Native American women in Colonial America explained

Before, and during the colonial period (While the colonial period is generally defined by historians as 1492–1763, in the context of settler colonialism, as scholar Patrick Wolfe says, colonialism is ongoing)[1] of North America, Native American women had a role in society that contrasted with that of the settlers. Many women were leaders in Native American tribes. For example, Cherokee women worked in treaty negotiations with the United States, and women in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy acted, and continue to act, as political leaders and choose chiefs.[2] [3] Other women were delegated the task of caring for children and preparing meals; their other roles varied between tribal groups. In many tribes, such as the Algonquins and the Six Nations that compose the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, women were responsible for tending to the fields while the men were responsible for hunting. There were often long periods in which the men were not present. Thus, women played a major role in the family and exerted significant control over social and economic factors within the tribes.[4]

Life in society

Life in society varies from tribe to tribe and region to region, but some general perspectives of women include that they "value being mothers and rearing healthy families; spiritually, they are considered to be extensions of the Spirit Mother and continuators of their people; socially, they serve as transmitters of cultural knowledge and caretakers of children and relatives."[5] Many Native American tribes believed that they originated from a woman, with many of their legends and creation stories depict a "mother earth."[6] Women were entrusted with overseeing a tribe's agricultural systems, and were responsible for harvesting and cultivating the vegetables and plants for their people. Tribal women like the Algonquians planted their fields meticulously and in a way that kept the land sustainable for future use. After harvesting a tract of land until the soil lacked nutrients to continue, women would be tasked with deciding when and where to clear new fields, allowing the used ones to regenerate.[7] Women in the Haudenosaunee tribes often controlled the distribution of food among their people.[8] Their perceived position as beings of spiritual power gave women in some tribes the opportunity to be healers for minor injuries, as men were more commonly shamans, chiefs, and herbalists.

Leaders

Some Native American peoples were known for having women sit in positions of political power beyond simply controlling the food or being "agricultural scientists."[6] Elder women in the Haudenosaunee tribes gathered in clans to decide who would sit on the tribe or village council,[9] including the appointment of 49 chiefs within the confederacy.[10]

Women also learned skills in hunting and fishing. Others, such as Weetamoo, the female chief of the Pocasset Wampanoag, led their people in battle.[11] [12] It was not unusual for women to go into combat. Women would often enter a battle to protect or substitute for their fallen husbands or brothers, and some women earned warrior titles for their participation.[6] Women who sat as leaders of their tribes, like Queen Anne and Weetamoo, were known for their participation in wars.

Religion

During the colonial period, Native American religion was heavily integrated in all aspects of Native life, influencing culture, art, history, politics, and economics. Many Natives believed both animals and plants had spirits.[13]

Menstruation was spiritually significant in some cultures. For example, some male hunters among the Shawnee, Creek, Cherokee, and Cree, would avoid contact with any woman who was menstruating during their hunt because a woman is at her most powerful, with the association of menstruating with life force, and this power would disrupt the men's power to kill. Even walking near a woman during this time was believed to impact that killing power the men possessed. During this time, women would stay in hunts away from their village to ensure their power didn't disrupt the regular schedule. This practice acknowledged the power of Native Women within the culture and also allowed for a break from their regular activities and roles.

The Apaches, as well as other Native American people, believed that women have spiritual power, and some respected elder women use their important spiritual and social authority within the tribe.[14]

Gender roles

Traditional gender roles transformed upon European colonization of North America. Before contact with European colonizers, several Native American cultures were matrilineal, meaning that women, rather than men, passed on clan membership to their children. After marriage, husbands left their household and joined their wives' families.[10] Historian Katy Simpson Smith described eighteenth-century Cherokee motherhood as a "social, economic, and political institution" which included "not only the relationship between biological mother and child, but also women's broader kin networks, their productive connection to fertile land and economic subsistence, and their political role as mothers of the Cherokee nation." Cherokee acknowledged the prominent role of motherhood in their culture by calling all female relatives "mother."[15] The Hopi were both matriarchal and matrilineal, with equalitarian roles in society. Women also participate in Hopi politics.[16]

In many Native American cultures, although male family members arranged marriages, wives controlled whether or not they wanted a divorce.[6] In the Haudenosaunee tribes and Cherokee Nation, a woman could leave her husband's belongings outside their door to show that she wanted a divorce.

