Colleen's Weblog

Post #2- British Thought on American Women

     During the period leading up to the Revolutionary War the British despised the Patriots activism. The political cartoon, “Society of Patriotic Women at Edenton, North Carolina,” is a perfect example of literature and artwork, such as cartoons, being completely biased. The British crown passed different acts of taxes, such as the Coercive Acts, to have Americans pay for their debt. Americans resisted as much as possible, especially women, by rioting and turning away from their own roles in society, and participating in politics. This cartoon shows American Women and how they are portrayed in politics.

  Women during the Revolutionary Era took on basic household duties carrying on a supporting role while her husband was head of the household. “ Women fed the family, made clothing and household essentials, cleaned house and clothing, cared for and supervised the children, and served as nurse or midwife. For women, “life was labor intensive,” (Nelson-Burns, 1). The cartoon portrays the lives of women who were very active in politics, while their old roles diminished. In the cartoon American women are having a meeting and apparently are being very promiscuous and bad. In the middle of the picture, there is a women being groped by an unknown man, showing that the women were very pretentious and easy. There is also a child sitting on the ground under the table eating off the floor. A dog is also present and is licking the child’s face, while urinating on a flask of booze. The cartoon also shows an African American at the meeting, which was a very bad thing in that era. The women are all drinking out of flasks or bowls and a large portion of the work shows a woman’s backside.

     The cartoon’s underlying meaning is that if women engage in politics then they will forget their roles as women. The artist is very biased and he/she obviously drew this cartoon in order to show that women cannot handle a “man’s job.” The British would definitely side with the artist of this cartoon because they believed that manual household labor was all women were good for.

  This cartoon is very biased, just like every other political cartoon. This one specifically was made to show the British that they do not need to worry of the thirteen colonies. It is being run by the women, and they thought this as a joke. Well as history shows us, the British should have taken this more seriously because it backfired. It enraged Americans when it eased the British, which proved fatal to the British reign of the thirteen colonies.

                                                               

                                                          works cited:

Nelson-Burns, Leslie.  "The Contemplator's Short History of Women in the Revolutionary Era."

     http://www.contemplator.com/history/revwomen.html

Image 1 memory.loc.gov/ammem/ awhhtml/aw05e/aw05e.html             

Image 2 www.oldgloryprints.com/ Flagmaker.htm

Group Report

During our first in class group meeting on Friday, we quickly assigned the jobs to each group member. Colleen and Ben were to work on the first draft, Sean on proofreading and the group activity log, John with image researching, and Holly for link researching. We also made sure everyone had each other’s contact information, since we were going to be relaying information back and forth. After making sure everyone knew their task, we agreed on a mutual meeting time the following Monday ten minutes before class. This meeting served as a reminder to everyone of his or her appointed tasks and to make sure we were all on track. After the brief meeting on Monday, the group kept in contact to make sure everyone got their work into the final post.

Post #1: Native American Creation Stories

     After reading and analyzing the three creation stories, one can notice many different trends in the way the stories were produced. In the time span from 1650 to 1910 a lot of things can change. Specifically in these three Native American creation stories, The Indians of the New Netherlands For the Creation, The Origins of Ottawa Society Recalled by Nicholas Perrot, and Remaking the World: A Sioux Story, changes in the status and roles of women in the society and the Anglo’s impact on the Native Americans are evidently shown. In order to understand, one has to relate certain events in history to the stories.

     The roles and status of women are very different in all three stories. In the first story even though this woman is described as “gross or corpulent,” one can speculate from the story that women were considered nurturing and God’s loving partner, (The Indians of the New Netherlands For the Creation). Women were highly respected in 1650, in the New Netherlands society. In the second story women were not portrayed as highly respected as in the first story. Women were like servants to their husbands. They made shoes, cleaned, sewed, cooked, and even skinned the hunted animals. In the third story women are not even mentioned. This shows that the status of women in the Native American culture and society had went from respect to lack there of from 1650-1910. Along with the status of women changing, evidence of influence from the Anglo’s is shown.

    There is some evidence especially in the last story, written in 1935, that shows that the Christians had a great impact on the Native American society. Resemblances of bible stories are evident as well. “When he sang the fourth song and stamped on the earth, it split open in many places like a shattered gourd, and water flowed from the cracks until it  covered everything,” (Remaking the World: A Sioux Story). This quote from the last story is symbolic and resembles The Great Flood and the Noah’s Arc stories from the bible. Also the use of the words “Creating power” shows how Native Americans started using different speech in their oral creation stories. By saying that the creating power created the world and man instead of an animal, as shown in earlier creation stories, it shows how Native Americans have adapted different ways of thinking, influenced by the Christian converts.

    There are many events in history that has helped many people understand the Native American creation stories more. From 1650 to 1910 the three different creation stories have changed dramatically, especially evident is the status of women in Native American society and the influence of Christianity in the language and way of thinking of many Native Americans. The greatest change observed after reading the three creation stories was how the language and thought processes of the Native Americans was influenced by the Anglo’s, who were trying to convert them to Christianity.

HIST 120

This is my first post and it is just a test.