Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner
Authors: Sally Roesch Wagner
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really no family property, as we use the term. A wife is as independent in the use of her possessions as is the most independent man in our midst. If she chooses to give away or sell all of her property, there is no one to gainsay her ... 33
When I was living with the Indians, my hostess ... one day gave away a very fine horse. I was surprised, for I knew there had been no family talk on the subject, so I asked: “Will your husband like to have you give the horse away?” Her eyes danced, and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the story to the other women gathered in the tent, and I became the target of many merry eyes. I tried to explain how a white woman would act, but laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white man’s hold upon his wife’s property. 34
A similar story came from the pen of a French woman, Emma Borglum, who spent her 1891 honeymoon with the Dakota on the Crow Creek reservation of South Dakota, where her husband, sculptor Solon Borglum, (brother of Gutzum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore) was working:
One day I showed some astonishment at seeing a young Indian woman, in the absence of her husband, give two horses to a friend. She looked at me very coldly and said: “These horses are mine.” I excused myself saying that in my country a woman would consult her husband before giving such expensive presents. The woman answered proudly: “I would not be a white woman!” 35
Minnie Myrtle wrote, “In regard to property, too, the wife retains whatever belonged to her before marriage distinct from her husband, and can dispose of it as she pleases without his consent, and if she separates from him, takes it with her, and at her death, either before or after separation, her children inherit all she possessed. 36
It was far different for United States women under common law, which denied them property rights, as attorney Carrie S. Burnham explained:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the legal existence of the woman is “merged in that of her husband.” He is her “baron,” or “lord,” bound to supply her with shelter, food, clothing and medicine and is entitled to her earnings—the use and custody of her person which he may seize wherever he may find it. 37
Stanton and Gage read early anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, whose study of the Iroquois also served as a basis for Frederick Engel’s On the Origins of the Family,Private Property and the State. The Haudenosaunee thus gave a practical example and framework for the development of socialism as well as feminism.
Morgan, who left money in his will to endow a women’s college at the University of Rochester, carefully explained how “not the least remarkable of their [Iroquois] institutions, was that which confined the transmission of all titles, rights and property in the female line to the exclusion of the male.” To EuroAmerican men who came from a political /social heritage in which only sons could inherit, it must have been remarkable to discover “the perpetual disinheritance of the son” among the Iroquois. The Haudenosaunee principle that “the child must be the son of its mother, although not necessarily of its mother’s husband” sharply contrasted with the Euro-Christian system of descent traced through the male line with legitimacy exclusively conveyed by the ather. 38
While feminists—with the support of their male allies—were waging an uphill struggle to gain married women the right to control their own property and wages, Morgan pointed out that among the Iroquois:
The rights of property, of both husband and wife, were continued distinct during the existence of the marriage relation; the wife holding, and controlling her own, the same as her husband, and in case of separation, taking it with her. 39
In 1846, two years before the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, the noted scholar Henry Schoolcraft—one of Gage’s
When I was living with the Indians, my hostess ... one day gave away a very fine horse. I was surprised, for I knew there had been no family talk on the subject, so I asked: “Will your husband like to have you give the horse away?” Her eyes danced, and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the story to the other women gathered in the tent, and I became the target of many merry eyes. I tried to explain how a white woman would act, but laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white man’s hold upon his wife’s property. 34
A similar story came from the pen of a French woman, Emma Borglum, who spent her 1891 honeymoon with the Dakota on the Crow Creek reservation of South Dakota, where her husband, sculptor Solon Borglum, (brother of Gutzum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore) was working:
One day I showed some astonishment at seeing a young Indian woman, in the absence of her husband, give two horses to a friend. She looked at me very coldly and said: “These horses are mine.” I excused myself saying that in my country a woman would consult her husband before giving such expensive presents. The woman answered proudly: “I would not be a white woman!” 35
Minnie Myrtle wrote, “In regard to property, too, the wife retains whatever belonged to her before marriage distinct from her husband, and can dispose of it as she pleases without his consent, and if she separates from him, takes it with her, and at her death, either before or after separation, her children inherit all she possessed. 36
It was far different for United States women under common law, which denied them property rights, as attorney Carrie S. Burnham explained:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the legal existence of the woman is “merged in that of her husband.” He is her “baron,” or “lord,” bound to supply her with shelter, food, clothing and medicine and is entitled to her earnings—the use and custody of her person which he may seize wherever he may find it. 37
Stanton and Gage read early anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, whose study of the Iroquois also served as a basis for Frederick Engel’s On the Origins of the Family,Private Property and the State. The Haudenosaunee thus gave a practical example and framework for the development of socialism as well as feminism.
Morgan, who left money in his will to endow a women’s college at the University of Rochester, carefully explained how “not the least remarkable of their [Iroquois] institutions, was that which confined the transmission of all titles, rights and property in the female line to the exclusion of the male.” To EuroAmerican men who came from a political /social heritage in which only sons could inherit, it must have been remarkable to discover “the perpetual disinheritance of the son” among the Iroquois. The Haudenosaunee principle that “the child must be the son of its mother, although not necessarily of its mother’s husband” sharply contrasted with the Euro-Christian system of descent traced through the male line with legitimacy exclusively conveyed by the ather. 38
While feminists—with the support of their male allies—were waging an uphill struggle to gain married women the right to control their own property and wages, Morgan pointed out that among the Iroquois:
The rights of property, of both husband and wife, were continued distinct during the existence of the marriage relation; the wife holding, and controlling her own, the same as her husband, and in case of separation, taking it with her. 39
In 1846, two years before the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, the noted scholar Henry Schoolcraft—one of Gage’s
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