White men who met and wrote about the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples of the upper Missouri in the 18th and 19th centuries found them prosperous and compelling. Their ceremonies were elaborate; they were colorful subjects for painters such as Karl Bodmer and George Catlin; they bought lots of trinkets and firearms.

Women, if mentioned at all, appeared as drudges and slaves in a male-dominated society, for these travelers failed to note the less obvious. Skilled farming by women produced a food surplus which allowed leisure for male ceremony; excess food made possible a continental trade network fostered by the linguistic powers of women traders; men, on the other hand, lived in their mother-in-law's house and gave the trophies from ritual war parties to their mother's lodge.

Society was matrifocal, and its activities conformed to the sanctions of religion.

In this book, Virginia Peters uses women's accounts, the strong oral tradition of the people, their myths and creation stories, and anthropological and archeological data to examine this vitality. She even follows the life cycle of a representative woman, and explores female farming, trading, and hunting activities, the organization of village life, and the culture of war.

Basic to village society, Peters shows, was deep faith in an order where the generative female principle had primacy, sustaining and defining the people and everything in their world from sun to rain to bison, stones, and corn.