A Book by Tai S. Edwards

Tai S. Edwards’ Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power, published in 2018, offers a critical examination of gender roles within the Osage Nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, challenging long-held misconceptions perpetuated by far too common historical narratives. Edwards, an associate professor and director of the Kansas Studies Institute, has contributed extensively to scholarship on gender roles in Native American history through journal articles and reviews. In this work, she seeks to unravel and destroy the pervasive notion that Osage women lived in a state of degradation, if not near-slavery, a stereotype that has shaped historical and pop culture interpretations of Indigenous gender dynamics. It further explores the complicated gender roles that the Osage Nation practiced and how they changed as they were increasingly colonized.

“Edwards’s examination of the Osage gender construction reveals that the rise of their empire did not result in an elevation of men’s status and a corresponding reduction in women’s. Consulting a wealth of sources, both Osage and otherwise—ethnographies, government documents, missionary records, traveler narratives—Edwards considers how the first century and a half of colonization affected Osage gender construction. She shows how women and men built the Osage empire together. Once confronted with US settler colonialism, Osage men and women increasingly focused on hunting and trade to protect their culture, and their traditional social structures—including their system of gender complementarity—endured. Gender in fact functioned to maintain societal order and served as a central site for experiencing, adapting to, and resisting the monumental change brought on by colonization.”

The book delves into European colonial perspectives that misrepresented the social structure of the Osage, often portraying Osage women as oppressed laborers subservient to idle men. Edwards highlights accounts such as those of Reverend William F. Vaill, a missionary whose 1872 writings reinforced the stereotype of Osage men as passive figures while women bore the burdens of physical labor: “And [the women’s] condition is truly degraded; for while the men are reclining at their ease in their camps; smoking, or telling stories, or engaged in the sport of war, or hunting, the females have to build their houses, plant their corn, dress the skins, transport the baggage and wood and water, and bear many a heavy burden” (Edwards, Introduction). Edwards critically examines such accounts, questioning their accuracy and the motives behind these representations. She situates her analysis within a broader historiographical debate about the ways in which European observers misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented Indigenous gender roles to justify religious intervention and assimilation policies.

The book is structured into chapters that trace the evolution of Osage gender roles during this period, situating it within the realm of historiography while also incorporating elements of social history. Chapter one explores the foundational gender traditions of the Osage, while chapter two examines the disruptions caused by European encroachment and colonization. Chapter three details the nineteenth-century decline of the Osage Empire, and chapter four shifts focus to life on reservations. As a result, this book concludes with a call to recover the traditional feminine aspects of Osage society, which have been significantly eroded by centuries of colonial influence.

One of the main arguments that Edwards makes early on is that men of the time period when Reverend William F. Vaill was writing his scathing rebukes of Osage culture largely engaged in the very behaviors they accused Native men of practicing. Edwards argues that this faux concern over women’s well-being was deeply rooted in patriarchal systems that had been present in European societies since medieval times. Women in these societies were regarded as second-class citizens, subservient to men, making the moral outrage directed at Osage gender roles appear hypocritical and driven by ulterior motives. “By the nineteenth century a respectable Euro-American woman was considered naturally frail and weak, requiring protection from a laborious, lower-class, less-evolved life” (Edwards, pg. 3). This selective application of moral judgment, Edwards suggests, was a tactic used to frame Indigenous cultures as inferior or “savage” and in need of Western intervention.

Edwards also discusses the misconceptions at the core of European missionary arguments regarding gender roles in Osage society. Unlike European social structures, Osage gender roles were complementary rather than hierarchical, with men and women fulfilling distinct but equally vital responsibilities that contributed to the success of their empire. Women were not menial laborers or subjugated figures but played essential roles in agriculture, food preparation, furniture construction, and child-rearing. Men, in contrast, were responsible for hunting large game to provide sustenance and engaging in warfare to protect their people. Additionally, Edwards acknowledges that Native American societies recognized more than two genders, a reality that further complicated European missionaries’ attempts to interpret Osage culture through their rigid binary framework.

