What Would Pocahontas Think Now?: Women and Cultural Persistence

Abstract

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Callaloo.In a classic case of sexual stereotyping, Joseph Gilfillan, an Episcopalian missionary, described the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota c. 1900-the tall, graceful male bounding through the forest, unburdened except for his bow and arrow, while behind him plodded the "short, stodgy, rotund" female, bearing a tremendous burden on her back, atop of which rode a small papoose. In Gilfillan's mind, the woman's stature was exemplar of her destiny since women over generations had been squashed down by burden bearing.'Although feminists might deny this equation of anatomy and destiny, the fact is that the female reproductive function is a crucial factor in determining a woman's social role in tribal societies. Women bear children who carry on the culture of the group. They also gather wild foods and thus acquire status in the economic terms of contemporary society.2 Scholars may analyze the roles of Indian women in academic paradigms, but the women themselves are lost in the babble of theories. One way to recover their identity is to examine the origin stories of Indian tribes. Women are the creators of the world. Their lives carry the meaning of the great human cycle of life, death, and rebirth, an ongoing process that Christianity forces into a linear paradigm of individual sin, guilt, death, and redemption.When Indian tribes first encountered European colonists, women played a major role in contact. The results of that contact, the spread of European diseases, the introduction of livestock, of alcohol, were the beginning of historical change in a linear sense for Indian tribes. In the southeast, the 'Lady of Cofitachequi" greeted Hernando de Soto in 1540 in what is now the state of Georgia. She gave him her own string of pearls-as a sign of good will, as a sign of welcome, as a sign of appeasement, as a way of encouraging him to move on? There are no words from the lady herself about her motives and intentions.3It is significant that it was a woman who represented her province. Matrilineal descent was common among Southeastern tribes. Although women generally influenced events indirectly rather than through public rule, they were powerful members of their societies.The equation of femininity and power is best expressed in the story of the origin of corn among the Creeks in Oklahoma. A woman fed her family every day with a delicious food, but she would not reveal its source. One day her two sons decided to follow her as she went to ...

Historical Oppression and Indigenous Families: Uncovering Potential Risk Factors for Indigenous Families Touched by Violence

“…The setting for this research included multiple Indigenous communities from one federally recognized tribe in the southeastern United States that are historically matrilineal and female centered (matrilocal; Kidwell, ). These resilient communities have experienced economic growth and development.…”

The Filipina's Breast

“…In popular accounts of the lives of these indigenous women, they are reduced to heroines or antiheroines based on their actions at the dawn of conquest. 34 Her acts are mythologized as acts of female treachery, the original race traitor of Mexican history. 32 In the case of Pocahontas, American history books immortalize her as a beautiful Indian princess who saves the life of John Smith and becomes the savior of the fledgling Jamestown colony; though she marries another Puritan, she is the most celebrated female figure of miscegenation, what Robert Tilton has described as "the quiet genocide of the native population."…”

Representing Native American Women in Early Colonial American Writings: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Juan Ortiz and John Smith

“…16 Some modern ethnographers have claimed that rituals similar to that described by Smith or Ortiz are also reported by other observers but that the result was not sacrificial death but rather, a ceremonial, symbolic death by which the prisoner lost his former, European identity and, in turn, became one of them (Kidwell 1994;Puglisi 1991). One of the main critics of Smith's, ethnologist Helen C. Rountree, author of The Powhatan Indians of Virginia and Pocahontas's People, on the contrary, denies the veracity of Smith's testimony of the ritual and argues that "no eyewitness writer mentioned adoption customs as such [described by Smith] for the Powhatans" (1994: 236).…”