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CHAPTER 2

The Haida Woman

The women also to a great extent share the good qualities of the men…. They are exceedingly strong and can cut firewood, sail and paddle canoes, and work equally as hard as the men. They are all handsome and possess agreeable features when classed with the other coast Indians. [Harrison, April 29, 1912]

A SKETCH OF THE TRADITIONAL PEOPLE

They called themselves Haada, “people,” and their world was divided into two islands, Haida Island (the Queen Charlottes) and the larger seaward country (the mainland). Both places were supported by a supernatural being, “Sacred One Standing and Moving,” who in turn rested upon a copper box (Swanton 1909:12). The Haida population of some nine thousand was distributed among winter settlements located along the more protected shores and inlets of the Queen Charlotte Islands and, by the mid-eighteenth century, in southeastern Alaska. The large cedar-plank houses comprising these villages were built close together, nestled against the treeline and facing the beach in one or two long even rows. Above the storm-tide mark along the beachfront were erected the forest of totem poles so frequently remarked upon by nineteenth-century visitors to these remote shores. Advertising the greatness of their owners or owners’ kin, some rested against the houses, some stood freely before the houses, and still others, shorter than the preceding types, contained the remains of the dead.

A maritime fishing, gathering, and hunting people, the Haida dispersed from March to November to resource areas where they fished, hunted sea and land mammals, gathered seaweed and other wild plants, and collected shellfish. The winter months, spent in the villages, were punctuated by the giving of potlatches and feasts, a prerogative of the wealthy.

Traditional Haida society was stratified into three categories: the y’a?؟zEyt (nobles), the ?is?aniya (commoners), and the hədənga (slaves). This stratification was underpinned and reinforced by the ceremonial distribution of wealth and food in potlatching and feasting, respectively. The y’a?؟Eyt were the “chiefs,” the holders of high-ranking hereditary titles, the house owners, the wealthy, the ambitious, the clever, and the lucky. They were kind, generous, polite, and well-spoken; they fulfilled kinship obligations and had “respect for themselves.” They gave potlatches and feasts to make good their names and to assure that their children would be y’a?؟Eyt, for the route to high status was through the potlatching efforts of one’s parents. Ideally, this upper stratum of society exemplified all the desired and valued Haida qualities.

The ?is?aniya, on the other hand, were traditionally regarded as “kind of poor”; they did not show proper etiquette, did not exemplify “respect for self,” talked “any old way,” and were lazy. They were outnumbered by the y’a?؟Eyt. The həldənga were slaves or the descendants of slaves, captives taken in warfare or persons purchased as slaves from other tribes. They were without status, regarded as chattels, used as labor, and valued by their y’a?؟Eyt owners for the prestige their possession conveyed.

The Haida class division crosscut the descent organization of society. Descent was traced matrilineally, and named matrilineages, each headed by a chief, were the important resource-holding corporations. Lineages owned, among other properties, fishing streams, stretches of shoreline, stands of cedar trees, a corpus of hereditary names or titles, and “crests.” The last, largely zoomorphic symbols, comprised the subject matter of most Haida art. Carved and painted on totem poles, feast dishes, chief’s seats, frontlet headdresses, screens, housefronts, and canoe prows and paddles, among other items, crests symbolized the lineage affiliations of their owners.

The more than forty Haida lineages were grouped into two matrimoieties—Eagle and Raven—which, like the lineages, were exogamous, but unlike them, were not corporate. In addition to their marriage function, the moieties were ritually significant; one feasted and potlatched members of the opposite moiety and called upon them to perform mortuary functions. The larger significance of the Haida moiety division is exemplified in their classification of mythical beings and deities into this same dual schema.

Sources and Lacunae

There are several well-known ethnographic accounts of Haida culture, beginning with geologist George M. Dawson’s 1878 study appended to the report of his geological survey of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Dawson 1880). Some thirty years later, John R. Swanton, a member of the Jesup Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, conducted what still stands as the most thorough investigation of traditional Haida culture. His extensive Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida (1909) was augmented a few years later by the ethnography that Edward S. Curtis prepared in 1916 as part of his twenty-volume study of North American Indians. Brief field research conducted in the summer of 1932 by G. P. Murdock resulted in important additions to our understanding of Haida social and ceremonial organization (Murdock 1934a, 1936). Additionally, Murdock provided a summary of Haida culture in Our Primitive Contemporaries (1934b). Ethnographic as well as ethnohistorical data on Haida culture are also found in the numerous accounts of eighteenth-century trading voyages to the Queen Charlotte Islands (e.g., Bartlett 1925; Dixon 1789; Ingraham 1971; Marchand 1801), in the published and unpublished writings of missionaries (e.g., Collison 1915; Harrison 1912–13; Harrison 1925), government agents (e.g., Deasy 1911–20), and museum collectors (e.g., Swan 1883).

