It is now time to turn to a consideration of the women of South America as we usually think of them, the product of a grafted Spanish civilization rather than a survival or result of primitive cultures. Yet when we turn to such consideration we find but little that is characteristic or even interesting. It is not to Spanish-founded countries that we must look for the greatest advances in the status or culture of women; in such lands there has ever been stagnation and even retrogression, while there has rarely been any marked individuality of personal or national trait. Nor must it be forgotten that the phrase "the Women of South America," even in the limited meaning of those of Spanish blood, covers an exceedingly broad field.
In noting the history of woman in South America, it is pleasant to relate that one of the first of the sex of whom we have record is chronicled as having performed a vast service to posterity, even though it were one which would have been done by others had she not been the pioneer. It is recorded that the first wheat ever sown in South America was carried to Lima, in the year 1535, by Doña Maria de Escobar, though the quantity was only a few grains. When the crop came to ripeness, the lady called together all her friends to celebrate the first harvest of wheat ever gathered in the New World; and although she was in error as to this,--wheat having been produced in Mexico in 1528 by a negro slave belonging to Cortés, who accidentally found a few grains mingled with the rice supplied to the soldiers and sowed them,--she is none the less deserving of being held in honorable remembrance as the benefactor of generations yet to come. While speaking of benefactors among South American women, one may be mentioned who is remarkable both for her race and for the form of one of her bequests. This was Catalina Huanca, an Indian, who was so rich--being a cacique--that she left at her death much money to be expended in various charitable bequests, among them being the still existing hospital of Santa Ana at Lima; but the extraordinary bequest to which allusion is made was a sum to be used for forming and maintaining a body guard for the viceroy, the guard to comprise both infantry--halberdiers, as the foot then were in such a body and cavalry, and to consist of a hundred men. It is difficult to say whether this bequest was not a malicious hit at the poverty of show among the high Spanish officials as compared with the state held by the Indians in their ceremonials; but the viceroy did not care to inquire too curiously into the donor's meaning, but preferred to accept with gratitude the goods with which the gods had provided him.