These customs and the marriages by servitude have led several observers to attribute to the women a considerable authority which they do not really possess. In fact, they are nearly always purchased, and are very submissive. The maternal family and the matriarchate are very different things. The first is common; the second is very rare, if indeed it has ever existed. The Australians, who have the maternal family, none the less treat their wives as we should not dare to treat our domestic animals. And again, in order that filiation by the female side should give women a notable social influence, it is necessary that society should be very civilised, that there should be exchangeable values, and that women should become rich by inheritance. Then they are in a position to exercise the power that fortune gives in every country. But among the Redskins private property as yet hardly existed; the clans preserved the prior claim; personal property had not a great value; there were no domestic animals; it was difficult for any individual, man or woman, to become rich. Lastly, the chief occupations, those which were reputed noble, those also on which the existence of the tribes depended, were the chase and war; now the women took no part in these. They have not therefore been able to exercise a dominant influence, even in the tribes where they were treated with relative mildness. Among the Redskins in general, all the painful labours fall to the women, except the fabrication of arms. It is she who takes care of the home, who cooks, prepares the skins and the furs, gathers the wild rice, digs, sows and reaps the maize and the vegetables, dries the meat and the roots for the winter-provision, makes the clothes and the necklaces, etc. She even works at the construction of bark canoes, but in this, man comes to her aid. With that exception, he confines himself to hunting and fighting, smoking, eating, drinking, and sleeping. In his eyes work is a disgrace.[922] Such are the customs of living Redskins. Were they different last century? Not at all, if we may believe the authorities even who are invoked by the modern theorists of the American matriarchate. Charlevoix tells us that the Huron husbands prostituted their daughters and their wives for money,[923] that the Sioux cut off the noses of their unfaithful wives and scalped them,[924] and that all the hard work was left to the women, the men glorying in their idleness.[925] Lafitau enumerates, with still greater detail, the many and painful occupations of the women,[926] and he narrates the story of a husband who burnt his adulterous wife at a slow fire.[927] It is not then amongst the Redskins that we can find the matriarchate. Their familial system is none the less very curious, especially if we compare it with that of the Australians.