Explains how traditional Cherokee women’s roles were destabilized, modified, recovered, and in some ways strengthened during three periods of great turmoil
American Indian women have traditionally played vital roles in social hierarchies at the family, clan, and tribal levels. In the Cherokee Nation, specifically, women and men are considered equal contributors to the culture. With this study, however, we learn that three key historical events in the 19th and early 20th centuries—removal, the Civil War, and allotment of their lands—forced a radical renegotiation of gender roles and relations in Cherokee society.
Carolyn Johnston (who is related to John Ross, principal chief of the Nation) looks at how Cherokee women navigated these crises in ways that allowed them to retain their traditional assumptions, ceremonies, and beliefs and to thereby preserve their culture. In the process, they both lost and retained power. The author sees a poignant irony in the fact that Europeans who encountered Native societies in which women had significant power attempted to transform them into patriarchal ones and that American women struggled for hundreds of years to achieve the kind of equality that Cherokee women had enjoyed for more than a millennium.
Johnston examines the different aspects of Cherokee women’s power: authority in the family unit and the community, economic independence, personal autonomy, political clout, and spirituality. Weaving a great-grandmother theme throughout the narrative, she begins with the protest of Cherokee women against removal and concludes with the recovery of the mother town of Kituwah and the elections of Wilma Mankiller and Joyce Dugan as principal chiefs of the Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokees.
IllustrationsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroductionCRISIS OF GENDERCultural ContinuityEarly Catalysts for ChangeThe Trail of TearsCRISIS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTIONThe Civil WarReconstructionCRISIS OF ALLOTMENTAllotmentConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
Carolyn Ross Johnston is a professor of American studies and history at Eckerd College. She is the author of Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838–1907 and Jack London: An American Radical?
“The major success of the book . . . is Johnston’s refusal to portray the Cherokee women as victims. Through every strife and struggle, these women were agents of their own power, adapting to the changing times. Walking the Trail of Tears, watching their homes plundered by Union soldiers, being forced to give up their sacred land, the Cherokee women persevered with a quiet strength, channeling their energy into what’s most important: cultural survival.” —ForeWord Magazine
“If the precise connection between historical events and cultural change cannot always be drawn clearly, Johnston's engaging narrative, based on solid research, brings to life many remarkable Cherokee women whose stories provide broader insights into gendered lives.” —Journal of Southern History