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Nation of Women



SKU:
169159
  • Nation of Women
  • Nation of Women
  • Nation of Women
  • Nation of Women
$26.50
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Description

In Delaware society at the beginning of this period, to be a woman meant to engage in the activities performed by women, including diplomacy, rather than to be defined by biological sex. Among the Delaware, being a "woman" was therefore a self-identification, employed  by both women and men, that reflected the complementary roles of both  sexes within Delaware society. For these reasons, the Delaware were known among Europeans and other Native American groups as "a nation of  women."

Decades of interaction with these other cultures gradually eroded the positive connotations of being a nation of women as well as the importance of actual women in Delaware society. In Anglo-Indian politics, being depicted as a woman suggested weakness and evil. Exposed to such thinking, Delaware men struggled successfully to assume the formal speaking roles and political authority that women once held. To salvage some sense of gender complementarity in Delaware society, men and women redrew the lines of their duties more rigidly. As the era came to a close, even as some Delaware engaged in a renewal of Delaware  identity as a masculine nation, others rejected involvement in Christian networks that threatened to disturb the already precarious gender balance in their social relations. 

  • Author: Gunlog Fur
  • Softcover
  • Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012
  • 264 pages, 9" x 6"
  • 17 illustrations 
  • ISBN: 9780812222050   
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