Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists (3 page)

Read Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists Online

Authors: Sally Roesch Wagner

We may teach about slavery in a way that makes it a safe, distant story for white people. Granted, it was a terrible part of our history (we may justify), but it’s behind us now, and the white people who supported slavery were totally unlike us today. An hour of unease in a classroom or museum and we can move on, reassuring ourselves that—had we lived then—our home would have been a station on the Underground Railroad. In reality, it probably would
not
have been. Most of us would have been silent on slavery. Many of us would have actively favored it. Only a few would have had the courage to stand up to charges of being a “Godless, man-stealing, law-breaking thief” hurled against us if we were early abolitionists. At a time when the Constitution had slavery built into it and ministers preached that slaves should obey their masters, those who opposed slavery had to resist the law and, generally speaking, the church as well. Abolitionists were accused of stealing the property of slave owners when they helped fugitive slaves to escape. Anti-slavery activists were considered radicals who upset the social, political, and religious order of society.
That information may cause us to question the institutions that sustained slavery. Is it possible that the churches upholding slavery in the 1830s might be equally unclear about similar issues of justice today? Ethical people opposed slavery by breaking the laws that sustained it. Do we have a similar moral responsibility to break contemporary laws we consider unjust?
The “comfortable” history of slavery ends with the 13th Amendment, which declared slavery illegal in the United States. The legacy of personal and institutional racism left behind by slavery is the uncomfortable story. Similarly, the “safe” version of the woman’s rights story is the victory of the 19th Amendment and the constitutional protection of women’s voting rights. This is the story of Susan B. Anthony and her life’s work. For a fuller story of the struggle for women’s rights, we must look to other, lesser-known figures who have been written out of history.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton presents us with a starting place. Equal in importance and reputation to Anthony during her lifetime, Stanton was nearly lost to history until the work of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation and the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls restored her to memory over these past two decades.
Following the leadership of the Stanton Foundation, the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation carries the mission of returning Gage to her rightful place in history as well. Gage was the third member of the suffrage “triumvirate” along with Stanton and Anthony. The three women shared leadership positions in the National Woman Suffrage Association and edited the first three volumes of the
History of Woman Suffrage.
While Anthony concentrated on achieving the vote, Gage and Stanton lived a different story—one in which, as Gage said, “the laws, civil and social, each equally burdensome, are of church origin, and not until the church is destroyed will women be freed.”
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Stanton shared Gage’s strong feelings about organized religion, charging that: “Every form of religion that has breathed upon the earth has degraded women.”
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Gage went further, maintaining: “In the name of religion, the worst crimes against humanity have ever been perpetrated.”
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Writing to a friend, Stanton confided, “as I have passed from the political to the religious phrase of this question, I now see more clearly than ever, that the arch enemy to woman’s freedom skulks behind the altar ... to rouse woman to a sense of her degradation under the Canon law and church discipline, is the work that interests me most, and to which I prepare to devote the sunset of my life.”
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Gage devoted her later years to the same work, and concluded: “All thoughtful persons ... must be aware of the historical fact that the prevailing religious idea in regard to woman has been the basis of all their restrictions and degradation. It underlies political, legal, educational, industrial, and social disabilities of whatever character and nature.”
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If we eliminate Gage and Stanton’s sharp criticisms of institutional, organized religion, are we telling the full truth of their work in the woman’s rights movement? Their institutional analysis of oppression extended beyond religion. “Society is based on this four-fold bondage of woman—Church, State, Capital, and Society—making liberty and equality for her antagonistic to every organized institution,” they wrote in the
History of Woman Suffrage.
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The two women shared similar ideas about the oppressive nature of each institution.
STATE
Stanton:
Would to God you could know the burning indignation that fills woman’s soul when she turns over the pages of your statute books, and sees there how like feudal barons you freemen hold your women.
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I do not feel like rejoicing over any privileges already granted to my sex, until all our rights are conceded and secured and the principle of equality recognized and proclaimed, for every step that brings us to a more equal plane with man but makes us more keenly feel the loss of those rights we are still denied.... May we now safely prophesy justice, liberty, equality for our daughters ere another centennial birthday shall dawn upon us.
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Gage:
A proper self-respect cannot inhere in any person under governmental control of others. Unless the person so governed constantly maintains a system of rebellion in thought or deed, the soul gradually becomes debased and the finest principles of human nature suffer a rapid process of disintegration.
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CAPITAL
Stanton:
Married women are upper servants without wages.
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Under the present competitive system existence is continual war; the law is each for himself, starvation and death for the hindmost.... It is impossible to have ‘equal rights for all’ under our present competitive system. ... The few have no right to the luxuries of life, while the many are denied its necessities.
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Gage:
It has been truthfully declared that England protects its hunting dogs kept for their master’s pleasure far better than it protects the women and children of its working classes.
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Man, in thrusting the enforcement of his ‘curse’ upon woman in Christian lands has made her the great unpaid laborer of the world. In European countries and in the United States, we find her everywhere receiving less pay than man for the same kind and quality of work... the church teaching that woman was made for man still exerts its poisonous influence, still destroys woman.... Not alone employers and male laborers oppress woman but legislation is frequently invoked to prevent her entering certain occupations.
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SOCIETY
Stanton:
Society as organized today under the man power is one grand rape of womanhood.
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Gage:
Although our country makes great professions in regard to general liberty, yet the right to particular liberty, natural equality, and personal independence, of two great portions of this country, is treated, from custom, with the greatest contempt; and color in the one instance, and sex in the other, are brought as reasons why they should be so derided; and the mere mention of such natural rights is frowned upon, as tending to promote sedition and anarchy.
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How can we best present significant women of history whose ideas are so profoundly challenging? Unfortunately, we often find it easier to not invite them to the history table. Anthony is a well-behaved guest; we ask her instead. However, we make a political decision when we choose to tell only safe or incomplete history. Democracy requires an enlightened citizenry, people who understand their place in the evolving history of issues about which they must decide. We rob the democratic process when we lie, through omission, about history. How do we present an accurate and complete story of our past? Stanton gives direction: “Reformers who are always compromising have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” Truth in history is the complete story. We need to cultivate the courage to tell the full stories, along with encouraging the development of a respectful, open mind to hear them.
What is in a Name?
 
