“more loving, pittiful and modest, milde, provident, and laborious than their lazie husbands....  Since the English arrivall comparison hath made them miserable, for seeing the kind usage of the English to their wives, they doe as much condemne their husbands for unkindnesse and commend the English for love, as their husbands, commending themselves for their wit in keeping their wives industrious, doe condemn the English for their folly in spoiling good working creatures.”

Concerning the intelligent, widely scattered, and numerous Iroquois, Morgan, who knew them more intimately than anyone else, wrote (322), that “the Indian regarded woman as the inferior, the dependent, and the servant of man, and, from nature and habit, she actually considered herself to be so.”  “Adultery was punished by whipping; but the punishment was inflicted on the woman alone, who was supposed to be the only offender” (331).  “Female life among the Hurons had no bright side,” wrote Parkman (J.C., XXXIII.).  After marriage,

“the Huron woman from a wanton became a drudge ... in the words of Champlain, ‘their women were their mules.’  The natural result followed.  In every Huron town were shrivelled hags, hideous and despised, who, in vindictiveness, ferocity, and cruelty, far exceeded the men.”

The Jesuit Relations contain many references to the merciless treatment of their women by the Canadian Indians.  “These poor women are real pack-mules, enduring all hardships.”  “In the winter, when they break camp, the women drag the heaviest loads over the snow; in short, the men seem to have as their share only hunting, war, and trading” (IV., 205).  “The women here are mistresses and servants” (Hurons, XV.).  In volume III. of the Jesuit Relations (101), Biard writes under date of 1616: 

“These poor creatures endure all the misfortunes and hardships of life; they prepare and erect the houses, or cabins, furnishing them with fire, wood, and water; prepare the food, preserve the meat and other provisions, that is, dry them in the smoke to preserve them; go to bring the game from the place where it has been killed; sew and repair the canoes, mend and stitch the skins, curry them and make clothes and shoes of them for the whole family; they go fishing and do the rowing; in short, undertake all the work except that alone of the grand chase, besides having the care and so weakening nourishment of the children....

“Now these women, although they have so much trouble, as I have said, yet are not cherished any more for it.  The husbands beat them unmercifully, and often for a very slight cause.  One day a certain Frenchman undertook to rebuke a savage for this; the savage answered, angrily:  ’How now, have you nothing to do but to see into my house, every time I strike my dog?’”

Surely Dr. Brinton erred grievously when he wrote,