I was reading an account of an expedition up the Amazon (back in 1923). The author has been stranded with an Indian tribe and occasionally hires some of the men to help him build a boat so that he can get back to civilization. The tribe had very little contact with white men and did not use money, so he would pay them with small items that were useful to a hunter-gatherer tribe.

In this context, the author noticed a remarkable interaction between the sexes which should be of interest (but no surprise) to TRPers:

[This] is a lamentable example of how many a strong warrior may be dominated by his women-folk. Listen to this, you downtrodden husbands, and groan for your naked brothers of the Brazilian jungle.

Many a time when I owed for some service and asked the man what he wanted, he would say, "Wait a minute till I go and ask my woman." Many a time the weaker sex would be waiting right at the landing-place to see that the man should get away with nothing. And immediately she would say, "Ask for a piece of cloth," or "for beads", or for some such futile feminine frippary. And the man, though I might know that his soul hungered for a knife, would say meekly, "I want a piece of cloth".

Then when the woman had duly taken the cloth away from the man, she would later come round to the boat, begging:

"What can I do with a piece of cloth without a needle?" And when she had the needle: "What can I do with a needle without thread?" Even unto buttons would such an one beg.

When I would say in exasperation:

"Go hence, thou daughter of the horse-leech. Go and borrow a palm-thorn needle from thy more provident sister and go twist for thyself the good tucum fiber which is better than thread."

She would begin to wheedle:

"Look, Kariwa: If you will give me just one needle and a piece of thread so long, and only six buttons, I will give you-look-four big handfuls, like this, of cassava bread, all hot, to make friendship between us."

When a woman would get such a piece of cloth and the necessary implements, she would immediately go and make for herself a much-pleated skirt which she would fasten around her waist with a draw-string and then would parade, purring, before her envious friends.

Sisters under their skins, they are, all of them, all the world over; unprincipled, scheming creatures whose instinct teaches them how to get what they want from men.

So mournful was it to me to see stalwart men bullied out of the fruits of their labor, that finally I took to asking them when they were out in the jungles with me, away from the dominant female eye, what they wanted for payment. And they would say with shining eyes, "A knife", or, "Some fish-hooks," I would say: "Very well, I will give you a knife. That is my promise." And upon my return to the boat I would with joyous deliberation select a knife for my man while his woman was whispering angrily over his shoulder, "Tell him that you want beads'" or "Ask him for a mirror".

It has even happened that a man, in fear of the wrath to come, has changed his mind and has asked weakly for cloth. Whereupon I have earned his gratitude by saying sternly, "No, a knife was my promise, and a Kariwa's promise must be kept."

All the more extraordinary is this henpecking because the women are only temporary burdens. In this perfect commune there is no permanent marriage. A man and a woman live together for just as long as they are individually so inclined. Either one may at any time change to another moloca, or perhaps just sling the hammock in another partition across the hall.

edit: The book is called White Waters and Black by Gordon MacCreagh, a possible inspiration for Indiana Jones. It's pretty hilarious and very well written.