Although the Haida have been well recorded in the ethnographic literature, there are certain lacunae in this material. Perhaps most importantly, ethnographic as well as historic sources on the Haida chronicle a male world seen through the eyes of male writers, a bias present in most earlier ethnographic literature from all areas of the world. The lives of women are described primarily as they impinge upon or complement the lives of men. Menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth, for example, had wide ramifying effects upon the Haida community and consequently these aspects of the female life cycle have been of sufficient interest to be reported in some ethnographic detail. But what of girlhood, the learning of female roles, the availability of power and authority to Haida women, achievement in female terms; what of the experiences of aging, menopause, and widowhood? We know little or nothing of these cultural domains from the literature.

In short, the culture of Haida women has not been described. Yet, in order for a life-history narrative to have meaning, one must understand the traditions from which it derives. In this chapter I draw together scattered data from ethnographic and historic sources and from Florence Davidson’s remarks upon Haida women in “the olden days” to form a picture of the cultural position of traditional Haida women. In particular I have dwelt upon the life cycle, the division of labor, ceremonialism, and the value system. By the time Florence Davidson was born, the Haida had been exposed to Euro-American culture for over one hundred years and were considerably acculturated in many respects. More changes followed during the long years of Florence’s marriage. These changes are also briefly reviewed in this chapter, in terms of their effect upon the lives of Haida women.

THE LIFE CYCLE

Traditionally, the Haida preferred female to male children (Murdock 1934b: 248). Female children signified future expansion of the matrilineage, and their marriages brought males into the household to assist their fathers-in-law in “making canoes, fishing and hunting” (Harrison, November 25, 1912). On the other hand, it was important that a woman also have male children so that her brothers would have nephews to assist them and to succeed to their positions when they died.

Males and females were treated differently from the moment of birth. The umbilical cord of a baby girl was cut with a knife belonging to her mother; that of a boy was cut with the father’s knife (Murdock 1934b: 248–49). Personal names (as opposed to honorific names) were bestowed in infancy and were sex linked. According to Murdock (1934:249), the mother, after consultation with the child’s father and grandparents, named a male infant after his real or classificatory paternal grandfather, while a female was named after one of her “grandmothers,” a second-generation woman of the infant’s own or the father’s father’s lineage. Harrison (November 25, 1912) notes that a shaman was often called in to determine which matrilineal ancestor had been reincarnated in the newborn and to name the infant accordingly.

While still infants, both males and females had their ears pierced, and, if of high rank, children of both sexes were tattooed on the arms, hands, and legs, and occasionally on the chest and back. It was customary, Harrison reports (December 16, 1912), for the parents to give small potlatches when their child was named, when its nose and ears were pierced, and again when it was tattooed.

The item of adornment that marked the Haida female, the labret or lip plug, was acquired during girlhood. An early maritime explorer (La Pérouse 1798:165) remarks that all Haida women wore the labret, while most other ethnographers have claimed that the lip plug was a distinguishing mark of high-status women. Former missionary Charles Harrison described the procedure of insertion and the significance of the implement:

… a hole is cut through the lower lip and an ivory or bone plug is inserted until the wound had healed. After healing the hole is stretched from time to time until it reached about half an inch in diameter and about an inch in length…. These labrets are increased in size according to the rank of the person wearing them, and according to the number of children she had become the mother of. [Harrison, May 20, 1912]

A visible marker of both female status and high rank, the labret was evidently also symbolic of the emphasis the Haida placed upon female fecundity.

No formal restrictions seem to have been placed on the association of the sexes during childhood. Swanton (1909:60) mentions two games that were played together by boys and girls, but otherwise there are no ethnographic data on childhood play activities. Children’s activities seemed to be generally sex segregated by Florence’s time, as she noted that “boys played together and girls played together.” Work activities during childhood were definitely sex differentiated and became more marked when a boy at age ten or eleven left his mother’s household to reside with one of his mother’s brothers. Under the tutelage of his mother’s brother a boy received formal instruction in ceremonial roles and assisted his uncle in various economic activities. He was toughened by harsh discipline and rigorous physical activity.

