| This dissertation explores the ways in which cultural conceptions of gender both influenced, and were influenced by, contact between European and Indian cultures in the colonial southeast. It analyses four main areas of native-white interaction: warfare, diplomacy, intermarriage, and trade.; First, this study argues that there was a middle ground of gender. In a region in which neither whites nor Indians could dominate the other, all parties involved had to find points of commonality where they could meet, and a common ground on which to interact. Native women and concepts of gender and kinship figured prominently in the creation of this common ground, as did creative misunderstandings of gender roles and family metaphors.; Second, differences in how natives and whites viewed gender affected how each viewed and defined the other. Both had their own ideas of what constituted proper gendered behavior and applied these conceptions to one another, often in ways that denigrated the manhood of the other. The English in fact used the failure of native men to live up to European standards to justify their own assertions of sovereignty.; Third, this study questions the declension narrative so common in histories of native women in two ways. First, it argues that native societies did not have egalitarian gender relations in the early contact period. While native women did enjoy a recognized place in the family, they did not achieve parity with men in several other areas of the society, including government, diplomacy, and religion. Second, this study argues that contact with whites, at least during the period of this study, did not cause women's status to decline precipitously. Gender roles and ideals prove to be among the most deeply, embedded and stable underpinnings of culture. Rather than experiencing the uprooting and overturning of their pre-contact gender roles because of the imposition of European patriarchal norms, Native Americans adapted traditional gender roles to the new exigencies of contact and trade. |
