Today's Strength from Yesterday's Tradition: The Continuity of the American Indian Woman

Abstract

In 1877, faced with loss of their land and a traditional way of living in their natural northern Plains environment, Northern Arapaho tribe was reduced to 938 individuals: there were 198 men and 740 women. Today, women of this tribe number nearly 3,000. During that year women were cold, hungry, and miserable-their homes destroyed, their children disoriented; men, some wounded and weak from hunger, were no longer able to provide food and protection. Sadly and regretfully tribe relinquished all hope of ever continuing their old way of life. women, during those years, were one half of the vanishing American. We need to ask why, over 100 years later, have they not only survived, but also become more numerous and stronger? And how is it that they are still going about their traditional responsibilities and actively existing in today's complex society? On a national scale population of American Indians has increased significantly. In 1940 there were 163,000 women in United States; by 1970 they had more than doubled their number to 404,000. Factors increasing longevity have had an influence on population: women are better surviving complicated childbirth, disease, and all other health hazards, and their life span has increased. women have always been hardy and enduring. The life of an Arapaho woman has never been an easy one, especially if she chose to live in traditional Indian way. During eighteenth and nineteenth centuries life was difficult, but she had a place in her tribe, in her camp, in her family lodge, and later with her husband and children. This place of acceptance became hers at birth. She was born into a secure family and raised to know who she was. From her first steps, she was guided daily into traditional tribal lifestyle which included roles for men and for women. Usually men did their necessary work, women did theirs and they were both engaged in roles of survival, each working in conjunction with others. For most part, there was a purpose to these different roles. In twentieth century, how did acculturation of nations into a new way of life-the white man's way-affect Arapaho women? They learned to adjust to complexities of change. Anthropologists and historians have had a field day with history of Indians, but how much truth was written about women of tribes is still an unanswered question. Even today, a short twenty years from twenty-first century, women are still immersed in enough traditional emotions to be reluctant to sit down and discuss their personal lives