In The Name Of God State - From Coercive Sterilisation To The Physical Elimination Of Helplessness

Once upon a Squaw

Once upon a SquawFrom child to young woman

Sometimes idealised, sometimes harassed and the object of s*****y, the condition of the squaw among Native Americans was not so different from that of women at the same time, in the West as in the East. With the exception of brief periods of enlightened matriarchy that followed one another in the past centuries, the female figure has always played subordinate social roles. In almost all societies, despite her functional essentiality, woman has always been the victim of obtuse macho views that have relegated her to the status of object or bargaining chip.

The Native Americans were no different, although it must be acknowledged that the subjection of women in this case stemmed from precise existential needs and not from religious or cultural conventions, as was the case in the Old World or the East. Indeed, it can be said that, unlike Europeans, Indian women enjoyed a freedom of customs and behaviour that perhaps only the pioneers of the New World were able to savour. The harshness of life imposed on the tribes, fundamentally nomadic and constantly in dispute with their neighbours, a strict separation of roles and a perfect organisation, which disregarded family sentiment and affection.

Thus, if in cases of forced exodus it was the elderly and no longer useful women who were abandoned, this was not the result of inhuman attitudes or ingratitude, but a desperate attempt to save the entire tribe.

The clear distinction between male and female, for the Native people, was in fact evident especially in old age: the male, a warrior and hunter, necessarily led a life of relationship, mediation and cooperation with the other males of his tribe, as well as of friendly tribes. Until death, his experience was indispensable to others, and sometimes the elder's strategic skills could make the difference between the life and death of an entire people.

The female role, on the other hand, was all encompassed within the family and tribal sphere, so that her sphere of experience, although fundamental to the smooth running of the group, was nevertheless extremely limited, and was exhausted where old age no longer permitted the normal performance of daily tasks.

Figure 1. The condition of the elderly Indian woman was always in the balance. Although old age was honoured and utilised by the American Indians, the possibility of having to suddenly move and take refuge in other camps, due to environmental problems or to escape their enemies, was very frequent. When this happened, the elders were included in the exodus plan, as long as they were able to withstand the harsh pace of the entire tribe, from which not even children were spared. If the elderly were too ill and no longer self-sufficient, they were often abandoned in their hut or, at best, taken to safety in the best possible place, where they were forced to fend for themselves anyway. Sickness and disability would have slowed down the pace of the tribe's march too much, endangering its survival. The decision was therefore not dictated by cruelty but by real needs. All things being equal, the elderly male was preferred to the older woman, since the old man had a wealth of social experience that he could still put at the service of the tribe, while the woman did not. In this photo Skokomish woman, 1930.

Each squaw was acutely aware of the impermanence of her role and the possibility that fate might ask one of them to make the ultimate sacrifice. On the other hand, the warrior was constantly putting his life on the line to defend the entire tribe from ransom, murder and enslavement: whichever way one looked at it, the numbers added up, and they were not always in the woman's favour.

The life of the squaw (a term that in the Algonquin language simply meant a maiden, from 'ethskeewa') began at the c***k of dawn and ended at bedtime when, stripped of her anonymous role as a member of the village, she took on that of wife and mistress. Her tasks were manifold and multi-functional: they ranged from taking care of household chores, especially cooking food and keeping it warm and ready for use, to making clothes and moccasins for the whole family, to foraging for roots and berries, to growing maize and rearing animals, which for many nomadic tribes were the only source of subsistence when the bison were absent.

They were able to gut, clean and skin game with the simple use of a bone knife, they salted meats, tanned skins, painted war tools, dyed clothing, assembled and disassembled the tepee in a single hour, and were able to hunt and defend their village. Infinally, they reared and cared for their children, nursed the sick, interpreted the cycles of the earth and the messages of the spirits, prepared the dead and took care of funerals. A full and difficult life, from which men were exempt, busy as they were with organising wars.

In spite of this, women remained illiterate throughout their lives, were excluded from the council of elders and ritual dances, and their social presence was limited to seasonal celebrations, engagement and marriage rites, and, of course, funeral wakes. However, compared to the working-class women of civilised England exploited in the fields, or the Chinese girls abandoned in the rubbish, or the Hindu wives immolated at the stake of their dead husbands and the poor creatures murdered by the Holy Inquisition as witches, the condition of the Squaw was in many respects much better.

