the evolution of only a few generations. She is without a traditional culture, but, as the author asserts, she inherited the cultures of all the nations. Beginning with the basic culture of the mother country she has grafted thereon the native branches which have sprung from her environment and has absorbed such mental and temperamental characteristics of introduced nationalities as have best suited her conditions, and from all together she has created the American type of womanhood, whose particular characteristic is to do.

In the women of these two mother settlements are found the "foundations and matrices of American femininity." So the causes and growth of the American type of womanhood are shown in its evolutionary processes therein along lines mainly parallel until the need of resistance to the mother country brings about a near approach to a national type. The spread of woman's influence to the constantly extending frontier and the new settlements is broadly but clearly sketched and the potency of the foreign settlers considered.

A very interesting part of the volume traces the development of society at the capital, the growth of an aristocracy, the unification of type that followed the establishment of the republic and marked the early growth of the nation. Still more interesting is the history of the dissolution of the courtly influence at Washington when the great strife reft the national womanhood and twin hatred ruled where unity was so lately waxing in strength. The author's presentation of this period is lucid and convincing, while fearlessly just to the woman of both sections. His emphasis of the causal misunderstanding as regards the women cannot fail to be appreciated, though it places upon our womanhood a heavy responsibility for the sorrows which befell the nation and struck down the South exhausted and almost destroyed.

A chapter on the Women of Canada affords chief interest for the account of the habitantes, the only distinct Canadian type of womanhood, though the author recognizes the advanced position occupied by the woman of British North America.

Of the recent developments of the American woman's activities, the sphere of which is ever enlarging, the author admirably projects on his page all the salient movements. Many phases of activity are of course tentative and their permanency and value are yet undetermined, while others mark the appreciation of the obligations associated with wealth or the need of diversion attending the enjoyment of leisure; all, however, are characteristic of the unresting energy of the American woman. If this characteristic is responsible for some illogical and occasionally harmful manifestations, the fact remains that the sum of the results is vastly preponderant for the good of the nation and the advancement, morally, intellectually, and physically of humanity.

The author is to be congratulated for his boldness in undertaking to set forth the broad picture of woman's part in the movements of the last quarter of a century. The task is perplexing, almost terrifying to mere man; conditions are in a state of flux or, more properly speaking, bubbling activity, but a wise discrimination has been shown in the present case. Much of the American woman's history that is unfamiliar will be found in this volume, which is sympathetic throughout, and expresses admiration for the noble and the good in all the stages of that subtle evolution which we now recognize as the American woman.
JOHN A. BURGAN.
Hammonton, New Jersey.

CHAPTER I

THE ABORIGINAL WOMAN

THE attempt to crystallize within the space of a single chapter even the most salient facts concerning the aboriginal woman of America is one foredoomed to failure. It is true that even in the present advanced state of ethnology there is comparatively little knowledge of the conditions which have obtained, and even of those which do obtain, among the red people of our continent; we can indeed see and record the outer results, but the inner causes are still in great measure hidden from us. The American Indian is a peculiar people in the strictest sense of the words; and is not to be judged by the standards that we apply to those races with whose history we are more familiar, nor is he to be measured by their heights or depths. In many ways he is, and always has been, a law unto himself; and although this state of things is passing away beneath the influence of a steadily advancing civilization, it has been conquered rather than modified, and the Indian remains beneath the surface the same enigma, the same unique individuality, that he has ever been.

Moreover, there is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with this division of our subject. One is forced to speak almost entirely in generalities, this compulsion existing both because of spatial limitations and because of the dearth of exact knowledge that still exists concerning the conditions of the Amerind in the far past. Yet enough is known to assure us that only the broadest generalities are inclusively true. The custom which was a rule of life among the Hurons of the North may have been entirely unknown among the Seminoles of the South; the cult which was of deep foundation among the Delawares of the Lakes may never have come to the knowledge of the Navajos of the great plains or the Tehamas who dwelt on the shores of the Pacific. For it is a fact which has never received sufficient recognition that the Amerind--to adopt a convenient, though not entirely defensible, nomenclature--had as many national divisions as have the inhabitants of Europe or Asia. We speak of the "tribes" of American Indians, and in so doing we are entirely correct; yet we thus blind ourselves to the significance of the divisions which have always existed, because we are accustomed to give to the word "tribe" a limited meaning which is not strictly its possession. The settlers of our country came far nearer to truth of expression when they spoke of "the Five Nations"; for nations many of these tribes really were, and nations radically differing in all but physical characteristics, and not infrequently, where there existed great divergence of climatic conditions, in physical characteristics also. It is true that the bounds of nationality were not so sharply drawn as they were, for example, between the Gaul and the Teuton, the Slav and the Briton; but they existed, and were discernible in many important matters. Thus the wide divergence of custom and conditions which frequently appears in our study of the Amerind was not mere accident, but was the product of a variant civilization--if we may apply such term to the barbaric conditions which for the most part existed when the race was introduced to the knowledge of Europeans. For this reason, generalization regarding the race is dangerous and usually leads to inaccuracy. Because, for example, a Modoc might kill his mother-in-law without incurring any penalty for the deed, we must not assume that such a custom was prevalent among all the tribes of the American Indians. Because among the Tehamas the newborn child was thrown into a stream by its mother immediately after its birth, when if it rose to the surface and cried it was rescued, while if it sank to rise no more its body was left to be carried away by the current, we must not therefore conclude that such a proceeding was common among the rest of the tribes of the Pacific slope. Each nation, and frequently each tribe, in the more limited sense of the word, had its own customs, its own superstitions, its own creed, its own conditions of existence. Yet there were certain manifestations of these circumstances which could be found among all the nations of the primeval American continent, and it is these things, as they relate to the women of the Amerinds, that it is the purpose of this chapter to discuss, as well as to cast a rapid glance over the general history and progress of the aboriginal woman of the continent of North America.

In