How does gender inform Perdue’s analysis of Cherokee political society? How does she redefine political leadership and power?
Thinking more generally about the narrative arc of her book, what were for Perdue the principal changes in the lives of Cherokee women over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Does she cite continuities in this same history? What sources does she use to reach her conclusions?
We might also think about how this work intervenes in the field of Indigenous history as a whole. In what ways does her work critique (perhaps implicitly) previous accounts of Native American history, including those of Jennings, White, Richter, and Edmunds? What new standards does Perdue set for subsequent scholarship?
