WOMAN

VOLUME X

WOMEN OF AMERICA

BY

JOHN ROUSE LARUS

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.

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.

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 eruption of Vesuvius in the middle of the night.

"To the Turkish girl, a figure as round as the moon and as soft as eider-down.

"To the English girl, an aurora borealis to tint her cheeks, her lips, and her shoulders.

"To the German, teeth like her own, and a tender heart.

"To the Russian, the dignity of a queen.

"Then, going into details, she put gayety on the lips of the Neapolitan wit in the brain of the Irish girl good sense in the heart of the Flemish girl; and, when nothing remained to be given, she arose to take her flight.

"'And I?' said the Parisian to her, detaining her by the floating border of her tunic.

"'I had forgotten you.'

"'Entirely forgotten, madam.'

'"I overlooked you. But what can I do? My bag of gifts is empty.'

"She reflected an instant, and then called around her the recipients of her gifts, told them the situation, and asked them to share their treasures with their unfortunate sister. Who could refuse a fairy, and above all the Blue Fairy? So, with the graciousness always conferred by happiness, these girls in turn approached the neglected Parisian and as they passed her one threw her a part of her black hair, another a tint of her rosy complexion; this one a beam of her joyousness, that one a touch of her sensibility; and thus it came about that the Parisian, so poor, so obscure, so eclipsed by her sisters, found herself in an instant, by this generous division, richer and more attractively endowed than any of her companions."

Now this charming little parable is by courtesy true of the Parisienne; but it is far truer of the American woman, for of her it might have been written as a parable indeed. The product of no one blood, no isolated race, she has been given by the fusion of variant races in her ancestry an origin and a tradition, both physical and mental, such as has been granted to no other woman of whom history tells us. Into the ancestry of the English woman entered the elements of the Celtic blood, Brythonic and Goidal, of the Saxons and Teutons, of the later Normans and even Provençals, while through all, perhaps, ran the strain of the primitive Briton and Pict; but not even in this mingling of races can she compare with her American sister in diversity of racial source. Moreover, the English stock, which we unite in calling--incorrectly--the Anglo-Saxon, has remained permanent in type and fount; but this is not so with the American. This latter is in constant process of modification by the introduction of new progenital elements, and it cannot now be prophesied when there will be a clearly-defined race, with individual and permanent characteristics, established upon this side of the great seas.

Therefore the American woman is the heir of the ages in a sense never before true of anyone. As with the Parisian in the story, so with the American woman in truth, all races have united in bringing her of their best gifts. It is for her to make of these the best that she may; certainly none of her sisters has ever begun her career with such fortune brought her by destiny as a birth-gift.

It must not, however, be forgotten or unnoted that, while the American woman is thus rich in a heritage unequalled by that granted to any of her sisters, being world-heir instead of heir to a race, she has some corresponding disadvantages to overcome in her effort to influence as a racial representative the currents of world-thought and world-progress. She has behind her no national tradition stretching far back into a past so remote that it has ceased to be effect and has become merely foundation. The American woman, alone of all the representatives of the higher cultures, has no effective nationality to shape her trend. She is a product of her time only, not of time and ancient tradition mingled; she has no distinct nationality of growth and line of progress. Every other woman of Caucasian race has a past to which to refer as inspiration and cause, a past which is a story of upward growth, of ever-increasing culture. The American woman found her culture ready for her--was already, at her birth, the child and expression of the highest civilization known to her day. She had no need of exerting formative influence upon her race; all was already done to her hand. Thus she lacks the greatest of all traditions--the tradition of growth and development.

Yet, though not of native production, though lacking the influence of constant-trending nationality, the American woman is and always has been strongly individual. While she is not an indigenous development, not a result of racial growth and broadening, yet her development has been essentially characteristic. She has reached forward upon lines of variant trend from those of her sisters of other cultures, and she is truly a product of her country in that she has been shaped by the conditions of the time and circumstances of that country's birth. There was breathed into her from the first the informing spirit of the typical American civilization the spirit of freedom. And into her nature has also come another spirit distinctively American--the spirit of the wilderness subdued and conquered, of a barren land made to yield its treasures to the arm of the pioneer the spirit of conquest. There is no new gift of mind or soul brought to her by other nations that has not been modified by these twin spirits. Thus, though heir to all nations and peoples, though product of all cultures, she remains typically American in dominant traits, in the path in which she has chosen to set her feet. Latin and Teuton, Slav and Celt, she has in her veins the blood of them all; but she is still less their result than their modification, and she is still the child of America even more than of the world which has given her life.

The conditions under which the northern continent of America was first settled were somewhat peculiar as contrasted with those of any other settlement whose full history we know. It was entirely different, for example, from the settlement of South America or Mexico. In both the latter cases there was what may be described as a blow and a victory; there was a conquest over a primitive, even if remarkably civilized people, and that was the end of the matter save for the mere formal colonization which followed. This was not the case with the colonization of North America. There was no overt or complete conquest; on the contrary, there was at first overture of peace between the inhabitants of the country and the newcomers. This did not last; the whole of the first history of the colonization of North America may be summed up, at least in its most prominent aspect, in one word--war. But this warfare was not decisive; it was not waged against a nation, but against nations, fighting individually and jealously of each other indeed,--else they must have prevailed at first,--but yet constantly bringing forward new disputants of the title of the newcomers to the land.

