The Treatment of Women most easily tests a
Civilisation

(5) In their attitude to women we observe the same contradiction in the Polynesian manners and customs that reveals the mingling of two different stages of culture. The women do not only all the household work, and especially the despised duty of cooking, but most of the field work, the raising and the collecting of the food, and the dressing of page 67materials and the making of garments, just as amongst the most primitive and savage races; whilst the men do the hunting and fishing and fighting, the building of houses and canoes, and everything connected with art and religion, carving, tattooing, and oratory. This represents the early stage when the wives were also the slaves, when the women of the conquered tribes were taken into the households to raise children and to do servile duties. The result is that the men retain their erect attitude and handsome form till far on in life, whilst the women, the burden-bearers, grow early old and hag-like. This contrast between the sexes belongs to a primitive stage, in which polygamy prevails, and the chief occupations of the male are war and hunting.

(6) But there are other aspects of female life in Polynesia that are a direct contradiction to this low polygamic stage. Women often occupied the position of distinction given to them by the Teutons, as described by Tacitus in the Germania. They were priestesses and seers, whose utterances were received with awe, and whose persons were guarded with reverence. They mingled with the men in warfare, and contributed not a little to the enthusiasm of the battle and the success of the victory. Nay, we hear not infrequently of chieftainesses who led the defence of a pa or the march of the warriors into battle. For the women had practically equal rights of inheritance with the men. The only limitation of it was that if they married into another tribe they did not take their rights with them as the men generally did.

(7) But perhaps the most striking contrast in the situation was the romance that hung round youthful love in all their legends, arguing great independence in the daughter of the household, although polygamy was not uncommon, and the marriage rite, unlike those of all other events in life (birth, baptism, tattooing, cutting of the hair, initiation, death), was insignificant, a mere handing over of the bride by her page 68brothers and uncles into the hands of the husband as his property. And a similar antithesis lies between the attitude of the Polynesian to maidenhood and to married life. There was no value attached to purity in the former, either in practice or theory; the girl was left to do as she pleased without let or blame. In theory, though perhaps not always in practice, the bonds of marriage were strictly respected. The latter was doubtless due to the inheritance of tribal and family rights to the land, which any ambiguity in the descent would mar. A people that kept such careful genealogies could not but pay great attention to purity of family life and descent. And yet in their legends and stories there is evidence of considerable interference with it, and of considerable toleration of such interference. Perhaps there is no more piquant antithesis to be found in ethnology than this combination of polygamy and female inheritance, the romance of love and the complete licence permitted before marriage. It seems to be due to the conquest of a primitive people by warriors, who married the women of the conquered, and accepted many of their marriage customs.

(8) There are two significant traits in their treatment of women that point in this direction. One was that the women had to do all the cooking, and had to eat apart. The men were too sacred to take any share in the culinary work. They were often too sacred even to touch cooked food with their hands, and they had to be fed like little children, the women cramming the food into their mouths. The steam of cooked food must never cross the head of a great warrior. And the women had usually to cook their own food in a separate oven. The other feature was that the women had no part or lot in religion. Like the Patupaiarehe,. who stand for one tribe of pre-Polynesians, they had no karakia. If we piece these together with the abhorrence of cooked food exhibited by this legendary people, we may conclude that the warriors of the page 69six canoes furnished their households with aboriginal women. Yet the chiefs and their families would take their place beside the women and the slaves in the work of the field. And in some of the Polynesian groups, as in Tonga, the women were largely relieved from being burden-bearers. In New Zealand the primitive combination of wife and drudge formed a striking contrast to the romance of love, the power of inheritance by women, and the honour paid to priestesses and chieftainesses. The same piquant antithesis existed in their treatment of old men and of children. The old were neglected and left to die like the sick. And yet none were so honoured in their assemblies as the old men. They dote upon their children, even when adopted; no race has ever shown more fondness for the little ones. And yet the warriors would not object to feasting on the flesh of an infant, even when absolute need did not demand it: and infanticide, although not nearly so common as in Polynesia, was not unknown.