Cherokee Women's Roles

In the early 1700s, one of the Cherokee leaders came to South Carolina to discuss trade agreements with the governor and was surprised to find that there was no white women present. And then Europeans were also surprised to see that Cherokee women were equally important as men, politically and economically. The women of the Cherokee tribe also could get divorced easily, rarely experienced rape or domestic violence, they worked as farmers, owned their own homes and fields, and had significant political and economic power.
One of the hardest things for the colonists to comprehend was the Cherokee kinship system. It was based on the matrilineal structure, where lineage is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. What completely shocked me however, was that a child’s father wasn’t very important in their life as their uncle from their mom’s side would be.
It is also seen that in traditional Cherokee culture, men and women had different roles, different ritual spaces and different ceremonies.
Men were hunters, and women were farmers who controlled the household. Both were responsible for putting food on the table. In the winter, when men traveled hundreds of miles to hunt bear and other animals, women stayed at home. They kept the fires burning in the winter-houses, made baskets, pottery, clothing and other things the family needed, cared for the children, and performed the chores for the household. Maybe because women were so important in the family and in the economy, they also had a voice in government.
Johnston says that both men and women were sexually liberated, and unions were typically based on mutual attraction. The concept of being ashamed of one’s body or physical desires was foreign to the Cherokee mind-set. Even though married men and women were expected to be faithful to one another, adultery was not considered a grand crime, and divorce based on loss of attraction was not
uncommon:
The loss of formal political power was dramatic. The Cherokee Constitution, modeled after the U.S. Constitution, created a three-branch government with a Supreme Court, a legislature and a principle chief as executive. The Cherokees hoped that this demonstration of sovereignty would prevent their forced removal from their ancestors’ land. But by the 1800s the Cherokees had lost their independence and had become dominated by white Americans, and during this time white Americans did not believe that it was proper for women to fight wars, vote, speak in public, work outside the home or even control their own children. The Cherokees began to imitate whites, and Cherokee women lost much of their power and prestige. In the 20th century, they had to struggle along with other women to acquire many of the rights that Cherokee women once freely enjoyed.