Clan mother

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Interior view of a longhouse (Mokotakan Open Air Museum, Quebec Province , 2007)

Clan mother or clan mother (English: clan matron " matron ") describes in ethnology (ethnology) the head of a clan arranged according to the maternal line ( matrilinear ) , usually one of the oldest and most experienced women in the extended family. Many North American Indians strains organized themselves into clans (family units), which see their common kinship and lineage ( descent ) from an original ancestress herleiteten. In general, however, clans can only inexactly or contradictingly derive such a mostly legendary origin (“ fictitious genealogy ”).

There are over 150 matrilineal races and indigenous peoples worldwide, many of whom are organized into clans led by women; also in these cases one speaks of clan mothers .

Clan structures of the Iroquois

The Iroquois lived in long houses occupied by 5 to 20 large families . One or more longhouses together formed a clan, the head of which was the clan mother. At her side stood a clan chief elected by women , and all clan mothers and chiefs together formed the tribal council. Here the women with the most children had the greatest voting weight. The formation of political will took place in separate assemblies of women and men. A consensus was then sought between the two groups. All important people were elected by women - if they were not up to their task, they could be removed again.

The extended matrilineal family lived together as ancestry group ( Matri- Lineage ), led by a lineage mother (lineage matron) . This guaranteed the women of the Iroquois far-reaching rights. No war could be waged without the consent of the matrons ; a mother could prevent her son from participating in a campaign. She could also decide whether a prisoner was adopted and accepted into the clan or whether he was killed. The women also owned the farmland outside the villages, which they worked together. All children of a woman belonged only to her maternal line and were therefore also members of her clan; the biological origin of the father - if known - was of no further significance. The right of inheritance and the family name passed from the mother to the daughter or the closest female member of the family. Sons and daughters lived in the long house of their maternal clan and contributed to its maintenance. After the marriage, the man visited his wife temporarily in her nave, but had no rights there (see visiting marriage ). Children together belonged to the mother and her clan. The social fatherhood and education for the children of his sisters often took her brother ( avunculate , see also uncle : mother's brother, mother's side uncle) or another close relative of the mother. There was no sexual violence whatsoever in the clan houses, premarital intercourse was not forbidden, and virginity and chastity were not expected of them.

After the subjugation of the Iroquois by the white Americans, the nuclear family was legally placed under male leadership in 1847 and declared a basic economic unit. A law passed in Canada in 1869 obligated the Iroquois living there to patrician inheritance ( patrilinearity ).

In the 1970s, the tribal council of the Seneca Iroquois tribe consisted of 16 chiefs who were traditionally chosen by the clan mother in consultation with other women of the clan.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Patrick Gray: Ethnographic Atlas Codebook. (PDF file: 2.4 MB, without page numbers) In: World Cultures. Volume 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 86–136, here p. 104: Table 43 Descent: Major Type (one of the few evaluations of all ethnic groups recorded at that time in 1267), quote: "584  Patrilineal [...] 160  Matrilineal [... ] 52  Duolateral […] 49  Ambilineal […] 11  Quasi-lineages […] 349  bilateral […] 45 Mixed […] 17 Missing data “.
    Percentages of the 1267 ethnic groups (1998): 46.1% patrilinear (from father) - 12.6% matrilinear (from mother) - 4.1% duolateral (bilinear: different from father and mother) - 3.9% ambilinear ( optional) - 0.9% parallel (quasi-lines) - 27.6% bilateral, cognatic (Western model: origin from both parents) - 3.6% mixed - 1.6% missing data.
    The Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock now contains data sets on 1,300 ethnic groups (as of 2015 in InterSciWiki ), of which often only samples were evaluated, for example in the HRAF project , a large-scale database for holistic cultural comparisons of 400 recorded peoples.
  2. ^ A b Hans Läng : Cultural history of the Indians of North America. Gondrom, Bindlach 1993, ISBN 3-8112-1056-4 , pp. 112-117.
  3. ^ A b Dieter Steiner : The large matrilineal family. In: Social (in the narrower sense). Own homepage, Zurich, 1998, accessed on September 28, 2018 (on the ohwachira of the Iroquois, based on Lewis Henry Morgan ; the clan mother is called " matron " here ).
  4. ^ Dorette Wesemann: Women's rights - example of a non-patriarchal social system: The Iroquois. In: D @ dalos: human rights. Pharos e. V., April 2000, accessed on September 28, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Northeast. tape 15 . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington 1978, ISBN 0-16-004575-4 , pp. 511-512 (English).