Download Family and Household in North America

READING 2
Candice Goucher, Charles LeGuin, and Linda Walton, “Ordering the World:
Family and Household,” in In the Balance: Themes in Global History (Boston:
McGraw-Hill, 1998), 332–39.
Abstract: This essay considers both families and households, and the ways
these intersected and interacted with the ideas, institutions, and communities
of North America, South America, and West Africa before 1500. In so doing, it
suggests the wide variety of family and household structures that existed
around the world, and the differing ways in which gender, power, and
lineage could be understood. Throughout, it demonstrates the complex ways
in which economics and ideology helped to shape these most intimate of
structures.
Family and Household in North America
Concepts of family and household vary as widely as do the kinds of historical
evidence describing them. The recovery of family history in the preColumbian Americas depends on written, nonwritten, archaeological, and
orally transmitted sources. Households in North America before 1500 were
cooperative kinship groups varying in size from fairly small (several
hundred) to large (5000). Indeed, the size of cooperative household units
adjusted to economic and ecological conditions.
Longhouses and Lineage
Multifamily dwellings, or longhouses, were common to communities in the
Pacific Northwest Coast region, the Great Plains, and among the Eastern
Woodland Iroquois. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, one of the
earliest European observers of native peoples in the Americas, Amerigo
Vespucci, wrote of hundreds of persons sleeping in shared households. In
some cases, multifamily dwellings were associated with the development of
agriculture, since joint residency encouraged the cooperative labor required
by intensive food production, though they were also characteristic of the
nonagricultural Pacific Northwest. More commonly, shared kinship was the
basis for establishing multifamily dwellings, with membership in a lineage
determining joint residence.
Matrilineal and patrilineal descent were recognized in different societies, and
in some cases, as in some Northwest Coast groups, bilateral descent
(acknowledgment of both sides of one’s ancestry) was recognized. Matrilineal
families, in which descent and property were transmitted through females,
were common among groups such as the Iroquois of the Eastern Woodlands.
The Zuni of the American Southwest were matrilocal, as well: when a woman
married, her husband left his mother’s house and came to live in her house,
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where he remained forever an outsider. The house and its possessions, the
sacred objects and wealth, principally in the form of stored corn and access to
the fields, belonged to the women who lived there. The family related by
blood through the women was the central and permanent social group.
Gender in Zuni Family and Household
Religious ceremony and ritual, which permeated Zuni life, as well as
economic production were centered in the family household. The working life
of a Zuni man was spent in the household into which he married. As a
farmer, he was an essential household member, though to the Zuni, a
person’s importance was not economic. Wealth was important only insofar as
it made it possible for a man to undertake and pay for the responsibilities and
ritual obligations that would make him truly respected.
Lhamana
Within the context of meanings and roles structured by gender, women were
considered responsible for the family and community; men were responsible
for the universe. Their roles were distinct and complementary. The Zuni
believed that gender was acquired through a gradual awareness of the
individual, usually in childhood. The most striking illustration of Zuni
gender construction is the identity known as lhamana (referred to as berdache
by anthropologists), who combined the cultural traits and roles of both male
and female. The decision to become lhamana was made by a boy in childhood
and finalized at puberty, when the youth adopted female dress. Rather than
assimilating the ritual knowledge of men, the boy destined to become lhamana
hung around the house and learned women’s skills, mostly those of weaving
and potting.
Archaeological evidence supports the antiquity of the lhamana identity.
Burials are recorded in which women wear both a dress and a man’s kilt and
in which men are buried with implements associated with women, such as a
clay ball and baskets. In Zuni kivas (the clan’s ceremonial houses) at the
archaeological site called Pottery Mound (1300–1425 C.E.), some 100 miles
north of the Zuni pueblo, paintings of masked dancers wear the distinctive
lhamana hairstyle: half the hair is plaited in a characteristic female whorl and
the other half is allowed to hang straight in the male manner. Other figures
carry both bow and arrows and a basketry plaque.
