The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

148 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)Agricultural workdone by womenamong savagetribes in India, NewGuinea, and NewBritain.[123]left to the women, while the men hunt with bows and arrows andblowguns in the woods, often remaining away from home forweeks or even months together. 391A similar distribution of labour between the sexes prevailsamong some savage tribes in other parts of the world. Thusamong the Lhoosai of south-eastern India the men employthemselves chiefly in hunting or in making forays on theirweaker neighbours, but they clear the ground and help to carryhome the harvest. However, the main burden of the bodily labourby which life is supported falls on the women; they fetch water,hew wood, cultivate the ground, and help to reap the crops. 392Among the Miris of Assam almost the whole of the field workis done by the women. They cultivate a patch of ground for twosuccessive years, then suffer it to lie fallow for four or five. Butthey are deterred by superstitious fear from breaking new groundso long as the fallow suffices for their needs; they dread to offendthe spirits of the woods by needlessly felling the trees. They raisecrops of rice, maize, millet, yams, and sweet potatoes. But theyseldom possess any implement adapted solely for tillage; theyhave never taken to the plough nor even to a hoe. They use theirlong straight swords to clear, cut, and dig with. 393 Among theKorwas, a savage hill tribe of Bengal, the men hunt with bowsand arrows, while the women till the fields, dig for wild roots,or cull wild vegetables. Their principal crop is pulse (CajanusIndicus). 394 Among the Papuans of Ayambori, near Doreh inDutch New Guinea, it is the men who lay out the fields by fellingand burning the trees and brushwood in the forest, and it is theywho enclose the fields with fences, but it is the women whosow and reap them and carry home the produce in sacks on their391 J. J. von Tschudi, Peru (St. Gallen, 1846), ii. 214.392 Captain T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India (London, 1870),p. 255.393 E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), p. 33.394 E. T. Dalton, op. cit. pp. 226, 227.