To fill the voids left by silence and misinformation, we begin with basic questions. For example, where did the name Indian originate? What we find is that
Indian
stands as a singular example of the arrogance of someone who believed he had the right—by virtue of a presumed cultural superiority—to name another group of people. One interpretation is that Christopher Columbus, not altogether a first-rate navigator, apparently thought he was in the Indies and deduced that the people greeting him must be Indians. Another version holds that he acknowledged the near-sacred state of the Native people he encountered with the name
indios
. Whatever the reasons for the name, Columbus believed he had the right to name the people, as he believed he had the right to claim their land. Did it ever occur to him to ask them what they called themselves? Would he have had ears to hear their answer? Each successive wave of European conquerors and settlers played the naming game. They gave names of their choosing to Native nations (such as Sioux and Iroquois), and Christian names to the indigenous children they forced into their boarding schools in order to “Christianize and civilize” them.
 
“The few have no right to the luxuries of life, while the many are denied its necessities.”
 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 
Members of the dominant culture often become irritated with the process of peeling off layers of historical paint hiding the true names of indigenous people. Not recognizing the terrible appropriation of self identity inflicted in a false, other-imposed name, they huff at a “political correctness” that requires them to change their language.
Self-naming is, of course, a critical part of the process of creating a diverse culture. The cultural change in names may happen in stages, as we work our way through levels of disrespect. Small animal and fruit names for women are no longer acceptable. We have given up saying “girl” in addressing a fifty-year-old woman and “boy” for a fifty-year-old African American man. “Nigger” and later “Negro” have both been dropped. The self-defined term “Black” proudly reclaimed the very physical characteristic that EuroAmericans used as the basis for enslaving people. “African American” emerged later as a more appropriate term for establishing a nation of diversity.
Native American served to replace the conquering name, Indian, by clarifying who was here first. Some now prefer to use Native, indigenous, or First Nation. Others suggest another term, American Indian, to firmly hold the government to nation-to-nation treaties made with American Indian nations.
While a rigid language suggests a static culture, the changes in our language herald a power shift, mirroring and furthering the social revolution we are undergoing. Unfortunately, we have few linguistic etiquette books, so we stumble along the best we can. One rule: when in doubt about what to call a person or group, don’t tie up their time and energy in asking. Read what they have to say. Then sift carefully and slowly through the multiple answers, knowing that this is not a trivial matter. Laughter always helps the tension, and American Indian humor is legendary: “We’re just glad Columbus didn’t think he was in Turkey!” they joke.
The issue of linguistic oppression is not new to our time. Matilda Joslyn Gage, arguably the most important scholar of the suffrage movement, wrote in 1893: “When America first became known to white men as the New World, within the limits of what is now called New York state existed one of the oldest known republics in the world, a confederacy of Five Nations when first formed, which added tribes to its numbers as its successor, the American republic, adds states to its Union.”
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Gage realized that whether one described this as the Old or New World depended on perspective, and acknowledged that it “became known to white men” as the New. Significantly, Gage’s presentation of American history did not begin with the presence of white men.

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