Blog #2

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Blog #2

(This was originally posted on Wed., September 12, 2007 at 4:55 pm). HAR

1. Given the enormous variety among Native American women, are there any generalizations we can draw about their experiences in the era of conquest?

Native American women were the ones who help their people to survive. They work hard finding new ways to give their people the basic elements of survival: food and cloth. Native
American women gave the newcomers from England that colonized Massachusetts and Virginia and the Spanish that colonized New Mexico food such us corn. They were active in their society implementing the trade market to the Europeans. Native American women gave the chance to their communities to have a new market to sell their crops.
Native American women also got married with the white traders. The "country marriages" opened more doors to their trade system. They provide the secret of farming while their husband opened a new way to trade their products. Native Americans were mediators between two different cultures.

2. What is the meaning of the statement, "Whether they were slave-owners or not, white women's lives were inextricably tied up with slavery?"

African American women were slaves and they did not have any rights. Slave African women work the same way as men they were not allow to work in the house but in the fields. African American women did not have the opportunity to have a family or even have a partner. In the other hand White women had a family they lived with their husbands but they were treated with no respect. They stayed home take care of their kids and primarily their husband. Women in general were inferior to men. They had to work hard at home or outside and they had to rights of any kind. So slave women and white women had to live their lives subordinated to the men.

3. What where the most significant differences among European women colonists?

European women also had many difficulties first of all women immigration was less common than men. When they finally made it to America they were having health issues. There was a high rate of mortalities because of malaria and dysentery. But women used to have a longer life than men; therefore there were a lot of widows but seems like they were having a better opportunity than the ones back home. Widows remarried and were wealth. In the other hand women that were married were subordinate to their husbands. They did not have any rights; no voice, no vote and their husbands had the control of their properties. But changes in European women were notorious in the first and second generations the quality of life had had a significant change; obviously they were changes according to ethnic, religious, and region which determine legal and economic status.