Yokut Marriages, Essay Example

Marriage, despite the sentimentality of the event, is also an action that has many economic, religious and societal implications. People who get married conduct this action to legitimize the birth of their children and to legally fix the responsibility for raising and educating future children. In addition to these societal perspectives of marriage, there are also economic inferences of marriage – this can be seen on such examples as the bride’s dowry in the way of perceiving it as an exchange of goods and services, as well as the distribution of income and responsibilities in the household.

Some of marriage implications other than only the action of legitimizing relations and feelings can be seen on the examples of Indigenous people, namely Yokut marriages. The Yokut are the people who live in the Central Valley in California. They have been recognized to adopt quite a different way of living including the range of activities, social life, beliefs and traditions etc. Such peculiarities are also observed concerning the way they build their family and treat marriage –“Yokuts tribelets followed a common system of patrilineal family organization and adopted moiety, or totem, animals” (Beckman).

According to the traditions of the Yokut, the dowry is understood in a bit different way than it is traditionally, so the family of the bride gives some compensation to the family of the bride:

“Marriages arranged by families were preceded by gift giving to the family of the future bride and concluded with a feast” (Yokuts – Marriage and Family).

Besides, endogamy and exogamy is treated in a special way by the Yokut – “lineage exogamy was enforced, and moiety exogamy was favored but not prescribed” (Yokuts – Marriage and Family). Concerning the traditions of the newly created family’s life matrilocality is more common than partilocality.

Works Cited

Beckman, Tad. The Southern Yokuts of the Central Valley, 1998. 1 November 2009. <http://www4.hmc.edu:8001/humanities/indian/ca/ch12.htm>

Yokuts – Marriage and Family, 2009. 1 November 2009. <http://www.everycultur e.com/North-America/Yokuts-Marriage-and-Family.html>