THE ROMANTIC ROLE OF OLDER WOMEN

IN A CULTURE OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST

Melville Jacobs

During my earliest field researches among the Indians of Washington
and Oregon I arrived at the opinion that, in this part of the Northwest

Coast, a young male anthropologist usually established better rapport with
older native women than with other informants. If this view was correct,

the phenomenon had to be cxplained.  Was it a matter of the manner of shat-
tering of the local Indian heritages, which had permitted women to retain

healthier psyches than men? Was it because I related better to older women
than to men? Had contact and acculturative conditions of earlier decades

developed more hostility toward Caucasians in men than in women? Had such
conditions also intensified a cultuially channeled need in women to relate

to younger men?  Wherever I went the natives quipped delightedly, naughtily
and persistently about my working with older women in their homes.   I was

inevitably led to suppose that there was a special socio-cultural factor in
the amusement and gossip. I believed that it had more to do with the reten-
tion of pro-Caucasian interpersonal ties and with the continuation of needs
than with relationships and feelings created by modern conditions.

I recognized no clues until, in 1933, my wife joined me in ethnographic
and liguistic researches with representative survivors of the Tillamook

Coast Salish group along the coast of northwestern Oregon. There one of the
informantsa a woman of noteworthy sophistication in her comprehension of

personal relationships, indicated that in pre-Caucasian times many Tillamook
widows or divorced women of post-menopause age sought and enjoyed culturally

acceptable affairs with unmarried younger men* Married women either remained,
in a sense, the property of their husbands or of their husbands' families,

or did not desire affairs with youths because community approval of such ven-
tures was lacking.

The youth with whom a post-menopausal widow or divorcee had affectional
and sexual relations gave her some sort of gift which was not regarded as a

payment. She received, for example, a blanket during the earlier decades of
Caucasian entry. A tryst had to be apart from the village houses where many
persons were around. It occurred in the woods, perhaps near a berr patch.

We recorded a Tillamook song that men sang, the words of which were, OI wish
I would fall (or swoop) down in the berry patch." That is, were I only a

bird and could fly to a tryst with an unmarried older woman. An experience

of this kind was a standard means of introducing a Tillamook youth to the art
of unhasty sexual foreplay, at the same time that it served the purpose of
providing an affedtional relationship for an older woman who lacked a hus-
band. But one should not suggest primacy for the relationship needs of the
woman, in the light of indications that the affectional involvement of the
youth was often intense and sincere, A characteristic feature that was
noted for the liaison itself supports the deduction that the affair was

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unreservedly romantic: we were told that sexuality here as in some other

Northwest Indian groups was featured by lengthy foreplay, in contrast to the
speedy consummation customary among Caucasions whom these Indians knew. It
would be interesting to determine the effects of relationships with older
women on the feelings and behavior displayed by younger men in marriage.

We know only that among Tillamooks, and perhaps among a number of immediately
adjacent Indian peoples as well, a husband might spend several weeks or even
longer in patient foreplay with his untutored young bride who was also, of
course, almost a total stranger compared to his romantic teacher. We lack
information as to whether his marriage terminated his relationship with the
older woman.

We were told about one older woman who had had a sixteen year old
youth among other residents in her house, He would complain that his

blankets did not keep him warm.  She would retort, "Oh, my nephew can sleep
with me."  Tillamooks presumed that she had had sexual relations with him

because in later years he would sing a little song to his wife: IIf I had

not had an auntie, I would not know how to have semxul intercourse. Oh, poor,
poor auntieP' When he sang this song his wife would retort, "You ought to be
ashamed. You are like that Wren in the mythp having sexual relations with

his own grandmother'" The shamefulne's was not that he had had an affair with
an older woman but that like Wren he had committed incest. Unfortunately,
we failed to determine his actual kinship relation to his sweetheart.

Our Tillamook informant asserted that affairs of unmarried older women

with unmarried young men were discussed, not by the participants but by obser-
vers, in the presence of people of all ages. That was one way in which youth

learned that for their initial ventures in romance they might seek out certain
older women with impunity and also without the necessity for onerous financial
transactions involving many relatives. The fact that the women might have
children or grandchildren appears to have been a matter of indifference to

youths who sought such relationships. We do not have clearcut evidence re-
garding the emotional investment in and the concomitants and consequences
of the relationship.  But our impression is that in many, if not in most,

instances there was mutual respect and affection, It is easy to understand

these feelings in the context of a social system where feminine status tended
to rise with age and where respect for a post-menopausal worthy mounted with
her years.  In addition, persons living in the same or adjacent villages may
have felt much affection for one another,

