Women Warriors

by

t WAS the Indian woman's place to prepare food and clothing, lug firewood and water and till the soil. And yet she was not backward in standing by her husband's side and fighting to the death. In no tribe of American Indians is there any record of women regularly serving as warriors. In the exigence of surprize attacks women, white as well as red, would fight. Mrs. Bozarth, at Dunkard's Creek, West Virginia, in 1779, killed three Indians with an ax within three minutes, after her cabin was attacked and her husband and several others, men and children, had been killed. Yet there are instances of Indian women playing the warrior's part. Timberlake, writing on Cherokee “War Women,” says “the reader will not be a little surprized to find the story of the Amazons not so great a fable as we imagine, many of the Indian women being famous in war as powerful in council.” Nevertheless the woman warrior was the exception, never the rule.

In 1676 Magnus, a woman chief of the Narraganset, fought with the English near Warwick, R. I., and was killed after her capture. It is not supposed that she was accustomed to bear arms, although probably skilled in their use. When Nathaniel Bacon stormed the Powhatan fort near present Richmond, Virginia, in August 1676, and the blood of the massacred defenders gave the name to Bloody Run, there is no doubt but what the Powhatan women conducted themselves bravely. But as in the majority of cases these were warriors from necessity.

When Rutherford's expedition fought the Cherokees in the Nantahala mountains in 1776, nineteen Americans fell before the Indians could be dislodged. One warrior remained behind a tree and was shot. It proved to be a woman, painted and armed for warrior. “A wound in the thigh had prevented her escape with the men. Here is an example of a woman deliberately taking the war-path and playing a man's part. Another woman during the Revolutionary war killed the slayer of her husband and rallied the demoralized Cherokee and led them to victory. After that she was allowed to carry gun and tomahawk and participate in the war-dance.