Native Americans and Anglo-American Colonists: Contact and Conflict

I. Gender and cultural contact

  • Gender and sexuality key areas of defining cultural difference
  • Difference offered a chance to feel superior to Native groups
  • But it also forced settlers to see that their ways were not the only or the “natural” ways
  • In general, Europeans viewed Indians as closer to a state of nature
    • Differing agricultural systems
      • Plows (settlers) v. hoe (Native American)
      • Settled plots (settler) v. seasonal, and nomadic patterns
      • Native American women the main farmers

II. Definition: Gender division of labor

  • Notion of “men’s work” and “women’s work”
    • Both reflects and reinforces gender ideology
    • Encodes beliefs about masculinity and femininity into the material world
    • Naturalizes gender difference

III. Work and gender in Native American societies

  • Rigid division of labor
  • Religious explanations for work patterns
    • Example: Algonquians believed in a virile war god and a congenial female hostess
  • Women’s work connected to giving and sustaining life
    • Earth, corn symbolized women
  • Men’s work connected to the taking of life
    • Hunting weapons, animal predators symbolized men
  • Mutual interdependency between sexes
    • Women not viewed as the “weaker” vessel
  • Women as traders (internal trade)
    • Men traded with whites
  • Native women’s status within their own communities typically declined with colonization

IV. European perceptions

  • Native American women seen as beasts of burden
  • Native American men seen as idle, lazy
    • In European societies, hunting and fishing were “gentlemanly diversions”
  • Missionaries attempted to alter work patterns

V. Sexual segregation

  • Colonists enforced only a moderate degree of sexual segregation
    • For example, seating in church; men excluded from scenes of childbirth
  • Native Americans lived much of their lives in sexually segregated groups
    • In many New England tribes, men and women even ate separately from men

VI. Family organization

  • Many Native American societies were
    • matrilineal (descent through the mother) and
    • matrilocal (men moved into homes that women had established)
  • Conception of “household” very different
    • Residential units not necessarily organized around married couples
    • More fluid
    • More impermanent
    • Challenged European ideas of “orderly” households

VII. Menstruation and childbirth

  • Colonial women practiced “social childbirth”
  • Native American women typically gave birth alone or attended by one other (older) woman
    • Removed to small huts situated in transitional areas, away from the village
  • Myth that NA women had virtually painless childbirths
    • Considered shameful to express feelings of pain

VIII. Sexuality

  • Emphasis on modesty (rather than purity)
  • Sexual restraint
  • Native American men generally did not rape captives
    • Sexual abstinence in wartime
    • Strong incest taboos (captives regarded as tribe members)

IX. “Two spirit” people

  • About 130 Native American tribes recognized a “third sex”
  • Typically a biological male recognized as have both male and female spirits
  • Generally declared during adulthood initiation ceremonies
  • Often adopted women’s dress and performed women’s tasks
  • Typically married men

X. Sexuality and marriage

  • Women often had the freedom to experiment sexually before marriage and to choose a marriage partner
  • In other cases, marriages arranged by families or tribes
    • Economic or political relationships
  • Easier to end marriages
  • Divorce/separation had less severe consequences than it did for white women

XI. Relations with settler men

  • Women often acted as cultural mediators
    • Did not necessarily involve loss of status for the woman
  • Fur traders (“Indian traders”) often married Native women
    • Advantageous for white men to form relationships with Native women

XII. Pocahontas

  • In 1607, she “saves” John Smith
    • Myth most likely based on Smith’s misunderstanding of what was occurring
  • She did help colonists survive difficult early years
  • 1610 Married an Indian named Kocoum
  • 1610 Kidnapped
  • 1613 Converted to Christianity; baptized as Rebecca
  • 1614 Married John Rolfe

Rolfe wrote to the governor of Virginia for permission to marry her “for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my owne salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbeleeving creature, namely Pokahuntas…”

  • 1616 Virginia Company brought the Rolfes to England; presented to the court
  • 1617 She became ill on the return trip; died at 22

XIII. Captivity 

  • Numbers may seem small…
    • 1689-1730 (300 whites seized in New England)
    • 1675-1763 (1,641 whites seized in New England)
  • But psychological impact was huge
  • Most captives were seized during attacks
    • To avenge losses of kin
    • To replace lost relatives
    • As a deterrent to further expansion/incursions
    • For trade or ransom

XIV. Gender and captivity

  • Women often endured special hardships
    • 20% of female captives were pregnant or had recently given birth
  • By late 18th century, women and children predominated among captives
    • Men were more likely to be killed outright
  • Men more likely to escape
    • 8% of men; 2% of women succeeded in escaping

XV. Captivity narratives

  • Religious paradigm: captivity as a ritualistic journey of salvation
  • Prototypes in captivity narratives reflected shifting gender ideals
    • “Resourceful survivor” (Colonial period)
    • “American Amazon” (Revolutionary Era)
    • “Frail flower” (1820s on)

XVI. Mary Rowlandson

  • Lancaster, MA; Feb. 20, 1676
  • Abduction occurred during King Philip’s War (1675-1676)
    • Incredibly bloody conflict; many atrocities
  • Wounded in raid; 6-year-old daughter also wounded (died 6 days later)
  • Valued as a captive because of her high social status
    • After two months, ransomed for 20 pounds

 


XVII.  Mary Rowlandson’s narrative

  • Published anonymously; The Soveraignty & Goodness of God
    • First published work by an American woman
      • Editor apologized for bringing a woman into “publick view”
      • Special case due to her piety and grace God had shown her
    • Preface by Increase Mather
    • Established new genre
    • Sold more than 1,000 copies in one year; a colonial “bestseller”
    • Emphasized her status as a “goodwife”
      • Reliance on skills as a housewife
      • Savvy negotiator
      • Piety

“I have seen the extreme vanity of this world. One hour I have been in health and wealth, wanting nothing; but the next hour in sickness and wounds and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction….And that scripture would come to mind…For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. But now I see the Lord had His time to scourge and chasten me…. Yet I see…when God calls a person to anything, and through ever so many difficulties, yet He is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby…. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”


XVI. Hannah Duston

  • Lived in Haverhill, MA; taken prisoner by the Abenaki Indians in 1698
  • Had just given birth to 13th child; baby killed
  • She killed her captors while they slept; returned with 10 scalps (6 children)
    • Her husband collected the bounty
    • Celebrated as a modern-day Jael
    • Cotton Mather’s sermon, “Notable Deliverance from Captivity”
    • By the 19th century, no longer celebrated
    • Behavior violated ideal of “true womanhood”