Native Women's History in Eastern North America Before 1900

How can we learn more about Native women's lives in North America in earlier centuries? This question is answered by this landmark anthology, an essential guide to the significance, experiences, and histories of Native women. Sixteen classic essaysplus new commentarymany by the original authorsdescribe a broad range of research methods and sources offering insight into the lives of Native American women. The authors explain the use of letters and diaries, memoirs and autobiographies, newspaper accounts and ethnographies, census data and legal documents. This collection offers guidelines for extracting valuable information from such diverse sources and assessing the significance of such variables as religious affiliation, changes in women's power after colonization, connections between economics and gender, and representations (and misrepresentations) of Native women. Indispensable to anyone interested in exploring the role of gender in Native American history or in emphasizing Native women's experiences within the context of women's history, this anthology helps restore the historical reality of Native women and is essential to an understanding of North American history.

Rebecca Kugel is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of To Be the Main Leaders of Our People: A History of Minnesota Ojibwe Politics, 1825–1898. Lucy Eldersveld Murphy is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University, Newark. She is the author of A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (Nebraska 2000).

 

Contributors: Jennifer S. H. Brown, Carl Ekberg, Rayna Green, Clara Sue Kidwell, Rebecca Kugel, Eleanor Leacock, Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Jean M. O’Brien, Theda Perdue, Michelene E. Pesantubbee, Anton J. Pregaldin, Kathryn Shanley, Nancy Shoemaker, Susan Sleeper-Smith, David D. Smits, and Helen Tanner.