Gender and Women’s Power Among the Blackfoot
The Blackfoot of the northwestern Plains provide an example of the difficulty
of documenting women’s power before the fifteenth century. Male roles were
more visible, flamboyant, and assertive, while women’s behavior was
properly docile and quiet. Yet several aspects of gender roles intersect and
even crosscut this portrait of male dominance, and upon closer examination
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the boundaries of gender roles that seem at first glance clear can easily
become blurred. For example, one way to explain the fact that men, not
women, were involved in spirit quests to increase their spirituality is to
assume that only men had the potential to achieve spiritual power. An
equally valid interpretation would be to attribute the exclusion of women
from spirit quests to their innate spirituality: they had no need to engage in
spirit quests.
Evidence from traditional myths and ritual practices suggests that women
were innately more spiritual. Women’s power was manifested in rituals such
as the Sun Dance Ceremony, in which women played a prominent role. In the
Sun Dance, the Holy Woman carries a medicine bundle as a sign of the power
of women to move between the Holy People of the Above World and
ordinary people below.
Age was also an important factor that intersected gender. A large number of
elderly women could become “manly-hearted” over the course of their lives.
Such powerful women were able to control social situations as well as
property. Although both men and women were believed to be necessarily
paired, it was primarily women who brought blessings and powers from
spiritual realms to be enjoyed by all.
Cultural Reproduction, Family, and Community
Family life maintained and expressed the Native American culture, not only
through its reproductive functions but also because it functioned as a vehicle
for sharing language, beliefs, and behavior. The family adapted and
transmitted cultural knowledge across generations. The expression of group
belonging reflected the economic and political context in which families
resided. For example, among other matrilineal and matrilocal groups in the
Pacific Northwest, such as the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, what was
inherited was often intangible: the right to wear certain crest designs and to
perform particular ceremonial dances and songs.
The sense of belonging to a group resulted from this intangible inheritance,
but in the Pacific Northwest environment of abundant and renewable
resources, the indication of belonging to the community was not limited to
the plentiful economic or material possessions, which all shared. The most
egregious crime in such communities was often theft, since anything that
injured one member of the group was felt by all. The sense of a shared family
or group identity was frequently reiterated by moral imperatives that
emphasized commitment to community and enduring relationships to the
landscape that transcended a single lifetime.
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Family and State in Andean South America and
Mesoamerica
Not all native American peoples were hunter-gatherers or subsistence
farmers living in small communities. Families also persisted in large
corporate groups, such as the Incan state (1438 –1536) in the Andean
highlands of South America. Families were patriarchal and regulated and
controlled not only by the male head of household but also by the state,
through laws issued by rulers and supported by the sanctions of religion. In
this way, the family was incorporated into the hierarchical and absolutist
state, the largest unit with which people identified.
The Family in Incan Society
As Incan society expanded after about 1000, the family was regarded as a unit
of economic production. Men paid their tribute to the state through laboring
on public works or in agriculture, or through military service; women spent
much of their time weaving. Woven cloths had extraordinary ritual and
ceremonial value. A special public building served as a convent for Chosen
Women, brought to the Incan capital to weave cloth and participate in rituals.
Male dominance was maintained in the patriarchal Incan society by treating
women as property. Adultery was considered theft of the female involved,
and the male was punished for having committed a crime against property.
Boys and girls were educated in separate schools.
Families were provided with land by the state, which claimed everything
produced and had the power to move family members and households to
anywhere their labor was needed. This strategy also reduced resistance
among conquered peoples. In turn, the Incas, aware of the benefits of keeping
their basic economic units in functioning order, took the care and
maintenance of family groups seriously.
Ideological changes accompanied territorial expansion and led to the
establishment of the empire in the mid-fifteenth century. Men came to
symbolize the conqueror and women, the conquered. As a result of the
pervasive warfare, in which female enemies were incorporated into
households as slaves and wives and male enemies were killed, the status of
Incan women was devalued and the power they had once held because of
their economic and reproductive roles was diminished. Warfare became as
important as childbirth in increasing populations. Although some elite
women could gain political influence through their relationship with the
Sapa-Inca, both slavery and warfare reduced women’s power. Family groups,
modified by the authority of the Incan state, would be further transformed
following the establishment of European control in the sixteenth century.
