Native American Women in the Sixteenth Century America - Essay Example

Native American Women in the Sixteenth Century America If we look back into the American history we find that women of native origin had many roles to play in the settlement of the colonial rulers. They played important roles ranging from that of an interpreter to that of a peacemaker and a diplomat to even being an economic partner. Though society at that time was not patriarchal or male dominated, many of these women were sold as slaves by their men folk or used as tradeoffs to bring in certain favors and privileges for the tribal groups. They later flowered, even if for a brief period, within these adverse conditions and helped the men they were associated with, mostly the outside settlers. La Malinche, from the gulf coast region of Mexico, is historys one of the most famous women. Being a Mexican, she however, played an important role in the invasion and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Today she is often synonymous with both, a traitor who betrayed her own country to the invaders and a victim of the then social conditions who was betrayed by her own people to the invaders. Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan who ruled over Native American tribes in the region of Virginia, also played an important role in brokering peace between her tribal group and the early English colonial settlers. Within a life span that stretched for only twenty years or so, she acted as a diplomat and a peacemaker between the English and her fathers group, saved the life of an Englishman, got kidnapped by the British colonial settlers, converted to Christianity, married an English planter and had a son, went to England, met the king and queen and while coming back died of small pox which she had contracted while in England. Role of women, that is, of the native or aboriginal women, in the fur trade in Canada were also of immense importance. They not only did much work to help the Europeans but also helped in the establishment of cordial relationships between the native Canadians and Europeans. They helped the trading companies to flourish by strengthening their political and economic ties through marriage alliances. La Malinche (1505-1550) was born into a family of comparative wealth and education. After her father died her mother remarried and had a son by the way of her second marriage. After the birth of this boy, Malinche was sold off to another tribe as a slave. According to some historians, however, she was kidnapped by passing traders and later sold to the Mayan tribe as a slave. From the hands of these Mayan merchants Malinche was again sold and passed on to another tribe, the Tabascans. From here, she, along with nineteen other Mexican women, were gifted to the Spanish people to pacify them and eventually stave off the impending war and invasion by the Spaniards. Here she met Cortes and soon became his interpretor and mistress. This selling of women as a slave or for exchange was a common practice in those days and part of the inherent culture of the Indian-Americans. As we can see, Malinche, prior to being in the hands of the Spaniards, had already been sold twice. Women in those days in Mexico were taught to be submissive and did not raise their voice against their men folk in matters that were outside their household arena. Women had no right to earn their own living, had no political rights and had to depend on their husbands and fathers. So Malinche, according to the dictates of the social order of her days, became a slave very easily to the Spaniards and saw them as her new master. This mental conditioning actually helped her to become a part of the Spanish order and betray her own countrymen later. In the hands of Cortes, she was first baptized along with the other girls, was renamed as Marina and then handed over to Alonso Hernandez de Puertocarrero as his personal slave. After Alonso left Mexico, Cortes took her as his own mistress, making her his personal translator, as she knew the Aztec language along with various other native languages and would help him during the invasion of the parts of Mexico that spoke these languages. During this time she gave birth to Cortés’s son (the first child of European and Latin American mixed parentage) who was removed from her to be raised in Spain. She continued to remain with Cortes and function as his interpreter and strategist. She had an amazing power to learn new languages and this made her very important to Cortes to interact with the various tribes. Her rise in power came to a grinding halt as the Mexicans defeated the Spaniards around the year 1821 and she was cast in the role of a villain, a traitor and her character was much vilified. As Frances Karttunen tells us, “the casting of great bells traditionally requires some human blood, and so it seems to be in the forging of national identity. A scapegoat was needed for three centuries of colonial rule, and one was easily found in Dona Marina, who was sexualized as the Indian woman who could not get enough of the white man” (Karttunen, Schroeder, Wood, Haskett 297). Pocahontas (1595-96 to 1617) had a similar story to tell, though her liaisons were with the British. Her life was cut short very early and she died when she was only a little more than twenty, from small pox which she had contracted while visiting England. She, like Malinche, was also born to a powerful family, her father being the chief Powhatan, who had more than 25 tribes under his control. Pocahontas came to know the British around the year 1607 when she was about twelve years old. As the English settled down to build their colony in the area around Chesapeake Bay, the Native Americans looked down on them with suspicion. In the year 1608 Opechancanough (Pocahontas brother) captured John Smith, a resident of the English colony and decided to kill him. According to Smith, Pocahontas intervened to save his life. After this incident the colonists and the Native Americans were on better terms and Pocahontas often came