ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the Amerindian women of the eastern woodlands in terms of historical change - and not just change generated by contact with Europeans, but by processes central to their own societies. It focuses on the absolute simultaneity of the Amerindian and European worlds, rather than viewing the former as an earlier version of the latter, and makes comparisons less polarized than the differences between "simple" and "complex" societies. The chapter suggests that interactions to look for in the colonial encounter other than the necessary but overpolarized twosome of "domination" and "resistance," and attribute the capacity for choice to Indians as to Europeans. The evidence comes also from the collective memory of Hurons and Iroquois after European contact and from Indian stories and legends. The Hurons and Iroquois alike lived from a digging-stick agriculture, gathering, fishing, and hunting.