The Native American, in fact, was essentially free. Its idea of independence went beyond the limits imposed by all European civilisations of the period, even presenting multiple connections with the concept of anarchy. Even the 'chief' did not actually command, but his function was purely to stimulate reflection and pacification; all important decisions were taken by the tribe's council of elders and the chiefs of the friendly tribes. In this sense, the regulating idea of Native American society was the refile of institution and absolute power. The real operating power was that of the WORD, according to which every man or woman had the right to accept or refute what was proposed to them.

Thus, if the man could speak his mind out loud, the woman expressed herself, no less forcefully, from the bosom of the family, from which she chose an appropriate contact person to bring her remarks back to the council.

In such a well-calibrated society, each man or woman did not live and act in function of the community, but was only responsible for it in imperative situations, such as defence against the enemy or hunting bison. In all other cases the individual reasoned for himself without being accountable to anyone, let alone being asked to conform to political or religious rules of collective behaviour. Female virginity, for example, was an absolutely absent concept for the Native American, and so were all those often discriminating impositions to which maidens from other worlds were forced to submit. The family was an open environment, in which punishment and rules were practically banned: children, placed in direct contact with the harshness of everyday life, self-regulated, expressing their own character traits to the utmost. Girls and boys lived together, without any kind of modesty even in the fulfilment of their bodily needs.

Sex was not considered sinful, nor was homosexuality: if savage mating was not favoured, it was simply for practical reasons, in order to be able to attribute the newborn to the right father, and in any case early marriage, often celebrated immediately after the girl's menarche, was a constant custom. The r**e of women by enemy tribes was not a properly Indian custom but a common practice among all ancient peoples (and not infrequently also in advanced civilisations such as the present). The female as a bargaining chip or possession has atavistic roots, and stems from the preciousness of women, certainly not from a derogatory consideration of them.

A people with many women always has a chance of survival: on the other hand, a tribe deprived of its female wealth is certainly doomed to extinction. A concept that would later be extended to pioneer women and which explains the numerous raids by the Natives during the Indian wars: it was not only out of retaliation but first and foremost out of survival instinct that the Natives started to kidnap white women, and in any case after the United States Army started to put their villages to the sword.

In fact, when the first English and French colonisers arrived in the North American states in the 1600s, the practice of k********g white women was reduced to the bare bones. This practice was then stimulated and favoured by the governments of both sides, vying for dominance over American territories, who often bestowed their allied Indians with the white women of their enemy as a prize.

Figure 2. Ouray girl, a people better known as Ute, in 1898. The fringe and lack of beads on her dress indicated her status as a virgin.

In times of peace, the 'buying and selling' of women took place within the framework of marriage, and was one of the few 'choral' events of the tribe, which often actively participated by compensating for any shortcomings of the 'buyer' towards the bride's family. It could happen, in fact, that the maiden's father valued her more than the future bridegroom's wealth, in terms of blankets and horses. So it could happen that the latter's relatives, but also friends and sympathisers, would supplement with their own possessions what was lacking in the asking price. This was because marriage was considered a public event, with undeniable implications for the future of the tribe. On closer inspection, this was a very civilised behaviour and practice, which should be understood not as a sale, but as compensation for the bride's family, who were deprived of a valuable asset.

Very similar, but more enlightened, to the phenomenon still in vogue of the bride's 'dowry', which, however, for civilised Europe rests its roots on a very dry concept of compensation not to the family of origin but to the maiden herself who, upon marrying, loses her right to her father's inheritance and becomes the property of her husband.

In order to dream with a touch of nostalgia, I will briefly illustrate the various steps that accompanied the phase of reaching puberty to the maiden's marriage. This is a very important phase for the young squaw, which will forever condition her life as an adult woman.

The Native Americans coined beautiful poems about it, which show how much love was hidden in the hearts of fathers and mothers at the moment of parting forever from their child. They have come down to us intact thanks to the oral tradition still alive among the Natives, which was able to stop time. Thanks to this collective memory, we can still fully enjoy the images of initiatory ceremonies that took place in America thousands of years ago.

The childhood of Indian children, completely unregulated, was one of the happiest among ancient peoples: pampered, fed and practically taught the basics of life, the children were raised by the entire tribe with no real distinction between real mothers and acquired mothers. The nurturing of the young was thus a collective event, designed for defence and education and never for coercion. The Native had no written language: any teaching was given orally and was levelled according to the individual's character differences, but also and above all according to the differences in the child's future tasks.