to visit Smith, carrying food with her, which saved the English colonial inhabitants from dying of sheer hunger. She later again saved Smiths life by forewarning him about her fathers plans to kill him. Later, as Smith had to leave America due to personal injuries, relations between the Native Americans and British went downhill once again. After some years, Pocahontas was abducted by the British colonists to pressurize her father to set free the English prisoners in his camp and also to give them some arms and ammunitions. Pocahontass father, though set some of the prisoners free, did not meet the demand of arms and ammunitions, leading to a long winding skirmish. Pocahontas, though a prisoner, was treated with utmost courtesy and given the best treatment. Here due to long confinement with the English, made her doubt her fathers love for her and as she was brought to meet her family by the abductors she expressed her despair and anger. As Dale frames it, she “would not talke to any of them scarce to them of the best sort, and to them onely, that if her father had loved her, he would not value her lesse then olde swords, peeces(firearms), or axes: wherefore she would stil dwel with the English man, who loved her” (cited in Brown, Steele and Rhoden 86 ). Later she met John Rolfe, an English planter and they supposedly fell in love with each other. Much like Malinche, she also converted to Christianity and married Rolfe and later had a son, Thomas Rolfe. Her marriage brought about some amount of peace between the colonial residents of Jamestown and her own tribal members though did not set the British prisoners free. When we look at native women who helped in the establishment of the fur Trade society in Western Canada (1670-1830) we find a similar picture based more or less on the lines of La Malinche and Pocahontas. These native women helped the traders, much like Pocahontas and Malinche, in their fight for basic survival. They had good knowledge of their surrounding thus helping the traders to hunt for food. They were extremely strong in their physique and carried the necessary arms and ammunitions and also the animals that had been hunted. Once back in their settlement these women would cook the meat and also make good use of the remnant fur and skin parts. They were extremely skillful in the making of moccasins or snow shoes and sew canoes without which the traders would not have been able to function. Thus, the traders were free to do business and make profit economically, while these native women took care of the basic necessities. Besides, they also took part in trade negotiations and often acted as peacemakers between the natives and the Europeans. Much like Pocahontas these native women were given high status within their families. And the traders soon learned not to trifle with the affections of these women. They had to pay a hefty price to get married to any of these native women and before that they needed the permission of the father. The women were also asked to give their consent and after their marriage they were given partnership status in the fur trade of their husbands. It is here we find that the Indians made use of their women by giving them in marriage to these traders. In exchange for the privilege of giving these Europeans access to their women, these natives would demand certain favors in return. They would also charge a hefty sum for giving their womenfolk in marriage thus making it more like selling their women in return for favors, much like the scenario that we had seen in the case of La Malinche. Thus the traders soon realizing the underlying intentions of the natives, formed many such alliances which helped them to make favorable ties with the natives. Such marriages were also random because of the fact that white women were absent from these far flung places. However in the early nineteenth century we find that that was a shift in the status of these women. A constant conflict arose between the traders and the natives due as these traders started abusing their native wives and used power to force these women to submission. Availability of young girls of mixed parentage, who all had the skills of their native mothers and were also used to the European ways through their white fathers became another reason as to why the status of these pure native women took a downhill turn. In fact around 1806 we find the fur trading companies were prohibiting their men from interacting with pure blooded natives and instead preferred these daughters of mixed blood. Later the status of these women even became worse with the arrival of white women and missionaries. A white wife became a prized showpiece and a native wife was looked down. However these white women could not adjust well with the fur trading scenario and inter racial marriages remained important till the mid nineteenth century. With the advent of agricultural practices in the country the native women were soon forgotten. As Sylvia Van Kirk summarizes “ the vital role native women had played in the opening of the Canadian west was either demeaned or forgotten”(Van Kirk, Armitage and Jameson 61). So when we compare La Melinche, Pocahontas and the native women of the western Canada who helped with the fur trade we find that all these women were used by male family members or their respective partners. La Melinche right from the beginning had no say and she was taught to submit before the smallest whims of her male owners or partners, being sold off twice already, before she reached Cortes. Here also she was used by him as a strategist, a translator and a peace maker on the lines of a diplomat. She was not even given the right to raise her own son. When later the Spaniards were thrown out by the Mexicans she was turned in to a villain without much thought and much slander was spread about her. It was not taken into account that she had been sent as a gift to the Spaniards by the Mexicans themselves and had been taught by her own people and her own native custom to be subservient before her owner, which was