Essay Series 6.2: Many Indigenous North American women had independence while White men confined White women to domestic roles and enslaved Black women.

When the European invaders of North America arrived, they found that Indigenous women in many tribes had substantial input into tribal leadership and decisions. In some cases, women were the final decision-makers. In contrast, White women had few political rights across the United States until 1920, and Black women didn’t effectively gain these rights until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Writing this essay taught me that many Indigenous women in North America had freedoms hundreds of years earlier than White and Black women. As White men conquered tribes, Indigenous women lost much of their independence.

North American Indigenous Women’s Human Rights

Multiple accounts by invaders, colonists, and religious workers document women’s roles in tribal life throughout North America.⁴³⁴ Numerous Indigenous tribes were matrilineal. So, inheritance passed through women, and husbands lived with their wives’ families.⁴³⁵ In addition, women generally controlled their own bodies and their sexual activity, which wasn’t confined to marriage. And married women could divorce.^436,437

Indigenous women often had leadership roles within the tribes. In the North, the five Iroquois nations in present-day New York were matrilineal and matrilocal. Women held councils, made decisions, and advised the men. Older women had a voice in deciding whether to go to war with other tribes and could dismiss the war chiefs.⁴³⁸ In Rhode Island, the Algonquins were matrilineal tribes, and women ruled the families. Children’s status was related to their mother’s.⁴³⁹ In the Midwest, tribal women could be healers, herbalists, holy people, and chiefs of their tribes.⁴⁴⁰ In the South, in Virginia, the Pamunkeys were matrilineal tribes, and women ruled the families. Again, children’s status was related to their mother’s. In certain southern states, Cherokee women held power in the political arena. Women’s councils could override the decisions of chiefs.⁴⁴¹ In the Southwest, matriarchal societies included pueblos. Zuni women owned the houses, and the clans owned the fields. Women and men had equal rights to the food the fields produced. Women could divorce their husbands and keep their own property.⁴⁴²

Indigenous women lost much of their independence over time. This happened because the White population imposed governing structures that Indigenous men led.

White Women’s Lack of Rights

White men, due to the structure of the U.S.’s original Constitution, controlled the country for its first 100 years. For about the first 150 years, women were almost entirely dependent on the men in their lives, unless they were widows who inherited wealth. This occurred because women couldn’t own property or get credit, had few opportunities for education and professional employment, and couldn’t control their own fertility. In addition, women who did work for pay earned much less than men.⁴⁴³ Before the mid-1800s in the United States, husbands had authority over their wives’ lives and only had to provide them with basic support.⁴⁴⁴ Exploitation could come along with this. If a woman’s husband mistreated or abused her, she couldn’t escape from the situation without major legal consequences, including loss of property and access to her children.

Black Women’s Enslavement

Enslaved Black women experienced exploitation in myriad ways. Women worked in their enslavers’ homes doing housework and taking care of White children, under the often harsh surveillance and punishment of the enslavers’ wives. Black women also worked in the fields and were subject to harsh working conditions and the sexual assault of their overseers. These women had to be available sexually to their enslavers; they legally couldn’t refuse them access to their bodies. Enslaved women risked punishment and death if they did.

Enslaved women produced children who could be sold away from them. The White enslavers were willing to sell their own children for a profit. Enslaved women’s children became the source of new enslaved people after the United States outlawed importation of enslaved peoples in 1808.⁴⁴⁵

Black women weren’t considered as fragile as White women were. Enslaved women and men did equivalent hard labor and endured equivalent punishments. Enslaved girls and boys were treated essentially the same, with the same freedoms until they had to start working.⁴⁴⁶

One of the most famous cases of an enslaved woman having to be sexually available was the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. He began the relationship with Hemings when she was a teenager, after Jefferson’s wife’s death. She remained available to Jefferson until his death in 1826. Their interactions resulted in up to seven children. Hemings and her living children remained enslaved for much of their lives, although Jefferson eventually freed his children.⁴⁴⁷

Reflections

I had no idea before writing this essay that Indigenous women in North America often had more human rights than the women who arrived here from Europe. Free White women were subject to their fathers’ and husbands’ control during the first 150 years after the United States formed. Men enslaved Black women in at least half the country until after the Civil War. These women endured sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, sale of their children, torture, and death at the hands of their enslavers. All this happened to families under a supposedly enlightened new U.S. government.