A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier (17 page)

Why Phebe did not tell anyone about her life and likely adoption is probably related to the racism and social mores of her times. It was one thing for a man to relate his stories of being adopted into the tribe and of being accepted into the warrior culture, but for a woman, matters were different. To the typical white settler, uneducated in the culture of the Native American world, adoption might imply she became the property of a male with all the sexual rights that might entail. In a society where many said any white woman should prefer death to suffering the sexual “depredations” of a savage, it is understandable, perhaps, that she was reluctant to add any detail to her story. Of course, as we now know, no Wyandot male would have ever forced himself on her. In the Wyandot community, sexual activities by unmarried members of the tribe were common and even encouraged, but they were virtually always consensual, and rape was almost unknown.

What did almost certainly happen upon Phebe’s arrival in the village was a decision by the Clan Mothers to adopt her. While these elder women of the community might deliberate her fate, adoption of women and children into a Wyandot tribe was essentially automatic. Furthermore, given the Wyandots’ love and care for their own children, it is hard to imagine that, once they learned the fate of Phebe’s children, the women of the village could not help but feel some empathy for her. The story that Phebe was given to the family of the dead warrior makes sense, as the Wyandot typically would give captives over to adoption by families who had lost members during a raid. In fact, in some cases, when a captive woman was given to a family to replace a lost female matriarch, the new adoptee would actually assume the role of her predecessor and be the leader of her longhouse.
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Phebe then would go through the adoption rituals. First, she would be required to run a gauntlet composed of the village women. Her gauntlet most likely consisted of two parallel lines of women, who stood facing one another with just enough space between the lines for her to run. The length of any particular gauntlet varied based on the size of the village, but at times it could be several hundred yards long. At the end, there would be an objective to reach, usually a council house, a village chief or some specific object. As Phebe ran the gauntlet, the women struck her with fists, clubs, switches and briars. However, the thrashing a woman received would typically be much lighter than that administered by warriors on a male captive. This process was not seen so much as one in which anger and grief were expressed but, rather, one in which the women were beating the “whiteness” out of Phebe.
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Although Phebe said she was not allowed to wash at first, a ritual bathing would be the next step in the adoption process. She would have been taken down to the stream near the village where the women of her new longhouse home would plunge her into the water, then wash and rub her severely. As one chief explained to a male captive, this Indian “baptism” was necessary to ensure “every drop of white blood was washed out of your veins.”
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With the bathing finished, the transformation into Wyandot society was completed by dressing Phebe in Wyandot clothing. For a woman, this meant wearing moccasins on her feet, along with a deerskin cloak, breechclout and skirt, with the latter extending from the waist to partway up the knees. The only exception to this attire would come the following summer, when most Wyandot women left their bodies bare from the waist up.
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One can only imagine what Phebe’s reaction was to that particular custom.

This mid-eighteenth century drawing depicts the clothing of a Wyandot woman.
New York Public Library
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After that, Phebe would be accepted into her new family, living in the longhouse and working alongside the other women of her adopted lineage. At first, she likely was exposed to brief periods of abuse and hard labor that alternated with periods when she was treated affectionately as a family member.
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Soon, however, as she proved herself worthy, she would be embraced, loved and cared for as though she was a Wyandot by birth.

