her clan and honour her spouse in the
most effective way known to primitive life; and at the same time she
enjoys the immeasurable moral stimulus of realising she is the arbiter
of the fate of a man who becomes a warrior or an outcast at her
bidding, and through him of the future of two clans--she is raised to
a responsibility in both personal and tribal affairs which, albeit
temporary, is hardly lower than that of the warrior chief." At the
close of the year, if all goes well, the probation ends in a feast
provided by the lover, who now becomes the husband, and finally enters
his wife's _jacal_ as "consort-guest." His position is wholly
subordinate, and without any authority whatever, either over his
children or over the property. In his mother's hut he has rights,
which seem to continue after his marriage, but in his wife's hut he
has none.

I have now collected together, with as much exactitude as I could,
what is known of the maternal family in the American continents. There
are many tribes in which descent is reckoned through the father, and
it would be bold to assert that these have all passed through the
maternal stage. An examination of their customs shows, in some cases,
survivals, which point to such conclusion; among other tribes it seems
probable that the maternal clan has not developed. As illustrations of
mother-power, I claim the examples given speak for themselves. It may,
of course, be urged that these complete maternal families are
exceptions, and thus to dismiss them as unimportant. But this is
surely an unscientific way of settling the question. One has to accept
these cases, or to prove that they are untrue. Moreover, I have by no
means exhausted the evidence; and to these complete maternal families
might be added examples from other tribes which would furnish similar
proofs, but there is such consistency of custom among them all that
further accounts may be dispensed with.

There is one other matter for which I would claim attention before
closing this chapter on the American Indians, and that is the
remarkable similarity to be noticed in many tribes between the faces
of the men and the women. To me this is a point of deep interest,
though I do not claim to understand it. My attention was first drawn
to notice this likeness between the two sexes when I came to know some
Iroquois natives who live in England. I was at once struck with the
appearance of the men: though strong and powerfully built,