Scholars have indicated that various reciprocal
relationships governed the sexes. These relationships, when
broken, triggered the need for response. They also reflect
that both women and men had certain rights, which were
enshrined in the social mores of the community. These
constituted the basic laws by which the people organized
their affairs. The following quotations reflect a wide
variety of penalties and reactive measures, etc.:
- Blackfoot: According to an ancient (Blackfoot)
custom, a man could kill an unfaithful wife or cut off her
nose; the members of the Brave Dog society, however, were
generally called to inflict this punishment (McClintok
29).
- Cree: A Cree woman, at certain periods, is laid under
considerable restraint. They are far, however, from carrying
matters to the extremities mentioned by Hearne in his
description of the Chipewyans, or Northern Indians. She
lives apart from her husband also for two months if she has
borne a boy, and for three if she has given birth to a girl"
… "Many of the Cree hunters are careful to prevent a woman
from partaking of the head of a moose-deer, lest it should
spoil their future hunts; and for the same reason they avoid
bringing it to a fort, fearing the lest the white people
should give the bones to the dogs (Franklin 112).
- Sioux: Her rights while in the family pertain
to the household. It was her duty to skin the larger game,
and the skins became her property, and she was expected to
tan them or otherwise fit them for use. If she made them up
into articles for the use of the man, they then became the
personal property of the man, or if she made them up for the
personal use of a grown up son or anyone not a member of the
family, they became the personal property of the one for
whom they were made. But if she made them up for any other
person of use in the family they remained her own, which she
had the right to dispose of in any manner she saw fit. But
the men skinned the smaller furbearing animals, and while
the women tanned and prepared these, they remained the
property of the men and when the buffalo skins became
articles of commerce with the white people, the men took
charge of the sale of them, and of the precedes of such
sales.
As the tipis were made of skins they were the property of
the women, as were the clothing of herself ad her children,
until they were grown up, and she owned the robes used in
the family, except those belonging to the man and grown
sons, and all the domestic implements and utensils.
All the children that were the issue of her body belong
to her until they had arrived at puberty in the sense that
her right to their possession took precedence over that of
her man, their father. She is their mother (hunkupi) and
they hold her as their ancestor. Her right to control her
children took precedence over that of her husband until the
sons became of an age when they could be instructed in the
arts of the chase and of war, when the father took charge of
them, but in the tipis they were still subordinate to the
mother until they arrived at the age of manhood. In the
management of all ordinary domestic work the woman’s
authority was supreme. If she left a man her claim to her
rights was unimpaired, but if her man disputed it she could
maintain it only by the help of her friends whose aid
depended on their ability to enforce their wishes because of
numbers or influence. But if a woman was thrown away or
given away for punishment, she lost all rights to all her
property and her children, except babies, but the man could
permit her to take such as she wished and he granted (Walker
43-44).
While the position of the woman in the family was
subordinate to the man in almost every particular, she had
certain rights which were recognized among the Sioux, as
follows. She had the right to leave a man who had taken her,
in which case her friends could take her part in the
difference, and if they thought that she had not sufficient
cause for her action they could restore her to her man, if
he so wished it. Then the only way she could escape
remaining his woman was to fly and remain in hiding from
him, or to become the woman of someone who was the more
powerful that her former man, and able to maintain his
possession of the woman, by force if need be. (Walker, 41)
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