Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists
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Susan B. Anthony’s arrest and trial for voting in 1873 drew the nation’s attention. By then, countless women throughout the country had presented themselves at the polls and none had been arrested. When the government arrested Anthony, the best-known suffragist in the United States, both Gage and Anthony understood that this would be the government’s test case. Organizing a whirlwind speaking tour, they brought their cause to upstate New York villages, educating potential jurors in the county where the case would be heard. By the time Anthony went to trial, people knew that “taxation without representation” had surfaced for a second time as a burning issue in the country.
Gage described the inexperienced presiding judge as “a small-brained, pale-faced, prim-looking man,” who displayed his nervousness the day of the trial, realizing that the jurors probably knew the significance of the case. “This was the first criminal case he had been called on to try since his appointment and, with remarkable forethought, he had penned his decision before hearing it,” Gage wrote.4 The judge did not allow the jury to decide the case, nor did he consult them or allow them to indicate their opinion in any way. Judge Hunt found Susan B. Anthony guilty of voting, an act expressly forbidden to women under New York State law, and fined her one hundred dollars, plus costs. Anthony refused to pay, protesting: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that ‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’5
Her defeat was simply a skirmish. The suffragists intended to win the struggle with the second part of their strategy. All around the country, women brought suit against the voter registrars who refused to accept their ballots.
Virginia Minor’s case began in St. Louis when Reese Happersett, the registrar of voters, refused to place her name on the list because “she was not a ‘male’ citizen, but a woman,” and therefore ineligible to vote in Missouri. In association with her husband Francis (married women under the common law were unable to bring suit independently of their husbands), Virginia Minor sued for damages. They lost in the Circuit Court and on appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. Finally they carried their case to the Supreme Court, with Francis Minor acting as chief attorney. An active member of the National Woman Suffrage Association, along with his wife, Francis Minor argued what would become the landmark case for woman suffrage. The decision was unanimous. “If the courts can consider any question settled,” the nine white men sitting on the Supreme Court agreed, “this is one.” Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite’s unanimous opinion stated, “[t]he Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one.” Suffrage is not coexistent with citizenship, the Court declared, and states have the absolute right to grant or deny suffrage. Women did not have the right to vote protected in the United States of America, the Supreme Court ruled.6
The setback was as astonishing as it was embittering. Woman suffrage had logic on its side. All tax-paying citizens of the Republic clearly had the inherent right to give their consent to the laws under which they were ruled and the representatives who made those laws. Even Professor Walker’s basic Introduction to American Lawsupported the women’s rights advocates:Women have no part or lot in the foundation or administration of the government. They cannot vote or hold office. They are required to contribute their share, by way of taxes, to the support of the Government, but are allowed no voice in its direction. They are amenable to the laws, but are allowed no share in making them. This language, when applied to males, would be the exact definition of political slavery.
The National Woman Suffrage Association convention in 1876 decided to protest against the government’s treatment of women by (illegally) presenting a Declaration of Rights of Women at the official Centennial celebration, declaring:Whereas, The women of this nation to-day, under a government which claims to be based upon individual rights, to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war of the revolution; and
Whereas, The oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters instead of dwelling in a foreign land, are our husbands, our fathers, our brothers and our sons; therefore, Resolved, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than the men of 1776.
Resolved, ... that, as Abigail Adams predicted, “We are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation. 7
The National Woman Suffrage Association had counted on the government being true to its own principles. They believed it would only be necessary to point out that the government was not living up to the founding philosophy of the country for change to occur. What they had not counted on was the sharp moral edge—backed up by the pulpit—of their opponents. “Wives, submit to your husbands,” the anti’s intoned, quoting St. Paul to prove that women must be subordinate to men. Religious conservatives warned that the divine order of the universe would be overturned if wives stood beside their husbands at the polling place.
Was the political subordination of women universal? If women had always been under the control of men, the suffragists would have to grudgingly admit that woman’s second-class status probably revealed a divinely inspired or natural order. An exception would throw into question the universal, natural argument. The evidence of even one culture where women stood equal to men in decision-making authority would reveal the EuroAmerican practice of denying women suffrage to be an arbitrary exercise of male power.
Once again, the suffragists did not have far to look for the example they sought. Their closest cultural neighbors, Haudenosaunee women, possessed decision-making authority equally with men. Political rights were not new to these women. Their democratic government rested on decision-making by all men and women. United States women citizens had to break from their religious and political tradition in order to have a part in their government. On the other hand, woman’s political participation was traditional for the Haudenosaunee, who believed the mutual authority of women and men was divinely inspired and necessary to maintaining the natural balance of the universe.