Are there data that would indicate why older women entered relationships
with youths? Unhappily the notes of our field researches fail to provide

pertinent suggestions. Apart from' specific cultural factors, and there must
have been such, psychiatric literature suggests that where paychobiologic

impulses of a sexual kind are displayed in older women of Euroamerican cul-

ture, they constitute a reactivation of adoleacent sexuality.  It is therefore
of interest that there are indications, from the mythology as well as from
the ethnography in the Tillamook group, that there was some similarity in
adolescent and menopausal or later manifestations of sexual activity. For
example, the Wild Woman myths of the Tillamooks delineate a supernaturally

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powerful older woman who is interested in effecting a series of amours. Accord-
ingly she always dresses with the basket hat, abalone-decorated garment, and

facial paint that are the customary appurtenances of pubescent girls. Tilla-
mook and other Northwest myths clearly express an older woman's desire to

act like and to be an adolescent girl. The vivacity of sexual drive in older
women in Tillamook communities is as openly and frequently projected upon the
screen of their mythology as it is in the oral literatures of other Pacific

Northwest Indians. The strength of the literary expression of such behavior
there tends to corroborate a deduction that post-menopausal sexual activity
may have been as great in coastal Oregon as it was elsewhere in the Pacific
Northwest.

However, we might discount the data we have and the inference that we
have drawn, by supposing that our main Tillamook informant happened to be

exceptional and not representative of her community; that she was an especially
interested collector and narrator of stories that included an undue number

of post-menopause sexual motifs. But as each myth was told, note was made of
the person from whom she had learned it; almost all her stories had come from
her father, who in his turn may have been aberrant. Then, too, we may have

been at fault in encouraging dictations of a sexual kind. On the other hand,
since we conducted researches among a number of other Indian peoples of the

region, and many friends and colleagues have done field work in various parts
of the Northwest, we have reason to suppose that no considerable amount of
data of this kind has been sought elsewhere in the area. The conviction

therefore remains that we have not distorted our estimation of this facet of
Tillamook culture.

Cultural acceptance of romantic relationships between persons who were
far apart in age is only a segment of the regional indorsement of marriages

of persons who were not of the same age level* We heard of several women who
had had husbands much younger than themselves. One was a Clatakanie woman
woman from an Athabaskan band immediately contiguous to the most nQrtherly

villages of the Tillamook. She had gone through a series of such marriages,
and was also a wlove doctor."  It was said that only older Tillamook women

became shamans of this type, that is, acquired supernatural aid to give other
women power to hold their husbands so that these men would be neither abusive
nor interested in acquisition of a second wife. Undoubtedly the fact that

the Clatakanie woman had a relationship with a spirit-power which conferred

sexual attractiveness connected her in some manner with younger men and sanc-
tioned her interest in them. She was enabled to act out her need in permis-
sible and stylized ways.

Psychiatric theory regarding the aggressive or hostile component in

sexuality deserves careful checking in mythologies of the Northwest, as well
as in ethnographic recordingsa  We heard, incidentally, that when a Tillamook

man sneezed he often said, "Some old woman who is fuzzy in the groin is calling
me by a bad nameow He referred in this antagonistic fashion not to a yOung,
but to an older, woman, In Northwest myths where sexuality is ascribed to

older feminine actors, they are presented as murderers or other dangerous and
hateful figures. The rancor was against persons to whom maternal-like roles

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were culturally assigned, perhaps also against plural wives who were jealous,
but not against older women solely because of their age, At the same time a
preferred marriage was perhaps everywhere with mates of similar age.

Our evidence seems to rule out a custom of menopausal or poast-menopausal
sexual activity for most Northwest Indians and to limit the area for expected
and sanctioned expression of that kind to the Tillamooks and possibly to their
imediate neighbors, for whom it is undoubtedly much too late to secure the
data. On the other hand, all over the Northwest there may have been strong
desires and occasional outlets that were not severely stigmatized, Oral

literatures appear to provide most of the indications in the absence of the

ethnographic notations that have become difficult to obtain in recent decades.
It is therefore necessary to connect the distributions of certain feminine

myth actors with the scanty ethnographic evidence concerning the status, social
participation, relationships toward younger persons, and channels of libidinal
behavior of older women among Northwest Indian people.