The country had to be won from its original owners step by step, not by one or many blows; the process of reclamation was by a steady pushing back of the aborigines, not by a conquest such as that of Norman over Saxon or even Englishman over Maori. There was no conquered race to become eventually amalgamated with its conquerors; the history of all the first period of settlement is the history of civilization driving barbarism before it as it marched on. But for such methods there was need of a somewhat peculiar and very strenuous civilization; the desired result was not to be won by any graces or abstractions, but by the prevailing of white stamina, bravery, and ingenuity over red cunning and tradition and honesty--of the axe over the tomahawk, of the rifle over the bow. It was the triumph of the knowledge rather than the principles belonging to a higher culture than that which was going down; it was Friar Bacon with his gunpowder, not Francis Bacon with his learning, who was fighting the battle of the white against the red, and was affecting the progress of the world.

In conditions arising from strife woman has but little place. She may indeed be present, and even be a part of the conditions which are inevitable in times of conquest; but she is there only as an accident, not as a requisite. The elimination of the influence of woman from the trend of present civilization would be fatal to all approach to any worthy goal; but in the time of the beginnings of our country's story woman was a hindrance rather than a help to progress, since by her presence and the consequent anxiety and by her weakness in physical prowess she enfeebled the fighting powers of the garrison or village. Even so, she had her part, and an honorable one, in the events which established white dominance in America; but it was one that was necessarily subordinate in the eyes of the chroniclers of those times, and so we hear but little of women in the flush of our country's dawn. It is not to be questioned that in the first colonies planted by England in the New World there were women--perhaps nearly as many as men. We are apt to forget, by the way, that Virginia was originally settled by the Spaniards under Menendez, the perpetrator of the terrible massacre in Florida by which his name is best remembered, and that the Latin races, both Spanish and French, long anticipated the English in colonization of our country. It is quite certain that in all these early Latin colonies there were women and that these bore no inconsiderable part in the events which were trending, though sometimes by devious paths, to the establishment of Caucasian empire in America; but their names are unknown to us and we are even ignorant of their place in the history of their time. The story of southern settlement, as far as this has any effect upon the present, begins for us with the settlement of Roanoke Island by Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated colony. The tale of its mysterious disappearance is too well known to call for recapitulation here; but before that sudden and final ending of its story we have chronicles which tell us that among these pioneer pilgrims were women, mostly wives of the men settlers, who bore their part in the burden and heat of the day,--and those days were toilsome and full of peril,--as well as their more active lords. Also to that lost colony belongs the honor of having reared the first alien child born on American soil, the forerunner of the race that was to make that soil its own,--Virginia Dare, the little maiden whose passing was as mysterious as her coming was ominous. The first of the enormous army of the conquering palefaces who were to overrun the land like locusts, she passed away into the mysterious silence of the woods as the standard bearer of the advance, leaving her name to be a shadowy record for all future ages and the very embodiment of the spirit of romance that was in the story of the subjugation of America. Had she lived the normal life of the woman pioneer, her memory would have lacked something of romance; but her unknown fate, and her position in the van of the great coming nation of Americans, keep her in remembrance.

Jamestown was founded on May 13, 1607, and with its foundation began the real era of English rule in America. We know but little of the place of woman in the first days of the colony, and it is not until 1608 that we find any record of female influence or even presence. At this time, Captain Newport, who had brought from England the first fleet and in whose honor Newport News--originally Newport Ness--was named, made his reappearance with a number of fresh settlers, among them being Mistress Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras by name, who was shortly afterward wedded to Master John Laydon and thus won for herself fame as the first woman of English blood to be married on American soil. By this time, Jamestown had grown to have a population of more than five hundred souls, of whom not more than two hundred were fighting men; so that the proportion of women and children must have been far larger than might be supposed by those looking at the circumstances of colonization and existence. It must have taken a stout heart in a woman's breast to face the unknown dangers of the unknown world; and soon the women of the infant colony had need for all their bravery. There is no doubt that the women played a noble part in the terrible days that followed the Indian siege of Jamestown--the days which were afterward known as the "Starving Time." Not more than sixty of the original five hundred souls remained at the end of that period; and its record presents the probably unique account of women of the higher civilizations descending to the horrors of cannibalism, the "common kettel" at last containing the bodies of Indians and even of kinsmen. Indeed, there was one foul deed of that time wherein a woman was directly concerned, though as victim, not principal: a colonist killed his wife and had eaten part of the body before he was discovered. He was burned alive; but those who punished him for his crime looked fearfully forward to the day when their own temptations might become too strong. At last came succor; and there seems to be for us assurance of the temper and mettle of the women of that time when we find that of the sixty survivors a fair proportion was of the weaker sex. There were children also, witnesses to the devotion of their mothers in their care.

The colony was abandoned; but only for three days, and then began the time of uninterrupted English dominance. There is, however, in its history nothing of importance to our subject until we reach 1621,--very near the limit which has been set as the end of the "period of settlement." At this time there occurred an event so peculiar and so far-reaching in its social results and withal so intimately connected with the general, though not the particular, chronicle of woman in the early colonies that it may be set forth in some fulness, even though it was one that does not give us any instance of feminine development. But it was so typical of its time and so ominous of the mothers that moulded the characters of the native-born pioneers in the southern settlements that it has its legitimate place in a history of American women. That event is the coming of the "maids," as they were called in the old chronicle from which we draw most of our knowledge concerning the early settlers of Virginia.

