Women

Part 5

Initially, it used to be a village affair that did not interrupt trade. Indeed, as late as the 1870s the tribal hostilities were still very much alive and Edward Im Thurn could observe that, "(members of) each tribe constantly visit the other tribes, often hostile, for the purpose of exchanging the products of their own labour for such as are produced only by the other tribes." The most important item of exchange were, however, women. In an account as early as the famous letter by Dr. Chanca (1493), the court physician who travelled with Columbus on his second voyage, it was observed that they "take as many women as they can (and) keep them as concubines." There was nothing more valuable to be bought, bartered or stolen.

In a sense, women were, actually and symbolically, the first commodities. Thus, the earliest precious items of exchange, almost functioning, centuries before Columbus, as a money for the diverse tribes reaching from the Amazon to the Greater Antilles, were described by Pierre Barre in 1743 as follows: "This stone is of olive color, of a slightly paler green... The most common shape one gives to this stone is cylindrical, length of 2, 3, up to 4 inches, by six or seven lines in diameter, and drilled their whole length. I have seen some of them that were squaraed, oval, to which one had given the shape of a crescent and imprinted upon it the figure of a toad, or some other animals." Such a stones, the price of a slave, were believed to be the products of a mythic tribe of women who later came to be called the Amazons. They were made of a maleable rock from a special lake - only when taken into the sunlight did the 'piedras hijadas' became hard. Frogs, water, greenness, softness, the longditudinal bore, these were the universal Indian symbols of the female.

This prehistoric attitude might have logic foreign to our overcrowded world but, within limits, the prosperity of the neolithic clan was directly in proportion to its size. The wealth and power of a man were judged by the extent of his family. High mortality rates placed a premium on fecundity. Consequently, women were valued for their reproductive capacity. Here lies the true reason for their exclusion from the dangerous business of warfare and hunting even, or rather especially, when it was a matter of survival or extinction. It has nothing to do with women being a weaker sex. And here lies too the true origin of sexual, and all subsequent forms, of inequality.

"The men only hunt, fish, and cut down trees when a new clearing has to be made, which does not happen often, and do other small jobs," observed Pere Labat, "The women have to do everything else. When the men return from hunting they just throw their game down in the doorway of the carbet, and the women pick it up and cook it, or if they come back from their fishing, they leave the fish in the canoe and not even mention it. The women have to run to the canoe to get the fish and cook it at once, for they are expected to know that the fishermen are hungry. In a word, the women are born servants and remain servants all their lives."

This changed, lost its primitive character, with the appearance of the Europeans. The attrition which the tribes suffered made raiding more vital to augment their declining numbers. At one time the Kalina of Dominica held over 70 captives - Spaniards and negroes, men and women - some of whom had been captured from the 'Arawaks' of Trinidad.

 

Part 6: Wars and African Slavery . . .