Rigid and ritually maintained differences between the sexes began with a girl’s puberty ceremony. The təgwəná, or first menstruation seclusion, marked a very real change of life for a girl because, upon her emergence from this ritual seclusion, she was acknowledged to be a woman and was now marriageable. Charles Harrison described the ritual as follows:

In the olden days when a girl reached maturity she had to pay strict attention to the order of the medicine man and pass through certain trying ordeals and ceremonies. A small tent was generally erected for her accommodation at the back of her father’s house and in this tent she had to exist for fourteen days and sometimes longer.¹ Her face was generally painted and she had very little food given her. Should she during this period be compelled to go outside of her tent and accidentally meet a man, her face had to immediately be covered with her blanket. During this trying time she also wore a peculiar cloak made out of the inner bark of a cedar tree which covered her head and reached down to her knees, leaving only a small aperture for her eyes so that she could see where she was going. This cloak was only worn on this peculiar occasion so that when seen wearing this garb all the people looked upon her as about to pass from girlhood to womanhood. During the time she lived alone in the tent she was supposed to wear the robe both day and night…. When her time had expired and the doctor had given his consent the parents of the girl were accustomed to make a great feast and all the people in the village were invited to attend. When all were assembled the screen or the door of the tent was raised and the girl was seen sitting with her back to the guests dressed in the garb above referred to. This was removed by a woman authorized by the doctor to do this work and as soon as this sign of her degradation had disappeared the girl commenced to sing and dance before all the people present the songs and dances that she had been previously taught for this occasion…. After the feasting and congratulatory speeches were ended the rest of the night was spent in dancing. This custom has completely died away with the death of the last Sa-ag-ga [shaman].² [Charles Harrison, November 25, 1912]

During her seclusion a girl was visited exclusively by her female relatives—older sisters, mother, grandmother, and, perhaps most important, father’s sisters (sqa?anləng). From the latter she received formal instruction in womanly behavior: how to behave toward one’s husband, how to rear children properly, standards of etiquette. Appropriate female behavior included submission, contentment, and industry (Dawson 1880:130B), endurance, modesty, a retiring disposition, and moderation in eating and drinking (Curtis 1916:126). Instruction and the various taboos enjoined upon the girl were designed to elicit these qualities.³

Childhood was both actually and symbolically terminated by the surrender of childhood toys and trinkets to the father’s sisters during the period of seclusion (Murdock 1934b:250). At the end of her seclusion the girl’s transition to womanhood was given public acknowledgment, as noted by Harrison above. Florence Davidson reported only that a small potlatch was given by the young woman’s mother to women of the opposite moiety, particularly, and sometimes exclusively, to the young woman’s father’s sisters.

With menarche, the Haida female acquired a significant, if negative, power. Menstrual blood was considered extremely polluting. It could detrimentally affect shamanic powers, hunting and fishing equipment, the abundance of certain food resources, and a man’s economic powers or his luck at gambling. Hunting, fishing, and gambling paraphernalia were kept outside a house in which a menstruating woman dwelled, and during her periods a woman was forbidden to walk in front of a man or step over salmon spawning creeks. Florence Davidson summed up Haida conceptions of this female power by remarking, “Once women change their life, they [men] are scared of them.” She added, however, that a woman would not consider purposefully using this power against a man, though such uses of polluting power have been reported from a few other cultures (for example, see Strathern 1972: 255 for New Guinea).

Marriage usually followed shortly after the təgwəná seclusion. Murdock (1934a:359), Swanton (1909:50), and Harrison (November 25, 1912) credited a girl’s mother with playing a decisive role in her marriage; according to Murdock, she arranged the marriage. Harrison contends that a young man took the initiative in selecting a prospective bride, but adds that the girl’s mother had to approve. Though Murdock (1934b: 251) notes that the wishes of the young couple received consideration in marriage arrangements, Florence Davidson’s personal experience suggests that a young girl could not override the wishes of her elders. Also in Florence Davidson’s case, somewhat contrary to the ethnographic accounts, marriage negotiations were between her husband-to-be (and his group) on the one hand, and her father and, ultimately, her maternal uncle, on the other.⁴ According to Florence, traditionally as well as more recently, “the girl’s uncle decided who she married. As long as your uncle thinks it’s all right, they all agree with him.” The traditional marriage ritual that followed the negotiations is described in some detail by Swanton (1909:50–51).

