More than 150 years ago, in 1839, the United States forced the Cherokee Nation West of the Mississippi River into what later would become the state of Oklahoma. The weather was unusually harsh that winter and the cold, the disease and the hunger cost the Cherokee Nation the lives of at least four thousand of the fifteen thousand people who traveled the thousand miles West (Perdue 93).
Not only was the journey a very cruel and dangerous one for the Native Americans, but it also upset their tribal lives, particularly the tribal lives of the Cherokee women. This essay will focus on the position of the Cherokee woman in her tribe before and during the relocation West. Native American women, particularly the Cherokee, lived and thrived in a matrilineal society long before the Europeans immigrated to North America. Traditionally Cherokee women had a voice in Cherokee government. They spoke freely in council, and the War Woman (or Beloved Woman) decided to the fate of captives (Perdue 94).
The Cherokee men would live in houses that belonged to their wives and to their wifes family. Many tribal members believed that marriage gives no right to the husband over the property of his wife; and when they part she keeps the children and property belonging to them (Perdue 95).
Even the fresh produce and other belongings of a Cherokee belonged to the women because they were the primary farmers. The Cherokee women owned their own fields and tended their own crops. The Cherokee women were also very adamant and vocal peacekeepers. In 1787, Benjamin Franklin received a letter from a Cherokee woman telling him that she had told her people to maintain peace with the white settlers.
The Essay on Cherokee Women 2 Men Traditional Perdue
Cherokee Women Although its title says otherwise, this is novel is not a novel that focuses solely on female life. Instead, Cherokee Women rewrites the history of the Cherokee people by placing women in the forefront and by showing how gender affected the Cherokee culture and their relations with Americans. In the process, The da Perdue tells the history of the "most civilized tribe" in terms of ...
She had filled the peace pipe for the warriors and she enclosed some of the same tobacco for the United States Congress in order to unite symbolically her people and his in peace. She continued, I am in hopes that if you rightly consider that woman is the mother of all-and the woman does no pull children out of trees or stumps nor out of old logs, but out of their bodies, so that they ought to mind what a woman says (Perdue 94).
These Natives had the right idea about their place in the family, and unlike their European sisters, they demanded and received respect. The instances of the Native American womans role in politics are numerous. As late as 1785 women still played some role in the negotiation of land transactions. Nancy Ward, the Beloved Woman of Chota, spoke to the treaty conference held at Hopewell, South Carolina, to clarify and extend land cessions stemming from Cherokee support of the British in the American Revolution (Perdue 95).
The shock and the upset of the Cherokee Nations forced relocation to Oklahoma was very brutal and very painful and upsetting to the lives and mentality of the tribe members.
This move affected the women tremendously because they were forced into brutal, new lifestyles. One tribe member later recalled how his mother was forced to react: When the soldier came to our house, my father wanted to fight, buy my mother told him that the soldiers would kill him if he did and we surrendered without a fight. They drove us out of our house to join other prisoners in a stockade. After they took us away, my mother begged them to let her go back and get some bedding. So they let her go back and she brought what bedding and a few cooking utensils she could carry and had to leave behind all of our other household possessions (Foreman).
These Cherokee Indian women were brutalized and savagely handled. Almost worse than the physical treatment, was the mental anguish and upset that these government troops caused: Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to stockades.
The Essay on Women Soldiers Should Not Be Permitted To Serve In Combat Situations With Their Male Counterparts.
Introduction History of warfare, down the ages covering a period of 4000 years beginning from 3500BC till today is replete with instances of women soldiers going to battle to defend their country, for their kingdom or for an interest perceived as vital during that particular period. From the moment Queen Vishapla (Rigvedic Period in 3500 BC) had her leg fitted with a prosthetic limb to permit her ...
Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand. Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow (Burnett).
Burnett recalled how one family was forced to leave the body of a child who had just died and how a distraught mother collapsed of heart failure as soldiers evicted her and her three children from their homes (Burnett).
After their capture, many Cherokees had to march miles over rugged mountain terrain to the stockades. Captain L.B. Webster wrote to his wife about moving eight hundred Cherokees from North Carolina to the central depot in Tennessee: We were eight days in the making the journey, and it was pitiful to behold the women and children, who suffered exceedingly-as they were all obliged to walk, with the exception of the sick. The missionary Daniel Butrick wrote in his journal: The other day a gentleman informed me that he saw six soldiers about two Cherokee women. The women stood by a tree, and the soldiers with a bottle of liquor were endeavoring to entice them to drink, though the women, as yet were resisting them. They seduced the women to drink; and now made them an outcast among their own relatives (Canon 100).
That type of treatment was very damaging to the reputation of a Cherokee woman who was cruelly forced into unwanted relations with the white soldiers.
Now she was considered soiled and unwelcome both in her own tribe and in the white community. This was also a stark contrast to her previous position as landowner/decision-maker/farmer. It was as if these soldiers were forcing these women into traditionally submissive roles. Worse that that was the fact that many of these mothers lost babies as result of the soldiers. Canon describes one such instance: One woman was a mother of two and her youngest child, about three years old, was sick in her arms, and all she could do was to make it comfortable as circumstances would permitshe could only carry her dying child in her arms a few miles farther, and then she must stop in a stranger land and consign her much loved babe to the cold ground, and that without pomp and ceremony, and pass on with the multitude (Canon).
The Essay on Child Soldier
Children of all ages have been forced to fight in wars. Wars of all kinds, fought for different reasons, but if you look back on all of them you’ll see children. They may or may not know why they are fighting; they simply do as they’re told. Everywhere around the world, there is always a war of some kind going on. This global issue needs to be resolved so that children of all ages don’t end up ...
Journals of removal hold large instances of the burial of children alongside the trail. Many of these strong Cherokee women were able to not only give birth along the journey, but their children miraculously arrived in Oklahoma safely.
There are at least sixty-nine known cases of newborns that arrived in the West. But sadly, there are also the documented cases of soldiers bayoneting pregnant Cherokee women along the trail. By March 1839, all survivors had arrived in the West. Although no one knows how many died throughout the ordeal, one missionary doctor, Elizur Butler, who accompanied the Cherokee on the journey, estimated that the tribe lost nearly a fifth of its members – because the trip was especially hard on infants, children and the elderly. These Cherokee women were forced into new roles in their society. They were no longer at the forefront of decision making, they were now nomadic, desperate people.
Cherokee women have long been noted for their strength, their cultural attachments, and their will-power and the ordeals that they faced in the 19th century were very devastating, but they came out of their nightmare alive and fighting. They are great and powerful women..
