Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists Read Online Free Page A
Author: Sally Roesch Wagner
protests that came from the Onondaga nation were published in full by the paper, along with the names of all the signatures to the petitions.
The level of sophistication of these newspaper stories indicates that the average reader in upstate New York 100 years ago possessed knowledge about the Iroquois that, among non-Natives, is held by only a relatively small number of scholars today. The newspaper articles assumed, for example, that the readers knew the process by which a chief was raised up and what comprised a condolence ceremony. 16
When Gage picked up her daily paper, she read how the Haudenosaunee ginseng trade with China was threatened by political events in that country. A dispute when two chiefs were raised up simultaneously brought non-Native readers into the question of which was the legitimate one. When Anton Dvorak came to the United States to write his New World Symphony, he suggested that indigenous music is the true voice of America; a Syracuse University professor gave a lecture supporting that thesis from his study of Iroquois music.
With so many writers and newspaper stories creating such a sophisticated level of general knowledge, it comes as no surprise that when reformers like Matilda Joslyn Gage looked for a model upon which to base their vision of an egalitarian world, they quickly found their well-known Native neighbors. And what did they find? What was revealed to the suffragists about women’s relative status in these two contrasting worlds? What did they have eyes to see?
Women’s rights
The concept of women’s rights could not be easily incorporated into Euro-Christian tradition. Rather, feminism challenged the very foundation of Western institutions, Gage beHeved—especially that of religion. 8
As I look backward through history I see the church everywhere stepping upon advancing civilization, hurling woman from the plane of “natural rights” where the fact of her humanity had placed her, and through itself, and its control over the state, in the doctrine of “revealed rights” everywhere teaching an inferiority of sex; a created subordination of woman to man; making her very existence a sin; holding her accountable to a diverse code of morals from man; declaring her possessed of fewer rights in church and in state; her very entrance into heaven made dependent upon some man to come as mediator between her and the Savior it has preached, thus crushing her personal, intellectual, and spiritual freedom. 9
“No rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of Church and State”
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Discontent came to a head for radical women’s rights reformers when they realized in the late 1880s that their hard labor of forty years had not resulted in woman’s equality in the church, state, work place, or family. The United States Supreme Court had ruled that the right to vote was not guaranteed to them. Still seen as the source of evil by the church because of Eve’s original sin, women continued to be, as Gage called them, the “great unpaid laborers of the world,” the virtual slave of the household and, in the few occupations open to them, paid only half the wages men received.
Reformers who had spent their whole lives working unsuccessfully to change woman’s condition began to realize the depth of the roots of oppression. Certainly they must have had doubts. Could women’s position be natural or “God-ordained,” as the enemies of freedom constantly told them? Both Stanton and Gage’s vision became deeper and broader as their successes failed to materialize.
Gage expressed it this way:
During the ages, no rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of Church and State; none has had its far-reaching effects. We note its beginning; its progress will overthrow every existing form of these institutions; its end will be a regenerated world. 10
How were these women able to see
The level of sophistication of these newspaper stories indicates that the average reader in upstate New York 100 years ago possessed knowledge about the Iroquois that, among non-Natives, is held by only a relatively small number of scholars today. The newspaper articles assumed, for example, that the readers knew the process by which a chief was raised up and what comprised a condolence ceremony. 16
When Gage picked up her daily paper, she read how the Haudenosaunee ginseng trade with China was threatened by political events in that country. A dispute when two chiefs were raised up simultaneously brought non-Native readers into the question of which was the legitimate one. When Anton Dvorak came to the United States to write his New World Symphony, he suggested that indigenous music is the true voice of America; a Syracuse University professor gave a lecture supporting that thesis from his study of Iroquois music.
With so many writers and newspaper stories creating such a sophisticated level of general knowledge, it comes as no surprise that when reformers like Matilda Joslyn Gage looked for a model upon which to base their vision of an egalitarian world, they quickly found their well-known Native neighbors. And what did they find? What was revealed to the suffragists about women’s relative status in these two contrasting worlds? What did they have eyes to see?
Women’s rights
The concept of women’s rights could not be easily incorporated into Euro-Christian tradition. Rather, feminism challenged the very foundation of Western institutions, Gage beHeved—especially that of religion. 8
As I look backward through history I see the church everywhere stepping upon advancing civilization, hurling woman from the plane of “natural rights” where the fact of her humanity had placed her, and through itself, and its control over the state, in the doctrine of “revealed rights” everywhere teaching an inferiority of sex; a created subordination of woman to man; making her very existence a sin; holding her accountable to a diverse code of morals from man; declaring her possessed of fewer rights in church and in state; her very entrance into heaven made dependent upon some man to come as mediator between her and the Savior it has preached, thus crushing her personal, intellectual, and spiritual freedom. 9
“No rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of Church and State”
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Discontent came to a head for radical women’s rights reformers when they realized in the late 1880s that their hard labor of forty years had not resulted in woman’s equality in the church, state, work place, or family. The United States Supreme Court had ruled that the right to vote was not guaranteed to them. Still seen as the source of evil by the church because of Eve’s original sin, women continued to be, as Gage called them, the “great unpaid laborers of the world,” the virtual slave of the household and, in the few occupations open to them, paid only half the wages men received.
Reformers who had spent their whole lives working unsuccessfully to change woman’s condition began to realize the depth of the roots of oppression. Certainly they must have had doubts. Could women’s position be natural or “God-ordained,” as the enemies of freedom constantly told them? Both Stanton and Gage’s vision became deeper and broader as their successes failed to materialize.
Gage expressed it this way:
During the ages, no rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of Church and State; none has had its far-reaching effects. We note its beginning; its progress will overthrow every existing form of these institutions; its end will be a regenerated world. 10
How were these women able to see
Readers choose
Agatha Christie
Corrine A. Silver
Hannah Howell
Tiffany Monique
Kristi Pelton
Nancy A. Collins
Anton DiSclafani
Richard; Forrest
Joannie Kay
Cara Nelson