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The narrative strategies that made the work of Child and Sedgwick distinctive were already a part of the Algonquian narrative traditions. Traditional Algonquian stories embody a logic of home of the sort illustrated by Child. In doing so, they also show that with the logic of home comes an understanding of women’s roles and status within a community that could serve as a starting point for a women’s movement in European America. The logic of home, in recognizing and valuing difference within a community, made women crucial members of the community as women, not as subservient or ornamental members whose value came from the men they served. As the logic of place af¤rmed the value and even the necessity of culturally different places, so the logic of home af¤rmed the value and necessity of differences within a place. Stories that follow the logic exhibited by “The Forsaken Brother” are common in Algonquian traditions. Although few were recorded before Johnston Schoolcraft began to publish, such stories were nevertheless part of the longstanding oral traditions of Northeastern Native peoples. Perhaps among the most striking Native stories to European and European American ears were those that not only illustrated the logic of home but that also illustrated varying Native conceptions of women. It was wellknown that many Native traditions were matrilineal, where membership in nation and clan was based on the mother’s descent, and not, as in most European traditions, on the father’s. In the Haudenosaunee Confederacy , women were responsible for appointing and dismissing male leaders of the confederacy council. And, much to the chagrin of white male diplomats, women often attended and participated in treaty conferences . Such a view of women was deeply opposed to the received European view in which women were understood to be subservient to men and dependent upon them, limited in ability and so in opportuni244 c h a p t e r e l e v e n Feminism and Pragmatism ties, and most importantly, limited in their ability to think rationally.1 As a result, European women often had no property rights, no access to education, no right to their children in the event of divorce, and no voice in government. At best, European women would carry out their natural biological functions as mothers and serve as helpers to their husbands, who would sustain the family. By the end of the eighteenth century, women were arguing against the legal, economic, social, and educational limitations placed on them. The leading voice in the English resistance to the established status of women at this time was Mary Wollstonecraft.2 Wollstonecraft adopted Locke’s empiricism and transformed it into a resource for arguing against the idea that women were naturally less able than men with respect to intellectual and creative work. Since the ideas and relations of human thought are all, according to Locke, the product of experience, Wollstonecraft argued that the incapacities of women can be explained as the product of limited experience. The narrowness of women’s experience ensured that they would not develop the complex ideas necessary for rational thought, but instead would only develop ideas applicable to their lives as mothers and domestic servants. On the other hand, if women were provided with the same kinds of opportunities that were provided to men, they would be able to develop the ideas and skills necessary for rational thought and so could participate in government, attend universities, and participate in other forms of intellectual work in society. Further, there would be no reason for women to be limited in their property holdings or other contexts of life where they had been all but excluded. Wollstonecraft’s ideas crossed the Atlantic with Frances Wright, an activist for women’s suffrage and a famous cofounder of the utopian community of New Harmony. Wright was also a well-known speaker who presented a case for the need to provide education to women and workers as a necessary condition of their freedom.3 The dif¤culty with this view, according to some, is that it seemed to adopt the all-or-nothing attitude of European thought. Either women were utterly equal to men or they were not equal and so related hierarchically to men as the lesser sex. Even as Frances Wright’s movement gained momentum in America, another way of understanding women emerged from the intersection of Native and European American thinkers as they worked against the policy of Indian removal. Much has been...

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