The patriarchal legacy of empire
Elite indigenous women of the Americas found few opportunities to exercise power within the colonial world. The Spanish Empire alone granted indigenous women power to rule through the introduced institution of the encomienda, and through the recognition of precontact hereditary chieftainships.
Spanish hereditary laws, combined with inter-ethnic marriages involving women from the highest echelons of pre-contact societies, created spaces for elite indigenous women to retain their status in colonial society. These women, especially those with large dowries, were the best placed to insert themselves in the new power networks. This is not to say that noble women did not suffer the ignominies often reserved for women of the defeated, including death or enslavement at the hand of the intruders.In North America, where no pre-contact polities of the complexity of the Aztec and Inca Empires were to be found, women’s contributions to European empire-building went unrewarded by access to political office. These circumstances might have been due to pre-existent conditions, especially the absence of a wealthy, landed indigenous elite, given that the land dowries of Aztec and Inca women seem to have attracted the greatest attention of elite Spanish men. Irrespective of the wellsprings of these women’s power in the pre-contact era, however, as producers of food, shelter, clothing and commodities they contributed greatly to the expansion of empire.
As we strive to understand better the complementary gendered roles of societies in the Americas in the pre-contact and colonial eras, it seems clear that the oft-repeated European claim that the indigenous woman was a ‘drudge’ is manifestly inadequate in describing the contribution of First Nations women as valuable producers and reproducers of communities, but also as builders of empire. Whether as heads of encomiendas or cacicazgos, as guides and translators or as fur trade wives and mediators between cultures, women’s presence at every stage of empire-building deserves to be recognised by becoming explicit, rather than implicit, in imperial history.
Notes
1 Irene Silverblatt, ‘Interpreting Women in States: New Feminist Ethnohistories’, in Michaela di Leonardo (ed.), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 140-174; and Susan Carol Rogers, ‘Women’s Place: A Critical Review of Anthropological Theory’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 20 (1978), pp. 123-162, 127.
2 John H. Hann, Indians of Central and South Florida, 1513 1763 (Gainesville, 2003), p. 2.
3 Dean R. Snow, The Iroquois (Oxford, 1994), p. 69.
4 Susan Schroeder, Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson, 1991), pp. 183-184.
5 Daniel Maltz and JoAllyn Archambault, ‘Gender and Power in Native North America', in Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman (eds), Women and Power in Native North America (Norman, 1995), pp. 230-249, 235.
6 Karen B. Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700 (Stanford, 2007), p. 33.
7 Kerstin Nowack, ‘Aquellas senoras del linaje real de los incas: vida y supervivencia de las mujeres de la nobleza inca en el Peru en los primeros anos de la Colonia', in David Cahill and Blanca Tovias (eds), Elites indigenas en los Andes: nobles, caciquesy cabildantes bajo elyugo colonial (Quito, 2003), pp. 9-53, 20-23.
8 David Cahill, ‘The Virgin and the Inca: An Incaic Procession in the City of Cuzco in 1692', Ethnohistory, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2002), pp. 611-649, esp. p. 617.
9 Peter Gose, ‘The State as a Chosen Woman: Brideservice and the Feeding of Tributaries in the Inka Empire', American Anthropologist, Vol. 102, No. 1 (2000), pp. 84-97, 93.
10 Kay A. Read and Jane Rosenthal, ‘The Chalcan Woman's Song: Sex as a Political Metaphor in Fifteenth-Century Mexico', The Americas, Vol. 62, No. 3 (2006), pp. 313-348, pp. 334-335.
11 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espana (Mexico, 1992 [c. 1580]), p. 97.
12 Pedro Carrasco, ‘Indian-Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony', in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood and Robert Haskett (eds), Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman,
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87-103, 92.13 Luis Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Dallas, 1983), pp. 50-51.
14 Frances Karttunen, ‘Rethinking Malinche', in Schroeder et al. (eds), Indian Women, pp. 292, 306.
15 Carrasco, ‘Indian-Spanish Marriages', p. 92.
16 Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Dona Francisca Pizarro: una ilustre mestizo. 1534-1598 (Lima,
2003), pp. 30-53.
17 Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Dona Francisca Pizarro, pp. 36-37; and Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores, pp. 50-51.
