“Her father, proud of her uncommon intelligence and beauty, resolved to mate her with the most renowned of warriors, and the most expert of hunters. In the spring of 1765, when she had just passed her fourteenth birth-day, she attracted the attention of one worthy to claim the prize. Nee-hee-o-ee-woo, The Wolf of the Hill, was a noble-looking young chief, belonging to the neighbouring tribe of Shiennes.”
Zah-gah-see-ga-quay’s early marriage indicates that a woman’s prime orthodox role is to bear children. Her father arranges for her matrimony when she is barely a child. In the conventional times, a fourteen-year old is a juvenile who does not have the capacity to get into a marriage contract.
“It was generally supposed that the Indians knew nothing of agriculture, till they saw it practiced by the whites, but this is not true. In our war with the Indians, 1794, Gen.Wayne destroyed many settlements of the Wyandots and Miamia on the shores of Lake Erie. In an official dispatch, he wrote thus: “The very extensive and cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of the rivers appear like one continued village for miles. I have never beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America, from Canada to Florida.”
Evidently, history is distorted to depict the Native Indians as communities who were not skilled in agriculture. The deliberate distortion is intended to justify the whites’ displacement of the natives. Gen. Wayne’s observation is an affirmation that whites did not introduce Agriculture to the natives, the natives undertook Agriculture long before the advent of the whites. Accordingly, historical accounts authored by the whites do not present an accurate picture of the Natives’ culture and their economic practices.
