The Iroquois Influence

>> I have this gut feeling that empowering women could be, in a preindustrial society with its own gender roles, a natural check on power; men decide policy, but women decide which men decide policy. <<

Indeed, a great many traditional societies divide responsibilities between men and women in a way that creates checks and balances. Sometimes men have a lot of the social power but the culture is matrilineal and matrilocal, so that a young man joins his wife's family ... and the families are run by the old women. Other times it's a break between things close to home (such as farming) vs. things farther away (such as hunting). The men may be in charge of outside things, but when they come home, the women are in charge there. And there are all kinds of different divisions, but they often result in approximately equal weight. One annoying problem is that anthropologists, who are usually male and usually inclined to value what Europeans and Americans consider important, often overlook the very real influence that women have or had in different cultures. Dudes. Just because you ignore your own women does not mean everybody else does too.

>>It's my contention that there was a lot more sophistication to Native American cultures than is usually acknowledged<<

Oh yes. In some periods they had coast-to-coast trading. They had cities, empires even. I've been to Cahokia Mounds, which is just a few hours from me -- it's inside the Illinois border on the way to St. Louis. In historic terms that place was a friggin' metropolis. Some of the technology was quite elegant too, like the evolution of aerodynamics in knapped arrowheads or the dyes used on different materials. I've tried my hand at many traditional crafts. It gives you a whole new level of respect for the artifacts you see.

>> (my favorite example; why would a landlocked culture have a word for "whale" and revere a goddess decorated with abalone shell?) <<

Given the patterns of migration in America, they probably brought her with them when they traveled inland, and had to trade for the shell. Wampum, a form of currency based on shells, spread FAR out of coastal range.

>>It's my contention that's largely both observer and reporter bias - white male anthropologist goes to collect data, so not only does he focus on the guys, but there's no reason women want to spill female stuff to this male outsider. <<

Plus which, female scholars get less respect, so it's harder to find their work and they're often pressured to slant their writing to please men even if that makes it less accurate. And if you start getting close enough to your study-culture that people actually tell you things or let you see something important, that's about when your colleagues say you've "gone native" and ignore everything you say. Tch. As if you're going to get those details any other way.

>>Thus, finding out that there's any information from white women inserted into Native cultures is exciting stuff. Maybe, with any luck, there's more information down there!<<

You should go digging. I bet it would be fun.