Explorers and scientists, who have lived among aboriginal tribes in
order to study their manners and customs, have always found, that each
sex has its own sphere of duty and work. To the stronger man fell the
obligation of protecting his family, which consisted of his wife or
wives and their offspring. It was also his share to support them with
the products of the chase, and to provide suitable material for the
building of the lodge. “These activities,” so states J .N. B. Hewitt in
the ‘Handbook of American Indians’ (Vol. II, 969), “required health,
strength and skill. The warrior was usually absent from the fireside on
the chase, on the warpath, or on the fishing-trip, days, weeks or
months, during which he often traveled many miles and was subjected to
the hardships and perils of hunting and fighting, and to the inclemency
of the weather, often without adequate shelter or food.”
To the lot of women fell the care of the children, the labor required in
the home and in all that directly affected it.
The essential principle governing this division of labor and
responsibility between the two sexes lies much deeper than in an
apparent tyranny of the man. The ubiquity of danger from human foes as
well as from wild beasts, the suddenness of their assaults when least
expected, compelled aboriginal men to keep their weapons always at hand.
During the day they hardly lay them aside, even for a minute, and at
night they are always within reach. This fact explains, why the women
and children transport all the loads, while the men carry nothing but
their weapons when aborigines move from one place to another.
This division of functions consequently led men to confine their
ingenuity and activity chiefly to the improvement and skillful handling
of their arms, to the invention of snares for the game and to methods of
fighting animal and human foes. It led also to the inclination to regard
hunting and warfare as the only occupations worthy of men, and to
relegate all domestic work to the women, since such labor would be
degrading to the warrior.
But the despised work of the weaker sex has proven of far greater value
to the progress of the human race than all heroic acts ever accomplished
by fighting men. To woman’s ingenuity we owe our comfortable homes.
Women kept the warming hearth-fire burning, prepared the meals, watched
faithfully over the children and made the clothes that gave protection
against rain and cold. To women’s inventive sense we owe also our most
important industries: agriculture, weaving, pottery, tannery, basketry,
dyeing, brewing, and many other peaceful arts.—
It has been said that human culture began with man’s knowledge and
control of fire, that mysterious, ever consuming, ever brightly flaming
element, which was regarded by all aborigines as a thing of life, by
some even as an animal. It must have all the more forcibly impressed
men’s imagination, inasmuch as it not alone promoted man’s comfort, but
even made life endurable, especially in cold climates.
It is certain that the practical knowledge of fire was obtained not at
one given spot only but in many different parts of the world and in a
variety of ways. In time men discovered also various methods of
producing sparks, generally by rubbing two sticks of wood or by knocking
two flints together. But as these methods were slow and laborious, it
became the custom for each band to maintain a constant fire for the use
of all families in order to avoid the troublesome necessity of obtaining
it by friction. Generally this constant fire was kept in the centre of
the village, to be in reach for everybody. The duty to keep it always
burning fell naturally to the women, as they remained always in the
village, and especially to those women not burdened with the cares of
maternity. As fire later on was regarded as a present of the good
spirits or gods to men, these central fires were held sacred, and so the
fire worship grew by degrees into a religious cult of great sanctity and
importance.
[Illustration:
LIFE AMONG PREHISTORIC CAVE-DWELLERS
]
* * * * *
[Illustration:
WOMAN OF LOANGO, TILLING THE SOIL
]
While searching for edible roots and berries, women became aware of the
usefulness of many plants. And soon they made attempts to cultivate them
in closer proximity to their lodges.
Having cleaned a suitable spot women made with their primitive digging
sticks the holes, into which they sunk the seeds, from which the plants
were expected to develop. Experience, the mother of all wisdom, taught
women that these plants needed constant attention. So the ground was
kept free from weeds and properly watered. From time to time it was
loosened with hoes, which in the beginning were made of bones, shells or
stones, and later on of metal.
Such was the origin of our vegetable gardens, orchards, and grain
fields. The continuous care, devoted to these plantations, greatly
improved the quality of useful plants. Poor and tasteless varieties
developed in time into those rich and palatable species, without which
our present human race could scarcely exist for a single day. I need
only name wheat, corn, barley, rye, peas, lentils, beans, rice, tapioca,
potatoes, yams, turnips, bread-fruit, pears, apples, plums, cherries,
bananas, dates, figs, nuts, oranges, coffee, cacao, tea, cotton and
hemp, to convince the reader of the immense value of women’s activity in
agriculture.
As simple as were the tools for the cultivation of the soil, just as
simple were the implements for the extraction of flour from the grain.