Phebe’s life with the Wyandot almost certainly included working in the fields, a task she was familiar with from her life as a settler. While Wyandot men were responsible for clearing the farm fields, once that was complete, all farming activities fell under the authority of the village women, and they performed all the agricultural labor. They loosened the soil with hoes, planted the seeds, pulled weeds and harvested the crops. These crops usually included corn, beans and squash, all of which were grown in the same fields, using cornstalks as poles to support the bean plants. Furthermore, Wyandot women displayed great insight and detailed technical farming knowledge. For example, to combat the danger posed by late spring frosts, they planted their squash seed in bark trays filled with powdered wood, which they kept near the fires in the longhouses. After the seeds had sprouted, they transferred the young plants to the fields.
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If there were no signs of potential raids by the white militia, women would sometimes leave the village with their children during the early weeks of summer to live in small cabins near the fields. These cabins were essentially smaller versions of the longhouses, and each one belonged to a different lineage. As the warm summer days went by, Phebe and the other women worked hard to keep the fields weeded, as the children made sure any birds or small animals were kept away. In just over three months time, the corn would grow to over six feet high, bearing two or three ears each, with each ear producing between 100 and 650 kernels. In early September, the Wyandot women harvested the corn, pulling the leaves back and bundling the cobs, which were hung from poles under the roof of the longhouse to dry. When dry and ready for storage, the women cleaned and shelled the corn before storing it in large vats.
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Besides farming, Phebe would have also participated in gathering activities that supplemented the food grown in the fields. Many varieties of berries were collected by the women of the village, with some being dried for use in the winter, as treats for the sick, to add flavor to otherwise bland corn porridge called
sagamité
and to put into small cakes they baked in ashes. Acorns, which were boiled to remove their inherent bitterness, as well as walnuts and grapes, were also common items on the Wyandot menu.
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As might be expected, cooking also fell into the Wyandot woman’s list of responsibilities. Again, while this was certainly not an unknown chore to Phebe, some of the items cooked and their unique preparation were probably new to her. Although some summertime meals were cooked outside, most meal preparation took place at the family fireplace inside the longhouse. As with the fireplaces of colonial settlers like Phebe, these hearths were kept active constantly. If a new fire had to be made, it was done by rubbing one stick inside the hollow of another. Despite the fact that the entire extended lineage family lived within the same longhouse, the two daily meals consumed by the Wyandot were always cooked and eaten separately by each nuclear family.
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Of course, corn was the staple of the Wyandot diet. The corn that had been dried by the Wyandot women of the longhouse was either pounded into flour using a mortar hollowed out of a tree trunk and a pole about six feet long or else ground between two stones. The best and most grit-free flour was produced using the wooden mortar.
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Although the Wyandot prepared a variety of dishes, much of their cuisine revolved around a few essential items. Their most common food was the
sagamité
, which they made by boiling cornmeal in water. They would add a little variety to this otherwise dull dish by including bits of fish, meat or squash. Fish, either whole or cleaned, were boiled for a brief period, then pounded into a mash and returned to the pot to complete cooking, with no attempt made to remove the bones, scales and entrails. During special feasts, Wyandot women would prepare a thick corn soup and serve it with fat or oil poured over it. They also cooked a soup made from roasted kernels of corn mixed with beans, as well as another from
andohi
. The latter was regarded as a delicacy, consisting of immature ears of corn fermented for several months in a stagnant pool of water.
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The Wyandot also made unleavened bread, cooked under the ashes of the longhouse fires. The bread dough was first rolled into cakes a few inches long and often included dried fruit and small bits of deer fat. The cakes were then either wrapped in fresh corn leaves for baking or placed directly into the ashes. When using the latter cooking method, the bread was washed before it was eaten. In the summer, the women also made a special bread from fresh corn, which they first masticated and then pounded in a large mortar. The resulting soft paste was wrapped in corn leaves and baked.
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While all this might not have seemed too alien to Phebe, cleanliness and general meal decorum was probably something to which she had to become accustomed. First, the Wyandot did not wash their hands before eating. However, if their hands became greasy during the meal, they might wipe them on their hair or the fur of a nearby dog. In addition, they seldom cleaned their cooking and eating utensils, although each person appears to have had his or her own spoon and bowl. Finally, it was considered completely appropriate to belch without inhibition during meals.
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The women of the longhouse were also tasked with gathering and splitting all the firewood required for cooking and heating. The best wood was usually available after a winter storm knocked any dead limbs from trees. During two days in March or April, the women from each village would help one another collect all the wood needed for the following year, which they tied in faggots and carried back to the village on tumplines.

Lastly, Phebe and the other women were responsible for maintaining the interior of the longhouse. This could be a daunting job given that anywhere from eight to ten families lived in the longhouse, with each family having its own sleeping area and a hearth they shared with one other family. As a result, the space inside became quite confining, especially during the long winters. The women would regularly sweep the houses but the presence of smoke, dogs, vermin and young children who openly urinated on the floors made cleanliness a great challenge. Despite the care taken to ensure a dry wood supply that was smoke-free, smoke was still produced and not all of it escaped as planned through the holes in the longhouse roof. As a result, eye diseases were common, and many of the elderly members of the tribe became blind in their later years. Large numbers of dogs also roamed freely inside the houses, knocking over and often breaking cooking pots and then helping themselves to whatever food they might be able to reach in the process. It is not surprising, therefore, that mice, lice and fleas were also a common problem.
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The longhouses were somewhat Spartan in their furnishings. Sheets of bark, supplemented in the winter by a large leather hide or blanket, covered the doorways. Simple mats served as both seats and mattresses, and each person had his or her own. When spread out, a mat designated that person’s place in the longhouse. Benches usually ran along either side of the house, and most work was performed either sitting or squatting. Fire was an omnipresent danger, so the Wyandot placed their most valued possessions in boxes and buried them in shallow pits both inside and outside the longhouse.
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Nevertheless, the longhouse was more than merely shelter to the Wyandot. For each clan lineage, it was the center of their family, a place shared with generosity despite the confining space, where harmony and peace was the rule. In many ways, despite the fact that it certainly was not an easy life, Wyandot society provided what could be an almost idyllic existence. One female settler who spent much of her adult life as an adopted Iroquois would later write, “Their lives were a continual round of pleasures. Their wants were few, and easily satisfied; their cares were only for to-day; the bounds of their calculations for future comfort not extending to the incalculable uncertainties of to-morrow. If peace ever dwelt with men, it was in former times, in the recesses from war, amongst what are now termed ‘barbarians.’”
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