Сибирское паувау

although a few women were members of secret societies, their roles were "pallid versions of the men's." Mead's Omaha women walked a few paces behind "their men," their eyes fixed "meekly" on the ground.(n10)

How can such a depiction be accounted for, fifty years after Alice Fletcher had observed that much of the livelihood of the Omaha depended on the women's labors, for which they were held in high regard?(n11) Perhaps it comes from Mead's jaundiced view of a people who would not give her information without payment. Perhaps it stems from the fact that Mead was an elitist, not a feminist, who believed that it was women's own fault if they hadn't improved their lot.(n12) Mead's account, produced about the time Weltfish commenced her work on the Pawnee, illustrates that, contrary to some postmodernist thinking, we are not merely ciphers for our times, with. our histories being written through us, but also individuals, asking different questions, adopting different styles, coming to different conclusions.

No one, from early nineteenth-century male travellers to twentieth-century feminist anthropologists, denies that Indian women worked hard or that Indian men wielded society-wide political power. What is at issue is whether Indian women were respected for their work and whether Indian men contributed equally to the day-to-day functioning of the society.

These issues can, perhaps, be resolved by itemizing men's and women's activites in nineteenth century Pawnee and Omaha societies and by analyzing changes in their demographic structures as statistical evidence pointing to a judicious balance of roles and responsibilities in everday life.


ACTIVITES, ROLES, AND STATUS
The information on activities (Table 1) is drawn mainly from Weltfish's study of the Pawnee, Fletcher and LaFlesche's study of the Omaha, and James Murie's account of the ceremonies of the Pawnee.(n13) In keeping with the critical stance of the postmodernist historian, and accepting that "the study of the past is never innocent," these authors and their feasible biases must first be previewed.(n14)

Alice Fletcher and Gene Weltfish had much in common. They were feminists who were alienated from an American society that had mistreated them. They sought refuge by re-creating the distant world of nineteenth-century Indian society, establishing close connections with Indian men (Francis LaFlesche in Fletcher's case, Mark Evarts in Weltfish's) who helped them record the old ways before they faded from memory. Perhaps they idealized traditional Pawnee and Omaha life, particularly women's roles, seeking there a dignity that they found lacking in their own society. Joan Wallach Scott has recently pointed to this risk of conflating the "valuation of women's experience" with the "positive assessment of everything women said or did."(n15) But their books are richly detailed, and the Indians' own voices are heard throughout. Fletcher and Weltfish were both connected to James Murie, the mixed-blood Pawnee who devoted his life to recording the elaborate ceremonies of his people, writing down what previously had only been spoken. Murie worked with Fletcher (and later with Clark Wissler), and after Murie's death Weltfish used her knowledge of the Pawnee language to translate and transcribe his texts.(n16) These are the classic works of Omaha and Pawnee ethnography.

Women's work was arduous and perennial. The women erected and dismantled the tipis, built and repaired the lodges, produced the staple crops, collected wild plants, hauled fuel and water, dug and transported salt, processed skins and furs, bore and raised children, and in general looked after the household. This heavy work load actually increased during the early nineteenth-century as the fur trade raised the demand for dressed skins. Women also carried heavy loads on the long bison hunts, especially if the family was poor and owned few horses. The work was, of course, communal, because polygamy, especially sororal polygamy, was common. Women welcomed the extra help in the household.

It is equally true that Indian women lacked formal political power and played a subordinate role in ceremonial life. Only one Pawnee ceremony-the Corn Planting Ceremony-included women in a major role, but even in this case male priests were in charge of the proceedings. Later, in dealings with the American government through treaties, annuity payments, and even in the allocation of allotments, it was Indian men, not women, who represented their societies. This, of course, reveals as much of American norms as it does of Indian society.

