,
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 massacre of Wyoming is illustrative 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 Slocum, about five years old. For
long all trace of her was lost; but in 1835, more than fifty years after
the massacre, an old woman known as Maconaqua, living in a Miami village
in Indiana, was by accident identified as the lost Frances Slocum. 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 Slocum 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 shores--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 circumstances 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 sex; 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 sex--privileges which sometimes were powerful
even to overcome the strength of custom or the promptings of vengeance.
One of these peculiar privileges is illustrated in the story of
Pocahontas, and, notwithstanding the hoary antiquity of the tale, it
must be set down here in order to illustrate this and some other points
needful to be understood if we are to comprehend the true position of
the Amerind woman among her fellows.

[Illustration 2: THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA.
After the painting by William L. Dodge.
The demi-god 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
passes 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 shield 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 establishing 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 noblest
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, lusty,
manly woman," who was almost smothered in copper ornaments: a
circumstance 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 ingratitude 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 title, 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 attitude of her erstwhile
friend, who would have "excused" her using the tender title 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 attitude
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
attitude of the king gives no excuse for Smith, since between marriage
with a "princess" and the mere use of the formal but affectionate title
of "father" lay a broad gulf.

The contemptible captain met his savior no more; for the Lady Rebecca,
as Pocahontas was now called, after being presented at court and winning
universal admiration by her dignified bearing and lovable disposition,
died of consumption just as she was about to set sail for her native
land. She left one child, a son, by Rolfe, and through him her blood
flows in the veins of some of the Virginia families of our own day. John
Randolph of Roanoke made it his boast that he was one of the descendants
of the Indian "princess"; but then John Randolph was very eccentric
indeed in more ways than one.

If more than proportional space has been devoted to this history of
Pocahontas, it is because in the narrative, and especially in the
characteristic glimpse obtained through the excerpt from Smith's story
of the interview, are to be found several very suggestive lessons as to
the nature as well as status of the Indian woman in the time of the
early colonists, before the new civilization had exerted any formative
influence whatever upon the old. The dignity of bearing, the eloquence
of speech, the modest and yet impressive demeanor of this child of the
woods were of her nature and training, not grafted there by the
environment in which she found herself during her residence in England.
In the eyes of those who surrounded her she was but a savage; but to us
she is far more, for she is representative of a race which has been
greatly misunderstood. It was a typical Indian woman who stood in such
splendid contrast to the time-serving and ungrateful Smith, who bore
herself at court with all the native dignity of a princess of the blood
royal, who showed herself in all essentials a better Christian and
higher type of true civilization than the majority of those of Caucasian
race with whom she came into contact. Such a woman as this was not the
product of a state of unredeemed barbarism, neither could she have
learned her dignity and self-possession among a people where her sex
knew only degraded slavery. That she was the daughter of a chief was not
of itself sufficient to rescue her from the usual lot of her sex, nor
was her association with Englishmen--especially of the type of Smith,
Argall, or even Rolfe himself--likely to change radically her modes of
thought and lend to her any admirable qualities of nature or bearing
that were not of her normal environment. So it is impossible to escape
the conclusion that among the tribes of Virginia at least--and it is far
from probable that these were peculiar in this respect--woman held a
position far higher than is generally supposed. It is necessary to
reconcile this theory with the known degradation of the Indian woman in
after years, and this task is not impossible; but before so doing it is
necessary that we retrace our steps to primitive conditions, in order to
glance for a moment at the status of women among some of the Western
tribes, which were in some respects more highly civilized than their
brothers of the Eastern slope.

The red civilization of the East was fairly constant. Between the
highest and the lowest of the tribes there was but little difference;
the Delawares of the Lakes, the Hurons, the Senecas, the Potomacs, and
all the rest of the innumerable tribes which inhabited the country east
of the Alleghanies, as well as those dwelling in the Mississippi Valley,
showed but little variation of civilization. In the West, however, it
was widely different. It is true that there were on the plains many
great tribes, such as the Sioux, the Pawnees, the Utahs, the Apaches,
and others too numerous to specify, whose general status in the roll of
civilization was of very slightly varying average; but there were also
tribes which touched the highest and lowest points of Amerind culture.
As an example of the latter, mention need be made only of the Pi-Utes,
or "Digger" Indians, a tribe as degraded as the Australian aborigines
themselves.

The Pi-Utes were the most abject and wretched of all American Indians;
they lived chiefly on roots--whence their common name among the
whites--and sometimes on offal. Yet even among these degraded people
there existed, even up to a comparatively late period, a spirit of
tribal devotion, at least if the story be true that is related of them,
and which, as it deals with women, is here reproduced without
pronouncement upon its entire credibility. It is--or was--said that, as
the products of the chase were of great importance to this people, it
was necessary that they should be armed with the most effective weapons
in their reach, and so they contrived a peculiarly deadly poison with
which to tip their small arrows. This poison was so noxious that its
distillation from the plant which furnished it a plant of which the
secret was known only to the "Diggers"--always resulted in the death of
the person preparing the decoction. It would naturally be thought that
the position of the individual who was to prepare the yearly stock of
poison for the tribe was one that would be shunned; but, on the
contrary, there was an annual contest between the oldest squaws for the
honor of becoming the sacrifice for the welfare of the tribe, and the
successful competitor proudly gave her life that the rest might live.

For this story, though cited from good authority, one may well decline
to vouch; but it is probably not untrue, since it is essentially of the
Indian spirit. Be this as it may, the Pi-Utes unquestionably represented
the most degraded aspect of Indian existence and nature. On the other
hand, there were the Yumas--often called the Apaches--and the Maricopas,
both agricultural tribes and most probably at one time dwellers in adobe
houses. They understood the principles of irrigation and attained a high
degree of Indian culture. Yet more remarkable in this respect were the
Navajos, whose name is said to signify "large cornfields" and to have
arisen from the extensive agriculture practised by the tribe. When they
were first discovered by the Spaniards in 1541 they lived in large
dwellings, partly subterranean, tilled the soil, irrigated their fields
by means of artificial watercourses, or _acequias_, and generally
displayed all the signs of the highest type of primitive civilization.
Again, there were the Pueblo Indians, as they are generally known--the
term is really ambiguous and probably includes many different tribes and
even stocks, being given indiscriminately to the inhabitants of the
ruined towns which have been found throughout Arizona and the adjacent
territory. While the civilization of these town dwellers was most
probably local rather than racial, an accident of situation and
propinquity, it was none the less decided.

Now, among such tribes, in the most advanced state of red civilization,
the status of woman was of necessity somewhat different even from that
which she enjoyed among the Sioux, Comanches, or other of the great
tent-dwelling peoples. Among the Navajos, who are chosen for example as
being in many respects typical, the son followed the gens of his mother,
the matriarchal system being in full force; while among the Sarcees, a
kindred tribe, the mother-in-law was held in such respect that the
husband of her daughter could not sit at meat with her, or even touch
her, without rendering himself amenable to a fine. Yet polygamy existed
among the Navajos, and marriage by purchase was the rule. Moreover, if
we are to believe the accounts of the early explorers of the West, among
all the southern tribes marital affection was practically unknown; the
wife was a mere slave, and in some of the tribes so lax was the marital
tie that it was not uncommon for friends to exchange wives in token of
amity. So it would seem that the status of woman, contrary to the
general rule, was higher where the outer signs of civilization were less
marked. Except in the case of the Nehaunies, a tribe of eastern Alaska,
there is no known instance of a Western gens being ruled by a woman,
though, on the other hand, there seems to be little doubt that among the
Navajos--whose religion was somewhat of the nature of that practised by
the Aztecs, with which race they were indeed associated in stock--women
at times bore a prominent part in the service of the gods, in the
ceremonial of the rites and even in the reading of omens.

Conceding due consideration to the difficulty of formulating any general
theory for the different tribes, even of the same scope of culture, it
would yet seem certain that woman's place among the Western Amerinds was
far inferior to that held by her in the East. Yet among the house
dwellers, such as the Pueblos and Navajos, her lot must have been, in
material matters, easier than that of her Eastern sister. In the
agricultural nations we find the men doing the heavier portion of the
labor incident to cultivation of the soil, though the women probably
acted as sowers, gleaners, and the like, as do the peasant women of
Europe to this day. On the whole, it is evident that the women of the
advanced Western tribes were inferior in general status, but superior in
ease of lot, to their sisters of the Atlantic slope.

It is now time to turn from the picture of the aboriginal woman as she
stood at the time of the coming of the first settlers, and trace, as far
as possible by general rule, the influences exerted upon her status by
contact with the incoming civilization of the East. It is in the
consequences of this influence that we may find an explanation of the
lowering of the status of the Amerind woman; for the effect of that
inroad of civilization was for long distinctly inimical to the
development of the Indian. How far the theory of our culture was
applicable to the needs of the Amerind can be only a subject of
speculation, for the errors of application of that theory debarred the
Indians from participation in any benefits which they might have
received thereunder. The imperfect generalization which has been applied
to the study of the American Indian is most conspicuous in error in its
failure to take account of the marked degradation which ensued in the
Indian character after the settlement of the country by the whites. It
is not necessary or practicable here to trace the witness of this
degradation in full strength; but it can be seen evidenced in the
failure of the Indian woman to maintain her status, either of position
or of character. We may indeed find a Queen Esther after the
establishment of the colonists as owners of the country; but we never
again see a Pocahontas. Under the incursions of a civilization which
assumed its most repugnant form in its dealing with the Indians, there
ensued on the part of the latter a reversion to a more barbarous type
than had before been prevalent. Nor was this strange; for the
necessities under which he found himself drove the Indian backward into
barbarism. The influence of "firewater" upon the character of the red
man has been often expatiated upon; but this was in truth but a small
factor in the sum of the general result. A conquered race, driven from
its strongholds into the primitive life of savagery to find means of
sustenance, will always relapse into a state of barbarism; history is
not wanting in examples of this truth. It was thus with the Indians of
North America. Though the process was gradual, it was none the less
sure; they found themselves involved in an unending contest for actual
existence, and such a state is highly inimical to development along
upward-tending lines. As has been inevitably the case in similar
instances, they retrograded.

It is to this cause--never perhaps sufficiently considered in studies of
the Indian nature--that must be referred much that would otherwise
appear inexplicable. Even though the early colonists were as a rule ill
disposed toward the Indians, as was befitting those who desired a
pretext for wholesale robbery of territory, yet their narratives stand
in sharp contrast to the tales of Amerind nature as we have them of
later date, and in still greater contrast to our present knowledge.
Instead of the progress for which one might look, if he should be of
those who are convinced of the admirable effects of the introduction of
our civilization, there was steady retrogression. The early colonists
found a species of civilization, however crude; but it did not advance,
or even continue. The Indians of the East, of course, felt the effect of
the influx of white men long before their brethren of the West; and we
will first glance at the effect here upon the status of woman from the
new conditions.

While before the coming of the whites there was doubtless frequent
warfare among the red men, and while the men were preeminently warriors,
yet warfare was not their normal state. Tribal feuds there were in
plenty, and these ever and again broke out into strife; but, as a rule,
the tribes lived in general amity, and not infrequently, as in the case
of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, there were treaties of alliance and
support. With the evolution and progress of the new conditions, however,
the Indian found himself an Ishmael indeed. Not only were tribal
jealousies and feuds augmented, but the red men became again and again
involved in the wars of the whites, so that strife became their constant
condition of existence. Battling for very life,--and, in their
bewilderment and lack of racial organization, often turning their
weapons against each other instead of the common foe,--the Indians were
soon reduced to the condition of mere wandering and militant tribes,
their culture forgotten and indeed inapplicable to the changed
conditions. In this state of affairs all that was not strictly military
became worthless; and so woman, save as leader or Amazon, lost her
rightful position in Indian society. She now became, indeed, a mere
chattel, a slave, even a detriment, however necessarily tolerated. She
was useful in producing warriors and in ministering to their physical
needs; but there her functions ceased. Though in rare instances, as in
the case of Catherine Montour, a woman might be heard at the council
fire, this was regarded as a survival of a custom decidedly "more
honored in the breach than the observance"; from a state of at least
partial equality with the men, she was soon, by the altered
circumstances of her race, reduced to a condition of abject slavery and
degradation.

The changed conditions were powerful over the nature as well as the
status of the Indian woman. The colonists always insisted most
strenuously upon the natural cruelty of the Indians; but we must
remember that this was not a quality confined to barbarism, since even
in the days of the first colonists the Inquisition was an established
institution, while the tortures practised in England during the reign of
"Good Queen Bess" might have seemed to the most enthusiastic Indian
warrior too cruel to be used by him on his worst enemy. There can,
however, be no question that the Indians, like so many other primitive
peoples, delighted in torture of their foes--though they did not emulate
their white fellows by torturing a man because he happened to differ
from them in a matter of theory. Now it has been seen in the case of
Pocahontas that it was a custom of the women to interfere to save the
lives of prisoners; and the existence of such a well-defined custom
argues a certain tender-heartedness among the women. Under the new
conditions of constant strife, however, this "quality of mercy" became a
thing of the past. It is the nature of woman to be enthusiastic in evil
as in good; and it soon came about that it was the women of the Indians
who were the most bloodthirsty and cruel of their race. It was they who
heaped the foulest insults upon a captive enemy, who most delighted in
the most terrible torture of that foe, who were best pleased if his
agony extorted from him the tribute of a groan.

This indulgence in the most depraved instincts of the animal nature of
course reacted. The women of the Amerinds lost all the distinctively
feminine characteristics that they had ever possessed, and with them
even their slight influence upon the men of their race. These saw in
their women the evidences of a lower nature than their own, instead of
one higher, and so they calmly and justly relegated those who were
developing toward animalism to the level of an animal. The rule was not
invariable; but it was general. There still remained a few "mothers in
Israel," women who by force of character maintained some influence in
their tribes; but, as a rule, the squaw was a mere beast of burden, a
mere "breeder of sinners." The facility in adaptation to conditions
which has always been one of woman's prominent traits had proved fatal
to the status and nature of the Amerind woman.

