Cherokee Clans

The Cherokee clans (ᏣᎳᎩ ᏓᏂᎳᏍᏓᏢᎢ) are traditional social organizations of Cherokee society. They are hereditary and matrilineal: children are considered to belong to the mother's clan.

The Cherokee society was historically a matrilineal society; meaning children belong to the mother's clan, and hereditary leadership and property were passed through the maternal line. Traditionally, women were considered the head of household among the Cherokee, with the home and children belonging to her should she separate from a husband, and maternal uncles were considered more important than fathers. Property was inherited and bequeathed through the clan and held in common by it. In addition, Cherokee society tended to be matrilocal, meaning that once married a couple moved in with or near the bride's family.

Cherokee clans held the only coercive power within Cherokee society. It was forbidden to marry within one's clan or to someone in the clan of one's father. Such marriage was considered incest and punishable by death at the hands of the offender's own clan and by no other. The clan was also responsible for balancing the death of one of its members at the hands of the member of another clan, whether deliberate, impulsive, or accidental. The one to pay the penalty did not have to be the person responsible; it could be any member of his or her clan. Indeed, if the intentional or unintentional killer escaped or found sanctuary in one of the towns so designated, such as Chota, Kituwa, or Tugaloo, the fugitive's clan was expected to deliver up another of its members. The purpose of this was not retaliation but equalization.

Cherokee born outside of a clan or outsiders who were taken into the tribe in ancient times had to be adopted into a clan by a clan mother. If the person was a woman who had borne a Cherokee child and was married to a Cherokee man, she could be taken into a new clan. Her husband was required to leave his clan and live with her in her new clan. Men who were not Cherokee and married into a Cherokee household had to be adopted into a clan by a clan mother; he could not take his wife’s clan.

In "The Cherokee Editor" on February 18, 1829, Elias Boudinot wrote the following regarding Cherokee Clan marriage customs:

The Cherokee have seven clans and have had that number as long as there has been contact with Europeans. Some have multiple names, and according to ethnographer James Mooney the seven are the result of consolidation of as many as what was previously fourteen separate clans in more ancient times.

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