Yet in the lodge, and in other contexts, too, women had positions of authority and respect. In Pawnee and Omaha societies (and among the Ponca and Otoe-Missouria too, the other indigenous peoples of eastern Nebraska), the lodge, tipi, and most of their contents were the women's, a right of property ownership that married American women did not have until after the 1830s.(n17) The women also owned the fields, seeds, and implements of production, and it was they who had the right to trade these products. Women often made the decisions on where to camp on the bison hunts and where, specifically, to pitch the tipis in relation to those of other clan members. The senior wife was the main decision maker in the lodge and controlled the distribution of food. A woman had the right to refuse to marry a man selected by her parents, and she also had the right to divorce. Since the woman owned the lodge, an unkind husband often found himself homeless with only his weapons, clothes, and horse to count his own.

Women were held in high esteem for the elemental role they played in the functioning of village life, including the production of food surpluses. They often were largely responsible for their husband's status (and hence the family's) because they manufactured the garments, skins, pipestems, and other products that were traded, or given as gifts, to attain or consolidate social position. Some women were especially esteemed for their craftwork skills, including the production of wooden bowls and spoons and tipi covers. They earned additional wealth for the family in the form of fees for imparting knowledge of such skills. Women also played a role in healing, especially in problems associated with childbirth, and they had the responsibility of taking care of the religious items, an obligation of the highest importance. Finally, and surely of great symbolic significance, the Skiri Pawnee believed that woman was created first and that "through her all human things came into the world."(n18)

The conclusion is that Indian women's roles, while different from the men's, were no less valued. Fletcher and LaFlesche explained this:

The Omaha woman worked hard.... In return she was regarded with esteem, her wishes were respected, and, while she held no public office, many of the movements and ceremonies of the tribe depended on her timely assistance. In the family she was generally the center of much affection.(n19)

The ethnologist James Owen Dorsey, who lived with the Omaha from 1878 to 1880, agreed, writing that "the woman had an equal standing [to the man] in society" and "always did the work of her own accord."(n20) Dorsey, like Fletcher and LaFlesche and Weltfish, was harkening back to earlier times when he wrote this. By the 1880s, with men's traditional roles increasingly defunct, the weight of supporting the people fell increasingly upon the women, and their relative power in the society may have increased. This process of role reversal has continued through to today.(n21)


DEMOGRAPHY AND THE FATAL CONTRIBUTION OF INDIAN MEN
Weltfish, Fletcher and LaFlesche, and Dorsey all make a point of stressing that, contrary to early nineteenth-century stereotypes, Indian men Worked hard. "The life of a man was not an idle one," wrote Fletcher and LaFlesche, "for want and danger were never far distant, and plenty and peace for the family and the tribe depended on his industry, skill, and courage." Dorsey came to the same conclusion: "The husband had his share of the labor for the man was not accustomed to lead an idle life."(n22)

Men were responsible for hunting, defensive and aggressive warfare, manufacture of weapons, and nearly all society-wide political and religious operations. The division of labor had some flexibility, and men would help with heavy work, such as lodge construction, and there were many instances of women helping defend the village. The complementary nature of the roles, and the high status that went with being a skilled farmer as well as successful hunter, was missed by the early nineteenth-century observers.

Part of the problem was that these observers generally saw the men at the villages, not out on the range. Henry Carlton, who led a military expedition to the Pawnee in 1844, drew his conclusions from the village scene:

Go into the village at any time of the day, and you will find the men entirely idle; there may be here and there one or two who will be making a bow or sharpening a lance, but the majority are either lounging about, smoking, or talking politics, while all the women will be engaged at something.(n23)

Men's work took place away from the village: journeying on foot to raid for horses as far away as Santa Fe (in the case of the Pawnee), hunting on an increasingly contested bison range, and striking deep into the heart of enemy territory to prove courage, gain wealth, or retaliate for past atrocities. Contrary to Dunbar's ideas, these activities were not "sport"; they were matters of life and death. In one Pawnee hero story, Lone Chief, son of a chief of the Kitkahahki band, is encouraged by his mother to follow the man's path: "It is not the man who stays in the lodge that becomes great," she tells him, "it is the man who works, who sweats, who is always tired from going on the warpath."(n24)

The balance of obligations between men and women is apparent from the hard facts of Indian demography. Most women died before the age of sixty, worn down by a life of childbearing and manual labor; but the men died in greater numbers and at an earlier age, victims of their dangerous occupations. As a result there were far more women than men in these societies, a gender gap that did not close until the era of hunting and raiding was over.

