Plains Cree family residence did have dominant
patterns, as Driver has indicated: "In the patrilocal
extended family, the sons continue to live with their
fathers and bring their wives to their father’s house or
locality; married daughters live elsewhere, but unmarried
daughters belong to this group" (234), but he also indicates
that North American instances of cross-cousin marriage are
remarkable for the wide variety of other social traits
associated with them: "Thus descent may be patrilineal,
matrilineal, or bilateral; postnuptial residence may be
patrilocal, matrilocal, avunculocal, or bilocal; kinship
terminology may be Crow, Omaha, Iroquois, Hawaiian or
Eskimo" (229).This suggests that the couple had ample choice
in setting up residence. As Charles Garnett reports:
"Among the Oglala Sioux Indians, a man in a camp
was subject to the commonly accepted laws and customs,
and to the regulations of that camp. If he desired to be
free from these regulations he might set up his tipi
alone, far away from the camp, where he would be chief
of his own family and govern all within his own tipi. If
others permanently placed their tipis near his, they
formed a new camp, and a new band, of which he was the
chief. If there were few who joined this new band, its
chief was of little consequence and remained largely
dependent on the band from which he came. But if a large
number joined the new band, it became important in the
affairs of the tribe, and its chief a person of
corresponding importance" (qtd. Walker 24).
A number of terms have been developed by academics to
reflect these choices, as Driver reports: "’patrilocal
residence’ means living with or near the groom’s parents; it
is also called ‘virilocal.’ ‘Matrilocal’ is living with or
near the bride’s parents … also called ‘uxorilocal.’
‘Avunculocal’ is applied to residence with the groom’s
mother’s brother’s family; ‘Neolocal’ to residence in a new
house … ‘bilocal’ (‘ambilocal’) to residence with either the
groom’s or the bride’s parents or a shifting back and forth
from one to the other" ( 232).]
On the other hand, Sir John Franklin reports in 1819-22
among the Plains Cree that:
..when a hunter marries his first wife, he usually
takes up his abode in the tent of his father-in-law, and
of course hunts for the family; but when he becomes a
father, the families are at liberty to separate, or
remain together, as their inclinations prompt them. His
second wife is for the most part the sister of the
first, but not necessarily so, for an Indian of another
family often presses his daughter upon a hunter whom he
knows to be capable of maintaining her well. The first
wife always remains the mistress of the tent, and
assumes an authority over the others which is not in
every case quietly submitted to.
It may be remarked, that whilst an Indian resides
with his wife’s family, it is extremely improper for his
mother-in-law to speak, or even look at him; and when
she has communication to make, it is the etiquette that
she should turn her back upon him, and address him only
through the medium of a third person … It appears to
also have been an ancient practice for an Indian to
avoid eating or sitting down in the presence of the
father-in-law (Franklin 108-109).
The classic ethnographic description of the Plains Cree
is that of David Mandelbaum, who conducted his fieldwork in
1934 for a monograph published in 1940. He used elderly
informants to reconstruct the period 1860-1870 as the
ethnographic present, and reports that ‘the newly married
couple usually lived near the husband’s parents’ (Mendelbaum
1940: 245). Using Mandelbaum and other sources, Murdock
coded the Plains Cree as Vn in the Atlas of World Cultures
(Murdock 1981: 124). V is defined as follows: ‘Virilocal,
equivalent to ‘patrilocal’ but confined to instances where
the husband’s patrikin are not aggregated in patrilocal and
patrilineal kin groups’ (Murdock 1981: 94). The lowercase n
indicates neolocality as a ‘culturally patterned’
alternative. For example, if the husband was an orphan,
obviously the newlyweds could not live near his parents
(Moore and Campbell 179).
According to the recent study taken by Moore and Campbell
to determine the accuracy of the original data, they
conclude that, "adherence to virilocality among the
exogamous couples was very high in our sample, over 90 per
cent for all five groups" (Moore and Campbell 183). Hence
relational law among these peoples recognizes virilocality,
or living with parents of the groom as a basic legal tenant.
|