Polyandry is generally
practised, increasing the horror of her position, for
she is required to be a slave to a number of masters,
who treat her with the most rigorous harshness and
brutality. From the day of her birth until her death
(few Pa-Urg women live to be fifty) her life is one
protracted period of degradation. She is called upon to
perform the most menial and degrading of services and
the entire manual labor of the community, it being
considered base of a male to engage in other labor than
that of warfare and the chase....
"When a child is to be born the mother is driven from
the village in which she lives, and is compelled to
take up her abode in some roadside hut or cave in the
open country, a scanty supply of food, furnished by her
husbands, being brought to her by the other women of
the tribe. When the child is born the mother remains
with it for one or two months, and then leaving it in a
cave, returns to the village and informs her eldest
husband of its birth and the place where she has left
it. If the child is a male, some consideration is shown
to her; should it be a female, however, her lot is
frightful, for aside from the severe beating to which
she is subjected by her husband, she suffers the scorn
and contumely of the rest of the tribe.
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