Prince Maximilian, for example, saw very few "vigorous young men" at the Omaha village in 1833, and Carlton described the Pawnee villages in 1844 as being "overstocked with widows."(n25) Such descriptions could be repeated, though it might be suspected that the men were only absent from the villages, doing their jobs. More persuasive evidence comes from three census counts of the Pawnee, taken in 1840, 1872, and 1887 (Table 2).

The 1840 count was made by Dunbar. For all his ethnocentrism, he knew the Pawnee well: by 1840 he had lived in their lodges for six years, accompanying them on bison hunts. Most likely the data are reliable. Dunbar's use of the age often to distinguish between children and adults may seem problematic, but childbearing often began by age thirteen, and boys were hunters from an early age. By 1840 the toll taken on the Pawnee men, particularly at the hands of the Ogalala Dakota, was evident: only 41 percent of the population over the age of ten were men; the Chaui and Kitkahahki bands had been stripped of their men even more drastically.

As the century wore on, the Pawnee became increasingly endangered. They were shadowed by the Ogalala on the bison range, besieged by this same enemy in their villages, and left unprotected by an American government which, contrary to treaty agreements, refused to protect them. Their agent's census in 1872 shows drastically reduced numbers and an even wider gender gap than in 1840. Barely 36 percent of the population were men. This census, based on annuity lists and in preparation for the allotment of the reservation, may be considered accurate, although the agent did not specify the age of differentiation between children and adults.

After the removal of the Pawnee to Indian Territory in 1875, the gender gap had almost closed. The 1887 census count identified every individual in the Pawnee nation, and its accuracy is beyond dispute. It showed that more than 48 percent of the adults were males, and the Kitkahahki band had more men than women. The total Pawnee population continued to plummet and would do so until after 1905. But this was the result of poverty and dislocation; hunting and raiding had ceased and death rates were no longer weighted against the men.


CONCLUSION: HISTORY AS TRUTH OR ILLUSION?
The British historian E. H. Carr, who anticipated many aspects of the recent postmodernist critique, liked to refer to the "center of gravity" between the historian and the facts.(n26) To the positivist historian or historical geographer the center of gravity lay firmly on the facts: their truth value was absolute and historical accounts were facsimiles of past reality. To the postmodernist thinker, like Ankersmit, the center of gravity lies with the historian, fact and fiction blur, and historical accounts are at best "substitutes" for the past.(n27) On the one hand there is "ontological arrogance"; on the other there is "epistemological angst."(n28)

This paper is an attempt to return the center of gravity to a middle zone between the historian and the facts. The facts here are derived from an analysis of activities carried out by Indian men and women in early nineteenth-century Nebraska and by inference from data describing the gender balance in these societies. Agreement on the validity of these facts would not necessarily lead other scholars to the same conclusions and certainly would not result in the same narratives; but such agreement would hold relativism at bay and prevent the perpetuation of crude stereotypes such as those of the downtrodden Indian woman and the lazy and exploitive Indian man.

NOTES

(n1.) W. R. Wedel ed., The Dunbar-Allis Letters on the Pawnee (New York: Garland Press, 1985), 611.

(n2.) Gene Weltfish, The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 28.

(n3.) F. R. Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," History and Theory, 28, 2 (1989), 146-7. The quote about history as allegory is from Hans Kellner, "Narrative in History: Post-Structuralism and Since," History and Theory, Beiheft 26 (1987), 1-29.

(n4.) Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1987), 45. Also Wulf Kansteiner, "Hayden White's Critique of the Writing of History," History and Theory, 32, 3 (1993), 273-95.

(n5.) Edwin James, An Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, in Reuben G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1905), vol. 14, 288-321, vol. 15, 11-42, vol. 17, 158-70. Charles Augustus Murray, Travels in North America in the Years 1834, 1835, and 1836 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1839), vol. 1, 215-26.

