SEX IN PRIMITIVE INDUSTRY 477
ous food conditions, and without resources accumulated from preceding generations, should utilize all'iis forces. The struggle for existence, in its harshest sense, was but little mitigated, and no group could have spared at all the industry of women. The best returns from activity will of course follow when each indi- vidual is doing something he is specially well fitted to do, and natural selection seems to have seen to it that primitive society should so divide the labor as best to utilize social energy by assigning to men the tasks requiring violent exertion, and to women those requiring constant attention.
But was not primitive man very lazy, and did he not do fewer things than he reasonably could have done ? If we mean by lazy an aversion to certain types of action, primitive man was doubtless lazy; but if we mean an aversion to all kinds of exertion, he certainly was not lazy. He was so thoroughly aroused by cer- tain kinds of stimuli, and so exhausted by the expenditure of energy in reacting to these stimuli, that periods of recuperation, or "sitting about," were necessary. Heckenwelder's remarks on the labor of men and women among the Indians of Pennsylvania are very instructive, although they relate to tribes which had come under white influences to some extent : "The work of the women is not hard or difficult. They are both able and will- ing to do it, and always perform it with cheerfulness. Mothers teach their daughters those duties which common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up. Within doors their labor is very trifling; there is seldom more than one pot or kettle to attend to. There is no scrubbing of the house, and but little to wash, and that not often. Their principal occupa- tions are to cut and fetch in the firewood, till the ground, sow and reap the grain, and pound the corn in mortars for their pottage, and to make bread which they bake in the ashes. When going on a journey or to hunting camps with their husbands, if they have no horses, they carry a pack on their backs which often appears heavier than it really is ; it generally consists of a blanket, a dressed deer skin for moccasins, a few articles of kitchen furniture, as a kettle, bowl, or dish, with spoons, and some bread, corn, salt, etc., for their nourishment. I have never
