Women’s Work is Never Done

Women’s Work is Never Done

A woman’s place in Plains Indian culture was an indispensable part of tribal life. The man and the woman were partners, he had his responsibilities and she had hers. Each partner’s respective roles were necessary for their survival. The lifestyle of the buffalo-hunting tribes of the Great Plains revolved around the dangerous and risky male pursuits of warfare and hunting. The role of Plains Indian women was to support the hunters and warriors. Such a supportive task involved considerable labor. It is true that the life of the Indian woman was hard, but her value to the tribe was recognized. The woman’s many tasks promoted tribal welfare.

The Plains Indians lived with constant exposure to the elements, to hunger and to attacks by enemy tribes. When these nomadic peoples moved their campsite, the men rode on the outside or ahead of the group ready to defend their families against any threat of attack and to look for game along the way. The women took down the tipis and packed their possessions on the horses and travois; small children rode with their mothers in a cradleboard or sometimes the cradleboards were tied to the firmly to the travois, older children often rode their own horses. (Before the acquisition of the horse from the Europeans, the women packed their belongings on the backs of dogs or on a dog drawn travois.) And it was the women who unpacked and pitched the tipi and set up the housekeeping at the next campsite. Apart from being a wife and mother, this strenuous work was done in addition to their daily homemaking duties of gathering firewood, cooking food, fetching water, and making and repairing clothing, moccasins, tipis and manufacturing household items.

The primary task of early Plains women revolved around providing food for her family. The harvesting of buffalo was the responsibility of the man, but once the game was harvested, it became the property of the woman. The women of the encampment often followed the men on a buffalo hunt. They waited by their travois until the harvesting was finished and then they would rush down to start skinning and cutting up the meat. Each carcass had to be quickly attended to in order to prevent spoilage, especially during the summer months. The women, skilled in cutting the hide away from the meat, were careful no to damage the hide in the process. Before the hides cooled and became stiff, the women quickly scraped the hides clean of fat and tissue. They wrapped the meat in fresh buffalo hides and took it back to camp on their travois. The men might help with the heaviest work such as turning the animal over, but processing the meat and tanning the hide were primarily the women’s responsibility. If the hunters had to travel some distance to where the herd had migrated, the men did the butchering and carried the hide and the meat back to the camp where the women waited for their return.

The buffalo was the commissary of the Plains Indians and virtually nothing was wasted. Buffalo bones and horns were fashioned into cooking utensils and tools; even the hoofs were utilized in making glue. In truth, during the height of hunting season, even the most industrious Plains Indian women could not keep up with her daily tasks and all the work that needed to be done to process the buffalo. It took the labor or at least two women to keep up with the amount of meat and hides one hunter provided. Usually, every wife had someone to help her—a young girl or an elderly relative.

Women in Battle

Although Plains Indian women were devoted to peace and fighting battles with the enemy was generally the duty of men, the women could not help but be involved in combat activities. When a way party was getting ready to go out on a raid, the camp was full of activity. For the most part, the women participated by providing supplies, outfitting their husbands for battle, singing in support of departing war parties, sending the warriors off with prayers for a safe return, and by imploring the warriors to avenge the deaths of those they loved. Sometimes young wives turned their children over to the grandmothers and accompanied their husbands on raids, helping out by preparing food, nursing the wounded, and, when necessary, fighting beside the men. When the victorious way party returned from battle with their spoils, the women had the privilege of dancing during the victory celebration. In many early tribes, the women decided the fate of any captured enemy.

In some communities, wives were allowed to carry their husband’s war shield on special occasions. The shield was perceived as having magical powers to protect the warrior in battle. The warrior painted a personal symbol of protection on the cherished shield and it was then strapped onto to the arm with which he held his bow so that his hands were free to use weapons.

It was custom of Plains Indians to instill the virtue of bravery in both sexes from early childhood. In some cases, girls were encouraged to develop their riding and fighting skills. Ordinarily, the women left warring and raiding expeditions to men, but in some exceptional cases stronger willed women actually became outstanding warriors. Tribal legends give accounts of brave women who were cunning in strategy and skilled in archery and horsemanship. However, not all women who engaged in battle always had a choice. They joined the battle to save themselves and their children from death or from becoming the spoils of way—taken from their homes and becoming captives of their enemies.

