woman

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The Cherokee woman is due much respect for she was the backbone of the tribe. She was responsible for providing the vegetables, tending to the children and older women, gathering firewood, carring water, cooking the food and attending various councils and rituals. She would clear, harvest, and reap the field many times with the very young infants in craddle- boards and tied to a low bough while the older children would help. The older women who could not indure the strong physical labor would sit in the middle of the field and chase off crows. The Cherokee were very lenient with their children and never spanked their offspring, rather, they were scratched lightly with thorns or either humiliated into mending their ways.
The women were also responsible for furnishing Cherokee houses, helping men dress game, and fashioning clothes. They would weave beds and benches out of river cane, strips of maple and oak, and honeysuckle. They would often double weave the furniture so it would be very strong. The Cherokee woman would help her husband dress deerskins and then fashion clothes out of them by using the skins and very thin bones as needles, although they didn't have to make very much clothing because very little was worn. The children often went around with nothing on and the men and women would wear only a skirt. In winter they might wear a skin cloak or moccasins to help keep warm.

"Beloved Woman"

The Cherokee were a matrilineal (tracing family relations through the mother) society and thus, women held leadership roles. Women of great influence became known as Ghigau meaning Beloved Woman,the highest role to which a Cherokee woman could aspire. The name also translates into War Woman and was often awarded to courageous women warriors.
One such woman, Nan'yehi, later to be known as Nancy Ward, lost her young warrior husband in battle so she took up the battle cry and led her people to victory. This feat gave her privileges accorded a Beloved Woman including voice and vote in the General Council, leadership of the Women's Council, the right to save a prisoner from execution, and the right to be her people's sage and guide.
Nancy became an ambassador of peace between the Cherokee and the White man. She served as the negotiator for the Cherokee at the 1785 signing of the Treaty of Hopewell, the first treaty made between the Cherokee and the United States Government.
Nancy feared that someday the white man's hunger for land would destroy her people. Thus, in 1817, while sitting on the General Council, she advised her people to refuse any more requests for land and to take up arms against intruders, if necessary.
Nancy Ward derived her Anglo Saxon name after having married a Scots-Irish trader named Bryant Ward. Nancy was spared the sight of her people's exile to Indian Territory in 1838 as she died a few years earlier. She was the last woman to be given the title of Beloved Woman until the late 1980s. Nancy remains a powerful symbol for Cherokee women, today.