Thus, while the male was taught to hunt and the essential rudiments of the art of war, the female was taught those inherent in her future destiny as wife and mother. However, with regard to the use of weapons, there was no clear difference between male and female. Particularly among Cheyenne and Apache, the female was able to mount a horse and handle a Tomahawk exactly like a male, use a bow and arrow and build elementary but functional defence systems. In situations of necessity, many women also learnt to kill and scalp their enemy and not infrequently, in the absence of men, the women and elders of the tribe were left in charge of some of them, who were able to handle weapons and know how to defend themselves in the event of an attack.

The most important period of the young squaw's life was that of menarche, which coincided with the abandonment of the robes of a girl to put on that of a maiden.

Although each tribe experienced and ritualised it differently, it was always a collective event, much more so than marriage or the birth of a child. It could be compared to the typical entrance into society of 19th century maidens. It was as good a way as any to put the maiden 'in the public square', and to give the time that preceded the eventual engagement a spiritual, even more than social, respite.

Not infrequently, a maiden's entry into the 'teen' sphere was accompanied by the promise of marriage, which for all natives occurred very early, for females as much as for males. The native was essentially polygamous, a necessity due to the high mortality of mothers and infants, which imposed an obligation on a man to enjoy many wives. However, this was not an imposing rule, much less a convention on a religious basis. Every man was free to adopt mono as well as polygamy, and in some tribes this right was also granted to females.

For example, among the Crow and Sioux Lakota it was very common for a woman to accompany several men. Indeed, among the Sioux, the woman enjoyed greater s****l freedom than her European peers: she could choose her future husband as much as refit him and, if she wanted to divorce, she could do so simply by leaving the tent and making her decision public by entering the lover's tent. Children always followed their mothers, even if male, and generally belonged to the latter's clan rather than her husband's. The male could seldom claim coercive rights over females and r**e, particularly if practised on virgins, was severely punished with exile.

Clearly, it was not all fun and games: among some tribes, such as the Urons and the Kiowa, the woman had a hard life and was quite subordinate to the male. The woman kidn*pped by an enemy tribe, apart from the certainly traumatic initial period, was generally incorporated into the tribe and often became the wife or concubine of the warrior who had captured her. Women with children were generally preferred in the a*******n, who in turn were simply integrated and adopted by the community.

The a*******n of women, especially European women, by the Indians, however, represents a difficult and dark period in American history. It is clear that not all women, especially if bound by deep affection for the husband they were leaving behind, accepted the new condition calmly, to which they were psychologically accustomed even as children. Not infrequently, especially if they played the role of concubines, they found themselves defending themselves against the other women already present in the warrior's tent, who often distressed them with their jealousies and even subjected them to violence.

However, this faded over time, and always for practical purposes. The women, however, were useful and necessary people and, if violence could endanger the life of the newcomer, they were usually sedated by the tribal chief or by the warrior himself responsible for the abduction...

Rape of women was sometimes accompanied by r**e, not for reasons of offence but to sanction the right of conquest. It was not an act of debasing women, as was the case in other continents: it was rather a practical and quick way to accustom women to their new condition and encourage them to cut ties with their past. r**e was however reserved for adult women; girls were generally never touched, let alone virgins. It was quite easy to distinguish them, not only by their young age but by their hairstyle and clothing. Virgins in fact wore fringes, and their clothing did not contain beads. It was only later, thanks to the brutalisation of the various tribes that had by then come into contact with European 'civilisation', that things underwent some less than edifying changes, and r**e was carried out on a large scale and especially on white women.

The phenomenon was a reaction, and some tribes even went so far as to slit the throats of females, an event that was 'signed off' by certain utensils such as pens and arrows, which were left on the spot. It was an attempt to repay, in a bloody and certainly primitive way, their women who were regularly r***d and then killed by the US Army. This practice, unfortunately, intensified enormously shortly before the closing of the borders, and contributed to the campaign against the Indians and their extermination.

The ritual celebrating a girl's transition from childhood to puberty was called 'Išnati awicalowan', i.e. 'feast of the first menstruation', but also 'feast of isolation', since after reaching s****l maturity, the girl was a woman in her own right and had the right to live alone in her own hut, previously built by her family. It was a moment of intense collective joy that, while it 'freed' the girl from her childhood, nevertheless anchored her to the one and only restrictions of her life, which anticipated marriage.

In the transition from achieved independence to marriage, in fact, the young squaw had to submit to social rules to avoid unwanted conception, even if the girl was often no longer a virgin. Habitual consorting between males and females allowed licentiousness even at an impubescent age, and was tolerated. The arrival of the first menstruation interrupted any idyll and the maiden was monitored on sight by the elders of the tribe, who also had the task of teaching her normal amorous practices.

