SOURCE: "Masculinity and Self-Performance in the Life of Black Hawk," in American Literature, Vol. 65, No. 3, September, 1993, pp. 475-99.

In the essay that follows, Sweet discusses the role of Native American masculine identity in the autobiography of Black Hawk, a Sauk warrior who was defeated by the U. S. army in 1832.

Traditional tribal lifestyles are more often gynocratic than not, and they are never patriarchal.—Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop

It is not customary for us to say much about our women, as they generally perform their part cheerfully, and never interfere with business belonging to the men!—Black Hawk, Life of Black Hawk

In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen articulates the need to recover the original feminine traditions of American tribal peoples as part of a general critique of white Western patriarchy. Traditional tribal lifestyles, according to Allen, underwent an incomplete but significant transformation from gynocratic...