In these communications, they sternly reminded their “eloved children” that they had raised the Council members on that land which “God gave us to inhabit and raise provisions.” They admonished their children not to “part with any more lands.”Īnother Cherokee woman wrote to Benjamin Franklin in 1787, advocating peace between the new United States and the Cherokee nation. Matrilineal inheritance of clan identity remained important parts of many cultures long after contact, and women continued to use their maternal authority to influence political decisions within and outside of their own nations.įor example, as the United States increased pressure against the Cherokee nation to relinquish their eastern lands and move west, groups of Cherokee women petitioned their Council to stand their ground. However, other scholars, such as SUNY Fredonia anthropologist Joy Bilharz and University of North Carolina historian Theda Perdue, argue that many indigenous women maintained authority within their communities. Euro-American men insisted on dealing with Indian men in trade negotiations, and ministers demanded that Indians follow the Christian modes of partriarchy and gendered division of labor that made men farmers and women housekeepers. Some scholars argue that, after contact, women’s authority steadily declined because of cultural assimilation. In Native American creation stories, it was often the woman who created life, through giving birth to children, or through the use of their own bodies to create the earth, from which plants and animals emerged. Women’s life-giving roles also played a part in their political and social authority. Clan matrons selected men to serve as their chiefs, and they deposed chiefs with whom they were dissatisfied. For example, the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois Confederation all practiced matrilineal descent. In many North American societies, clan membership and material goods descended through women. They usually owned the family’s housing and household goods, engaged in agricultural food production and gathering of foodstuffs, and reared the children.īecause women’s activities were central to the community’s welfare, they also held important political, social, and economic power. Women, on the other hand, managed the internal operations of the community. Men were generally responsible for hunting, warfare, and interacting with outsiders, therefore they had more visible, public roles. Lineage was central to determining status and responsibilities, consent held communities together, and concepts of reciprocity extended to gender roles and divisions of authority. Kinship, extended family, and clan bound people together within a system of mutual obligation and respect. However, most cultures shared certain characteristics that promoted gender equality.
Evidence is particularly scarce about women’s everyday lives and responsibilities. It is hard to make any generalizations about indigenous societies, because North America’s First Peoples consisted of hundreds of separate cultures, each with their own belief systems, social structures, and cultural and political practices. Most scholars agree that Native American women at the time of contact with Europeans had more authority and autonomy than did European women. But, from the Native American perspective, women’s roles reflected their own cultural emphases on reciprocity, balance, and autonomy.
Indian women performed what Europeans considered to be men’s work. John Megalopensis, minister at a Dutch Church in New Netherlands, complained that Native American women were “obliged to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do every Thing the Men do nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their Enemies.” Many of his fellow Europeans described American Indian women as “slaves” to the men, because of the perceived differences in their labor, compared to European women. What were women treated like in the tribes of the Indians? Were they given more rights than American women of the time? Answer
0 kommentar(er)