Sir Edwin Sandys, being at the head of the London Company, in whose hands were now the interests of the Virginia plantations, devised the plan of sending out as wives to the Virginia adventurers a number of respectable young women. It is probable that Sandys was instigated by the thought of the dangers of mixed marriages with the Indians, which were apt to result from the paucity of women of Caucasian race,--for many young men had of late been tempted to try their fortunes in the New World, and the proportion of women had failed among the settlers. Sandys was in every way a believer in vigorous immigration, and in one year he sent out one thousand two hundred and sixty-one new settlers; these he was desirous of attaching to the soil of their new country,--a thing that could be done only by aiding them there to establish a home. So he secured a cargo of young women, ninety in number, who were willing to go to a far land in search of husbands. Whether he had great difficulty in finding such women, or whether matrimony as a prospect, even though with an indeterminate partner, was so attractive to the average spinster of the day as to make her eager to embrace any opportunity which held certainty of result, cannot be known; but the "maids" went, though under somewhat peculiar and even, to modern eyes, degrading conditions. For the thrifty company was not minded that the prospective husbands should have their wives as free gifts; no, they must pay for them as for any other chattel, and the price fixed was one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, the value of this amount of the weed being about eighty dollars at present values. One would think that, if the matter was to be one of barter, the company might have set a higher price upon a wife, even if only out of compliment to the sex; but doubtless the company knew the true value of the goods which it purveyed.

It must be admitted that the worshipful company, notwithstanding its parsimonious spirit in the matter of vend, acted in good faith with both prospective husbands and present "maids." It had already made many regulations intended to promote matrimony by distinguishing in favor of married men; and in the selection and care of the feminine cargo exported it took the utmost precautions to ensure the purity of the women offered as wives. Moreover, the "maids" were carefully guarded from imposition or force. Orders were straitly given that "In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives until they can be supplied with husbands.... We desire that the marriage be free, according to nature, and we would not have these maids deceived and married to servants, but only such freemen and tenants as have means to maintain them... not enforcing them to marry against their wills." However, there was very little need for these precautions, since the men of the settlement flocked in crowds to the sale of the ladies, and the only difficulty was that there were more suitors than there were fair ones to make them happy. The scene presented must have been very much like that to be found at the old hiring fairs of England, and there does not seem to have been more embarrassment on the part of the "maids" while their charms were being appraised by their suitors than if they had been merely disposing of their services for a short time and in menial capacity. It is impossible to suppose that women who would seek matrimony under such circumstances were of a very refined type; but, on the other hand, they must have been possessed of bravery and independence beyond the common lot of women of whatever class. Later, sixty other "maids," "young, handsome, and chaste," according to the chronicle, were induced to come out to the colony under the same conditions, and these and their predecessors were among the founders of the race which developed into the soldiers of the Revolution and of the yet more terrible struggle of later years.

Unfortunately, there were at this time introduced into the young colony two elements that were to affect it, one slightly and temporarily only, the other profoundly and for as long as there was in the South a distinctiveness of culture. These were the practice of sending criminals to Virginia and the introduction of slavery. To the first number of settlers sent over by Sandys, James I. added one hundred felons, and this was by no means the last shipload of criminals to be exported to the Virginias. These criminals included both men and women, and their introduction among the colonists, though on the pretence of their being indented servants, was an evil which for long found results in the lower strata of the growing civilization. The women, generally of the lowest dregs of English life,--where not political convicts, who were of course of entirely different stamp,--were "hired" by the more dissolute of the unmarried male colonists, and became openly their mistresses; and thus there came into existence a social element which was to do important if insidious work in the undermining of the older morals of the settlement. Slavery, however, was of far more import, and affected all the future civilization. In August, 1619, twenty negroes were sold as slaves to some of the planters, the blacks having been brought by a Dutch ship. This was the rise of the African cloud, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, but in time to grow to most portentous dimensions, and to bear the whirlwind as its legitimate progeny. It may be questioned why note is made of the rise of slavery in a book devoted to the history of woman; but to those who will trouble to think the reason is evident. The woman is always at once a formative cause and a product of her civilization; and the civilization of the South was built upon the institution of slavery. To comprehend the culture even the nature of the Southern lady we must keep constantly in mind the influence of the national institution, so that, as its effects will have to be frequently noted in the future, it is not amiss to chronicle here the small root which afterward spread to such upas growth.

Turning to matters more immediately of the time with which we are at present concerned, a proclamation of Governor Wyat, issued shortly before the fall of the Virginia Company and the consequent beginning of the real colonial period, is worthy of note as bearing upon the universal story of women. Though including men as well as women in its provisions, the proclamation was aimed chiefly at the latter, and its intent was the breaking up of the seemingly common habit of becoming engaged to more than one person at a time. A man was to be whipped for doing so vile an action, though a woman might escape with a fine. The worthy governor forbade women "to contract themselves to two several men at one time," for the reason that "women are yet scarce and in much request, and this offense has become very common, whereby great disquiet has arisen between parties and no small trouble to the government." It was further proclaimed that "Every minister should give notice in his church that what man or woman soever should use any word or speech tending to a contract of marriage to two several persons at one time... as might entangle or breed scruples in their consciences, should for such their offense either undergo corporal correction or be punished by fine or otherwise, according to the quality of the person so offending."

Such a regulation would not be popular nowadays; but coquetry seems to have been of more serious moment then. That flirtation should threaten the government itself suggests a singular state of affairs indeed.

