Women
Plains Indian women are often portrayed as "beasts of burden," a view that has been challenged by some scholars. Women tanned hides, gathered wild foods, cooked, made clothing, and took down and erected tipis during the frequent movements of the band or tribe. Women had different roles than men. Their social life was primarily with other women in various societies and clubs in which they participated, not engaging in political life except indirectly. That Indian women were not always subservient and suppressed is illustrated by the experiences of frontiersman Kit Carson. In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman named Making Out Road. The marriage was turbulent and ended when Making Out Road threw Carson and his belongings out of her tipi. She later went on to marry, and divorce, several additional men, both white and Indian.
Read more about this topic: Plains Indians
Famous quotes containing the word women:
“... the prevalent custom of educating young women only for marriage, and not for the duties and responsibilities consequent on marriage—only for appendages and dead weights to husbands—of bringing them up without an occupation, profession, or employment, and thus leaving them dependent on anyone but themselves—is an enormous evil, and an unpardonable sin.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“There is still the feeling that women’s writing is a lesser class of writing, that ... what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, ... that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“Men are cowards when it comes to the “eternally feminine”: and the little women know it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)