for many years a missionary among the Seneca
Iroquois, testify: "As to their families, at a time when they still
lived in their old long houses (communistic households of several
families) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned, so that the women
choose their husbands from other clans (gentes).... The female part
generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe
to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to
contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or
how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any
moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out. And he
could not dare to venture any resistance; the house was made too hot for
him and he had no other choice, but to return to his own clan (gens) or,
as was mostly the case, to look for another wife in some other clan. The
women were the dominating power in the clans (gentes) and everywhere
else. Occasionally they did not hesitate to dethrone a chief and degrade
him to a common warrior."

The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one
and the same gens, while the husbands come from different gentes, is the
cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in
primeval times. The discovery of this fact is the third merit of
Bachofen.

By way of supplement I wish to state that the reports of travelers and
missionaries concerning the overburdening of women among savages and
barbarians do not in the least contradict the above statements. The
division of labor between both sexes is caused by other reasons than the
social condition of women. Nations, where women have to work much harder
than is proper for them in our opinion, often respect women more highly
than Europeans do. The lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham
homage and a stranger to all real work stands on a far lower social
level than a hard-working barbarian woman, regarded as a real lady
(frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of such.

Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted
group marriage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations
among those nations of northwestern and especially of southern America
that are still in the higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many
reports of sexual license are current that the assumption of a complete
cessation of the ancient group marriage is hardly warrant