Who made up most unions between Europeans and natives?
In the early 19th century, the Indigenous American woman Sacagawea, who would help translate for and guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the West, married the French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau. Most marriages between Europeans and Indigenous Americans were between European men and Indigenous American women. Depending on the kinship system of the woman's tribe, their children would be more or less easily assimilated into the tribe. Nations that had matrilineal systems, such as the Creek and Cherokee in the Southeast, gave the mixed-race children status in their mother's clans and tribes. If the tribe had a patrilineal system, like the Omaha, the children of white fathers were considered white. Unless they were specifically adopted into the tribe by an adult male, they could have no social status in it.