Gutman's examination of the slaves'extended kinship
system produces important findings. Gutman discovers
that cousins rarely married, an exogamous tendency that
contrasted sharply with the endogamy practiced by the
plantation owners. This preference for exogamy, Gutman
suggests, may have derived from West African rules
governing marriage, which, though they differed from
one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of
prohibition against unions with close kin. This taboo
against cousins'marrying is important, argues Gutman,
because it is one of many indications of a strong
awareness among slaves of an extended kinship network.
The fact that distantly related kin would care for children
separated from their families also suggests this
awareness. When blood relationships were few, as in
newly created plantations in the Southwest, "fictive"
kinship arrangements took their place until a new pattern
of consanguinity developed. Gutman presents convincing
evidence that this extended kinship structure—which he
believes developed by the mid-to-late eighteenth
century—provided the foundations for the strong
communal consciousness that existed among slaves.