EVANS CITY - The more things change, the more they stay the same is an adage that applies to women and their roles as much as anything else in human history.

In the frontier days between the French and Indian War and post-Revolutionary war in Western Pennsylvania, women, whether they were white, red or black, were in charge of the details of civilization, just as they are today.

They ran the household regardless if it was a log cabin, a bark wigwam, or a frame-built manor while the men were someplace else for large amounts of time. That meant tending children, perhaps parents, household help, livestock and the garden, according to Carl Robertson of Providence Plantation in Jackson Township, a living history establishment presenting frontier life in the Ohio country.

If a woman was Anglo-American, she spun the thread that she wove into cloth that she sewed into garments and then laundered over a boiling pot in the yard. If she was a black woman, the work was the same and maybe a little more and most likely in service to another's family often without a spouse but with children.

Indian women had their own type of enormous domestic tasks to endure to ensure everyone in her family was fed and dressed, in addition to literally keeping the home fires burning.

"It was tough," said Robertson. "It was so tough many women didn't live past their early 30s."

If sheer hard work didn't wear them out, poor hygiene, injury, disease and childbirth did them in.

In addition, "women in general were not well treated by the men in their lives," said Robertson.

That included women who were considered to be the lady of the house, rather than the workhorse. The only difference is it had to appear that she wasn't laboring even though she was working hard.

Of the three races of women living in America in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the Indian women who had it best.

In the Shawnee, Delaware and Iroquois nations that lived in this area, "it was not uncommon for a woman to become equal with a chief," Robertson said.

Women made up the stable part of the society, as opposed to the men, who spent much of their time hunting and warring with each other. Unlike white and black women, Indian women also had "equal say whether men went to war" or stayed home.