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An almost universal
political and social institution which originally dealt only
with persons but later with families, clans or gentes, bands,
and tribes. It had its beginnings far back in the history of primitive
society and, after passing through many forms and losing much ceremonial
garb, appears to-day in the civilized institution of naturalization. In
the primitive mind the fundamental motive underlying adoption was to
defeat the evil purpose of death to remove a member of the kinship group
by actually replacing in person the lost or dead member. In primitive
philosophy, birth and death are the results of magic power; birth
increases and death decreases the orenda (q. v. ) of the clan or family
of the group affected. In order to preserve that magic power intact,
society, by the exercise of constructive orenda, resuscitates the dead
in the person of another in whom is embodied the blood and person of the
dead. As the diminution of the number of the kindred was regarded as
having been caused by magic power, by the orenda of some hostile agency,
so the prevention or reparation of that loss must be accomplished by a
like power, manifested in ritualistic liturgy and ceremonial. Front the
view point of the primitive mind adoption serves to change, by a fiction
of law, the personality as well as the political status of the adopted
person.
For example, there were captured two white
persons (sisters) by the Seneca, and instead of both being adopted into
one clan, one was adopted by the Deer and the other by the Heron clan,
and thus the blood of the two sisters was changed by the rite of
adoption in such wise that their children could intermarry. Furthermore,
to satisfy the underlying concept of the rite, the adopted person must
be brought into one of the strains of kinship in order to define the
standing of such person in the community, and the kinship name which the
person receives declares his relation to all other persons in the
fancily group; that is to say, should the adopted person be named son
rather than uncle by the adopter, his status in the community would
differ accordingly.
Front the political
adoption of the Tuscarora by
the Five Nations, about 1726, it is evident that tribes, families,
clans, and groups of people could be adopted like persons. A fictitious
age might be conferred upon the person adopted, since age largely
governed the rights, duties, and position of persons in the community.
In this wise, by the action of the constituted authorities, the age of
an adopted group was fixed and its, social and political importance
thereby determined. Owing to the peculiar circumstances of the expulsion
of the Tuscarora from North Carolina was deemed best by the Five
Nations, in view of their relation to the Colonies at that time, to give
an asylum to the Tuscarora simply by means of the institution of
adoption rather than by the political recognition of the Tuscarora as a
member of the league. Therefore the Oneida made a motion in the federal
council of the Five Nations that they adopt the Tuscarora as a nursling
still swathed to the cradleboard. This having prevailed, the Five
Nations, by the spokesman of the Oneida, said: "We have set up for
ourselves a cradle-hoard in the extended house," that is, in the
dominions of the League. After due probation the Tuscarora, by separate
resolutions of the council, on separate motions of the Oneida, were made
successively a boy, a young man, a man, all assistant to the official
woman cooks, a warrior, and lastly a peer, having the right of chiefship
in the council on an equal footing with the chiefs of the other tribes.
From this it is seen that a tribe or other group of people may be
adopted upon any one of several planes of political growth,
corresponding to the various ages of human growth.
This seems to explain the problem of the alleged
subjugation aid degradation of the Delaware by the Iroquois, which is
said to have been enacted in open council. When it is understood that
the Five Nations adopted the Delaware tribe as men assistants to the
official cooks of the League it becomes clear that no taint of slavery
and degradation was designed to be given by the act. It merely made the
Delaware probationary heirs to citizenship in the League, and
citizenship would he conferred upon them after suitable tutelage. In
this they were treated with much greater consideration than were the
Tuscarora, who are of the language and lineage of the Five Nations. The
Delaware were not adopted as warriors or chiefs, but as assistant cooks;
neither were they adopted, like the Tuscarora, is infants, but as men
whose duty it was to assist the women whose official function was to
cook for the people at public assemblies. Their office was hence well
exemplified by the possession of a corn pestle, a hoe, and petticoats.
This fact, misunderstood, perhaps intentionally
misrepresented, seems to explain the mystery concerning the "making
women" of the Delaware. This kind of adoption was virtually a state of
probation, which could he made long or short.
The adoption of a chief's son by a follow chief,
customary in some of the tribes of the northwest coast, differs in
motive and effect from that defined above, which concerns persons alien
to the tribe, upon whom it confers citizenship in the clan, gens, and
tribe, as this deals only with intra-tribal persons for the purpose of
conferring some degree of honor upon them rather than citizenship and
political authority.
The Iroquois, in order to recruit the great
losses incurred in their many wars, put into systematic practice, the
adoption not only of individuals but also of entire clans and tribes.
The Tutelo, the Saponi, the Nanticoke, and other tribes and portions of
tribes were forced to incorporate with the several tribes of the
Iroquois confederation by formal adoption.
After the Pequot war the Narraganset adopted a
large body of the Pequot. The Chickasaw adopted a section of the
Natchez, and the Uchee were incorporated with the Creeks. In the various
accounts of the American Indian tribes references to formal adoption and
incorporation of one people by another are abundant. It is natural that
formal adoption as a definite institution was most in vogue wherever the
clan and gentile systems were more or less fully developed.
Handbook of American Indians, Frederick W. Hodge,1906
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/history/indianadoption.htm
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