(n6.) Gottlieb F. Oehler and David Z. Smith, Description of a Journey and Visit to the Pawnee Indians... April 22-May 18, 1851, Moravian Church Miscellany, 1851-2, 30. Oehler and Smith wrote that the Pawnee men regarded themselves as "lords" and the women as "inferior" beings.

(n7.) Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 576-9; Sara M. Evans, Born For Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 93-101.

(n8.) Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," 147.

(n9.) Sandra L. Myres, Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 6-7, 163-5; Gerda Lerner, The Woman in American History (Menlo Park: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1971), 32; Kenneth F. Kiple, ed., The Cambridge Worm History of Human Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 528, 1061.

(n10.) Margaret Mead, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), 134-6. First published in 1932.

(n11.) Alice C. Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche, The Omaha Tribe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), vol. 2, 326. (First published in 1911).

(n12.) These conclusions are based on Mead's own reporting, in Margaret Mead, Letters from the Field, 1925-1975, ed. by Ruth Narda Anshen (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 96-8, on Jane Howard, Margaret Mead: A Lift (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 362-6, and Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983), Chapter 6.

(n13.) James R. Murie, Ceremonies of the Pawnee, ed. by Douglas R. Parks (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). First published as Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, 27 (1981).

(n14.) The quote is from White, The Content of the Form, 82.

(n15.) John Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20.

(n16.) Joan Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988); Ruth E. Pathe, "Gene Weltfish, 1902-1980," in Ute Gacs, Aisha Khan, Jerrie McIntyre, and Ruth Weinberg, eds., Women Anthropologists: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) 372-81, and Ann Margeton, "Anthropology Begins at Home: Reflections of a Daughter," in Stanley Diamond, ed., Theory and Practice: Essays Presented to Gene Weltfish (The Hague: Mouton, 1980), 351-56; Murie, Ceremonies of the Pawnee, vii-x.

(n17.) Lerner, The Woman in American History, 32; Evans, Born for Liberty, 76-7.

(n18.) Murie, Traditions of the Pawnee, 33. The preceding four paragraphs in this paper are modified from the account in David J. Wishart, An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).

(n19.) Fletcher and LaFlesche, The Omaha Tribe, vol. 2, 326.

(n20.) James Owen Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Amerian Ethnology, 1881-2 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884), 266-7.

(n21.) Mead, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe, 25-6, 142-3. Also, Janet Mancini Billson, "Standing Tradition on its Head: Role Reversal among Blood Couples," Great Plains Quarterly, 11 (Winter 1991), 3-21.

(n22.) Fletcher and LaFlesche, The Omaha Tribe, vol. 2, 339; Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, 266-7.

(n23.) Henry J. Carlton, The Prairie Logbooks: Dragoon Campaigns to the Pawnee Villages in 1844 and to the Rocky Mountains in 1845. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 76.

(n24.) George Bird Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 46.

(n25.) Maximilian, Price of Wied, Travels in the Interior of North America, 1832-1834, in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 22, 225; Carlton, The Prairie Logbooks, 76.

(n26.) E. H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 34.

(n27.) F. R. Ankersmit, "Reply to Professor Zagorin," History and Theory, 21, 3 (1990), pp. 275-96.

(n28.) Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," 148-9; Gordon S. Wood, "Novel History," (Review of Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations)), The New York Review of Books, June 27, 1991, 12-16.

Acknowledgement: The author thanks Fran Kaye of the Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Matthew Hannah of the Department of Geography, University of Vermont for their comments on this paper.

TABLE 1: MEN'S AND WOMEN'S RESPONSIBILITIES ACTIVITIES

MEN WOMEN

Political decision making Day-to-day decision making
(chiefs) in lodge

Child-rearing (mothers and
Sacred matters (priests) grand-mothers)

Medical/supernatural Ownership of lodge, tipi, and
matters (doctors) house-hold property

Military protection and Assistance in ceremonies
raiding (warriors) Care of religious items

Hunting Care of horses (with boys)

Manufacture of weapons Most farming (clearing the fields,

Minor assistance in fields planting, hoeing, harvesting)
Most wild plant collection
Food storage and processing
(care of cache pits)

Hide and skin processing and
manufacture (clothes, tipi, cover, etc.)

