Sifters Native American Women's Lives

by Perdue, Theda

• ISBN13: 9780195130805
• ISBN10: 0195130804
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In this edited volume, Theda Perdue, a nationally known expert on Indian history and southern women's history, offers a rich collection of biographical essays on Native American women. From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed theBureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerfulmatrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including thecultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

Author Biography

Theda Perdue is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (1998) and The Cherokee Removal (1995).

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Introduction	3	(11)
Theda Perdue
Pocahontas: The Hostage Who Became Famous	14	(15)
Helen C. Rountree
Mary Musgrove: Creating a New World	29	(19)
Michael D. Green
Molly Brant: From Clan Mother to Loyalist Chief	48	(12)
James Taylor Carson
Sacagawea: The Making of a Myth	60	(17)
Donna Barbie
Catharine Brown: Cherokee Convert to Christianity	77	(15)
Theda Perdue
Lozen: An Apache Woman Warrior	92	(16)
Laura Jane Moore
Mourning Dove: Gender and Cultural Mediation	108	(19)
Dee Garceau
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: For the Indian Cause	127	(14)
P. Jane Hafen
Lucy Nicolar: The Artful Activism of a Penobscot Performer	141	(19)
Bunny McBride
Maria Montoyal Martinez: Crafting a Life, Transforming a Community	160	(15)
Terry R. Reynolds
Alice Lee Jemison: A Modern ``Mother of the Nation''	175	(12)
Laurence M. Hauptman
Delfina Cuero: A Native Woman's Life in the Borderlands	187	(17)
Phillip H. Round
Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash: An American Indian Activist	204	(19)
Devon A. Mihesuah
Ada Deer: Champion of Tribal Sovereignty	223	(20)
Nancy Oestreich Lurie
Further Reading	243	(6)
Index	249