Cherokee Indian Race Identity

Karen Fahey ANTH 113 23 January 2012 Reading Report Week 1 Blood Politics, Chapter 2 During the eighteenth century, the political and racial identicalness of the Cherokee people underwent a tardy scarcely definite change. Most of these changes can be attributed to proceed contact with Euro-American colonies. Before any interaction with Europeans, Cherokee communities operated under a belief system of blood ties, binding kin from distant and unknown clans. Cherokee mythology often describes blood as a central metaphor for life and it has remained a vital element of Cherokee identity (Strum 35). Although Cherokees had a sense of cohesive identity across many relatively small self-governed towns, they lacked political cohesiveness until interaction with European colonial powers led to a more alter form of government. Continued conflicts between European colonists and individual Cherokee communities promote some towns to voluntarily relinquish their much valued independence in rig to work towards a new tribal government, one that increasingly separated from the Cherokee kinship system. It was not until the here and now half of the eighteenth century that Cherokees began to define themselves in underground to whites, in terms of not only culture, but in addition race.

Europeans first began to describe Native Americans as redskin most(prenominal) likely in response to the red paint worn out by Native American warriors during battle. During the eighteenth century naturalists popularized the categorisation of people into color categories. Cherokees started accepting most of this racial classification, but they consistently put themselves on top of the hierarchy. Euro-Americans were sure to realize racial tensions between Native-Americans and African-Americans to ensure the two groups never form an alliance. It seems to me that racism as we know it was brought to the Americas by European colonist, but Cherokee culture was unique in that they were open to observe the... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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