Carrie Chapman Catt - Diaries, India, January - February? 1912 (Box 1, Folder 5)

are matriarchate with some curious exception due to the Mohammedan religion which it adopted many centuries ago. As the Menang Kabous believe themselves to be pure Malay and their language is a Malay dialect. It is not a written language and they have no written history, but stories handed down from parents to children contain an account of their past probably more or less correct.

...are well known. They [illegible] the matriarchate, with curious variations due to the Mohammedan faith. The government is now entirely in the hands of men, the property chiefly in the hands of women. Their institution belong to the matriarchate, what many sociologists believe to have been a stage thro' which all races have passed. In the case of the Minangkabous the survival of this ancient form of social organization has been curiously varried by two powerful patriarchate influences. One came from an influx of Hindoos who left behind them something of their arts religion and organization, the other came later in the form...

...Arab traders who converted the people to Mohammedanism. There must have been an unusual virility in the institution to have withstood this. Since women are ordered to seclusion and a position entirely subordinate to men by the priests of Mohammed, Polygamy follows to the extent of four wives permitted by the Koran was thoroughly established and the political power passed into the hands of men. The thousands of fertile well watered lands which occupy the numerous valleys of this mountainous country are owned by the women and are inherited in the female...

...line only. The houses are peculiarly picturesque and the result a far more advanced architecture than that of Hindoo or Arab and must have been original. The ridge of their high roofs is shaped like a pair of bullock horns and ends in sharp points. When a wing is added the roof forms a single horn with the usual sharp oint. A large house may have six wings. These people believe that in a remote past there was a great war between two branches of the Malay race to which they belong. After much loss of life and destruction of property they decided to settle their differences by a contest between two bullocks. Their bullocks...

...won and ever after they were known as the Minagkabaou which means "victory of the bullock." The bullock horn was adopted as the symbol of their power and was first applied in a novel fashion to the ridge of their roof. These roofs are beatifully thatched and mounted with metal tips to the horns and are sometime decorated with silver thread woven into the thatch in intricate designs. Every house has one or more rice barns supported on high piles and surmounted by a proportionately large roof with several curved ridges. A group of fmaily houses will also have a masjid or small mosque and every village...