Beyond the prescriptions of moiety and lineage exogamy, bilateral cross-cousin marriage was preferred: a girl would marry a real or classificatory father’s sister’s son or mother’s brother’s son.⁵ Some pairs of Haida lineages reveal long histories of these preferred intermarriages. Several examples can be seen in Florence’s genealogy. Residence after marriage was initially with the bride’s parents because of the requirement of bride service; following that, residence was avunculocal, that is, with the husband’s maternal uncle. In the event that the preferred pattern of cross-cousin marriage was followed, a girl would likely remain in her natal home for the duration of her marriage.

Polygyny was practiced but, according to all accounts, was not very common. Dawson, writing in 1878, noted that “[polygyny] was formerly more usual, but was always mainly or entirely confined to recognized chiefs. I could hear of but a single instance in which a man yet has two wives…. Three or four wives were not uncommon with a chief in former days …” (Dawson 1880:130B). There are no ethnographic data on the relationship between co-wives. Florence Davidson reports, however, that her “grandfather,” Albert Edward Edenshaw, had two wives, the elder of whom was the mother’s sister of the younger (see genealogy). His first wife encouraged him to take her sister’s daughter as a second wife. The relationship between these two women was evidently quite harmonious.

According to Curtis (1916:121), most marriages were of relatively short duration. The separation of spouses (Curtis mentions only husband leaving wife) was common, and if a man simply left his wife, there was no redress. If a man mistreated his wife or abandoned her for another woman, however, he was held liable to her parents (in particular to her mother; see below). If a woman committed adultery, neither she nor her lover were accountable to her husband, though the latter might seek revenge. Rather, the lover was accountable to the woman’s mother. Adultery was grounds for divorce among the Haida.

Large families were desired and it was expected that a woman would become pregnant within a few months following marriage. Florence Davidson noted that the inability to conceive was invariably blamed on the woman. When pregnant, a woman continued her routine daily activities, modified only by the observance of a number of taboos, almost all of which were designed to protect the developing fetus and assure an easy delivery. For the same reasons, the child’s father and other household members were also subject to certain restrictions.⁶ Parturition, according to Murdock (1934b:248), took place within the house, but according to Florence Davidson, women traditionally gave birth outside the house in a small hut specially constructed for the occasion. She noted, “They used to say they have the baby outside, not in the house because they have respect for their house keeping clean.”⁷ The afterbirth, soiled bedding, and clothing were later burned, and the mother remained in relative seclusion for ten days (Murdock 1934b:249).

Within the household, Murdock reports (1934b:252), a husband exerted but mild authority over his wife, which he was ashamed to show in the presence of others. Harrison, on the other hand, saw male authority as more decisive:

The father was beyond any question master in his own house. To the mother belonged a peculiar domestic importance but both she and her children always obeyed the will of the actual lord of the household. The father was a master without being a tyrant; the mother was a subject without being a slave; and the children did not act in opposition to their parents’ wishes…. [August 19, 1912]

Harrison does not expound on a woman’s “peculiar domestic importance,” and the other ethnographic accounts offer no clues. Regarding the status of wives, Dawson, more in line with Murdock, notes that “the women appear to be well-treated on the whole, are by no means looked upon as mere servants, and have a voice in most matters in which the men engage” (1880:130B).

In her narrative, Florence Davidson remarks that a woman should have respect for her husband and look up to the men of the community as the leaders of the people. With age, however, appeared to come a measure of authority for a woman. A mother-in-law, for example, exerted some influence over her son-in-law who was expected not only to provide her and her husband with food but was required to pay her a considerable amount of property should he commit adultery. A woman could exact a similar property settlement from the suitor of her adulterous daughter (Swanton 1909:51). Following menopause, which apparently had none of the negative connotations it has in Euro-American society, a woman had access to cultural domains that were previously endangered by her menstrual periods (see sections, “Economics and the Division of Labor” and “Cultural Specialists,” below). There was no Haida term specifically denoting the physiological experience of menopause; it was simply noted that when a woman reached a certain point in life, she ceased becoming pregnant. Florence observed that women who had had many children experienced no physical difficulties with menopause.

