Chapter from the book Tawíscara: The Hijacking of Democracy (2026)
In this chapter, we will not argue that feminism is a Native American invention, just as we do not argue that liberal democracy is, since in both cases they stem from different origins and traditions—some of which are quite distinct, such as Athenian democracy, the slave-based democracy of the United States, and the communist democracies of Native peoples.
We will, however, show that, just like modern democracy, modern feminism was sparked by the discovery of concrete and long-established examples in the Americas of a gender relationship radically different from that of Europe and the Middle East.
In “Indigenous Cosmology and the Spanish Conquest” (2016), we examined the significance of Indigenous American mythology and the shift from the feminine cosmos (peaceful earth goddesses) to the masculine cosmos (warlike sky gods). [i], [1] We will not revisit the details of this analysis, but we must briefly recall that so-called “Mexican machismo” or “Latin American machismo”—an accusation promoted by Europeans or the white Creole classes of Latin America and by the sense of superiority inherent in Anglo-Saxon imperialism —was an import from Europe through the brutality of the conquest and colonization of peoples who were, by far, less “machista” than the Europeans; peoples among whom patriarchy was much weaker and, in some cases, nonexistent. Or there existed a matriarchy, generally more peaceful and democratic. The paradox lies in the fact that this modern feminist critique stems from a Native American reality, a practice, and a sociocultural order (not a theory). In other words, the European conquest of the Americas imposed patriarchy on them and then criticized it from the perspective of feminism—a concept that Native Americans had freely bestowed upon them without receiving any credit whatsoever.
European queens did not challenge the rigid patriarchal order or its misogyny—as was the case even with writers such as Saint Teresa. Neither the Isabels nor the Elizabeths represented women but rather the noble class order—a masculine order that imposed the morality of men’s honor, not women’s, through institutions such as virginity for women and promiscuity for men. These institutions and values were largely unknown among indigenous peoples. Even in the most hierarchical Mesoamerican civilizations, there were female emperors or female rulers. One example was Lady K’abel (Sacred Serpent and military leader, with a rank higher than her husband’s), a Maya ruler from the second half of the 7th century at El Perú-Waka, Guatemala. [ii] Even in more militarized and patriarchal societies such as the Aztec and Inca—the Inca condemnation of homosexuality is another sign of patriarchal domination—women’s roles continued to hold greater public importance than in Europe.[2]
Neither the obligation to be a virgin nor the condemnation of homosexuals were values among the democratic peoples of North America.
In the vast body of chronicles left by the Jesuits in North America, references abound in the 17th century expressing shock at the freedom exercised by women in indigenous nations, who were masters of their own bodies and their own lives.[iii] Women held power in both the public and private spheres. In 1633, Father Paul Le Jeune reported: “Here women have a great deal of power. A man may promise something, and if he fails to keep his promise, he is considered sufficiently excused by saying that his wife did not want to do it. I then told him that he was the master, and that in France women do not boss their husbands around.” [iv]
For the particularly misogynistic centuries of the European conquest, this deviation among the “savages” was yet another reason to convert them to the True Religion. At that time, Saint Teresa of Ávila wrote that (European) women are especially weak and perverse, which is why any hint of freedom in them had to be eradicated: “they already call freedom melancholy; and so it is that I have thought that in these houses, and in all religious houses, this term should not be uttered (because it seems to imply freedom), but rather it should be called a serious illness and treated as such. [Women] must not think they can get their way, since they are required to obey; for the harm lies in feeling that they have this freedom […] and they must be made to understand that the best remedy is to keep them very busy with chores, so that they have no time to daydream—for therein lies all their trouble. […] Bear in mind that weakness is natural and very frail, especially in women […]it is necessary that whenever we fancy the slightest thing, we not immediately think it is a figment of our imagination. […] I do not believe there is anything in the world that harms a prelate as much as not being feared, and having his subjects think they can treat him as an equal—especially women—for if they once come to believe that the prelate is so soft-hearted, it will be difficult to govern them.” [v] It is no coincidence that Saint Teresa was canonized as a saint and doctor of the Church and not Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; quite the opposite, in fact—on the other side of the Atlantic. Sor Juana, the rebel raised by Indigenous women in Mexico.
