CHAPTER 17
WOMAN’S PART IN PRIMITIVE
AGRICULTURE
IF Demeter was indeed a personification of the corn, it is natural to ask, why did the Greeks personify the corn as a goddess rather than a god? why did they ascribe the origin of agriculture to a female rather than to a male power? They conceived the spirit of the vine as masculine; why did they conceive the spirit of the barley and wheat as feminine? To this it has been answered that the personification of the corn as feminine, or at all events the ascription of the discovery of agriculture to a goddess, was suggested by the prominent part which women take in primitive agriculture.*
Theory that the personification of corn as feminine was
suggested by the part played by women in primitive agriculture.
Before the invention of the plough, which can hardly be worked without resort to the labour of men, it was and still is customary in many parts of the world to break up the soil for cultivation with hoes, and among not a few savage peoples to this day the task of hoeing the ground and sowing the seed devolves mainly or entirely upon the women, while the men take little or no part in cultivation beyond clearing the land by felling the forest trees and burning the fallen timber and brushwood which encumber the soil.
Thus, for example, among the Zulus, ‘when a piece of land has been selected for cultivation, the task of clearing it belongs to the men. If the ground be much encumbered, this becomes a laborious undertaking, for their axe is very small, and when a large tree has to be encountered, they can only lop the branches; fire is employed when it is needful to remove the trunk. The reader will therefore not be surprised that the people usually avoid bush-land, though they seem to be aware of its superior fertility. As a general rule the men take no further share in the labour of cultivation; and, as the site chosen is seldom much encumbered and frequently bears nothing
but grass, their part of the work is very slight. The women are the real labourers; for (except in some particular cases) the entire business of digging, planting, and weeding devolves on them; and, if we regard the assagai and shield as symbolical of the man, the hoe may be looked upon as emblematic of the woman … With this rude and heavy instrument the woman digs, plants, and weeds her garden.’ A special term of contempt is applied to any Zulu man, who, deprived of the services of his wife and family, is compelled by hard necessity to handle the hoe himself. Similarly among the Baronga of Delagoa Bay, ‘when the rains begin to fall, sometimes as early as September but generally later, they hasten to sow.
With her hoe in her hands, the mistress of the field walks with little steps; every time she lifts a clod of earth well broken up, and in the hole thus made she plants three or four grains of maize and covers them up.’ Among the Barotse, who cultivate millet, maize, and peas to a small extent and in a rudimentary fashion, women alone are occupied with the field-work, and their only implement is a spade or hoe. Of the Matabele we are told that ‘most of the hard work is performed by the women; the whole of the cultivation is done by them.’ Among the Awemba, to the west of Lake Tanganyika, the bulk of the work in the plantations falls on the women; in particular the men refuse to hoe the ground. They have a saying, ‘Is not each male child born for the axe and each female child for the hoe?’
Among many savage tribes the labour of hoeing the ground and
sowing the seed devolves on women.
Agricultural work done by women among the Zulus and other
tribes of South Africa.
The natives of the Tanganyika plateau ‘cultivate the banana, and have a curious custom connected with it. No man is permitted to sow; but when the hole is prepared a little girl is carried to the spot on a man’s shoulders. She first throws into the hole a sherd of broken pottery, and then scatters the seed over it.’ The reason of the latter practice has been explained by more recent observers. ‘Young children, it may here be noted, are often employed to administer drugs, remedies, even the Poison Ordeal, and to sow the first seeds. Such acts, the natives say, must be performed by chaste and innocent hands, lest a contaminated touch should destroy the potency of the medicine
or of the seedlings planted. It used to be a very common sight upon the islands of Lake Bangweolo to watch how a Bisa woman would solve the problem of her own moral unfitness by carrying her baby-girl to the banana-plot, and inserting seedlings in the tiny hands for dropping into the holes already prepared.’ Similarly among the people of the Lower Congo ‘women must remain chaste while planting pumpkin and calabash seeds, they are not allowed to touch any pig-meat, and they must wash their hands before touching the seeds. If a woman does not observe all these rules, she must not plant the seeds, or the crop will be bad; she may make the holes, and her baby girl, or another who has obeyed the restrictions, can drop in the seeds and cover them over.’