There were some notable exceptions. In the long Seminole war the Indians
were led by a remarkable man named Osceola. He was a half-breed, the son
of an Indian woman by a white named Powell; but Osceola, though reared
amid the environment of Caucasian civilization, never acknowledged any
relationship to the whites. The Seminoles preserved the gentile system,
in which the child followed the fortunes of its mother, and Osceola
acknowledged none but Indian racial laws. Of his mother but little is
known; but it is certain that she was a woman of stern and decided
character, that she accepted the benefits of white civilization without
admitting any gratitude therefor, and that she instilled into her great
son the principles which had come down to her from her ancestors. She
possessed great influence with her race, as much for her powers of
intellect as for her education--for she was excellently taught--and
culture; and it is probable that her influence was paramount in the
selection of her son as one of the chiefs of his nation. After his rise
to fame, we hear no more of her; but that she was a power in her day and
way cannot be doubted.

This was at a comparatively late date, and the instance is the last that
we find of an Indian woman exerting decided influence within her tribe.
Long before the dawn of the last century, the aboriginal woman had lost
all little power that had once been hers. That this loss was largely due
to her own failure to advance, and her consequent retrogression, we have
already seen, but circumstances were also largely responsible for the
lapse of feminine prestige.

It may be that one of the causes for the lost influence of women among
the Indian tribes was the lowering of the standard of morality. This is
a matter upon which it is difficult to pronounce, since morality, always
comparative in its standards and to be judged only by the racial creeds
which govern it in local applications, was peculiarly variant among the
Indian tribes of North America. Judged by the rules of modern
civilization, it might be broadly stated that morality was always at a
very low ebb among the Amerinds; but such a statement would be entirely
unwarranted by the true laws of morality. Polygamy, for example, is by
modern white races held to be immoral; but it was a very common custom
among the Amerinds, and that which is sanctioned by custom is assuredly
not immoral, though it may be counted _un_-moral. Again, as already
noted, there were tribes among which the exchange of wives, temporarily
or permanently, was held to be entirely legitimate; and, while such a
custom is very far from being in accord with Caucasian standards, it is
the custom only, and not the practisers thereof, which is to be blamed
by the just moralist. On the other hand, it may be set down as a rule of
Indian social life that adultery was severely punished. Even here the
point of view was not invariable, some tribes holding the man the more
guilty, while others visited punishment chiefly or entirely upon the
woman; but the sentiment concerning the crime in the abstract was almost
universal. It is very probable--though no authority can be found for
the statement--that it was among those tribes where the descent was in
the male line that the woman was held chiefly criminal in adultery,
since thus the purity of descent was contaminated and diverted, while
among those nations where descent was in the female line, the woman was
held less guilty than he who shared her crime. However this may be, and
there is too much confusion of statement, as well as too many diverse
laws, for us safely to generalize in the matter, certain it is that
adultery was in general looked upon as a heinous crime, usually to be
visited with death as its penalty. Yet, with all this strictness
regarding the sanctity of the marriage tie, where not abrogated by
consent, there was among many of the tribes of the West a singular lack
of respect for female purity in general. In more than one tribe, the
unmarried women were practically held in common by the unmarried men,
though immediately upon marriage the former became strangers to all but
their husbands. Here are contradictions in theory as well as practice,
but such contradictions are invariably to be found among primitive
peoples, nor can the highest civilization yet known boast entire freedom
from them.

While upon the subject of morality, it may be well to glance at the
aboriginal customs concerning divorce. As always, any inclusive
statement must be prefaced by the warning that generalization is
impossible of application to all the nations of North America; only a
few very broad rules can be laid down, and these are tried by many
exceptions. It may be stated as one of these rules that divorce was
general among the Amerinds. As is usually the case where polygamy
prevails, divorce was almost invariably at the discretion of the
husband; but this rule knew some remarkable exceptions, as among the
Pueblo Indians, where, because of the status of the husband as the
perpetual guest of his wife, divorce was chiefly in the discretion of
the women. It is, however, safe to lay down the general rule that
divorce was at the discretion of the husband and rarely needed more than
the expression of his wish to become effective and legal. This facility
of divorce, of course, made for immorality as at present understood,
since it created of marriage little more than a state of concubinage,
where the concubine could be cast off at will and made over to another
master, so that the marriage relation lacked the continuity which is its
most essential feature; but, as a matter of fact, the practice of
divorce was uncommon among most of the Amerind tribes. Whether this was
because of public sentiment overriding the customary law, as is so often
the case among people where law is entirely of custom and not of
legislation, or whether the very lack of romantic affection in most
marriages among the Indians acted as a safeguard against satiety and
disgust, or whether there were other effective but unconjecturable
reasons, cannot be known; but the fact remains that divorce, though easy
of accomplishment, was of rare practice among the American Indians as a
race.

Thus, even though it be contrary to the general judgment, it appears
that we should be justified in pronouncing the morality of the Indian
race, judged by their standards and not by those of our civilization, to
have been of at least average excellence. With the coming of the white
men, however, this state of affairs altered rapidly for the worse. Stern
moralists as the Puritans may have been in theory, they were not always
so in practice; and Antinomianism, at one time so prevalent among them,
may have had much for which to answer. If the cold Puritans were not
guiltless in this wise, what could be expected from the Cavaliers or the
warm-blooded sons of France? The theory of King James and his
councillors, that marriages with Indian maidens would be desirable, was
put into at least semi-practice in many of the colonies, and the
relations thus established were not continued strictly "under the rose."
The consequence of this immorality on the part of the Caucasians, who
were held at first by the Indians as a superior race in all ways,
reacted upon the aboriginal thought, and the standard of morality became
lowered among the redskins, particularly among their women. Here also we
find a cause of the retrogression of the Indian woman in all ways.

It is, however, a curious fact that in one instance white immorality was
the cause of great and lasting benefit to a white nation. After the
occupation of North America by the English and French had become a
settled fact, and while there was yet dispute between the two nations
for dominance on the continent, there arose among the Indians a man of
wonderful ability and wide influence over his race. He was an Ottawa,
Pontiac by name; and though by right chief of only his own tribe, he had
before long brought many other tribes to acknowledge him as their head.
Soon after the defeat of the French on the Plains of Abraham, the
English took possession of Detroit, until then held by the French, and
the Indians in the vicinity soon found cause to complain most bitterly
of the change in the masters of the region. Pontiac assembled the
neighboring tribes and proposed to drive the English from the country.
He believed, and not impossibly with reason, that if the British were
dealt a severe blow by the Indians, the French, notwithstanding their
recent discomfiture and the treaty of peace, would finish the work; and
as a preliminary step he proposed to capture Detroit, which from its
position was of the first importance to the holding of the region of the
Northwest. It must be remembered that at that time Detroit was a fort
and not a city; and Pontiac saw that his best chance to capture it was
by stratagem. The Indians were nominally at peace with the English; but
several of the tribes--among them the Ojibwas and Wyandots--assented to
the scheme proposed by Pontiac, and assembled before Detroit. It was
Pontiac's plan to propose to Major Gladwyn, in command at Detroit, a
meeting inside the fort, where a belt of wampum--the sign of
amity--should be presented by the chief and everything done that might
promote friendly relations. Suspecting nothing, Gladwyn assented, and
Pontiac's scheme seemed sure of fruition.

It chanced, however, that among the Ojibwas was a beautiful girl, named
Catherine, and that she came under the notice of Gladwyn. He was
enamored of her beauty and proposed to her to become his mistress; and
she, honored by the notice of the handsome Englishman, yielded to his
desire. It would seem that at first the girl did not know that evil
threatened the British; but one evening, when she came to the fort to
visit her lover, she was noticed by him to be absent and sad. At first
she would not tell him the reason of her grief; but at last, urged by
her love to treachery to her own people, she told him that the Indians
had been engaged in filing off the barrels of their rifles so that they
could conceal these weapons beneath their cloaks, and that the next day,
when the peace conference was to be held, the presentation by Pontiac of
the belt of wampum was to be the signal for the armed warriors to rise
upon the unsuspecting and weaponless officers in a massacre which should
become general when the gates of the fort had been seized by those
deputed for the purpose. Gladwyn was not the man to neglect such a
warning; and the next day, when Pontiac, surrounded by his apparently
peaceful but really armed warriors, was about to hand the wampum belt to
Gladwyn, a drum beat, the doors of the council chamber were thrown open,
and there appeared at every entrance a file of soldiers with levelled
muskets, while in the streets was heard the tramp of marching men
hurriedly assembling at the point of danger. Pontiac saw that he was
betrayed, and, with quick presence of mind, concluded his speech with
some words of friendship, and sat down without having made the intended
signal; but Gladwyn, less tactful than the Indian, boldly accused the
latter of treachery and dared him to do his worst. He did not, however,
take the obvious course of securing the person of Pontiac, who was
allowed to depart and who at once began a siege which for vigor and
ability is hardly surpassed in the annals even of civilized warfare.

The narrative of the siege of Detroit and the fate of the brave and able
chief who conducted it have no connection with the subject of this work;
but the incident of the preservation of the fort from Pontiac's
ingenious plot is germane to the matter in hand. Had the Indians been
successful in their scheme, it is not at all impossible that France
would have made another attempt to maintain her footing in North
America; and thus it might be said with some show of reason that
Gladwyn's immorality was the cause of the consummation of British
dominance in North America, and that an obscure Indian girl saved for
England a possession which that country had bought at the price of some
of her noblest blood.

But the sentiment that brought about the preservation of the defenders
of Detroit, and thus perhaps determined the British title to dominance,
was not the inspiration that led another Indian woman to direct the
course of the white man in America, and in so doing to contribute
largely to the work of subjugating the continent to his race. Sacajawea,
the "Bird-woman," born in the mountain region dwelt in by the Shoshones,
had been made captive, when a child, by the Blackfeet, the foes of her
people, and by them sold into slavery. Her master and husband was
Chabonneau, a French wanderer among the Indians. When Lewis and Clark,
on their famous expedition, reached the Mandan villages, they found
there the Frenchman and his Indian squaw, now a girl of sixteen, and
hired them as interpreters and guides. With her lately-born papoose
strapped to her back, this little woman's native dexterity proved
invaluable to the explorers as they journeyed along the Upper Missouri
in their canoes. Across the divide and into the mountains which were her
native home the party moved, ever helped and encouraged by Sacajawea.
Here, at length, difficulties seemingly too great to be overcome, faced
the explorers, but the little squaw, recognizing in a valley they had
reached the home from which she had been taken five years earlier, saved
the turning back of the expedition. At last she was with her long-lost
tribeswomen and winning these, their warriors were soon gathered about
her. To them she spoke of the good intentions of the white man and her
influence soon established friendship between the explorers and the
Shoshones, and their safe conduct through the territory of the tribes
was now assured and their way led to the Pacific.

Many incidents are told of the "Bird-woman's" skill, bravery, and
fidelity during the long journey from the home of the Mandans to the
shore of the Pacific and back to the point of starting. Of these mention
may be made of her saving the valuable records and instruments of the
explorers; of her sacrifice of a prized ornament to enable Lewis to
secure a much desired otter skin; and of her giving to her hungry
captain the piece of bread treasured to appease the hunger of her babe
in an emergency. These traits of Sacajawea serve to present her as a
woman of eminent personal worth, for much more than the acquired skill
of her race or the energy born of a desire to revisit her childhood home
is transparent in her actions on this memorable journey. Though in her
social relation she held a degraded position, she displayed
characteristics which place her in a lofty position as to qualities of
mind and heart. Unconscious she was, of course, of the vast results
which were to follow the expedition, to the success of which she so
largely contributed, yet she accepted the mission of her captains and
loyally furthered its accomplishment.

Before closing this brief and imperfect attempt to define the primitive
and modified status of the Amerind woman it is necessary, that the
sketch may have as much completeness as is possible, to cast a hurried
glance at the present conditions of the women of the Indian tribes that
remain to us.

While the first effects of the impinging civilization were most
deleterious to the status and nature of the aboriginal woman, there came
a time when, under conditions of comparative peace, there was ampler
opportunity for the best of that civilization to prove that it really
had a message for red men and women as well as white, though its first
words had been so marred in the saying. It would not comport with
tenderness for the good name of our country to set forth the wrongs
suffered by the Indians at the hands of those who assumed a higher place
in the scale of race; the story is written large for all those who care
to read. Beneath the combined influences of tyranny, treachery, knavery,
and every other crime that the whites could commit against them,
together with the degrading effects of the existence which was forced on
them and the pernicious results of the introduction of drunkenness as a
racial vice, the Indians went from bad to worse, until in the majority
of cases they became little better than mere savages. In this
retrogression the status of the Indian woman participated, until in
almost every tribe within the boundaries of our country she was reduced
to the state of the merest beast of burden. Her lot became harder and
harder, and was not even ameliorated by the consolations of any
religious creed that held promise of better things to come. At last,
though very slowly and very late in the history of the Amerinds, there
dawned a day when equity began to take some place in our dealings with
our red brethren, when there began some organized effort to show them
that white civilization held some benefits even for them and that
Christianity was something more than a theory. Even then, the efforts to
improve the condition of the Indians were chiefly directed toward the
education of the youths; for the girls and women there was but little
consideration shown. At length, however, this field also was entered by
some devoted men and women,--especially the latter,--and the Indian
woman, with as much wonder as joy, found that she too was regarded as
something better than a slave and brute, that she too was held as being
worthy of education and the influences of refinement. Even yet, this
message has not been borne to the majority of the women of the tribes,
at least in effective manner; but the leaven has been placed in the
lump. At first, the reclamation of the Indian woman from the degradation
into which she had fallen was a disheartening work. By long years of
maltreatment and neglect she had been rendered almost incapable of
understanding that any other lot was possible for her; in many cases,
her racial instincts and inherited education revolted against the new
order of things which was proposed to her. With the apathy in
degradation peculiar to primitive peoples, the Indian woman turned her
face from civilization and would have none of it; she was not of it, and
it was not for her. But a change of plan resulted in at least partial
success. The attempt to teach and refine the elder women--the women who
had years of experience of their racial conditions as a barrier to the
appreciation of a different order of things--was largely abandoned, and
the efforts toward amelioration were put forth for the education of the
younger women. Even so, the effort has not yet met with satisfying
success, but its results bear promise of the future.

