Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

In the old days the Iroquois extended their household “matriarchal” giving the women outright ownership to the land and housing. There were no discontinuities in her upbringing. She was the one to carry on the clan and its prerogatives right through to her children to keep up the strength of numbers in the clans. The girl was fondly and permissively treated as the boy. Children were not punished. They participated in activities as soon as they were able and were not disciplined in any harsh physical fashion, nor weaned too young. Surrogate mothers were always available and in the extended household there was no chance for isolation or neglect for the child.

In the matriarchal household the relatives are first to have contact with the girl and would always be the closest kin to her. She is taught by her mother and her grandmother and other women. As the girl grew older she would assist her mother in household tasks and in the care of the young, work in the fields with cooperative women’s group, and learn the feminine crafts and techniques from her mother and maternal relatives. As the girl grows older she will also be told about the clan lineage of her family of one house.

The women held a high position in respect to their participation in dominantly male-oriented cultural activities, especially politics and religion.

The extended family structure of the longhouse symbolized the league and accounts for the function of the matrons who hold the chiefs ‘ names in their clans and the rights to appoint and depose their chiefs. Death feasts and mourning were the responsibility of the women. The different ceremonies were also in the hands of the women, such as, the Name Giving Ceremony.

Their matrilineal clans participated to a marked degree in the political and religious life of the village. Religion was a shared activity. The men took more active part in rituals: thanksgiving speeches, dancing, singing, and a figure of principals in most of the myths. There were as many women faithkeepers as the men and these officials were appointed for life. The women faithkeepers had not only the care and preparation of the feast as their duties but other responsibilities as well, conferring the times of festivals, the corn would be examined for setting the date of the Green Corn Ceremony. Women’s activities, rather than men’s, are celebrated in the ceremonial cycle in all the ceremonies with the exception of the Midwinter Ceremony, which is the thanksgiving for the fertility of the earth and for the crops.

Women were secure in The Three Sisters are honored firstly; corn, beans and squash, also called our mothers and supporters of life.

Reprinted from the library of Yvonne & Jacob Thomas