These were allowed to marry none but private men; but by way of compensation they had the right to discard their husbands whenever they pleased and take another.  The other women had no more privileges than the squaws of other tribes; whenever a chief saw a girl he liked he simply informed the relatives of the fact and enrolled her among the number of his wives.  Charlevoix adds that he knew of no nation in America where the women were more unchaste.  The privileges conferred on the princesses thus appear like a coarse, topsy-turvy joke, while affording one more instance of the lowest degradation of woman.

Summing up the most ancient and trustworthy evidence regarding Mexico, Bandelier writes (627): 

“The position of women was so inferior, they were regarded as so far beneath the male, that the most degrading epithet that could be applied to any Mexican, aside from calling him a dog, was that of woman.”

If a woman presumed to don a man’s dress her death alone could wipe out the dishonor.

SOUTH AMERICAN GALLANTRY

So much for the Indians of North America.  The tribes of the southern half of the continent would furnish quite as long and harrowing a tale of masculine selfishness and brutality, but considerations of space compel us to content ourselves with a few striking samples.

In the northern regions of South America historians say that “when a tribe was preparing poison in time of war, its efficacy was tried upon the old women of the tribe."[219]

“When we saw the Chaymas return in the evening from their gardens,” writes Humboldt (I., 309),

“the man carried nothing but the knife or hatchet (machete) with which he clears his way among the underwood; whilst the woman, bending under a great load of plantains, carried one child in her arms, and, sometimes, two other children placed upon the load.”

Schomburgk (II., 428) found that Caribbean women generally bore marks of the brutal treatment to which they were subjected by the men.  Brett noted (27, 31) that among the Guiana tribes women had to do all the work in field and home as well as on the march, while the men made baskets, or lay indolently in hammocks until necessity compelled them to go hunting or fishing.  The men had succeeded so thoroughly in creating a sentiment among the women that it was their duty to do all the work, that when Brett once induced an Indian to take a heavy bunch of plantains off his wife’s head and carry it himself, the wife (slave to the backbone) seemed hurt at what she deemed a degradation of her husband.  One of the most advanced races of South America were the Abipones of Paraguay.  While addicted to infanticide they, contrary to the rule, were more apt to spare the female children; but their reason for this was purely commercial.  A son, they said, would be obliged to purchase a wife, whereas daughters may be sold to a bridegroom (Dobrizhoffer, II., 97).  The same missionary relates (214) that boys are laughed at, praised and rewarded for throwing bones, horns, etc., at their mothers.