Yet, the outlook is not bright; for the conditions which confront the
Indian woman are still not favorable for the material betterment of her
lot. Those who generalize with insufficient grasp of the premises are
fond of saying that the Indian cannot bear civilization, that it is
destructive to his health and morals; but they forget that no race has
ever become suddenly civilized, even under the most favorable auspices.
There is always the past history of that race as a controlling influence
in the result; physical and social traditions must be reckoned with
before the race can fully adapt itself to its new conditions and make
the best of them. Unfortunately, all these traditions among the Amerind
peoples are highly unfavorable to their acceptance of the civilization
peculiar to the environment into which they have been forcibly brought;
and this fact, together with the still persistent injustice of treatment
which is meted out to them, has resulted in the physical deterioration
of their race, until there now looms near the threat of extinction. In
these racial conditions the Indian woman, of course, participates; and
she has the further disadvantage of being compelled, in order to be able
to make her own the best condition that is offered her, to effect a
total change in her social relations with her own people. The Indian
warrior can perhaps be brought to understand that for him better
conditions are possible than those which have been his lot in times
past; but it is well-nigh impracticable for him to grasp the truth that
it is possible for his slave, his chattel, his beast of burden, to be
aught, to herself or to him, than that which she has been almost for
time immemorial. The tradition that woman is an inferior being has
become so deeply merged into all his conceptions of sociology, that he
cannot rid himself of it; and the woman is perforce compelled to accept
this tradition, since she cannot traverse it by any appeal that he could
understand.

Therefore, it would seem that the future of the Indian woman is not
bright. Before she can shake herself free from the trammels of tradition
and even superstition which now hold her down, it is probable that her
race will have become practically extinct. Yet before that catastrophe
it may well be that her lot will have been ameliorated, that she will
have emerged from the degradation which even now is the condition of the
greater part of her race and sex, that she will at least have regained
the status which was hers before the encroachments of a new and more
powerful civilization than that which she knew altered for the worse
every condition of her existence. Even this is the less to be hoped for
in that the Eastern tribes, which were most cultured in nearly all
respects, have now fallen by the wayside in nearly all instances, while
the remnants of the Western nations are less adapted to the reception of
higher conditions, since they have behind them few or no traditions
which make for the best tendencies in this wise. None can safely
prophesy of this matter; but, while hope is always permissible, he would
be a rash oracle who would foretell the establishment of the Amerind
woman upon a plane befitting her sex or even the best traditions of her
race.




CHAPTER II

THE WOMEN OF MEXICO


THE story of the women of Mexico, as that country is known to-day,
presents few distinctive features. If that story were confined to the
status of woman as found in the present inhabitants of the country of
the _conquistadores_, there would be but little to tell, since from the
time of the first coming of the Spaniards to the present day there has
been but little change of consequence in the matter with which we are
directly concerned. But the very mention of the name of the Spanish
conquerors recalls a civilization which preceded that which we now
know--a civilization which in various forms has remained impressed upon
the characteristics of Mexico, and one which is therefore of some
importance as well as of the greatest interest to us in our study of the
progress of women in America. That civilization is, of course, that of
the Aztecs, that wonderful race which held Mexico from time
immemorial--or, more strictly, indeterminate--up to the hour when Cortés
and his followers penetrated to their capital and began the work, to
know completion in a few short years, of destroying not only a nation
but a civilization, and one that was in many ways the most remarkable of
which there is record.

It is in no way needful to enter into the detail of general Aztec
sociology. In this work the principal interest is connected with those
social aspects and influences which affect women; yet a few words
concerning the chief features of the Aztec civilization are absolutely
necessary to the understanding of our subject. The Aztecs--in which
general title, for convenience, are included the Tezcucans, though there
were differences of civilization, the Tezcucans being in many respects
superior to their neighbors--the Aztecs present in nearly every way the
greatest racial mystery that has ever come under the notice of the
student of comparative ethnology. Their very origin is unknown; it is
impossible to discover how much of their civilization they owed to their
traditions, how much may have been of gradual growth, and how much may
have come to them as a legacy from the still more mysterious Toltecs,
later probably known as Mayas, of whom remain wonderful monuments and
traditional narratives preserved by the Aztecs. This people appeared in
the Anahuac Valley in the sixth or seventh century, and founded their
chief town, Tula, about fifty miles north of Mexico City. Their name is
said to signify "builders," and tradition ascribes to them an advanced
knowledge of arts and a remarkable culture. The supremacy of the Toltecs
in the Anahuac Valley lasted till the twelfth century, when they
abandoned Tula and mysteriously disappeared. Among the traditions
preserved, the most conspicuous concerning the Toltec women is that of
Xochitl, queen of one of the later chiefs, or "kings."

Huemac II. began to reign in Mexico about 995, in what is called the
Toltec period. Xochitl, accompanied by her father, a nobleman, went to
the court of Huemac, carrying with her as an offering to the king a
beverage which she had invented. The king tasted the wine, and desired
to have more. Later, Xochitl returned to the court, and Huemac, who
already was fascinated with the girl, caused her to be retained, and
sent a message to her father that he had placed her in the care of his
court ladies and would complete her education. Shortly afterward his
queen died, and Huemac immediately made Xochitl his queen.

The labors of Don Mariano Veytia in his _Historia Antigua_, and the
researches of more modern scholars, furnish us with some fragmentary
history of the Aztecs before the coming of Cortés; but these fragments,
in relation to the status of womanhood in those days, cannot be joined
into a coherent whole, and consideration will therefore be here given to
some aspects of Aztec civilization as found by the conqueror rather than
to the pre-Aztec culture. The most notable general feature of that
civilization is its singular contradictions. We find a race, gentle,
intelligent, refined in some respects beyond European standards of their
day--and yet cannibals, at least under certain conditions! We find these
people moral, with high ideals of religion in theory--and in practice
holding human sacrifices as an essential part of their cult! We find
them warlike and yet mild, the conquerors of the neighboring races, and
yet ruling these more by force of intellect than of arms. Most wonderful
of all, we find a true and high civilization, isolated from all
companionship and existing by its own inherent merits, and not, as has
been the case with almost all others, by contact and rivalry with others
of almost equal powers.

The Aztecs were versed in the arts of agriculture, mechanics,
architecture, pottery, and, generally, in the domestic arts. They built
beautiful cities, containing noble edifices, both private and public.
Their dress was artistic and graceful, and their tastes were worthy of
the highest civilization then known. They delighted in flowers, in
beautiful gardens, in all manner of natural graces. They lived under the
rule of an emperor, and there were many great nobles, of a distinct
class and holding large estates.

There was a regular law of descent for these estates, and the principles
of entail and of reversion to the crown were understood and practised.
There seems to have been a species of feudality as the foundation of the
social order, but our knowledge in this respect is too vague to justify
us in reasoning from it to any great length. There were courts of
justice, with jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, and there was
the legal machinery of higher and lower courts, with the privilege of
appeal. The rights of property and persons were fully, if not acutely,
recognized. There was a regularly established priesthood, of which the
emperor was the official head. There were admirably organized and
conducted schools, where morality as well as education was inculcated.
In short, there were all the requisites, though not always in modern
form, that we are accustomed to consider as the rightful and unique
portion of the highest Caucasian culture.

And yet, this cultured and refined people practised cannibalism! Not
only did they eat the bodies of captives taken in war and immolated upon
their altars in the execution of their religious rites, but, according
to Sahagun in his _Historia de Nueva Espana_, they often, at private
feasts, sacrificed a slave and served his flesh to the assembled guests.
These dishes were dressed in most elaborate ways, for the Aztecs were
excellent cooks. This, however, only adds, in its refinement of
bestiality, to the revolting aspect of the custom.

It is now time to turn from this very imperfect summary of the
civilization of the Aztecs to the place therein occupied by woman. This
place was very high higher than that gained by the sex in any other race
found on the North American continent. It may be stated as a general
fact that woman held equal social position with man. Physically they
were attractive, their complexions being light and their hair long and
black. They dressed tastefully, their heads being covered by a gauzy
veil or wreathed with flowers or even with strings of precious stones
and pearls. They wore flowing robes, handsomely trimmed with embroidery,
and their appearance was in all ways far superior to that of any other
American women.

Their status, while in some respects sharing in the contradictions that
we find prevalent among the Aztecs, was, on the whole, almost equal to
that of their European sisters of that day. It is true that
polygamy--that institution usually so fatal to the place of woman in the
community where it is practised--was permissible among the Mexicans; but
it is probable that its practice was confined only to the most wealthy
and was not invariable among them. On the other hand, the sanctity of
the marriage tie, that great safeguard for women, was strongly insisted
upon. Not only was the marriage rite formally celebrated as a religious
ceremony, but there was instituted a special legal tribunal for the sole
purpose of hearing and deciding questions relating to marriage. Divorce
existed, but only by a decree of the tribunal mentioned above, and was
not a matter of discretion; due reason must be alleged and proved,
infidelity being, of course, the primary cause for divorce. Adultery was
severely punished; and it is a remarkable fact, as showing the advance
made by this people upon the conceptions of the ancient civilizations,
that concubinage was exceptional, though slavery was an institution of
the country. Even the slave woman, however, held a position advanced
beyond that usual in such cases, for her child was born free; there was
no such thing as hereditary slavery among the Aztecs. No other
civilization, ancient or modern, has been thus generous.

The practical equality of woman to man was recognized in the fact, among
others, that women had a distinct and honorable part in the sacerdotal
functions and rites, though they could not participate in sacrifice. The
priestesses undertook the education of the girls, the schools being a
part of the temples. Here the girls were taught the feminine
accomplishments peculiar to their culture as well as those of more
general use, such as weaving and embroidering the rich draperies used to
cover the altars of their gods. The strictest morality was inculcated in
these schools; for the Aztecs were essentially a moral people, and the
girls were brought up in habits of the straitest decorum. This they were
not likely to exceed, at least while under the tutelage of the
priestesses, for offences were visited with the greatest severity, even
death being occasionally meted out as punishment for the most marked
transgressions. The system of these schools was to some extent
conventual, and reverence for religion was instilled as an integral
portion of the system.

The education that was received by women among the early Mexicans may be
illustrated by a reference to the story of _The Lady of Tula_. Among the
Tezcucans, at least at one time, concubinage was recognized as a
legitimate appanage of royalty, and the Lady of Tula was one of the
concubines of Nezahualpilli, son of the great monarch Nezahualcoyotl and
his successor as ruler of the Tezcucan nation. The son of this latter
king entered into a correspondence with the Lady of Tula, and, as the
offence was capital, the youth was slain by royal command; but we are
not concerned so much with the sadness of his fate or with the Roman
severity of his father as with the characteristics of the woman who
tempted him from his allegiance to his royal sire. It is told of her
that, though of humble birth, she possessed most remarkable endowments
of mind, that she wrote beautiful verse, and that she was often
consulted upon grave matters by the king and his ministers. She was
given a separate establishment, and maintained almost regal state. The
information that we have of this woman discloses a very high feminine
status among the Tezcucans; and as the chronicler of her powers
expresses little or no surprise concerning them, we may assume that such
education and standing as she enjoyed were not uncommon among Mexican
women, even if not in so high a degree as in the case of the Lady of
Tula.

To return to the women of the true Aztecs. When the young girl had
emerged from the conventual school she took her place in society as one
of its rightful factors. She participated on equal terms with the men in
all social functions, eating with them at the banquet and taking part in
all the festivities which were so congenial to the somewhat superficial
nature of that people. It is true that at the banquets she sat apart
from the men, as did also the married women; but this was simply a
custom, not a result of inferior status. These banquets were carried on
in a style not inferior to the feasts of the old Romans; the tables were
covered with flowers, and bowls of water and cotton napkins were
furnished to each guest, that they might perform before eating the
ablutions which were as formal with the Aztecs as with the Mussulmans.
There were golden chafing dishes and cups and platters, as well as table
ornaments of the precious metal, which was very common among the
Mexicans. The feasts of the wealthy, if we may credit the accounts of
early writers, were sumptuously provided with delicacies, such as
venison, peccaries, rabbits, "tuzas,"--a species of mole,--fish of many
names, turtles, iguanas, turkeys, quails, and numerous other kinds of
birds. Vegetables and fruits of several varieties completed the dishes.
The variety and quality of food here indicated suggest an epicurean
supply rather than the frugal dietary to which the Aztecs are reputed to
have been accustomed. Before eating it was _de rigueur_ to smoke, the
tobacco being in the form of cigars or used in pipes, the former being
held in dainty holders of tortoise shell or silver; but we are not
informed whether or not the women participated in this part of the
feast. We do, however, know that after the banquet was concluded the
elder women as well as the men drank pulque, the national beverage,
often to a state of intoxication; but the young of both sexes were
rigorously excluded from this portion of the entertainment. The youths
and maidens danced while their elders drank--a custom which has not
wholly ceased in our own civilization; and we can find in the whole
proceeding on these festal occasions more likeness to modern
entertainments than is found even by the old Spanish writer who tells us
that, after the distribution of gifts with which the entertainment came
to a close, the guests dispersed, "some commending the feast, and others
condemning the bad taste or extravagance of their host, in the same
manner as with us."

While the home discipline of children, like that in the public schools,
was of a very severe type, the relations of the Aztec maiden to her
parents, after she had arrived at maturity, were of the closest and
tenderest description. They enjoined upon her, with loving solicitude
for her well-being and felicity, simplicity of manners and conversation,
personal neatness, modesty of demeanor, and reverence for her husband
when she became a wife. They showed her an affection and consideration
which were in conformity with the highest type of social culture, and in
return were regarded and treated with respect and love.