The Išnati awicalowan was rigidly codified and very similar in all tribes. Through the initiation rite, the squaw was educated about the myth of the Great Mother or White Bison Woman, and thus became aware of her feminine nature. The myth, which the Sioux claimed as their own, is very ancient and common to all the Natives.

Figure 3. Here is a modern raffiguration of the White Bison Woman, a sacred and legendary figure whose story you can read at the end of this chapter

The first menstruation was collected in a bundle of skins, which the maiden kept around her private parts like an absorbent pad for the duration of her period. Once the flow was over, the bundle was placed by the mother in a plum tree to protect it from the nefarious influences of IKTOMI, a multiform evil spirit who often hid in the guise of a spider. (Here, too, the legend takes its cue from reality. There are extremely toxic arachnids in America which, by stinging young girls near puberty, can inhibit the normal development of the ovaries, thus causing infertility).

In the meantime, the father, having built the isolation tepee for the fighter, asks for the blessing of the shaman who, followed by the entire tribe, goes into the tent and begins to purify the environment, the clothing and all the squaw's personal belongings with herbs burned as incense. Then a new altar was built in the tepee that would be forever linked to the young woman. In the meantime, the whole tribe crowds the tent, inside and out, and attends the ceremony, except for children and menstruating women (who could have contaminated the ceremony with their blood).

Once everyone had taken their seats, the maiden was made to sit between the new altar and the domestic hearth, but with her legs on one side as is the custom for women, and no longer cross-legged as was the custom for men and children. Afterwards, the shaman lit the ceremonial pipe, placed on his head a buffalo skull on whose forehead he had painted a long red line running perpendicularly up to the occiput, and began to instruct the girl on her duties as a squaw. She must always be "industrious as the spider, silent as the tortoise and cheerful as the lark".

He warns her about the effect of lasciviousness, reminding her of what the buffalo does with the bull at the time of the mount (an event well known to Indian children, who lived in close contact with animals). At this point, the shaman would move from theory to practice: completely naked, he would gird himself with a kind of rudimentary godemiché and with this he would attempt to mate with the maiden, who must always remain with her legs firmly closed while the man tried to open a gap between them with his hands. Whenever the maiden's resistance began to falter, her mother would place under her arms and belly a few leaves of sage, an aromatic herb that the natives called the 'herb of dreams', as they attributed to it a spiritual power of warning and teaching.

The meaning of the entire practice was very clear: to make the maiden aware of her great s****l power and the spiritual importance of conception, while at the same time stimulating her not to indulge in wild and animalistic fertilisation. An instruction that often ended in emptiness: it not infrequently happened that the maiden, although controlled on sight, at the arrival of the first ardours would make the so-called 'fuitina' with the lover of the moment, who was not always the future husband. Unwanted pregnancies were not objects of ostracism for the tribe, but rather 'pitied'. Proposing in marriage a maiden pregnant by another was in fact possible and frequent, but it greatly reduced their value... in terms of horses!

However, the Išnati awicalowan did not finish here. After dressing, the shaman filled the maiden's bowl with a mixture of water and chokecherry (a kind of plum with a cherry-like taste, from the fermentation of which an antibacterial drink was made), had the maiden lie on the skins and, The liquid was then partly licked by the shaman in the gesture of 'a buffalo drinking from a trough', and partly collected in another bowl and passed around among those present, so that all could drink.

In this way, the young woman's fertilising energy was shared with the entire tribe, which would one day also welcome her children. At this point the squaw was made to strip completely naked in front of everyone and her old dress thrown out of the tent, or donated to a poor woman.

The maiden then wore a new dress embroidered with beads, symbolising her onset of puberty, her fringes were cut off, and in its place a shaman woman painted a horizontal line on her forehead, which the maiden would wear for the rest of her life (and which the Europeans mimicked in their costumes by attaching a strip of leather to which a feather was attached to her forehead. A giant hoax...to stay on topic!)

Infinally, her hair was loosened and styled softly on the front and shoulders, no longer on the back, as was the custom for children: it would then be the squaw's choice whether to braid it or leave it loose.

Finally, the girl's mother went to fetch the menstruation bundle she had hidden in the plum tree, to bury it in front of her daughter's tepee.

It was only at this point that the celebration was finished: the women erupted in noisy shouts of joy and the tribe started the festivities in honour of the girl...