It is now time to turn to a consideration of another settlement--the only one that rivalled that of Virginia in effectiveness of result and continuity. For the settlements in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and others--with one exception, to be reserved for later brief consideration--did not continue the civilization which they established, but took their later culture, that which survives, from the more prepotent colonies of Virginia and New England. Therefore they do not enter into our present inquiry, since they produced no feminine type or even individual of note; it is to the more northern and southern settlements that we must look for the foundations and matrices of American femininity. We have glanced at that of the South; let us glean what we may of the story of women in that of the North.

It was on November 11, 1620, that the Pilgrim Fathers, as they have come to be known to history, united in an agreement which was the foundation of constitutional government in America. They had been brought, rather as it seemed by Divine Providence than by their own guidance, to a more northern shore than that to which they had intended voyaging, and they had determined to make that place their colonial abode. Tradition records that the first to step on the famous Plymouth Rock was a woman, Mary Chilton by name, and the circumstance has brought her name down to us of this day. It would not seem a difficult manner of attaining immortality, that of stepping from a boat to a rock; most women, being gifted with the ordinary means of locomotion, could do as much; but circumstances decide the value of every action, and so Mary Chilton achieved fame by one of the simplest and most natural acts of her whole existence. There are those who deny the very existence of Mary Chilton and sneer at the tradition that makes a woman lead the way to the florescence of American nationality; and it must be confessed that Mary Chilton, having taken the step which was to preserve her from forgetfulness, disappears as completely as if she had never lived. But we like to think the legend true, for it was most appropriate that a woman should head the march to that land where women were destined to be such a controlling force and where, as in no other country, women were to lead in many of the greatest movements that have crowned the civilization of our own day. One likes to believe in Mary Chilton; and it is something in favor of the story that the name of James Chilton is found attached to the document which has already been referred to and that it would be quite in keeping with Puritan superstition to send a young and pure maiden before them as their advance guard into the unknown land which was to be won by strength of soul as well as of arm.

At least we know that there were women, and those in due proportion, among the settlers. The total number of pilgrims has always been stated as small, and the Mayflower, their little vessel, is said to have been of but one hundred and eighty tons burden; but it is evident that there has been error in both these matters, judging by the large number of New Englanders whose ancestors "came over in the Mayflower." If half these genealogical tracings are founded on fact, the supposed tiny Mayflower must have been the forerunner of our present huge ocean liners; but, be this as it may, we have record that the first of these many descendants was born on the day following the arrival of the vessel. It was not a girl this time, as had been the case with the first child born of English parents on Virginia soil; it was a boy, and he was appropriately named Peregrine, which signifies "pilgrim." While not directly germane to our subject--save so far as having been born of woman makes all men contributory to the history of women--it may be interesting to state that this first child of the Pilgrims lived to the age of eighty-three years, and died at Marshfield, where later died the greatest of New Englanders.

The influence of the women of the colonists was doubtless great in maintaining the courage and constancy of the men; but, as was the case with the early settlers in Virginia, we have little or no particular record of the feminine portion of the settlement. We are told of Priscilla, "the Puritan Maiden" in Longfellow's poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and we are entirely at liberty to account her a real personage if we desire to do so. It is at least certain that Miles Standish was the valiant captain pictured by the poet and that John Alden to whom the poet ascribes the office of deputy-wooer was one of the Pilgrim Fathers--whether the latter in esse or in futuro we are not told, though knowledge on this point might have bearing upon the authenticity of the story of Priscilla and if the rest of the legend is not true it is at least well imagined. Moreover, it may be asserted that it is true in the deeper sense of truth, whether or not it be loyal to mere fact. The picture drawn for us of the Puritan maiden is typically true and therefore worthy of quotation even in a volume dedicated to the Muse of history rather than to her of poesy:

"Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday

Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in the Proverbs--

How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her always,

How all the days of her life she will do him good and not evil,

How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness,

How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff,

How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household,

Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving."

For they were no idle butterflies of fashion, no languid great dames, these wives and daughters of the Pilgrims. Their hands knew the rush of the thread on the wheel, the touch of the distaff, and were even not unacquainted at need with the weight of musket and bird-gun. They were cast to some extent in the fine old Spartan mould, these Pilgrim mothers; they feared God--and nothing else--and they bent their energies to the performance of their sole aspiration, that of "doing their duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call them." It was a state of life that held peril and toil and little reward for these things; but they cared nothing for this, these splendid pilgrim dames, but lived their lives bravely and died with the consciousness that they had done their best to make noble the birth of a new land which should shelter their children forever.

The first authentic record that we have of an individual woman in the time of the first northern settlement comes to us in the shape of a death, as the first feminine name of the Roanoke settlers came to us connected with a birth. It was in 1630, when the settlement of Massachusetts Bay had begun to take some aspect of permanency, that there came into its harbor a fleet of some ten or eleven ships, the flagship, a vessel of three hundred and fifty tons, being named the Arabella. She was thus called because of the presence on board of Lady Arabella Johnson, wife of a commoner called Isaac Johnson. The pair had come to America to breathe a purer atmosphere of freedom in religion than they had been able to find at home; but Lady Arabella was not destined long to enjoy the liberty she sought. The words of Cotton Mather may be quoted in regard to her, the first of noble blood to succumb to the rigors of the new climate:

"Of those who soon dyed after their first arrival, not the least considerable was the lady Arabella, who left an earthly paradise in the family of an Earldom, to encounter the sorrows of a wilderness, for the entertainments of a pure worship in the house of God; and then immediately left that wilderness for the Heavenly paradise, whereto the compassionate Jesus, of whom she was a follower, called her. We have read concerning a noble woman of Bohemia, who forsook her friends, her plate, her house and all, and because the gates of the city were guarded, crept through the common sewer, that she might enjoy the institutions of our Lord at another place where they might be had. The spirit which acted that noble woman, we may suppose carried this blessed lady thus to and through the hardships of an American desart. But as for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq.,

'"He try'd

To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'ed.'