Recent archæological research has disclosed the fact that many thousand
years before Christ Egyptian women ground corn between two stones in
just the same manner as the women of the Apache and Pueblo Indians and
many other aboriginal tribes are doing to this day.
Other aboriginal women crushed the seeds in mortars of wood or stone. In
several parts of Asia women succeeded in inventing hand-mills, which
proved much more effective.
The necessity of storing provisions for the winter and hard times led to
the invention of receptacles in which grain, nuts and dried berries
might be kept and be safe from destruction by rain and animals. While
pondering over the best methods of accomplishing this, women observed
that certain insects and birds moulded their nests from wet clay, and
that such nests, after hardening, were rain-proof. By this observation
women became induced to use the same material for all kinds of nest-like
vessels, in which provisions could be stored successfully. By accident
such vessels came in contact with fire. Then it was found that by such
baking the hardness of the vessels increased considerably. And so the
preliminaries were discovered for the art of pottery, in which many
aborigines became masters.
Similar observations led to the art of weaving. The nets, spread out
everywhere by spiders for the capture of insects, gave women the first
hint to make similar fabrics for the capture of birds and fishes. The
spider’s thread was imitated by long hair and the fibres of certain
plants. These were twisted together in a manner similar to that used by
the weaver-birds in constructing their airy nests.
For many thousand years weaving was done exclusively by hand. But in
time all kinds of apparatus were invented. And so weaving developed into
an art that among many aboriginal tribes was improved to the highest
degree. At the same time these female weavers created a genuine native
art. So for instance the garters, belts, sashes and blankets of the
Navajo and Pueblo Indians are, for their splendid quality as well as for
their tasteful designs and colors, highly appreciated by all
connoisseurs. The same is true in regard to the ponchos of the Mexicans
and Peruvians, and the magnificent shawls and carpets, made by the women
of Cashmere, Afghanistan, Persia and other countries of the Orient.
[Illustration:
A TOLTEC WOMAN SPINNING COTTON.
]
Basketry, including matting and bagging, belongs also to the primitive
textile arts in which many native women excelled. By using choice
materials, or by adding resinous substances, some aboriginal women are
able to make baskets water-tight for holding or carrying water for
cooking. From crude beginnings basketry developed into an industry,
which in many countries grew to great importance, as for instance in
Morocco, where the markets are always supplied with large quantities of
bags and baskets of beautiful design and workmanship.
Aboriginal women also attended to the dressing and tanning of skins of
those animals which the men brought home from their hunting expeditions.
In the domestic economy of many tribes skins were and are the most
valued and useful property, especially in all regions having a severe
climate. Every kind of skin, large enough to be stripped from the
carcass of beast, bird or fish, is used here in some way.
A painting by George Catlin, the well-known artist, who during the first
part of the last century travelled among the various Indian tribes of
North America, illustrates the methods by which the skins of buffalo and
deer are staked out upon the ground or between poles. We see the women
engaged in scraping off the flesh and fat, a process which is followed
by several others until the skin is fit to be used for tent covers,
beddings, shields, saddles, lassoes, boats, clothes, mocassins, and
thousands of other things.
Most skillful tanners and dressmakers are likewise the women of the
Eskimo tribes. They make excellent suits from the skins and even the
entrails of whales, walrus, seals and other animals.
To the keen sense of women we also owe undoubtedly most of our domestic
implements. From the bones of fish and other animals they made needles
and pins; from the horns splendid spoons and combs. Gourds, pumpkins and
cocoanuts were turned into water bottles. Women also devised the
comfortable hammocks. About the cribs, cradles and swings, invented in
endless variety by aboriginal mothers for the protection and comfort of
their darlings, volumes might be written. And by innumerable pictures
and photographs it could be proven that the great care, bestowed
nowadays upon our babies, is not the outcome of our advanced culture,
but originated many thousand years ago among aboriginal women.
The same is true in regard to the dolls and play-things with which women
seek to amuse those little ones, dearest to their hearts. What motherly
affection, ever present and everlasting, has done for the welfare and
progress of mankind, no one can conceive, nor describe, nor illustrate.
As brief as these remarks about aboriginal woman’s activity are, they
indicate, however, sufficiently her share in the founding and evolution
of human culture. To appreciate this even more, we must not forget that
the life of those women was one of constant care, misery and danger. The
blissful happiness of aboriginal existence, of which we read sometimes
in novels, written by poetical dreamers, was never enjoyed by these
women. How full of hardships their share was in reality, we find by
investigating their place in the social life of their tribes.
[Illustration:
WOMAN OF NORTHERN AFRICA TENDING TO HER BABY
]