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Dancing with Scalps: Native North American Women, White Men and Ritual Violence in the Eighteenth Century

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Dancing with Scalps: Native North American Women, White Men and Ritual Violence in the Eighteenth Century Donohoe, Helen Felicity (2013) Dancing with scalps: native North American women, white men and ritual violence in the eighteenth century. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5276/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Dancing with Scalps: Native North American Women, White Men and Ritual Violence in the Eighteenth Century Helen Felicity Donohoe MLitt, MA Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities College of Arts University of Glasgow September 2013 © Helen Felicity Donohoe 2013 Abstract Native American women played a key role in negotiating relations between settler and Native society, especially through their relationships with white men. Yet they have traditionally languished on the sidelines of Native American and colonial American history, often viewed as subordinate and thus tangential to the key themes of these histories. This dissertation redresses the imbalance by locating women at the centre of a narrative that has been dominated by discourses in masculine aspirations. It explores the variety of relations that developed between men and women of two frontier societies in eighteenth century North America: the Creeks of the Southeast, and the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia. This dissertation complicates existing histories of Native and colonial America by providing a study of Indian culture that, in a reversal of traditional inquiry, asks how Native women categorised and incorporated white people into their physical and spiritual worlds. One method was through ritualised violence and torture of captives. As primary agents of this process women often selected, rejected or adopted men into the tribes, depending on factors that ranged from nationality to religion. Such acts challenged contemporary Euro- American wisdom that ordained a nurturing, auxiliary role for women. However, this thesis shows that ‘anomalous’ violent behaviours of Indian women were rooted in a femininity inculcated from an early age. In this volatile world, women were not shielded from the horrors of war. Instead, they became one of those horrors. Therefore, viewing anomalous actions as central to the analysis provides an understanding of female identities outwith the straitjacket of the Euro-American gender binary. With violence as a legitimate and natural expression of feminine power, the Indian woman’s character was far removed from depictions of the sexualised exotic, self- sacrificing Pocahontas or stoic Sacagawea. The focus on women’s violent customs, which embodied several important and unusual manifestations of Native American femininity, reveals a number of jarring behaviours that have found no home within colonial literatures. These behaviours included sanctioned infanticide and abortions, brutal tests for adolescents, scalp dancing and death rites, cannibalism, mercenary wives and sadistic grandmothers. With limited means of incorporating such female characteristics into pre-existing gender categories, the women’s acts were historically treated as non-representative of regular Indian lifeways and thus dismissed. Colonial relations are therefore analysed through an alternative lens to accommodate these acts. This allows women to construct their own narrative in a volatile landscape that largely sought to exclude those voices, voices that challenged dominant ideologies on appropriate male-female relations. By constructing a new gender framework I show that violence was a vehicle by which women realised, promoted and reinforced their tribal standing. 4 5 Contents Acknowledgements Page 7 Author’s Declaration 9 Map 11 Introduction 13 Chapter 1 Violence and Women 31 1. The Gender Map 31 2. Constructing Native American women 33 3. Femininity, moral worth and violent expression 36 4. War and power in female spaces 45 5. The role of torture 47 Chapter 2 Children 53 1. Infanticide, abortion and selective reproduction 58 2. Child victims of violence 71 3. Value and ‘otherness’ 75 4. Participants 77 5. Indulgence 79 6. Huskanaw 82 Chapter 3 Sexuality 91 1. Age, sex and exchange 92 2. Children and status 96 3. Sexual punishments 100 4. War and rape 112 6. Sexual regulation 119 7. Indian-white compatibility 122 6 Chapter 4 Marriage 131 1. Material goods 141 2. Dependency 144 3. Long term unions 151 4. Serial wives 153 5. War husbands 159 6. Political marriage 169 7. Polygamy 172 8. Community approval 177 Chapter 5 Civil and Sacred Powers 183 1. Violent acts and spirituality 187 2. Speech and civil power 193 3. Ageing and chastisement 198 4. Accountability 205 5. Masculinities 209 6. The struggle to retain authority 216 Conclusion 225 Bibliography 231 7 Acknowledgments Among the people who have helped me undertake this monumental task over the past several years are my supervisors Professor Simon Newman and Dr Alex Shepard, whose unflagging patience, support and insightful comments have made this thesis possible. Dr Matthew Ward, who remained enthusiastic about the topic throughout my research, has also been a strong supporter along with Dr Tony Parker. The wonderful staff and research fellows at the McNeil Center offered good criticism and advice, and made me feel very welcome during the year I worked there. Others friends and colleagues who read my papers over the years include Gaye Wilson, Keith and Linda Thomson, David Anderson, Laura Keenan Spero, Rachel Jones, Greg Smithers and Chris Bilodeau: their kindness and discerning observations made a huge difference. My father Peter deserves a special mention, too, in addition to the charities and research centres whose generous grants allowed the project to take shape. They include The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The International Center for Jefferson Studies and the American Philosophical Society. Finally, David has shared this journey with me. He helped me make the tough decisions, overcome hurdles and continues to support me at every step. Without him this endeavour would have been impossible. 8 9 Author’s declaration I declare that, except where explicit reference is made to the contribution of others, this dissertation is the result of my own work. It has not been submitted for any other degree at the University of Glasgow or any other institution. Signature ___________________________________________________________ Helen Felicity Donohoe Printed name ________________________________________________________ 10 11 Map of Native American territories in the eighteenth century 12 Introduction After witnessing ritualised torture by Mi’kmaq women of captives in the 1750s, the Abbé Maillard, a Jesuit priest stationed among the Indians of Nova Scotia, said, “If the missionary is wise he will be very careful to say not one word then against these horrors, because not only will he speak in vain, but he will also be in grave danger of suffering the same fate.”1 A little later at the other end of the colonies in the Southeast, another witness compared women’s methods of torture to the “Romish inquisition”, claiming that victims would have happily welcomed a “merciful tomahawk” than suffer at the hands of such women.2 These descriptions are striking. They stand out from the dominant Indian-white violent narratives in sharp relief, a bewildering spike in an otherwise predictable trajectory of masculine, colonial development where men fought men, and women assumed the status of victims of war, or supporters of heroic spouses and children.3 Furthermore, the descriptions are notable not just for their depictions of women or the violence they enacted, but also for the tone of the accounts, the former suggesting that female ritualised violence was a regular occurrence, the latter concurring and equally disapproving. These incidents of female torture were not anomalous for within these two regions along the Eastern seaboard, multiple Indian groups permitted and encouraged female violence. They took place throughout the eighteenth century among almost all of the major indigenous groups in French (then British) Canada, Colonial America and French Louisiana. The accounts describe torture that ranged from deeply sadistic to brief and merciful. White men saw grief and savagery in the actions, sometimes naked anger, or a demonstration of cold and heartless hatred for the enemy as Indians faced warfare and loss on a regular basis. The colonisation of the Americas offered many chances to witness indigenous lifestyles, war-making, kinship organisation, socio-political endeavours and gender structures as they came into contact with Euro-American mores. Filtered through the eyes of critical, judgemental and even admiring white observers, native peoples were assigned many characteristics, from savages to noble warriors, blood-thirsty primitives to civilised 1 Maillard, “Lettre a Madame Drucourt”, R. H. Whitehead, The Old Man Told Us (), p115. 2 James Adair, The History of the American Indians (London 1775), p390-1. 3 June Namias,
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