"His mourning for the death of his honourable consort was too bitter to be extended a year; about a month after her death his ensued, unto the extreme loss of the whole plantation."

There is here much cause for smiling, especially in old Dr. Mather's unconscious snobbery as to the "paradise of an earldom," even to italicising the important word, and to his wonder how anyone could leave such delights for the goal of a "desart"; but there is also some moving if equally unconscious pathos, and for this, as well as for the fact of Lady Arabella's being the first feminine name to come down to us from Plymouth in the dignity of history, her virtues and fate are here recorded. Moreover, that otherwise unfamed lady from Bohemia who left her "plate" behind her in her search for religious liberty deserves to be rescued from oblivion.

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH
After the painting by C. Y. Turner

We are told of Priscilla, "the Puritan Maiden" in Longfellow's poem The Courtship of Miles Standish, and we are entirely at liberty to account her a real personage if we desire to do so. It is at least certain that Miles Standish was the valiant captain pictured by the poet and that John Alden to whom the poet ascribes the office of deputy-wooer was of the Pilgrim Fathers.

In the same vessel that brought Lady Arabella to the inhospitable shores of America there came another woman whose name better deserves memorial, as far as is concerned lasting influence of life, than does that of the saintly lady commemorated by Cotton Mather. Anne Dudley was the daughter of an old servitor of the Count of Lincoln, the father of Lady Arabella, and was herself married to Simon Bradstreet, destined to be governor of Massachusetts. She was as devout and devoted as Lady Arabella herself, and she was of yet finer stamp in that she was a poet. She was a Puritan of the Puritans; her father was later elected to be governor of the colony, preceding his son-in-law in that distinguished position, so that Anne Bradstreet must have been from the beginning of her life permeated with the very spirit of Puritanism. One would not think that such training and environment would be favorable to the fostering of the poetic faculty; severity of creed and the aesthetic soul do not often go hand in hand. Yet she was the first professional poet of New England,--indeed, probably of America; and, if fault be found for calling her a poet of America when she was not a native product, answer may be made that the New Englanders strenuously claimed her as their own under the title of the Tenth Muse, and that she was, if not a product of the soil of Massachusetts, at least a product of the spirit that made that soil sacred. She was very young, not yet twenty, when she arrived at Plymouth, and most of her poems were written during the first decade of her residence in the colony. Since, in this portion of our history there are few feminine names upon which to expatiate, it may not be a waste of space to give in full the title page of the first volume of poems issued by the "American Sappho":

"THE TENTH MUSE--Lately sprung up in America; or Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and description of

Together with an Exact Epitomie of the Four Monarchies,

Also a Dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles, With divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts. Printed at London for Stephen Bowtell at the Signe of the Bible in Popes Head Alley. 1650."

It will be noticed that the gifted poet was forced to have recourse to her native land to produce her works, and it may be for the repute of her modesty, it is to be hoped that it was that she never saw the title page until it had been printed. However, it would seem that there were many of her time who believed that she had some just cause to claim the title which had been given her. One of her admirers wrote in more or less admirable verse a long compliment to her which contained the notable though undeniably plagiarized line:

"None but her self must dare commend her parts."

Apart from its too close resemblance to

"None but himself could be his parallel,"

it strikes one that Mrs. Bradstreet's admirer pays a poor compliment to the lady's modesty, however he may praise her ability; and another and abler critic, the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, takes occasion in paying his respects to the singer to cast a slur upon her sex:

"It half revives my chill frost-bitten blood

To see a Woman once do aught that's good;"

which could hardly be described as fulsome praise. It must be remembered that in those days it was rare to see a woman attempt anything with the pen, and the prologue to the volume contains some deprecatory reference to this state of affairs:

"I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

Who says my hand a needle better fits,

A Poet's pen all scorn I thus should wrong,

For such despite they cast on Female wits;

If what I do prove well, it won't advance,

They'll say it's stoln, or else it was by chance."

This strikes the judicious reader as better sarcasm than poetry; and, indeed, when one looks through the volume it is difficult to understand the enthusiasm roused by the production. It is a very ambitious affair; the Elements, as promised by the title page, have a great deal to say, and most of it is said in the right Ercles vein. Here, for example, is the manner in which Fire ends her little speech:

"What shall I say of Lightning and of Thunder

Which kings and mighty ones amaze with wonder,

Which make a Cæsar (Romes) the worlds proud head,

Foolish Caligula creep under 's bed.

And in a word, the world I shall consume

And all therein at that great day of Doom."

This is not impressive; and we may gladly skip the rest of the remarks made by the Elements. The second quaternion of poems, as shown by the title page, is concerned with the four Ages of man, wherein the first Age exclaims:

"What gripes of wind mine infancy did pain

What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain!"

which is very excellent realism, but not highly poetical, either in sentiment or expression. The Seasons have but little more claim to a hearing than the Elements, and in the poem on the Four Monarchies, which is merely a rhymed version of Raleigh's History of the World, the only notable lines are those containing Mrs. Bradstreet's defence of her sex:

"Now say, have Women worth? or have they none?

Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone?

Nay Masculines, you have thus taxed us long;

But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.

Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason,

Know 'tis Slander now but once was Treason."

The queen to whom these lines refer is of course Elizabeth; and we can well believe that in her day so to asperse the sex as to decline to admit their possession of the attribute of reason may well have been treason sufficient, if reported to the highest quarter, to be punished by the terrible peine forte et dure. Although we may entirely sympathize with Mrs. Bradstreet's vigorous defence of her sex from the foul slanders of the "Masculines," it is difficult to see wherein she makes good her claim to be considered the Tenth Muse, or the Hundred and Tenth, if so many could be named. Nevertheless, at her death sermons laudatory of her life and work were preached in nearly every church in New England, and her afflicted family must have been greatly comforted by the number and expressions of the elegies with which they were fairly deluged. Here is a specimen from the pen of the Rev. John Norton:

"A Funeral Eulogy, upon that Pattern and Patron of Virtue, the truly pious, peerless and matchless Gentlewoman

MRS. ANNE BRADSTREET, RIGHT PANARETES,

Mirror of her Age, Glory of her Sex, whose Heaven-born-Soul leaving its earthly Shrine, chose its native home, and was taken to its Rest, upon the 16th Sept. 1672."

All of which strikes us as a little hyperbolic, while the phrase "Patron of Virtue" does not appear as very happily chosen, and the reference of the reverend gentleman in the body of his "poem" to the

"Black, fatal, dismal, inauspicious day"

would be a little overdone if applied to a general catastrophe. Yet even this balderdash is of interest as showing us the estimate in which was held America's first woman of letters the first at least to attain note and thus worthy, in that respect at least, to be held as patron saint by all the lady writers of our day and country.

There were a few other women writers during the period of settlement; but they were very few. As may be gathered from the tenor of the quoted lines from Anne Bradstreet's prologue, the spirit of Puritanism was opposed to literary pursuits by a woman, at least to the degree of a profession. Indeed, it is probable that there was widespread sympathy with the sentiments of the chronicler of the following incident, in which is to be seen the regard in which were held feminine litterati:

"The Governor of Hartford upon Connecticut came to Boston, and brought his wife with him (a godly young woman and of special parts) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her husband being very loving and tender of her was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended to her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, she had kept her wits and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her."

It was Governor Winthrop whose domestic affliction arose from such a strange cause; and it is not unlikely that he inspired the words here set down. At all events, the comments are amusing. If all the women now writing books were to suffer like penalty with Mistress Winthrop the insane asylums would have to be considerably enlarged; but authorship seems to have grown less fatal to the fair sex of late years.

For the rest, we must regard these mothers of the country in the mass rather than as individuals; and this is in accord with their true natures. They were not given to "brawling in the streets" or to "contention upon the housetops," these women of the old Puritans; they did their duties in their household and left the management of the weightier affairs of the young colony to the men. Yet they guided these same men in ways which they hardly knew; and they were in all ways fitted to be the mothers of the nation which was even then beginning to stretch its infant arms in growing strength. They were grave, decorous, and terribly strong, those wives and daughters of the Pilgrims. They took upon themselves the cares of the household, and these were not slight in those days when all provision must be garnered by the sweat of the eater's brow. There were then no shops to which one might send in search of luxuries or even necessities; the Puritan woman usually brought with her on her ship some store of household goods, some chests of clothing, some plate perhaps to furnish forth her table; for all the rest she depended upon the energy and skill of her husband, the work of her own hands, and the blessing of that God to worship whom in freedom she and hers had sought the wilderness as their home. And the spirit of that wilderness entered into her as she dwelt in its boundaries; she drew from its breast some of its quiet and strength and truth, even as the aborigines had imbibed these qualities in their long communion with nature at her best. There was to come a time, and that right soon, when the reclamation of the wilderness should have so far progressed that there would be town life, on its borders at least, and the Puritan woman would lose some of the qualities which had been imparted to her by the land to which she had come as an alien and where she remained as a daughter; but until the coming of that time she was true to the inspiration of the country in which her lot was cast. America was then a land of mystery; back from the Atlantic stretched miles upon miles of untrodden, unknown wood and plain and hill and lake and river; and the power of the unknown was felt over that little strip of coast which acknowledged though not in entire subjection the control of the white race. So the Pilgrim Mother had ever the sense of the mysterious, the unfathomable, pressing upon her, ever ready to whisper new secrets in her ear; and though she was as a rule stern and unimaginative, she was more profoundly affected by this mystery than she knew. It was to bear terrible fruit in after time in the horrors of Salem witchcraft; but for the present it only tried and proved and hardened the courage of the women who faced it with confidence in the strength of their husbands and in the protection of their God.

So to New England and Virginia there came the founders of a race led forth from home by different motives, bringing different qualities of body and mind and spirit to the formation of the people, but both foundations possessing strength upon which could be built a mighty nation. And not the men of Jamestown or Roanoke, with their fighting and their tilling, not the Pilgrim Fathers, with their stern courage and their strait creed, but the women of Virginia and the Pilgrim Mothers were those to whom must look that new nation for all its best. It was not the blood of kings and princes that came to vitalize this our land in the period of its rescue from the dominion of the lesser races, but the blood of yeomen and peasants, sprung from generations of fighters with the soil rather than with men, yet soldiers too, and so in all ways fitted for the battles they must wage with men and beasts and the earth itself ere they could win an empire for their race. And this blood comes down to us through the women of that day--the Mothers of a Nation.

