ABSTRACT
Jean O’Brien searches through sparse documentation for clues about how Native American women adjusted to colonial domination in New England. (Indeed, the scarcity of evidence about Native American understandings of kinship and gender relations is itself a product of the colonial assault on indigenous cultures and cultural memory.) This was a “shattered society” in which colonialism and the intrusion of the world market wreaked havoc with preexisting family and kinship practices. This essay highlights the links between kin and gender relations and modes of production, and demonstrates how kin relations were vulnerable to dramatic upheavals in the political economy such as those brought by European colonial settlement. These changes affected women, who traditionally worked the land, particularly adversely. Moreover, the economic activities of Native American men, who moved into military service and whaling as Indian land were taken over by Europeans, exacerbated the detrimental economic impact of colonialism by weakening kin ties.
