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Theda Purdue’s “Cherokee Women” is a piece that asserts a somewhat unheard of view regarding the power of women during colonial times. Radically different from the colonial/European view of the subservience of women, Cherokee females actually possessed a significant matrix of power within their society. One abstract way in which Cherokee women possessed power over the rest of their culture was during menstruation (30). Cherokee’s viewed menstrual blood as that of an unborn child, which could bring about unknown change in society. They feared this change because they did not know whether it would be good or bad, making the unknown their true tormentor (34).
With the common European and colonial portrayal of women in mind, I was shocked to read about women possessing this type of power within society. At first I thought it might just be an abnormality but, as I read further, Purdue asserts more claims regarding the power of Cherokee women. They alone had the right to abandon a new born if it was sickly, if anyone else did then it would be constituted as murder (33). To really cap it all off, Purdue quotes an eighteenth century trader named Alexander Longe which says “I have this to say that the women rules the roost and wears the breeches and sometimes will beat their husbands within an inch of their lives” (45). This statement alone encompasses the entirety that was Women’s power in the Cherokee nation. They were not subservient to men but instead, a balancing factor, with both genders performing their duties as needed to better the tribe as a whole. Unfortunately for the Cherokee women, as Europeans took more of a foothold within the American lands these equal rights began to shift into more of a reflection of European culture. Cherokee women lost their right to actively participate in government, farm, and have that same power they had before European arrival.
As there have not been any other posts this week to respond to, I would like to take this time to comment on how Perdue’s piece compliments my own research on the Cherokee nation. Her description of the Cherokee’s adoption of a republican directly corresponds to efforts of the people to show themselves as cultured in an attempt to avoid removal. This same idea connects to the alteration of women’s power within the tribe, as this shift is simply another way in which the Cherokee people hoped to portray themselves as peaceful and sophisticated individuals, rather than the savages that some whites coined them as. Throughout the beginning to mid nineteenth century, the Cherokee openly expressed these changes within their own newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, in what could be viewed as a plea to both the United States Government and the rest of the nation to cease their efforts in removal. It is clear how important this land was to the people, as they were willing to radically alter their own customs to conform to white standards in order to maintain their place in the country. Unfortunately, the very people who spurred these publicized efforts into existence ended up signing over the Cherokee land to the United States, disregarding the will of the rest of the tribe for what they viewed as a lost effort.