An example of the paucity of ethnographic items may be given for the

Quinault Coast Salish of central coastal Washington, about one hundred miles

north of Tillamook villages. Dr. Ronald Olsonts Quinault ethnography, written
on the basis of field materials Jotted down over thirty years ago, provides

little beyond the explicit statement that it was thought that it would "poisonw
a young man to have sexual relations with an older woman. The early death of
a Queets berdache, who belonged to a group Just north of the Quinault, was

said to have been due to the fact that he had had sexual relationships solely
with older women. A cursory perusal of ethnographic writings suggests the

absence of Tillamook-like behavior of older women in other Washington groups,
in Oregon coastal groups south of the Tillamook, and among the Chinookan
peoples of the lower Columbia River valley. Since ethnographers have not

often made painstaking inquiries into the feelings and permissible relation-
ships of older women, omissions in technical publications are really indeci-
sive, however. Only the internal evidence of oral literatures may offer
definitive answers.

If menopausal and post-menopausal senxality as a matter of custom and
cultural stylization were more or less localized in northwestern Oregon,

what could have developed historically in that district to bring about so

wholly accepted a behavioral outlet? Was there a relative severity of con-
straints against almost all highly rewarding community participations for

women to the north along the coast, and a contrasted freedom in opportunities
to become shamans or to engage in other valued social participations directly
to the south? If so, did a confusing variety in permissible relationships
among peoples with whom Tillamooks occasionally intermarried and visited

involve Tillamooks in conflicting feelings which the women resolved by turn-
ing to "love doctor" shaanism, affairs with youths, or other alternatives
depending upon personal inclinations? Were the cultural conflicts which

resulted in a Tillamook proliferation of stories, told and enjoyed by both

sexes, about the eotional needs of older women?   Another possibility is that
polygamy, largely confined to hereditarily wealthy persons and an old feature
on the entire Northwest Coast, had severely curtailed the ability of many

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young Tillamook men to purchase young brides. Such a limitation might have

constituted a pressure for cultural approval of affairs with unmarried older
women. On the other hand, evidence in myths suggests an old sanctioning of
the custom.

A11 in all, the clues regarding social relationships are so numerous
and even repetitious in the oral literatures of the Northwest States that

one is tempted to surrender hope of making trustworthy deductions about such
matters from most of the published ethnographic sketches, and to channel

scholarly endeavors in the direction of analysis of the expressive content

of stories. An example of the resources that are latent in oral literatures

may be given by a myth which has a wide distribution among Oregon and Washing-
ton Indians. The plot tells of Wren or some other precultural actor and his
often unnamed grandmother, He goes out for food, kills an elk, and asks his
grandmother to help pack home the butchered portions. She refuses to carry
any part but the rump or genitalsnd is subsequently found dallying sexual-
ly with them. In a Clackamas Chinook version, from a group over eighty

miles east of the Tillamooks, she later masquerades as a young girl and has

intercourse with her grandson, who In shame and anger at his incest attempts
to kill her. The Coos Indians, who lived on the Oregon coast over a hundred
miles to the south, also told a myth about a grandmother who impersonated
a young girl in order to have an affair with her grandson. The Coos also

had a myth about a grandmother who agrees to carry home only the genitals of
and elk and who amuses herself sexually with them. Miss Sally Snyder found
the story in the Skagit valley of northwestern Washington in 1954 among a

group over two hundred and fifty miles north of the Chinooks. Although the

plot has not been reported for the Nez Perce of central Idaho, well over two
hundred miles to the east of Clackamas Chinook and about three hndred miles

east of Tillamook, these Idaho Indians heard a story about a woman shaman who
captured a youth, married him, and killed five girls with whom he had had

affairs. Then the people killed her, Other instances of commingled sex and
anger, all directed toward grandmothers but expressed in differing plots,

could be cited from the vast collections of oral literature already obtained
from the Northwest. For example, the Nass Taimshian far to the north tell
about the tricky grandson who cut his grandmother's vulva, roasted it,

awakened her and gave it to her to eat. Then he ran outside and sang, wGrand-
mother ate her own vulva4 Grandmother ate her own vulva2L Shouting at him,
WDon't enter my house again, slavel" she forced him to walk about outside
and remain hungry.

The wide dispersion of stories of such kinds reinforces a deduction from
ethnographic data that a number of cultural factors made for the imaginative

development of plots expressing love and hostility between young maen and older
women. Both along the coast and in the less wealthy interior east of the

Cascade Mountains a possibly important factor is a relationship wherein per-
sons such as aunts, uncles, grandparents and unrelated village elders played
a vital part in the care, feeding, restraint, disciplining9 education, train-
ing, and pride accorded children and adoleseentso Psychiatrists might urge

that one aggressive resolution or outlet which received cultural crystallization
for males and was sometimes expressed sexually was directed against any females

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who had functioned as early objects of love and hate. Along the Northwest

Coast they may have been either present in the household or in other houses
of the village.