Graeber and Wengrow observed that while the Jesuits spoke of “the appalling freedom of the savages” that prevented their submission to “the yoke of the Lord,” it was only “the translation of the words ‘Lord,’ ‘commands,’ and ‘obedience’ that posed serious problems in the native languages.” [vi]
Although many indigenous nations in pre-Columbian America were matrilineal, not all were democratic and egalitarian like the Iroquois Confederacy, among others. The civilization that preceded them along the Mississippi River—Cahokia—built great cities and pyramids that have been all but forgotten in what is now the border between Missouri and Indiana. It disappeared in the 12th century, around the time the Iroquois founded their League of Peace.
Feminist ideas, under other names, can be traced back to the very origins of history. Not to mention prehistory, where matriarchal systems were even more common, though more difficult to analyze due to the scarcity of sources. Feminism, as we know it today—as a current of critical thought—emerged or reemerged with the Enlightenment. It is reasonable to think that the new humanist ideas of freedom and equality—the rights of man—inevitably had to lead to a reflection on and assertion of women’s rights. Now, just as we argue that the European Enlightenment was influenced by humanism and by knowledge of the indigenous societies of the Americas, we must likewise consider the influence of these societies with regard to gender relations.
In 2009, we published several chapters on the possible influence of the then-rediscovered heroine of feminism, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: “Why have Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s writings and her influences from the Spanish Golden Age been studied ad nauseam, while the relationships between the young Juana Inés and her Indigenous maids have not been studied? How can we explain the feminism of the rebellious nun by resorting to the misogyny of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish writers? Including Saint Teresa herself, an advocate of female submission to male power, whom Sor Juana herself cited—more out of political expediency than ideological conviction. Why dismiss the possibility that Mexico’s so-called “macho culture” was not actually such, or was far less macho and misogynistic than that of medieval and Renaissance Europe?”[vii] It goes without saying that the Spanish Golden Age was not only the century of American gold but also the century of Spanish and European misogyny. One need only consider the writings of renowned intellectuals of the time, such as Fray Luis de León (La perfecta Casada, 1583, described by one prologue writer as “almost feminist”), Juan de Zabaleta (Errores celebrados, 1653, Días de fiesta por la mañana, 1654), Saint Teresa (Fundaciones, 1573), Juan Huarte…[viii]
One of the most influential feminist written arguments in late-18th-century Europe was Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). By then, more than a century had passed since the first chronicles, stories, and plays about the indigenous world on the other side of the Atlantic had appeared. Like almost all her male contemporaries, Wollstonecraft neither cites nor mentions anything about that revealing and challenging account of the savages across the ocean, which was circulating in intellectual salons—with greater cultural intensity at the beginning of that same century. Perhaps because she was unaware of it, or perhaps because the philosophical rhetoric of the time did not require her to acknowledge the historical sources of her ideas. The most basic ideas were sufficient for her—ideas that were defensible in and of themselves without archaeological support: if freedom and equality depend on the reason of individuals, and women are rational beings, then they are citizens with equal rights. Her logic does not require an examination of the origins of her ideas, but for this study, it is indeed relevant. The coincidences are too numerous and can only be explained by the historical context of the so-called “discovery of the New World.” As if that were not enough, some of the most prominent feminists of the late nineteenth century openly acknowledged their admiration for the indigenous political and cultural system. Others were absorbed into the European system.
Nine years after the First Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention in the United States, in 1848, an assembly of 68 women and 30 men—chaired by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott—adopted a declaration of women’s rights to vote and participate in politics, later known as the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. That summer in Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was emphatic in her criticism of patriarchal society: “A woman is nothing. A wife is everything. A pretty girl is worth more than ten thousand men, and a mother, next to God, is all-powerful. Therefore, the ladies of Philadelphia, under the influence of the most serious reflections, are determined to defend their rights as wives, beauties, virgins, and mothers—and not as women.” [ix]
Alice Fletcher’s testimony was particularly thoughtful and significant. Born in Cuba in 1838 and a scholar of Native American cultures, Fletcher lived in the Great Lakes region with the Sioux for a time. She was a friend of Susette La Flesche, an Omaha woman known as Bright Eyes. In late March 1888, in Washington, D.C., Fletcher addressed the International Women’s Council, the first international gathering of women for suffrage. In her speech, she recalled a visit she had made to the Omaha Nation in Nebraska. On that occasion, a woman had given her a horse.
