The high status of women in Native societies did not escape the notice of white women either. White women often looked to the Native societies as models of equality from which the white society should base itself, often to the dismay of white men. Even in war, European women were often surprised to find that they went unmolested by their Indian captors. Mary Rowlandson said of
her experience: “I have been in the midst of roaring Lions, and Savage Bears, that feared neither God, nor Man, nor the Devil … and yet not one of them ever offered the least abuse of unchastity to me in word or action” (Rowlandson 1974, 108–109). Between 1675 and 1763, almost 40 percent of women who were taken captive by Native people in New England chose to remain with their captors (Namias 1993, 25).3
- Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples ANDREA SMITH
(Source: whitedenial-ontrial)
