{"id":136,"date":"2019-10-31T10:30:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T10:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nonnativewarpaint.wordpress.com\/?page_id=136"},"modified":"2019-12-20T22:15:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T22:15:46","slug":"gender","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/microsites.csusm.edu\/nonnativewarpaint\/gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the preceding pages, one may notice that all of the characters I have spoken about are male. This is not an oversight on my part. The writers apparently thought there was little room for women in these stories, especially Native American women, laced as they are with violent conflict which traditionally privileges males. <\/span>All for Liberty, America, Turn: Washington\u2019s Spies, Washington the Warrior, The American Revolution, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Drums Along the Mohawk <\/span><\/i>all have zero female American Indian representation. In <\/span>Liberty\u2019s Kids<\/span><\/i>, Native American women are present in episode 27 and 31 but only as scenery; none of the male characters interact with them at all (unlike a main character who is a British girl). <\/span>Sign of the Otter<\/span><\/i> has a couple lines for Tekhane\u2019s partner, and a few other women are present in Tekhane\u2019s village, but this makes up a tiny minority of the screen time and narrative importance, especially after Tekhane and Todd leave on their mission.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two minor female characters in <\/span>ACIII<\/span><\/i>. The first is Kanieht\u00ed:io (Kaniehtiio Horn), mother of Ratonhnhak\u00e9:ton, who plays a significant role in the prologue of <\/span>ACIII<\/span><\/i>. She becomes involved with the machinations of Haytham Kenway (Adrian Hough) first by wanting nothing to do with him. He is able to convince her to at least listen to him by rescuing some of Kanieht\u00ed:io\u2019s people from British incarceration. She is presented as a strong, capable woman who knows what her goals are and who has a stubborn disinclination to work with this British man that she initially treats dismissively. She is portrayed as being skilled in the outdoors and in hand to hand combat, along with a no-nonsense pragmatic demeanor to go along with her intelligence. She is, unfortunately, killed to provide Ratonhnhak\u00e9:ton with the revenge motivation that propels him through the story of <\/span>ACIII<\/span><\/i>. One of the classic tropes in Westerns is that Native women who become intimately involved with white men must be killed in order to free the white man from her dangerous corrupting influence, or to narratively punish her for miscegenation.10<\/sup><\/span> I do not believe that Kanieht\u00ed:io is killed for these classic Western tropes, since Haytham is not the hero of the story. Haytham is, in fact, one of the primary antagonists, second only to Charles Lee (Neil Napier), who is the person Ratonhnhak\u00e9:ton believes is responsible for Kanieht\u00ed:io\u2019s death. It is this revenge story that is at the heart of <\/span>ACIII<\/span><\/i>, around which the events of the American Revolution are woven.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n