As in most Indian societies, Louisiana Indians carried out tasks defined along gender lines. Men ruled and defended the tribal communities and hunted and constructed buildings and canoes with tools they made. Women cared for children and the elderly, planted crops, and made clothes and utensils, which they used to prepare foods and decorate their homes and religious centers.
There were no tepees in Louisiana. Rather, Louisiana's first families lived and worshipped in palmetto-thatched houses, beehive-shaped grass houses, wood frame houses, and wattle-and-daub houses and temples. Women prepared and cooked the food that they gathered and grew and the men hunted and fished. The Indians boiled, roasted, baked and parched their food. Native American women also manufactured all the clothing. Popular clothing materials were feathers, bark, cloth, and hides, as well as furs from deer, bear, bison, and small hunted animals. Both men and women fashioned such body ornaments as necklaces, bracelets, armbands, rings, and ear and nose plugs from locally available shells and pearls and imported copper. |
