When I wrote about Emateloye for Florida Spectacular, I wanted quite badly to tell her story.But the story I didn’t tell is what that history did to me. How it changed me.

Emateloye walked barefoot, at night, for 400 miles, with a handful of other women, to escape her white male captors and return to her homeland.

Her story is nothing short of amazing. But it’s not only the physical things she did — tricking the soldiers, escaping into the swamp, and finding her way home — but the significance of what she did.

She was born into a matriarchal society, but captured by a patriarchal one. The patriarchy had its firm fist around her neck on the Grey Cloud, which wasn’t how she was raised, or how anyone else imprisoned on Egmont Key and marched aboard the ship were raised, either.

And yet, she and her fellow women instinctively how to manipulate this.

Matriarchy, Defined

---

Encyclopedia Brittanica defines matriarchy as a “hypothetical social system in which the mother or a female elder has absolute authority over the family group; by extension, one or more women (as in a council) exert a similar level of authority over the community as a whole.”

However, the entry continues to explain that such societies have “never existed” because the idea of a patriarchy stemmed from Darwin’s suggestion that “animalistic sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy, which was in turn followed by patriarchy” but more modern thought agrees that although “many cultures bestow power on one sex or the other, matriarchal societies in this original, evolutionary sense have never existed.”

The problem with scholars, though, is that sometimes they spend too much time studying and not enough time living. Because, for Emateloye, this was reality. Whatever that word salad is that Darwin said may make perfect sense in the classroom or a laboratory, but Emateloye had likely never set foot in either. She was born into a land that was changing, and she was likely born with a price on her head.

I will never be that woman, or part of that culture. At best, I am an outsider who, on occasion, has the invitation to look in, so I can only guess.

Matriarchy, In Practice

It’s one thing for us, as humans in the 21st century, too look at the actions of an 18th-century woman and call them “badass” or “brave”, but it’s another to put ourselves in her shoes (or lack thereof) and grapple with what she had to do.

It appears U.S. soldiers captured her at least one other time, and they tried to force her to show them where more of her people lived. She did not; although, years later, she would find her way home at night, in new territory, in this instance, Emateloye had a horrible sense of direction and led the men in circles.

Perhaps in her life among her own people —among the true first Americans — she didn’t have had to manipulate men.  But both times white men captured her,  on the ship, with her future in the balance, she knew. How did she know? Was it some deep-rooted instinct that lives in some part of all our reptilian brains, or was she simply that shrewd? Because this woman tricked soldiers into letting her and a dozen other women off the boat with a lone guard. Did they play on the idea that they were helpless women, or did the soldiers assume that helplessness?

It really doesn’t matter. That’s because EuroAmerican men have, historically, devalued, then later underestimated, the feminine.

They were not prepared for a woman who expected to control her own destiny… She was, of course, minimized. But she was not accustomed to being treated the way that the men treated her.

How This Impacted Me

Thinking about this all as I studied what few records there are of her, then later reflecting on what her life looked like… well, it started to impact me in other ways. I don’t know what went through Emateloye’s head during her capture, imprisonment, and escape; I only know what would have gone through mine.

I would have thought about escaping.

I’m sure she did, too.

But why?

I would have thought about escaping to get back to the life I knew. Was that what she thought about, too? Or did Emateloye think about the larger impact of her actions?

We can’t know.

The larger impact has meant success for her people others would never see. It had far-reaching consequences felt by other people descended from first Americans, too. Her descendants strengthened the Seminole.

James E. Billie, former chairman of the Seminole Tribe, said that “Emateloye’s destiny was to start the Seminole Tribe as it is today.”

Did she know that?

And, if she did, did the stakes being higher make her more resolved?

I honestly don’t know. Things for the female first Americans in Florida were so drastically different than they are for female Floridians now that I can’t say she didn’t realize the consequences of her actions; I cannot say that she did.

But as I’m wading through stories of different Florida women, I think about this very issue a lot.