The topic of this paper is the changes in the kinship system of the Cherokee community. In order to understand the significance of the status of the kinship system of the Cherokee Indian tribe during the period from the end of the 19th century to today, it is important to know about their traditional kinship system. In the traditional Cherokee community, the lives of the Cherokee Indians revolved around their kinship affiliation to one of the seven clans that constituted the Cherokee Nation. Based on a matrilineal social structure, Cherokees belonged to the clan of their mother and traced their lineage through her. When a Cherokee man got married, he moved in with the Cherokee woman's family. For Cherokee Indians, clan membership in this kinship structure lay at the heart of their identities because their kinship determined their social relationships, their relatives, friends, enemies and even their marriage partners. Although the Cherokee Nation was a highly decentralized entity during the 18th century, Cherokees traveling to other villages could rely on the members of their clan to provide them with room and board (Purdue 41-2; Allen 107).
Therefore, through this kinship system, the Cherokee Indians were a highly interdependent people whose sense of community also influenced the economic and political spheres of their society. Based on this matrilineal and matrilocal structure, the Cherokee women were primarily responsible for the property and the economic structure. Working in collaboration with other clan members, they ensured the collective well-being of the clans and their members (Hunt 33). Because of the collective unity of the clan, every Cherokee adult was considered an equal in political issues. Leadership titles were not common and when decisions needed to be made, each clan was involved in the discussion to ensure that the decisions were attained by consensus (Reid 40).
However, the Cherokees' contact w...