Gendered Violence: Native American Women and the Early Republic

Abstract: The rise of the early American Republic and the expansion of U.S. territory in the century following the revolutionary war wrought havoc on the new nation's Indigenous neighbors. Federal policies of assimilation, dispossession, and military invasions led to the death of tens of thousands of Native Americans and fundamentally disrupted Native societies and lifeways. As governmental policies systematically targeted Indigenous lands, families, and social orders, women felt this invasion acutely and intimately. Sexual assault and gender-based violence surged in the early nineteenth century, and Native peoples turned to old strategies and new laws to protect their people and homelands from settler violence. As such, for Indigenous nations, the era of the Early Republic was fundamentally defined by violence and women were often on the front lines of these military, political, and social conflicts.