強制移住以後のチェロキー族における立法と女性の地位
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概要
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In the hope of avoiding removal from their homelands in the Southeast and coexisting with white Americans, the Cherokee Indians began to adopt broad aspects of white culture from the end of the 18th century. In the process of adopting white culture, they enacted many laws including their own constitution to transform their social and political institutions into white man's institutions. Despite those efforts, ultimately the Cherokees were forced at gunpoint to remove from their homes in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina to a reservation in the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in the late 1830s. Their harsh journey to the West, which killed thousands of tribesmen, came to be known as the Trail of Tears. In my previous paper (Otsuma Journal of Comparative Culture 2, 2001, pp. 77-97), in order to evaluate this preremoval cultural transformation of the Cherokees from a viewpoint of the status of women, I examined the laws enacted by the Cherokee government before removal that provided new women's role and status in the so-called "civilized" Cherokee society. And I concluded that the laws showed us the "civilization" of Cherokee women did not only mean their blind adoption of white culture, but their efforts to preserve beneficial aspects of Cherokee tradition. Even in the Indian Territory, the Cherokees kept adopting white culture and enacted many laws to reconstruct their society. In this paper, I once again examine the laws especially enacted during the period from removal to the Civil War to evaluate the postremoval cultural transformation for Cherokee women. Then I find that there was a great similarity between the postremoval laws and the preremoval laws. So I conclude that the postremoval laws also show us that the "civilization" of Cherokee women in the Indian Territory meant the conscious acceptance of the white way while preserving Cherokee tradition.