To Beget a Tame Breed of People: Sex, Marriage, Adultery, and Indigenous North American Women

Eighteenth-century primary sources depict a number of group sexual attacks on southeastern Indian women by Indian men as punishment for adultery. To maintain that these events were the result of adultery is problematic, as all modern scholarship provides evidence that Native women had significant status, authority, and freedom, especially regarding sexual matters. This article reexamines these sources and suggests that the events were not a result of any Euro-American concept of adultery. Instead, it presents some alternative explanations that are more in accordance with Indian tradition as opposed to European social conventions, while simultaneously shedding further light on the lives of Native American women.