Compare and contrast: the standing of women in the (matrilineal) Six Nations of the Iroquois, vis a vis Anglo women (see yesterdays post on the extreme strictures on Victorian women). Lucretia Mott witnessed [Iroquoian] women sharing in discussion and decision-making as men reorganized their governmental structure. Her feminist vision increased by that experience and she traveled from the Seneca nation to Seneca Falls. There she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held the first women’s rights convention. It’s said that when the Seneca adopted a constitutional government, they retained the tradition of full involvement of women. No treaty could be valid without the consent of 3/4 of the “mothers of the nation”. Native women had property rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton described seeing a man approach her Indian playmate’s mother. The two conversed and the man handed her money. They went to the barn and selected a horse. The man rode off on the horse. Stanton asked what had happened, and the woman said, “Well, I sold the man one of my horses. Stanton asked, “What will your husband say when he gets home?” The woman said, “Well, it was my horse, and I can do with it as I please.” U.S. laws at the time gave married women no rights to property, to their earnings or to any inheritance. They didn’t even have rights to their children; a husband could “will away” guardianship to whomever he chose. As early as 1888, a White woman addressed the International Council of Women and spoke of the greater rights of American Indian women, pointing out that those women realized they would lose many of their rights if they became U.S. citizens! She said one Indian woman told her: “As an Indian woman, I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children should never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under White law.” -- via Suppressed Histories Archives
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 19:25:30 +0000
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