If this point of view is valid, it must be woven into the theory of the
historical development of locally distributed as well as widely dispersed

forms of ethnographic behavior and myth projections which have been mentioned.
I am confident that a hitherto little appreciated feature of Northwest Coast

cultures is clearly evidenced: there is a qualitatively distinctive response
of commingled hostility and affection toward older women. Anthropologists

commenced intensive field research much too late in the Northwest to account
for, much less to depict, the specific libidinal outlets available to older
unmarried women in a district which includes Tillamook, as contrasted with
the absence or lower frequency of such behavior among older women in other
districts of the Northwest.

Although the title of this paper refers to what I have termed the roman-

tic role of older women, much of the discussion has so far dealt with cultural-
ly stylized expressions of that role. But it is useful and necessary to make
a distinction between romantic relationships that were expressed sexually

and a variety of relationships which were not so manifested, but were romantic
in the sense of deep affection and mutual interdependency; relationships of
the latter type were much more important in the society than those of the
former. Again, oral literatures of the Northwest offer far more evidence

about such relationships than can be gleaned from the sketchy ethnographic

observations of anthropologists whose informants were hardly able to verbalize
regarding such matters and who were, in fact, seldom asked about them by the
investigators,

As in many parts of the world, strong affectional ties, feelings of
belonging, and identification of self with others characterized Northwest

sibling, extended family, lineage, household and intravillage bonds. These
relationships were accompanied by emotions that were of Oedipal origin in
the broadest sense.

Northwest romanticism as expressed in oral literature is connected

with feelings that arose in non-nuclear family relationships. It is abundant-
ly clear from myths that members of the nuclear family, whether monogamous

or polygynous, were not the exclusive sources and objects of romantic atti-

tudes, In the oral literature emotions of a romantic kind are less frequent-
ly directed toward unpurchased future mates and members of the nuclear family
than toward other persons, One had intensely romantic feelings of bondedness
toward siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, as well as toward various
persons outside the nuclear family. Potential mates were brought together
in marriage largely by the decisions and payments of elders, and emotional
responses of distinctive kinds undoubtedly arose in such relationships.

Husband-wife relationships may have become romantic in quality as the years
went by. But if Northwest affectional responses are to be comprehended in
their types and totalities of expressions, it is necessary to understand
that generous feelings which extended to siblings, grandparents, extended

84

kin., and co-villagers went out with comparable quality ard intensity to spirit-
powers which each individual desired and eventually acquired. Spirit-powers

were actually only a special kind of kin who desired relationships with persons
as much as persons craved relationships with supernaturals. The link with a
spirit-power was as individual, symbiotic and profoundly romantic as any tie

with a person. Evidence from the oral literature indicates that it is neces-
sary to proceed upon the further premise that similar responses were accorded
the principal foods and major tools. such as flint knives and awls.  It is as
if they, too, were spirit-powers, kindred, or co-villagers.  Foods and tools
themselves wanted relationships with people just as spirit-powers and kin
yearned for their relatives. All must help and lean upon one another.

Whatever the affection and dependency responses may have been qualita-
tively, and irrespective of their variability of manifestation, they apply

to an impressively large class of relationships; it includes siblings, various
kin outside of the nuclear family, co-villagers, spirit-powers, the principal
foods, and the most important tools, The latter three were qualitatively

rather than physically anthropomorphic. They had had the overt appearance of
persons only in the precultural epochs which were depicted in myths. Since'
that bygone era the spirit-powers had appeared in the guise of human beings

only infrequently and largely during dreams, vision quests, and winter spirit
dances. Evidence is meagre concerning the supernatural garb in which food
and tools manifested themselves.

It would be absurd to say that older women of the Northwest were special
kinds of foods, tools, and spirit-powers.  Nevertheless, it seems that the

permissible libidinal relationships of older women to youths partook of the
kinds of feelings which I have pointed to without further specificity of
delineation. If psychoanalysts are right, deeper components in the bonds
of such women and youths flowed especially from the high status of post-

climacteric womenp their expanding participation in village life, and their

continued responsibility for children. The latter duty was assigned as often
to older persons of the household and village as to parents and siblings of

the nuclear family.  Additional factors in such bonds may be sought, for example,
in the feelings of widows whose husbands had treated them unflatteringly, and
in the sentiments of widows whose acceptance by the community had become such
that their creative worth was deeply respected.

Although I have been unable to offer much detailed evidence about the

romantic role of older women in the Northwestg future research on the Indians
of that region should not neglect the interesting problem of determining the

manifestations and causes of affectional behavior in such women. The broader
problem of describing all relationships to persons, supernaturals and things
is a central one for the comprehension of the dynamics of community life
before European invasion of the region.

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