The Iroquois women had something over on us. Instead of our suburban nuclear family huts, all isolated from one another, and the inhabitants inside all quietly, or not so quietly going mad--the Iroquois women lived in communal female groups. At odds with what the bearded white 19th-century anthropologists believed, that Native American women were beaten and downtrodden by their men--the Iroquois ladies OWNED the longhouses. OWNED. They shared work and food production and child care duties.
