ePub The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study by W. E. B. Du Bois in History

Description

A Nation of Women chronicles changing ideas of gender and identity among the Delaware Indians from the mid-seventeenth through the eighteenth century; as they encountered various waves of migrating peoples in their homelands along the eastern coast of North America.In Delaware society at the beginning of this period; to be a woman meant to engage in the activities performed by women; including diplomacy; rather than to be defined by biological sex. Among the Delaware; being a "woman" was therefore a self-identification; employed by both women and men; that reflected the complementary roles of both sexes within Delaware society. For these reasons; the Delaware were known among Europeans and other Native American groups as "a nation of women."Decades of interaction with these other cultures gradually eroded the positive connotations of being a nation of women as well as the importance of actual women in Delaware society. In Anglo-Indian politics; being depicted as a woman suggested weakness and evil. Exposed to such thinking; Delaware men struggled successfully to assume the formal speaking roles and political authority that women once held. To salvage some sense of gender complementarity in Delaware society; men and women redrew the lines of their duties more rigidly. As the era came to a close; even as some Delaware engaged in a renewal of Delaware identity as a masculine nation; others rejected involvement in Christian networks that threatened to disturb the already precarious gender balance in their social relations.Drawing on all available European accounts; including those in Swedish; German; and English; Fur establishes the centrality of gender in Delaware life and; in doing so; argues for a new understanding of how different notions of gender influenced all interactions in colonial North America.