Role and Treatment of Women

It is always interesting to read about the treatment and roles of women throughout different time periods, cultures, and societies throughout history.  Pekka doesn't put major emphasis on this, but mentions it many times throughout the book.  As expected, the women in the Comanche empire were not highly respected and were used as more of a tool for male Comanche dominance than anything else.  

The first, most famous example we discussed in class on Tuesday is on page 45, and says, "Now you can take her.  Now she is good."  This line refers to after they deflowered a woman and sold her.  This action clearly shows that the women during the time were treated with little respect.  More support and examples become especially strong in the Chapter titled, "Children of the Sun," when Pekka talks about the Comanches polygynous ways.  p. 248 says  "Women in polygynous marriages are literally hewers of wood and drawers of water to their dominate and supercilious husbands.  Every description of domestic labour is imposed upon them to a degree not usual, even among savages."  He continues on the next page with "Marriage among the Comanches is a purchase which the man makes, rather than a contract between two individuals.  Polygamy is the rule, and a man marries only in order to increase the number of his servants."  He concludes his discussion of Polygyny on the following page, 250, by saying, "The escalation of polygyny went hand in hand with the escalation of slavery," and "Polygyny and slavery sprang from common cultural and ideological foundations: both reflected a larger patriarchal system that rested on male control and subordination of women and children and intended to reduce women and children to the objects of male honor, rivalry, and militarism."  Once more he mentions the treatment of women, but that of captives not 'wives.' On 252 Pekka says, " Comanches put women to work almost immediately after capture and used various methods, from physical abuse to monthly quotas of finished robes, to increase their productivity.  Captive women were also forced to provide domestic and sexual services."

At this website it describes not the mistreatment so much of plains women, but the conditions of their work and how "a plains woman's work is never done.  http://www.bluecloud.org/work.html

In the book Massacres of the Mountains by Jacob Piatt Dunn he describes how treatment of Indian women is usually always bad, but especially in the case of Plains women.

Although Pekka fails to give this topic too much significance, this mindset of treating women as if they are animals is what makes me have the least respect for Comanches and also makes it difficult for me to see them as such a strong and smart Empire.  Though it's true that the overall treatment of women during this time period was not high, I am led to believe from what I read that the Comanches was especially bad.  The portrait that is portrayed in this book and from other sources more so supports the conclusion that the Comanches were a savage people than it does anything else.  By talking about the MIS treatment of women in the Comanche Empire, it adds more to the idea of the "heathen" and "savage" peoples