ropean society held the belief that women belonged in the house doing domestic chores. Also through a patrirical system of social order the women had no property or political rights. Through the attempt to convert the natives to European religious and social ideals the native women took a reduction of political and social standing. Another group that noticed a decline in living conditions where the African peoples. Taken as prisoners of war from their villages by fellow Africans, they where forced to make a march ,in shackles, to the coast which many did not survive. Once to the African coast they where held in forts until the slave traders had obtained a full load of human cargo (HIST 210 Lecture notes). Treated as cargo as they neared land they where rubbed with oil and forced to exercise in an attempt to make them look healthy (HIST 210 lecture notes). The slave women upon arrival to the New World where sold at auction and then taken to their perspective southern plantations or northern homes. In the south they where required to work long hours in the fields, in the north they took up the domestic workload of their mistress. The southern slave women worked in the fields through their child bearing years (First Generations Pg. 122). This led to a high mortality rate but families still managed to develop. Southern slave women where frequently separated from their families. Where as in the north childbearing was prohibited since it forced the slaves owner to feed another, most times, unwanted slave.Still another group, the Dutch, who settled the New Netherlands, received a decline in political power and economic opportunity. The women of the New Netherlands through a Dutch legal code, borrowed from Roman law, held their right to a maiden name and the right to still own property as well as exercise economic opportunity after marriage (American Colonies Pg. 256). The Dutch women when they where widowed received half of the f...
