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.

[Illus