Changing kinship systems

A study in the acculturation of the Creeks, Cherokee, and Choctaw

Bibliographic Data

ID5784103
AuthorsAlexander Spoehr (corresponding author)
Year1947
Publication date1947-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenuePublication - Field Museum of Natural History. Anthropological series/Publication. Anthropological series (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0894-8380
PublisherField Museum Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5962/bhl.title.5236
OpenAlexW2498856790
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited6

Changing Kinship Systemswhat is now the eastern part of the state of Oklahoma.However, small remnants of Cherokee refused to move, and in recent times they have been consolidated on the Eastern Cherokee reservation of North Carolina.In a situation similar to that prevailing with the Seminole, the main body of the Cherokee, numbering more than 15,000, moved to new lands, with a conservative handful left in their aboriginal habitat.This small group in the Carolinas has been studied in recent years by Gilbert, who has provided us with the first full report on Cherokee social organization (Gilbert, 1937(Gilbert, , 1943)).In view of Gilbert's work on the Eastern Cherokee, a small group of Oklahoma Cherokee was selected for field survey.This group lives in the rocky and rather remote Cookson Hills of eastern Oklahoma, in the vicinity of the little town of Stilwell.They are known as "full bloods" but some white admixture is evident with most of them, and the term actually refers to cultural conservatism as much as to racial purity.Work was conducted with approxi- mately fifteen informants of middle age or older.Most were bilingual and all were fluent speakers of Cherokee, while a few had only a very limited knowledge of English.For the rest, they were all Christians and actually very acculturated as far as aboriginal Cherokee culture is concerned.In addition, a sample of young Cherokee was studied for comparative purposes.The majority of the Choctaw had moved from their old country in Mississippi to the new lands in Indian Territory by 1833, though a few still reside in Mississippi and Louisiana.Notably less con- servative than the Creeks, up to the time of allotment they were on the whole considerably more acculturated.For the field survey, two rural areas were selected, one in the vicinity of the town of Stigler and a second in the area around Broken Bow.At the present time, the latter is about the most out-of-the-way locality in the old Choctaw Nation and contains a relatively high proportion of full-blood Indians.The procedure followed with the Choctaw was similar to that used in the case of the Creeks and Cherokee.Work was conducted with a series of informants of middle age or older, while a sample of younger Choctaw was used for comparison.In the following pages, the data on terminological shifts in the Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw systems will be presented first.These systems exhibit an orderly change from a lineage to a genera- tion type within the context of the native languages.Next, the related changes in social organization will be examined, particularly INDEX

Acculturation · Archaeology · Cherokee · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Kinship · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology

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