Native American Women Essay

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Analytical Paper #1 There has been a drastic transformation in the importance of American women and their roles in the last four centuries. The freedom and equality that women possess today was not present in the 1600s. Americans viewed women as a minority and treated them with contempt. Unlike Americans, Native Indians treated their women and the colonial women they kidnapped with more respect, granting them with more pleasant and important tasks. Due to the gratitude, more opportunities, and roles the Native Indians provided, the colonial women chose to remain with their captors instead of departing back to their families. Women have suffered for countless years, until America 's views about Women 's Civil Rights changed. In Carol Berkin
The Indian captured the colonial because one-third of the women did not resist from the captures, instead, they adapted to their culture (44). Women found the Indians had a more balanced system in which they had indirect social and political power through the underground silos. For example, "men could not undertake war…if women refused to unlock the treasury of cornmeal" (62). Another example of political power for women is how they had the right to policy behavioral boundaries because they were a legitimate authority and an interest group (63). One of the major reasons why the captured women stayed with the Indians is because "women found the gender division of labor and rights…more desirable than those of colonial Haverhill or Deerfield" (44). The labor Indian women had to do was more pleasant than the Chesapeake and New England people because one could use their children for help. In addition, most women used to do their field labor cooperatively, making the experience more pleasant. Along with significant roles, women had the freedom of divorce and premarital sex, unlike the Chesapeake and Puritans. Divorce did not require complex laws of inheritance and premarital sex was permitted at young ages in almost all Indian societies. When looking at captured women and all the cultures from an omniscient perspective, it is obvious why captured women stayed with the Indian instead of going back to their families. The captured women had longer lives, more respect, and a pleasant lifestyle than they did as colonial

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