Native American Women in History by Frederick Webb Hodge

NATIVE AMERICAN LEGENDS

Native American Women in History

By Frederick Webb Hodge in 1906

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One of the most erroneous beliefs relating to the status and condition of the Native American woman is that she was, both before and after marriage, the abject slave and drudge of the men of her tribe. This view, due largely to inaccurate observation and misconception, was correct, perhaps, at times, as to a small percentage of the tribes and peoples whose social organization was of the most elementary kind, politically and ceremonially, and especially of those tribes that were nonagricultural.

Among the other Indian tribes north of Mexico, the status of woman depended on complex conditions having their origin in climate, habitat, mythology, and concepts arising from the economic environment and in the character of the social and political organization.

It is one of the fundamental deductions of modern mythological research that the prevailing social, ceremonial, and governmental principles and institutions of a people are closely reflected in the forms, structure, and kind of dominion exercised by the gods of that people.

Chinook Indian woman on the beach, 1910, Edward S. Curtis.

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Where numerous goddesses sat on the tribal Olympus, it is safe to say that woman was highly esteemed and exercised some measure of authority. In tribes whose government was based on the clan organization, the gods were thought of as related one to another in degrees required by such an institution in which woman is supreme, exercising rights lying at the foundation of tribal society and government.

Ethical teaching and observances find their explanation not in the religious views and rites of a people but rather in the rules and principles underlying those institutions which have proved most conducive to the peace, harmony, and prosperity of the community.

In defining the status of woman, a broad distinction must be made between women who are, and women who are not, members of the tribe or community, for among most tribes, life, liberty, and the pursuit of well-being are rights belonging only to women who by birth or by the rite of adoption, are members or citizens thereof. Other women receive no consideration or respect on account of their sex, although after adoption, they were spared, as possible mothers, indiscriminate slaughter in the heat of battle, except while resisting the enemy as valiantly as their brothers and husbands, when they suffered wounds or death for their patriotism.

Among the North American aborigines dealt with here, each sex had its own peculiar sphere of duty and responsibility, and it is essential to a proper understanding of the subject, that both these spheres of activity should be considered. To protect his family, his wife or wives, their offspring and near kindred, to support them with the products of the chase, to manufacture weapons and wooden utensils, and commonly to provide suitable timbers and bark for the building of the lodge, constituted the duty and obligation which rested on the man. These activities required health, strength, and skill. The warrior was usually absent from his fireside on the chase, on the warpath, or on the fishing trip, weeks, months, and even years, during which he traveled hundreds of miles and was subjected to the hardships and perils of hunting and fighting, and to the inclemency of the weather, often without adequate shelter or food.

The labor required in the home and in all that directly affected it, fell naturally to the lot of the woman. In addition to the activities which they shared in common with men, and the care of children, women attended to the tanning of skins, the weaving of suitable fibers into fabrics and other articles of necessity, the making of mats and mattresses, baskets, pots of clay, and utensils of bark; sewing, dyeing; gathering and storing of edible roots, seeds, berries, and plants, and the drying and smoking of meats brought home by the hunters.

Zuni woman making pottery, 1903, Edward S. Curtis.

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On the march, the care of the camp equipage and of the various family belongings constituted part of the woman's duties, in which she was assisted by the children and by any men were were unable to participate in active fighting or hunting.

The essential principle governing this division of labor and responsibility between the sexes lies much deeper than apparently heartless tyranny of the man. It is the best possible adjustment of the available means of the family to secure the largest measure of welfare and to protect and perpetuate the little community. No other division was so well adapted to the conditions of life among the North American Indians.

Fortified by the doctrine of signatures and by other superstitious reasons and beliefs, custom emphasized by various rites and observances the division of labor between the sexes.

Thus, the sowing of seeds by women was supposed to render such seeds more fertile and the earth more productive than if planted by men, for it was held that woman has and controls the faculty of reproduction and increase. Hence, sowing and cultivating the crops became one of the exclusive departments of woman's work.

According to Lewis and Clark, the Shoshone husband was the absolute proprietor of his wives and daughters, and might dispose of them by barter or otherwise at his pleasure. According to Daniel Williams Harmon, a fur trader and explorer, his journal of 1820, described the women of the tribes visited by him as having been treated no better than the dogs. W. L. Hardesty, of the Hudsons Bay Company, said of the Kutchin and Loucheux Indians, that "the women are literally beasts of burden to their lords and masters. All the heavy work is performed by them." A similar statement is made by Stephen Powers, an American journalist and ethnographer, in 1877 in regard to the Karok of California.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, described in his 1855 book, Indian Tribes, that the Cree women were subjected to lives of heavy and exacting toil, and that some mothers would not hesitate to kill their female infants to save them from the miseries which they themselves had suffered.

Samuel de Champlain, an explorer, geographer, and colonizer, wrote in 1615, that the Huron and Algonquian women were expected to attend their husbands from place to place in the fields, acting as a pack-mule in carrying the baggage and in doing a a number of other things. Yet, it would seem that this hard life did not thwart their development, for he adds that among these tribes, there were a number of powerful women of extraordinary height, who had almost sole care of the lodge and the work at home, tilling the land, planting the corn, gathering a supply of fuel for winter use, beating and spinning the hemp and the bark fibers, the product of which was utilized in the manufacture fishing nets and other purposes; the women also harvested and stored the corn and prepared it for eating.

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