Upon contact with European colonizers, some tribes adopted a patriarchal system of gender roles that resembled European culture.[17] In the Cherokee Nation, a series of laws passed by the Cherokee Council over the course of the nineteenth century restricted women's sexual freedom, including the criminalization of abortion. The Council also passed laws which introduced new patrilineal forms of inheriting property and establishing citizenship.[18] Historian Theda Perdue suggests that changes to Cherokee gender roles were "superficial" before removal, and that the Council's series of bills represented a point of view "limited perhaps to the Cherokee elite who sought to emulate white southern planters."[19]

In the Lakota tribes, there was the legend of the "Double Woman Dreamer" who behaved in masculine ways and had special powers. This spurred on the concepts of warrior women or "manly hearted women" who acted like men in hunting and during warfare. There was the counterpart role for men of the "berdache," a role where a man could dress and take on the responsibilities of a woman. This designation is also referred to as "two-spirit" in modern American Indian cultures.

In the Apache tribe, girls are not recognized as a woman until they have gone through the Sunrise Ceremony. The Apache Sunrise Ceremony is a four-day coming of age celebration that Apache girls experience soon after their first menstruation. Throughout the sacred ceremony, they dance to songs and prayers to fill themselves with the physical and spiritual power of White Painted Woman to embrace their role as a woman of the Apache nation.[20]

Effect of Europeans on Native Women

European immigration came with the effect of territorial claims and forcibly removing Native Americans from their land. Some Native American people welcomed these immigrants, sharing their skills and belongings with the newcomers. Yet immigrants took advantage of Native Americans' hospitality and started building their own nation on top of tribal lands, encouraging more and more Europeans to move to North America and build new towns and homes for their people. Aside from violently evicting many American Indians off their land, the Europeans brought novel diseases, which caused a high mortality rate among the tribes and decreased the birth rate of the Native American people. As the number of Europeans grew bigger, the American Indian population decreased and neared extinction.[21]

One of the effects on the Native American women by the onslaught of Europeans was marriage. In many Northeast tribes, native women were used as guides, interpreters, and eventually wives for the fur traders. These marriages appeared to broker an alliance between cultures; however, when the fur traders decided to return to Europe they would abandon their wives, or even pass them on to another trader as property. The children resulting from these unions were not under the control of the mothers, like they were traditionally in Native American society. Instead, many of these children were sent away by their father to obtain a Christian education.

Some colonists sought to convert the native women involved in these relationships into Christians[22] Pocahontas’ story exemplifies the many marriages that brought alliances between tribes and colonists.[23] A portrait of Pocahontas was made depicting a woman in stiff European clothes, stripped of her native identity. Some native women converted to Christianity, most notably Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks. Tekakwitha was taught Catholicism from mother, who had been baptized by French missionaries. Tekakwitha converted to Catholicism when she was 19, a decision that elicited scorn and harsh treatment from her tribe.[24]

European's sexualization of Native Women and their roles created the "Pocahontas Perplex" coined by academic Rayna Green, that impacts Native Women still today. This ideology represents only three different types of people they can be, one of which is the Squaw (a derogatory slur). This role has been tied up with an abstract virtue that white men lust after and created a dangerous environment where they are seen as sex objects, thereby excusing violence against Native women then and still today.[25] Before European contact, domestic violence against Native Women was not as prevalent, and what did occur was severely sanctioned. This violence against Native women was shaped by colonization and permits the ongoing violence against them, today.[17]

Significant figures

Some of the notable women of the time period include:

