Most descriptive monographs on primitive tribes contain lists of the words with which the natives designate their relatives by blood and marriage. The reason is far from obvious. Why should not this topic be left in the hands of a linguist-lexicographer? It is true that primitive usage in this regard is very quaint from our point of view, but so are primitive conceptions on a variety of subjects that likewise find expression in speech. The refinement of spatial distinctions in North American languages, the classification of colors or animals or other groups of natural phenomena are of equal intrinsic interest from a psychological point of view. Why, then, single out a particular department of the aboriginal vocabulary in a treatise on culture? The answer is simply this, that kinship terms have a direct relation to cultural data.

The very fact that primitive tribes frequently use terms of kinship as words of address where we should substitute personal names is a social practice of ethnological interest. But the essential point is that the terms used are often very definitely correlated with specific social usages. Generally speaking, the use of distinct words for two types of relatives is connected with a real difference in their social relations to the speaker. Thus, a majority of primitive tribes draw no distinction between the father’s sister’s daughter and the mother’s brother’s daughter. But among the Miwok of California, where one of the cousins may be married while the other is within the prohibited degrees, a discrimination is made in language. Again, in many regions of the globe an altogether special bond connects the maternal uncle with the sister’s son, and accordingly we find that he is very often sharply distinguished from the paternal uncle in nomenclature.

On the other hand, we can often explain very naturally the use of a single word for two or more relatives whom we designate by as many distinct words. The Vedda of Ceylon, for example, call the man’s father-in-law and maternal uncle by the same term. The reason is that here a man commonly marries his mother’s brother’s daughter; the mother’s brother is his father-in-law, and this identity is expressed in the terminology. A different illustration is supplied by the Crow of Montana, who have one term for the man’s mother-in-law and his wife’s brother’s wife. The simple explanation is that both stand to him in the relationship of mutual avoidance, and it is this social fact that is expressed by the common designation. The same Indians apply the word for ‘father’ in a very inclusive manner, possibly to dozens of individuals; but closer examination shows that all of the people so addressed are entitled to the same kind of treatment by the speaker, to a peculiar form of reverence, and to a preferential rank in the distribution of gifts.

These few and casual examples possibly suffice to show why kinship terms deserve the ethnologist’s attention. Terms of relationship are, in some measure, indices of social usage. Where relatives whom other people distinguish are grouped together, there is some likelihood that the natives regard them as representing the same relationship because they actually enjoy the same privileges or exercise the same functions in tribal life. Where relatives whom other peoples group together are distinguished, there is some probability that the distinction goes hand in hand with a difference in social function.

Lewis H. Morgan, the pioneer in this domain of knowledge, was keenly alive to the social implications of kinship nomenclature. But while he endeavored to give an ultimate interpretation of it in terms of various social conditions, he was confronted with the fact that not every tribe had a terminology sui generis, but that nomenclatures of remote peoples were sometimes marvelously similar. Morgan boldly argued that such community of nomenclature established ultimate racial unity and on this ground coolly suggested a racial connection between the Hawaiians and the South African Zulu, between the natives of India and those of the Western Hemisphere.[1-v]

These speculations as to racial affinity have been rightly disregarded by later students, because to accept Morgan’s premises means running counter to the most obvious facts of physical anthropology. As Lubbock pointed out, we cannot assume that the Two-Mountain Iroquois are more closely akin to remote Oceanians than to their fellow Iroquois because some of their kinship terms resemble in connotation those of the Hawaiians. Nevertheless, Morgan was right in feeling that some historical conclusions could be drawn from similarities of relationship nomenclature. We must simply bring this particular group of ethnological data under the same principle as other cultural phenomena. When the same feature occurs within a definite continuous region, we shall assume that it has developed in a single center and spread by borrowing to other parts of the area. When the same feature occurs in disconnected regions, we shall incline to the theory of independent development and shall inquire whether the course of evolution may have been due to the same cultural determinants, i.e., in this case, to the same social institutions.

After these preliminary remarks, we may turn to a closer scrutiny of the facts.

