succeeded by the son of his nearest of kin. This was the female chief, and she had, like the Sun, the power of life and death over the people. At the death of the female chief in 1721, her husband, not belonging to the family of the Sun, was strangled by her son, according to custom, and that without prejudice to other human sacrifices.[1] The ancient Spanish chroniclers also speak of the submission of the husbands to their wives in Nicaragua; they seem to have been treated as servants (Herrera, Audogoya).
Lastly, among the Redskins the matrons had the right to baptise the children—that is to say, to make them enter either the maternal or the paternal clan.[2]
These facts are curious. They prove, indeed, that with the Redskins the women enjoyed a notable influence, especially in ancient times. With the Seneca-Iroquois they could expel the incapable hunter; but this was evidently by their title of housekeepers of the clan. Among the Wyandots, they figured numerously in the council; but nevertheless, the supreme chief was a man. As for the woman-chief of the Natchez Indians, we find an equivalent of it in certain little despotic monarchies of black Africa. Among the Ashantees, and in Darfour, etc., the princesses dominate their husbands or their lovers by the prestige of royalty. Nothing is more natural than that a plebeian husband should be strangled on the tomb of his wife with other human victims, when we consider the prevailing ideas of future life and the absolute servility of the subject in primitive monarchical states. In fact, the power of women among the Redskins was more apparent than real. Charlevoix himself declares that their domination is fictitious,[3] "that they are, in domestic life, the slaves of their husband," that the men hold them in profound contempt, and that, amongst themselves, the epithet of "woman" is a cutting insult.
Important affairs were kept secret from them;[4] polygamy was habitually permitted to the men, but polyandry was nearly always prohibited to the women. In fact, among the Redskins the woman is the slave of her husband, and
