[Author’s Note: This essay is part of the forthcoming book tentatively entitled, Mago the Great Mother: A Mytho-Historical-Thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, the Way of the Great Mother from Old Korea (Mago Books). This is also my conversation piece with the late Mary Daly (1928-2010) who used to broach the subject of Five Peoples of Americas in our conversations. Daly was discovering Gage in her later years but did not write about her feminist thought.]
Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), the 19th century United States radical feminist thinker, activist, and author, stands as the forerunner of anti-colonial matriarchal feminist advocates. Gage, pointing out that U.S. federalism was borrowed from the structure of matriarchal Iroquois confederacy known as Six Nations, nestles her feminist thought at the root of non-Eurocentric matriarchal polities.[1] Historically, the U.S. government issued the Indian Appropriations Act in 1851 and 1871, which illustrates how legally the U.S. took over the territory of First Nations people. Having lived through the Gilded Age, the last few decades of the nineteenth century marked by a rapid expansion of capitalist economy during which more than a half of First Nations territories fell under the U.S. statehood, Gage saw what a woman was not expected to see, U.S. Founding Fathers betrayed First Nations people, the Clan Mothers of the Iroquois confederacy in particular. Gage witnessed that the U.S. government stole the constitution of the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy for its own agenda of perpetuating and expanding colonialist capitalist patriarchy.
In 1987 and 1988 over a century later from her time, the U.S. House passed and amended “H.Con.Res.331, A concurrent resolution to acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution and to reaffirm the continuing government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States established in the Constitution,” which reads:
Acknowledges the contributions made by the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian nations to the formation and development of the United States.
Reaffirms the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes.
Reaffirms the trust responsibility and obligation of the Government to Indian tribes, including Alaska Natives.
Acknowledges the need to exercise good faith in upholding treaties with the various tribes. [2]
While the above appears to be a belated but necessary public recognition on the part of the U.S. Congress, Gage, if she returns today, would deplore it for it is a final seal to dismiss the fact that the very formation of the U.S. statehood exploited the matriarchal tradition of the Iroquois Confederacy. H.Con.Res.331 is a symbolic act that legitimizes the colonialist usurpation of matriarchal power. Patriarchal hijacking of the latter is justified in the name of democracy once and for all. Also gone are anti-colonialist U.S. feminist advocacies in the public domain. In the foreground, Gagean anti-colonialist matriarchal feminist thought has become further marginalized among feminists, if ever recognized. The young hear no anti-colonialist feminists in the so-called first wave of feminism in the nineteenth century. Students are encouraged to swallow the postmodern bubbles of anti-colonial feminist discourse, a deplorable impasse in the mind of women. In the Background, however, Gagean feminism ignites a new awareness that women from around the world CAN build alliances following nature’s diversity in unity within the worldwide tradition of Matriarchal Mothers. That is the underpinning of Magoist feminism, which propels the writing of this book.
Targeting the patriarchal nature of U.S. federalism, Gage refused to become a mere suffragist feminist for white women exclusively. She saw an old colonialist Eurocentric patriarchy in pursuit of its new capitalist gains resettling as the U.S. statehood in Turtle Island. And Christianity was the engine that boosted its colonialist patriarchal politics. Christianity provided U.S. Founding Fathers with moral authority not only to dominate their own women but also to appropriate the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy for the making of the U.S. Constitution, a new colonialist rule disguised as democracy. Put differently, U.S. Founding Fathers were religiously sanctioned to keep women as a property of men and take the land as they advanced into new territories. They found no better ally than Christianity, which put forth the ideology that God is the male and vice versa. The male is God.
In short, Gage demanded that the U.S. government must follow the footsteps of the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy. She was no mere women’s suffrage feminist but a radical advocate of matriarchal leadership in modern politics. For this, she, along with her colleagues, focused on Christianity, a driving force behind U.S. patriarchal and colonialist politics. Christianity needed to be shaken, if not dismantled. How did she do that? By outsourcing matriarchal rules of the worldwide non-Eurocentric world, Gage sought to undermine the espousal between Christianity and U.S. federalism.
The suffragist right for white women would mean an agreement in the colonialist appropriation of Iroquois matriarchy, a subjugation not a liberation for white women. Thus, Gage urged that U.S. Founding Fathers must incorporate the matriarchal rule of the Iroquois confederacy. In this regard, Gage’s feminism was distinguished from her contemporary suffragist feminists including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Gage’s critique of Christianity, often lumped together with that of other feminists of her time, was never limited to an equal participation for women in the church or a liberation of women from its oppressive teaching. She opposed Christianity not only because it was oppressive against women but also because it was the colonialist religion, which endorsed white men to rule over against native peoples.
