By Peta Andersen
The Dead Wife, an Iroquois tale, is a fascinating story. Here’s the short version:
A husband and wife live away from their tribe; the wife dies; the husband grieves but is so lonely he makes a wooden likeness of her; the Great Spirit takes pity on him, and returns his wife under the condition he not touch her 'til they return to their tribe; the husband fails, and is left with only the wooden doll.
In her paper, Psychological Types from Iroquois Folktales, Martha Champion Randle notes that the main body of Iroquois tales are intended for adults and that, though the stories are quite magical in content, they are also well-tied to the real world [Champion Randle, 1952]. But what’s most interesting, I think, is that although it is the male who is the "hero" or protagonist of our story, it's only in relation to his wife that he is important.
To fully understand a folktale, we need a frame in which to place it so a we're going to take a look at Randle's Psychological Types from Iroquois Folktales, and W.M. Beauchamp's Iroquois Women to get a better idea of women in Iroquois society. (footnote-Remember, though, that the Iroquois were comprised of several groupings, and that some of the details to follow may not apply to all groups therein.)
The importance and prestige of Iroquois women was well-known. Agriculture was controlled by women. Equality of religious positions allowed for women spiritual leaders. Society was matriarchal in nature; women did not rule, but delegated to their male relatives, and, in fact, the basic unit of Iroquois society was the maternal family.
So, since that's quite a lot to chew on, let's break it down into that most favoured study aid, the bulleted list.
1. Family—what exactly is a maternal family? Simply put, the maternal family was comprised of a head woman, her immediate male and female descendants (think sons and daughters), the male and female descendants of her female descendants (her daughter's children) &c. &c. According to Randle, "some maternal families, consisting of individuals of three or four generations living at one time, numbered fifty or less member, while other has as manyas as 150 or perhaps 200. Such a maternal family lived in one long bark house, each married pair with its children having its own section of the house where the wife did her own cooking…tow or usually more maternal families constituted a clan; clans were exogamous."
2. Leadership—although it was the men who "exercised the real executive power" [Randle, p.15], titles were carried through the maternal line, and the decisions of who would be appointed clan chief were made by the matrons. Perhaps this does not seem like a power as great as that of the male chiefs—and perhaps it is not—but having the appointment of a leader in one's hand is indeed something.
3. Marriage—according to Beauchamp, there are few, if any references to polygamy within Iroquois society, though the dissolution of the marriage state, I.e. Divorce, was easily granted even if rarely applied for (possibly tied to the seeming informality of Iroquois marriages, though Beauchamp's paper does not allow for views other than those of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century Western world). There were, however, certain points, or aspects, of marriage that stand out: among the Mohawks, there was an allotment of a couple's resources or assets allocated to the wife; among the Onondaga, "the only community of goods there is between the one and the other is that the husband gives all the fruits of the chase to his wife, who renders him some services in recompense, and is obliged to cultivate his fields and make his harvest," [Beauchamp, p.81]; men and women within the same clan were not allowed to marry due to the nearness of their relationship; and children were considered of the mother's clan rather than the father's.
4. Work and the division of labour—according to Beauchamp, "there was a division of work between men and Women, and the women's work was often assigned to men who had become slaves of the Iroquois. They had lost their rank as warriors, unless adopted by some family or clan: The work of the women was to collect fuel, usually only dry sticks gathered in the woods; to cultivate the ground, a very light, and rather jolly task; to carry the necessary baggage on the trails, while their husbands held axe and bow ready for defence against any sudden assault; to prepare clothing from the hides and furs the men brought in from the weary hunt; to cook the meat that had been found in the woods. There was lighter and tasteful employment in weaving and embroidery, but the Iroquois woman's daily lot was by no means hard. It was considered light by them. With the use of iron axes, fuel was more easily obtained, but the primitive mode was not very laborious" [Beauchamp, p.81].
I think, perhaps, that Lafitau said it best when he wrote that "There is nothing more real than this superiority of the women. It is they who constitute the tribe, keep up the genealogical tree and the order of inheritance, and perpetuate the family. They possess all real authority; own the land and the fields, and their harvests; they are the soul of all councils, the arbiters of peace and war; they have care of the public treasury; slaves are given to them; they arrange marriages; the children belong to them, and to them and their blood is confined the line of descent and the order of inheritance."
So, now we've learned a little about the Iroquois. What does this mean in terms of The Dead Wife? Well, we know that the wife's role in the story—collecting &c. was the norm. There are several elements within the tale, however, that remain without sufficient explanation, so we'll consider them one by one.