When the maiden finally attained the dignity of wifehood, her condition
was hardly changed. She received from her husband the utmost respect of
demeanor, and she was--of course we are considering the women of the
upper classes--freed from all obligation of service. She had maidens to
wait upon her and to do the tasks of the household, over which she ruled
much as did a feudal chatelaine in the days of chivalry in Europe; and a
favorite amusement with the Aztec wives consisted in listening to their
maidens rehearse traditionary tales and ballads. When there came to her
the further dignity of motherhood, she was the recipient of
congratulatory visits from her friends and neighbors--male as well as
female--from whom she received gifts of dresses, ornaments, or flowers,
in token of sympathy and regard. These visits of ceremony were regulated
by a code, unwritten but as thoroughly understood and binding as that
which regulates similar forms in our own social world. In short, the
Aztec woman, whether as maiden, wife, or mother, received universal
acknowledgment of her rightful place in the structure of society and was
in almost all respects the peer of her Caucasian sister in status and
indeed in civilization. Most of what has thus far been written is
applicable to the women of the lower classes as well as to their richer
and more cultured countrywomen, at least so far as concerns the
estimation in which they were held and their place in the household and
in their appropriate society. Of course, even as with us, the women of
the lower classes labored; but their labors were as a rule not severe.
The Aztecs were primarily an agricultural people, and their women
assisted in the toil necessary to the tillage of the soil, but their
labors were of the lighter kinds; they sowed the seed and husked the
corn, but they did not reap or garner, while they would doubtless have
rebelled in mass had they been required to undertake the more laborious
tasks incident to irrigation or actual tillage. Even the slave women,
though these of course were doomed to harder service than the wives and
daughters of freemen, were not generally condemned to wearing toil.
Indeed, the institution of slavery, except in the cases of prisoners
taken in war,--a small class of slaves, since such prisoners were
usually sacrificed to the gods,--was milder among the Aztecs than among
any people of whom there is historical record; the slave could marry at
will, could hold property, and could even possess slaves of his own,
while, as has been already said, the child of a slave was independent of
the status of his parent.

It is unfortunately true that there can be found but few names of women
of importance in the history of the Aztecs or indeed of the Conquest
itself; nearly all that is to be learned is general and not particular
in its import. Though the blood of many of the women of that period,
intermingled with that of the Spanish cavaliers, flows in the veins of a
very large number of the Mexicans of to-day, there is yet no trustworthy
record of particular names or fames. It is indeed recorded that
Alvarado, one of the right-hand men of Cortés, married the daughter of
Xicotencatl, a Mexican chief; but she was a Tlascalan, not an Aztec. So,
as space would fail in the compass of a large volume to tell of all the
civilizations which surrounded that of the Aztecs, and also as Doña
Luisa, as she was called by the Spaniards after her baptism into the
Christian faith, did nothing more meritorious than to bear to
Tonitiuh--"the Sun"--as Alvarado was called by the Mexicans, because of
his bright face and golden hair, a number of children who became by
intermarriage the sires and mothers of some of the noblest families of
Castile, she does not deserve particular chronicle here. It may,
however, be well to take advantage of the introduction of this incident
to make the statement that marriage between the followers of Cortés and
his successors and the native maidens--who must first, as an unalterable
rule, embrace the tenets of Christianity, which had borne its earliest
message to them in the flame and steel of the massacre of their parents
and kinsmen--was adopted as a matter of policy and resulted in the
foundation of many lines which have continued to the present day.

Though there is no typical Aztec woman to present as representative of
her sex and country, there is one whose name is so welded with the
history of the fall of the Aztec power that a brief sketch of her story
may be given here. She was of Mexican birth, but had been sold by her
unprincipled mother as a slave, the mother thereby securing for her son
by a second marriage the estate which would otherwise have fallen to the
girl. When Cortés reached his first harbor on his road to Tenochtitlan,
as the Aztec capital was called, the cacique of Tabasco presented him
with several slaves, among whom was this girl, called by the Spaniards
Doña Marina, and by the Mexicans Malinche. She was of great beauty and
of a high degree of intelligence, and she soon came within the notice of
Cortés by acting as interpreter for him when he was embarrassed by his
inability to communicate with the Aztec embassy. She did not at that
time speak Spanish, but she managed to interpret through an
intermediary, and she soon became proficient in the language of the men
with whom her lot was now thrown, from one of whom she learned more than
the Castilian tongue.

The beauty of the young girl, whose charms are said by Spanish writers
to have been extraordinary, soon captivated the heart of Cortés, and he
first made her his secretary and then his mistress. At least so the
fashion of our time would term her, but there can be little doubt that
in the eyes of Marina, reared amid traditions of polygamy, there was
nothing of wrong in her union with Cortés, and it may be noted that such
a good and moral man as Father Olmedo had for her no word of reproof but
rather of blessing. At all events, she openly lived with Cortés as his
wife and by him had a son, Don Martin Cortés, acknowledged by his
father, and who afterward became comendador of the Military Order of
Saint lago.

Marina was a loving, faithful, tenderhearted woman, and she was in all
ways true to her Spanish lover and to his countrymen, frequently
extricating them from grave difficulties by her advice, given with
knowledge of the natures as well as customs of the Mexicans. Perhaps
this was only to be expected; but it is remarkable, and speaks volumes
for her character, that she was always held in affectionate honor by the
Mexicans themselves, though she dwelt in the camp of their oppressors.
In truth, Marina time and again used her influence with Cortés on the
side of mercy, and she always displayed a profound sympathy with the
misfortunes of the Mexicans, notwithstanding the fact that she may have
in some ways aided their foes and tyrants. Even though the act which
more than aught else struck terror into the souls of the Indians--the
cutting off of the hands of fifty Tlascalans, who had come to the camp
of Cortés in the garb of ambassadors but were suspected of being
spies--was directly traceable to the watchfulness of Marina in the cause
of the man she loved, she was never held culpable by the natives for her
guardianship, though this resulted so disastrously to those who, if not
precisely her countrymen, were assuredly more nearly of consanguineous
race than were those whom she defended from them. It was these people
too, who, after their desperate but vain struggle with the Spaniards,
whose arms and valor proved invincible against overwhelming numbers,
were the most faithful allies of Cortés in his battles with the Aztecs.
Muñoz Camargo relates that, among other tokens of their friendship, they
presented numbers of "beautiful maidens" to the Conqueror and his
companions.

All through the wonderful march to the capital, through the honorable
reception accorded to Cortés, through the siege which was the
consequence of Spanish treachery, through the "Terrible Night," which
saw the banishment of Spanish power for a time from Tenochtitlan,
through the long march back to the coast, through all perils, as through
all triumphs, Marina stood by the side of her lover, watchful of his
welfare, wise in suggestion, tender in helpfulness, in all things a
noble type of woman. When the unhappy Montezuma was made prisoner within
his own capital, Marina alone of those who surrounded him never forgot
the reverence that was due to the monarch, and it was she who nursed him
most tenderly when he lay dying under the wounds inflicted by his own
outraged subjects. It was she who most uncomplainingly bore the
privations of the siege, she who most bravely met the terrors of the
"Noche Triste;" and it may be said that it was she more than any other
single man or woman, Alvarado and Sandoval not excepted, who helped
Cortés to establish the Spanish rule in Mexico.

The question of the gratitude of Cortés for these services and for her
love is one that is to be settled by each reader of history according to
his own ideas of the form which true appreciation should take. The facts
are simple enough. In 1525 she was with the Conqueror at Coatzacualco,
the province which could claim the honor of being her birthplace. Here,
by accident, she came into contact with her own mother, who had sold her
into slavery and who was now naturally terrified at meeting her injured
daughter in a situation of power; but Marina, with her natural
generosity, embraced her parent, assured her of her forgiveness, and
even made her many presents, apparently in the wish to regain that
affection which had once been hers in her babyhood. This was the last
time that Marina appears by the side of Cortés; on the expedition to
Honduras, made shortly afterward, he gave her away to Don Juan
Xamarillo, a knight of Castile, who wedded her according to the rites of
the Catholic Church. Here then is the question which each must decide
for himself: Was Cortés just and generous in thus making disposition for
the honorable and safe future of the woman who loved him, or was he
merely ridding himself of one who had grown to be an encumbrance? It is
impossible to answer; it is not even known whether the marriage was
arranged with the sanction of Marina or whether it was a piece of
tyranny on the part of the Conqueror, of venality on the part of Don
Juan, of heartbroken docility on the part of Marina. Nor is there any
record of the further life of the latter by which to decide the
probabilities of her marriage being more than a mere contract; from the
time of the completion of the ceremony the gentle Marina fades from the
page of history. It is certain indeed that she was given estates in
Coatzacualco,--possibly the bribe which induced Don Juan to wed the
mistress of his captain,--but it is not even known that she lived to
take possession of those estates. Except for the unmerited persecution
and shameful torture undergone by her son, Don Martin Cortés, we are
never again reminded in history that Marina had lived to be the right
hand of one of the greatest conquerors of all time, to prove the most
valuable ally found by the fierce enemies of her native land, and yet to
be held in lasting honor alike by conquerors and conquered.

[Illustration 3: THE BEAUTIFUL MAIDENS PRESENTED TO THE SPANIARDS.
_Reproduced from the "Lienzo de Tlaxcala".
Muñoz Camargo relates hot their Tlaxcalan allies presented the Spaniards
a large number of "beautiful maidens." This native representation of the
scene shows Cortés seated, with his followers behind him, and at his
side Marina, a young native woman who was his companion and interpreter.
The_ Lienzo de Tlaxcala _was a long strip of canvas, containing
forty-eight representations of scenes of the early Spanish invasions.
The original was destroyed during the revolution following the downfall
of Maximilian, but a copy had fortunately been made before the
destruction._]

Shortly before the marriage of Doña Marina, Cortés's legal wife a woman
of low birth and a drag upon him in his upward career had come over from
the Islands to New Spain, but she did not live long after her arrival,
and her death furnished the later detractors of Cortés with a pretext to
attack him in the way that could most deeply and yet safely pierce his
defence. This was absurd enough, since Cortés had always treated his
wife with affection and consideration; but suspicion was never entirely
allayed. The facts of having thus influenced in some degree the fortunes
of the Conqueror and of having been one of the first ladies of Spain to
die on the shores of New Spain form the only title to mention in this
history of Doña Catalina Xuarez.

There are indeed but few names of women associated with the conquest of
Mexico, that of Marina standing out preeminent. Yet there were women not
a few who exercised a certain influence on the fortunes of the Conqueror
and his army, though their names are generally unknown to us. In the
second march upon the Mexican capital many of the soldiers had brought
their wives with them, and during the stress and storm of the days when
Guatemozin was hurling his forces again and again upon the fearfully
outnumbered but better armed Spaniards, these women did service in true
Amazon style. Not only did they cheer and encourage the downhearted and
prick the cowards--though there were very few of the latter in that
little army--with the needle of their scorn, but they actually did
soldier service as well. When Cortés had besought these women to remain
at Tlascala, they had replied that "It was the duty of Castilian wives
not to abandon their husbands in danger, but to share it with them, and,
if necessary, to die with them." Though some of the names of these
heroines have been embalmed in history by Herrera, they have but little
meaning for us now; it is more to the point to know that one and all
acted to the utmost of their conception of duty and that some of them
mounted guard on the walls in the place of their husbands, while one was
said actually to have donned mail at a time of disaster and rallied the
retreating troops against the enemy. It cannot be said, however, that
even these gallant dames showed a higher spirit than did the native
women during the same time of battle. The Aztecs were suffering from
many evils during the conflict when the Spaniards strove, for long in
vain, to take from them their beautiful city. The plague of small-pox
was abroad, brought to the Aztecs by a dying negro in the train of
Cortés; and that unknown negro proved the most terrible foe of the Aztec
nation. Yet, even though they were now dying by hundreds in the streets,
while their thinning ranks were being swept by the fire-speaking tubes
that weaponed the army of their foes, they fought fiercely on, and their
women gave them noble aid and incitement. They stood by the side of the
warrior in battle, strung his bow, filled his quiver, gave him fresh
stones for his sling; they nursed the sick through all the horrors of
the loathsome disease which had fastened upon them; and they did yet
more, for they kept their hearts high with hope and determination when
even the noblest warriors failed of these things, and so they upheld the
hands of Guatemozin, their beloved but most unhappy chief, and upbore
the standard of their country to the very end. It was all in vain; the
Mexico of that civilization was doomed; but none the less did the women
of that day, both pagan and Christian, display qualities which in the
fusion of the races in after years should have borne noble fruit.

It is not the purpose of this work to trace the history of any country,
save at the points where such history touches the universal story of
woman; and so there exists no obligation to present to the reader even
the most fragmentary sketch of the progress of Mexico from the rule of
the barbarism of the Aztecs to that of the civilization of the
Spaniards. The latter brought with them their own feminine culture, and
for long held it apart from the conditions existing among the indigenous
inhabitants of the land. Among the women of Spain who took up their
abode in Mexico there are names which lend themselves to story; but
their histories touched Mexico only as a scenic background, and,
moreover, it would be an unfruitful digression to attempt to find any
feminine history in the days of Spain's first occupation of Anahuac. The
vice-roys held their courts with little less than regal splendor, and it
cannot be that those courts were unadorned by the presence of women of
high claim to remembrance; yet there comes down to us no name of those
days touched with the halo of romance or in any way made worthy of
memoir. Doubtless the ladies of the viceregal courts flaunted as costly
attire and held themselves as haughtily as their sisters in the court of
Spain itself; but they passed away and left no trace, even as an
influence. For years of varying fortunes but of constant prosperity in
high places, Spain held Mexico under dominance, until the oppression of
the lower classes began to bear its invariable fruit, and there came
first threats, and then acts of rebellion. There was revolution after
revolution; but although the unsuccessful revolts bequeathed to history
the names of such men as Hidalgo and Morelos, and the successful attempt
to throw off the galling yoke of Spain, the names of Yturbide and Santa
Anna, there comes down to us even from these later times the name of not
one woman of renown. Moreover, there is but little in the way of
development and change which is found for record. Long before the
expulsion of the Spaniard, the Mexican people had come to be recognized
as a nation, not merely descendants of the Spaniards, but a people of
self-gained characteristics. Mexico was no longer New Spain; she was
herself, even as, a few years before, a greater country on her borders
had come to be itself in the matter of nationality, even before it had
gained autonomy. To be a Mexican woman was not merely to be a lesser
Spaniard, but to be something definite, something individual. Some of
the older national traits had become developed, some atrophied; but long
before Mexico had achieved her independence, the Mexican woman had
attained her own freedom from Spanish dominance in matters of custom,
thought, and even heredity.

