Fifth Grade Native Americans and Explorers

Lesson 3

Title: Eastern Woodland Family Structure

Grade Level: 5th

Unit of Study: Native Americans and Explorers

Abstract: Students will understand American Indian life with respect to governmental and family structures.

GLCE:

U1.1.3

Describe Eastern Woodland American Indian life with respect to government and family structures, trade, and views on property ownership and land use.

Sequence of Activities:

The following activity comes from the downloadable web site :

http://www.worldsinmotion.org/misconception.asp

“The Survivors”

by Andy Knez

Background Discussion

Although Woodland Indian men were primarily responsible for hunting and protecting their families from enemies, and Woodland Indian women were primarily responsible for cooking, tending the cornfields, and taking care of the infants and toddlers, responsibilities were not as gender-specific in Native society as they were in white society. The perception that Indian men did all the important things while women were relegated to the more menial tasks implies that Woodland Indian women did nothing that required any intellectual skills or important decision-making, but nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, tasks that were often considered menial in white society, and therefore relegated to women, were not always looked at the same way in Native culture. In white colonial societies, for example, sewing was usually considered a woman’s work, but Indian men in Woodland societies sometimes repaired their own clothes, and there was always at least one warrior in every war party or hunting expedition designated as the moccasin mender.

o  Ask your students to stop and think about how quickly a pair of moccasins could wear out while tramping through the rocky, rugged terrain of the North American wilderness day after day for months at a time – climbing cliffs, wading through streams, maneuvering your way through acres of giant trees, deadfalls, and thorn bushes. A moccasin mender’s skills would thus be highly valued.

Women in Iroquois society, in particular, were certainly not confined to menial tasks. In the white man’s world, it took nearly 300 years for women to obtain the right to vote, and it wasn’t until 1933 in FDR’s administration that any woman held an important position in government (Frances Perkins – Secretary of Labor), but women in the Iroquois Confederacy always had status and power. It was a matrilineal society. Women owned the home and the contents of the home, and they played important roles in governance. In fact, Iroquois men couldn’t even wage war without the consent of Iroquois women, and women could sometimes be found among the ranks of warrior. For example, Weetamoe, leader of the Pocasset band of Wampanoag, who fought against the English in King Phillip’s War, and Awashonks, leader of the Sakonnet. Iroquois women also had the power to elect or depose a chief or impeach a member of council. They sat on councils as voting members, they delivered speeches, they signed official treaties, they passed on property (which was officially owned by the women), and they were the ones who decided whether a prisoner of war would live or die.

Many activities in Woodland culture were also frequently done together, e.g. tanning hides, building canoes, making toys for their children. Heckwelder notes that a wife would sometimes go hunting with her husband, and a husband would sometimes help his wife gather sap at sugar–making time (History, Manners, and Customs of the Indians Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania…, 156-57). Students also often have the mistaken notion that there were only medicine men in Indian societies, not medicine women, but many elderly Woodland women were “held in high esteem as herbalists and healers” (Herbert Kraft’s The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage, 248). So a more accurate view of gender roles in Woodland Indian culture would be that both Native men and women did what they needed to do in order to survive, and few tasks were viewed as unimportant. There were, of course, macho men in Indian society, as there are in all societies past or present, who considered a “woman’s work” beneath them, but in a matrilineal society, a woman was not permanently condemned to second-class citizenship.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY #1

Write Biographical Sketches of Woman Chiefs (Sachems)

To help break down the misconception that the role of women in Native society was limited to cooking, working in the garden, and taking care of children, have your students explore the lives

of some fascinating Eastern Woodland Indian leaders such as the following:

QUEEN WEETAMOE

Leader of the Pocasset band of Wampanoag during King Phillip’s War. During the Great Swamp Fight in the winter of 1675, according to Carl Waldman, Weetamoe “made brushes of twigs and tied them on her men as a camouflage,” and she also “helped build canoes and rafts for escape.” She was later beheaded by colonial authorities (Biographical Dictionary of American Indian History to 1900, pp. 408-409).

MAGNUS

Narrangansett leader in Rhode Island who “commanded warriors in battle” during King Philip’s War. She was captured and executed by colonial troops in 1767 (Carl Waldman’s Biographical Dictionary of

American Indian History to 1900, p. 231).

AWASHONKS

Leader of the Sakonnet, part of the Wampanoag Confederacy. She allied her warriors with the colonists during King Philip’s War (Carl Waldman’s Biographical Dictionary of American Indian History to 1900, p. 12).

QUEEN ALIQUIPPA

Leader of a band of Senecas along the Ohio, who, according to early narratives, “ruled with great authority.” A young George Washington once paid her a visit and inadvertently insulted her by not bringing her any presents. On his next visit, he presented her with a coat and a bottle of rum, noting later in his journal that she “much preferred the rum” (C. Hale Sipe’s Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, pp. 255-258).

MADAM MONTOUR

Described as a woman of “genteel manners, and handsome of face and form,” Madam Montour was a respected Indian interpreter for some of the most important negotiations on the frontier, e.g. the Albany Treaty in 1711 and the Lancaster Treaty in 1744. She was captured by the Iroquois when she was 10 and adopted by the Seneca. Her family name lives on in a river, a creek, a town, a county, and numerous public buildings in Western Pennsylvania (C. Hale Sipe’s Indian War of Pennsylvania , pp. 310-312).

Formative Assessment #3

Group Projects: Comparing/Contrasting Gender Roles

1.  Divide your students up into male groups and female groups.

2.  Then ask each group of guys to answer this question: “What, in your opinion, would be the best things about growing up as a boy in a Woodland Indian village?” Then ask the girls, “What, in your opinion, would be the best things about growing up as a girl in a Woodland village?” Ask them to come up with a list of at least five things.

3.  Then ask each group to answer the same question in reference to life in white culture in 18th century America.

4.  Use their answers to teach them more about the cultural values of Woodland Indian society vs. European society.

5.  You might conclude by posing this question: “In terms of gender roles, which society was more like our modern American society today – 18th century Native culture or 18th century European culture?”

Connections:

English Language Arts

Mathematics

Instructional Resources:


Equipment/Manipulative

Student Resources

Teacher Resources

The word matrilineal means inheriting or determining descent through the female line.

In the Iroquoian society the women were the head of the families and families were identified by the women’s descendants.

The women arranged their children’s marriages. When daughters married, they would take their new husband to live in the longhouse of their mother. When sons married they would go and live in the longhouse of their new wife’s mother.

Many generations of families lived in the same longhouse (made of bark and pole shaped like a rectangle)

There were many longhouses in one village.

The women would elect a man to represent their clan at the village meetings. If the women thought the man did not represent them well they would replace him with someone else.

Women took car of the crops, men hunted and fished. Land and houses were common property, owned by everyone.

The game and fish were brought back to the village and divided equally among the entire village.

The women were charge of the food once it was brought back to the longhouse.

Calhoun ISD Social Studies Curriculum Design Project