Marrige

Iroquois have lived in the upstate New York area for a long period of time before the Europeans had arrived. They were known as the five nations before European contact, and then later became the six nations after European contact. The Iroquois lived in longhouses, which both had tribal and political significance. Each longhouse housed a family anywhere from 30 to 60 people. Each family had about six to nine feet of semi personnel space, with the central areas used as social and political meeting areas. In the Iroquois culture, women held the power. They owned the longhouses, controlled the land and choose the chief. When a man married a woman, he lived in her clan, and all children born between the two belonged to the woman’s clan. The kinship in the Iroquois tribe is a system to define family. In the following paragraphs, it is my intent to describe and identify three examples of the kinship system of the Iroquois Indians. The original homeland of the Iroquois tribe was in upstate New York, between the Adirondack Mountains and Niagara falls. The Iroquois’s married only certain members you could marry cross cousin but not parallel cousin that was considered to close related. This impacted their way of thinking; it also keeps the alliances between tribes strong. Marriage also lets you know where you will live, the men move into the women mothers’ home which is called matrilineal. Iroquois men do all the hunting and fight to protect the tribe.

When we think of kinship we think of family, marriage. And all the good stuff. Kinship all deals with divorce as well. So when I started doing my paper on the kinship of the Iroquois Indians it was a bit confusing to me to understand. Doing the Iroquois kinship I learned a lot about them that I didn’t know. When it comes to kinship the women in the Iroquois determine the kinship. When they get married the groom moves into the brides longhouse. The kids they have become part of her family or clan as they call it. Louis...