Yet it cannot be said that there was progress. There was fixed
development of nationality as displayed in the establishment of a
characteristic femininity, but there was no evolution toward a higher
type of individual or of civilization than had been known in the days of
the coming of the Spaniards. On the contrary, there may be said to have
been retrogression. The woman of Mexico--by which name we must now
distinguish the descendants of the Spaniards, while those of Aztec
blood, or descendants from any of the native tribes, may be called
generically Indians--retained as a rule neither the activity and courage
of the wives of the _conquistadores_ nor the graces and dignity of the
dames of the viceregal courts. After the establishment of Mexican
independence there came as first ambassador from Spain, in 1839, Señor
Don Calderon de la Barca; and this gentleman brought with him his very
accomplished wife. Madame Calderon, as is the case with most women, was
an indefatigable letter-writer, especially when she was amid new
conditions; and to a number of her letters, written with no intent of
publication, but most vivid and entertaining in their presentation of
the chief characteristics of Mexican social life, is owing much of the
present-day knowledge of Mexican existence in the early part of the
nineteenth century, when that existence had begun to be acknowledged as
national and individual. There is no period better adapted than this to
the purpose of finding and fixing a typical Mexican woman, for it was
the time when the women of Anahuac had emerged from the imitation of
Spanish characteristics and customs into a national female existence as
well as type, and it was before their briefly held individuality failed
beneath the incursions of a northern civilization which has been so
universally destructive of national type wherever it has set foot.

Consideration of the characteristics of the Mexican woman of the forties
may be begun with an extract from the letters of Madame Calderon. She is
speaking of society women in Mexico, and she says: "I must put aside
exceptions which are always rising up before me, and write en masse.
Generally speaking, the Mexican señoras and señoritas write, read, and
play a little; sew, and take care of their houses and children. When I
say they read, I mean they know how to read; when I say they write, I do
not mean that they can always spell; and when I say they play, I do not
assert that they have a general knowledge of music. The climate inclines
everyone to indolence, both physical and moral. One cannot pore over a
book when the blue sky is constantly smiling in at the open windows."
This language reads as the words of one who is reluctantly compelled to
tell the whole truth and then seeks to withdraw or at least palliate the
accusation which she has brought. It is entirely plain that at the time
of Madame Calderon ignorance and sloth were the prevailing feminine
characteristics among those who sat in high places. It is true that the
chronicler goes on to say that the Mexican women generally made good
wives and affectionate mothers; but even in this matter she does not
strike us as speaking from conviction. However this may be, she is
certainly at no loss to characterize the taste in dress displayed by the
"fine ladies" upon festal occasions. Describing one of these, she
writes: "Here was to be seen a group of ladies, some with black gowns
and mantillas, others, now that their church-going duty was over,
equipped in velvet or satin, with their hair dressed--and beautiful
hair they have; some leading their children by the hand, dressed--alas,
how were they dressed! Long, velvet gowns trimmed with blonde, diamond
earrings, high French caps furbelowed with lace and flowers, or turbans
with plumes of feathers. Now and then, the head of a little thing that
could hardly waddle alone might have belonged to an English
dowager-duchess in her opera-box. Some had extraordinary bonnets, and as
they toddled along, top-heavy, one would have thought they were little
old women, without a glimpse caught of their lovely little brown faces
and blue eyes."

Though again Madame Calderon very kindly bestows her criticism upon the
dresses of the children rather than those of the mothers, even a mere
man can guess what must have been the appearance of the mothers who had
chosen thus to dress their offspring.

It is not, however, among the higher classes of city-dwellers that one
should seek for the most characteristic aspects of the life of a nation.
These city-dwellers, and especially the female moiety of them, are apt
to be mere imitators of other cultures, shaping their lives, as their
costumes, in obedience to the dictates of some other land, higher in the
scale of fashion. It is to the country, the _terris_ as distinguished
from the _urbis_, that one must go to obtain the truth of female life in
Mexico or any other land; for, though fashion may hold sway here also,
it is less apt to overcome national taste and custom.

Female life on the great estates of Mexico, the _haciendas_, in the
first days of the republic was in a measure characteristic and
individual--more so, at least, than at any time since the days of the
first coming of the Spaniards. To some extent there was a continuance of
the customs of the race which had dwelt in Anahuac before the coming of
the invaders, the customs being modified by the conditions and needs of
the new time. Among the upper classes, there was no costume peculiar to
the country, save that nearly all wore the graceful veil in lieu of the
hideous European headdress of the period. There was, however, then as
now, a decided love for garishness of color among the Mexican women, and
there was but little display of taste in the direction of costume.

The mistress of a large hacienda was somewhat in the position of one of
the European "ladies of the castle" in feudal days; but as a
rule--though, of course, the stated rules had many exceptions--she did
not occupy herself in the same manner as did the feudal chatelaine. She
was apt to be ignorant and lazy; she passed the greater part of the day
in idling upon the _azotea_, as was called the roof-garden which crowned
most of the long and low houses of the Mexican country estates, perhaps
rolling and smoking her cigarettes,--for the Mexican ladies were
inveterate smokers,--or perhaps writing a _papelcito_ to be sent to her
lover in appointment of a tryst. This latter if she were young and
handsome; if she were old--and no daughter of Anahuac passed the Rubicon
of forty and retained her beauty in even the most modified form--she
might reflect on her sins, which probably gave her some little
uneasiness, or she might rehearse them into the ears of her confessor,
or she might do aught that called for no exertion, of mind or body. Of
the latter she would never be guilty, and the former she abhorred to an
almost equal extent. There were, however, marked exceptions to the rule
of inactivity of body in the persons of certain señoritas who could ride
like Comanches and throw a _lazo_ almost as well as their lovers and
brothers, and who delighted in the display of these, their chief and
perhaps only accomplishments. These ladies, however, were in the
minority; the rule of Mexican female life was passivity, not to say
sloth.

As in the case of their predecessors, so with the women of modern
Mexico, consideration has been accorded chiefly to those of the upper
class. There was, however, until recently a very large and significant
class in Mexico called _peons_, who might be said roughly to answer to
the servitors of European feudal times. This class was composed chiefly
or entirely of those of native Indian blood, the descendants of the
races enslaved by the Spaniards and set free so late in the history of
Mexico as even now hardly to have lost in all respects the
characteristics of slavery. These peons form the servitor class on the
great haciendas, and are almost retainers of the wealthy proprietors.
Their women are of widely different type from the señoras who form the
bulk of the upper classes; and the same difference which exists to-day
was even more determined in the days of the youth of the Mexican
republic. So constant, indeed, have been the individualities of this
people that it matters little whether we look at them in the past or in
the present; as is generally the case with classes which represent the
lower strata of the population and are from their very unimportance in
the social scale less affected by outer influences and therefore more
steadfast to national type, the peon class has altered but little in its
peculiar customs and characteristics, these being modified only as is
rendered necessary to meet the changes in material conditions which have
from time to time occurred. In this peon class are encountered many
recurrent and persistent customs of the Aztec civilization; but as these
instances do not strongly affect the life of the women they may be
passed over. That which it is needful to note, however, is the fact that
always in the history of feminine Mexico it is these women, of truly
native stock, who have formed the characteristically native class. It is
they who have had and held a settled and constant tradition and custom;
it is they who have conserved an individuality which has come down to
them from mingled cultures--from that of the Aztecs, with their
paradoxical civilization and nature, and that of the Spanish intruders,
with their Latin characteristics modified by new environment. The
mingling of these cultures produced the true Mexican individuality.

Yet, though individuality was at the time of the foundation of the
republic to be found most decisive in the peon class, it may be broadly
said that at that period the Mexican woman was generally characteristic
and individual. She reproduced and accentuated many Spanish traits; she
was gay beneath a mask of propriety, immoral--the rule of generalities
must be remembered--under the cloak of a profound piety, vengeful and
jealous under the garb of a real love, and in all ways was the emphasis
of the Spanish woman of her time. She was more than that, however; she
had her national and even racial traditions and characteristics which
parted from the Castilian culture at certain points and turned to the
old fount of the Aztec racial influence. She was more profoundly
superstitious than her Spanish sister, and she was more concerned with
outer guise in all matters of morality or religion. She would not for
the world miss her accustomed attendance at mass, but she did not fail
to recognize the opportunities offered by the ceremonial, with its
genuflections and its periods of rest, for the transmittal of notes of
amorous inspiration, and many was the _billet d'amour_ which was slipped
by a tiny hand into a broader palm as the respective owners thereof
bowed in apparently deep reverence at the elevation of the Host. Among
the higher classes, the Mexican señora and señorita were far less
educated and cultivated than their Spanish kindred; yet among the lower
classes--not the peons, but the shopkeeper class in the cities, the
small landholders in the country--education of a kind was further
advanced in Mexico than in Spain. Most interesting in certain ways,
though least individual of all, was this middle class, wearing as their
festal costume, "white embroidered gowns, with white satin shoes and
neat feet and ankles, _rebozos_, or bright shawls, thrown over their
heads;" while the peasants on the same occasions were dressed in "short
petticoats of two colors, generally scarlet and yellow, with thin satin
shoes and lace-trimmed chemises." Stockings, it may be noticed, are not
referred to in either case; sixty years ago they were not considered at
all _de rigueur_ in the costume of a Mexican woman of any but the very
highest class and, if we are to believe all travellers, not even
invariably among the señoritas themselves.

The Mexican woman of the dawn of the republic was a type--indefinite,
even elusive, amid the crowd of southern Latin nationalities, yet
possessing some distinctive traits of manner, custom, and nature, and by
these to be distinguished from her Italian, Spanish, or even South
American kinswomen. But the individuality which she possessed, never
strongly marked, soon began to fade before the incursion of a northern
culture, with its novel ideals, standards, and requisites. When the
United States was at war with Mexico, the type of the latter culture was
at its most distinctive stage; and, though there were not a few of the
women who were enamored of the methods of the northern invaders and
became _Ayankeados_, as sympathizers with the foe were contemptuously
termed, yet, as a rule, the women of Mexico proved true daughters of
Anahuac in their hatred of the enemy of their native land. But these
passions passed away with the coming of peace; and the Maximilian
episode served to bring Mexico into somewhat closer relation with the
civilization of her northern border neighbor. Still the national
culture, if so it can be called, remained practically unaffected for
years after the founding of the republic; for the purely Spanish
families had been banished in large numbers, and the Maximilian rule was
too brief to effect a new Latin invasion.

But there was an invasion lowering upon the horizon of Mexico, though
foreseen perhaps by few, which was destined to prove most effectual in
influencing the future of the Mexican woman--the invasion of the
Anglo-American in peaceful guise, armed with scrip and not with stave,
and bearing the axe and spade in his hands. The wealth of Mexico began
to attract the attention of the citizens of her northern neighbor, and
they kindly hastened to relieve her of as much as she found at all
burdensome and they themselves decided the discomfort of that burden.
The typical American, the American _par excellence_, he of the United
States, invaded Mexico once more, though this time in search of dollars,
not glory; and under his influence, perhaps yet more under that of his
wife and daughters, the feminine civilization of Mexico lost its
individuality in its acceptance of standards which were unfitted to its
conditions and unacceptable to its traditions. The woman of Mexico
forgot her history and her very nature, and became, in the majority of
cases, a mere imitator of Anglo-Saxon and Gallic fashion and custom.
Once she smoked her dainty cigarette with entire nonchalance; now, even
though her English and North American sisters have found a charm in the
nicotian incense that is offered to the god of social converse, your
Mexican woman, having long since been told solemnly that "_Las
Americanas_ do not smoke," has thrown away her little roll of paper and
tobacco, and has become "proper" according to standards with which she
should have nothing in common. She has doffed her _rebozo_--that which
might have been termed the national garment of the Mexican woman--and
has accepted the less graceful and becoming garments of European
fashion. In all outer guise, she is steadfastly setting herself to
become a mere imitation, if not a caricature, of the belles of other
civilizations; but within she is still the child of the South, the
daughter of a race of Indians, dashed indeed with Spanish blood but
preserving many of the Indian characteristics intact; and these do not
agree with normal culture. For it must be remembered that in Mexico
there is to-day, owing to the wholesale expulsion of the Spaniards at
the establishment of independence, hardly a family of unmixed blood; and
those who do claim uncontaminated descent from the Spanish _hidalgos_
are looked upon with utmost disfavor almost--ostracized, indeed. On the
other hand, the Mexicans have come to look upon Americans of the North
with respect and even affection, and to welcome them to their country
and often to their homes. The result, of course, has been partly to
establish a heterogeneous culture, neither Spanish, Indian, nor
American, and yet a commingling of all three, at least in outward form.
But beneath the veneer of the new culture the Mexican woman preserves
the characteristics which have been hers for centuries and which in
their greater part came down to her from her Indian forebears. She is
still passionate, jealous, vengeful, sudden and violent in all her
impulses, most of which are founded upon that which she calls her love,
but which, as a rule, is but passion. Her traditions do not agree with
her surroundings as she would fain make them; and the question as to
which will finally survive in permanent conquest is one that can be
answered by time alone, that convenient arbitrator to which to refer all
vexed questions of this sort. To that tribunal may be left the questions
for the future which have been suggested to thoughtful readers
concerning the Mexican woman.




CHAPTER III

THE WOMEN OF SOUTH AMERICA


As in our retrospect of the feminine history of Mexico, so in our review
of the past of the women of South America, it is necessary to begin with
a consideration of an extinct civilization,--necessary not only to the
completeness but to the interest of our subject, for the chief claim of
these chapters to the reader's attention rests on the consideration of
those primitive cultures. Were it not for the dead civilizations of the
Aztecs and the Incas, with their surrounding and dependent cultures,
there would be but little to say concerning the women of Mexico or South
America. For in their later aspects these American cultures represent
simply a more or less decadent Spanish and Portuguese civilization,
modified indeed by circumstance and the infusion of alien blood as well
as custom, yet so close in all material respects to the parent stock
that there is but little of variance worthy of note, while even the
variations from the modern types are most frequently the result of the
influence of the dead civilizations which still live in the stock which
was grafted upon them, though only upon their dead trunks.

