Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner Page A
Authors: Sally Roesch Wagner
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sources—had similarly written:
Marriage, among the Iroquois, appears to be a verbal contract between the parties, which does not affect the rights of property. Goods, personal effects, or valuables of any kind personal or real, which were the wife’s before, remain so after marriage. Should any of these be used by the husband, he is bound to restore the property or its worth in the event of separation.... Descent being counted by the female, may be either an original cause or effect of this unique law. 40
While Schoolcraft’s Christian-blinded eyes failed to see the spiritual foundation that rooted longhouse marriages in the hands of a supportive community, other EuroAmerican observers commented on the remarkable stability of these marriages. Economic independence seemed to be good for a marriage.
The first married woman’s property law in the country was passed in Mississippi in 1839, a full nine years before New York reformed its law in 1848. Years later the Mississippi Bar Association explained how this unlikely Southern state became a leader in women’s rights reform:
Let it not be forgotten, however, whence came to us the conception. It is said, and it is no doubt true, that our first married woman’s law ‘in the statute of 1839’ embodied and was suggested by the tribal customs of the Chickasaw Indians, who lived in our borders. 41
The vision of economic equality in marriage spread slowly across the United States as women demanded their financial independence.
No Equality in Employment
Women’s subordinate position in marriage spilled over into the world of employment as well, as the “Declaration of Sentiments” made clear at the very beginning of the woman’s rights movement:
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known. 42
Four years later, in her maiden speech at the third National Women’s Rights Convention, held in Syracuse during 1852, Matilda Joslyn Gage pointed out the connection between lack of employment, unequal pay, and marriage:
Because all lucrative and honorable means of support have been seized by men, ... women have been driven to marriage as a necessity ... or driven to a life of pollution, by the insufficiency of wages in those departments of labor which she is legitimately permitted to enter ... men’s wages are from one-half to two-thirds greater than woman’s. 43
How far removed was this life from that of Haudenosaunee women doing respected, satisfying, enjoyable work which gave them economic autonomy?
Alice Fletcher talked about her conversations with Native women who were well aware of their superior rights:
As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: “As an Indian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law.” 44
Fletcher found a similar response among Indian men:
Men have said: “Your laws show how little your men care for their women. The wife is nothing of herself. She is worth little but to help a man to have one hundred and sixty acres.” One day, sitting in the tent of an old chief, famous in war [one source says this is the Lakota medicine man, Sitting Bull], he said to me: “My young men are to lay aside their weapons; they are to take up the work of the women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for them to do? I see nothing! You are a woman; have pity on my women when everything is taken from them.” 45
Political Outsider and Lawbreaker
The vote was the major tool that women
Marriage, among the Iroquois, appears to be a verbal contract between the parties, which does not affect the rights of property. Goods, personal effects, or valuables of any kind personal or real, which were the wife’s before, remain so after marriage. Should any of these be used by the husband, he is bound to restore the property or its worth in the event of separation.... Descent being counted by the female, may be either an original cause or effect of this unique law. 40
While Schoolcraft’s Christian-blinded eyes failed to see the spiritual foundation that rooted longhouse marriages in the hands of a supportive community, other EuroAmerican observers commented on the remarkable stability of these marriages. Economic independence seemed to be good for a marriage.
The first married woman’s property law in the country was passed in Mississippi in 1839, a full nine years before New York reformed its law in 1848. Years later the Mississippi Bar Association explained how this unlikely Southern state became a leader in women’s rights reform:
Let it not be forgotten, however, whence came to us the conception. It is said, and it is no doubt true, that our first married woman’s law ‘in the statute of 1839’ embodied and was suggested by the tribal customs of the Chickasaw Indians, who lived in our borders. 41
The vision of economic equality in marriage spread slowly across the United States as women demanded their financial independence.
No Equality in Employment
Women’s subordinate position in marriage spilled over into the world of employment as well, as the “Declaration of Sentiments” made clear at the very beginning of the woman’s rights movement:
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known. 42
Four years later, in her maiden speech at the third National Women’s Rights Convention, held in Syracuse during 1852, Matilda Joslyn Gage pointed out the connection between lack of employment, unequal pay, and marriage:
Because all lucrative and honorable means of support have been seized by men, ... women have been driven to marriage as a necessity ... or driven to a life of pollution, by the insufficiency of wages in those departments of labor which she is legitimately permitted to enter ... men’s wages are from one-half to two-thirds greater than woman’s. 43
How far removed was this life from that of Haudenosaunee women doing respected, satisfying, enjoyable work which gave them economic autonomy?
Alice Fletcher talked about her conversations with Native women who were well aware of their superior rights:
As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: “As an Indian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law.” 44
Fletcher found a similar response among Indian men:
Men have said: “Your laws show how little your men care for their women. The wife is nothing of herself. She is worth little but to help a man to have one hundred and sixty acres.” One day, sitting in the tent of an old chief, famous in war [one source says this is the Lakota medicine man, Sitting Bull], he said to me: “My young men are to lay aside their weapons; they are to take up the work of the women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for them to do? I see nothing! You are a woman; have pity on my women when everything is taken from them.” 45
Political Outsider and Lawbreaker
The vote was the major tool that women
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