Wives and Husbands: Gender and Age in Southern Arapaho History (New Directions in Native American Studies Series) - Hardcover

In Wives and Husbands, distinguished anthropologist Loretta Fowler deepens readers understanding of the gendered dimension of cultural encounters by exploring how the Arapaho gender system affected and was affected by the encounter with Americans as government officials, troops, missionaries, and settlers moved west into Atapaho country Fowler examines Arapaho history from 1805 to 1936 through the lens of five cohorts, groups of women and men born during different years spans. Through the life stories of individual Arapahos she vividly illustrates the experiences and actions of each cohort during a time when Americans tried to impose gender asymmetry and to undermine the Arapahos' hierarchical age relations. Fowler examines the Arapaho gender system and its transformations by considering the partnerships between, rather than focusing on comparisons of, women and men. She argues that in particular cohorts, partnerships between women and men---both in households and in the community---shaped Arapahos' social and cultural transformations while they struggled with American domination. This work also shows how the complexities of Arapaho gender are better understood by examining how the age system affects gender relations. Wealth differences, marital history, and---on the reservation---education also crosscut the gender system.

Over time Arapahos both reinforced, and challenged Arapaho hierarchies while accommodating and resisting American dominanes. Fowler shows how, in the process of reconiguring their world. Arapahos confronted Americans by uniting behind strategres of conciliation in the early nineteenth century of civilization, in the late nineteenth century, and of confrontation-in the early twentieth century. At the same time, women and men in particular cohorts were revamping Arapatio politico-religious ideas and organizations Gender played a part in these transformations giving shape to new leadership traditions and other adaptations.

Loretta Fowler is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of numerous books, including Tribal Sovereignty and the Historical Imagination Cheyenne-Arapaho Politics and The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains.