Power – Popular Politics in Early America

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In Cherokee Women, Theda Perdue presents the story of a people which has received scant coverage in recent writing: Native women. Perdue asserts that recent literature regarding Native cultures has skipped over the female population because it assumed that since women were not prevalent among Native sources then they did not contribute much to Native society. Perdue counters that this primary source absence is due to men controlling all the documents and literature in society so that women were victims of neglect in respect to being mentioned. One of Perdue’s overarching arguments, however, is that men and women cooperate to create a balancing system between their roles and beliefs in society.

As Perdue states early on, “women balanced men just as summer balanced winter.” This indicates how women and men were similar in that they occupied powerful roles in society but ones that were separate so that they would not intrude or disturb each other. Native Americans like virtually all other civilizations at the time imposed gender norms on their people which held that men engaged in war and hunted while women stayed at home and farmed the land to nourish their family. This explanation implies a semblance of equality between the sexes but it neglects to mention what Ian and AJ have both addressed- women enjoyed an almost dominating role over men because they were connected to, among other things: corn, babies and the home. As I will show, women could cross into various spheres. They both made the apt claim that women, unlike in most Western societies, held the capacity to wield substantial power over men and engage in behavior men may not have found possible. I also agree with AJ’s assertion that the work “distanced itself from other reads by presenting it in a manner that makes it manageable to the average history reader.” Perdue definitely organizes her work in a very categorical method, outlining the basics of a situation then delving into the specifics of the topic as a segue into the next topic.

The men and women in society saw gender as “an affirmation of cosmic order and balance” so that if they did not fill their own roles the society would not function correctly or to its potential. This is shown in the Cherokees’ reaction to men who attempted to fill the position of women, resulting in joking and being compared to bears, a sign of ineptitude and incongruence. Women, on the other hand, were afforded the ability to alter their identity into men. Women who became warriors were seen as particularly powerful because they overcame their innate weakness and the limitations traditionally ascribed to females. Such women “possessed extraordinary power: through war and menstruation she had male and female contact with blood.” Women were elevated into supreme positions as War Women and beloved women, these positions according them the power to live and interact in any circle of society, whether it be farming, fighting, birthing children, or maintaining the home. This balance between men and women can thus be seen as a system of women exercising much influence in daily life, in spite, of their absence from the period’s primary sources.

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.

Tag: Power

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