mory the emotional
situations of hunting life, and also in the clever and inimitable
accuracy of co-ordination and superhuman development of
sense-perceptions, while there was always in the attitude of woman
toward these animals a touch of maternal feeling, such as is still
expended on the "harmless, necessary cat." And, in a small way, woman
also contributed to the domestication of animals by giving them suck,
partly as an economic investment. In Tahiti and New Britain, for
example, the women suckle the pigs, and the old women feed them.[175]
Aside from this, the connections which primitive woman has with animal
life is very slight. Worms and insects, shellfish, and even fish she
may capture, but but after this her relation to animal life is in
caring for the flesh and skins turned over to her by the man.

It was a very general early practice that, when man had killed his
game and brought it home, he was not concerned in the further handling
of it. He did not, indeed, in all cases bring it home, but sent his
wife after it. The Indians killed buffalo only as fast as the squaws
could cut them up and care for the meat, and the men of the Eskimos
would not draw the seal from the water after spearing it. Exhausted
by extraordinary efforts, the man may well have left the dressing of
the animal upon occasion to his wife, and, exhausted or not, he soon
fell into the habit of doing so. It thus turns out that all labors
relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilizations of the
side-products of food stuffs, are apt to be found in the hands of the
women.

Vessels are necessary in cooking, both to carry and hold water, and to
store the surplus of food, both vegetable and animal, and the woman,
feeling the need of these in connection with what she has set about
doing, weaves baskets and makes pottery. Fetching wood, grinding corn,
tanning the hides, and in the main the preparation of clothing, follow
rather necessarily from her relation to the raw products. Spinning and
weaving and dyeing are related closely to the vegetable world to begin
with, and it is to be expected that they would be developed by the
women. But man is very deeply interested in clothing on the ornamental
side, and the farther back we go in society, the more this holds, and
sometimes, particularly in Africa, since the domestication of oxen
there, the men prepare the leather and do the sewing, even for the
women. There is, indeed, nothing in the nature