Cherokee Clans - Customs and Functions of The Cherokee Clans

Customs and Functions of The Cherokee Clans

The Cherokee society was historically a matrilineal society; meaning children belong to the mother's clan, and hereditary leadership and property were passed through the maternal line. Traditionally, women were considered the head of household among the Cherokee, with the home and children belonging to her should she separate from a husband, and maternal uncles were considered more important than fathers. Property was inherited and bequeathed through the clan and held in common by it. In addition, Cherokee society tended to be matrilocal, meaning that once married a couple moved in with or near the bride's family.

Cherokee clans held the only coercive power within Cherokee society. It was forbidden to marry within one's clan or to someone in the clan of one's father. Such marriage was considered incest and punishable by death at the hands of the offender's own clan and by no other. The clan was also responsible for balancing the death of one of its members at the hands of the member of another clan, whether deliberate, impulsive, or accidental. The one to pay the penalty did not have to be the person responsible; it could be any member of his or her clan. Indeed, if the intentional or unintentional killer escaped or found sanctuary in one of the towns so designated, such as Chota, Kituwa, or Tugaloo, the fugitive's clan was expected to deliver up another of its members. The purpose of this was not retaliation but equalization.

Cherokee born outside of a clan or outsiders who were taken into the tribe in ancient times had to be adopted into a clan by a clan mother. If the person was a woman who had borne a Cherokee child and was married to a Cherokee man, she could be taken into a new clan. Her husband was required to leave his clan and live with her in her new clan. Men who were not Cherokee and married into a Cherokee household had to be adopted into a clan by a clan mother; he could not take his wife’s clan.

In The Cherokee Editor on February 18, 1829, Elias Boudinot wrote the following regarding Cherokee Clan marriage customs:

"This simple division of the Cherokees formed the grand work by which marriages were regulated, and murder punished. A Cherokee could marry into any of the clans except two, that to which his father belongs, for all of that clan are his fathers and aunts and that to which his mother belongs, for all of that clan are his brothers and sisters, a child invariably inheriting the clan of his mother."