Women in 17th-century New England

The experience of women in early New England differed greatly and depended on one's social group acquired at birth. Puritans, Native Americans, and people coming from the Caribbean and across the Atlantic were the three largest groups in the region, the latter of these being smaller in proportion to the first two. Puritan communities were characteristically strict, religious, and in constant development. The separate colonies that formed around Massachusetts and Rhode Island began as centralized towns that expanded quickly during the seventeenth century.

An illustration of Puritan spiritual advisor Anne Hutchinson.

Prior to European contact, gender roles in native societies were divided based on class and gender, and tended to be more equitable than in Puritan society. Native women were able to adapt to the societal changes that followed the introduction of European social, legal, and religious beliefs, while still maintaining their identities within their indigenous tribes. However, historical accounts of women who arrived as slaves and free people from the Caribbean are scarce, as most written records of their lives were recorded from the viewpoint of white male elites and slave owners, who regarded the women and men they owned as property.

Colonial women in 17th-century New England

New England colonists living in Puritan-established settlements in the seventeenth century dealt with many of the same realities. Colonial settlements in New England saw a rapid expansion from roughly 1620 onward. The common assumption that Puritan society was homogeneous holds some truth, excepting matters of wealth. As communities became more established, people naturally accumulated more material possessions, differing in quality from family to family. As little physical money circulated in the early colonies, tangible objects became proof of both wealth and status. Disparity in material wealth was a major force impacting daily life in places like Plymouth Colony; the recorded inventory of William Pontus in 1652 valued his land, house, and furnishings at thirteen pounds, while in 1654 the estate of "Miss Ann Attwood" recorded the ownership of eighteen table clothes and sixty-six cloth napkins (not including other assets).[1] However, the function of social norms outweighed wealth in relation to personal roles and interactions.

Social structure

Puritan society was overwhelmingly male dominated, reflected in most areas of public life. Women could not own property independently, and therefore could not vote, a privilege that was awarded to “freemen”, or men who owned property.[1] Women were excluded from enacting laws, serving in courts, creating taxes, and supervising land distribution, all of which were government functions. The role of religion was also divided by gender, since nearly every colonist in New England was Christian in some form. In this area, women were also seen as lesser to God than men were. Men were inferior to God and women were inferior to men according to the logic of social hierarchy.[2] The average lifespan of a seventeenth century female colonist in New England who made it to her twenty-first year was about 63.[1] This age was about seven years less than the male average, and is often considered by historians to be a result of childbirth, although this claim is not widely agreed upon.

Private life differed greatly from public life. In a frontier society like early New England, communities were centralized organizations with strict social norms that were upheld consistently, making privacy for sexual and economic matters basically non-existent. The essential unit of a home was the nuclear family. From marriage to death (assuming no premature death) it was critical to the survival of a family group that wife, husband, and children live together. Married women in these settings typically underwent a time of about twenty years in which they reared children in addition to the obligations of daily work.[1]

The work of a married Puritan woman centered around domestic settings, and often was very laborious, especially in early New England. In practice, a wife and mother would be responsible for all the housework, cooking, and cleaning. But women would also trade food commodities in addition to helping each other with birth as midwives or companions. When permanent settlements were built and began to expand, European women were scarce, tending not to take permanent residence in early New England.[3] Although a few decades after the initial settlements in New England, female populations increased as birth rates rose.

Women and law

Personal disputes in Puritan communities, if proved serious, were occasionally brought to court by one of the involved parties. Women were excluded from court, but not the law. Therefore, in the case that a woman broke common law, they were obligated to attend trials. In Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1634, the town's court records include a dispute between Maria Drew and Joan Butler. Maria's husband, Edward, having heard of the altercation from two other men in town, “preferred a complaint against Joan Butler, for calling his wife a common carted ass”.[4] Joan Butler was found guilty and made to apologize and pay a small fine to Drew.

Earlier in the same year, in an apparent disagreement over debt, a woman named Agnes Williams sued the widow that she had previously been “attending to in her confinement”, winning 18 hens instead of the proposed 12 that the “widow Hollens” had intended to pay.[4] In this disagreement, there were no exchanges of personal insults, which might add to the reason why, unlike with Drew and Butler, the sentence in this case was not as harsh.

