Lastly, among the Redskins the matrons had the right to baptise the children--that is to say, to make them enter either the maternal or the paternal clan.[916] These facts are curious. They prove, indeed, that with the Redskins the women enjoyed a notable influence, especially in ancient times. With the Seneca-Iroquois they could expel the incapable hunter; but this was evidently by their title of housekeepers of the clan. Among the Wyandots, they figured numerously in the council; but nevertheless, the supreme chief was a man. As for the woman-chief of the Natchez Indians, we find an equivalent of it in certain little despotic monarchies of black Africa. Among the Ashantees, and in Darfour, etc., the princesses dominate their husbands or their lovers by the prestige of royalty. Nothing is more natural than that a plebeian husband should be strangled on the tomb of his wife with other human victims, when we consider the prevailing ideas of future life and the absolute servility of the subject in primitive monarchical states. In fact, the power of women among the Redskins was more apparent than real. Charlevoix himself declares that their domination is fictitious,[917] “that they are, in domestic life, the slaves of their husband,” that the men hold them in profound contempt, and that, amongst themselves, the epithet of “woman” is a cutting insult. Important affairs were kept secret from them;[918] polygamy was habitually permitted to the men, but polyandry was nearly always prohibited to the women. In fact, among the Redskins the woman is the slave of her husband, and the latter thinks so slightly of her, that frequently the men live conjugally for years without communicating with their wives otherwise than by signs, as owing to exogamous marriage they speak different languages.[919] The authority that the husbands concede to their wives in certain tribes is entirely domestic; it is a household royalty. Thus, with the Selisches, the cabins containing the provisions are confided to the women, and the husband himself can take nothing without their permission.[920] The husband or the son commands in the woods and on the prairie; but in the interior of the wigwam it is the most aged woman or the mother who governs and assigns to each one his place.[921]