This past week, we read Theda Perdue\u2019s Cherokee Women. I found it very interesting because I have not read many direct accounts of Native American life and society structure, and unsurprisingly ones I have read tended to focus on men. As Michael Lameroux points out in his post, this book fits into what I have seen from a few other books in my history classes in the past year or so. For example, last year I read Woody Holton\u2019s Abigail Adams, which focused on how John Adams\u2019 wife Abigail took an active and often equal role in their marriage. I also read Maya Jasanoff\u2019s Liberty\u2019s Exiles, which spent a good deal of time on Molly Brant, a woman of the Mohawk tribe who wielded great power in her community during the Revolutionary era, in great part due to her romantic relationship with the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs. However, those books focused on women of the upper echelons of their respective societies, and also ones who likely would not have had as much power were it not for their husbands\u2019 positions. Perdue\u2019s book, on the other hand, exposes the importance of the roles of a wider swath of Cherokee women.<\/p>\n
Perdue begins by establishing that the Cherokee did have defined gender roles, which she describes as \u201ctheoretically rigid\u201d but in reality not so, due to men\u2019s propensity to help. Women\u2019s duties included agricultural chores, which seems to have been typical of native societies who depended heavily on crops. (18) Another example of a similarly structured society is that of many western African cultures, where agricultural tasks were similarly seen as women\u2019s work to the point that men who participated were lesser than their peers. However, Perdue makes it clear that things were much more fluid among the Cherokee, pointing out that men were often expected to help in these agricultural duties rather than discouraged. Perdue also points out the important role of the menstrual cycle in Cherokee society. Cherokee women derived power from the menstrual cycle as it was so tied to pregnancy and childbirth. Perdue\u2019s account of the myth of the \u201cstone man\u201d shows that this reverence for women\u2019s menstruation was a deep-rooted part of Cherokee culture.<\/p>\n
If I had one issue with the book, it is that I am a bit worried about the primary source material Perdue uses to make these claims. In the introduction, Perdue outlines the difficulties of finding reliable primary source material on Native American women, noting that many of the early accounts of Native American life come from Europeans who lacked context for what they saw and likely misinterpreted a lot. That, combined with the fact that historians have neglected women in general until relatively recently, makes this a difficult subject to research. However, after the introduction, Perdue does not remark much on those concerns. I think that it is difficult to make definitive claims with such limited source material, and believe Perdue should have done more to justify why her sources were worthwhile and good enough to back up her claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past week, we read Theda Perdue\u2019s Cherokee Women. I found it very interesting because I have not read many direct accounts of Native American life and society structure, and unsurprisingly ones I have read tended to focus on men. As Michael Lameroux points out in his post, this book fits into what I have … <\/p>\n