in many countries grew to great importance, as for instance in Morocco, where the markets are always supplied with large quantities of bags and baskets of beautiful design and workmanship.
Aboriginal women also attended to the dressing and tanning of skins of those animals which the men brought home from their hunting expeditions. In the domestic economy of many tribes skins were and are the most valued and useful property, especially in all regions having a severe climate. Every kind of skin, large enough to be stripped from the carcass of beast, bird or fish, is used here in some way.
A painting by George Catlin, the well-known artist, who during the first part of the last century travelled among the various Indian tribes of North America, illustrates the methods by which the skins of buffalo and deer are staked out upon the ground or between poles. We see the women engaged in scraping off the flesh and fat, a process which is followed by several others until the skin is fit to be used for tent covers, beddings, shields, saddles, lassoes, boats, clothes, mocassins, and thousands of other things.
Most skillful tanners and dressmakers are likewise the women of the Eskimo tribes. They make excellent suits from the skins and even the entrails of whales, walrus, seals and other animals.
To the keen sense of women we also owe undoubtedly most of our domestic implements. From the bones of fish and other animals they made needles and pins; from the horns splendid spoons and combs. Gourds, pumpkins and cocoanuts were turned into water bottles. Women also devised the comfortable hammocks. About the cribs, cradles and swings, invented in endless variety by aboriginal mothers for the protection and comfort of their darlings, volumes might be written. And by innumerable pictures and photographs it could be proven that the great care, bestowed nowadays upon our babies, is not the outcome of our advanced culture, but originated many thousand years ago among aboriginal women.
The same is true in regard to the dolls and play-things with which women seek to amuse those little ones, dearest to their hearts. What motherly affection, ever present and everlasting, has done for the welfare and progress of mankind, no one can conceive, nor describe, nor illustrate.
As brief as these remarks about aboriginal woman's activity are, they indicate, however, sufficiently her share in the founding and evolution of human culture. To appreciate this even more, we must not forget that the life of those women was one of constant care, misery and danger. The
20
