Five Things You Didn’t Know About Native
American Families
By Martha Conway
These days there is so much information
available that I’m fairly sure that whatever is news to me will not be news to
someone else. That being said, however, there is a lot I learned about Native
American families and communities while I was researching my novel, THIEVING
FOREST. Previous to this, most of my “knowledge” came from Hollywood or from my
6th Grade Ohio state history class. And I don’t even want to tell
you how many decades ago that was!
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| Ohio forest |
I had certain prejudices. I thought that
some tribes settled in villages, others roamed about hunting and fishing, while
still others traded and lived in portable houses (tepees). But as it turns out,
in 1806 many Native Americans did a combination or even all of the above, regardless
of their tribal affiliation. Much like today, families could be very fluid,
moving from one part of the country to another, sometimes living with other
families, sometimes going it alone, depending on what we might now call the
economy.
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| Potawatomi dancer |
Here are five other facts that surprised
me:
1. Different tribes
lived together in harmony
Villages might not consist of only one
tribe. In fact it was common in northwest Ohio, especially after the Iroquois
Wars, for several tribes to live together. It was better for the sake of
protection, and it worked to build up tribes that had lost a lot of members to
war and famine.
2. Separate
checking accounts
Women in certain tribes owned their own
land and farmed it themselves. When they sold their crop, they kept the money.
Their husbands had their own sources of income.
3. Chiefs could be female
I know, surprising, right?! Never saw that
in a Hollywood movie. Also, you might find more than one chief in a village,
especially if the village was a large one. Different chiefs had different
responsibilities: one might oversee agricultural disputes; another might interview
guests and newcomers.
4. Not all tribes
took captives
Different tribes had different attitudes
about this. Some tribes did not take prisoners at all, some let their captives
go after hostilities were over, while others converted captives into adopted
tribal members and treated them like family.
5. Intermarriage
and adoption was common
Inter-tribal loyalties were strengthened by
marriages, much like European royalty. And in fact, in some cases relations
through marriage took precedent over tribal affiliation.
Of course, generalizing about Native
Americans is like generalizing about Europeans—not everyone is going to be
culturally similar, even if they live on the same continent. And my focus was
very small: the Great Lakes Indians, or Forest Indians as they were sometimes
called. But even so: some surprising facts, yes? Or did you know all this already?!
FIVE SISTERS. FOUR ARE KIDNAPPED. ONE GOES AFTER
THEM.
ALL THEIR LIVES ARE CHANGED FOREVER.
”Conway's historical novel features prose as
rich as its characters ... hypnotic.” —Kirkus Reviews
"An extraordinary historical novel."
—Akron Beacon Journal
On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of
Ohio's Great Black Swamp, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind
a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters
from their cabin. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other
settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them
herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters, and the
parallel story of her sisters' new lives.
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| Potawatomi man's costume Field Museum, Chicago |
The frontier wilderness that Susanna must cross
in order to find her sisters is filled with dangers, but Susanna, armed with
superstition and belief in her own good luck, sets out with a naive optimism.
Over the next five months, she tans hides in a Moravian missionary village;
escapes down a river with a young native girl; discovers an eccentric white
woman raising chickens in the middle of the Great Black Swamp; suffers from snakebite
and near starvation; steals elk meat from wolves; and becomes a servant in a
Native American village. The vast Great Black Swamp near Toledo, Ohio, which
was once nearly the size of Connecticut, proves a formidable enemy. But help
comes from unlikely characters, both Native American and white.
Both a quest tale and a tale of personal transformation, Thieving Forest explores the transformation of five pioneer women and one man as they contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. It paints a startling new picture of European and Native American communities, along with compelling descriptions of their daily lives. Fast-paced, richly detailed, with a panoramic view of cultures and people, this is a story of a bygone place sure to enthrall and delight.
“Thieving Forest is the gripping story of Susannah Quiner’s quest to find and
recover her sisters, kidnapped as part of a plot against the family, all
struggling to survive in the unforgiving wilderness that was 19th century Ohio.
The interwoven tales of each sister – and Susannah’s search through the vast
forest and swamp that once bordered Lake Erie – are told in fast-paced prose
that vividly portrays a time long past and the timeless challenges and choices
of life both then and now.
Fans of literature about early life in America
from Last of the Mohicans to Little Women
will be delighted to discover Thieving Forest and add it to their list of books to enjoy again and again.”
– Alice K. Boatwright, author of Collateral
Damage and Under an English Heaven
For an excerpt of THIEVING FOREST, go to Martha’s website
at http://www.marthaconway.com
ORDER
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| Martha Conway, Author |
Martha
Conway’s latest novel, Thieving Forest, has been called “extraordinary”
by the Akron Beacon Journal. Her first novel 12 Bliss Street was nominated for an
Edgar Award, and her short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, The
Mississippi Review, The Quarterly, Folio, Puerto del Sol, Carolina Quarterly,
and other publications. She graduated from Vassar College and received her
master’s degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She
has reviewed fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle, The
San Francisco Review of Books, and The Iowa Review, and
is a recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship in Creative Writing.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she now lives with her family in San Francisco.
Martha has taught
fiction at UC Berkeley Extension and at Stanford University’s Online Writer’s
Studio. She tweets ten-minute prompts and exercises every day on twitter
(#10minprompt, #WritingExercise) via @marthamconway.
