siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL. LIFE 139
DIVISION OF LABOE BETWEEN THE SEXES
Our earliest source, the anonymous French writer, says
Their women . . . are like slaves to their husbands. They do everything in
the house, work the ground, sow, and harvest the crop. The men sometimes
aid them at a distance from the town, but never go for water or fire after they
are made warriors, considering that that would dishonor them. They occupy
themselves only with hunting."
To the male occupations must of course be added war and all governmental
duties, besides the manufacture of certain wooden and
stone implements, and houses.
In contradistinction to the above informant, Romans, writing a
few years later, says of the men
They help tlieir wives in the labour of the fields and many other works; near
one half of the men have never killed a deer or turkey during their lives.
Game is so scarce, that during my circuit through the nation we never saw any,
and we had but two or three opportunities of eating venison in as many
months."
The following item may be added from Cushman
He [the Choctaw man] struggled for what was immediate, the war path, the
chase and council life ; but when not engaged therein, the life of the national
games, under the head of social amusements, filled up the measure of his days
the ball play, horse-race, foot-race, jumping and wrestling—to them as honor-
able as the gymnastic exercises of the eastern nations of antiquity ;
enduring
heat and cold, suffering the pangs of hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleepless-
ness.'*
Says Claiborne:
Generally the wife is very submissive. We met with but one case of a henpecked
husband. In that case, it was shown that the wife packed up all the
movables, took all the horses, and moved away some sixty miles. He followed
after a while. " She was," said the same witness, " master of the camp, and he
was the squaw." "
Simpson Tubby affirmed that " about 65 years ago " it was a rule
among the Choctaw for the women to carry all of the burdens, the
men being barehanded except for a gun, a fishing pole, or something
similar. He claimed that the custom of requiring women to carry
hampers of corn on their backs was abolished by Little Leader
(Hopaii iskitini), captain of the Sukanatcha band, at the very last
Green Corn dance. " Before that they not only carried hampers of
corn on their backs but babies, and other burdens in their arms at
the same time."
'* Appendix, p. 247; Mem. Am. Anth. Ass'n, v, p. 59.
" Romans, E. and W. Fla., p. 86.
Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 252 ; see also Claiborne, Miss., i, p. 487.
Claiborne, Miss., i, p. 517.