Ridiculed, labeled heretics, and arrested for the crime of voting, the courageous suffragists continued to believe in the rightness of their cause. They believed it was neither natural nor religiously mandated for women to be denied a voice in decisions affecting their lives and the lives of their children.
Mother of Nations
Denied a political role in their own nation, the two major theorists in the woman’s rights movement, Stanton and Gage, knew and wrote about the decision-making responsibilities of women in the Six Nations. Stanton talked about how the clan mother held the authority for putting and keeping in place the chief that represented her clan:The women were the great power among the clan, as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, ‘to knock off the horns,’ as it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with the women.“8
Stanton read Lewis Henry Morgan, a Rochester lawyer known in some circles as “the father of American anthropology, who wrote League of the Iroquois in 1851. Morgan drew heavily on the knowledge of the Seneca, Ely S. Parker, along with the decades of personal knowledge gathered by Ashur Wright, missionary to the Seneca nation. Wright had explained women’s decision-making responsibilities to Morgan in this way:So also if the regular heir of office should be guilty of any disqualifying conduct or should prove wanting in any respect, the old people could interfere, throw him out of line and select another in his place: and in a like manner they could depose one already a full Chief, who had been guilty of three successive disqualifying acts, and raise the next in line into his place. In the case, however, of tribal and national chiefs, it was customary for the tribe or nation to ratify their
action; which they very seldom if ever failed to do. In all these matters the old women of the clans took the lead, so that it used to be said they could put up or put down whomsoever they chose, and they could approve or veto all the acts not only of the councils of their own clan, but those of the tribal and national councils also (in the latter case, in connection with the women of the other clans).
Gage described the purely democratic nature of Iroquois decision making:The common interests of the confederacy were arranged in councils, each sex holding one of its own, although the women took the initiative in suggestion, orators of their own sex presenting their views to the council of men.9
Voting is not a concept that makes an easy cross-cultural transfer. The United States government takes the form of a representative democracy, with each citizen having a vote (initially African American men and all women were not allowed to participate, of course), and the majority rules. Among the Haudenosaunee, decisions are made by consensus and everyone must agree. It has been that way since the founding of the Confederacy, long before Europeans arrived on this continent. Voting, per se, does not exist. Rather, people speak and listen to one another, carefully considering ideas, until they are all of one mind. There is a balance of responsibilities between men and women that allows consensus to work.
This reality presented a startling contrast to the “liberty and justice for all” nation which denied women—despite their continuous protest—any part in their own government. Among the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, as Morgan explained, the intricate system of female lineage “lay at the foundation of their political as well as social organization.”10 Hewitt described what a family-based government looked like:The ohwachira [matrilineal family] which in their own right possessed official titles of hereditary chiefships, and lesser officials, filled these offices by nomination by the suffrages of the mothers and adult girls in them. The federal chief who represented the ohwachira in the tribal council and also in the federal council [the Iroquois League] and the chief warriors as well, were chosen in this manner, usually with the advice of the warriors of the ohwachira. The woman trustee chief, [clan mother] the highest official known to Iroquois polity, was also nominated and confirmed in this manner. She was the executive officer of the ohwachira and was chosen because of exceptional ability and purity of character; she had a seat in the federal council in addition to her position as a trustee of her ohwachira, and so had a somewhat higher standing and authority than had the male federal chief.11
The Haudenosaunee world view is based on keeping everything in balance. Women and men each have responsibilities they must carry out to maintain this balance. The clan mother heads the entire extended family that makes up a clan. Since the ancient founding of the League of the Haudenosaunee, which Barbara Mann and Jerry Fields have dated at 1142 C.E.,12 each clan mother has the responsibility for carrying out the process by which the women of her clan select a male chief. The clan mother also has the duty of deposing the chief if he fails to perform his official duties. The man cannot become a chief or remain a chief if he commits rape, which is considered one of the three major crimes—theft and murder are the other two.
