1. Early North American Women
Native Americans had distinct and diverse cultures across North America. The communities varied depending on their environment and the traditions that developed there. Distinct gender norms developed as well. Much is known about these gender norms and the lives of women before European contact.
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "1. EARLY NORTH AMERICAN WOMEN." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Before the United States was the US, the land was home to numerous Native American nations whose diversity, then and now, rivals that of Eurasia. Each of the hundreds of nations have, and had, their own language, religion, customs, governance structure, judicial system, and history. The role of women in Native culture is as complex and different as the nations from which they emerged.
Like most cultures, so much depended on where the nation was located and the particular needs of that geography, and environment dictated the various roles people within that society played. Northwestern nations lived on rivers and relied on fishing, while those on the plains followed buffalo and planted corn for their livelihood. While gender usually plays a role in determining responsibilities, gender did not limit women in many Native cultures.
Investigating the lives of women native to North America is deeply challenging because the experiences of Indigenous people varied from region to region, community to community, and even within communities. Native people are diverse – their societies rich, complex, and enduring. Gender was, however, significant in the lives of early Native peoples wherever they were.
Family and community systems brought Native people together through mutual reliance and respect. As in many places and cultures, men were generally responsible for hunting, warfare, and interacting with outsiders; therefore, they had more visible roles. This is why the names of male Natives tend to be more visible in our histories.
Eurasia (n.), the land mass that encompasses Europe and Asia.
Native American Women in Traditional Dress, Public Domain
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Gender Norms
Native women were active in community governance and activities. Many nations, perhaps one-fourth if not a majority, were organized matrilineally where husbands would come to live with the wife’s family and inheritance was passed down from the mother.
In matrilineal societies, women owned the family’s home and goods. They did all the agricultural production and reared children. They also held political and economic power.
The Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee, were all led matrilineally with women at the helm. Clan leaders selected a male chief to represent the nation and they removed them when the women were dissatisfied with their leadership.
In other nations, women would even become warriors. Some were able to earn the title of chief because of their own achievements on the battlefield or due to their husband’s death. In the midwest, women often helped hunt and harvest buffalo and were responsible for utilizing the entirety of the animal. In these communities, the relationship between gender and service to the nation was much less significant.
In other communities, however, gender determined many of the expectations about what contributions a person would make to the community. For example, the Cherokee of the Southeast assigned male and female infants a bow or a sifter at birth to connect them to their future lives as hunters and fishers of agricultural production. The Iroquois of the Northeast, also known as the Haudenosaunee, classified the forest as male and the village as female.
But for Indigenous people, gender wasn’t always strictly binary. For example, Dine and Navajo recognized six different genders. The Ojibwe did have male and female roles, but individuals could align with the gender of their choice.
Despite the birth rituals, the Cherokee also allowed for gender variance and even built it into their language. A variety of words in the Cherokee language describe people who are “Two-Spirit”, or whose gender expression or identity fits outside the binary male or female. There are words that translate to “he or she thinks like a man or woman”.
In most Native communities, women had significant spiritual roles. They often served as spiritual leaders, healers, and in political leadership. In many Native American creation stories, one of the female characters created life, nature, and Earth through their body through some sort of birth.
The Pueblo of the Southwest have a fascinating origin story where the Corn Mother gave birth to human life and corn sprouted up through the ground. All babies were given an ear of corn at birth to recognize this sacred connection to the Mother. This story illustrates the centrality of the feminine to Pueblo life.
The belief in women’s inherent spirituality lended to their role as healers. Many nations believed that women had more healing power. Women had extensive knowledge of plants and medicines for healing and were vital to the nation's success. Most Native American women were master craftspeople producing blankets, baskets, jewelry, and pottery. Because women work– and always have.
European sketches of indigenous mothers, Library of Congress
Assiniboin Woman and Child, Public Domain
Property Ownership
The importance of property ownership depended on where the nation was located and what natural resources the nation used to sustain itself. In the Pacific Northwest, trees and acorns were incredibly important to the community’s diet, so ownership of trees was passed down from mother to daughter. In the east, some Native nations placed emphasis on actual land ownership and, unsurprisingly, women often owned the land. The Algonquin and other North Central nations used markers, like Eurasians, to show where one family’s property began and ended.
Other nations, like the Lenape, thought of ownership more like leasing, where someone had the right to use the land, but that it belonged to the nation as a whole. To the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, women owned the fields they worked, the longhouses, and everything in them. The Hopi women owned the pueblos and the land which was inherited matrilineally.
One early Native source said, “You ought to hear and listen to what we women shall speak…for we are the owners of this land and it is ours.” Native American women engaged in agricultural activity for generations prior to European contact.
On the Great Plains where buffalo were essential and nations migrated to follow them, inheritance rules put emphasis on objects that people moved with them. When these nations, like the Lakota and the Pawnee, got horses brought from Europe, they became the predominant source of wealth. Everyone, even children, had the right to own horses.
Domesticating animals other than horses was rare in Native cultures because they tended to believe that animals had equal spiritual rights as humans and because it disrupted gendered distributions of labor.
We have few reliable written sources about Native women’s lives before contact with Europeans, so unfortunately we have to turn to white men’s interpretations of Natives for some of our sources. In 1644, the Rev. John Megalopensis, minister at a Dutch Church in New Netherlands (modern day New York) said that Native American women were, “obliged to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do everything; the Men do nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their Enemies” Others described Native women as “slaves'' to the men. These European observers were describing and defining the actions of indigenous people, but filtered through their own lens. Specifically, these white men were witnessing what they saw as aberrations to idealized European gender roles. Some historians have argued that these observations contributed to the racialization of native peoples as “savage” or uncivilized–because their gendered division did not mirror Europeans’ gendered division of labor. The reality was that these European writers didn’t really understand, or care to understand, the way Natives shared the burden of labor.
Dakota Woman and Assiniboin Girl, Public Domain
European Arrival
After the arrival of more European explorers, 90 to 95 percent of the Indigenous population was wiped out by diseases. Territorial disputes and the resulting conflicts also had devastating impacts on the already weakened Native populations.
Scholars disagree on how European expansion and migration impacted Native women. Some argue that, after contact, women’s authority declined because of a term called “cultural assimilation” where cultures shift and change to become similar to the dominant culture. White men preferred to deal with Native men in trade and political negotiations, despite women sitting at the helm in most Native communities. White Christian leaders demanded of their Native converts that they follow patriarchal norms and European gender norms.
And while that may be true in some places, other scholars insist that women’s leadership remained central to other societies. Matrilineal inheritance of clan identity remained important to many communities, as evidenced by women’s central role in those communities long after European contact and today. For example, in 1787, a Cherokee woman appealed to Benjamin Franklin on behalf of her community. She said, “...ought to mind what a woman says, and look upon her as a mother – and I have Taken the prevelage to Speak to you as my own Children…and I am in hopes that you have a beloved woman amongst you who will help to put her children right if they do wrong, as I shall do the same…”
Later in the 1800s when the Cherokee nation was increasingly forced out of their homes, groups of Cherokee women petitioned their Council to stand their ground. They forcefully stated, “[b]eloved children…God gave us to inhabit and raise provisions…[do not] part with any more lands.”
These quotes give merit to the suggestion that women’s roles remained, and continue to remain, central to the leadership of at least some Native communities.
A Métis Man and his two Wives, circa 1825-1826, Public Domain
Conclusion
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. How would these rich cultures continue? What would happen to the Native people that survived European arrival and what role would women play in that survival? What efforts would be made to resist European expansion? And how many would assimilate to European norms and culture?