“What will your husband say if he finds out you just gave me a horse?” Fletcher asked.
The woman burst out laughing and immediately told the story to the others gathered in her home, who reacted in the same way.
“My explanation of the white man’s control over his wife’s property was met with mockery and contempt,” Fletcher said.
At that time, unlike in Indigenous cultures, women in Europe and the United States not only faced limitations on their access to work, but once married, their property became their husbands’ possession. Their submission was justified by a supposed will of God or by a biblical curse for something they hadn’t done—such as eating a forbidden fruit at the dawn of time or something of that nature.
Indigenous cultures not only served as an inspiration for activists fighting for the democratization of modern societies and for women’s rights, but they also provided concrete, real-world examples—not merely theoretical ones. At the same time, Indigenous nations continued to lose rights—not only to their lands but also to their customs—under the violent expansion of white men who legislated and imposed a policy of “christianize and civilize” on the so-called “savage” nations.
Fletcher continued:
“Every time I explained our laws to the Indian women, I always received the same response: ‘As an Indian woman, I was free. I was mistress of my home, of myself, of the work of my hands, and my children never forgot me. I lived better as an Indian than under white law.’” [x]
In an article published by the New York Evening Post in 1875, Matilda Gage described the social and marital rules of Indigenous societies, which bore far more resemblance to modern-day relationships than to Western societies of the time: “The division of power between the sexes in this Indian republic is practically egalitarian… If, for any reason, an Iroquois husband and wife separated, the wife would take with her all the property she had brought to the wigwam. The children would also go with their mother, whose right to them is recognized as indisputable.”[xi]
A couple of decades later, feminists defied insults and slander by embracing the bicycle as a means of independence. Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that the bicycle “The bicycle will inspire women with greater courage, self-respect, and self-confidence…” Her friend and fellow women’s suffrage leader, Susan Anthony, said: “I stand up and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bicycle… the image of free and unrestricted womanhood.” [xii]
As we noted earlier, there was no shortage of direct references to Native American examples as political models, nor of frustrations over the hijacking of the feminist cause. Such was the case with Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the most notable activists for women’s rights and universal suffrage. Gage was imprisoned for supporting the abolitionist movement and for aiding fugitive slaves, which was illegal under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. After a period of feminist struggles, Matilda Gage resigned from her leadership role in the National Woman Suffrage Association due to the association’s shift toward conservatism.
In her voluminous and admirable 1893 book, Woman, the Church, and the State, Gage described the demise of matriarchy due to Christianity, which earned her enemies even within her own suffragist group.[xiii] The book was banned in 1913 for blasphemy. In other words, aside from her exclusion from politics because she was a woman, she was punished for two other violations of the “native law”: the state’s defense of slavery and its censorship of an individual for her ideas.
Matilda Gage wrote in detail and with encyclopedic knowledge about the Iroquois Confederacy, among other matriarchal systems. According to Gage, “never was justice more perfect; never was civilization more elevated.” In her chapter on matriarchy, she wrote: “The State Archives in Albany, New York, preserve treaties signed by the ‘Sachems and Principal Women of the Six Nations.’ Women also held the power of veto in matters of war. Sir William Johnston mentions a case in which Mohawk women forbade young warriors from setting out on the warpath. Family relationships among the Iroquois demonstrated the superiority of women’s power. […] If, for any reason, an Iroquois husband and wife separated, the woman took with her all the property she had brought to the wigwam; the children also accompanied their mother, whose right to them was recognized as supreme. To this day, descent is traced so strictly through the mother that blue-eyed, blond-haired children, the offspring of white parents, are counted as members of the tribe.” [xiv] Let us recall that, in the United States, the children of white slaveowners and Black or mixed-race female slaves were considered slaves, not members of the family. Even today, as in the case of former President Obama, they are considered Black, even though they have four times as many European genes as African ones.
