Sioux Women: A Photographie Essay · 2016-08-19 · Sioux Women 231 The only acceptable role for...

Sioux Women:A Photographie Essay

text by JANET A. MCDONNELL

an Woman, or We-tamakee1^93 (Red Cloud's wife)

\olograpker: James Mooney

Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.

228 South Dakota History

One great misconception about Indian women is thatthey were mere drudges who were little respected by men.In some tribes, women had considerable power and respon-sibility. Occasionally, they served as guides, interpreters,scouts, and even medicine women and chiefs. More impor-tantly, they helped preserve traditional languages, attitudes,beliefs, and behavioral patterns. Although they were inmany ways subordinate to men, they had certain recog-nized rights. In many tribes, women owned the fields,crops, herds, household goods, and houses. Their author-ity was supreme in domestic work.

standing Holy,Hunkpapa

Sioux girls startedlearning adult activitiesand preparing for fami-ly responsibilities at anearly age. Young chil-dren learned by exam-ple and word of mouth.As soon as girls couldtoddle, they followedtheir mothers to gatherwood and carry water.Later, they learnedhow to tend babies,prepare food, care forcooking utensils, makemoccasins, tan skins,decorate robes, and ap-ply quill designs.


Sioux Women 229

Children practiced adult activities and mimicked familylife in their play. Girls "played camp" with small tipis madeby their mothers. The oldest girls played the role of moth-ers, while the youngest children were enlisted to act asbabies.

Among the Sioux, the ideal parent-child relationship wasone of deep affection. Parents indulged their children, mak-ing their lives as comfortable as possible, and they rarelypunished them physically. At the same time, children learn-ed to be quiet and respectful in the presence of elders and tobe generous, honest, and brave. Sioux parents regardedtheir children as individuals with responsibility for their ownactions and the capacity for rational decision making.


Girls playing camp, location unknown, 1890s

Eva Red Eagle, seated, ^:fRosebud reservation f

For the Sioux girl, the firstmenstruation marked the transi-tion into womanhood. EverySioux maiden went through apuberty ceremony that an-nounced that she had become awoman and was eligible to mar-ry. The important virtues for theyoung woman were reserve, in-dustry, courage, generosity, wis-dom, and chastity. Helpful andconscientious young women whocould quill and bead, cook well,and prepare hides were recog-nized as potentially good wives,and they attracted suitors fromthe best families.


Sioux Women 231

The only acceptable role for young Sioux womenwas that of wife and mother. A successful marriagewas accorded high honor, and a wife's skill at cook-ing, firekeeping, bedmaking, and housecleaningwent a long way to ensure that the marriage was asuccess.

Sioux family. PineRidge reservation



Women in camp,Rosebud Creek

The duties of men and women were divided. The menwere away from camp for long periods hunting, trading, orraiding for horses. While they were gone, the women hoedthe fields, planted seeds, and tended and harvested thecrops. They also carried out the more mundane tasks ofcamp, supplying the fuel and water and preparing the foodover an open fire.

A woman not only farmed and cooked, she also dressedskins and made all the clothing for herself and the children.After a woman skinned larger game, the skins became herproperty, and she was expected to tan them. Although theSioux women earned little distinction as carvers, potters,


Sioux Women 233

Woman singeing dog before cooking

Woman cooking in front of a tipi, with braided comdrying on racks in the foreground, 1880s or 1890s

avid F. Barry



and textile workers, they were skilled skin dressers, makingclothes and most of their containers from the hides of buf-falo and other large animals. The worker first staked thehide on the ground, with the hairy side down, and thenhacked away the fat, muscle, and connective tissue with atoothed flesher. To produce fine leather, she then tannedthe prepared rawhide by rubbing a mixture of fat and buf-falo or other brains into the surface. She next dried the hidein the sun or rolled it up into a bundle. Later, she stretchedit back to its proper size and rubbed a rough-edged stoneover the surface. After the fur trade was established, Indianshunted on a larger scale and thus increased the duties ofwomen in supplying the white man's demand for dressedskins.

Woman working with buffalohide stretched in frame

turn


Sioux Women 235

WoTnen makingtipi cover

Women kept count oftheir accomplishments justas men kept war records.The women recorded theirachievements with dotscarved along the handles ofpolished elkhorn scrapingtools. A red dot representedten hides, or one tipi, andeach black dot represented atanned robe. At contests,women exhibited dresses,storage bags, cradles, andother samples of their work.Perhaps their most impor-tant construction was thetipi.

When the tribe was on the move, it was the woman wholoaded and unloaded goods and put up and took down theconical tipi house.

Breaking camp.Pine Ridge reservation


, , — . - U M ^ . ^

Next to the tipi, the Sioux woman's most importantmanufacture was clothing. Prior to contact with whites, shemade garments of soft, tanned skins of buffalo, elk, anddeer and painted the robes or decorated them with porcu-pine quill work. The decorating of clothing was one of themost highly developed feminine crafts. Women spentmonths attaching bone and shell ornaments and quilledwork on deer or elk clothing. These elaborately decoratedgowns were not for everyday wear but were worn only onceremonial occasions. Some of the yokes were so heavilydecorated that the garments weighed twelve to sixteenpounds. Decorations such as bear-claw necklaces and shellssometimes indicated status. For example, no single huntercould kill many elk, and only two of the teeth of any oneanimal were acceptable, so garments with hundreds of elkteeth were a rarity.