Even as for long the history of the eastern coast was that of North
America, so at first the story of Peru was all of true history that we
find of the southern division of our continent. Yet closer in likeness
is the story of Peru to that of Mexico; there is the same tale of a
high, and in many respects admirable, civilization overthrown and
practically destroyed by Spanish lust for gold, and yet in some wise
abiding in influence upon the race which had crushed it. There is the
same record of a mild race yielding to the strength of one armed for
conquest; but in the case of the culture of the Incas the contrast
between conquerors and conquered is still more marked to the advantage
of the Peruvians, for they were of even gentler and more refined natures
than the Aztecs, influenced by a higher and purer religion and dwelling
under a system which encouraged and developed the noblest tendencies of
human nature. There were among the Peruvians fewer paradoxes and
contradictions of culture than among the Aztecs; they were not given to
even the refined forms of cannibalism indulged in by their northern
brethren, nor did they include human sacrifice as a part of their cult.
Their religion was a pure and somewhat simple sun-worship; indeed, the
Incas themselves claimed to be children of the sun. In other respects,
there were many points of approach between the civilization of the
Peruvians and that of the Aztecs; they might be roughly called cultures
of the same class, though where there lay advantage it was usually,
especially in matters which were of the ethical rather than the material
cultivation, on the side of the Peruvians.

As might be expected in such a state of culture, woman held among the
Peruvians a high place; one that might, in a further rough estimate, be
regarded as equal to the status of woman among the Aztecs. In this
comparison, however, the advantage is again found on the side of the
Peruvians, woman being, in some respects, in higher estimation among
them than among their northern compeers. Without pushing the
comparison,--indeed, it is less dangerous to speak positively,--let us
glance at the chief features of feminine life among the people of the
Incas. In the first place, we find that even in the religion of the
Peruvians woman held an honored place. The sun was the chief personage
in the theogony of the Peruvians; but he had his satellites, and among
them the most important was the moon, his sister and wife. In this union
of a god to his sister we are reminded of the Egyptian cult, wherein
Osiris was married to Isis, and it is somewhat curious that in both
nations, Egyptian and Peruvian, wherein there obtained this feature of
incest elevated to sacred places, there was also the introduction of the
same offence against nature in the royal house; for both Peruvian Inca
and Egyptian Pharaoh were given to marrying their sisters, that the
royal race might be preserved uncontaminated by any alien strain.

The religion thus acknowledged the status of woman by giving her a place
among its deities; nor did it stop at this point, though, as is so
frequently to be found in primitive cults, it mingled the sacred and the
profane in a manner rather confusing to our more complex modern thought.
The institution of the "Virgins of the Sun" was in some ways a most
singular reproduction of the Roman Vestal and the Catholic nun, and in
others the exact opposite of the intentions of these European types. The
Virgins of the Sun were young maidens who from their infancy had been
dedicated to the service of their deity, and who, when very young, were
placed in convents. Here they were instructed by elderly matrons called
_mamaconas_, who taught them religious theory and duty as well as the
material arts of spinning, embroidery, and other occupations suited to
their sex and situation. These maidens were usually selected from those
of royal blood or from the daughters of the greater nobles, though a
girl of great beauty would sometimes be raised from the ranks of the
commonalty to the high dignity of a Virgin of the Sun. Their life was
strictly conventual; no one but the Inca himself, or his queen, could
enter the consecrated precincts without having duties to call them
thither. Chastity was most strongly inculcated, and it is said that no
lapse was ever known on the part of an inmate of these convents. This is
not so surprising when the provisions of the law of the Incas on this
subject are recalled. The offending virgin was to be buried alive, her
lover was to be strangled, and the town or village in which he resided
was to be utterly destroyed and "sown with stones," that it might be
effectually forgotten. It would take an enterprising and desperate lover
indeed to dare such results, even could he have overcome the
difficulties of access and the reluctance of his mistress.

Yet, with all this strict regard for chastity on the part of the
consecrated virgins, it was only while the latter were inhabitants of
the cloister that they were so rigorously bound. Indeed, their destiny
was to be brides of the Inca; and thus the whole system was but a sort
of sacred concubinage, and it may be suspected that in the eyes of the
framers of the severe law above cited it was less the offence against
purity than that against the Inca that called for such heavy penalties.
When the Virgins of the Sun attained a fitting age, they were, if
sufficiently beautiful, sent to the seraglio of the Inca. The number of
these royal concubines at times amounted to thousands, and it is not
improbable that to the majority of them a visit from the monarch was
unknown. They lived in sumptuous seclusion at the various royal palaces
scattered throughout the country, guarded and attended by the trusted
officers of the Inca, until the monarch determined, as periodically
happened, to reduce his establishment in this respect, when a large
number of his "brides" were sent away. They did not return to the
conventual institutions from which they had come, but to the home of
their childhood, where they lived in state befitting those who had been
the spouses, even if only theoretically, of the monarch. Nor did these
ladies suffer any loss of good repute for their past; on the contrary,
they were held in reverence as having been admitted into such close
relation with the Child of the Sun. It does not appear whether they were
allowed to contract ordinary marriages after their dismissal from the
royal harem; but it is not probable that this was permitted to those who
might still be termed brides of the Inca, however he might be pleased to
dispense with their society for a time.

Besides the place of woman in the cult of the country, she had high
position in the dynastic as well as domestic polity and customs of the
land. Notwithstanding the number of concubines possessed by the Inca,
there was but one legal queen, the _Coya_, whose eldest son inherited
the crown,--at least so say most authorities, although there are some
dissentients,--and it is stated by the Inca historian that the
succession came down in unbroken line through the whole dynasty. The
Coya was always a sister of the ruling Inca; but as to this custom there
are also diverse statements, some authorities claiming that it was of
comparatively modern innovation, while others assert that it was as
ancient as the dynasty itself, which assertion there seems to be but
little reason to doubt. The Coya received all due reverence from her
people, noble and common; but she had no real authority, however great
may have been her influence. The so-called _Loi Salique_ was in force
among the Peruvians, even though they had never heard of the original
heresy concerning the sceptre and distaff. They acknowledged no female
rule; at the death of the Inca the sceptre passed to his eldest son by
the Coya, provided that the heir-apparent had successfully passed
through an ordeal of great severity, imposed upon him as the test of his
fitness to bear the toil of ruling, while his investiture with that
which answered to knighthood among the Christian cultures was imposing
and wonderfully impressive in its significance.

It is commonly said that polygamy was customary among the Peruvians; but
this statement may be strongly doubted. It is entirely true that the
nobles had large seraglios; but, when the open concubinage that was a
prerequisite, as it were, of royalty is taken into consideration,
together with the fact that polygamy was not known among the common
people, it is far more likely that the real custom was that of open and
legal concubinage rather than true polygamy. The confounding of nearly
related facts in this wise is too common to make us chary of attributing
such confusion; even to this day many well-informed writers are given to
stating that polygamy among the Mussulmans is unrestrained, whereas no
Mussulman can have more than a fixed and small number of wives, all the
other women in his harem being merely legal concubines. Because of this
rashness of statement as well as of the difficulty of ascertaining the
precise facts in regard to Peruvian domestic polity, we may assume that
monogamy was the legal custom, with a recognized concubinage as the
privilege of the nobility as well as of the monarch, since this theory
best consorts with the facts as we know them. Be this as it may, there
is no doubt that among the Peruvians, speaking of them in general and
not as divided into classes and castes, domesticity was on a plane fully
equalling that known to any of the primitive cultures of America or even
of Europe. Marriage was regarded as a sacred relation, and adultery was
considered one of the most heinous of crimes, being punishable with
death. In this and other places, however, it must be borne in mind that
in speaking of the old Peruvian civilization, the word "punishable" is
necessarily used instead of the more positive "punished"; for it does
not seem that all the laws were straitly enforced. It was, for example,
a singular provision of this law that made no distinction between
adultery and fornication, both being equally visitable by death; yet
there was a recognized, if not legalized, system of prostitution in the
cities of the Incas. Such a contradiction of facts casts a very grave
suspicion upon the integrity of the whole of the code in which that
contradiction appears; and it may therefore be supposed that much of the
legislation of the Incas was allowed to remain a dead letter. Still, the
tendency of thought among a people can frequently be discovered by a
study of their statute-book, even if the laws be not implicitly
enforced; and we may judge from the laws of the Incas that the people
over whom they ruled were straitly moral according to their lights,
which is all that can justly be demanded of any people, even the most
civilized.

The other facts pertaining to the status of women in that wonderful
civilization which Pizarro destroyed may be well summed up within the
scope of a paragraph. The women of the Peruvians knew a domestic lot
which was strongly akin to that held by their Aztec contemporaries. They
were reared in affection, though with some severity, and they were early
taught the principles of chastity, modesty, and reverence for parents
and religion, as well as the more material knowledge that enters into
the life of the normal woman of all cultures: housewifery, needlework,
and certain of the arts pertaining to the household. The Peruvian maiden
was well fitted for the responsibilities and dignities of wifehood ere
she was allowed to assume that place of honor; and the occasion of her
marriage was marked by a ceremony so quaint and original that it
deserves special mention. The Peruvian maidens could not choose their
own marriage day; this was appointed by law, and only once did it come
in a year, so that each twelvemonth there was a season of bridal
rejoicing throughout the land. Those who were desirous of being married
assembled on this stated day in the public square of their respective
cities, and their hands were joined by a cacique in face of the people.
This simple ceremony, together with the pronouncement of the contract by
the cacique, constituted a marriage. The gentile system was, in some
sort, in force among the Peruvians, and no one was allowed to contract
marriage with any but a member of his or her gens; but this rule was
capable of broad extension, even to including those residing in the same
province. The ceremony was followed by festivities lasting several days;
and the fact of all weddings being simultaneous turned the whole land
into a festal place. We are not told what was done when some one was so
inconsiderate as to die during this period and thus interfere with the
merriment of his particular kindred; probably the corpse was compelled
to wait until its turn came and grief could legitimately take the place
of joy. However this may be, it is certain that marriage was in all ways
held in high respect by the Peruvians, and divorce was almost or quite
unknown. For the rest, the lot of the Peruvian woman was practically the
same as that held by the woman of the Aztecs and does not call for
amplification.

There is, however, another primitive civilization of South America which
calls for notice, as being in its way as interesting as that of the
Peruvians, and moreover of greater importance to the present, since in
some aspects it still survives. This was the civilization of the
Araucanians, to adopt the general, though not absolutely correct
nomenclature. While the more remarkable civilization of the early
Peruvians has centred general attention upon itself among the primitive
cultures of South America, that of the Araucanians was hardly less
wonderful in certain aspects, though as an absolute culture it was far
below the standard of its more northern compeer. The Araucanians were
simply Indians, but Indians of a very remarkable class. Among the tribes
of North America their nearest peers would probably be found among the
Navajos; but the Araucanians were in many respects far superior to their
brothers of the northern plains. They were, above all, warriors, and for
long they successfully resisted the Spanish invasion. They were a free,
restless, brave, and highly independent people, and far better fitted
for survival than their more highly cultured neighbors, and this they
have proved by resistance to the ill effects of eastern civilization and
a persistence unto this day.

It may be succinctly said that, while the status of the Araucanian woman
was far from being equal to that of her Peruvian or Aztec sister, she
was yet held in higher esteem than was usual among most Indian tribes.
One of the manifestations of the racial instincts of the Araucanians is
to be found in their delight in that which is generally and
contemptuously denoted "finery." The women as well as the men painted
their faces: not after the manner of civilization, but after that of
savagery, the colors used being red and black, and with pigments of
these hues the Araucanian belle decorated her face, using the black
chiefly for emphasis of the eyebrows, eyelashes, and eyelids, much in
the manner in which henna is used by Oriental women. A curious use of
the black paint was the occasional depiction of sable tears rolling down
the cheeks. Silver and beads were much worn,--for silver was almost as
common as stone among the aborigines of Chili,--and bright colors were
profusely used in the dress of the Araucanian lady of social standing.
The most distinctive part of the costume of the Araucanian belle was her
headdress and the manner of wearing the hair, the former being composed
entirely of beads, and coming low upon the forehead, while it passed
over the head and descended quite low on the back; the hair was worn in
two queues, which were wound with bright colored beads, the ends falling
over the face or sticking out in front like horns.

As among most Indian races, polygamy prevailed among the Araucanians. To
the women fell the greater part of the work; indeed, it would not be
overstating the case to assert that the wife did all the labor in the
Araucanian household, even to those offices which the Indian of the
northern continent generally performed for himself. Yet the women of the
Araucanians were not ill treated as a rule. Marriage by capture
prevailed, though there was about it also the elements of marriage by
purchase. The friends of the wooer sought the father of the girl and
requested his consent to the match; but this was rather a matter of form
to even more than the usual extent, since while the father was thus
being flattered the lover was searching for his bride. Invading the
sanctity of her chamber and plucking her forth, by the hair or heels, as
was most convenient,--for the Araucanian was somewhat strenuous in his
wooing,--he threw her upon his horse and galloped off with her _à la_
Lochinvar, leaving his friends to sustain the attacks of the women, who
always rallied fiercely to the defence of the bride. The latter made it
a point of honor, indeed, to scream loudly for help; and, however
doubtful may have been her good faith, the other women considered it a
duty to their sex to accept her protests as implicit and to visit her
rape upon the heads of the allies of the lover, which allies rarely
escaped with unscarred faces. Having covered the retreat of the ardent
swain, the friends then followed him to the sylvan haunts which he
sought for concealment and from which he emerged some two or three days
later with his captive, now a willing bride. No other ceremony was
needful; but, if the parents of the girl were really averse to the match
and rallied in time to prevent the wooer from gaining the shelter of the
woods with his captive, there was no marriage; if, on the other hand,
the thicket was safely gained, the marriage could not be afterward
annulled. After the emergence of the wedded pair from their solitude,
the friends of the husband called upon him to congratulate him and to
offer him gifts, most of which had been pledged beforehand. These
presents were then conveyed in procession to the father of the bride,
who, if he considered that he had been paid full value for his daughter,
took the bridegroom by the hand and declared his delight at the
alliance. The mother, however, was supposed to be so angered with her
son-in-law for the robbery of her child that she would not even speak to
him or so much as look at him; and though she generally relented so far
as to tell her daughter to ask her husband if he were not hungry, and
upon receiving an affirmative answer proceeded to cook a feast for the
assembled company, nevertheless for years after the marriage she would
never speak face to face with her son-in-law, though with her back
turned to him she would converse with him with entire freedom. This
formal resentment on the part of the mother-in-law seems to indicate a
recognized status on the part of the _mater familias_, since it was
theoretically in opposition to the will of the _pater familias_ and
therefore in some sense a declaration of independence.