Chastity required in the sowers of seed.
Of the Caffres of South Africa in general we read that agriculture is ‘mainly the work of the women, for in olden days the men were occupied in hunting and fighting. The women do but scratch the land with hoes, sometimes using long-handled instruments, as in Zululand, and sometimes short-handled ones, as above the Zambesi. When the ground is thus prepared, the women scatter the seed, throwing it over the soil quite at random. They know the time to sow by the position of the constellations, chiefly by that of the Pleiades. They date their new year from the time they can see this constellation just before sunrise.’ In Basutoland, where the women also till the fields, though the lands of chiefs are dug and sowed by men, an attempt is made to determine the time of sowing by observation of the moon, but the people generally find themselves out in their reckoning, and after much dispute are forced to fall back upon the state of the weather and of vegetation as better evidence of the season of sowing. Intelligent chiefs rectify the calendar at the summer solstice, which they call the summerhouse of the sun.
Woman’s part in agriculture among the Caffres of South Africa
in general.
Among the Nandi of British East Africa ‘the rough work of clearing the bush for plantations is performed by the men, after which nearly all work in
connexion with them is done by the women. The men, however, assist in sowing the seed, and in harvesting some of the crops.’ The Baganda of Central Africa subsist chiefly on bananas, and among them ‘the garden and its cultivation have always been the woman’s department. Princesses and peasant women alike looked upon cultivation as their special work; the garden with its produce was essentially the wife’s domain, and she would under no circumstances allow her husband to do any digging or sowing in it. No woman would remain with a man who did not give her a garden and a hoe to dig it with; if these were denied her, she would seek an early opportunity to escape from her husband and return to her relations to complain of her treatment, and to obtain justice or a divorce. When a man married he sought a plot of land for his wife in order that she might settle to work and provide food for the household.’ In Kiziba, a district immediately to the south of Uganda, the tilling of the soil is exclusively the work of the women. They turn up the soil with hoes, make holes in the ground with digging-sticks or their fingers, and drop a few seeds into each hole. Among the Niam-Niam of Central Africa ‘the men most studiously devote themselves to their hunting, and leave the culture of the soil to be carried on exclusively by the women’; and among the Monbuttoo of the same region in like manner, ‘whilst the women attend to the tillage of the soil and the gathering of the harvest, the men, unless they are absent either for war or hunting, spend the entire day in idleness’. As to the Bangala of the Upper Congo we read that ‘large farms were made around the towns. The men did the clearing of the bush, felling the trees, and cutting down the undergrowth; the women worked with them, heaping up the grass and brushwood ready for burning, and helping generally. As a rule the women did the hoeing, planting, and weeding, but the men did not so despise this work as never to do it.’ In this tribe ‘the food belonged to the woman who cultivated the farm, and while she supplied her husband with the vegetable food, he had to supply the fish and meat and share them with his wife or wives.’ Amongst the Tofoke, a tribe of the Congo State on the equator, all the field labour, except the clearing away of the forest, is performed by the women. They dig the soil with a hoe and plant maize and manioc. A field is used only once. So with the Ba-Mbala, a Bantu tribe between the rivers Inzia and Kwilu, the men clear the ground for cultivation, but all the rest of the work of tillage falls to the women, whose only tool is an iron hoe. Fresh ground is cleared for cultivation every year. The Mpongwe of the Gaboon,
in West Africa, cultivate manioc (cassava), maize, yams, plantains, sweet potatoes, and ground nuts. When new clearings have to be made in the forest, the men cut down and burn the trees, and the women put in the crop.
The only tool they use is a dibble, with which they turn up a sod, put in a seed, and cover it.
Agricultural work done by women among the Nandi and other
tribes of Central and Western Africa.
Agricultural work of women among the Baganda.
Agricultural work of women on the Congo.