An appropriate way to express grief, for women whose husbands had been killed in battle, was for the widow to organize a vengeful raid on the enemy tribe. Sometimes the widow would be allowed to accompany the war party. Plains Indians followed certain rituals to show respect for the dead. An important custom for the women of many tribes was to mourn the death their spouses for a year or longer. Widows in come Plains tribes cut their hair short, wailed, and slashed their bodies as a means of ensuring that dead mates would have a safe journey to the afterlife. In some Plains tribes the family tipi was burned and its contents were given away. The widow was taken in and cared for by members of her tribe. After the period of mourning, the widow usually remarried right away, for her skills were vital to the welfare of the community.

Buffalo:

The Life and Spirit of the American Indian
By Thomas E. Mails¹¹
If God was the creator and overseer of life, if the morning star, the moon, and Mother Earth combined their talents to give birth and hope to the Indians, if the sun was dispatcher of wisdom and warmth, then the buffalo was the tangible and immediate proof of them all, for out of the buffalo came almost everything necessary to daily life, including his religious use as an intermediary through which the Great Spirit could be addressed, and by which the Spirit often spoke to them. In short, the buffalo was life to the Plains Indians until the white man's goods and ways first eliminated and then replaced the animal.

Understandably, then a major part of Indian life was oriented in and around the buffalo herds. They moved with them during all but the winter months. The buffalo's habits were studied intensely, and in time the Indians put virtually every part of the beast to some utilitarian use. In fact, it is almost astounding to see a graphic breakdown of the uses made of him, of his hide, of his organs, of his muscles, of his bones, and of his horns and hoofs. It is slight wonder that the Indians reverenced the buffalo, related him directly to the Great Creator, and be a natural symbol for the universe, and no doubt the other tribes accorded him a like honor.

If a child's name included the word "buffalo" in it, the Indians believed that the child would be especially strong and would mature quickly. And though a name in itself is not the guarantee of automatic transformation, a "buffalo" child usually fulfilled the expectations of others by striving to accomplish what his name implied. If a warrior was renamed after a vision or great hunting or war accomplishment, and his new name included the word "buffalo," it meant that the buffalo was his supernatural helper, or that he exhibited the strength of a buffalo, or that he was an extraordinary hunter. In other words, the name described the powers of the man.

All the Plains tribes had special songs which they believed would make the buffalo approach their camp areas. And all the tribes had Dreamers, or holy men, who would conduct secret rites and then prophesy where the buffalo were most plentiful.

Speaking generally, when considering the energy put into buffalo calling, it should be recognized that there were many reasons to want the buffalo herds to come close to the camps. First, the transportation problems were monumental, since the enormous quantities of meat and heavy hides were not easy to carry from the hunting areas to the campsites. Second, it was much safer to hunt in one's own domain. In particular, the penetration of enemy territory or even of contested areas was extremely hazardous. A Ponca spokesman, in describing the plight of his tribe, tearfully stated that the more numerous Sioux were cutting the Ponca warriors, who were few in number, to pieces because they had to go into Sioux territory to obtain buffalo. And third, without the ever-present buffalo all the Indians could not have survived, at least on the Great Plains.

The buffalo had poor vision, a keen sense of smell, and surprising speed when aroused. With their short tails sticking straight up and their shaggy manes shaking, they ran with a roll in their gallop which easily deceived the spectator as to the pace they were going. The earth shook as they thundered over it, and not every horse could match their speed. “Blind fury” was an exact description of a charging buffalo bull. Its momentum was fantastic. In addition to weight and speed, it had an impressive height. A mature bull stood six or seven feet at the shoulder hump. Beyond this there was a tough hide, a battering-ram skull with a thick hair pad, and a nervous system that sometimes kept it moving long after the beast was technically dead.

Against these teeming mountains of muscle, the Indian boy or warrior, until he obtained a gun, had only the bow and arrow, the lance, the long two-edged knife and, of course, the horse, which was really the weapon that finally sliced the odds between hunter and hunted. Skillfully used, it alone enabled its master to catch up with and get away from a stampeding herd.

Accordingly, the buffalo hunt became, in addition to a source of supply, an ideal training ground for military duty on horseback, for the two thousand pound Goliaths of blind fury and thrust were excellent tests of anyone’s competence and valor as a warrior.

