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Why Colonialism Led To Devastating Consequences for Native American Women
Before colonization, Native American women were respected and held military, political, and spiritual leadership positions because most of the communities were matrilineal. Some of the prominent Native American women leaders included Pocahontas, Queen Weetamoo, and chief Awashonks. Therefore, colonizers viewed the subjugation of the Native Americans as essential for the success of political, economic, and cultural colonization. As a result, the colonizers attacked the women to suppress the Native American society. Colonialism had devastating effects on the Native American women because it subjected them to forced marriage, slavery, violence, Christianity, and diseases
Native Americans were forcibly married by the colonizers. The unions were intended to act as a broker alliance between the cultures. Women married by the colonizers were forced to denounce their Native identity and abandon the children they had from their previous marriages. Therefore, women would lose their legal rights to be native and to practice the traditions of their societies. Without an identity, the women became unprotected by the safety and the tribal laws of their communities, leading to the disruption of the power status of Native American women and the rise of male dominance. In their marriages with the Europeans, the Native American women suffered domestic violence and psychological torture. The European husbands, especially the fur traders, would often divorce their Native Americans and pass them on to each other as if they were property when returning to Europe. Children born out of these marriages were usually sent by their fathers to get advanced education, and their mothers were forbidden to converse with the children in their native languages. With such, Native American women were unable to pass the Native American culture to their next generations.
With the increased demand for labor in the European plantations and industries, Native American women were captured and sold as slaves to provide free work. The Native American women slaves were often sold overseas. After all, when sold locally, they would always escape because they knew the local areas well, unlike the African American slaves. As a result, the women were mainly exported through Carolina ports to British West Indies to in ensuring that they could not return home. In the British West Indies, the enslaved Native American women cultivated in the sugarcane farms. The Native women who were enslaved locally worked for the British settlers in the southern colonies .here they were involved in growing rice, tobacco, and indigo. Unscrupulous merchants of the rubber industry enslaved other Native American women. Women enslaved by these merchants worked as rubber tappers for industries manufacturing bicycle tires, gaskets, and electrical insulators, and other products. Due to the immense enslavement of women, some Native African Leaders like Awashonks, the chief of the Sakonnet, agreed with the colonizers to mitigate the slavery crisis. Awashonks pledged to support the English in the war on the condition that her Sakonnet women would not be sent out of the country as slaves. Thus, slavery was expensive for Native American women because it put them through family separations, deplorable working conditions, disease, physical violence, sexual abuse, death, and starvation.
When colonizers landed in the land of the Native people, they used violence to destroy the Native civilizations they encountered. The force was a life-altering experience for the indigenous women because it implied genocides, rape, and relocations. In the first forty years of the colonization, more than 7 million Native American women had been killed. Whenever the oppressors would attack the Native Americans, they would always lose because they lacked the advanced weapons and technologies that their enemies had. However, Queen Weetamoo of the Pocasset lead her troupes into a successful ambush against the colonialists. Still, the impacts of the victory were short-lived because the colonialists retaliated using a lot of force, weakening her military capabilities. Most of the colonialists used rape as their tool of conquest, and they would always justify the sexual violence against the Native American women (Sara). The European colonizers felt justified to objectify Native American women because they conceptualized them to embody savage sexuality. This perception contrasted sharply with the notions they had about European women. According to the colonizers, European women were racially pure and clean; thus, the Native American women were thought to be sexual beings. Due to territorial claims, Europeans used excessive force to push the forcibly to push the Native American women and their families out of their lands. Therefore, the violence meted on the Native American women resulted in deaths, sexual assaults, and loss of property.
Native American societies practiced diverse religions before the arrival of Europeans, with women serving as spiritual leaders. When the Europeans arrived, they did not consider the fact that the Native American women had a religious tradition that was different from theirs. As a result, Spanish and French Catholics begun establishing catholic missions while Missionaries from England brought an expression of protestant Christianity and attempted to convert the Native American women. When Native American women were confronted with Christianity, they resisted the faith because the faith required them to get baptized, and for them, baptism meant subjection to the invader. However, the missionaries remained determined to convert the Native people. So, they established many mission boarding schools that separated the children from their parents and forced the Christian religion on them. The missionaries ensured that Native American religion was not placed under the protection of religious freedoms the same way Christianity was enshrined in the constitution. The reason is that, in their own right, Native American religions were heathen like In nature. Eventually, Native American women lost their traditional beliefs to Christianity, with women such as Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief of Powhatan, encouraging other Native American women to follow suit.
Europeans introduced diseases such as smallpox and various secondary effects such as famine. When the Europeans arrived, some of them had already been infected with smallpox because of close associations with animals. Lucky for them, they had the cure for the diseases, and so they were able to recover. However, in the process, the condition also infected the Native American population, but because they did not have a cure for the disease, most of them died(Sara). It is estimated that smallpox resulted in mortality rates as high as 90% in the Native Americans. Due to the vast spread levels of the disease, a famine came about because the colonialists took advantage of the situation to cut down corn in the farms of the Native American people. As a result, the population of Native American women was significantly reduced by disease and hunger. Birth rates in women also declined. Ultimately, the population of the Native American women did not return to the pre smallpox levels.
In conclusion, colonialism had devastating effects on the Native American people because it targeted them through violence, disease, religion, forced marriage, and slavery. As a result, a lot of Native Americans died, experienced enormous suffering, and lost their position in society. Due to the consequences, the lives of Native American women have changed completely.
Works Cited
Sara Smith. “Native American Women and Colonialism pt 1.” YouTube, 29 Aug.2108, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er14bRS7nnc&feature=emb_titlehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DqumR5fFOXEI&feature=emb_title
Sara Smith. “Native American Women and Colonialism pt 2.” YouTube, 29 Aug.2108, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeJ4efK0APQ&feature=emb_title