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Family and Household in Mesoamerica
Less is known of family and household in Aztec society, centered in the
Valley of Mexico and reaching its peak in the fifteenth century, just before the
European conquest. The cult of the warrior that dominated Aztec culture and
society was reflected in the beliefs and practices associated with childbirth
and child rearing. The metaphor of battle was used for childbirth, and the
infant was described as a “captive,” won in battle. Women giving birth were
possessed by the spirit of the Earth Mother. If a woman died in childbirth, the
Earth Mother would have to be appeased. From birth, female infants were
carefully distinguished from their male counterparts by differences in care
and feeding, according to the roles that each would fulfill in society. The
social duty of the male was to be a warrior; that of the female was to be a
wife. Marriage was a secular rite that symbolized the transfer of a young male
from the care of his mother to that of his bride.
Although women were restricted to the domestic sphere, some did have
public roles—healers and physicians, and especially midwives. These
occupations had spiritual dimensions. Whereas the constant marking of
sexual differences and consideration of gender were central to the ordering of
the world in Aztec thought and culture, in the sacred realm sexual differences
were often blurred. Many deities, in fact, had androgynous forms, and the
gender of healers could be strategically ignored.
Sources that reveal the nature of family and household in both Aztec and
Incan society are restricted for the most part to accounts recorded by Spanish
scribes after the conquest. Neither the largely male informants nor the
Spanish conquerors took great interest in the affairs of the domestic sphere,
which was regarded as the domain of women.
Family and Household in West Africa
In many African societies, there is no term equivalent to the word “family.”
Links created by descent and marriage did not always exist between persons
sharing a residence. A household, which consisted of people sharing a
residence, was as often defined by significant relations of production as it was
by functions of reproduction. In other words, the household as an economic
unit was often as important as the family as a social unit.
The Family and Spirituality
As elsewhere throughout the world, a pervasive concern of African societies
throughout history was continuity, the ability of the family and group to
reproduce itself. An adult’s sense of social completeness was dependent on
his or her ability to sire or bear children. Motherhood was an essential aspect
of female identity in most societies. Children guaranteed the well-being of an
individual in old age and ensured the transition of the parent’s spirit to the
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community of the ancestors, who would be honored by their descendants.
The prevalent belief in reincarnation of ancestors as newborn members of the
lineage meant that children were highly valued as visible symbols of the
continuity of life. The pragmatic concern of many African women and men
over fertility ensured a large and productive household labor force
The Human Household
In many West African societies before 1500, there existed more than a
figurative association between humans and their households. Houses were
often quite literally human in shape and concept. The human body,
household, and family were physical manifestations of the ideology that
wove people into a single social fabric. Like the actual white threads observed
by author Camare Laye (in the opening to Part II) after his initiation into the
social group, the human body (as individual and group) and the built world
of society were interconnected.
The Batammaliba
For example, among the Batammaliba of northern Togo and Benin, who lived
in dispersed, stateless settlements in the fifteenth century, the same word
designated both the extended family and the house in which its members
lived. The meaning of household (those sharing physical space) and family
(those sharing social space) was a conceptual continuity. Lacking a
household, an individual would be without social and spiritual support. The
house was dressed in human clothes, and its parts were identified with parts
of the human body as well as with specific human ancestors in its lineage.
The Batammaliba house also reflected the importance of historical ancestors
in the identity of the family’s compound. Every house served to symbolize a
tomb; without the death of an elder, there was believed to be no new life. The
arrangement of a settlement’s cemetery was identical to the placement of
family houses within the village, reinforcing the complementarity of house
and tomb, present and past. In the house, family history was evoked and
manipulated through daily contact between living family members and their
ancestors.
Kinship and Power
Almost everywhere in pre-1500 Africa, kinship played a critical role in both
the formation and the transmission of property, power, and prestige.
“Family” mirrored the concepts of gender in society at large. “Household”
represented a zone of social activity as often as it did an actual physical
residence. The notion of extended family, the belonging of multiple
generations and their siblings (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) to a
single family group, is common in African historical contexts. Family
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connections had political currency whether they were remembered as shared
genealogy legitimizing the right to rule or as proof of descent from the first
settlers.