‘Systems’. Abstractly considered, it is conceivable that every individual relative might be designated by a different term of relationship by every other individual, just as each object in nature might theoretically be defined by some distinctive word instead of being placed in some such category as ‘tree’, ‘animal’, or ‘book’. Indeed, primitive people go rather far in their distinctions. Thus, in the Menomini family circle boys are not called ‘son’ or ‘brother’, but each is addressed by a word indicating the order of his birth, the oldest being ‘mudjikiwis’, the second ‘osememau’, the third ‘akotcosememau’, the fourth ‘nanaweo’.[2-v] But in this, as in every other department of language, economy has been exercised and instead of a chaotic number of distinct terms for every possible relationship, there is always a limited series, many distinct individual relationships being always grouped together under a single head. Thus, in English we apply the word ‘brother’ to a number of individuals regardless of their age relatively to ourselves or to one another and irrespective of the sex of the speaker. Yet, as the Menomini instance shows, the age distinction might very well have been expressed in speech and there are many Indian languages in which one set of terms is used by female and another by male speakers.

All the terms used by a people to designate their relatives by blood or marriage are jointly called their ‘kinship system’. This phrase is wholly misleading, if it is understood to imply that all the constituent elements form a well-articulated whole, for this probably never applies to more than a limited number of them, as will appear presently. But as a convenient word for the entire nomenclature of relationship found in a particular region the word ‘system’ may be provisionally retained. We may say, then, that systems of different peoples vary in their mode of classifying kin and it seems the ethnographer’s first duty to determine the types of system found and their geographical distribution.

At the present moment a satisfactory grouping of the world’s kinship systems is impossible, owing to our lack of knowledge of many areas. The task is also rendered very difficult by the frequent coexistence of distinct and even contradictory principles in the same ‘system’. Each of these may be defined separately, but to weld both or all of them into a unified whole defies our efforts. For example, the Masai of East Africa, in referring to the paternal uncle, simply combine the stems for ‘father’, baba, and ‘brother’, alasche, thus forming by juxtaposition of these primary terms the compound expression ol alasche le baba, which means literally ‘the brother of the father’. This mode of defining a relative’s status by combining primary terms of relationship or a primary term with a qualifying adjective as in our ‘grandfather’, is technically known as ‘descriptive’, and ethnologists are wont to speak of descriptive systems. As a matter of fact, this descriptive principle is highly characteristic of the Masai—but not when relatives are directly addressed by them. In such vocative usage, as it may be called, the father’s brother is called baba like the father himself; the mother’s brother is not designated by a phrase composed of primary stems but by a new stem, abula, which is also used reciprocally for the nephew; while koko serves to call both a paternal and a maternal aunt. These connotations introduce into the Masai ‘system’ a discordant principle by which relatives, instead of being defined descriptively, are grouped together in classes. But this ‘classificatory’ feature by no means characterizes all the vocative nomenclature. By far the majority of relatives are addressed by terms suggestive of the presents of live stock presented to them by the speaker; if the gift consisted of a bull, the word used is b-ainoni, from oinoni, bull; if an ass was given away, the vocative term is ba-sigiria, from sigiria, ass; and so forth. Accordingly, the vocative terms cited above are only employed by children, who have not yet presented stock to their kin.[3-v] In short, Masai terminology is molded by at least three entirely disparate principles.

We shall, accordingly, do well to amend our phraseology and to speak rather of kinship categories, features, or principles of classification than of types of kinship systems.

The Descriptive Principle. When we approach our subject in a purely empirical way, we are confronted with the fact that features do not, as a rule, occur sporadically but are distributed over continuous areas. Imperfect as is our knowledge of African systems, for example, we know that the descriptive feature of the Masai nomenclature does not appear everywhere, but flourishes especially among East African tribes, such as the Shilluk, Dinka, and other Upper Nile populations, and perhaps more widely where Arabic influence extends, the Arabian terminology being of a markedly descriptive character. In East Africa, indeed, there is almost quantitative proof of the dependence of kinship terminology on historical connection and geographical proximity. Among the Baganda, as among most Bantu Negroes, the descriptive feature is lacking and such a relative as the mother’s brother’s son, instead of being designated by a compound expression, is classed with the brother.[4-v] The Masai, who live surrounded by Bantu tribes, have a purely descriptive system for non-vocative usage but their vocative forms are in part classificatory, while some neighboring Bantu peoples have a correspondingly mixed system. The Shilluk and Dinka seem to use the descriptive principle exclusively, as do the Arabs. The Masai are undoubtedly closely allied with the Nilotes and markedly different from the Bantu. The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that their terminology—whatever may be its ultimate raison d’Être—is a function of their historical relations. They have descriptive features because they belong to a group of peoples of whom such features are characteristic. They have classificatory features because they have come into contact with peoples whose systems were characterized by such features and from whom they have borrowed them. The Shilluk lack the classificatory principle because they have not had the same alien influences as the Masai. The restriction of descriptive features to a definite part of Africa and their amalgamation with other features in the marginal section of this area show that kinship nomenclatures follow precisely the same rules as other elements of culture and that their distribution indicates probable or corroborates known tribal relations.

