Dagons Blade
I'll Take The Job
Originally posted by ragesRemorse
i think every one in history is known for rapping except for the indians
Being an American Indian of Eastern Woodland descent, I'll clarify that for you:
Many of the Eastern Woodland Algonquin tribes of the NE seaboard of America and Canada did not rape, because it wasn't permitted by the elders. However, the influence of an elder could be overridden at the expense of punishment to the offending warrior. When the elders spoke it was law, and they knew the consequences if it was defied.
Torture, not rape, was the forte' of the Eastern Woodland people: and if the captive cried or showed his or her pain, the treatment became worse, but if the prisoner showed no fear or pain, the treatment became less and less until it eventually stopped. Those who survived were either released or absorbed into the capturing tribe and given equal amounts of the work, a sign that they were accepted.
But this did not mean that prisoners such as French or British soldiers weren't ordered killed sometimes, esp. during the French and Indian war. After all it was a war.
Women and children however were treated differently.
Despite historical rantings by such early American sensationalists like James Fenimore Cooper and his BS Last Of The Mohicans and Drums Along the Mohawk,
The fact is that white or Indian women, when captured, would not want to go back to their societies inmost cases. European women were nothing but slaves in their societies, while in the Indian culture, everything was different:Women were given the highest status in Indian culture because they were givers of life, and equal with the men.
In all of the Eastern Woodland tribes, women owned the land, did the work, and even picked the chiefs and political leaders, and when a man married a woman, he moved in with HER family, not the other way around. Everything was matrlineal. And unlike European society at the time, women also had the right to say "NO."
This was true democracy and equality in one of it's earliest forms.