Hunting buffalo was close to warfare in its demands upon horsemanship and courage. Cool nerves and sharp reflexes were required of horse and rider in both hunting and war, so the young brave trained his finest horses in the buffalo hunt until they became like extensions of the lower part of his own body.

A bow’s length away was the distance hunters had to try for, and the preferred targets were the intestinal cavity just behind the last rib, and just back of the left shoulder and into the heart. At that narrow distance their powerful bows could sink an arrow into the buffalo’s body up to the feather, or even pass it clear through him. A foot closer brought them into hooking range, but a foot farther away meant losing power and accuracy. Unless the buffalo was hit in a vital spot, he died slowly, or often recovered altogether. In either case, he would race away and was lost to the tribe. After successfully killing a buffalo, the victor cut out the buffalo’s liver and ate it raw, seasoned with gall and still steaming with body hear and dripping blood.

Once the buffalo became virtually extinct, and deer and elk scarce, hide preparations and use came to an end so abruptly that it has not been possible for scholars to reconstruct in complete detail all of the old ways of dealing with hides. Before 1850 the Indians were using woolen and cotton trade cloth in addition to skins, and from 1890 on, trade cloth was almost exclusively used to make clothing.

At their peak, around 60 million buffalo were estimated to have lived on the Great Plains. When railroad tracks were laid, the “iron horse” and buffalo met. Delays occurred as buffalo herds took perhaps one half a day to cross the tracks. The railroads saw a way to capitalize on this and solve a problem. They advertised hunting by rail, a sport for the “fun” of killing because the buffalo were left for dead.

In the East a demand for buffalo robes became an incentive to kill more buffalo. Leavenworth, Kansas became a trading center for the robes. This meant year-round work for buffalo hunters who also supplied buffalo meat to the growing number of U.S. army forts in the West. In less than 35 years, the entire population was estimated at only 1,000. Today it is only 200,000.

Native Americans were so dependent were so dependent upon the animal that their entire culture came to be interrelated with it. It was their storehouse, their source of industry, their main topic of conversation, and one of the prime intermediaries between God and man. Its swift destruction by white hunters, beginning about 1870 in the south and 1886 in the north, left the Indians destitute and confused. Life itself as they knew it had been taken suddenly and cataclysmically away. Little wonder they fought so furiously for their hunting grounds, and in the end were so slow to convert to an agricultural society, although the reasons for their reluctance to be converted are exceedingly complex, and go far beyond the buffalo itself.

Having found no transportable wealth, ailing from his injury, and wanting to see his wife again, Coronado ordered a return of the army to Mexico in 1542. The expedition was considered a colossal failure, squandering fortunes of several participants. Coronado resigned his governorship of the northwest frontier of New Spain and retired to his estates. The Spanish were so disillusioned by the lack of rich empires that they didn't return north in substantial numbers for half a century. Although the Coronado expedition mapped the northern Gulf, pioneered a route to New Mexico, explored America all the way to Kansas, and made the only observations of pre-European native life, most of this knowledge was lost.

In the mean time, the naval branch of the expedition had packed many of the personal supplies of the soldiers and sailed from Acapulco May 9, 1540. This expedition was under the captain, Hernando de Alarcon. Alarcon reached the Colorado River delta, which had already been discovered by Francisco Ulloa in an expedition sent by Cortes in 1539, but Alarcon sailed further up the river, past modern day Yuma, in a fruitless search for the army. He buried a message, which was later found by party sent out by Coronado, stating that he had sailed this far and returned home. Thus, the army was on its own, and the dream of naval support died.

The army spent the winter of 1540-41 in that area. Although the army made attempts at a peaceful presence, they were a serious strain on the food resources of the area, and several skirmishes were fought with pueblos, including one site now known as Santiago Pueblo. A National Historical Monument is located at the ruin of Kuaua Pueblo, a few miles west of Albuquerque, where the army may have spent some time. Crossbow bolt heads and nails, resembling the material at Hawikuh, have been found at some of these sites, including one bolt head reportedly embedded in a Puebloan skeleton at Santiago Pueblo. One of these sites is commemorated by a sign along the west side of a highway a few miles southwest of Albuquerque.

