22/11/2016

HowNativeAmericanWomenInspiredTheFeministMovement

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How Native American Women Inspired The Feminist Movement

BY BUST MAGAZINE (HTTP://BUST.COM/BUST-MAGAZINE/) IN FEMINISM (/FEMINISM/)

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From left to right: Elizabeth Cady Stanton,Haudenosaunee woman, Matilda Joslyn Gage

Where did early suffragists ever get the idea that women should
have the same rights as men? The answer may be in their own
backyardsin the egalitarian society created by Native
Americans
"One day, a [Native American] woman gave away a ne quality horse. The audience of womens rights activists listened attentively as
ethnographer Alice Fletcher addressed the rst International Council of Women. The scene was Washington, D.C. The date was March 1888.
Will your husband like to have you give the horse away? Fletcher recalled asking the woman, shocked. The Native womans eyes danced,
Fletcher told the suragists and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the story to the others gathered in her tent, and I
became the target of many merry eyes. Laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white mans hold upon his wifes property.
Fletcher had forgotten just for a moment that she was with Native, not white women. No white woman would dare give away her familys
horse. In fact, married white women had no legal right to their own possessions or property in most states, but that was just the tip of the
iceberg. Far beyond simply lacking rights, married American women had no legal identity. They couldnt vote, have guardianship of their own
children, or have autonomy over their own bodies. A wife and mother didnt exist in the eyes of the law; she became one with her husband
the moment they were joined in matrimony. In fact, husbands were legally within their rights to beat their wives if they chose. Yet for most
women, getting married was the only way to support oneself. Most jobs were closed to them and the few available ones paid half (or less) of
the wages that men were paid for the same work. The founding document of Americas womens movement, the 1848 Declaration of
Sentiments, summed it up well: He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
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Haudenosauneewomengrindingcornordriedberries,withinfantoncradleboardinbackground

Womens second-class position in Western society had been in place for centuries. Even in the 1800s, most white people were still guided by
the Biblical notion that God made Adam rst, then Eve as a helpmate. When she was disobedient in Genesis 3:16, the text stated that Eve

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the Biblical notion that God made Adam rst, then Eve as a helpmate. When she was disobedient in Genesis 3:16, the text stated that Eve
and all women after her would be under the authority of men as punishment. Thy desire shall be to thy husband, The Bible said, and he
shall rule over thee.
But the early feminists had to wonder: Was womans degraded position truly God-ordained as a punishment for Eves sin? Did it develop
over time, with women depending upon mens greater strength and wisdom to survive? If either was true, the oppression of women would
be universal, they reasoned. Once the early suragist-feminists discovered the authority and respect women held in Native American
nations, however, they knew beyond a doubt that their subjugation was man-made, and they resolved to ght for a similar world of equality
for themselves.
Two of the earliest founders of the U.S. womens movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, saw the egalitarian Native
model rst-hand while growing up in New York, the land base of the Haudenosauneea label denoting the ve nations of the Iroquois
confederacy: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Senecalater joined by the Tuscarora. Native women were the agriculturalists
of their tribes, and from North to South America they collectively raised corn, beans, and squash. Their responsibility for the survival of the
Nation, through the creation of life and the food that sustained life, gave women a position of equality in their society that white women
could only dream of.
In the councils of the Iroquois every adult male or female had a voice upon all questions brought before it, Stanton reported in The
National Bulletin in 1891. The American aborigines were essentially democratic in their government.The women were the great power
among the clan. Stanton went on to describe how clan mothers had the responsibility for nominating a chief, and could remove that chief if
he did not make good decisions. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, Stanton recalled, to knock o the horns, as it was
technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors.

Their responsibility for the survival of the Nation, through the

creation of life and the food that sustained life, gave women a
position of equality in their society that white women could only
dream of.
Gage, who was the third member of the National Woman Surage Association leadership triumvirate with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,
also wrote about her Haudenosaunee neighbors in her 1893 magnum opus, Woman, Church and State (http://www.sacredtexts.com/wmn/wcs/wcs03.htm). Never was justice more perfect; never was civilization higher, she wrote. Under their women, the science
of government reached the highest form known to the world.
In particular, Gage was struck by the Native American political power structure. Division of power between the sexes in this Indian republic
was nearly equal, Gage wrote. The common interests of the confederacy were arranged in councils, each sex holding one of its own,
although the women took the initiative in suggestion, orators of their own sex presenting their views to the council of men.
Gage not only observed this process, she experienced it as well. Given an honorary adoption into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation in
1893, Gages adopted Mohawk sister told her that, this name would admit me to the Council of Matrons, where a vote would be taken, as to
my having a voice in the Chieftainship. What must this have meant to a woman who went to trial the same year for voting, which was illegal
for women to do? Considered for decision-making in her adopted nation, she was arrested in her own state for attempting to do exactly
that.

