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Cherokee Women in Crisis
Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838â"1907
By Carolyn Ross Johnston The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2003 The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8466-1
CHAPTER 1
Cultural Continuity
Their darling passion is liberty. To it they sacrifice everything, and in the most unbounded liberty they indulge themselves through life.
Haywood, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee
When the Europeans encountered the Cherokees in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were shocked to find that women had so much sexual freedom and held considerable political, economic, and domestic power. To them, Cherokee women represented sexual danger. The Europeans viewed this reversal of patriarchal values as deviant, uncivilized, pagan, sinful, and deeply threatening. They were shocked also by the Cherokees' view of their bodies. The Cherokees did not see nudity as a cause for shame, and women and men were lavishly tattooed. The Cherokee language did not have words for heaven or hell, damnation or salvation, or for grace, repentance, or forgiveness, and the Cherokees did not have laws against fornication or adultery. Understanding traditional Cherokee gender roles and the myths and cosmology in which they were embedded is key to discerning subsequent fights between Cherokees and Europeans over meanings of gender. Men and women had gender-specific tasks, but they occupied interdependent spheres. They had complementary responsibilities in productive and reproductive spheres: men hunted, and women cultivated the earth and gathered food. Survival depended on the balance of male and female contributions. Cherokee women had access to roles, behavior, and power that their European counterparts did not.
Ancient Cherokees had seven clans. The names of the Wolf clan, Deer clan, Bird clan, and Paint clan have been translated with certainty. The other three have been translated variously as Long Hair, Blind Savannah, Holly, Blue, Wild Potato, and Twisters. Today the clans are generally recognized as Deer, Wolf, Bird, Long Hair, Wild Potato, Blue, and Paint. Social identity and rules of conduct were tied to clan, and the tribe was matrilineal and matrilocal. Fathers did not discipline their own children. Instead, brothers disciplined their sisters' children, and thus women had special relationships with their brothers. Cherokee women owned their dwelling and domestic hearth, and husbands came to live in their houses. Women had control over their property, and, although the land was held communally, domestic improvements belonged to the women. Women also owned the agricultural fields they cultivated. Clans had a strong sense of revenge. A clan member's death would be avenged by the killing of either the murderer or a member of the killer's clan. This law of blood was a fundamental dimension of tribal life.
Cherokee women were also influential in political affairs, advising on war and peace. The women of each clan selected an elder woman to serve on the women's council, a highly influential body. One of these women, the beloved woman, who also represented her clan, presided over the council. Frequently beloved women who had distinguished themselves in battle could decide the fate of prisoners. Traditional Cherokee women inhabited a separate, complementary sphere defined by their roles as clan members, farmers, wives, and mothers. They knew the appropriate behavior for women regarding taboos, dietary and sexual restrictions, and marriage. They were neither subordinate nor superior to men; the Cherokee division of labor based on one's sex did not imply hierarchy, but equality.
Traders, travelers, and missionaries described striking changes in Cherokee women's roles between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although their accounts must be read critically with an awareness of their biases and limited access to the women's world of ritual, the accounts do reveal how Cherokee women defined femaleness, how they related to men, and what they considered appropriate behavior. The accounts generally presented Cherokee women's sexual freedom as licentious and dangerous and their crucial economic role as that of their oppression by Cherokee men.
Private Life: Marriage, Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Socialization of Children
Marriage and Sexuality
In the eighteenth century, James Adair described the marriage ceremony practiced generally by the southeastern tribes during which a man and woman exchanged symbols of their roles. The bridegroom presented the bride with venison, and the bride presented her partner with an ear of corn. The ceremony demonstrated his ability to provide meat for his bride, and her gift symbolized her ability to provide vegetable food for her husband.
Alexander Longe described the marital tie as often temporary: "Sometimes they will live together till they have 5 or 6 children and then part as unconcernedly as if they had never known one another, the men taking the male children and the women the female and so each marry with contrary parties. I have this to say that the women rules the roost and wears the breeches and sometimes will beat their husbands within an inch of their lives." Longe's assertion of a complete reversal of gender roles is suspect; however, he accurately noted that the Cherokees did not conceptualize marriage as a lifelong tie. Divorce within the tribe was easy, as both Cherokee husbands and wives could choose to separate at any time. Lieutenant Henry Timberlake confirmed Longe's observations when he conducted two diplomatic missions with Cherokee leaders in England before his death in 1765. He wrote that though many marriages lasted a lifetime, it was common for a person to change marital partners three or four times a year. He added, in contrast to Longe, that when separations occurred, the children went with the mother. Longe also suggested that the mother-child bond was stronger than the tie between wife and husband.