CHAPTER V

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

There were many marked differences between the period of settlement and the early colonial period, which latter, for our present purpose, we may roughly class as that extending from 1630 to 1685. Of course the most salient difference was that in the colonial epoch there first appeared the racial American as we now know him--not the red man of the forest and plain, to whom such title was really due, but the white American, the son of the soil, but not of generations of dwellers thereupon,--the American as universally entitled to-day.

It must be remembered that there is no parallelism in the chronology of the beginnings of the North and the South. The Virginia colony was, in matter of time, far in advance of that on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and the colonial period had fairly begun in the South when settlement was yet hardly established in the North. Many white children, native Americans, had succeeded Virginia Dare in the southern colony before Peregrine White made his appearance as the pioneer American of the New England dominion; and therefore the American type had to some extent become confirmed in the one section before it had been modelled in the other. So that synchronistic treatment of the development of the American race in its beginnings is impossible, and this tends to produce confusion of statement and consequently of thought. It is fortunate for our present purpose, therefore, that the development of a distinct feminine type seems to have been almost confined to New England. The Virginia woman was not markedly individual; she had certain definite characteristics, even from the first, but these seem to have been rather of environment as modifying original race than of race as taking impression from environment. There were many reasons for this, which we shall consider later in the chapter; but for the present we will leave the woman of Virginia to turn to her younger but stronger sister of the North, the American Puritan woman.

If it be true--and denial is hardly possible--that during the period of settlement women played but a small part, at least as individuals, in the general result and progress, the same statement concerning the early colonial period, at least in New England, would meet with prompt and strenuous denial at the hands of history. We are accustomed to vaunt the present as the day of feminine influence in matters of human interest; but it may be doubted if, as far as our own country is concerned, the palm must not be awarded to the early days of the Puritan settlements. Such award may not be altogether to the liking of the fair sex, since the effect of the feminine influence was almost invariably in the direction of turbulence and revolt; but that effect was very intense and formative. It was chiefly in the matters of religion, or that which passed for such, that woman's influence was exerted and effectual; but it must be remembered that religion was the paramount subject in the consideration of the Puritan, whether male or female. None the worse for that, doubtless, were those staunch, if stern, followers of conscience; but one may be permitted to wish that they had been less unbending, less gloomy,--less Puritanical, in short,--in their ideas concerning that which they termed Christianity. As in all else, it was the women who were the extremists in this matter; and fanaticism, persecution, and enthusiasm were by the women rather than the men maintained at a height of fervor, not to say frenzy, that stopped short not even at the taking of life to further its own ends or to crush the purposes of others.

Before entering into this more particular portion of our present subject, however, it may be well to cast a hurried glance at the status of woman in the Puritan settlements when these began to attain to the dignity of colonies. As early as 1631 we find the court of Plymouth sending for the elders and charging them to urge upon the conscience of the people that they should avoid the costliness of apparel which was beginning to be noted, as a detriment to the young colony; but, unfortunately, the worshipful court did not take into consideration all the circumstances of the case, for we read that "divers of the elders' wives were partners in the general disorder," and we may be entirely sure that the elders did not dare too strenuously to urge reform in this matter. Winthrop tells us that "little was done about it." So that even here we find feminine influence paramount, and on the side of disorder; and this was to be the history of the sex in New England for many a day, even though there were to be notable exceptions to the rule thus begun.

When we read the "Twelve Good Rules" of the infant colony, we are constrained to believe that some of them were framed with especial reference to women, and that they were dictated by some sad experiences. The twelve rules ran thus:

1. Profane no divine ordinance.
2. Touch no state matters.
3. Urge no healths.
4. Pick no quarrels.
5. Encourage no vice.
6. Repeat no grievances.
7. Reveal no secrets.
8. Maintain no ill opinions.
9. Make no comparisons.
10. Keep no bad company.
11. Make no long meals.
12. Lay no wagers.

Truly a Draconian code in its paternalism; but we are inevitably forced to the conclusion that the framers thereof had in their minds' eye their helpmeets when they laid down rules 6 and 8, while they must have smiled at one another when they wrote rule 7.

One of the first regulations of the infant colony was in regard to marriage, and ever and anon we find the Solons of the settlement laying down new legislation for the better enforcement of the marriage tie as a thing to breed accord rather than discord in the colony. It would seem that there was considerable trouble in regulating the matrimonial desires of maidens under guardianship and maid-servants, since in 1638 there was published a regulation which deserves quotation in whole, both for its quaintness of phraseology and for the light which it throws upon female servitude in the colony, whether undergone because of ties of blood or of bondage resulting from apprenticeship:

"Whereas divers persons unfit for marriage, both in regard of their yeong yeares, as also in regard of their weake estate, some practiseing the inveagleing of men's daughters and maids under gardians, contrary to their parents and gardians likeing, and of mayde servants, without leave and likeing of their masters: It is therefore enacted by the Court that if any shall make any motion of marriage to any man's daughter or mayde servant, not having first obtained leave and consent of the parents or master so to doe, shall be punished either by fine or corporall punishment, or both, at the discretions of the bench, and according to the nature of the offence.

"It is also enacted, that if a motion of marriage be duly made to the master, and through any sinister end or covetous desire, he will not consent thereunto, then the cause to be made known unto the magistrates, and they to set down such order therein as upon examination of the case shall appear to be most equall on both sides."

