Women And Their Roles In Cherokee Society

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Cherokee society was not some savage like the first European settlers liked to pretend. The people were very connected through their religious beliefs and by living in close knit communities. The Cherokee people knew what was expected of them in their communities, but also knew what they could do to improve their status. In this way their lifestyle was very organized. Men and women had their own roles in day to day life, not because one gender was inferior, but because it was what they believed they were meant to do. Men went to war and fought to bring honor and gain supplies for the village. Women were in charge of the home life and crops. The mother’s clan was the one the children would belong to. Clans were very important for Cherokee identity. A person’s tribe was responsible for avenging them should they be killed, or on the flip side of that should they kill someone else a person from their own tribe could be killed in their place. Cherokee sense of family is also quite different from European family structure. European styles uses direct blood connections, Cherokee uses clan. …show more content…

Blood was sacred and powerful to the Cherokee and this had a large impact on many of the things they did. When a woman was menstruating she separated herself from the rest of the community. When a woman was bleeding she was considered powerful. Women had power through their monthly cycles of bleeding and childbirth. Men gained power through war, hunting, and stickball. When preparing for war there was a long ceremony with the medicine man, similarly stick ball was very sacred and the sticks would be handled in a special way. The life of animals was sacred and when they were killed they had to appease its