Presidential Lecture: Wives and Husbands: Arapaho Gender in Time

This essay examines the lives of four Arapahos whose experiences are broadly representative of the life-career patterns of their cohorts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that in the American encounter, individuals and groups challenged both American and Arapaho ideas and practices associated with age and gender. Comparison of experiences between and within cohorts shows age- and gender-based strategies, including the “partnering” dimension of gender relations most evident in the wife-husband relation. These multiple strategies shaped Arapaho history.