Cultural Interactions Between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans (College Board AP® US History): Exam Questions

“A growing body of contemporary scholarship affirms longstanding claims that both female and male elders shaped the public and political life of their people. Placed in the hands of those responsible for daily nurturing, the distribution of essential resources of food, shelter, and clothing was accomplished in a relatively equitable manner, which led to a strong and vigorous populace. Out beyond the villages, clan mothers and many a more ordinary mother, too, traveled extensively. Respected grandmothers served as elders, council members, religious figures, and diplomats, just as men did. There was a sharing of authority between the sexes that nonaborignial societies still struggle to achieve, four centuries after certain unorthodox arrangements were reported in the villages of Iroquoia.”

Jan V. Noel, “Revisiting Gender in Iroquoia,” in Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850, ed. Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough, 2011 

What effect did the societal structures outlined in the excerpt, have on early relationships between the Indigenous peoples and European settlers?