No.^TS]^' ^^^" EASTERN CHEROKEE GROUPS — KUPFERER 243 



THE TYPOLOGY AS AN APPROACH TO 

 CULTURAL DIFFERENTIATION 



Interest in the differential development of once-homogeneous 

 groups is not without precedent. Latin American scholars have 

 attended to this question at great length. ^^ With the exception of 

 the Pueblo tribes, the presence of subgroups with differing cultural 

 orientations is probably a feature of most North American Indian 

 reservations at present. Scudder Mekeel (1936, pp. 5-6) called 

 attention to this segmenting tendency. Among 932 Oglala of the 

 Teton Dakota tribe, three different strata existed. These were 

 "divided not only according to generation but also according to the 

 particular way of gettuig a Uvuig which was in vogue during the 

 impressionable years of those within the given stratum." The first 

 group was old; it remembered the hide tipi, it had counted coup and 

 hunted buffalo, and it yearned for the old Ufe. The second group 

 knew of the old life only through tales. "Their minds were tuned 

 to a parasitic Ufe due to treaty rations." The third group was better 

 educated. It knew of neither of the above-mentioned experiences. 

 It resented the leadership of the older men, and thought "it could 

 handle Washington better." Some of the members of this group 

 were making a genuine effort to support themselves. 



Mekeel's work was early and crude in its categorizing, but it pre- 

 saged a flood of research using the basic notion of social gradients. 

 Outstanding among these scholarly productions is the work of Irving 

 Hallowell, which is based upon gi'oups who at one time participated in 

 a common Ojibwa culture. To examine changes in personality or- 

 ganization which, he hypothesized, might derive from acculturation 

 pressures, he divided the Ojibwa into four groups. The groups 

 represented four different communities: three in Canada, and one in 

 the United States. They were placed on a scale of acculturation 

 proceeding from level one, the least acculturated, through level four, 

 the most modernized. The identification of these categories was made 

 on an impressionistic basis (Hallowell, 1952, pp. 106-107). 



George D. Spindler (1955, p. 6) comments on Hallowell's impres- 

 sionistic differentiation of levels of acculturation, stating that this 

 basis of ordering is only partly explicit and is, therefore, subject to no 

 critical test of vaUdation. Admitting that this method may be 

 appropriate to samples drawn from distinct areas, he questions its 

 application to a single population on one reservation. In such a 

 situation the attributes used to place individuals on a scale must be 



» See, for example, Redfleld, 1941, p. 13: "In short, the Yucatan, considered as one moves from Merida 

 southeastward into forest hinterland, presents a sort of social gradient in which the Spanish, modem and 

 urban, gives way to the Maya, archaic and primitive." Others who have dealt with Latin American 

 typology construction are Wolf, 1955, pp. 452-469, and Wagley and Harris, 1955, pp. 428-429. 