NativeAmericanwomenandmeninFloridaplantingbeansormaize

Haudenosaunee womens authority in family relations provided another inspiring model for suragists. While U.S. women had
responsibility for the home, the authority for all decisions ultimately rested with their husbands. Not so with Native women, Gage explained
in Woman, Church and State. In the home, the wife was absolute.
Although saccharine tribute was paid in the West to motherhood, the harsh reality was that American women, Gage pointed out, had no
legal right or authority over her children. These laws, Gage wrote, even permitted the dying father of an unborn child to will it away, and to
give any person he pleases to select the right to wait the advent of that child, and when the mother, at the hazard of her own life, has
brought it forth, to rob her of it and to do by it as the dead father directed.
This claim is supported by New York law of the time, which read, Every father, whether of full age or a minor, of a child likely to be born, or
of any living child under the age of 21 years and unmarried, may, by his deed or last will duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of
such child, during its minority, or for any less time, to any person or persons in possession or remainder.
What an anomaly on justice is such a law! Gage asserted. It is better to be a live dog than a dead lion, was a proverb I learned in my
childhoodbut I have learned a new rendering: It is better to be a dead father than a live mother.

"The American aborigines were essentially democratic in their

government.The women were the great power among the clan.
They did not hesitate, when occasion required to knock off the
horns, as it was technically called, from the head of a chief and
send him back to the ranks of the warriors."
Issues of paternal rights were totally foreign to the Native world. Haudenosaunee children were (and are) born into their mothers clan and
follow their mothers line. When Gage tried to explain the concept of an illegitimate child to a Haudenosaunee friend, the woman puzzled,
how can any child not be legitimate? You always know who your mother is. The living arrangements were traditionally based on this
matrilineal system. A husband came to live with his wife, her parents, her sisters and their husbands and children in their matrilineal family
longhouse. Unmarried brothers lived there, too, until they married and moved to their wives longhouses. If any of the mothers died or the
couple split up, the children continued to live in the mothers longhouse. The children also accompanied the mother, whose right to them
was recognized as supreme, Gage wrote, if for any cause the Iroquois husband and wife separated.
Stantons study of Native American nations concurred. From these cases, it appears the children belonged to the mother, not to the father,
and that he was not allowed to take them even after the mothers death, she wrote. Such, also, was the usage among the Iroquois and
other Northern tribes, and among the village Indians of Mexico.
Condemned for her public declaration that women should be able to leave loveless or dangerous marriages, Stanton delightedly shared
Rev. Ashur Wrights description of divorce Iroquois-style with the International Council of Women meeting in 1891. No matter how many

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Rev. Ashur Wrights description of divorce Iroquois-style with the International Council of Women meeting in 1891. No matter how many
children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, she quoted, the husband might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and
budge; and after such an order it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey.

Violence against women was a behavior seldom seen among

Indian nations, and when it occurred, it was dealt with severely,
generally by banishment or death.
Also not healthful to Native American men, was the spousal battery their white counterparts so cavalierly engaged in. In fact, violence
against women was a behavior seldom seen among Indian nations, and when it occurred, it was dealt with severely, generally by
banishment or death. In fact, white women entered a paradise of personal safety among Native people that they never experienced on their
own soil. It shows the remarkable security of living on an Indian Reservation, that a solitary woman can walk about for miles, at any hour of
the day or night, in perfect safety, Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp, who taught school on the Onondaga Nation, remarked in a letter to the
Skaneateles Democrat in 1883.
In the 200 years since the early feminists rst came into contact with liberated Native women, very little has changed in terms of their status
within their tribes. Iroquois Haudenosaunee women today continue to have the responsibility of nominating, counseling, and keeping in
oce the male chief who represents their clan in the Grand Council. In the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, Haudenosaunee women
have worked alongside men to successfully guard their sovereign political status against persistent attempts to turn them into United States
citizens. For the suragists who were inspired by Native women, and the feminists who continue their important work today, womens
empowerment is synonymous with womens rights. But for Iroquois women, who have maintained their traditions despite two centuries of
white Americas attempts to civilize them, the concept of womens rights actually has little meaning. To the Haudenosaunee, it is simply
their way of life. Their egalitarian relationships and their political authority are a reality thatfor many non-Native womenis still
something to strive for.
--By Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D.
Collage by Mara Salomn
This story originally appeared in the October/November 2015print issue of BUST Magazine. Subscribe today
(http://www.bust.com/subscribe)!
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