garment. He commenced with a club, but finding he could not hit her, changed it for a curved club with which he tried to 'peck' her on the head over guard. After a time he also had to give it up, and they had to make friends with the invincible woman. This is an instance of the manner in which the women are able to defend themselves with their weapon, the yam-stick, being no mean opponents of a man armed only with a club." 1 The status of woman was generally sad and pathetic in savage life, but we may accept it as an established fact that this was not because she was physically inferior to man, but was due rather to inferiority in the struggle for existence on account of maternity. In the family the man often tyrannized over the woman, and the woman came into the family unwillingly, driven by a greater necessity, but the family was not a product of force. It was a product of contract. It was controlled by the mores which soon established notions of the right way to behave and of rights and duties which would be conducive to prosperity and happiness.

In this primitive society the family became the arena in which folkways were formed and taught, traditions were handed down, myths were invented, and sympathies were cultivated. The mother and the children were in the closest association and intimacy. The instruction of example without spoken command or explanation was the chief instruction. It makes little difference whether we think of a family in a horde or of monandrous family of Australians or Bushmen. The children learned from their mothers the usages which were domestic and familiar, which underlie society and are moral in their character. At puberty the boys went with their fathers into the political body and became Howitt, A. W.: l.c., 197.

1

warriors and hunters. Then they were disciplined into the life of men and left the family. They got wives and founded families, but the father, in his own family, was an outsider and a stranger with few functions and little authority.

Mohammed gave approval to the father-family, which seems to have been winning acceptance in his time. Islam is founded on the father-family. In the Koran women are divided into three classes in respect to marriage: first, wives, that is, status-wives with all the rank, honor, and rights which the name implies; second, concubines, that is, wives of an inferior class, in a permanent and recognized relation, but without the rank and honor of wives; third, slaves, whose greatest chance of happiness was to "find favor" in the eyes of their master or owner. This classification of the wives was also a classification of the mothers, and it produced jealousy and strife of the children. Only men of rank and wealth could have households of this complex character. Those of limited means had to choose which form of wife they would take. The full status-wife could make such demands that she became a great burden to her husband, and it appears that the Moslems now prefer concubines or slaves. In Mohammedan royal families the jealousies and strifes of children, where the son of a slave might be preferred and made heir by the father, have reduced kingdoms and families to bloodshed and anarchy.

In general, in the mother-family, the domestic system must have lacked integration and discipline. The Six Nations or Iroquois had the mother-family in well-developed form. Each woman with her husband and children had a room about seven feet square in the "long house." This room was separated from others inhabited by similar families, not by a partition, but only by a pole three or four feet

from the floor, over which skins were hung. Each family shared fire with another family opposite, and evidently privacy was only imperfectly secured. Any man who did not bring in what was considered his fair share of food-supply could be expelled at any time. A husband had to satisfy not only his wife, but all her female relatives if he was to be in peace and comfort. He could withdraw when he chose, but he must leave his children, for they belonged to his wife. He must also keep the peace with all the other husbands in the house, although it is easy to see that frequent occasions of quarrel would occur. In short, the man had constant and important reasons to be dissatisfied with the mother-family. He always had one alternative: he could capture a woman outside the group. If he did this he distinguished himself by military prowess and the woman was a trophy. He was not limited in his control of her or of their children by any customs or traditions, and he could arrange his life as he pleased. We should expect that great numbers of men would try this alternative, but it does not appear that many did so. If they had done so they would have speedily introduced man-descent and the father-family. As we well know, uncivilized men do not freely reflect on their experience or discuss reforms or speculate on progress; they accept custom and tradition and make the best of it as they find it. The change to the man-family was brought about by some great alteration in the conditions of the struggle for existence or by the invention of a new tool or weapon used by the men or by war with powerful neighbors. This much, however, can be said with confidence about the family under woman-descent: it was the conservative institution of that form of society and in it traditions were cherished and education was accomplished. It did not encourage change or cherish

reforms, but preserved what had been inherited and protected what existed.

Probably the change from mother-family to fatherfamily was by far the greatest and most important revolution in the history of civilization. This was so because the family, especially in primitive society, is such a fundamental institution that it forces all other societal details into conformity with itself. Miss Kingsley, speaking of the negroes of West Africa, describes societal details as follows: "The really responsible male relative is the mother's older brother. From him must leave to marry be obtained for either girl or boy; to him and the mother must the present be taken which is exacted on the marriage of a girl; and should the mother die, on him and not on the father lies the responsibility of rearing the children. They go to his house and he treats and regards them as nearer and dearer to himself than his own children, and at his death, after his own brothers by the same mother, they become his heirs." These details are all consistent with the mother-family and are perfectly logical deductions from its principles. There never was any such thing as woman-rule, if by that it should be understood that women administered and conducted in detail the affairs of house or society, directing the men what they should do or not do; but the women of the Iroquois regulated the house life; they owned the land, in the only sense in which Indians could conceive of land-owning, because they tilled it; they established the reputation of warriors, and so determined who should be elected war chief in any new war, and they decided the treatment of captives. Women, however, never made a state, and war, so long as the woman-family existed, was always limited and imperfect. It was never 1 Travels in West Africa, etc., 224.

decided whether a man must fight with his wife's people or go back to the clan in which he was born and fight with that. War was oftenest about women or about blood revenge. It was, as among our Indians, a raid and not a persistent campaign; it was mean, cowardly, savage, and marked by base bloodshed.

Much of this seems strange and inverted to us, because our society has long been characterized by the fatherfamily. The state has long been the institution, or set of institutions, on which we rely for our most important interests and our notions of kinship, of rights, of moral right or wrong; and our ways of property, inheritance, trade, and intercourse have all been created by or adjusted to the system of man-descent. We can see what a great revolution had to be accomplished to go over from woman-descent to man-descent. Christian missionaries often find themselves entangled in this transition. In West Africa the native tie between mother and children is far closer than that between father and children, and the negro women do not like the change which white culture would bring about. In native law husband and wife have separate property, so that if white man's law was introduced, the woman would lose her property and would not get her husband's. The man also objects to giving his wife any claim on his property, while at the same time he does not want the children saddled on him. It seems to him utter absurdity that it should be his duty to care more for his wife than for his mother and sister.1 At every point, in going over to the fatherfamily, there is a transfer of rights and power and a readjustment of social theory.

In the long history of the man-family men have not been able to decide what they ought to think about 1 Kingsley, M. H.: West African Studies, 377.