A married woman could hold property independently of her husband (Swanton 1909:54; Murdock 1934a: 371) and a woman often received property from her parents as endowerment for her marriage. At her death her property was passed on to a daughter. Though a woman might continue to reside in her natal home following her marriage, the house itself and its name were considered male property; this had a critical effect upon the status of those widows who did not remarry.

Both the levirate (marriage to deceased husband’s brother) and the sororate (marriage to deceased wife’s sister) were traditionally practiced by the Haida. A man, however, had considerably more freedom in remarrying than a woman. A widower was required to give the mortuary potlatch for his deceased wife, and until he did so, he was beholden to his wife’s family. It was preferred that a deceased woman’s sister “take her chair” (the sororate) and her family would try to hold onto a man who had married into their lineage. Once a widower had given the mortuary potlatch, however, he was technically free to do as he pleased. A widow, on the other hand, was expected to marry a man of her husband’s lineage, either a younger brother or a nephew. Late nineteenth-century church records and the recollections of Masset Haida indicate that the spouse was often quite junior to the widow. Florence’s “grandmother,” widow of Albert Edenshaw, is a case in point: two years following Edenshaw’s death in 1894, she was married to one of her husband’s nephews (Phillip White), who at age twenty-four was some twenty years younger than she. Although an older widow exerted considerable influence over her young husband, who “was just like a slave to his uncle’s wife,” she had little or no voice in the selection of her new husband. Florence Davidson recounted one such levirate marriage which dates from the mid-nineteenth century:

Tałanat married an old, old lady, his uncle’s wife. He was about ten or eleven and was out playing while they prepared for the wedding. His mother called him home, washed the mud off his feet, and put a shirt on him. “You’re going to stay with that old lady, your uncle’s wife.” But he didn’t understand. His mother took him inside to the top step [of the housepit] and sat him beside the old woman on a pillow. All the food—smoked dog salmon soaked in salt water—was served. “Eat, dear, eat,” the old lady said to him, but he didn’t want to eat. “I wonder why that old thing said that to me,” he asked. “Look at all my granddaughters, those pretty girls. I’ll die quick and you’ll marry one of them.” He looked at the girls and he hated them. The old lady was supposed to let her new husband sleep by her, but he didn’t want it. Maybe when it started to get cold out he started sleeping by the old woman.

The levirate was really the only security a widowed woman had, for a widow who did not remarry was often left destitute. She was not allowed to stay in her former husband’s home, and, if lucky, she escaped with a few personal belongings when her husband’s heir took over the house and its property. Masset people cited several instances when widows hurriedly left their former husbands’ houses and, with their children, sought sanctuary in the homes of matrilineal relatives. These women were pitied and high-ranking people were instructed to be kind to them and offer them food. Widowers, as noted above, did not suffer a symmetrical fate.

Mourning rituals were identical for widow or widower (Murdock 1934a: 373). The grieving spouse remained isolated for a period of time and ate very little because, in Florence Davidson’s words, “if they think nothing of it [death], there’s no luck. You have to deny yourself.” Mortuary potlatches were given for both men and women of high rank.

ECONOMICS AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR

Although some economic activities, such as collecting shellfish and cooking, were performed by both males and females, in general the Haida division of labor was marked. Men might beachcomb during the winter following onshore storms to collect clams and cockles that had washed ashore, but clam digging and the implement of procurement, the glɨgú (digging stick), were considered part of a woman’s domain. The sexual division of labor was summed up for me by one elderly Masset man who offered the following comment on the essential property of a newly married couple: “Every man’s got to have his fishing line and devilfish stick and every woman her digging stick.”

The gathering of plant resources was women’s and girls’ work; young boys did not normally accompany their mothers on such expeditions. What little gathering men did complemented that of the women. Both sexes, for example, collected spruce roots, but women dug the small delicate roots for hat and basket weaving, and men the large roots from which they made fish traps and snares. Similiarly, both men and women collected cedar bark, but women sought the inner bark for weaving mats, and men the large sheets of outer bark for roofing.