Notes

  1. Wolfe. Patrick. 2006. Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research. 8. 4 . 387–409. 10.1080/14623520601056240 . 143873621 . free.
  2. News: The Power of Cherokee Women. Indian Country Today.
  3. Web site: Current Clan Mothers and Chiefs.
  4. Book: Brinkley, Alan. 2014. American History: Connecting with the Past 15th Edition. New York. McGraw Hill. 78. 9780073513294.
  5. Portman. Tarrell Awe Agahe. "Debunking the Pocahontas Paradox: The Need for a Humanistic Perspective.". The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development. 40.2 (2001). 185–99. Web.
  6. Green, Rayna. Women in American Indian society. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992.
  7. Wilson, James. The earth shall weep: a history of Native America. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998.
  8. Evans, Sara Margaret. Born for liberty: a history of women in America. New York, NY: Free Press Paperbacks published by Simon & Schuster, 1997.
  9. Graebner, Norman A., Gilbert Courtland. Fite, and Philip L. White. A history of the American people. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1970.
  10. Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States 1492–Present. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
  11. Calloway, Colin G. After King Philip's War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997.
  12. Book: Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War. Yale University Press. 2018.
  13. Book: Martin, Joel W.. The Land Looks after Us : A History of Native American Religion. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central. 34.
  14. Book: W., Martin, Joel. Land Looks After Us : a History of Native American Religion.. 2001. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-972661-5. 958521533.
  15. Smith . Katy Simpson . 2010 . "I Look on You... As My Children": Persistence and Change in Cherokee Motherhood, 1750—1835 . The North Carolina Historical Review . 87 . 4 . 403–430 . 23523708 . 0029-2494.
  16. Web site: The Original ~ Indians.org . 2019-12-04 . indians.org.
  17. Weaver . Hilary N. . 2009 . "The Colonial Context of Violence: Reflections on Violence in the Lives of Native American Women." . Journal of Interpersonal Violence . 24 . 9 . 1552–1563 . 10.1177/0886260508323665 . 18768738 . 30458055 . SAGE Journals.
  18. Yarbrough . Fay . 2004 . Legislating Women's Sexuality: Cherokee Marriage Laws in the Nineteenth Century . Journal of Social History . 38 . 2 . 385–406 . 10.1353/jsh.2004.0144 . 3790444 . 144646968 . 0022-4529.
  19. Perdue . Theda . 2000 . Clan and Court: Another Look at the Early Cherokee Republic . American Indian Quarterly . 24 . 4 . 562–569 . 10.1353/aiq.2000.0024 . 1185890 . 162379852 . 0095-182X.
  20. Web site: Becoming Woman: The Sunrise Ceremony: Apache Female Puberty Ceremonies in the Apache Tribe. www.webwinds.com. 2019-12-04.
  21. Web site: Native American – Removal from their Land – Immigration...- Classroom Presentation Teacher Resources – Library of Congress. www.loc.gov. 2019-12-04.
  22. Plane, Ann Marie. Colonial intimacies: Indian marriage in early New England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.
  23. Perdue, Theda . Sifters : Native American Women's Lives. Oxford University Press, 2001.
  24. Green, Raya. Native American Women. The University of Chicago Press, 1980
  25. Green. Rayna. 1975. "The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture.". The Massachusetts Review. 16. 4 . 698–714. Web.
  26. Bataille, Gretchen M., and Kathleen Mullen. Sands. American Indian Women Telling Their Lives. University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
  27. Champagne, Duane. Chronology of Native North American history: from pre-Columbian times to the present. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1994.
  28. Book: Alderman, Pat. Nancy Ward, Cherokee Chieftainess: Dragging Canoe, Cherokee-Chickamauga War Chief. The Overmountain Press. 1990.
  29. Tucker. Norma. 1969. Nancy Ward, Ghighau of the Cherokees. The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 53. 2 . 192–300. Web.
  30. Book: Burton, Sophie . 2008 . Colonial Natchitoches. A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier . Texas A&M University Press . 22–38 . 978-1603440189.
  31. Book: Mills, Elizabeth . 2007 . Natchitoches. Abstracts of the Catholic Church Registers of the French and Spanish Post of St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in Louisiana 1729-1803 . Heritage Books Inc. . 4–8 . 978-0931069109.

References and further reading

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