Sioux Women 237

Clothing began to change after whites came in contactwith the Sioux. Whites introduced beads, paints, and clothover one hundred fifty years ago. White contact alsobrought changes in the use of new dyes for quills and pro-vided glass beads as replacement for quill embroidery.Sioux women acquired pony beads from white traders andbegan to make old quill designs with beads in new colors.



In the late nineteenthcentury, the federalgovernment issuedcloth, and women usedit for clothing ratherthan skins, but theytrimmed these gar-ments with beads andelk teeth, just as theyhad decorated the oldskin clothing.

Photographer:

Although their work was demanding,many Sioux women also found time foramusement. Women had their own socialevents such as sewing bees, where newclothes or moccasins were made or newcovers for tipis. The women would sit andchat as they made baskets or pottery orwould go on food gathering parties to col-lect nuts and berries. Their principal diver-sions, however, were dances and feasts.The younger women played ball gamessuch as shinny, while the older womenplayed games of dice and chance. Theygambled for articles of clothing with a kindof dice made of plum stones.


Women playing skinny, probablyCrow Creek reservation, about 1910

Shuffling-feet dance,near Grand River, about 1910

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Woman sewing, usingtraditional designs

Throughout the reservation period, the federal gov-ernment sought to convert the Indian to white eco-nomic practices and values. In the late nineteenth cen-tury, it stepped up its program to "civilize" Indiansthrough education. American Indian cultural patternschanged considerably as a result of these assimilationefforts. Indian males were now expected to do thefarming, and women were urged to learn the crafts as-sociated with civilized life, such as needlework. As thepressure to conform to Anglo-American life stylemounted, women found themselves torn between twocultures.

Worrian and childrenin varying clothing

¿tyles, about 1895

7 '


Sioux Women

As women came moreunder the influence ofwhite missionaries, mer-chants, and governmentofficials, they began todress more like whites,without their traditionaldecorations.

Exhibition of quilts, Rosebud reservatum


Sioux women not only found themselves dressing differ-ently, they also saw their traditional role as educators dimin-ishing as the federal government and missionary groups as-sumed more responsibility for educating Indian children.Until 1870, federal aid for Indian schools was inconsistent.

Sí. John's William Welsh Memorial School forgirls, 1880s. Cheyenne River reservation


Sioux Women

Sewing room, OglalaBoarding School Pine

Ridge reservation, 1900$ 1but in that year. Congress appropriated the first sum specifi-cally for education. The off-reservation boarding school wasthe government's most popular forum for education in the1870s and 1880s. Reformers and Indian Service personnelat the time generally agreed that a complete break with thehome environment was desirable. In the 1890s, dayschools became more popular because they were cheaperthan boarding schools, and they did not separate the childfrom his or her family.

The curriculums in the day and boarding schools empha-sized skills that would prepare girls for the life style of whitesrather than skills that would help them fulfill their traditionalrole in Indian society. They learned sewing, cooking, do-mestic work, and manual labor. While young boys weretaught to farm, girls were trained in the domestic tasks ofwhite households. The goal of such education was the co»^-plete transformation of children from native ways to whitecivilization.


Soutk Dakota History

Sources

Gridiey. Marion E. American Indian Women. New York: Hawthorn Books. 1974.Hassrick, Royal B. In collaboration with Dorothy Maxwell and Cile M. Bach. The

Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society. Civilization of the AmericanIndian Series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1964.

Lowie. Robert H. Indians of the Plains. American Museum of Natural History An-thropological Handbook, no. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Co., 1954.

MacGregor, Gordon. In collaboration with Royal B. Hassrick and William E. Henry.Warriors without WeapOTis: A Study of the Society and Personality Develop-ment of the Pine Ridge Sioux. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1946.

Medicine, Bea. The Native American Woman: A Perspective. Las Cruces. N.Mex.;Eric/Cress, National Educational Laboratory Publishers, 1978.

Sandoz. Mari. These Were the Sioux. New York: Hastings House, 1961.Walker, James R. Lakota Society. Edited by Raymond J. DeMallie. Lincoln: Uni-

versity of Nebraska Press, 1982.


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Typewritten Text

All illustrations in this issue are property of the South Dakota State Historical Society except those on the following pages: p. 189 (right), from Stella Gilman, A Gumbo Lily and Other Tales (New York: Abbey Press, 1901); p. 197, from South Dakota State Library, Pierre; p. 209, from Dorinda Riessen Reed, The Woman Suffrage Movement in South Dakota, 2d ed. (Pierre: South Dakota Commission on the Status of Women, 1975); pp. 250, 251, from Memorial Library, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis.

Sioux Women: A Photographie Essay · 2016-08-19 · Sioux Women 231 The only acceptable role for...

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