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Engendering New Netherland: Implications for Interpreting Early Colonial Societ

Engendering New Netherland: Implications for Interpreting Early Colonial Societies Anne-Marie Cantwell, Rutgers University-Newark, Newark, NJ, USA Diana diZerega Wall, The City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA E-mail: dwall@ccny.cuny.edu ABSTRACT ________________________________________________________________ Here, we study the Algonquian and Iroquoian women who lived in settlements surrounding the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in today’s northeastern United States. We begin by examining their roles in the colony and find that their lives did not fall into the pattern of servitude, concubinage, culture-brokering, and intermarriage that many have seen as the fate of Native or African women in other colonial societies. Instead, these women were, by and large, independent agents and followed their own indigenous customs as they interacted with Europeans. We then go on to explore how this new revisionist view of their actions affects archaeological interpretations of their households and the households of the Europeans as well. We further point out how the role of Native women in New Netherland was influenced in part by the presence and absence of other groups of women—both European and African—there. ________________________________________________________________ Re ´sume ´: Nous e ´tudions dans le pre ´sent document les femmes algonquines et iroquoises qui ve ´curent dans les e ´tablissements de population autour de la colonie ne ´erlandaise de la Nouvelle-Hollande, dans les E ´tats-Unis du nord-est d’aujourd’hui. Nous commenc ¸ons par l’e ´tude de leurs ro ˆles dans la colonie et de ´couvrons que leurs vies ne se conformaient pas aux mode `les de servitude, de concubinage, de courtage culturel et de mariage mixte que beaucoup ont vu comme ce qui advenait des femmes aborige `nes ou africaines dans les autres socie ´te ´s coloniales. Au contraire, ces femmes ont e ´te ´ dans l’ensemble des repre ´sentantes inde ´pendantes et suivaient leurs propres traditions locales lors de leur entre ´e en contact avec les Europe ´ens. Nous poursuivons en examinant comment cette nouvelle vision re ´visionniste de leurs actions a influence ´ les interpre ´tations arche ´ologiques de leurs me ´nages, ainsi que des me ´nages des Europe ´ens. Nous soulignons de quelle manie `re le ro ˆle des femmes autochtones en Nouvelle-Hollande a e ´te ´ influence ´ par la pre ´sence RESEARCH ARCHAEOLOGIES Volume 7 Number 1 April 2011 ! 2011 World Archaeological Congress 121 Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (! 2011) DOI 10.1007/s11759-011-9159-7 et l’absence d’autres groupes de femmes, a ` la fois europe ´ennes et africaines dans cette re ´gion. ________________________________________________________________ Resumen: En el presente trabajo estudiamos a las mujeres algonquinas e iroquesas que vivı ´an en los asentamientos que rodeaban la colonia holandesa de Nuevos Paı ´ses Bajos, en lo que hoy es la zona noreste de los Estados Unidos. Comenzamos analizando su papel en la colonia y descubrimos que sus vidas no se corresponden con los patrones de servidumbre, concubinato, intermediacio ´n cultural y matrimonios mixtos que muchos consideran como inevitable destino de las mujeres nativas o africanas en otras sociedades coloniales. Ma ´s bien al contrario: estas mujeres son, en su inmensa mayorı ´a, personas independientes y siguen sus propias costumbres indı ´genas en su interaccio ´n con los europeos. Posteriormente procedemos a analizar co ´mo esta nueva visio ´n revisionista de sus acciones afecta a las interpretaciones arqueolo ´gicas de sus hogares y tambie ´n de los hogares de los europeos. Ma ´s adelante destacamos la influencia que la presencia y la ausencia de otros grupos de mujeres (tanto europeas como africanas) tuvieron en el papel de las mujeres nativas en Nuevos Paı ´ses Bajos. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ KEY WORDS Gender, Native American women, Women traders, Sexuality, New Nether- land, Colonialism, Site interpretation _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The time has come….to cast away all our ancient antipathies, all inherited opinions; and having taken a nearer view of their social life, conditions and wants, to study anew our duty concerning them. (Lewis Henry Morgan, writing about the Iroquois 1851:ix–x) As the second wave of the feminist movement swept through western soci- ety in the 1970s, many academicians, including anthropologists, began to ask questions and to design studies that were influenced by, and contrib- uted to, feminist theory. The publication of Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector’s seminal article in 1984 served as a watershed for archaeologists. This in turn was followed by a third wave of feminist theory, which cri- tiqued the earlier focus on white middle-class women ‘‘to argue for a femi- nist theory of the diversity of women’s experiences due to the complex intersections between gender, race, class, and subsequently, ethnicity, sexu- ality, age/life cycle, religion, etc.’’ (Spencer-Wood, this volume). More 122 ANNE-MARIE CANTWELL AND DIANA DIZEREGA WALL recently, archaeologists have published a plethora of articles, edited vol- umes, and single-authored books that use feminist approaches to decode stereotypes and problematize issues of gender in looking at the past.1 This article is in keeping with this tradition of examining the diversity of women’s experiences and stresses the importance of taking historical and cultural contexts into account. We are currently working on a long-term archaeological study of the inhabitants of the Dutch colony of New Netherland and their Native neighbors—Europeans, Africans, and Indians alike. Scholars have not sub- jected New Netherland to the scrutiny they have applied to some of the other North American colonies (Goodfriend 2003); it therefore offers a rel- atively new case study for examining colonialism. The work of many schol- ars using both feminist and engendered approaches (c.f. Wilkie and Hayes 2006) in their studies of colonialism (e.g. Deagan 1974; Etienne and Lea- cock 1980; Lightfoot et al. 1997; McEwen 1991; Rothschild 2003; Stoler 1989, 2001; Voss 2008) has led us to rethink the data and to contest many long-standing preconceptions. Following Elizabeth Brumfiel and Cynthia Robin, we hope that this study challenges ‘‘implicitly held assumptions about gender [that] limit our understanding of the past,…assump- tions…that go unchallenged precisely because they are so central, natural- ized, and ingrained in our society…[and constrain] archaeological interpretation’’ (2008:9). Furthermore, we hope our work will contribute to their call to ‘‘widen the scope of the social sciences’’ by showing how earlier societies ‘‘are distinctive from contemporary arrangements’’ (2008:1). New Netherland flourished at the beginning of the era of the European penetration into northeastern North America, during the time when slavery was first being introduced and the Native population, though scarred by European diseases and war, was still relatively free of overt European rule. New Netherland itself, unlike some neighboring colonies, was also relatively free of missionary activity. As such, as Rothschild has argued (2003), it provides a useful case for comparative studies with other colonies in other times and places.2 Here, we study the Algonquian and Iroquoian women who lived in settlements surrounding New Netherland. We begin by exploring the historical background of the colony and framing our argu- ment. Next, we examine the roles of the Native women there and make some unexpected findings: their lives did not fall into the pattern of servi- tude, concubinage, culture-brokering, and intermarriage that many have seen as the fate of Native or African women in other colonial societies in North America and elsewhere. Instead, these women were, by and large, independent agents and followed their own indigenous customs as they interacted with Europeans. We then go on to explore how this new revi- sionist view of their actions affects archaeological interpretations of their Engendering New Netherland 123 households and the households of the Europeans as well. Finally, we point out how the role of Native women in New Netherland was influenced in part by the presence and absence of other groups of women—both Euro- pean and African—there. Background New Netherland, a 17th-century Dutch colony in northeastern North America, was set in an Indian country with at least thirteen millennia of indigenous history. The colony extended from today’s Delaware River to the west and south, to Albany on the Hudson River in the north, and to the Connecticut River in the east. Dutch interest in the area began with Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River area in 1609, when he noted the presence of animals bearing high-quality furs, a coveted com- modity in Europe in the midst of the Little Ice Age. Soon thereafter, Euro- pean traders working for Dutch merchants began to make annual visits to the river, where they traded for furs with its Algonquian and Iroquoian inhabitants. Finally in 1624, the Dutch West India Company, which by then controlled the trade, established settlements in Indian country to pro- tect its interests from other European powers. Although the Dutch, a mari- time people, set up trading posts on the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, for the most part they conducted the fur trade on the Hudson River, at Fort Orange in today’s Albany, in Iroquois and Mahican country. Their entrepot was at New Amsterdam, today’s New York City, at the mouth of the Hudson and in the territory of the Algonquian Munsee.3 The colony ended with the British takeover in 1664 (Cantwell and Wall 2008; Jacobs 2005). Peoples from three uploads/Geographie/ cantwell-and-wall-2011-engendering-new-netherland.pdf