03/24/2026
One of my favorite paintings depicting Our Grandmothers Dress - commonly known as a strap dress. Great story too!
Our posts continues with NETNOKWA, and WOODLAND WOMEN CHIEFS:
John Tanner's words: "In spite of her s*x, this woman was regarded as principle chief of the Ottawas" is revealing, both of Anglo perspectives and Great Lakes tribes of this time and place (late 18th century). Though Tanner’s description is sincere and appears accurate, his bias and misunderstandings should be kept in mind when reading his accounts.
Netnokwa was likely a high-ranking chief among others (she had much influence according to Tanner), but certainly she wasn't "the” chief of the Ottawa/Odawa. Yes her office demanded time to serve her community, and so her schedule sometimes dictated the family’s travels, when the family went with her. However Tawgaweninne, her husband, was not a second-class citizen. But Tanner's observation is correct concerning chief titles as Native women, when in formal leadership positions (titles passed and/or titles earned), often fulfilled those roles not based on marriages to male leaders but through their own clan membership, lineage, and community endorsement… Netnokwa's husband wasn't a leader like herself, nor would he had to have been to legitimize her position.
Most likely everything belonged to Netnokwa not because she was chief, but because she was the woman of her household, with exception to some redistribution materials and political paraphernalia (she would have been in charge of these materials because of her office). In many Eastern Indigenous cultures, women owned most of the household items (even in patrilineal/patrilocal households). However during the late 18th century a shift in household dynamics had taken place (more or less depending on the Native community),... such a change likely influenced by contact with Euro-American culture (and internal/cultural strife). Many Indigenous households had begun to revolve more around male-gendered work, likely in response to participation in the European fur trade (and in response to European values, like acknowledging primarily male "heads of households"). What John witnessed was very likely a traditional household where a woman was still very much in charge of the home and direction of the family.
In general Netnokwa was’t alone. There had been other women chiefs before herself in Eastern North America, and these female leaders weren't exactly all that rare before 1700... Take the woman known to history as the "Lady of Cofitachequi," possibly a paramount chief who the De Soto expedition had met and notoriously kidnapped in South Carolina (1540). In southern New England there was Weetamoo - female sachem of Pocasset, and Awashonks - female sachem of Sakonnet. Both these sachems provided warriors during the infamous 1675-76 conflict known as "King Philip’s War." There was Mamanuchqua, an Esopus (Munsee-Delaware) woman sachem of the Catskills (NY) region… “Among the Indians in Munsee country, some women, like Mamanuchqua, strode late seventeenth-century diplomatic floor boards as full-fledged sachems signing treaties and selling land. In Mamanuchqua’s case, her s*x was of so little relevance to her role as sachem that it was often not even mentioned in meeting minutes (1).” But with outside European influences and internal cultural upset and strife, female chiefs become more rare by the late 18th century, making John Tanner’s account of Netnotwa invaluable.
Despite the decline and disappearance of female chiefs in later centuries, such ambition among Eastern Indigenous women is not lost to history… Consider activist Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010) who became the first female Principle Chief elected to serve the Cherokee Nation (1985-1995). And Chief Glenna Wallace who today serves as the first female Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma (2006-present). At the national level is Representative Sharice Davids (Kansas, District 3), an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, who is one of two first Native American women elected to the US Congress (along with 54th Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo), and the first openly LGBT Native American to serve in the House (2019-present). With the backing of their communities, they too continue the tradition of Indigenous women serving in leadership positions traditionally reserved for men.
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(Note: Chief positions were/are usually reserved for men, though not exclusively in some communities. Women did, and still do, have leadership positions as clan matrons - a position exclusively reserved for women. To be clear, this post is about women chiefs, not clan matrons.)
(1) Quote about Mamanuchqua from Robert S. Grumet’s “The Munsee Indians: A History.”
Image: Jú-ah-kís-gaw, Anishinaabe woman by George Catlin, 1835 (Ojibwe and Odawa (Ottawa) are a related People). She wears a wool strap-dress trimmed in silk ribbons and glass beading. The strap-dress is historical garment that is, today, in the process of being reclaimed/revived by Anishinaabe women... Every year more and more Anishinaabekweg are wearing traditional strap-dresses for special occasions (See "Our Grandmothers Dress" at https://www.facebook.com/strapdress/about ).
More Women's History Month posts to come on https://www.facebook.com/WoodlandIndianEDU