Construction and dismantlement of tipi

Construction and repair of lodge

Household maintenance (cooking, dishes, haulage of
water and fuel, etc.)

All household crafts except weapon making (quill work, pottery,
stonework and woodwork)

Haulage of possessions, including cred items, on bison hunts and,
occasionally, on raids.


TABLE 2: PAWNEE DEMOGRAPHY, 1840, 1872, 1887.

Band Total Adult Population[*]

1840 1872 1887
Skiri 1,067 386 220
Kitkahahki 1,013 332 166
Chaui 893 394 176
Pitahawirata 561 273 147
Pawnee Total 3,534 1,385 709


Band Male/Female Percentages

1840 1872 1887
Skiri 44/56 39.9/60.1 43.6/56.4
Kitkahahki 39.9/60.1 37.3/62.7 53.6/46.4
Chaui 37/63 35.5/64.5 48.9/51.1
Pitahawirata 43.9/56.1 33.3/66.7 49/51
Pawnee Total 41/59 36.7/63.3 48.3/51.7

Sources: Wedel, The Dunbar-Allis Letters, 700 (for 1840);
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1872, 224, (for 1872); Indian Census Rolls, National Archives Microfilm Publication, Roll 386, Pawnee Census, 1887.

~~~~~~~~

BY DAVID WISHART


DAVID WISHART IS A PROFESSOR IN THE GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN.

Вот, нашел таки!
Это как раз к тому рисунку, что Пауни прислал.

The Skidi Pawnee Craft of the Heavens. This was
painted on a finely tanned thin
piece of buckskin of oval shape measuring
approximately 22x14 in (56x38 cm).
On it references are made to such astronomical
features as the Morning Star (top center),
the Pleiades (cluster, upper right),
and the Milky Way (across center), which
divides the chart in half. The sacred medicine
bundles of the Pawnee contained many representations
of things which were essential to the traditional
way of life and this star chart is in that category.
Thus, it was probably never intended
to be used as a star map but rather to incorporate
powers of the star and bring these powers to
the people when it was opened. The chart
underlines the great emphasis
which the Pawnee put on astronomical phenomena
in their religious and ceremonial practices.
(Drawing based on original star chart.)

А это перевод (не уверен что все правильно!)

Небесная механика по Скиди Пауни.
Нарисовано на прекрасно выдубленном тонком куске шкуры оленя овальной формы
равной приблизительно 22х14 дюйма (56х38 см).
Показано соотношение астрономических особенностей Утреней Звезды (на самом верху в центре),
Плеяд (звездное скопление, вверху справа), и Млечного Пути (поперек в центре), который
разделяет схему пополам.
Священые магические связки Пауни содержат много изобразительных вещей, которые были важными
в традиционном пути жизни, и эта звездная схема из такой категории.
Таким образом, это возможно никогда не использовалось как звездная карта,
скорее всего как воплощение силы звезд и передача этих сил людям, когда изображение открыто.
Схема подчерктвает большое значение, которое Пауни придают астрономическим явлениям
в своих религиозных и церемониальных практиках.
(Рисунок базируется на оригинале звездной схемы.)

_________________
Thathanka Sapa miyelo!

Теперь понятно, Пауни всё-таки - инопланетяне!!!!....

Перо хорош англ. текстами заваливать, это добро и так некуда складывать

Так я тебе его даю, может кто ещё скопирует....
Вот дал бы ты мне текст по ЛАкота на энглише, которого у меня нету, я бы тебе боооольшое лакотское спасибо сказал....

Ну ежели будет чего, выложу.

спасибо!....

Перович хотелось бы тебя поправить, у Зовущего Лося связь не Орионом, а с Арионом и это совершенно разные планеты.
А по поводу того что лакота мало уделяли внимания небесным светилам мне кажется это утвеждение не совсе верное, вспомнить хотя бы легенды лакота о Упавшей Звезде и др. Очень часто в своих молитвах они обрщаются к Утренней Звезде(источнику мудрости), да и вобще если хорошо порыться можно кучу других доказательств этому найти.Шайенов тоже не назовешь "астрономами" по сравнению с пауни, но есть упоминания об определенной группе шаманов, которые очень хорошо разбралиь в небесной карте.К сожалению такие люди исчезли у шайенов.Возможно такой же случай и с лакота.

