How the Role of Women in Haudenosaunee Culture Inspired the Early Feminist Movement :: Essays Papers

How the Role of Women in Haudenosaunee Culture Inspired the Early womens rightist MovementThe United States has had a long family with the Haudenosaunee people. When Europeans invaded North America, start in the end of the 15th century, they found a land already inhabited by a large group of people, who they called Indians. Although their subsequent relationship was plagued by disease, wars and fights for domination, there was, inevitably, some exchange of goods, like crops, and ideas between the ii peoples. Most nonably, even the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were influenced by the Haudenosaunee Confederacys ideas or so democracy and government. One aspect of the relationship, however, is rarely mentioned the impact that Haudenosaunee women had on first womens rightists in the U.S. The two groups of women interacted very closely during the 19th century, and prominent feminist voices in the U.S., like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Lucretia Mott, were heavily influenced by the native womens numerous freedoms. The contrast between the two groups of women was tremendous. Haudenosaunee women held prominent, decision-making positions in their matriarchal political system. They had the post to choose their clans chief, and their authority as clan mothers was prize by Haudenosaunee law. Spiritually, these women were viewed as being connected to Mother Earth and were trustworthy for leading various religious ceremonies, alongside of men. Haudenosaunee women in like manner shared unsophisticated work with men, dealing with the work load on a communal basis. Not only did they have control of their own property, but women also had authority over their own bodies, including the responsibility of childbearing. This authority was developed in the Haudenosaunee matriarchal system of family in which children were considered members of the mothers clan and husbands were brought into the married womans longhouse upon marriage. Women had final dome stic control violence against women and children was not tolerated because wives had the originator to kick their husbands out, ordering them to pick up their blanket and budge (Wagner, p. 47). On the other hand, women in the U.S., the land of the free, experienced a severe bound of rights in comparison. Unlike the Haudenosaunee, white women were considered altogether subordinate to men, and had to rely completely on their husbands for economic support and political influence. Not only were these women not in positions of political power, but they could not vote, control their own property, perplex decisions about their own body, or claim their own children.