Women’s abstention from certain economic activities seems to have been rationalized and prohibited on the basis of pollution taboos associated with menstruation and reproduction (see, for example, Swanton 1909:219). Fishing lines and hooks, sea mammal clubs, bows, arrows, and any other items of subsistence technology used by males were kept outside the house, concealed from the view of female household members. Menstruating women were believed to have supernatural visual powers capable of causing considerable damage. Were a menstruating woman to see a man’s fishing or hunting equipment, all of his economic endeavors would be doomed. If a woman were to attempt to hunt or fish herself, her efforts would go similarly unrewarded. For this reason, the Haida say, women never fished or hunted. Nor did women collect octopuses, comestible shellfish but more commonly used as halibut bait. Were a woman to catch an octopus near its rocky den, all octopuses would permanently abandon the site.

Male economic activities could be further influenced by domestic activities. Baby tending, for example, was fraught with potential ruination of male economic prowess. A man might play with his small children, but his handling of a soiled or wet baby would diminish his luck at hunting or fishing, perhaps spelling economic disaster for the entire household. To assure the ritual purity of male members of the household, men’s clothing was washed separately from that of women and children. Ritual cleanliness brought economic rewards, for “those who were ‘clean’ were blessed with food and riches,” according to Florence Davidson. Men could negatively affect their own economic endeavors by having extramarital affairs or by leaving their wives. A man who did so would lose his luck at hunting or fishing. Ritual purity and consequent economic “luck” were also acquired or enhanced by drinking medicine,⁸ a male prerogative. Women, too, drank medicine, but only to cure sickness, not for “luck.”

The sexual division of labor in trading is not clear. Swanton (1909) and Curtis (1916) make no mention of women in trading; Murdock (1934b:377), in his brief discussion of trading partnerships, implies that the parties are male but does not discuss trade more generally. Early maritime traders’ accounts from the late eighteenth century, however, suggest that Haida women played a significant and authoritative role in trading activities at the time of first contact. In his journals of 1790–92, Joseph Ingraham, for example, offers the following comment:

Here in direct opposition to most other parts of the world, the women maintain a precedency to the men in every point insomuch as a man dares not trade without the concurrence of his wife. Nay, I have often been witness to men being abused by their wives for parting with skins before their approbation was obtained. [Ingraham 1971:132]

The men of the ship Columbia Rediviva similarly remarked on the ascendant role of Haida women in trade:

The women in trade, as well as in everything else which came within our knowledge, appeared to govern the men; as no one dared to conclude a bargain without first asking his wife’s consent; if he did, the moment he went into his canoe he was sure to get a beating … and there is no mercy to be expected without the intercession of some kind female. [Howay 1941:208]

Howay adds in a footnote that “all witnesses agree on this” (1941:208). On the basis of the above and similar evidence from the late eighteenth century, it seems quite possible that women played a significant role in trading, particularly as they could hold property independently of their husbands. Given the acknowledged role of men as traders, however, it may be that they represented their wives in exchange and that the dominant role of women reflects the latter’s interest in their own property.

Dawson downplayed the general economic contribution of Haida women, noting that “… the women do not contribute materially to the support of the family, attending only to the accessory duties of curing and preserving the fish …” (1880:130B). Swanton suggests the symbolic importance of woman’s freedom from economic activities in the following remark: “A young, unmarried woman was not allowed to do much work, and lay in bed a great deal of the time. This was so that she might marry a chief, and always have little work to do” (1909:50). From Florence Davidson’s comments it seems unlikely that even a high-ranking woman would actually have little work to do. Though she might have slaves to gather firewood and assist in the processing of fish and other foods, the desire for prestige and the ambition characteristic of the Haida spurred all toward the accumulation of wealth and surplus resources. Florence’s remark that “we try all our best for our children” applies equally to the aboriginal Haida whose paramount concern was securing a place for their children in the social order. Neither is Dawson’s comment that women do not contribute materially to the support of the family an accurate assessment of the economic position of Haida women. The ability of a woman to process foods, particularly fish, was of considerable concern to all. A woman adept at slicing and drying fish was greatly admired for her skills. Furthermore, the limitations on the quantity of salmon a household could garner for winter stores was dependent not upon the number of fish that men could catch but on the number that women could practicably clean, slice, and dry. Thus female skills were critical to the ability of a household to provision itself and to lay aside a surplus for feasting and pot-latching.

Ceremonial Division of Labor