Clans and Marriage

Another very important element to Native American culture that Europeans failed to grasp the significance of is the separation and delineating lines of "clan." Clan lines not only determined parental lineage lines but also ensured genetic diversity and the dilution of genetic flaws. Members of the same matrilineal clan were forbidden to marry or bear children together. (Marrying within a clan is tantamount to incest.) Also, each clan has its own separate and individual stories and traditions, each of which keeps that clan viable and important to the overall fabric of indigenous life--which is one of the things that helps keep them dynamic, separate, and alive. As a concessionary aside I must say that if hierarchy was present in pre-European-Contact Native American tradition, it was in the place, role, and placement of clans, as certain clans have, at certain times over the course of cultural and technological evolution, risen and fallen to differing levels of import, significance, and relevance.
     At the same time, it should be understood that marriages in most indigenous bands were often temporary and served purposes foreign to those that Europeans valued. As men were predominantly hunter-trader-warriors, they were quite often absent from towns and/or temporary, transient settlements for long periods of time. The duties of raising children, processing meat, growing and processing/storing food, tanning skins, making clothes and pottery, cooking and cleaning, even building and passing culture on, fell predominantly to the women, of course, (with the "retired" elder men and pre-adolescent children also each serving important, integral roles). Perhaps this is why women were afforded great power in communal decision-making--including in matters of law and punishment, war and retribution, migration and settlement.

     Men might father a child and then not see that child (or wife) for years. Men were understood--almost expected--to have multiple wives, though almost never in the same town--though the sharing and impregnation of multiple siblings was not an uncommon or vilified phenomenon. Men were equally unexpected to play significant roles in the transmission of culture or even skills to children (even their own offspring): The village raised their children and the children found each their own heroes (real and imagined) to inspire and emulate (often in story and legend, occasionally in their own band's warriors and leaders).