18 Nowack, ‘Aquellas senoras del linaje real de los Incas', pp. 25-26.
19 Frances Karttunen, Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides and Survivors (New Brunswick, 1994), pp. 1-23.
20 Karttunen, Between Worlds, p. 18; Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, pp. 100-101 and 554.
21 Susan E. Ramirez, ‘The Cosmological Bases of Local Power in the Andes during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', in David Cahill and Blanca Tovias (eds), New World, First Nations: Native Peoples of Mesoamerica and the Andes under Colonial Rule (Brighton, 2006), pp. 36-56, 36.
22 Ramirez, ‘Cosmological Bases', pp. 36 and 42-44.
23 David T. Garrett, ‘ “In Spite of Her Sex”: The Cacica and the Politics of the Pueblo in Late Colonial Cusco', The Americas, Vol. 64, No. 4 (2008), p. 569.
24 Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Curacas y sucesiones. Costa Norte (Lima, 1961), pp. 29-31; and La mujer en la epoca prehispanica, Documento de Trabajo No. 17 (Lima, 1986), p. 15.
25 Collapina, Supno y Otros Quipucamayos, Relation de la descendencia, gobiernoy conquista de los incas, Juan Jose Vega (ed.) (Lima, 1974 [1542]), p. 34.
26 Garrett, ‘“In Spite of Her Sex”', p. 557.
27 Yasuhide Kawashima, Igniting King Philip's War: The John Sassamon Murder Trial (Lawrence, 2001), pp. 28-29; and Eric Johnson, ‘“Some by Flatteries and Others by Threatenings”: Political Strategies among Native Americans of Seventeenth-century Southern New England', PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1993, p.
156.28 Johnson, ‘“Some by Flatteries”', pp. 171-172.
29 Kawashima, King Philip’s War, p. 153.
30 James Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Oxford, 1988), pp. 184 and 190.
31 Kathleen M. Brown, ‘The Anglo-Algonquian Gender Frontier', in Nancy Shoemaker (ed.), Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (New York, 1995), p. 31.
32 Helen C. Rountree, ‘Pocahontas: The Hostage Who Became Famous', in Theda Perdue (ed.), Sifiers:.Native American Women’s Lives (Oxford, 2001), pp. 14-28, 15.
33 Rountree, ‘Pocahontas: The Hostage Who Became Famous', p. 24.
34 Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York, 2003 rpt [1996]), pp. 187, 212 and 277.
35 Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 178 and 180.
36 Karttunen, Between Worlds, p. 23.
37 Frederick E. Hoxie and Jay T. Nelson (eds), Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: The.Native American Perspective (Urbana, 2007), p. 125.
38 Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 399 and 448.
39 Leslie Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats: The Life and Times of Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina' (Spokane, 2000), pp. 93-95, 162, 219-20 and 224.
40 Sarah Carter, ‘First Nations Women of Prairie Canada in the Early Reserve Years, the 1870s to the 1920s: A Preliminary Inquiry', in Christine Miller and Patricia Chuchryk (eds), Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom, and Strength (Winnipeg, 2001), pp. 51-75, 53.
Further reading
Albers, Patricia and Beatrice Medicine, The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women (Washington, DC, 1983).
Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC, 1999).
Diaz, Monica, Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson,
2010).
Graubart, Karen B., With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700 (Stanford, 2007).
Gutierrez, Ramon A., When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, 1991).
Klein, Laura F. and Lillian A. Ackerman (eds), Women and Power in Native North America (Norman,
1995).
Kugel, Rebecca and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy (eds), Native Women's History in Eastern North America before 1900:A Guide to Research and Writing (Lincoln, 2007).
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Maria, Dona Francisca Pizarro: una ilustre mestiza, 1534-1598 (Lima,
1989).
Shoemaker, Nancy, ‘The Rise or Fall of Iroquois Women', Journal of Women's History, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Winter 1991), pp. 39-57.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst, 2001).
Socolow, Susan Migden, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge, 2000).
Townsend, Camilla (ed.), American Indian History: A Documentary Reader (Chichester, 2009).
Turner, Erin (ed.), Wise Women: From Pocahontas to Sarah Winnemucca, Remarkable Stories of Native American Trailblazers (Guilford, 2009).