In this essay, I will identify the difficulties imposed on Algonquian women by English colonists’ concepts of gender roles. I will also describe women’s responses to the English colonists and the internal divisions between Indian women and men.

Pre-contact Algonquian peoples “invoked a divine division of labor to explain and justify the differences between the roles of men and women on earth” (Shoemaker 29). Thus, women were in charge of domestic chores, which included growing corn and other plant foods. Men’s duties included hunting, warfare, and clearing land for cultivation. The English colonists were shocked by this division of labor; they considered male Indians lazy for avoiding agriculture and engaging in activities that the English associated with the favorite pastimes of the landed gentry.

The response to the English colonists by Algonquin men and women reveals internal divisions between the two. Powhatan, head of the Algonquian confederacy, tried to make the English his allies by providing them with corn and women and, at one point, tried to adopt John Smith. On the other hand, Algonquian women distrusted the English. Many of the women refused to have contact with them and “fled their homes out of fear” (Shoemaker 39).

Another response to the presence of the English was to turn “a female tradition of sexual hospitality into a weapon of war” (Shoemaker 39). The women would lure the English to their villages, leaving their weapons behind, where they could easily be captured or killed.

Bibliography

Shoemaker, Nancy. Change Negotiators: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women. Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1994.