The Kinship System of the Cherokee Community
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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 structu
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ording to Thomas Jefferson, the federal policy of Indian acculturation would teach the Cherokees to adopt the European agricultural practices, the economic philosophy of private ownership, European laws and government. In short, the purpose of the "civilization program" was to assimilate the Cherokee Indians into European society (Berkhofer 73-74; Bowden 174-6).
With the help of the missionaries whose mission was to civilize and Christianize the Cherokee Indians, the government agents started by exposing the Indians to European agricultural practices. The Cherokee Indian men were given plows, livestock and gristmills, while the women were provided with cloth and spinning tools. Apart from offering them the implements, the missionaries also provided instruction to the men and women in agricultural practices and homemaking respectively. At the same time, the Cherokee Indian children were educated by the missionaries who taught them about the social structure of European society. The good scholars from the best Cherokee families were even sent to boarding schools in Cornwall, Connecticut to further their education (Berkhofer 73-74; Bowden 174-6).
The effectiveness of the government policy was reflected in the religious c
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Approximate Word count = 1502
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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