Divorce was known among the Araucanians, and the discarded wife was sent
back to her father's house with full liberty to marry whom else she
would; but in such case the second husband was compelled to pay to the
first the full price which the woman originally cost him. When a man
died his widow became independent, except where there were surviving
sons by another wife, who in such case could claim their father's widow
as a concubine to be held in common. This singular custom doubtless
arose from the theory of the woman being a chattel of the estate and
reverting by right to the heirs. Adultery was punished on the woman by
death, while if the outraged husband took the guilty paramour in
_flagrante delicto_ he could slay him without incurring any penalty; if,
however, the man escaped, he could not afterward be killed with
impunity, but could be made to pay to the injured husband the original
cost of the wife. It seems highly probable, however, that among the
early Araucanians female virtue was of a high standard, though among
their descendants it is not quite so highly esteemed.

A somewhat curious custom, still in force among the Araucanians, was
that of borrowing children. A sterile woman was an object of reproach,
as has been the case among all primitive peoples, and she was likely to
forfeit the consideration of her husband and to be supplanted by a new
wife who might bear him children. It was to guard against this as far as
possible--as well as for protection, since sterility was cause for
divorce--that the barren Araucanian wife would often borrow from some
complacent and prolific kinswoman one or more of her children, whom the
sterile wife would rear as her own. The exact status of these children
in the household is not clear; they would seem to have been attributed
by courtesy, as it were, to the wife, but not to have stood as heirs to
the husband unless in default of heirs of his body, nor even then except
by express testamentary act, or that which bore the value of such act,
on his part. Yet the fact that the custom existed and still exists is
sufficient to show that it must in some way have assured the position of
the barren wife. The Araucanians, by the way, notwithstanding a
statement to the contrary by Molinos, swathe their children as do most
Indian tribes, and they even tie their infants to a bamboo frame so
tightly that the little unfortunates have no control over any portion of
their bodies save their eyes, and in this state they are hung upon the
walls when it is desirable to get them out of the way an occurrence so
frequent that the infants pass nearly their whole existence hung upon
pegs like unhappy _lares_.

One curious Araucanian custom, surviving to the present time among many
of the tribes, is that of giving to each wife a separate fireplace, at
which she did her own cooking. Of course this was not practicable where
the house was small and the wives were many; but so well was the custom
established, in theory at least, that the polite manner in which to
inquire the number of wives a man had was to ask him, "How many fires do
you burn?" The houses, by the way, were often shaped much like an
inverted boat, and the interior was furnished with a row of cane
partitions which roughly carried out the maritime idea, as they had
somewhat the appearance of staterooms. These were arranged on each side,
and in the middle ran the row of fires around which squatted the ladies
of the household. It must not, however, be imagined that only one
family, as we understand the word, inhabited one house; on the contrary,
each of the married sons had his portion of the paternal rooftree, and
often there were as many as a dozen households under one roof. These
matters varied with the geographical position of the tribe, the Indians
of the north differing from their southern brothers much as the Indians
of the eastern part of North America differed from those of the west;
and the household which has just been described was typical rather of
those of the south than those of the north, though some of the features
were identical in both sections.

One of the most remarkable facts concerning the status of women among
the Araucanians was that there were medicine women as well as medicine
men, and that the former were generally held in higher repute than their
male rivals. While this belief in women as peculiarly adapted to the
pursuit of sorcery has been prevalent among many peoples, those of white
blood as well as those of black, it is rare among Indian races.

The civilization of the Araucanians, both past and present, is among the
most interesting of the social developments of American origin, and is,
perhaps, the one which has survived in truest individuality. Little
record is found of individuals; but two historical facts may be cited
concerning the women of the great Indian race of the south facts
illustrative of the spirit which was inculcated into females as well as
males and born of the indomitable love of liberty which was the
fundamental characteristic of the Araucanians.

When Caupolican, one of the greatest of the Araucanian leaders in their
long struggle against the Spaniards, was at last taken prisoner, his
chief wife, on learning of his capture, hastened to his side; not, as
might be expected by those of less Spartan culture, to alleviate his
captivity with her tenderness, but to upbraid him for his pusillanimity
in being taken alive. Coming into his presence, she threw at his feet
their infant son, saying, passionately and scornfully, _No quiero titulo
de madre del hijo infame, del infame padre!_ [I do not wish to be called
the mother of the infamous son of an infamous father!] At least, that is
what she is reported to have said; but as the Spanish is in rhyme, and
the chronicler was one rather given to romance, we may be permitted to
doubt the implicitness of the narrative in this respect; yet it is most
probable that the incident really occurred, since it would have been in
entire conformity with the fierce pride of the Araucanians.

The other woman of whom Araucanian history tells us was called Janaqueo.
She was the head wife of a chief who was defeated and slain by the
Spanish invaders. As soon as she learned of the death of her husband she
organized a band of Puelche Indians, was chosen their chief, and sallied
forth against the enemy. She proved herself a most skilful leader in the
peculiar fighting which was appropriate to the terrain; she hung on the
flanks of her foes as a hound on a clumsy boar, alternately fighting and
disappearing, and even in pitched battle defeating more than one noted
Spanish general. She was one of the most enterprising and dangerous foes
ever encountered by the invaders; and when at last she was conquered
through her affection for her brother,--who, having been taken captive
and condemned to death, was enlarged on condition that his sister
retired to her distant home,--the Spaniards felt that they had won a
victory which was most important, even though the forces of the Amazon
still held the field against them. There can be no doubt that Janaqueo
was a most skilful and valiant general; and she relieves the Araucanian
nation from the aspersion of being the only people that cannot claim a
national Joan of Arc to play against the French heroine.

Before turning to a consideration of South American women as descended
from Spanish civilization, it may be well to say a word concerning a
most singular class of natives of South America one which, happily, may
be dismissed in a few words, but yet which must be mentioned for the
sake of completeness, _the Gauchos_. There may be a question as to the
right of the Gaucho women to occupy even a minor place in a history of
the development of woman; for the feminine Gaucho has but one individual
characteristic. She is dirty, she is slovenly, she is lazy, she is a
mere animal, a slave, a beast of burden, but all these things may be
found in other extant or past civilizations,--to give them a term of
courtesy,--and it would seem hardly needful to bring to the reader's
attention a peculiar people if the qualities mentioned were the only
ones to be found among these women. But this is not so, for the Gaucho
woman has a preeminence in one respect: she is absolutely the most
unmoral woman upon the face of the earth, and she has been so ever since
her singular class came into recognized existence. This does not say she
is immoral; her depravity is too open, too much a matter of course, too
entirely a condition of her existence to be deemed immorality. It has
been said that it is a wise child who knows his own father; but among
the Gauchos it was a remarkable woman who had any assured ideas as to
the father of any particular one of her children. Marriage existed as a
form of possession; but as all Gaucho women who had reached maturity had
families,--and maturity in that climate came at about the age of
twelve,--whether they had gone through the ceremony of marriage or not,
it will be understood that few Gauchos, male or female, ever thought of
troubling to be formally wedded. Sir Francis Head, who, about the
opening of the last century, wrote a most entertaining account of his
travels across the Andes and Pampas, tells us that if one asked a young
Gaucho señorita who might be the father of the child that she was
carrying, the almost invariable and entirely artless reply would be,
"_Quien sabe_?" and though Lieutenant Strain, who followed in the
footsteps of Sir Francis some fifty years later, contradicted the
latter's account of the surliness and fierceness of the male Gaucho, he
did not find it lie in his mouth to defend the virtue of the women.

Such absolute, universal, and unblushing unmorality as this is worthy of
chronicle and really is hardly shocking, since it is so perfectly matter
of fact that it simply resolves itself into a rule of life alien from
our ideas. Yet, on the other hand, it is not as the unmorality of the
natives of the South Sea islands, for example, where in their primitive
state the retention of that which among us is known as womanly virtue
was considered a reproach; for the Gaucho women, though so frankly
unmoral, yet were not thus by religion and custom. On the contrary, the
Gauchos were usually profoundly superstitious and were apt to be devout
members of the Roman Communion. Had they been pagans, they would not
have acquired any especial claim to renown for immorality by their
customs; but as members, by courtesy, of a Christian civilization the
women of the Gauchos deserve to be embalmed in the history of their sex
as superlative in their national unmorality.

Mention of the women of the South Sea islands leads to another
digression from the main subject, for there are one or two interesting
facts to be told about these women. The customs of the Taeehs, one of
the most powerful of the tribes of the Pacific islanders, may be taken
as typical of the others, though, of course, there are points of
variance and even departure. When Porter, the captain of the famous
Essex, visited the island of Nookahevah during his celebrated cruise in
1812, he found that island governed by a princess named Pittenee--a fact
which shows that among the islanders women were held in some esteem. The
lady, potentate though she was, was not above forming a scandalous
connection with one of Porter's officers, though she displayed no
fidelity to her temporary spouse; but nothing better could be expected
of one of a race where the parents urged their daughters to sacrifice
their virtue to strangers and even rewarded with presents those who did
them the honor to accept that virtue in gift. Indeed, the claims of
hospitality required the proffer of the person of wife or sister to the
guest, while before reaching marriageable age--about nineteen, very late
for such a climate--the young girls were given entire license. There was
marriage among these people, though it is difficult to see why; and,
strange to say, post-nuptial unfaithfulness was rare. The married women,
as usual among primitive peoples, were rather chattels than slaves,
being entirely at the disposition of their husbands; indeed, save in the
matter of unmorality, the customs of the islanders in regard to their
women differed but little from those conventional among barbarous
tribes.

It is now time to turn to a consideration of the women of South America
as we usually think of them, the product of a grafted Spanish
civilization rather than a survival or result of primitive cultures. Yet
when we turn to such consideration we find but little that is
characteristic or even interesting. It is not to Spanish-founded
countries that we must look for the greatest advances in the status or
culture of women; in such lands there has ever been stagnation and even
retrogression, while there has rarely been any marked individuality of
personal or national trait. Nor must it be forgotten that the phrase
"the Women of South America," even in the limited meaning of those of
Spanish blood, covers an exceedingly broad field.

In noting the history of woman in South America, it is pleasant to
relate that one of the first of the sex of whom we have record is
chronicled as having performed a vast service to posterity, even though
it were one which would have been done by others had she not been the
pioneer. It is recorded that the first wheat ever sown in South America
was carried to Lima, in the year 1535, by Doña Maria de Escobar, though
the quantity was only a few grains. When the crop came to ripeness, the
lady called together all her friends to celebrate the first harvest of
wheat ever gathered in the New World; and although she was in error as
to this,--wheat having been produced in Mexico in 1528 by a negro slave
belonging to Cortés, who accidentally found a few grains mingled with
the rice supplied to the soldiers and sowed them,--she is none the less
deserving of being held in honorable remembrance as the benefactor of
generations yet to come. While speaking of benefactors among South
American women, one may be mentioned who is remarkable both for her race
and for the form of one of her bequests. This was Catalina Huanca, an
Indian, who was so rich--being a cacique--that she left at her death
much money to be expended in various charitable bequests, among them
being the still existing hospital of Santa Ana at Lima; but the
extraordinary bequest to which allusion is made was a sum to be used for
forming and maintaining a body guard for the viceroy, the guard to
comprise both infantry--halberdiers, as the foot then were in such a
body and cavalry, and to consist of a hundred men. It is difficult to
say whether this bequest was not a malicious hit at the poverty of show
among the high Spanish officials as compared with the state held by the
Indians in their ceremonials; but the viceroy did not care to inquire
too curiously into the donor's meaning, but preferred to accept with
gratitude the goods with which the gods had provided him.

It may be broadly said that the characteristics of the Spanish-American
ladies of Chili, Peru, and the rest of the greater Spanish-American
states were from the first, and continue until now, very like those of
the Mexican women. Even physically there is a great resemblance in the
races, as indeed there should be, considering the identity of parent
stock. Their complexions were and are rarely good; but their hair and
eyes are generally fine and their figures excellent, while small feet
form a national physical trait of which they, like their Mexican
sisters, are exceedingly proud. There has never been any marked racial
individuality among the women of South America, and what little there
once was has entirely disappeared. Even early in the past century a
traveller, in noting the influx of European manners, said: "This spirit
of imitation is natural and praiseworthy, but it produces a cloying
sameness; it is a leveller, destructive alike of national and personal
individuality, and the traveller, tired of seeing continually reproduced
the manners, customs, dress, and even ideas with which he has always
been familiar, will tarry with pleasure in those spots presenting the
freshness of originality. Such spots exist only where a continual
jostling with the exterior world has not abraded the salient angles of
the national character."

