Реферат: Native American Women Essay Research Paper Native

wife’s eldest brother. As a result, the husband was unlikely to become an authoritative,

domineering figure. Moreover, among such peoples as the Cherokee, Iroquois, and

Pueblo, a disgruntled wife, secure in her possessions, could simply divorce her husband

by tossing his belongings out of their residence.

Women’s role in tribal governance was often influential in matrilineal societies, as among

the Iroquois, in which the principal civil and religious offices were kept within maternal

lineages. The tribal matriarch or a group of tribal matrons nominated each delegate,

briefed him before each session, monitored his legislative record, and removed him from

office if his conduct displeased the women. Despite the feminine checks and balances,

the actual business of government was a masculine affair.

In the Northeastern Woodlands and on the Plains, where hunting and warfare demanded

strenuous activity away from home, the men often returned exhausted and required a

few days to recover. Wearied by both these arduous actions and the religious fasting

that usually accompanied them, the men relaxed in the village while the women went

about their many tasks. Seeing only female busyness in these native encampments,

White observers misinterpreted what they saw and wrote inaccurate stereotypical

portrayals of lazy braves and industrious squaws. Such was not the case.

In the Southeast and Southwest, men and women performed their daily labors with

observable equality because the men did not go out on grueling expeditions as did the

men in the Northeast and Plains. In California, the Great Basin, and Northwest Coast,

the sexual division of labor fell somewhere between these two variations.

Women had certain common tasks in each of the U.S. culture areas: cleaning and

maintaining the living quarters, tending to children, gathering edible plants, pounding

corn into eal, extracting oil from acorns and nuts, cooking, sewing, packing, and

unpacking. Certain crafts were also usually their responsibility: brewing dyes, making

pottery, and weaving such items as cloth, baskets, and mats. In the Southwest,

however, men sometimes made baskets and pottery, and even weaved cloth.

In regions where hunting provided the main food supply, the women were also

responsible for house building, processing carcasses of game, preparing hides or furs,