Sustaining the Cherokee Family: Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation

CHAPTER ONE. Arriving

21 6' chapter one Arriving The story of the Cherokee people begins with a family undergoing tremendous change. In the version of “Origin of Corn” that ethnologist James Mooney learned while researching among the Eastern Band of Cherokees during the late nineteenth century, the central characters are a couple, Selu and Kana’ti, and their unnamed biological son. Selu means “Corn Mother,” but her significance is transcendent and multifaceted.1 The first woman and man at once represented the ideal division of labor in Cherokee society, explained the origination of dietary staples, and modeled standards for proper behavior. Selu and Kana’ti knew only harmony and, therefore, abundance until they adopted another son, an outsider, a boy born of pollution, of blood mixed with water, who brought chaos and suffering into the world.2 This Wild Boy did not respect boundaries, and the Cherokee world hinged upon the careful balance of many opposing categories. Lacking his adoptive parents’ sagacity, his understanding of how to survive was simplistic and irreverent. He had no interest in the long process through which wisdom was acquired, nor did he care to know the deeper significance of the work humans did to live rightly in the world.3 As a result, Selu and Kana’ti’s household suffered through tragedy of their own making, but they responded as a family, including Wild Boy. He had inadvertently caused the dispersion of the resources, technology, and knowledge essential for Cherokee survival and shaped the natural environment into the one Cherokees recognized and in which they prospered . Instructed by his parents, he at last learned behaviors essential 22 arriving for community well-being, especially making recompense through the assumption of individual responsibility and generously sharing food and labor with the earliest Cherokees. That Wild Boy’s mistakes, the release of game and the spread of agriculture, ultimately produced positive results should not be surprising, considering the emphasis on restoration in the traditional Cherokee worldview. Selu and Kana’ti are not Adam and Eve. The change that took place in their idyllic home was not an irrevocable loss of harmony because, although there was no restoration of what had been, Selu’s children made amends together and in doing so restored prosperity to a world forever transformed but still fundamentally good.4 This chapter tells the story of how Selu’s descendants adapted to enormous changes taking place in their southeastern homeland even prior to allotment. Emphasizing the major transitions defining Cherokee history during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I historicize the experiences of the families in this study as they adjusted to nonIndian encroachment, relocated to the Goingsnake District, and rebuilt their households in Indian Territory. The Henderson roll, compiled in 1835, and the Eastern Cherokee applications collected by the Guion Miller Commission between 1906 and 1909 provide the core of this chapter .5 Many scholars have ably conceptualized this period, and the causes, outcomes, and nature of the profound political, religious, and economic developments that characterize this era remain a subject of debate. As historian Theda Perdue has argued, however, the overall persistence of traditional gender roles made possible adaptation to and even mastery of new resources and technologies prior to removal.6 This consistency suggests the overall stability of Cherokee family life. As the chaos of colonization buffeted them, Cherokee households remained egalitarian, flexible, inclusive, and decentralized. The Old Nation This story begins in the southeastern homeland of the Cherokee clans. Prior to the early nineteenth century, these seven interconnected, extended families that traced their ancestry back to a common maternal ancestor formed the basis of Cherokee sociopolitical organization.7 Cherokees recognized matrilineal descent, meaning that anyone born of a Cherokee mother belonged to her clan and was a person with rights and obligations to other “Real Human Beings,” or Ani-yun-wiya, as they called themselves. Because clan affiliation was fixed and did not change, arriving 23 people knew who they were and relied upon maternal relatives to provide care, companionship, and protection throughout their lifetimes. Within clans, individuals related to each other in precise ways informed by gender , age, and type of connection, but this specific and complicated system for positioning oneself in relationship to others should not be confused with hierarchy. Clans provided order rather than rank. Forbidden from marrying members of their own clan, Cherokees were exogamous, and through intermarriage with members of other...