Category: Native American Women
First Women, Native American Women, Poets and Writers

Betsey Guppy Chamberlain

• Maggie

Native American Mill Girl During the 1830s and 1840s, Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (daughter of an Algonquian woman) worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts and wrote stories for two workers’ magazines. A brave and pioneering author, Chamberlain wrote the earliest known Native American fiction and some of the earliest nonfiction about the persecution of Native people. Image: Betsy Guppy Chamberlain, right With another Lowell Mill girl Early Years Betsey Guppy was born December 29, 1797 in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. She was the daughter of William Guppy and Comfort Meserve Guppy. She was of mixed race: American and Algonquian Indian. Betsey married Josiah Chamberlain on June 25, 1820, and they had two children; he…

Read Article
Native American Women, Philanthropists, Women in Business

Madeline La Framboise

• Maggie

Native American Bussinesswoman La Framboise was one of the most successful fur traders in Michigan, while it was still considered the Northwest Territory. At that time, fur trading was a difficult, dangerous and male-dominated occupation. Madame La Framboise was one of the most prominent early businesswomen in the territory. Madeline Marcotte was born in February 1780 at Mackinac Island, the daughter of a French-Canadian fur trader Jean Baptiste Marcotte and Marie Nekesh, an Ottawa Indian. Madeline was only 3 months old when her father died. She was raised among her mother’s people in an Ottawa village at the mouth of the Grand River near Grand Haven Michigan. She must have been a person of some status there, as her grandfather…

Read Article
Indian Captives, Native American Women

Frances Slocum

• Maggie

Abducted by Indians in Pennsylvania Frances Slocum, or Maconaquah, (1773-1847) was an Indian captive who was taken from her family home in Pennsylvania in 1778 by the Delaware Tribe. She was raised by an elderly Miami Indian couple in what is now Ohio and Indiana. Slocum was reunited with her white relatives in 1838, but remained with her adopted Native American family for the rest of her life. Image: The austere woman portrayed in this painting by artist John Froehlich is much less Frances Slocum and far more Maconaquah. Childhood and Early Years Frances Slocum was one of ten children born to Jonathan and Ruth Tripp Slocum, a Quaker family who emigrated from Rhode Island to the Wyoming Valley of…

Read Article
Native American Women

Marie Dorion

• Maggie

Native American on the Astor Expedition Image: Marie Dorion – Escape 1814 by John Clymer Marie Dorion (1786–1850), a Native American of the Iowa tribe, was the only female member of the Astor Expedition (1811-1812) from Missouri to Oregon Country. Her journey followed that of Sacagawea by six years, but Dorion’s 3,500-mile trek was both longer and much more difficult. Her epic story shows the strength and perseverance needed to survive in the unforgiving wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Childhood and Early Years A member of the Iowa tribe, Marie was probably born in 1786. It appears that Marie did not to have a Native American name. She was most likely baptized in the Roman Catholic Church early in her…

Read Article
Native American Women, Poets and Writers

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

• Maggie

Native American Author and Poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842) was the first Native American literary writer. She was also the first known Indian woman writer, the first known American Indian poet and the first known poet to write poems in a Native American language. Now, critics speculate about the extent to which Jane also contributed to her husband’s writings, for which she was rarely given credit. So pensively joyful, so humbly sublime – this final line of her poem “Pensive Hours” aptly describes Schoolcraft’s writing. Childhood and Early Years Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was born on January 31, 1800 in Sault Ste. Marie in the upper peninsula of what is now the state of Michigan. Her Ojibwe name was Bamewawagezhikaquay, which…

Read Article
Native American Women

Polly Cooper

• Maggie

Oneida Woman Who Saved Washington’s Army Polly Cooper was an Oneida woman who took part in an expedition to aid the Continental Army during the American Revolution at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania during the bitterly cold winter of 1777-78. Cooper has long been held up as an example of the courage, generosity and indomitable spirit of the Oneida people. Image: George Washington, Polly Cooper and Chief Skenandoah at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC When the Revolution began, the Oneidas decided to fight side by side with the Americans, thus becoming the young country’s first ally. In the summer of 1777, a pary of Oneidas fought at the Battle of Oriskany, a significant engagement in the Saratoga…

Read Article
First Women, Native American Women

Sacagawea

• Maggie

Native American on the Lewis and Clark Expedition On February 28, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson won approval from Congress for a project that would become one of America’s greatest stories of adventure. It would be led by Jefferson’s secretary Meriwether Lewis and Lewis’ friend William Clark. Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone Indian, was the only woman to accompany the 33 members of the permanent party to the Pacific Ocean and back. Image: Sacagawea and Jean-Baptiste Monument Sacagawea Center in Salmon, Idaho As to the pronunciation and spelling of her name, Captain Clark wrote that the “great object was to make every letter sound” in recording Indian words in their journals. He therefore recorded her name as Sacagawea (Sah-cah’ gah-we-ah), a combination…

Read Article
Feminists, Native American Women

Cherokee Women’s Rights

• Maggie

Women’s Rights in Cherokee Society Image: Loving Sun Marianne Caroselli, Artist (I know the Cherokee did not live in teepees; I just love this painting.) In the early 18th century, the Cherokee existence was one marked by balance guided by oral tradition. Their belief in balance in all aspects of life didn’t leave room for a system of hierarchy that oppressed women. Men primarily assumed the roles of hunters, while women took responsibility for agriculture and gathering. At the time of European contact, the Cherokee controlled a large area of what is now the southeastern United States. Of the southeastern Indian confederacies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw), the Cherokee were one of the most…

Read Article
Molly Brant Plaque, Kingston Ontario
Native American Women, Women in the American Revolution

Molly Brant

• Maggie

American Revolution Loyalist Molly Brant Plaque Kingston Ontario Molly Brant was an important Mohawk woman in upstate New York and Canada in the era of the American Revolution, particularly in the Mohawk Valley, the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains. Her younger brother, Joseph Brant, grew into a celebrated Mohawk statesman in his own right and rubbed shoulders with the likes of U.S. General George Washington and King George III of England. Molly Deganwadonti was born in 1736, the daughter of Peter Tehonwaghkwangeraghkwa and his wife Margaret, both Mohawks of the Wolf clan from Canajoharie – the site of a barricaded long house village of the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois Nation in New…

Read Article
Native American History, Native American Women

Queen Aliquippa

• Maggie

Native American Leader Image: Young Major George Washington Visits Queen Aliquippa Queen Aliquippa was a leader of the Seneca tribe of Native Americans during the early part of the 18th century. Little is known about her early life. Her date of birth has been estimated anywhere from the early 1670s to the early 1700s, but historians have indicated that she was born in the 1680s, probably in upstate New York. The story of Queen Aliquippa begins long before white trappers had ventured into western Pennsylvania, so no accurate record of her early life exists. The information that can be found is extremely fragmented, so sorting through the fact and fiction of her life will be left to the reader.