In contrast to other observers, William Bartram, who visited the Cherokees shortly before the Revolutionary War, saw complementarity and equality rather than female dominance. He wrote that he "never saw nor heard of an instance of an Indian beating his wife or other female, or reproving them in anger or in harsh language. And the women make a suitable and grateful return; for they are discreet, modest, loving, faithful, and affectionate to their husbands." Still, Cherokee women's sexual and economic autonomy shocked most observers. The Cherokees accepted sexuality as natural, and their dances were sometimes overtly sexual in nature. For example, in the friendship dance, as observed in the first half of the twentieth century, men and women enacted the stages of courtship and became openly intimate. During the first song, men formed a line, and women formed another line opposite the men so that they stood face-to-face. They began to dance in a counterclockwise direction, forming a circle. During the second song when the leader began to use words referring to intimacy, the sexual gestures began. During the part of this song when they danced facing each other, the partners held hands. Then they began to dance side-by-side, holding hands crossed in front of their bodies. Dancing face-to-face again, they put their palms upon their partners' palms. Then they placed their hands on their partner's shoulders. Then, dancing side-by-side, they placed their arms over their partners' shoulders. Dancing face-to-face again, they placed hats on the women's heads, and the dancers stroked their partners under their chins. Finally, the male dancers put their hands on their female partners' breasts while they danced side-by-side, and then they began touching the clothing over their partners' genitals. Crowding together during these last two phases concealed the more explicit gestures. The friendship dance was thus an occasion for single people to meet and get together socially.
Louis Philippe's moralistic commentary on the Cherokees in 1797 emphasized the sexual freedom of Cherokee women. Sexual activity before marriage was accepted, and although fidelity was expected after marriage, the Cherokees had no punishment for adultery. In 1807, Major John Norton remarked that in contrast to the Creeks, "the Cherokees have no such punishment for adultery; the husband is even disgraced in the opinion of his friends, if he seeks to take satisfaction in any other way, than that of getting another wife."
Although he recognized Cherokee women's sexual autonomy, Phillipe portrayed Indian women more generally as drudges. He wrote: "The Indians have all the work done by women. They are assigned not only household tasks; even the corn, peas, beans, and potatoes are planted and preserved by the women. The man smokes peacefully, while the woman grinds corn in a mortar." Rayna Green stresses that this image of Indian women as degraded, overworked drudges persisted into the nineteenth century. Euro-Americans did not realize that Indian women's strenuous work brought them power and control over the products of their labor. Green reminds us that the other distinct image of Indian women was the princess, such as Pocahontas, a beautiful daughter of a chief. Thus when Europeans encountered Cherokees, who possessed a radically different gender system from theirs, they saw the women's power and sexual autonomy as deeply threatening. These misconceptions about gender were used to justify campaigns to civilize American Indians and eventually remove them from the Southeast.
Because their women had such considerable power, it is understandable that the Cherokees developed an elaborate system of taboos and rituals to separate purity and defilement. Daniel Sabin Butrick, a missionary sent by the ABCFM in 1818, recorded that the Cherokee women observed all the traditional rules of the Hebrews regarding female "uncleanness," as stated in the twelfth and fifteenth chapters of Leviticus, with the exception that among the Cherokees, the restrictions did not last any longer after the birth of a daughter than that of a son. After childbirth, Cherokee women observed restrictions for twelve to twenty-four days. During their menstrual periods they remained alone for seven days, touching only their own food, clothes, and furniture. They would bathe before reentering their communities.
Warriors remained separate from women for three days before and after going on a raid. Before warriors could be reintegrated into domestic life, they were purified by "going to water" and sweat baths to "wash away the blood." Adair said that wounded warriors were secluded in small huts outside the settlement for an extended period.
In her book Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo, Mary Douglas explains, "We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body." She suggested that when male dominance is accepted in a social organization, beliefs about sex pollution are not likely to be highly developed. Conversely, the Cherokees' beliefs regarding pollution stemmed from the absence of either male or female dominance.