Почтительный, я имел ввиду не все небесные светила, а именно ночные звёзды
(не Утреняя Звезда, не Луна, не Солнце) ....

Внимание ночным звездам Лакота, конечно, уделяли, но явно такого поклонения как у Пауни, чтобы звёзды таким сильным образом управляли жизнью народа (Пауни даже звёздные карты рисовали) явно не было, (если не считать Семь Звёзд и Полярную Звезду) например Звонящий Щит говорил про звезды так:

"Звезды скрываются от солнца. Они должны бояться его. Так что человечество не должно пытаться учиться у них. Не хорошо говорить о них. Не хорошо бороться светом звезд. Они должны быть злыми, так как они боятся солнца".

Это конечно его мнение, но это я и имел ввиду (ранее я сказал, что звёздам не стоит уделять много внимания, т.к. они бояться Солнца (ссылка на Уолкера), а не то, что лакота мало уделяли внимания небесным светилам) ....

По лакотским небесным светилам есть интересная сатья, рекомендую ознакомиться:

http://www.lakota-indians.narod.ru/Cele ... agery.html

А насчёт Утренней Звезды - это не легенда, а так и было....

А вообще, "конструкция" вселенной, с точки зрения астрономии, очень похоже на лакотское понимание вселенной ....
Только астрономы подходят к этому снаружи, а Лакота изнутри (поэтому и астрономической "фиксации" звёзд нет)....

Слава, а как Пауни к своим женщинам относились????....

У пауни дом, типи, и большинство из их содержимого было в собственности женщины. Женщины также владели полями, семенами, и орудиями производства, и имели право торговать этой продукцией. Женщины часто принимали решения относительно того, как располагался лагерь в облавах на бизонов, особенно в расстановке типи относительно других членов кланов.
Старшая жена принимала хозяйственные решения в доме и управляла распределением продовольствия. Женщина имела право отказатся выходить замуж за мужчину, выбранного ее родителями, и она также имела право развестись. Плохой муж уходил только со своим оружием, одеждой, и лошадью.
Женщины уважались за важную роль, которую они играли в функционировании деревенской жизни, в том числе в производстве продукции для торговли. Они часто были в значительной степени ответственны за статус семьи, потому что они производили одежды, кожи, pipestems, и другую продукцию, которая продавалась, или использовалась, как подарки, чтобы достичь или укрепить социальную позицию семьи. Некоторые женщины особенно уважались за свои навыки ремесленных производств, в том числе производство деревянных чашек и ложек и покрышек для типи. Они зарабатывали дополнительное богатство для семейства в форме вознаграждений за передачу знания таких навыков. Женщины также играли важную роль в лечении, особенно в проблемах, связанных с рождаемостью, и они заботились о религиозных элементах, обязательствах самой высокой важности.
Скиди пауни считали, что женщина создается сначала и что "через нее все человеческие вещи вступили в мир."

Женская работа была трудной. Женщины ставили и снимали типи, строили и восстанавливали дома, собирали урожаи, собрали дикие плоды, собирали топливо и воду, обрабатывали кожи и меха, растили детей, и вообще следили за семьей. Этот тяжелый рабочий груз фактически возрос в течение раннего девятнадцатого столетия, так как меховая торговля подняла запрос на украшенные кожи. Женщины также несли тяжелые грузы в длинных облавах на бизонов, особенно, если семейство было бедно и имело в собственности несколько лошадей. Работы было много, поэтому многобрачие, особенно сестринское многобрачие, было обычным делом. Женщины приветствовали добавочную помощь для семьи.