During The First Half Of The 19th Century

“During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Cherokee legislature enacted a series of laws regulating sex and marriage that reveal the efforts of Cherokee authorities to modify conceptions of gender and race in the Nation.” –Fay Yarbrough, Legislating Women’s Sexuality: Cherokee Marriage Laws in the 19th Century, 385 Yarbrough’s statement illustrates how Cherokee officials were redefining Cherokees racially and sought to control the marital behavior of Cherokee women because they had the ability to create legitimate members of the Cherokee Nation through marriage and childbirth. It reveals how the Cherokee Nation was resisting American’s attempt to control them and dispossess them of their land, yet at the same time, they were slowly adapting American ideologies regarding race, gender and status.
The National Council tightened the provisions of the intermarriage law by making white men apply for a license from the Clerk of the National Committee in order to be given permission to marry a Cherokee women and become part of the Nation. It also implemented a law that stated that Cherokee women retain their property rights upon marrying white men and that a white man could not dispose of his Cherokee wife’s property without her consent. On the other hand, legislations were passed that prohibited intermarriage between a Cherokee female with any “slave or person of color not entitled to the rights of citizenship under the laws of Cherokee Nation.” (Yarbrough 390) It all demonstrates how the Cherokees tried to limit whites to prevent them from taking advantage of Cherokee women’s rights in order to gain land and foothold in the Nation and at the same time barred any person with black blood to gain membership or