The violence arising from the invention of private property was also preceded by a radicalized patriarchy. Professor Sally Roesch Wagner, director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and the Center for Dialogue on Social Justice in New York, summarized it as follows: “According to most accounts, rape and other acts of violence against women were rare in Indigenous societies before European contact. When they did occur, they were severely punished. White women who spent time on Native American reservations often remarked on the sense of safety they felt and the freedom to move about as they pleased. A mail carrier in the late 19th century told a reporter from the New York Herald visiting the Seneca Nation: ‘A white woman can walk alone among them or along the most desolate roads in complete safety. I’d rather have my wife or daughter walk alone at night on this reservation than in the town where I live.” A schoolteacher said the same thing: “That’s the only place I’ve taught where I’ve never been insulted… I’ve heard the same from all the teachers I know on the reservation.” [xv], [xvi]
Exactly the same thing I used to hear from white women living in Mozambique in 1997.
Chapter from the book Tawíscara: The Kidnapping of Democracy (2026)
[1] One such example of a cosmic rupture is the very myth of the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, born of the goddess of fertility or Mother Earth, Coatlicue—who wore a skirt of serpents and was impregnated by a ball of feathers that fell from the sky, much to the dismay of her daughters, who wanted to kill him to conceal their mother’s infidelity with the Sun God (sky). The goddess or demigoddess Coatlicue dwelt on the Mountain of Serpents and had a son named Colibrí (bird, sky).
[2] See Luis Vitale, The Invisible Half of History: The Social Role of Ibero-American Women. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-Planeta, 1987; and Manuel Burga, Birth of a Utopia: Death and Resurrection of the Incas. Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1988.
[i] The Routledge History of Latin American Culture. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2017.
[ii] Owen, James. “Tomb of Maya Queen Found. ‘Lady Snake Lord’ Ruled Centipede Kingdom.” National Geographic, Oct. 4, 2012.
[iii] The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791; the Original French, Latin, and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes. United States, Burrows Bros. Company, 1898.
[iv] Paul Le Jeune. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791; the Original French, Latin, and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes. United States, Burrows Bros. Company, 1898, p. 181.
[v] Saint Teresa of Jesus. The Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus. [1573] Barcelona: Juan Olivares, 1847, pp. 45–47, 239.
[vi] Graeber, David, and Wengrow, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. United States, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, p. 44.
[vii] Majfud, Jorge. “The Unexpected Universe of Amerindia (I).” América Latina en Movimiento, May 13, 2010, http://www.alainet.org/es/active/38159.
[viii] Majfud, Jorge. “The Imperfect Sex: Why Is Sor Juana Not a Saint? [El sexo imperfecto. ¿Por qué Sor Juana no es Santa?]. Monthly Review Online, February 25, 2007, mronline.org/2007/02/25/majfud250207-html/
[ix] Aliano, Kelly. “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments.” Women & the American Story, April 4, 2023, wams.nyhistory.org/expansions-and-inequalities/politics-and-society/declaration-of-rights-and-sentiments/.
[x] “How Native American Women Inspired the Women’s Rights Movement (U.S. National Park Service).” Nps.gov, 2020, http://www.nps.gov/articles/000/how-native-american-women-inspired-the-women-s-rights-movement.htm.
[xi] Wolfe, James, and Moehn, Heather. Understanding the Iroquois Constitution. United States, Enslow Publishing, 2015, p. 81.
[xii] “Pedaling the Path to Freedom.” National Women’s History Museum, June 27, 2017.
[xiii] Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman, Church and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages: with Reminiscences of Matriarchate. United States, C.H. Kerr, 1893, pp. 11–28.
[xiv] Gage, Matilda Joslyn. *Woman, Church, and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages: with Reminiscences of Matriarchate*. United States, C.H. Kerr, 1893, pp. 11–28.
[xv] “How Native American Women Inspired the Women’s Rights Movement (U.S. National Park Service).” Nps.gov, 2020.
[xvi] Roesch Wagner, Sally. We Want Equal Rights: How Suffragists Were Influenced by Haudenosaunee Women. United States, 7th Generation, 2020.
Deja un comentario