Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her husband's sphere of action. The Bechuanas never allow their women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow themselves.... In Guiana no woman may go near the hut where _ourali_ is made. In the Marquesas Islands the use of canoes is prohibited to the female sex by _tabu_: the breaking of the rule is punished with death. Conversely, amongst the same people _tapa_-making belongs exclusively to the women: when they are making it for their own headdresses it is _tabu_ for the men to touch it. In Nicaragua all the marketing was done by the women. A man might not enter the market nor even see the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... In Samoa where the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women, it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the process.... An Eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an _umiak_, the large boat used by women. The different offices of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore, and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to interfere with what is the work of women. In British Guiana cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one occasion when the men were compelled perforce to bake some bread they were only persuaded to do so with the utmost difficulty, and were ever after pointed at as old women.[272]
Amongst the Barea, man and wife seldom share the same bed; the reason they give is that the breath of the wife weakens the husband.... The Khyoungthas have a legend of a man who reduced a king and his men to a condition of feebleness by persuading them to dress up as women and perform female duties. When they had thus been rendered effeminate they were attacked and defeated without a blow.... Contempt for female timidity has caused a curious custom amongst the Gallas: they amputate the mammae of the boys soon after birth, believing that no warrior can possibly be brave who possesses them, and that they should belong to women only.... Amongst the Lhoosais when a man is unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to associate and work with the women. Amongst the Pomo Indians of California, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is made a menial and assists the squaws.... When the Delawares were denationized by the Iroquois and prohibited from going to war they were according to the Indian notion "made women," and were henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits appropriate to women.[273]