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Indian Adoption
. An almost universal political and social institution which
originally dealt only with persons but later with families, clans or gentes,
bands, and tribes. It had its beginnings far back in the history of primitive
society and, after passing through many forms and losing much ceremonial garb,
appears to-day in the civilized institution of naturalization. In the primitive
mind the fundamental motive underlying adoption was to defeat the evil purpose
of death to remove a member of the kinship group by actually replacing in person
the lost or dead member. In primitive philosophy, birth and death are the
results of magic power; birth increases and death decreases the orenda (q. v. )
of the clan or family of the group affected. In order to preserve that magic
power intact, society, by the exercise of constructive orenda, resuscitates the
dead in the person of another in whom is embodied the blood and person of the
dead. As the diminution of the number of the kindred was regarded as having
been caused by magic power, by the orenda of some hostile agency, so the
prevention or reparation of that loss must be accomplished by a like power,
manifested in ritualistic liturgy and ceremonial. Front the view point of the
primitive mind adoption serves to change, by a fiction of law, the personality
as well as the political status of the adopted person.
For example, there were
captured two white persons (sisters) by the Seneca, and instead of both being
adopted into one clan, one was adopted by the Deer and the other by the Heron
clan, and thus the blood of the two sisters was changed by the rite of adoption
in such wise that their children could intermarry. Furthermore, to satisfy the
underlying concept of the rite, the adopted person must be brought into one of
the strains of kinship in order to define the standing of such person in the
community, and the kinship name which the person receives declares his relation
to all other persons in the fancily group; that is to say, should the adopted
person be named son rather than uncle by the adopter, his status in the
community would differ accordingly.
Front the political adoption of the
Tuscarora by the Five Nations, about 1726, it is evident that tribes, families,
clans, and groups of people could be adopted like persons. A fictitious age
might be conferred upon the person adopted, since age largely governed the
rights, duties, and position of persons in the community. In this wise, by the
action of the constituted authorities, the age of an adopted group was fixed and
its, social and political importance thereby determined. Owing to the peculiar
circumstances of the expulsion of the Tuscarora from North Carolina was deemed
best by the Five Nations, in view of their relation to the Colonies at that
time, to give an asylum to the Tuscarora simply by means of the institution of
adoption rather than by the political recognition of the Tuscarora as a member
of the league. Therefore the Oneida made a motion in the federal council of the
Five Nations that they adopt the Tuscarora as a nursling still swathed to the
cradleboard. This having prevailed, the Five Nations, by the spokesman of the
Oneida, said: "We have set up for ourselves a cradle-hoard in the extended
house," that is, in the dominions of the League. After due probation the
Tuscarora, by separate resolutions of the council, on separate motions of the
Oneida, were made successively a boy, a young man, a man, all assistant to the
official woman cooks, a warrior, and lastly a peer, having the right of
chiefship in the council on an equal footing with the chiefs of the other
tribes. From this it is seen that a tribe or other group of people may be
adopted upon any one of several planes of political growth, corresponding to the
various ages of human growth.
This seems to explain the problem of the alleged
subjugation aid degradation of the Delaware by the
Iroquois, which is said to
have been enacted in open council. When it is understood that the Five Nations
adopted the Delaware tribe as men assistants to the official cooks of the League
it becomes clear that no taint of slavery and degradation was designed to be
given by the act. It merely made the Delaware probationary heirs to citizenship
in the League, and citizenship would he conferred upon them after suitable
tutelage. In this they were treated with much greater consideration than were
the Tuscarora, who are of the language and lineage of the Five Nations. The
Delaware were not adopted as warriors or chiefs, but as assistant cooks;
neither were they adopted, like the Tuscarora, is infants, but as men whose duty
it was to assist the women whose official function was to cook for the people at
public assemblies. Their office was hence well exemplified by the possession of
a corn pestle, a hoe, and petticoats.
This fact, misunderstood, perhaps
intentionally misrepresented, seems to explain the mystery concerning the "making
women" of the Delaware. This kind of adoption was virtually a state of
probation, which could he made long or short.
The adoption of a chief's son by a follow chief,
customary in some of the tribes of the northwest coast, differs in motive and effect from that defined
above, which concerns persons alien to the tribe, upon whom it confers
citizenship in the clan, gens, and tribe, as this deals only with intra-tribal
persons for the purpose of conferring some degree of honor upon them rather than
citizenship and political authority.
The Iroquois, in order to recruit the great losses incurred in their many wars,
put into systematic practice, the adoption not only of individuals but also of
entire clans and tribes. The Tutelo, the Saponi, the Nanticoke, and other tribes
and portions of tribes were forced to incorporate with the several tribes of the
Iroquois confederation by formal adoption.
After the Pequot war the Narraganset adopted a large body of the
Pequot. The
Chickasaw adopted a section of the
Natchez, and the Uchee were incorporated with
the Creeks. In the various accounts of the American Indian tribes
references to formal adoption and incorporation of one people by another
are abundant. It is natural that formal adoption as a definite institution
was most in vogue wherever the clan and gentile systems were more or less
fully developed.
Additional Indian History
Resources:
The books presented are for their
historical value only and are not
the opinions of the Webmasters of
the site.
Handbook of American Indians, 1906
Indian Tribal History
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