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skins bundled on her head or shoulder," while the man carries only his spear, bow, and quiver." The conditions among the American Indians were practically the same. Cotton Mather said of the Indians of Massachusetts : "The men are most abomi- nably slothful, making their poor squaws or wives to plant, and dress, and barn, and beat their corn, and build their wig- wams for them ; " "^ and Jones, referring to the women of southern tribes, says : " Doomed to perpetual drudgery and to that sub- ordinate position to which woman is always consigned where civil- ization and religion are not, she was little less than a beast of bur- den, busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets, moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her own chil- dren, and at all times a servant to the commands and passions of the stronger sex." 3
Primitive woman was certainly very busy, but I have seen no reason to believe that she considered her condition unfortunate. Our great-grandmothers were also very busy, but they were apparently not discontented. There was no reason why woman should not labor in primitive society. The forces which with- drew her from labor were expressions of later social conditions. Speaking largely, these considerations were the desire of men to preserve the beauty of women, and their desire to withdraw them from association with other men. It is the connection in thought and fact between idle and beautiful women and wealth, indeed, which has frequently led to the keeping of a superfluous number of such women as a sign of wealth. The exemption of women from labor, in short, implied an economic surplus which early society did not possess. The lower classes of modern society do not possess it either, and there the women are still " drudges," if we want to use that word about a situation which is normal, in view of the economic condition of the men and women con- cerned It was necessary that primitive society, in the absence of elaborate machinery for doing things, in unstable and precari-
' Arbousset and Daumas, Voyage of Exploration, p. 249 ; Moffat, Mission- ary Labors and Scenes in Southern Africa, p. 53.
■Schoolcraft, History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part I, p. 285.
'Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 70.
