It is important to notice that among the peoples who have developed or perfected the gentile institution, a rule of which is descent in the female line, the husband is the head of the household, and the wife little more than a servant, so long as they continue to live together. It is true, as Lahontan states,[295] that the wife has the same power of divorce as the husband, but so long as she remains in his cabin she is treated by him as a drudge and a mere child-bearer. As women they have some influence in the tribe, but this is only when they have children to give them dignity. The Polynesian Islanders not having risen to the conception of a gens, it is, perhaps, not surprising that woman is usually regarded by them as an inferior creature. Her position as a woman is, however, better than that of a wife, in which capacity she is cared for as little as among the American aborigines. Her condition is mitigated only under the influence of the Areoi Institution, and where she enters into the punaluan engagement. If it is true, as Mr. Morgan states, that “the Australians rank below the Polynesians, and far below the American aborigines,” we cannot wonder that the position of woman among the Australian aborigines is one of great inferiority. In fact, among them wives are considered as articles of property, and not only do they suffer great privations, but they are most barbarously treated. The last-named people practice the simplest form of obtaining wives, that of capture by cunning and personal violence, but in most of their tribes descent is in the female line, and the gens or clan is developed more or less perfectly. And yet the Australian aborigines possess marriage regulations which seem formed for the express purpose of preventing the intermarriage of blood relations, and which fully recognise kinship by the male line.