Women’s Nominating Wampum Belt
Balance also requires that everyone in the nation have a voice, and decision-making is achieved by consensus in public councils. All questions, including the making of treaties and deciding on issues of war and peace, have always required the approval of both women and men. This ancient democratic government continues to this day, with clan mothers still choosing the chiefs. The women’s nominating wampum belt records this law of the Confederacy of the original Five Nations:We give and assign the sacred chieftainship titles and the soil of our land to all of our Mothers, the Women of the Five Nations, and they shall be the proprietors of the same.“13
Arthur C. Parker describes the critical female role in the formation of the confederacy which resulted in women having responsibility for holding the chieftainship titles:Likewise, in the wampum codes of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, we are told that both Hiawatha, the Onondaga and the Peacemaker, a Wyandot, made their journeys to the tribes with the ‘Great Mother,’ Ji-gon-sa-seh, the Kakwah, and consulted her in every important detail. Without the approval of their ‘Mother of Nations’ and her sanction of Hiawatha’s plans, the integrity of the principles of the confederacy of the Five Nations would have been assailed. But Ji-gon-sa-seh, who was regarded as a descendant of the first Ye-go-wa-neh, the woman who was the mother of all the first Ongwe was sacred to her people, for her word was law and her sanction was necessary in all political measures of inter-tribal importance.14
The decision to place women in the highest position of governmental, as well as social, authority, was thoughtfully made by the founding mothers and fathers of the Six Nations Confederacy. Hewitt explained:The astute founders of the league had made the experiment of entrusting their government to a representative body of men and women chosen by the mothers of the community; they did not entrust it to a hereditary body, nor to a purely democratic body, nor even to a body of religious leaders. The founders of the league adopted this principle and with wise adjustments made it the underlying principle of the league institutions.15
Even when the Seneca, in a desperate attempt to maintain their land abandoned their traditional system and emulated the United States constitutional form of government—as had the Cherokee—the women still maintained their traditional authority over the land, as Minnie Myrtle wrote in 1855:The legislative powers of the nation are vested in a Council of eighteen, chosen by the universal suffrages of the nation; but no treaty is to be binding, until it is ratified by three-fourths of all the voters, and three-fourths of all the mothers of the nation!16So there was peace instead of war, as there would often be if the voice of woman could be heard! And though the Senecas, in revising their laws and customs, have in a measure acceded to the civilized barbarism of treating the opinions of women with contempt, where their interest is equal, they still cannot sign a treaty without the consent of two hirds of the mothers!17
Myrtle also described the political authority women held in the traditional way:The emblem of power worn by the Sachem [chief] was a deer’s antlers, and if in any instance the women disapproved of the election or acts of a Sachem, they had the power to remove his horns and return him to private life. Their officers or runners from council to council were chosen by themselves and denominated women’s men,and by these their interests were always fully represented. If at any time they wished any subject considered, by means of their runners, they called a council in their clan; if it was a matter of more general interest there was a council of the nation, and if the opinions of the women or Sachems of other nations were necessary, a grand council was called as readily to attend to them as to the interests of men. Thus a way was provided for them to have a voice in the affairs of the nation, without endangering their womanly reserve or subjecting them to the masculine reproach of publicity, or a desire to assume the offices and powers of men!18
The emblem of power worn by the Sachem is a deer’s antlers.
Gage’s first-hand knowledge of Haudenosaunee political structure came through her friendship with Harriet Maxwell Converse, known widely for her creation of cultural bridges between Native and EuroAmerican people. Converse, in turn, introduced Gage to Mohawk friends, who decided to give Gage an honorary adoption into their clan, the Wolf. Gage’s Mohawk sister told her that “this name would admit me to the Council of Matrons, where a vote would be taken, as to my having a voice in the chieftainship,” Gage wrote.19 This was in 1893, the same year Gage was arrested for voting in a school board election in Onondaga County, New York. While offered the possibility of decision-making rights in her adopted nation, Gage was arrested for voting in her own community! Would this not have profoundly affected her vision?
War and Peace and Land
Iroquois women were involved in all decisions of governmental policy, from the local to the federal level,
as white reformers well knew. This extended to issues of war and peace. Timothy Dwight, writing in 1822, stated that if the warriors wanted to go to war, they needed the consent of the women:If the women opposed the enterprise the warriors always gave it up, because the opposition of such a female council to any public undertaking was regarded as a bad omen.20
French observers Lafitau and Charlevoix 200 years earlier had stated that the “chief matrons” who were the “principal women” could order the warriors to cease and desist from war.21 Beyond being a “bad omen,” since the women were responsible for providing the food and clothing the warriors needed, there was an economic basis to their authority. If the women withheld food and moccasins, the warriors stayed home. According to Gage:Although it was a confederation of warriors, owing its permanence and its growth to prowess in arms, yet its women exercised controlling power in peace and war, forbidding at will its young braves to enter battle, and often determining its terms of peace.22 ... Sir William Johnston mentions an instance of Mohawk squaws [sic] forbidding the war-path to young braves.23