Sunjata
The reciting of the epic of Sunjata, the thirteenth-century founder of the West
African empire of Mali, almost always began with a legitimizing list of
ancestors that connected the singer (even centuries removed) with the
chronological and political context of the historical hero. In the epic, Sunjata
of the Keita clan overcomes a physical affliction and a questionable right to
the throne and establishes himself as ruler. Sunjata’s defeat of his opponent
was a political and spiritual victory, but his right to rule as mansa (guardian
of the ancestors or chief ) was claimed through kinship ties. The continuity of
the family line reinforced the continuity of male dominance in the social and
political spheres of a patriarchy such as that of Mali.
Matrilineal Society in Ghana
The Akan people of Ghana created some of west Africa’s most powerful
forest states and empires, beginning around the fourteenth century and
culminating in the Asante Empire in the late seventeenth century. Central to
Akan identity was the matrilineal structure of society centered on the abusua
(which referred to family or matrilineage, as well as clan). Matrilineal descent
in Akan society refers to the pattern by which Akan men and women marked
their place in the continuum of ancestors, by reference to the female side of
the family. It had no special connotations for the distribution of political
power, which as elsewhere in large-scale states worked in favor of men.
The Akan concern with fertility and bearing children was a recognition of the
importance of the abusua in acquiring individual and community identity.
Individuals had recognized rights only through their positions within an
abusua. Without the protection afforded to members, they were considered
without ancestors and without sexual identity. The uncertainty and
ambiguity inherent in the lack of ancestry and status are best exemplified by
the fact that enemies captured by the expanding Akan state became
permanent slaves unless they were integrated into an abusua through
adoption. During the expansion of the Akan state during and after the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, neither women nor children gained
position or power. The emphasis on warfare resulted in men gaining status,
and the increased numbers of slaves available to perform household tasks
generally devalued women’s labor and diminished their influence even
further.
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The Akuaba: Motherhood and Family
One of the best-known sculptural traditions from the Akan region is the
small, abstracted carving of a human figure known as akuaba, literally
“Akua’s child.” Oral traditions claim that a woman named Akua, desperate
to produce children, once approached a local priest. He consulted the spirit
world and then instructed Akua to commission the carving of a small
wooden child. She was told to carry the child on her back, feed it, and care for
it as if it were real. The whole village laughed at her until she succeeded in
her quest to become pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful daughter. The
tradition illustrates the high status and importance associated with
motherhood in matrilineal societies, even ones in which women are
politically subordinated.
The akuaba images remain in use today. While images of children and infants
are rare in African art history, motherhood is frequently depicted as a source
of empowerment. Children had relatively few rights, since knowledge and
power, considered to be the basis of rights, were thought to accumulate with
age. Still, children were accorded respect because they were believed to be the
reincarnation of ancestors. The akuaba fertility figures suggest the important
role of children in reflecting spiritual harmony, ideals of individual beauty,
and the well-being of the family order. In Akan society, an early proverb was
symbolized by the image of two crossed crocodiles sharing the same belly.
The associated proverb reminded members of a household that no matter
who tasted the food, it would end up in the same place. That is, that which
benefited one member of the group benefited all.
The extent to which such a unit as the household-family was mediated by the
Akan state or local political authority varied according to the status of its
members. Typically, interference in the creation of marriage alliances allowed
a patriarchy to control the labor of women and their children and thus the
accumulation of any household surplus. Even when wealth was inherited
through the female line, most women were excluded from most political
offices. Exceptions were made for elite Akan women who were beyond their
childbearing years. The female office of queen mother was secondary to that
of the king, but she was omnipresent and consulted in the ascension of the
head of state. Women acted as priestesses and even diplomats who could find
themselves making significant contributions to statecraft and foreign policy.
Summary
Families constitute the most basic threads in the social fabric; they are the
most common units of society in world history. As spheres of human
interaction, families are arenas in which culture and values are reproduced.
Their differences suggest the staggering range of significant variation in the
human past. Indeed, though states and empires rise or fall, the family and
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household remain central to understanding world societies. The features of
various forms of family and household around the world—as basic social
units, units of shared residence, or units of economic production—were in
place by about 1500. The same forces that shaped family and household
before 1500 continued to influence and change them after that date. Only the
dominant position of males in society, family, or state would remain
relatively unchanged.
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