her for feasting without foreigners, as in the
Philippines, Japan, and China, and in many European countries. The
Hausfrau of the small merchant, laborer, or farmer is a drudge. In
Japan the woman remains subject to the hourly whims and wants of her
husband, and to his frequent infidelity, though she is true to him.

The Tahiti wife had the care of the canoe, the paddles, and all the
fishing and hunting things, and she accompanied her husband often in
these pursuits. The husband had to make the fire, prepare the oven,
kill the pig or dog or fowl, and do the outside chores; but she
had a lesser position than he at all public observances. She could
not become a priest or enter the temple, but must remain always at
a distance from the marae. Yet she could be a queen or a chiefess,
and as such was as powerful as a man, making war in person, and often
leading her troops valiantly. The Tahitian women were nearly as strong
as the men and mentally their full equal. They wound their husbands
around their fingers or treated them cruelly in many instances,
astonishing the whites by their independence. Only religion, the
taboos, held them in any restraint.

If a queen bore a child by an unknown father, the child was as royal
as if the descendant of a long line of kings; but if the father was
notoriously a commoner, the child remained a prince, though not so high
of rank as if his father had been an Arii. If a king had children by
a woman beneath his rank, they had no rights from their father, but
held a mixed position proportioned to the power of the father. He
established their rank by his personal prestige, as the kings of
Europe forced their bastards on the courts. Sixty years ago Tamatoa,
King of Raiatea of the Society Islands, himself the highest born of
all the chiefs of the archipelago, was forced to adopt a child of
King Pomare of Tahiti to succeed him because his own children were
by a woman of the people.

The woman thus had an advantage over the man in being able to transmit
her rank to her children, a survival of the matriarchate custom once
ruling the world. Polygamy was rarely indulged, though not forbidden. A
chief here and there might have two or three wives. Women were allowed
only one husband, but often avowed lovers were tolerated, if not
feared, by the husband. Mr. Banks, president of the Royal Astronomical
Society of England, was horrified after he had made love to Queen
Oberea of Papara in the absence of he