The Tried and the True: Native American Women Confronting Colonization

The first of the women we now call Native American were among the prehistoric nomads who crossed a land bridge between Asia and North America 40,000 years ago. Over centuries, these humans formed larger bands, and eventually farming villages and even larger units, the seeds of the many tribes and nations that we call Indians or Native Americans. In most of these cultures, women held positions of honor in the community. John Demos looks at four Native American groups--the Puebloans of the North American Southwest, the Iroquois of the Northeast woodlands, the fur-trading tribes of the central Great Lakes region, and the Cherokees of the interior Southeast--and explores the possibilities open to women and how colonization by Europeans forever changed their lives.