It may be added that such spots have become increasingly difficult to
find, and that the romance of South America has entirely disappeared
before the march of "progress." Yet few countries have known more of
romance, and this in regard to her women, though the chronicle is scanty
and must be pieced together from scraps of information. Perhaps the most
romantic era of South American women was that of the buccaneers. It was
a brief time and one that held much of peril to womanly honor and
virtue; but it also held delightful possibilities for the daughters of
Spain in their new home. These ladies, even some of noble birth, looked
not unkindly upon the "hereticos" who came with fire and sword to gain
wealth in the shape of booty and ransom. Do we not read in quaint old
chronicle of that paladin of a filibuster, Revenau de Lussan, who, in
1685, put Panama to ransom and then occupied the town of Queaquilla? De
Lussan was a freebooter, which is a polite way of writing "pirate," and
he was a Frenchman in days when Gallic morals were not on the highest of
planes even when judged by the usual standard of their country; but the
gentlemanly filibuster was frankly shocked at the state of affairs
existing in Queaquilla, where he found the most beautiful and wanton
women he had ever encountered. The monks and priests with which the town
swarmed took the lead in illicit intercourse with the entirely willing
ladies, and there were few children who had the faintest idea concerning
the identity of their paternal parents. The people of this place had
been told frightful stories about the pirates, and when De Lussan
captured a pretty young woman, the maid to the wife of the governor, she
begged him with tear-strewn cheeks, _Señor, por l'amor de Dios no mi
coma!_ [Senor, for the love of God do not eat me!] It took but a short
time, however, for the jovial buccaneers to prove to the ladies that
they were not greatly to be feared by the fair sex unless the latter
proved unkind; and when the pirates retired to the island of Puna with
their spoils they were accompanied by many of the ladies of Queaquilla,
who went with them nominally as prisoners awaiting ransom but really as
willing mistresses. There the freebooters spent many glorious weeks in
high revelry, with music, wine, dancing, and all other amusements most
dear to the pirate heart, the Spanish ladies entering most heartily into
the spirit of the occasion. In the attack on the town De Lussan killed
the Spanish treasurer, and the latter's disconsolate widow fell to the
lot of the slayer of her husband. In a few days she developed for the
gallant Frenchman a passion that was absolutely embarrassing, insisting
that he should remain with her after the rest of the band had departed,
should marry her, and should live with her at Queaquilla. She actually
went so far as to obtain from the governor a signed pardon for De Lussan
for offences committed against Spanish possessions, so that he could be
assured that he might safely remain. De Lussan, however, though he tells
us that he "was not a little perplexed herewith," could not resolve to
settle down and abandon the career of a pirate for that of a private
citizen; he may also have had doubts as to the intention of the governor
of keeping his fair promises when once he had the famous freebooter in
his power; so he further tells us: "Thus I rejected her proposals, but
so as to assure her I should retain even long as I lived a lively
remembrance of her affections and good inclinations toward me." Thus he
extricated himself from his quandary with all the finesse and gallantry
of his nation and went his way rejoicing in his liberty. We are not told
of the future fate of the lady, of whose name we are indeed kept in
ignorance, but it is probable that some Spaniard consoled her for the
loss of her lover as readily as had that lover for the loss of her
husband.

De Lussan's experience with the women of Central America--which for
convenience is here considered as part of the southern continent--was so
typical that it has been treated at greater length than it may have
deserved. Indeed, there seems to be much light thrown on the impetuous,
passionate nature of the Spanish-American woman by her bearing toward
the pirates who ravaged the shores of her country yet to whom she
frequently gave her heart and virtue. Of course this bearing was not
invariable; Morgan, a greater pirate, but not so gallant a gentleman as
De Lussan, when he captured Panama against fearful odds, found within
its walls a Spanish lady with whom he fell violently in love, but who
resolutely refused to listen to his proposals. Finding flattery,
pleading, and bribery in vain, he showed the true brutality of his
nature by throwing her into afoul dungeon and keeping her there
half-starved, until even his rough comrades who delighted in slaughter
and made the name of England a stench in the nostrils of the civilized
world by their treatment of the Spaniards, remonstrated, and the brutal
buccaneer was compelled by motives of policy to release his captive from
her cell. She was finally ransomed and allowed to return to the ruins of
her home, and here we lose sight of her; but we can remember her as one
who was worthy of the best traditions of the Spanish ladies and whose
memory may redeem the repute of her lighter countrywomen from their
shame.

It must not be thought from what has been said as to the morality of
Spanish-American women in certain periods and places that it is designed
to charge the race in general with immorality. That were to utter a
slander which would be as baseless as it would be inexcusable. It is
unfortunately true that in the history of any country or race it is the
women most famous for immorality and wickedness who stand out most
prominently; those who were merely good were tolerably sure to be
forgotten as unnoteworthy. So it was with South America. We have the
word of a keen observer "that any impartial person who shall reside long
enough among South Americans to become acquainted with their domestic
manners will declare that conjugal and paternal affection, filial piety,
beneficence, generosity, good nature, and hospitality are the inmates of
almost every house. I have no doubt, too, that these virtues will
continue here, until civilization and refinement shall drive them from
their abode in the New World, to make room for etiquette, formality,
becoming pride, prudery, and hypocrisy from the Old. Then, the children
of the first families in Lima (whom I have often seen rise from the
table and carry a plateful of food to a poor protege beggar, seated in
the patio or under the corridor, wait and chat with the little wretch
until he had finished, and return to the table) will look on such
objects with disdain, because mamma has subscribed a competent sum to a
charitable institution and made that sum known to the world through the
medium of the newspapers! I cannot avoid fearing that this modern
improvement will supersede their own pure but almost antiquated
customs."

This, written about 1825, is a severe arraignment of the blessings of
our civilization; but it is also a sincere compliment to the character
of South American women and so is worth quoting. Fond of pleasures the
South American señorita and even señora has always been; but such
fondness, however indicative of volatility of temperament and lack of
depth of nature, is not incompatible with many of the virtues which are
held in high esteem among women. Another thing worthy of note in the
words of our sarcastic critic is the reference to the disappearance,
even at that date, of the more characteristic customs of South American
ladies. A later visitor to Chile and Peru tells us that the young
señoritas often denied that they practised smoking, whereas we know from
other travellers that but a short time prior to that period it was
considered the height of courtesy for the South American lady to
transfer to the lips of her male companion the cigarette moist from her
own. Eating sweetmeats from the same plate was also common at one time,
in fact, down to the beginning of the last century, among South American
ladies and gentlemen; they even sucked mate, the native tea, from a
single tube. These characteristic customs have long since passed away,
and now the Spanish-American lady sedulously apes her European
contemporaries in tastes, dress, and customs. She has retained but
little of the individuality which once marked her national place among
her sex; yet in one respect she is still unique, and it is to be hoped
will long remain so. That singularity is her influence and part in
politics.

All of us know the constant political cataclysms that occur in South
America. It is said that a Spanish-American lady who not long ago
visited New York looked with some surprise upon the arrogance of one of
the _grandes dames_ of the city and inquired the reason. "Why, my dear,"
replied her interlocutor, "she is a Daughter of the Revolution!" "Oh,
_ça!_" replied the charming South American, with a shrug: "Is that all?
For me, I am the daughter of at least six!" The anecdote may be
apocryphal, but it is none the less pointed; and the constant
revolutions of the South American states have become fair matter for
jest. In these turbulent ebullitions of racial spirit rather than
national liberty the fair señoritas and señoras have had a most
prominent part. Not only have they incited and encouraged the men who
bore the brunt of the actual combat, but, if those who know most of the
inner histories of these affairs of state are to be believed, the women
have been the most efficient as well as the most ardent plotters. In
fact, it may be said that of late years, say for the latter half of the
past century, politics has become with South American women as much a
fashion as literature was in France at the time of the great _salons_.
She who had never plotted was at one time--not yet entirely passed
away--beyond the social pale, while she who was fortunate enough to
include among the visitors to her political _salon_ some especially
virulent revolutionist was regarded with as much envy as, in circles of
other nationality, is the exhibitor of some literary lion of
particularly loud roar. We often hear the expression, "the game of
politics"; but certainly it has never been so well applied as to the
somewhat dangerous but entirely conventional pursuits of the female
plotters and revolutionists of South America. That these women, of whom
none has bequeathed to posterity a name worthy of record, have been of
some influence in regulating the course of South American events it is
impossible to deny; but their methods have not, as a rule, been such as
to call forth high eulogium of feminine politics. They have been for the
most part on a plane with the female Nihilists of Russia, save that the
latter are in deadly earnest, while the South American ladies play at
politics as their northern sisters at golf, with intent to win indeed,
but after all merely as a diversion.

This aspect of the woman of South America, however, is the only one of
characteristic form she has retained after her determined subduing of
national individuality to European commonplaceness. The lady of Brazil,
Peru, Chili, or the lesser South American states is not characteristic
in appearance, in custom, or in thought; she stands simply as a
modification of Latin civilization under variant conditions, and is
hardly to be distinguished from her European sisters of similar stock.
There is of course some individuality left among the lower class of
women; but even this is fast disappearing before the inroads of the more
insistent culture. As with the Mexican, so with the South American
woman: she has ceased to possess racial uniqueness and so has ceased to
be nationally interesting, however she may charm as an individual.

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.

The political, social, and economic changes effected by emancipation in
Brazil were not attended with violent disturbance as was the case in the
United States. Generally, the act was favorably received, although great
hardship was caused to many individual slave owners. So far as this
measure has affected Brazilian women, the result may safely be assumed
as making for their uplifting. Woman has been stimulated to greater
activity, intellectual, domestic, and social.

Of the emancipated race it can hardly be doubted that they are in better
state. In the large cities where the negroes constitute a large
proportion of the population, as in Bahia, their condition betokens
relative material prosperity and physical content. A most characteristic
picture is presented on a holiday by a Bahian negress, when the occasion
permits of the racial indulgence of lavish display. Her deckings are
dazzling in color and bewildering in variety,--dress ornaments and air
of self-satisfaction offer a moving picture that cannot well be
forgotten. In the many industries of Brazil where manual labor still
holds relatively great preponderance over mechanical, the negroes
furnish a very considerable part of the labor, as also in the work of
the great _haciendas_. What may almost be termed a general industry is
the preparation of manioc or mandioca, the cultivation of which was
considered of such importance in colonial days as to be obligatory. It
is an article of almost universal use in Brazil, and the free negroes of
to-day are no less skilful in cultivating and preparing it than were
their forbears in slavery days.

Since the inauguration of the republic of Brazil there are but few women
of whom notable mention has been made. It has been a period of
transition and adjustment in which woman's activities, though constantly
exercised in patriotic endeavor and toward social progress, have not
found the record that they merit. Nevertheless, we get a glimpse of the
character of the later womanhood of Brazil in the words of Senhora
Campos-Salles,--the wife of a recent president,--addressed to her
husband on the occasion of a political revolution in the State of San
Paulo: "You must forget to-day that you have a wife and children and
remember only your duty to your country."

The social and domestic life of woman in Brazil is still largely
influenced by European customs. The senhorita's chaperon is still
regarded as a conventional desideratum, and courtship, if not quite as
much a "long distance" communication as among the Puritans of New
England when the "courting-stick" was in vogue, is yet largely regulated
according to the customs of the mother country, and generally involves
the presence of the family. As in the political, so in the social world,
however, the spirit of the New World has entered and the Brazilian woman
is very gradually throwing off restraints which European convention has
put upon her, and is participating more generally and prominently in
intellectual, social, and political affairs. In social progress and
amelioration, in educational and charitable activities she is taking
place as an accepted leader. In the elementary schools for girls the
instruction is entrusted exclusively to women, who, on the other hand,
are also found in charge of those for boys. There are special
institutions provided for the education of girls in "all womanly arts,"
and in addition to this the State provides them with a dot for the
purchase of a wedding trousseau and a suitable housekeeping equipment.

In art and literature the names of Brazilian women have gained
honor,--among painters, Senhoras de Andrade and Bertha Worms,--and among
writers, Senhoras de Bivar, de Almeida, and de Azeredo. Senhora de
Almeida has established and edited a paper devoted to the _feministe_
movement in Brazil.

While the list of notable and noted South American women is far from
exhausted by these names, enough has been said to show that below the
equator as well as above it there has been advance and change. Yet it
must be confessed that in South America the march of feminine progress
has thus far been very slow and is still confined, as already said, to
individuals rather than manifested in national or racial movement. It
may yet broaden into this; but the omens are hardly propitious. The
restraining and clogging influence is rather of racial than masculine
nature; it is less that the men look upon the advanced woman as a _lusus
naturæ_, though this also is broadly true, than that the women are not
racially capable of working out their own salvation in this line. Thus
far the movement has been almost entirely productive of leaders only;
there is no rank and file to give it strength and continuity. There is
ardent enthusiasm; but it is confined within narrow limits. Yet he would
be a rash prophet who should foretell that these circumstances will
continue to prevail, and it may well be that the signs may develop into
conditions and South America prove a close follower, if not a pioneer,
in the march of feminine advancement and culture.




CHAPTER IV

THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT


We have now reached the point in our consideration of the women of our
own land where we are free to turn to the story of the American woman as
she is generally known the woman of the United States. Of course
scientific ethnology recognizes no such nomenclature, giving the title
of "American" only to the aborigines of this continent; but we who write
and read this work are not concerned to be scientific but rather
perspicacious on the one side and perspicuous on the other, and the
generally accepted nomenclature will be adopted here and the woman of
the United States and the mother-colonies spoken of as being, by right
as well as acceptation, the American woman to all other lands and ages.

Before entering upon the history of the woman of our country, it seems
needful to cast a glance upon some general conditions which must be
reckoned with in our estimate and appreciation of the women of America
and their history. As a preliminary, the story of the Blue Fairy will be
related,--a story so old that it may be new to most of the readers of
this volume and which, fairy story though it be, has yet a meaning in
the study of the history of women, if we will but seek it out. Here is
the story, as told by Stahl:

"One day the Blue Fairy descended to earth with the courteous intention
of distributing to all the young girls of in the different nations the
treasures of beauty that she brought with her.

"Her dwarf Amaranth sounded his horn, and instantly a young girl of
every nation presented herself at the foot of the Blue Fairy's throne.
Then, after having made a short speech, she proceeded to distribute her
gifts.

"She gave to the young girl who represented all the Castiles locks so
black and long that she could make a mantilla of them.

"To the Italian she gave eyes as bright and burning as an eru

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