Cherokee Women

and their Assimilation to

Western Culture
By: Isabel Provisor-Lemery, Heide Ellis, Rose Guedea
How has the interaction between
Western Society and the
Cherokee tribe led to the drastic
shift in tribal gender roles?
Cultural Diffusion
The spread of the beliefs and social activities of one culture to
different ethnicities, religions, nationalities, etc.
Background

● Combined farming, and hunting and gathering

● Were accepting and inviting to outsiders
● In the 18th centrury there was 30,000-35,000 Cherokee
● Believed everything had a soul and was therefore sacred
Cherokee Gender Roles Before

● Highly respected
● Matrilineal
● Were part of the council
● Men joined wife's family
● Divorces
● Worked the Farms
Cherokee Gender Roles After
● No longer allowed divorce
● No longer allowed to farm
● Wasn’t Part of the Council
● Were Forced into European Women roles
● No longer Matrilineal
ASSIMILATION
what is it?
Assimilation
● Assimilation- Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to
resemble those of a dominant group.
● Americans wanted to make Natives change because it reduced risk of cultural conflict between
them
● Made women work inside rather than on the farms
● Created Boarding Schools to try and remove Native culture from the youngest generation
○ Language and Customs
What directly caused the shift in
gender roles?
What directly caused the shift in Gender Roles?
- Trade
- Disease and population decline
- Change in government
- Forced relocation
- Boarding schools
Trade
● The Cherokee traded meat and skins with the colonists for tools and weapons
○ Because the men hunted, they became the primary providers for the tribe
● They lost their original culture because they used Western tools and ideas
● Trade provided them with safety because the settlers needed the meat to survive
○ Created a relationship between the nations
● Women and farming were less needed so they started to work in homes
Disease/ Population decline
● Population decrease led to stricter birth control and citizenship laws
● Population was decreasing because:
○ European disease (smallpox, influenza, etc)
○ Death from violence with colonists and Trail of Tears
● Because the population was decreasing, they had to allow more people to join the nation and
prevent abortions to allow for more births
○ The matrilineal society culture changed to allow everyone to join, not just the Cherokee mother’s children
○ Because they prevented abortion, women had less control over their lives
A change in Government
- Transformation of Cherokee Government
- Women’s power began to weaken
- Dsire for white approval
- Limited voting rights to only adult males
- The 19th Amendment (1920) - Gave women the right to vote
- Native American women played a vital role in gaining women’s suffrage, but were still not given the right to
vote until 4 years later
- Native American Citizenship Act (1924)- U.S. government granted citizenship to Native Americans,
which gave them the official right to vote
- Native Women still faced many challenges when voting including fees, literacy tests, and their land status
Forced Relocation and the Trail of Tears
- The Indian Removal Act (1830)- This act which was passed by President
Andrew Jackson, forced the Cherokee tribe to move from their ancestral
land east of the Mississippi, to a reservation in present day Oklahoma
- This also often referred to as the Trail of Tears
- Many Cherokee women had developed a relationship with the land- which they
had lost due to the removal
- The forced relocation of the Cherokees caused a shift in gender roles due
to U.S. government taking more control over the actions of Native
Americans
- Dawes Act- American government could break up tribal lands and disperse
them to individual Native Americans- Broke the cherokees communal
ownership
- Adoption of American Government ideas
- Judicial, Legislative, and Executive branch
- taxes
Native American Boarding Schools
- Many Native Americans were forced to attend boarding schools, where
they were taught western culture and ideas as a way to assimilate their
Native American culture
- Taught to read the Bible
- “Kill the Indian save the man”
- Were taught that Native Americans were “savage”- and therefore many
abandoned their original ideologies and followed those of white men with the
belief that their culture was inferior
- This led to a shift in Native American gender roles due to the teachings of
traditional American European gender roles
How this relates to present day society?
● The changes to Cherokee culture in the 18th and 19th centuries provided the basis for all current
Cherokee issues
● Their original culture is still thought to be “less important” than Western culture by many
● Still experiencing racism from Americans
○ Have to work harder to be treated fairly in workforce
○ Stereotypes from movies (Pocahontas)
○ False information taught in schools
● Years of abuse from US Government causes alcoholism and substance abuse on reservations
● Pocahontas “Savages”
Culture Activity:
Traditional Cherokee Cuisine
 Native American Cornmeal Cookies
Background Ingredients

- Known as - Salt
Seluisauganasda - Margarine
- Corn was a very - Honey
important crop to the - Vanilla Extract
Cherokee - Egss
- Many variations - Cornmeal
- Flour
- Baking Soda
- Chocolate Chips or
Raisin
Cherokee Grape Dumplings
Background Ingredients:

● Traditional Cherokee and Choctaw recipe ● Flour

● Used wild grapes wild Muscadine grapes ● Sugar
● Medicinal background — heart health ● Baking powder
● Salt
● Unsalted butter
● Grape juice
Works Cited
Bennion, Jillian Moore, "Assimilationist Language in Cherokee Women's Petitions: A Political Call to Reclaim Traditional Cherokee Culture" (2016). All Graduate Plan B and other
Reports. 838, https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports/838.
Fay Yarbrough. “Legislating Women’s Sexuality: Cherokee Marriage Laws in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Social History, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004, p. 385. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3790444&site=eds-live.
Keith, Angel “The Changing Role of Women in Cherokee Culture,“ The Spectator: Molding British Society in
1711https://etown.digication.com/angela_keith_10-28-10/The_Changing_Role_of_Women_in_Cherokee_Culture.
Marshall, John, and Supreme Court Of The United States. U.S. Reports: Cherokee Nation vs. the State of Georgia, The, 30 U.S. 5 Pet. 1. 1831. Periodical. Retrieved from the Library of
Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep030001/.
“Our History” Cherokee Nation , February 18, 2019, https://www.cherokee.org/About-The-Nation/History/Facts/Our-History.
Morris, Lauren “European and Cherokee Affairs” Native American HIstory, September 24, 2014, https://nativeamericanhist.as .ua.edu/european-and-cherokee-affairs/
“The Power Of Cherokee Women” Indian Country Today, October 6, 2017,
https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/the-power-of-cherokee-women-cguyNX91RE6asAyIQwYheg/.
Rogner, Danielle “Cherokee Acculturation & the Fall of Women’s Status” Eastern Illinois University, April 17, 2013,
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1001&context=lib_awards_2013_do s.
Ross, Lewis “Appeal of the Cherokee” The Cherokee Phoenix Newspaper Archive – Western Carolina University,
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/1830CherokeeAppeal.pdf.
Williams, Anna “Progress or Regress: Nineteenth Century Struggles for Identity”, The Roles of Native American Women Tribal Society versus American Society, December 4 2014,
http://annawilliams.web.unc.edu/.
Wishart, David ¨Native American Gender Roles” University of Nebraska-LIncoln, http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.gen.02.