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:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Many women who used to be full-time mothers are discovering that outside work gives them friends, challenges, variety, money, independence; it makes them feel better about themselves, and therefore lets them be better parents.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“Your women of honour, as you call ‘em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and ‘tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.”
—William Wycherley (1640–1716)