Adolescence Life in 17th Century Huron Community

In order to establish a meaningful comparison of seventeenth-century Huron and contemporary American middle class adolescence, it is first necessary to note that the Huron culture suffered from its encounter with European civilization. Between a lack of resistance of European diseases, dispersion of Huron both geographically and through various neighboring indigenous peoples, and the variety of pressures of modernization, the Huron way of life that the French encountered on their explorations by and large disappeared. However, the difference of time that separates American middle class from seventeenth-century Huron culture can be set beside an important attribute that they share, which is a form of social organization, or sociocultural system in which identifiable social roles emerge and define relationship and behavior patterns.

It is impossible to discuss the adolescent phase of the Huron life cycle without reference to the context

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articular concern to them" (Trigger, 1990, p. 142). Both male and female adolescents do appear to have been subject to a degree of social coercion by older people, although according to Trigger "care was taken to avoid the appearance that one person was being ordered about by another" (p. 142). In order to satisfy the people's "soul desires," young people might be obliged to dress (or undress) in a certain way to do a curing dance, as a species of spiritual healing. Trigger cites the endakwandet curing ritual, "which involved public sexual intercourse" (1990, p. 137). Trigger says that the instrumental public use of sexual activity as a cure allowed Huron "to transgress the restrictive norms of their society, albeit in well-defined and short-lived social contexts" (1990, p. 138). This range of activity suggests an altruistic ethos, with the individual subsuming his or her personal preferences to the needs or desires of the or anyway to others. The sociocultural system of the American middle class differs from that of Huron culture chiefly in the fact that it reacts to inputs from the wider culture, but not as a matter of social obligation. One aspect is that the American middle class as a whole is conscious that it is neither of t
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Approximate Word count = 1915
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)