It has been suggested that the plainer appearance of the women depends upon their oppressed and despised position, as well as upon the selfishness of the men.[1097] But it is doubtful whether this is the true explanation. Savage ornaments, generally speaking, are not costly things, and even where the state of women is most degraded a woman may, if she pleases, paint her body with red ochre or put a piece of wood through her lip or a feather through the cartilage of the nose. In Eastern Central Africa, for instance, the women are more decorated than the men, although they hold an inferior position, being viewed as beasts of burden, and doing all the harder work. “A woman,” says Mr. Macdonald, “always kneels when she has occasion to talk to a man.”[1098] Almost the same is said of the female Indians of Guiana;[1099] whereas in the Yule Island, on the Coast of New Guinea, and in New Hanover, the women are less given to personal adornment than the men, although they are held in respect, have influence in their families, and exercise, in some villages, much authority, or even supremacy.[1100] Of all the various kinds of self-ornamentation tattooing is the most laborious. Yet, in Melanesia, it is chiefly women that are tattooed, though they are treated as slaves; whilst in Polynesia, where the _status_ of women is comparatively good, this practice is mainly confined to the men.[1101] In Fiji, where women were fearfully oppressed, genuine tattooing was found on them only.[1102] It is expressly stated of the women of several savage peoples that they are less desirous of self-decoration than the men. Speaking of the Aleuts on the Fur-Seal Islands of Alaska, Mr. Elliott says, “In these lower races there is much more vanity displayed by the masculine element than the feminine, according to my observation; in other words, I have noticed a greater desire among the young men than among the young women of savage and semi-civilised people to be gaily dressed, and to look fine.”[1103] Among the Gambier Islanders, according to Beechey, the women “have no ornaments of any kind, and appeared quite indifferent to the beads and trinkets which were offered them.”[1104] In Tierra del Fuego, Lieutenant Bove found the men more desirous of ornaments than the women; and Proyart made a similar observation with regard to the people of Loango.[1105] Again, touching the Crees, Mackenzie remarks that “the women, though by no means inattentive to the decoration of their own persons, appear to have a still greater degree of pride attending to the appearance of the men, whose faces are painted with more care than those of the women.”[1106]