For Gage, the newly formed U.S. government was nothing but a new form of patriarchy fully charged with its Eurocentric colonialist and capitalist goals. Gage foresaw the future wherein the U.S. would dominate international politics and spread a modern form of patriarchy, democracy. Seemingly secular, democracy promulgated by the U.S. government relies on Christianity. That Christianity is the largest religion of the planet is not irrelevant to the domination of Eurocentric U.S. democracy. Today without a direct support of Christianity, the modern political system of democracy has successfully instituted itself as an ideal form of government for modern nation-states. That would be a modern contribution of the U.S. to the world’s patriarchy. Consequently, moderns fetishize democracy at the expense of matriarchal socio-political practices.
Gage’s critique opens the door to the insight that modern patriarchy is maintained through the international politics of Eurocentric colonial democracy represented by the United States. Gagean feminist thought, underestimated if not forgotten today even among feminists, sheds light on how modern nation-states have come to preclude matriarchal leadership of the patriarchally non-conquered world. Put differently, the socio-political ideal of democracy is nothing other than a patriarchal usurpation of the matriarchal or gynocratic tradition of the non-colonial world. Under the banner of democracy, moderns are ever more tightly locked into a patriarchal system believing that they are given the freedom of many kinds that were not allowed to their pre-modern predecessors. The more fully women participate in modern democracy, the less likely we realize the democratic abuse of matricentric leadership. Ironically, the achievement of women’s suffrage would be a regress rather than a progress.
Matriarchal leadership stands for All not only for humans but also for all species and beyond. If a system is not for everyone in WE, it is not for anyone in WE. Matriarchy is not for negotiation. Gage’s feminism, rooted in the matricentric reality, is elevated to a form of soteriology. Gage urges the leaders of modern nation-states to return to the matriarchal principle for All in WE. The patriarchal model of U.S. federalism marks an era that Eurocentric democracy surpasses its competitors of the world in sapping and devouring the lifeforce of all beings in WE on a global scale.
The suffrage movement for women, the subjugated wives of white men, was an expected strife within the system of U.S. colonial patriarchy. Patriarchy, a factionalism in identity, is destined to face conflicts from within. Patriarchy, driven by a self-seeking oppositional group of individuals if not the supreme male at the top of its hierarchical power structure, is set for an militant insurgency from all directions. Arm competitions among modern nation-states prove an insecure state of patriarchal nation-state powers. Gage’s radical feminism, pumped up from the root of the matricentric principle, which is for all in WE, did not fall for a self-serving perspective. Her Euro-U.S. identity was disassociated with that of her colonialist male masters. Gagean feminism sprang from a sense of radical otherness to her own white people.
What draws our attention is that Gage saw the stark contrast between Eurocentric U.S. women and women of the matriarchal Iroquois First Nation confederacy. While white women demanded a right to vote for themselves, Iroquois Clan Mothers wielded power over socio-political affairs. The difference is that the latter took the role of the Mother of All. Here is an insight from the matriarchs of the non-white world: Women, as mothers in one way or another, the representative of the Great Mother, are no individuals whose lives are made for themselves only. Demanding equal rights for women as the same as those of men is a regression not a progression. Female biology is a tangible feature for the public nature of women. Women must guide societies and polities for they can stand for all beings in WE. Gage saw that Iroquois Clan Mother naturally wielded socio-political-religious power and operated a peaceful and harmonious living for the best it could be. Gage’s anti-colonialist feminist advocacy conveys a self-transcending moral agency that checks Eurocentric imperialism in the form of U.S. patriarchal power on the part of white women. Ultimately, her feminist thought is a self-critique of modern patriarchy clad in democracy.
The source of Gage’s radical feminist vision comes from her study on “the matriarchate,” more immediately from the Clan Mothers of the Iroquois confederacy, a model for U.S. federalism. In Woman, Church and State, Gage delves into a historical survey of ancient matriarchate societies worldwide. By “the matriarchate” Gage means the primacy of women in societal roles and the peacefulness of female rule. Her broad but careful study of worldwide mythological, archaeological, and religious writings takes her to the insight on the matriarchate (a society in which women rule) in pre-patriarchal times. Delving into ancient histories, her comparative research unearths thus-far-hidden materials from Egypt, Europe, Near East, Native North America, and South Asia and sets a tone for the forthcoming cross-cultural approach by feminist scholars. In the pre- and proto-patriarchal times of these societies, women, she maintains, held authority in family, religion, and state more than men did, if not on an equal basis, and that the female principle was revered as sacred. Gage goes further to say that the Euro-American Christian religion and governments are the patriarchal reversals of gynocentric religions and political systems of the ancient matriarchate.
A recommended reading on Magoism: The Mago Way: Rediscovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
[1] See History of the United States, Vol. I, cited in Gage, 19.
[2] Congress.Gov. https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/331 (December 22, 2020).