Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris Page B

strict matrilocality is observed a man who wants to have several wives must restrict himself to women who are each other’s sisters. (Formal polygyny was often forgone in matrilineal societies as was true of the Iroquois.) And, as I’ve said, marriages in matrilineal societies are easily broken by the women. When a man is a guest in his wife’s homestead, he cannot mistreat her and expect her to take it lying down. Yet this moderation of the sexist hierarchy should not be confused with the nullification of that hierarchy. In their eagerness to overturn common stereotypes of male supremacy, some anthropologists cite the moderating effect of matrilineal institutions on the degree of male control as if it were evidence of sexual parity. One should not make too much of the fact that Iroquois women “greatly resented being beaten by their husbands.” And the fact that the women “might commit suicide to revenge themselves for the ill treatment” is not a sign of their equality with men, as one researcher has recently implied. The important point is that no Iroquois woman would dare to beat her husband. And if such a thing were ever to happen, the husband would certainly have “revenged” himself in a more convincing fashion than by committing suicide. I see no reason to doubt that Lewis Henry Morgan knew what he was talking about when he wrote that the Iroquois male “regarded women as the inferior, the dependent, and the servant of man, and from nurture and habit, she actually considered herself to be so.” Early observers who expressed opinions contrary to Morgan’s were completely befuddled by the differencebetween matrilineal descent and female supremacy.
    The moderating effect of matrilineality upon the Iroquois was stronger and perhaps even more unusual in the sphere of politics than it was in marriage and domestic life. As far as I know, of all the village cultures about which we have any reliable information none came nearer to being a political matriarchy than the Iroquois. Yet the role of Iroquois women as political decision-makers did not establish political parity between the sexes. Iroquois matrons had the power to raise and depose the male elders who were elected to the highest ruling body, called the council. Through a male representative on the council they could influence its decisions and exercise power over the conduct of war and the establishment of treaties. Eligibility for office passed through the female line, and it was the duty of women to nominate the men who would serve on the council. But women themselves could not serve on the council, and the incumbent males had a veto power over the matrons’ nominations. Judith Brown concludes her survey of the Iroquois sexual hierarchy with the remark that “the nation was not a matriarchy, as claimed by some.” But she adds that “the matrons were an
éminence grise
.” This is not the point. Women are always more influential behind the scenes than they seem to be out front. It is the fact that they are seldom out in front that is so puzzling and that, as I see it, can only be explained in relation to the practice of warfare.
    Aside from the problems presented by warlike matrilineal societies, there is another reason that the influence of warfare on sex roles has been virtually ignored up to now. Modern theories about sex roles have been dominated by Freudian psychologists and psychiatrists.Freudians have long been aware that some kind of link must exist between warfare and sex roles, but they have inverted the causal arrow and derived warfare from male aggressiveness rather than male aggressiveness from warfare. This inversion has penetrated to other disciplines and entered the popular culture, where it lies like a fog over the intellectual scene. Freud claimed that aggression is a manifestation of the frustrations of sexual instincts during childhood and that war is simply socially sanctioned aggression writ large in its most homicidal form. That