It is interesting to note that Edwards masterfully delves into the discussion of a term the book coins as, “alternative gender roles”, representing ideas that would be part of the modern understanding of the LGBTQIA+ community, and specifically the trans community (although these are not perfect analogues). “A few nineteenth Century missionaries and travelers noted Osage “men” wearing women’s attire and performing women’s work […] known as Mixu-ga (instructed by the moon).” (Edwards, pg. 19) A this time, most instances of this revolved around men that had visions of living like women, or in some cases, attempted to live a double life of working as a warrior when war was necessary and as a woman at times of peace. Edwards notes that female-to-male Mixu-ga was apparently far less likely, but did occur historically and was ignored or left undocumented due to colonizers simply not noticing it. Considering the political climate, we are in currently, and the overall idea that being on the trans gender spectrum is some sort of modern invention of popular culture, this evidence lays that argument out in defeat fairly easily.

A humorous aside for me, at least, was that missionaries and expedition leaders seemed to take many Male-to female Mixu-ga as some sort of odd anomaly but seemed very concerned about the opposite female-to-male Mixu-ga, or perceived female-to-male Mixu-ga, namely women referred to as “woman-chiefs.” One would have to surmise that the patriarchal mindset of the time made it hard to see a female as a superior, and having to interact with a woman in this position shook them to their very cores as European American men.

 

Tai S. Edwards’ Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power effectively supports its central thesis, challenging misconstrued ideas of gender roles in Native American history, particularly within the Osage Nation. However, some of her source choices present limitations. Edwards primarily relies on secondary sources, some of which have been contested or reassessed by later scholarship. This is understandable given her goal of disputing these misconceptions, but I feel she leans on them too heavily. Notable sources she draws from include Francis La Flesche, a Native-born ethnologist, as well as James Dorsey and Willard Rollings, both highly respected scholars of the field in their own right. This reliance on sometimes problematic secondary sources (such as the aforementioned mission registers, journals from expeditions, and outdated scholarly journals) made it challenging for me to personally classify this book—was it a historiographical work or a research study? A more extensive incorporation of Osage oral traditions could have strengthened her arguments, providing a direct Indigenous perspective rather than solely engaging with Eurocentric historical interpretations. As a result, the book at times struggles to decide whether its primary aim is dismantling flawed historical narratives or presenting a comprehensive research study on Osage gender roles.

What I did really enjoy are some of the wild ideas that missionaries, and other sources contemporary to the time, had regarding these cultures. Seeing the hypocrisy of their “pearl clutching” at native customs that they misunderstood as the exact customs they largely practiced at home was somewhat humorous. Upon discovering the sexual freedom practiced by Osage women, perhaps due to being divorced or a widow, one missionary was quick to label this custom “so brazenly licentious that it is quite disgusting.” (Edwards, pg. 55) Some that got past that hurdle were often awestruck by the fact that many Osage men had many wives, and both parties could divorce whenever they needed to. These marriages were not necessarily the end result of sexual attraction, but almost a business transaction based on status. “The men actually seemed to have a harder time garnering female attention because they needed to prove their ability as a hunter or warrior.” (Edwards, pg. 57) It’s fun to imagine missionaries walking around aghast, mouth open and gasping, upon learning of all of these customs.

In my opinion, Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power, is best used as a supplement to another more comprehensive text about Native American history and culture. On its own, it does not present a self-contained robust understanding of Osage history or culture, and assumes the reader is somewhat familiar with these ideas. This is likely based entirely on recency bias on my part, but reading this alongside a book such as Greg Olson’s Indigenous Missourians helps a lot. I am sure there is a huge, dedicated book to the Osage Nation I am unaware of that might even be better, so researching this would be a solid recommendation from me. That said, Tai Edwards has done a great job of both dispelling common myths about the societal structure of Native Tribes propagated by old scholarship and popular culture media such as Hollywood films. For that reason alone, this is an important book and an atypical gender studies read that most might overlook.