The army was growing more desperate during this period. During this period, Coronado's men sought information about other possible wealthy locations. Many of the soldiers, not to mention Coronado's wife and Viceroy Mendoza, had invested their fortunes in the expedition, and the only hope of making good on this investment was to find gold, jewels, or other transportable wealth that could be plundered from the native people. Because of their faith in their own religion and the superiority of European culture (not to mention theological questions about whether the "Indie-ans" were actually human), the Spanish army never questioned their assumed moral right to take the property and even the lives of the "heathen" natives—an age-old problem that has been expressed by many cultures.

After many interviews, the army learned of another important trading center far to the northeast, called Quivira. This center did exist, though some historians believe the Puebloans exaggerated its importance just to get rid of the troublesome Spanish visitors!

On April 23, 1541, the entire army set out to find Quivira, stopping first at the Pecos Pueblo, now a National Monument east of Albuquerque. More Coronado materials have been found there.

Leaving Pecos, they traveled east across east-central New Mexico until they reached extremely flat plains—so devoid of features that some men who set out from army camps to hunt couldn't find their way back and were lost. This area is identifiable as the Llano Estacado, or "Staked Plains" of the Texas panhandle. Finally that found two canyons where they camped.

In an intriguing tie-in, an old, partly blind informant at one of these Texas panhandle campsites told the soldiers that he had heard of the Cabeza de Vaca party, which had passed somewhere near there to the south. With a little more detail, this remark could help us identify the route of Cabeza de Vaca's castaways, but no one is sure how far to the south they were.

At this point, Coronado did the same thing he had done the previous year. He picked a small, light contingent to travel north to Quivira, leaving the main army behind. There are some indications that he was beginning to suspect that Quivira would have no more gold than Cibola did. In any case, he sent the main army back to their base in pueblos of Tiquex, near Albuquerque, where they arrived in June 1541. Meanwhile Coronado's small expeditionary force then set out to the north, and probably in July they arrived in the Quivira province, turned out to be located in Kansas!

The midsummer march across the dry plains must have been uncomfortable, and once again the army was disappointed in the destination. Although Quivira was an important trade center to the buffalo-hunting Plains Indians, it was less impressive than the pueblos of New Mexico. As perceived by the Spanish, it was merely a collection of impoverished villagers in mud huts. Coronado stayed about 25 days in Quivira, and finally decided to return to the pueblo country, leaving toward the end of August, 1541. Some of the soldiers must have decided that this was the end of the line, and flung down their heavy armor, because various pieces of chain mail have turned up in Kansas.

Evidence of Coronado in Kansas
The evidence that Coronado reached Kansas is well documented but not widely known. The army, of course, recorded that they had marched many days east and north from New Mexico. As early as 1880s, a piece of chain mail turned up in central Kansas, and locals proclaimed that it was Coronado material and Quivira was in Kansas. Others questioned this, however; the chain mail might have come from later Spaniards such as Oñate, in 1601, or been traded into the region by Indians. Writing in 1994, however, archaeologist Waldo Wedel documented numerous fragments of chain mail, from six sites scattered over a few miles in central Kansas, and only in that area. Many of these are from caches made by Indians, and thus are material buried by Indian hands, not directly part of a known Coronado Army campsite. Trade pottery from the New Mexico pueblos is also abundant in the area, affirming that this was a specific destination region for Pueblo traders. Although native people may have moved the material over short distances, it is unlikely that all the material was moved en mass. Wedel thus locates Quivira near Lyons, Kansas.
The Retreat
Coronado marched quickly back to the Rio Grande pueblos, arriving October 2, 1541. Some time in December he fell from his horse and hit his head. This injury took some time to heal, and Coronado seems to have become despondent over his failure to find gold, his injury, and his separation from his wife. During the cold weeks of January 1542, in the Albuquerque pueblo country, Coronado decided that the army should return to Mexico, empty handed. Return meant that the investments would be abandoned and the soldiers would return bankrupt. Some of the soldiers tried to talk the general out of his decision, probably arguing that they should stay, explore the new land, and perhaps find mineral deposits that could be worked by native labor, as was being done in Mexico. Coronado overruled them and the return began in the spring of 1542.

On the way home, near the campsite at the ruin of Chichilticale, he met up with a relief army on its way north. Many of the fresh troops argued for a glorious return to the Cibola/Tiquex country, but Coronado talked them out of it. The armies returned home, numerous soldiers dropping out and settling near Culiacán or Compostela rather than return to Mexico City in shame.