Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907.

Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. By Carolyn Ross Johnston. Contemporary American Indian Studies. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, c. 2003. Pp. xvi, 227. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 0-8173-5056-X; cloth $53.00, ISBN 0-81731332-X.)

Carolyn Ross Johnston contends that removal, the Civil War, and allotment of tribal lands in Indian Territory sparked a "crisis in gender" for the Cherokee (p. 2). After a succinct summary of the aboriginal Cherokees' egalitarian gender roles, she outlines how trade and the adoption of plantation agriculture created an elite class that embraced Euro-American gender roles, establishing a Constitution (1827) that shifted political power from the matrilineal clans to a patriarchal government. While women lost political standing, they maintained property rights and fought against removal. Removal sparked a "crisis of masculinity" because men could not provide for or protect their families (p. 57). While women endured rape, children's deaths, and the burden of childbirth and child care, their gender roles "were less disrupted than men's because they continued to function as mothers" (p. 58).

Using Works Progress Administration interviews, Johnston examines the Civil War and Reconstruction through the experiences of Cherokee women. Not surprisingly, war affected the women in ways similar to those in other regions. They suffered terrible violence--one-third of adult Cherokee women were widowed and many others left homeless. Yet some women found wartime responsibilities empowering. While the war allowed men to be warriors again, elite women lost their slaves and thus their class-based gender identities. During Reconstruction, for reasons that are not entirely clear in the narrative, more Cherokees intermarried with whites and converted to Christianity, and attendance increased at the assimilationist Cherokee Female Seminary, whose graduates filled the helping professions. Cherokee women also learned to use the courts to fight domestic violence in the tumultuous postwar years.

The final crisis, breaking the Cherokee communal land base into individual allotments, was especially grievous to women as the holders of clan property. Most Cherokees resisted allotment, and many embraced a revival of ceremonies, such as the Green Corn Dance, celebrating conventional gender roles. Women's efforts to maintain their culture have persisted despite continual hardships. The Cherokee have preserved a distinct culture and continue to produce strong female leaders, such as former principal chief Wilma Mankiller.

If the precise connection between historical events and cultural change cannot always be drawn clearly, Johnston's engaging narrative, based on solid research, brings to life many remarkable Cherokee women whose stories provide broader insights into gendered lives. As in other ethnic groups, Cherokee women's experiences were largely determined by class. As with other Indian women, Cherokee women adapted select aspects of the white agenda to their own cultural needs. This study, then, is a useful addition to the literature on gender.

KATHERINE M. B. OSBURN

Tennessee Technological University