Social sway

Women were often adept at using societal roles to their benefit. The lack of privacy in any given community made personal information valuable knowledge. Puritans valued sex for procreation as a tool to “gauge moral quality” over any other functions. Early seventeenth-century Puritans were very critical of pre-marital sex. “…the boundary between illicit and licit sex was crossed once a couple became committed to each other.”[5]

Pre-marital sex with intent to marry was allowed, and a woman being pregnant out of wedlock was acceptable if later married to the same man. Marriage contributed to overall themes of social stability and procreation. As matrimony provided the only legitimate context for sex, controversy over marital formation and dissolution "had profound implications for sexual politics, in local communities as well as in county courts and legislative assemblies.”[5]

Native American women in 17th Century New England

For centuries prior to colonization, Native American women lived much in the same way within their respective tribes. Similar to the society of colonial New England, indigenous women were ascribed specific roles in their communities. Women were usually responsible for “cooking, preserving foods, or making household utensils and furniture.”[2] In most cases, a woman lived around other women in close groups within a community, unconfined to the central unit of a heterosexual couple. Women were responsible for growing and cultivating crops, most notably maize, where it was common for a woman to claim and use land that her mother had left her. Their work in organizing food sources accounted for up to 75 percent of the average person's annual diet.[6]

Marriage

The concept of marriage in Native American society differed from the colonial version in both ceremony and meaning. In Native society, relationships were much more elastic than those of New England colonists. The appearance of youthful sexual experimentation, “divorce”, and, less often, polygamy would have been relatively normal.[6]

Men with higher political standing in the tribe would sometimes take multiple wives. One tribal leader, or sachem, could marry his son to another sachem's daughter to further the union between the two tribes. In some cases, a sachem might take multiple wives who were higher-ranking members of other tribes, reinforcing the common practice of confederation building between neighboring tribes.[7]

Major Native American Federations

The seven principle tribal confederations of the Native peoples of New England, or Ninnuock (“the people”), were the Mahican and Mohegan, Nipmuck groups, the Pequots, the Sokoki, the Abenaki, and the Pennacook. These broader groups were constantly in flux and challenging one another for local dominance. For example, of the Nipmuck confederation located in Eastern Massachusetts, were the Pocasset, one of many tribes in the area, whose lands reached down to northern Rhode Island. When the Europeans arrived, their leader, Sagamore Conbitant, was distrustful of the settler's intentions, and his early feeling later proved to be right. After he died, his daughter Weetamoo succeeded him as leader. Later she married one of Massasoits sons, bringing both their social ranks higher, and strengthening tribal bonds.[7]

European effects on Native Women

Native women in New England, such as Sarah Ahhaton who lived during the mid-seventeenth century, experienced a cultural clash as the introduction of European settlements and customs eroded the historic lands and ways of life of Indigenous people. In spring of 1668, Sarah Ahhaton lived in a small town inhabited by Christian Native Americans.[6] Her husband of ten years, William (the son of the chief), brought charges against her with the local court. He accused Sarah of flirting with another married man in the previous two years, known as Joseph. Even though it was observed by the community that William had previously struck Sarah, her husband's offense became the prevailing charge, and she was ordered to no longer be left alone with Joseph. Weeks later, she and Joseph disobeyed the court ordered and fled to his mother's house a few miles away. Eventually she returned home but refused to stop seeing Joseph. Finally, after having been alleged to consummating relations with Joseph, she fled from her tribe.[6] The dismissal of her answers in court, although morally superior to her husbands, reflected the influence of European customs on her society.

Enslaved women in 17th Century New England

Most scholars agree that the first slave ship to New England, the Desire, arriving in 1638, brought some of the first people of African descent to Boston,[3] having been captured or purchased as part of the African and international slave trades. Women of African or Caribbean descent were one of the three unique and diverse ethnic groups in 17th-century New England, however, few left behind personal accounts.[3] The abundance of primary sources left by Europeans offers the most comprehensive view into the lives of the region's non-white residents. Legal records are crucial to understating official stances that colonies maintained on human rights and crime, as the choices and practices of New England's courts reflect broader societal norms.

As Twombley et al. summarized, “The Puritans did not hold advanced racial views but they did place a high priority on the universality of justice.” The emphasis in Puritan society on order is exemplified by the judicial actions they enforced. Desire for prosperity was valued so highly by the early colonies that ensuring their stable continuity took priority over most other issues. The result being that a person's religious beliefs were more likely to receive negative attention than their race. Hence, of the 245 penalties recorded by the court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1630 and 1641, 121 were remitted at least partially if not in full.[8] As author Jules Zanger notes, the cause of remittances as originating from “…the significance Puritan authorities attached to confession and repentance [that] was in great part responsible for many of the remissions granted.”[8] People of African or Caribbean descent were more likely to succeed in seventeenth-century New England society if they were Christian.

References

Demos, John (1970). The Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. New York: Oxford University Press.
Evans, Sara (1997). Born for Liberty. New York: Free Press Paperbacks.
Warren, Wendy (Spring 2007). "The Cause of her Grief: The Rape of a Slave in Early New England". Journal of American History. 93 (4) – via Ebsco Host.
"Northampton County Records in 17th Century". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 4 (4). 1897.
Godbeer, Richard (2002). Sexual Revolution in Early America. New York: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Marie Plane, Ann (2000). Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Johnson, Steven (1995). Ninnuock (The People). Marlborough, Massachusetts: Bliss Publishing Company, Inc.
Zanger, Jules (1965). "Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts". The William and Mary Quarterly. 22 (3).