Note 17 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

In the first paragraph it has already been noticed, that the advocates of women’s rights make very great use of the term “slavery”. We shall see that this equally applies to some ethnographers and theorists describing the state of women, especially as wives, in some primitive societies. To give one instance of each of them: Bancroft says of the Northern Californians: “Although I find no description of an actual system of slavery existing among them, yet there is no doubt that they have slaves. We shall see … that women entitled by courtesy wives, are bought and sold”17. The theorist we shall quote is Letourneau: “In all very primitive societies woman represents the domestic animals, the beasts of burden which the more advanced societies possess: she is indeed treated as a slave, and this certainly is one of the reasons why slavery has been instituted so late in the course of social evolution”18.