Matrilineal Society

One group of Native Americans, the Iroquois, was a confederation of five nations–the Senecas (Great Hill People), the Mohawks (People of the Flint), the Oneidas (People of the Stone), the Onondagas (People of the Mountain), and the Cayugas (People of the Landings). They lived along the great lakes that border present-day New York and Pennsylvania. Many European Americans (missionaries, hunters, colonizers) remarked, when coming in contact with the Iroquoian civilization, that it differed greatly from their own civilization because it was matrilineal.

Write a list of words that come to your mind when you hear this term.

MATRILINEAL

Look up the word "matrilineal" in the dictionary and write its definition in the space provided below:

MATRILINEAL-

Read the facts about Iroquoian society in the seventeenth century; they will give you an idea of how this matrilineal society operated.

1. The mother was the head of Iroquoian families and family descent was traced through her.
2. When daughters reached puberty and married, they would bring their new husbands to live in the house of their mothers.
3. When sons reached puberty and married, they would go to live in the households of their new wives.
4. Many generations of a family lived together (sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents) and became an "extended family."
5. Each extended family lived in a "long house" (a house made of wood and bark, in the shape of a long rectangle).
6. Each extended family was grouped together with other extended families to form a "clan."
7. A village was made up of a dozen or more clans.
8. The women of each clan elected a "matron" to represent them in village affairs.
9. Matrons organized agricultural labor and household management.
10. Each matron selected a man to represent the clan at village councils. The matron stood behind her selected man as he sat in a circle at village council meetings; she watched how the selected man spoke and voted and removed him from this position if he strayed too far from her wishes.
11. Matrons of the village got together to select the man from their village to represent them at tribal council meetings. (Each tribe consisted of many villages.)
12. Matrons had the power to impeach the men they had selected to represent them at the tribal council level, if they were not pleased with their performance.
13. Women tended the crops; land was owned and worked in common.
14. Men hunted and fished; catch was divided equally among the members of the village and was controlled by the women once it was brought back to the long house.
15. Women were in control of food, both agricultural and hunted, once it was within the long house.
16. When a woman wanted a divorce from her husband, she set her husband's things outside the door of the long house.
17. Women arranged their children's marriages and kept the children in the case of divorce.
18. Houses and land were considered common property. The idea of private property was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote "No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers. . . . Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common."

Essay Questions: Consider your own life. How would it be different if you lived in Iroquoian society of the seventeenth century? Where would you live? Who would be the members of your "extended family"? Whom would you marry? Where would you live after marriage? What kind of work would you perform? Would you be happy living in a society organized in this manner? Write a story describing your life with the Iroquois. Be sure to explain the advantages and disadvantages (from your point of view!) this life held.

Excerpted from Ready-to-Use Multicultural Activities for the American History Classroom.