In a society in which rituals were designed to avoid pollution and maintain harmony and balance, the Booger Dance may have been a way for the Cherokees to ritualize and contain the perceived threat of sexual danger. The boogers, representing licentious Euro-American men or Indians from other tribes, were comic figures in the ritual, rather than plundering invaders. They broke rules of sexual restraint and appeared awkward and rejected. The Cherokee term is tsu'niGãdu'li (many persons faces covered over); aGã'dulã' is mask. The Booger Dance, then, refers to masked dancing. During a social dance, an announcement would be made that some strangers were expected. The women and children would express their anxiety and excitement. Then the Booger Gang would appear, consisting of four to ten men, and occasionally a couple of women, wearing sheets or blankets and masks representing other cultures such as Chinese, Germans, French, Spaniards, Africans, and other Indian tribes. Their masks were shaped with gourd phalluses and were explicitly sexual. A few masks portrayed Indian women. The Booger Gang also hid gourd phalluses under their blankets, which they would expose to the shrieks of the women. Someone would then ask, "Where are they from? Where are they going?" They generally would say that they had come from "a far distant land." They carried names such as Black Buttocks, Sooty Anus, and Big Phallus, and they would dance around awkwardly with the women. The boogers symbolized aliens, ghosts, the other, and they were rule-breakers. They would make obscene gestures, imitate motions of sexual intercourse, and dance "like white men trying to do an Indian dance." After each of the boogers danced individually, the host would ask them if they would all like to dance. They would reply by dancing either the Bear or the Eagle Dance: after an interlude, a group of women dancers would enter in a line, and they would partner off with the boogers in a dance. As they danced with Cherokee women, they enacted the blending of outsiders with their community in a symbol of intermarriage. The women s participation may have symbolized their submission to the boogers' sexual desires, or they may have been conveying resistance, as they remained poised during the dance. The boogers made explicit sexual movements during the dance. This erotic exhibitionism was more overt during a Bear Dance than an Eagle Dance. After dancing with the women, the boogers would leave as awkwardly and suddenly as they had come. After taking off their disguises, they returned to the dance.
The order of Cherokee society was restored after the boogers left. In addition, the Booger Dance was a way to openly express emotion and sexuality in a stylized manner within accepted rules of restraint. According to Cherokee beliefs, the mythical figure Stone Coat revealed a vision to a medicine man of the coming of white men accompanied by strange Indians from the East and Africans. He offered the Booger Dance as a means of counteracting the social and physical contamination that they brought. The Cherokees probably performed the dance before the Europeans arrived. Therefore, the dance seems to have been both a prophetic and a protective ceremony. In broad terms, the Booger Dance was a medicine dance intended to guard the community from harm and prevent disease. The meanings that the Cherokee people attributed to the Booger Dance probably changed over time, but clearly, the celebration of unbridled sexuality, the fears of contamination and intrusion by foreigners, and the containment of boundaries seem central to the dance. Although the Cherokees feigned fear in the Booger Dance, deeper anxieties remained. The boogers were rebuffed in the dance, but because they left as suddenly as they came, there remained a chance that they might return. And return they did.
Pregnancy
The Americans misinterpreted the Booger Dance, Cherokee institutions of marriage and sexuality, their gendered division of labor, and their taboos regarding pregnancy and childbirth. Women were defined as quintessentially female when menstruating and pregnant. Cherokee women inhabited female ritual space as mothers. The rituals surrounding pregnancy reinforced the interdependence of men and women. Cherokees believed that men and women both contributed matter that becomes mixed to produce a child. The female contributed blood and flesh to the fetus, and the father provided the skeleton through the congealed sperm. Presumably, the length of time it took to have a child depended on how long the matter took to be mixed. The contributions that the mother and father made to the formation of the child have implications that transcend physiology. As Will West Long related, the Cherokees believed in a multiple-soul concept. One soul is located in the head, under the anterior fontanelle (the baby's soft spot). This soul has memory and consciousness and exists forever; it is from the Creator. It creates or secretes the fluids of the body such as saliva, lymph, phlegm, spinal fluid, and sexual fluids. The second soul is located in the liver, and its secretions are yellow and black bile as well as gastric juices. The third soul, the one of circulation, resides in the heart, and its secretion is blood. Finally, the fourth soul is located in the bones. Thus the belief in male and female complementarity in the spiritual and physical contributions to the child is inherent to the concept of the multiple soul.
Cherokee men and women enlisted the services of medicine men and women during pregnancy. A pregnant woman was "taken to the water" every new moon, beginning in the fourth, fifth, or seventh month of pregnancy. This ritual of going to the river to pray, to be prayed for, and be purified was disappearing by the 1930s, but the conservative elder people still practiced it with their young relatives. In the ritual, a pregnant woman went down to the river with a medicine man. The attendant—the mother, husband, or relative of the woman—assisted him and placed a yard of white calico on the ground, and then placed two white beads, symbolizing life, or sometimes two red beads, representing success, and a white thread (50-60 cm long) on the material. As the party stood on the bank of the river facing the water, the medicine man said a prayer while holding a red (or white) bead between the thumb of his right hand and his index finger, and a black bead between the thumb of his left hand and his index finger. At the end of the ceremony the attendant strung the beads and wrapped them up and gave them to the medicine man.
The pregnant woman could request that the medicine man discover through the divination whether the child would live or be stillborn or ascertain the sex of the child. The medicine man brought the beads and cloth home with him. At the next ceremony, the woman brought two more beads that were strung with the others. The medicine man received another yard of white calico as his payment.
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Excerpted from Cherokee Women in Crisis by Carolyn Ross Johnston. Copyright © 2003 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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