Cortes in this case. She did exactly what her culture taught her and got nothing in return. In case of Pocahontas, the situation was a little different, since she was her fathers favorite girl, though it did not stop him from using her as means to strengthen his relationship with the colonial English and thus reign supreme over his own tribal people. When she was held captive by the English settlers for nearly a year with her father refusing to meet the demands of the British, she decided to rebel by marrying an Englishman who as per records also slighted this union by saying that he was marrying her not for love but to convert her to Christianity, thus saving her soul. Thus we find Pocahontas demeaned by her own husband and used to gain privileges by her father and brothers. The Native American women of western Canada, though holding a high status within their own families, were often given in marriages to the European traders for a large sum of money or traded goods and to gain certain privileges themselves. At the beginning, though the women and the traders were of equal footing in their marriage and were mutually beneficial to each other, it was the native men folk who used their women folk in exchange for privileges. Later with the arrival of white women and missionaries, these traders also started looking down on these dark skinned native women. Thus La Malinche, Pocahontas and the western Canadian native women were all treated as disposable commodities, to be used when required and simply thrown aside when the work was done and means achieved. None of their partners or the people that they had helped had openly acknowledged that, always keeping them in the background, yet using them time and again, whenever the need arose. In case of La Malinche and Pocahontas, there is another striking similarity which cannot be missed out. They both were converted to Christianity by their partners/husbands, thus promoting the dominance of Christianity over the tribal customs whose religious acts consisted of worshiping idols and nature (considered as paganism by many Christians) and attempting to prove the superiority of Christian European male power over the submissive native women. As Bernal Diaz puts it, “god had been very gracious to her in freeing her from the worship of idols and making her a Christian, and giving her a son by her lord and master Cortes, also in marrying her to such a gentleman as...Juan Jaramillo...she would refuse the honour, for she would serve her husband and Cortes than anything else in the world”(cited in Brown and Mcbride 171). Even Pocahontass husband Rolfe felt that by marrying her and converting her to Christianity he was doing her a favor and saving her soul. Though John Smith wrote favorably about Pocahontas, it was an irony that her husband Rolfe wrote of her before their marriage, that she was “one whose education hath bin rude, her manners barbarous, her generation accursed” (cited in Brown, Steele and Rhoden 88). It shows the arrogant nature of the Christian European settlers who believed in their own superiority over the natives. For the native women in western Canada, in the initial stages of the fur trade, when a number of inter racial marriages were taking place, which was so possible because of the social and family norms of the Native Americans that were prevalent during those times. As Van Kirk tells us “such interracial unions were, in fact, the basis for a fur trade society and were sanctioned by an indigenous rite known as marriage a la facon du pays – according to the custom of the country”( Van Kirk, Armitage and Jameson 88). Here, during the early days the Indians aggressively supported marriage between their women folk and the traders, as marriage at that time was seen to combine social and economic factors both and often a marriage of convenience was arranged where economic profit could be made. Thus marriage was looked upon as creating an alliance that would be mutually beneficial for both the concerned parties. In this case the traders became a part of the Indian families through their marriages and in turn the native men folk were given certain privileges pertaining to various provisions and other benefits. The women in course, as the wives of traders, took to acting as peacemakers and often played the role of a diplomatic middle man. They were also keen to keep receiving small household items from Europe like needles, knives, kettles etc. which helped them to ease the burden their house work. In the marriage ceremony it was mainly the Indian custom which was followed. The male relatives of the woman chosen had to give their consent first and later the consent of the woman was asked for. After this the price for the bride was fixed and next the marriage took place as per Indian rites and the couple declared as man and wife. This entire scenario was in stark contrast to La Malinche and Pocahontas, as they were first converted to Christianity and then only accepted as wives. In case of Pocahontas, we find that she was a favorite child of her father and he trusted her to represent him while conducting deals with the British. The tribal custom of Pocahontass group as seen in most native tribes, was matriarchal, though she would never rise to the position of power because of her mothers inferior position amongst her fathers various wives. She was probably married at the age of thirteen or fourteen to a highly placed Indian called Kocoum. Here again, according to the family norms, she would have required the permission of her father and as she was the daughter of Powhatan, her marriage would have to be beneficial to her tribe and family. Again we find the scenario of a marriage of convenience as with the natives of western Canada. Thus, even though La Malinche, Pocahontas and native Canadian women were from three different parts of the great American continent, they had similar social conditions, faced more or less similar situations and had similar roles to play, that is, that of a mediator with the colonial settlers. Though trading