While it would seem from the first part of this somewhat puzzlepated enactment that "yeong yeares" were considered as disabling one from "inveagleing" young ladies into the toils of matrimony, yet in cases where it was evident that the objection of the master of the maid servant was founded upon entirely personal grounds of his own gain there was recourse to a tribunal for the obtaining of justice. This portion of the law shows how careful were the old fathers of the country to encourage marriage wherever this could be done with no risk to the harmony of the settlement. We can also see how strict were the ideas of female servitude. Not only had the parent or guardian absolute power over the hand of the daughter or ward, but the master of an indentured servant could at least obstruct her matrimonial designs. In all these cases there was the same basal idea--the loss of service. The interest of the father in his daughter, of the guardian in his ward, and of the master in his maid servant were supposed to be identical and to be founded on actual loss sustained through the transference of right of service from them to an alien in the family. In this "fiction of the law" one can see the persistence of an idea as old as the status of woman as a mere chattel, and it is curious to note that in some phases it survives even unto the present day.

There are recorded numerous instances of the enforcement of the law which has been quoted. One Will Colefoxe, in 1647, was brought before the court at Stratford and fined five pounds for "labouring to inveagle the affection of Write his daughter;" and, among several other notable instances, we find Arthur Hubbard in 1660 fined the same amount as Colefoxe, the court this time being that of Plymouth, the complainant Thomas Prence, the Governor of the colony, and the charge that of "disorderly and unrighteously endeavoring to gain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence." It would seem that Master Hubbard was as persistent as he was unrighteous, for after an interval of seven years we find him again mulcted of the same amount for the same offense regarding the same lady; but his patient waiting had its reward, as in a few months he became the happy husband of Mistress Prence.

Yet the law did not exclusively care for the father and threaten the suitor, for the latter, as we have seen, had recourse of law if he were unjustly rejected by the master of a "mayde;" and it would seem that this part of the statute was held to apply to the father as well, since in 1661 Richard Taylor obtained judgment against the father of Ruth Whieldon for interfering with the marriage of the young pair. Probably the court issued something in the nature of a perpetual injunction; but its task must have been most difficult in the case of another youth, Ralph Parker by name, who, having been sent about his business by the sire of his faire ladye, actually sued said sire for loss of time incurred in courting. Nor were there lacking maids to aid their lovers to avoid the penalty of the law. There is record of one Sarah Tuttle who was, on May Day in the year 1660, and in the colony of New Haven, while on an errand to a neighbor, Dame Murline, kissed by Jacob Murline in the very presence of his mother and sisters. The chronicler,--doubtless with shocked feelings but not without a suggestion of a smacking of lips as well,--records that "they sat down together, his arm being about her and her arm upon his shoulder or about his neck; and hee kissed her, and she kissed him, or they kissed one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and Susan testified." Which, when one considers the detail, was doubtless very shocking; and we cannot wonder that Goodman Turtle haled Murline into court on the charge of "inveagleing the affections of Sarah his daughter." But behold! Sarah, "being asked in court if Jacob inveagled her said, 'No!'" This was a baffling of justice, perhaps unprecedented; for only absolute "inveaglement" could constitute guilt under the statute, and the party most concerned denied the criminality of the accused by taking the guilt upon herself. It is no wonder that the scandalized court took occasion to call Sarah a "bould Virgin," and fined her a goodly amount, though on what count does not appear. Two years afterward half the fine was remitted, nor does it appear that the remaining moiety was ever paid; which seems just as well, since the real sufferer would probably have been Master Tuttle, the plaintiff, who would naturally be called on to pay his daughter's debt--which would have been a miscarriage of justice indeed.

It would seem from these accounts that matrimony was hedged about with difficulty in the time of the Puritans; but this was far from being the true state of the case. On the contrary, marriage was in every way given "incurridgement." In several towns bachelors about to change their condition were allotted tracts of ground from the commonwealth, and "maid lotts" were granted at Salem until frowned upon by that grand old Puritan, Endicott, who placed on the town records his opinion that it were best to discontinue the custom and "avoid all presedents & evil events of granting lotts unto single maidens not disposed of." "Spinsters of uncertain age" were difficult to find in those days; the time and circumstances called for matrimony as a duty to the State as well as to oneself. The death of the sister-in-law of Governor Bradford was recorded with the addition of some words of wonder that, though ninety-one years of age, "she was a godly old maid never married." Yet even then there was a measure of respect for those women who refrained from matrimony, and some of these were commended for their choice. There is to be found in the Life and Errors of John Dunton an account of a maiden lady which is worth quoting, not only for the picture of the lady herself, but for the light which it throws upon some of the customs of its time,--which was, however, rather later than the days which have thus far been considered.

"It is true an old (or superannuated) Maid in Boston is thought such a curse as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a dismal spectacle); yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaux) that it is not her necessity but her choice that keeps her a Virgin. She is now about thirty years (the age which they call a Thornback) yet she never disguises herself, and talks as little as she thinks of Love. She never reads any plays or Romances, goes to no Balls or Dancing-match (as they do who go to such Fairs) to meet with Chapmen. Her looks, her speech, her whole behaviour are so very chaste, that but once, (at Governor's Island, where we went to be merry at roasting a hog) going to kiss her, I thought she would have blushed to death.

"Our Damsel knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst the women (as there is least danger from that sex) so that I found it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent in Religious Worship. She knew Time was a dressing-room for Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses than those of the Comb, the Toilet, and the Glass.