Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner Read Free Book Online

at the very fabric of Native society, which held that women, producers of life, were the only appropriate group to bring life from the soil. Despite resistance, Indian land—over which women had historically been the caretakers for the nation—was often divided up among Indian men, as “heads of the family.” Tribal governments, systematically changed to model after that of the United States, disfranchised women.
    “It behooves us women,” Stanton wrote, “to question all historians ... who teach ... any philosophy that lowers the status of the mothers of the race.” 9 She found a suppressed history, one that elevated women. While women’s work was not valued in the EuroAmerican world (if it were, it would be paid, Stanton insisted), there was nothing inherently demeaning about it, she held. To the contrary, the creative powers of woman in birthing and maintaining daily life, she came to believe, were the source of her strength. Stanton recognized the indigenous truth that agriculture grew naturally out of woman’s ability to birth. In an 1891 speech to the National Council of Women she expressed this view:
    Careful historians now show that the greatest civilizing power ... has been found in ... motherhood. For the protection of herself and her children woman made the first home in the caves of the earth, then huts with trees in the sunshine. She made the first attempts at agriculture, raised grains, fruits, and herbs, which she learned to use in sickness. She was her own physician; all that was known of the medical art was in her hands. She domesticated the cow and the goat, and from the necessities of her children learned the use of milk. The women cultivated the arts of peace, and the sentiments of kinship, and all there was of human love and home-life. The necessities of motherhood were the real source of all the earliest attempts at civilization. Thus, instead of being a ‘disability,’ as unthinking writers are pleased to call it, maternity has been the all-inspiring motive or force that impelled the first steps towards a stable home and family life. 10
     
    Stanton recognized and valued women’s work in one small way with this prayer, delivered when she was asked to bless the food at a meal:
    Heavenly father and mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food. For humanity’s sake. Amen. 11
     
    Stanton—unlike the Christians of her day—acknowledged the divinity of woman, along with the role of women in the creation of daily life. 12 Her words expressed a sentiment somewhat similar to the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, an ancient prayer given by Iroquois elders before and after an event of importance. An oral tradition, it can take four hours to tell in its entirety. This is a contemporary Mohawk version:
    We give greetings and thanks to our Mother the Earth—she gives us that which makes us strong and healthy. We are grateful that she continues to perform her duties as she was instructed. The women and Mother Earth are one—givers of life. We are her color, her flesh and her roots. Now our minds are one. 13
     
    While EuroAmericans might have lost that grounding, Native people had not. Traditionally, woman as mother and woman as creator of life were one and the same. Mother Earth was an obvious descriptive term, not a romantic metaphor. The Haudenosaunee believed that the earth would not bear unless cultivated by women. Agriculture retained its ancient spiritual connection to fertility, growth, and revival among the Haudenosaunee.
    What happened to bring about the downfall of Western women from sacred creators of life-giving food to kitchen drudges? Stanton presented her theory, with which Gage agreed:
    Women and their duties became objects of hatred to the Christian missionaries and of alternate scorn and fear to pious ascetics and monks. The priestess mother became