What Were The Roles Of Native American Women

Native American women during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often enjoyed a more equitable lifestyle than their counterparts in the colonies. The women’s lives were often dictated by geography and what indigenous group they belonged to. However, in the Native American societies that were more matrilineal women were often in charge of the village, while the men went off to hunt or make war, they often took care of the crops, and gathered fruits, nuts, and berries to supplement the group’s diet. As the women often prepared the food and grew most of it, they were often in charge of distributing it. For instance in the Iroquois Five Nations, which include the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and the Mohawks the clan’s elderly women chose
New England native women built their own homes and thus owned them, if they ever wanted to divorce their husbands they could just move their home before their soon to be ex-husbands got home. Additionally, the Iroquois Five Nations elderly women ran the longhouses and decided who would get what spot near or far away from the fires. One would not want to make them mad in the bitter cold of winter. Native American women were also seen as powerful for what the white women of the colonies were seen as weak for, pregnancy and menstrual periods. Often Native American women who were pregnant or menstruating would be kept away from the group because it was believed that they could cause trouble by just looking at someone wrong. Native American women were free to choose their mates and to change their minds if they did not like their chosen mate. In general, Native American women had more power within their communities and more sexual equality than most European
Pocahantas grew up in a world where Native American women were often kidnapped by enemy war parties and forced to change their allegiance. However bad the kidnapping experience was for these women, they knew that they would be treated kindly by the other clans and that they could harbor hope of becoming wives rather than slav es. Instead of being taken captive by another tribe, Pocahontas, who was not of royal blood because her mother was not royal, was taken captive by the white settlers who were ecstatic to have someone they could hold for ransom. However, all of the items and captive that her father tried to exchange for her were deemed not enough by her captors. Eventually, Pocahontas learned English and met John Rolfe, a widower who became infatuated with her. This gave Pocahontas power over him, and when he stated that he wanted to marry here, she had agency and her male relatives to back her up if she decided against it. It is likely that Pocahontas viewed her marriage to John Rolfe as an alliance. With this marriage she was able to serve as a go-between between her people and the white settlers and eventually the Londoners. Pocahontas was smart and she knew how to use her circumstance, however unfortunate, to better her situation in life. She had agency and a plan in mind behind her decisions and her plan gave her power. Essentially,