bout with spears
in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the
opposite sex.... The Ojebwey, Peter Jones, thus writes of his
own people: "I have scarcely ever seen anything like social
intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable
that the women say little in the presence of the men." The
Zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. If a man
were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and
they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in
company. If he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his
wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. In Senegambia
the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands,
and their sex is virtually a clique. In Egypt a man never
converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by
a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the
same vault.[271]

Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the
wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her
husband's sphere of action. The Bechuanas never allow their
women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow
themselves.... In Guiana no woman may go near the hut where
_ourali_ is made. In the Marquesas Islands the use of canoes
is prohibited to the female sex by _tabu_: the breaking of
the rule is punished with death. Conversely, amongst the same
people _tapa_-making belongs exclusively to the women: when
they are making it for their own headdresses it is _tabu_ for
the men to touch it. In Nicaragua all the marketing was done
by the women. A man might not enter the market nor even see
the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... In Samoa where
the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women,
it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the
process.... An Eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an
_umiak_, the large boat used by women. The different offices
of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for
example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a
stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore,
and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to
interfere with what is the work of women. In British Guiana
cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one
occasion when the men were compelled perforc