It is not difficult to explain why among the lower races individual
preference either does not occur at all or is so weak and utilitarian
that the difference of a few cows more or less may decide a lover's
fate. Like sunflowers in the same garden, the girls in a tribe differ
so little from one another that there is no particular cause for
discrimination. They are all brought up in exactly the same way, eat
the same food, think the same thoughts, do the same work--carrying
water and wood, dressing skins, moving tents and utensils, etc.; they
are alike uneducated, and marry at the same childish age before their
minds can have unfolded what little is in them; so that there is small
reason why a man should covet one of them much more than another. A
savage may be as eager to possess a woman as a miser is to own a gold
piece: but he has little more reason to prefer one girl to another
than a miser has to prefer one gold piece to another of the same size.
Humboldt observed (_P.E_., 141) that "in barbarous nations there is a
physiognomy peculiar to the tribe or horde rather than to any
individual." It has been noted by various observers that the lower the
race is the more do its individuals thus resemble one another. Nay,
this approximation goes so far as to make even the two sexes much less
distinct than they are with us. Professor Pritsch, in his classical
treatise on the natives of South Africa (407), dwells especially on
the imperfect sexual differentiation of the Bushmen. The faces,
stature, limbs, and even the chest and hips of the women differ so
little from those of the men that in looking at photographs (as he
says and illustrates by specimens), one finds it difficult to tell
them apart, though the figures are almost nude. Both sexes are equally
lean and equally ugly. The same may be said of the typical
Australians, and in Professor and Mrs. Agassiz's _Journey in Brazil_
(530) we read that
"the Indian woman has a very masculine air, extending
indeed more or less to her whole bearing; for even her
features have rarely the feminine delicacy of higher
womanhood. In the Negro, on the contrary, the
narrowness of chest and shoulder characteristic of the
woman is almost as marked in the man; indeed, it may
well be said, that, while the Indian female is
remarkable for her masculine build, the negro male is
equally so for his feminine aspect."
In the _Jesuit Relations_ there are repeated references to the
difficulty of distinguishing squaws from male Indians except by
certain articles of dress. Burton writes of the Sioux _(C.O.S_., 59)
that "the unaccustomed eye often hesitates between the sexes." In
Schoolcraft (V., 274) we are told concerning the Creek women that
"being condemned to perform all the hard labor, they are _universally
masculine in appearance_, without one soft blandishment to render them
desirable or lovely." Nor is there anything alluringly feminine in the
disposition which, as all observers agree, makes Indian women more
cruel in torture than the most pitiless men. Equally decisive is the
testimony regarding the similarity of the sexes, physical and mental,
in the islands of the Pacific. Hawkesworth (II., 446) found the women
of New Zealand so lacking in feminine delicacy that it was difficult
to distinguish them from the men, except by their voices. Captain Cook
(II., 246) observed in Fiji differences in form between men and
females, but little difference in features; and of the Hawaiians he
wrote that with few exceptions they
"have little claim to those peculiarities that
distinguish the sex in other countries. There is,
indeed, a more remarkable equality in the size, color,
and figure of both sexes, than in most places I have
visited."