off or bartering and selling women folk for obtaining certain privileges were a practice very much in vogue at that time, women were treated with respect within the family and tribe. They sustained and gave new lives and were accorded the due respect. As Perdue tells us “native peoples honored mothers, not through empty sentimentality, but by recognizing ….the importance of their reproductive roles”(Perdue 6). Women did all work related to the household and had full control over the extended family system. It was an egalitarian society where both and men and women had their own responsibilities and functions to do. Religion for the natives mostly consisted of worshiping idols and nature and natural spirits were worshiped in the form of the sun god, rain god and others. Colonization, we find had different effects on the native men and women. Men were more interested in securing their needs and took help from these outsiders to further their position and did not think twice before selling or bartering their own women folk to strengthen their hold over rival tribes, not realizing in most cases that were soon to lose their own freedom to these foreign colonial settlers. The women became more powerful under the colonial settlers. A new vista of life opened up before them, where suddenly from doing normal housework and field work they were elevated to the role of a translator, a strategist, a diplomat and even an economic partner. They also got used to European house hold items like knives, kettles, axes, etc. brought in by these colonial settlers, which made their household chores much easier. Thus we find colonization in the initial stages made more favorable impact on the native women. Native women though finding initial success with the colonial settlers later lost their importance with the arrival of non native women from Europe. These non native women were white skinned, with all the pretenses of airs and graces of a lady, even if they were mere school teachers. Soon it became fashionable amongst the settlers to marry only these white skinned women. However these women were not as hard working as the natives and being in a new country they had not much to do. They missed their social lives and did not become a part of their husbands work life, in stark contrast to those of native wives. They were only preferred over the native wives because of their skin color and because of the missionaries who issued a warning to the settlers as not to marry women of inferior pagan culture. It is in fact, the white women and the settlers who were mostly used to patriarchal society and being submissive to their male partners. Native women were more used to freedom having often coming from matriarchal families and seeing their women folk yielding power. Thus, we find non native women in a completely different scenario when compared to the native women. Later these white colonial settlers insisted, as Theda Perdue tells us that “the native families be nuclear and patriarchal rather than extended and egalitarian...and that womens roles be submissive rather than complementary to that of men. Missionaries and government agents descended on Indian populations....in order to implement these changes” (Perdue 6) Hegemony was established in the New World or America, when the Europeans came as early colonial settlers and slowly took control of the land and became powerful after overthrowing the Native Americans / Indians. When they first arrived, the Indians, though suspicious, were more or less welcoming and accommodating. Taking their help, the Europeans firmly established themselves, then forgetting all the courtesy and kindness shown by the host tribes, they became greedy and decided to conquer the whole country by violent and brutal invasive wars, killing many innocent Indian men, women and children in the various massacres like the infamous Wounded Knee. These Europeans also brought many deadly diseases along with them which spread amongst the local natives who had no immunity against these new ailments, killing them in droves and sometimes an entire village population was annihilated by small pox or measles or even chicken pox. As their numbers decreased, the settlers found it increasingly easy to reign supreme and the remaining natives were soon cowered into submission by various stringent and abusive laws and acts. The roles of the Native American Indian women have not been properly understood and appreciated because of neglecting the concept of gender analysis. Gender analysis, by definition, means that it is not sufficient to record history from the point of a male perspective and assume that the same is also valid for the females. Lack of this perception makes women like La Malinche a villain, who has betrayed her people and has also mothered a child (the first Mestizo) through an illicit relationship. Thus the term “Malinchista” in Mexican means “the disloyal one” and Malinche is often described as “La Chingada” - the violated one. Needless to mention, both the terms are the typical stereotypes created by a male chauvinistic society. The proper role of a powerful woman like La Malinche, who, in fact, is the founding figure of the Mexican race, is being appreciated only recently – after we have become conscious enough to understand and accept the gender analysis way of looking at history, that is, looking from a proper context and a neutral perspective that gives justice to all historical figures, be it a man or a woman. References Brown,K. Steele,K,I. Rhoden,L,N. The Human Tradition in Colonial America. Wilmington: Rowman and Littlefield. 1999. Brown,L,M. McBride,B,K. Womens roles in the Renaissance. London: Greenwood Publishing group. 2005. Karttunen,F. Schroeder,S. Wood,S. Haskett, R. Indian Women of Early Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1999. Kirk,V,Sylvia. Armitage, H,S. Jameson,E. The Womens West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1987. Perdue,T. Sifters- Native American Womens Lives . New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. Read More