Colonial Women
The story of the colonial era has usually been told as if white European males acted alone in settling North America. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, history books generally gave only slight attention to the lives of colonists who lacked access to power—servants, women, Native Americans, African slaves—thus creating wide gaps in the story of America. Yet without the efforts of these silent actors, the new country would never have been built. Scholars eventually recognized this fact, and during the 1970s they began collecting and publishing information about the daily existence and contributions of ordinary European settlers such as servants and other laborers. Anthropologists and ethnologists (scientists who study human culture) also retrieved a rich history of Native Americans dating back thousands of years (see Chapter 1). Efforts to piece together the story of African Americans were ongoing at the end of the twentieth century, producing a better understanding of slave culture (see Chapters 5, 7, 8, and 9). Similar efforts were being made to tell the story of colonial women—European, African, Native American—who worked hard to build their communities but remained essentially voiceless.
The idea that the New World (a European term for North and South America) was a place of unlimited growth, freedom, and opportunity did not necessarily apply to women.
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