Cherokee clans
In addition, Cherokee society tended to be matrilocal, meaning that once married a couple moved in with or near the bride's family.
Such marriage was considered incest and punishable by death at the hands of the offender's own clan and by no other.
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.
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.
The wild potato was a main staple of the traditional Cherokee life in the Southeast (Tsalagi Uweti).
"Anigilohi" (Cherokee syllabary:ᎠᏂᎩᎶᎯ) is translated as "Long Hairs" or "Twisters."
The subdivisions were Raven, Turtledove, and Eagle, probably in origin three separate clans later consolidated into one.
Earned Eagle feathers were originally presented by the members of this clan, as they were the only ones able to collect them.
A large reason for this was the turmoil of the Cherokee–American wars and the resulting displacement of vast numbers of Cherokee removed westward, both voluntarily and involuntarily, from their more easterly ancient homes.
Also, European traders in the Southeast—mostly Scottish, but also English, Irish, German, even French—had married Cherokee women (as well as those of other tribes) for several decades.
[10] The Ridge, who had joined the Council as the representative from Pine Log town, the previous year, initiated these changes.
The stated reason was Doublehead's involvement in making private deals to sell off Cherokee land.
The killers were he and Alexander Sanders, the two of them having to stand in for James Vann, who was too drunk to accomplish the task.
A major reform designed and pushed forward by the young chiefs' "Cherokee Triumvirate" (James Vann, Charles R. Hicks, and The Ridge), its primary prescriptive feature was setting up a Light Horse Guard of several teams over the whole Nation to act as "regulating parties", and also provided for a system of patrilineal inheritance alongside the matrilineal inheritance system of the clans.