Among some peoples of the Indian Archipelago, after the land has been cleared for cultivation by the men, the work of planting and sowing is divided between men and women, the men digging holes in the ground with pointed sticks, and the women following them, putting the seeds or shoots into the holes, and then huddling the earth over them; for savages seldom sow broadcast, they laboriously dig holes and insert the seed in them. This division of agricultural labour between the sexes is adopted by various tribes of Celebes, Ceram, Borneo, Nias, and New Guinea. Sometimes the custom of entrusting the sowing of the seed to women appears to be influenced by superstitious as well as economic considerations. Thus among the Indians of the Orinoco, who with an infinitude of pains cleared the jungle for cultivation by cutting down the forest trees with their stone axes, burning the fallen lumber, and breaking up the ground with wooden instruments hardened in the fire, the task of sowing the maize and planting the roots was performed by the women alone; and when the Spanish missionaries expostulated with the men for not helping their wives in this toilsome duty, they received for answer that as women knew how to conceive seed and bear children, so the seeds and roots planted by them bore fruit far more abundantly than if they had been planted by male hands.
Division of agricultural work between men and women in the
Indian Archipelago.
Even among savages who have not yet learned to cultivate any plants the task of collecting the edible seeds and digging up the edible roots of
wild plants appears to devolve mainly on women, while the men contribute their share to the common food supply by hunting and fishing, for which their superior strength, agility, and courage especially qualify them. For example, among the Indians of California, who were entirely ignorant of agriculture, the general division of labour between the sexes in the search for food was that the men killed the game and caught the salmon, while the women dug the roots and brought in most of the vegetable food, though the men helped them to gather acorns, nuts, and berries. Among the Indians of San Juan Capistrano in California, while the men passed their time in fowling, fishing, dancing, and lounging, ‘the women were obliged to gather seeds in the fields, prepare them for cooking, and to perform all the meanest offices, as well as the most laborious. It was painful in the extreme, to behold them, with their infants hanging upon their shoulders, groping about in search of herbs or seeds, and exposed, as they frequently were to the inclemency of the weather.’
Among savages who have not learned to till the ground the task
of collecting the vegetable food in the form of wild seeds and
roots generally devolves on women. Examples furnished by the
Californian Indians.
In these customs observed by savages who are totally ignorant of agriculture we may perhaps detect some of the steps by which mankind have advanced from the enjoyment of the wild fruits of the earth to the systematic cultivation of plants. For an effect of digging up the earth in the search for roots has probably been in many cases to enrich and fertilise the soil and so to increase the crop of roots or herbs; and such an increase would naturally attract the natives in larger numbers and enable them to subsist for longer periods on the spot without being compelled by the speedy exhaustion of the crop to shift their quarters and wander away in search of fresh supplies. Moreover, the winnowing of the seeds on ground which had thus been turned up by the digging-sticks of the women would naturally contribute to the same result. For though savages at the level of the Californian Indians and the aborigines of Australia have no idea of using seeds for any purpose but that of immediate consumption, and it has never occurred to them to incur a temporary loss for the sake of a future
gain by sowing them in the ground, yet it is almost certain that in the process of winnowing the seeds as a preparation for eating them many of the grains must have escaped and, being wafted by the wind, have fallen on the upturned soil and borne fruit. Thus by the operations of turning up the ground and winnowing the seed, though neither operation aimed at anything beyond satisfying the immediate pangs of hunger, savage man or rather savage woman was unconsciously preparing for the whole community a future and more abundant store of food, which would enable them to multiply and to abandon the old migratory and wasteful manner of life for a more settled and economic mode of existence. So curiously sometimes does man, aiming his shafts at a near but petty mark, hit a greater and more distant target.
The digging of the earth for wild fruits may have led to the
origin of agriculture.
On the whole, then, it appears highly probable that as a consequence of a certain natural division of labour between the sexes women have contributed more than men towards the greatest advance in economic history, namely, the transition from a nomadic to a settled life, from a natural to an artificial basis of subsistence.
The discovery of agriculture due mainly to women.