The descriptive principle is not restricted to East Africa and the Semitic family, but has been found in the Persian, Armenian, Celtic, Esthonian, and Scandinavian languages.[5-v] Although guesses might be offered, I do not feel that our present knowledge permits definite statements as to the historical relations suggested by the total range of the descriptive principle on the face of the globe.

The Hawaiian Principle. While the term ‘descriptive’ admits of a fairly unambiguous definition, the same cannot be said for the word ‘classificatory’. Morgan, after explaining his use of the former, states that a system of the second type reduces blood-relatives to great classes by a series of apparently arbitrary generalizations, applying the same terms to all the members of the same class. “It thus confounds relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the primary and secondary terms beyond their seemingly appropriate sense.”[6-v] This is looking at the matter from the arbitrarily selected point of view of our own nomenclature (which Morgan improperly, as Rivers has shown, regarded as descriptive). Objectively considered, even descriptive terminologies are classificatory, inasmuch as they do not individualize, but content themselves with such generalizations as classing together, say, all the father’s brothers instead of uniformly specializing according to age. For this reason I regard as misplaced Dr. Rivers’ emphasis on whether a term designates a single individual or a wider group. What, then, lies at the basis of the classificatory principle? Dr. Rivers, following Tylor, reduces it to the clan factor or rather to the influence of the dual organization of ancient society, by which it was divided into exogamous moieties. But this important suggestion, to which we shall have to revert, applies avowedly only to one form of the classificatory system and involves, therefore, the hypothesis that this preceded other forms. This may prove to be valid, but we cannot prejudice an empirical survey by taking its proof for granted and cannot, therefore, simply substitute ‘clan’ for ‘classificatory’ systems—apart from the fact that to talk of systems instead of principles or features in this connection is demonstrably misleading.

It is quite clear that ‘classificatory’ can be used only in a loose sense, to indicate wider groupings of kin than those to which we are accustomed; and that there is no necessary evolutionary relation between the two forms usually classed under this head. The empirical data are simply these. In certain systems, blood-relatives are classed according to generation regardless of nearness of kinship and of their maternal or paternal affiliations; in others, there is bifurcation, the maternal and paternal kin of at least the generations nearest to the speaker being distinguished. We may call the former the ‘unforked merging’, or geographically the ‘Hawaiian’ mode of classification; the latter may be correspondingly referred to as ‘forked merging’, or ‘Dakota’. One point which it is essential to remember even at this early stage of our survey is that these principles, together with the descriptive one, are very far from exhausting the varieties found.

Let us now consider the ‘unforked’ principle somewhat more closely as it finds expression among the Hawaiians. These people apply a single term, makua, to both parents and to all their parents’ brothers and sisters, sex being distinguished only by qualifying words meaning ‘man’ and ‘woman’. All related individuals of one’s generation are classed as brothers and sisters, certain distinctions being drawn according to the age of their parents relatively to that of one’s own parents and also according to the speaker’s sex, but none resulting from the differences in nearness of kinship. The children of all these brothers and sisters are classed with one’s own children, and their children with one’s grandchildren, while a single term embraces grandparents and all related members of their generation.[7-v] This age-stratification of blood-relatives with disregard of differences as to father’s or mother’s side occurs not only in Hawaii, but also in New Zealand, Kusaie, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[8-v] It is not uninteresting to note that Hawaii and New Zealand, though far removed from each other, coincide closely in other cultural features not shared with fellow-Polynesians, as Professor Dixon has recently shown in his treatment of Oceanian mythology. The geographical proximity of Micronesia to Hawaii hardly requires mention. Dr. Rivers points out[9-v] that certain Polynesian tribes in contact with Melanesians, whose systems display essentially the forked principle, e.g., the Tongans, use an intermediate nomenclature. We are thus again able to summarize the data in terms of historical connection. The assumption may be made that the ancient Polynesian terminology was that of Hawaii and New Zealand, which was modified where the Polynesians came into contact with diverse populations, and is shared by populations whose territory was presumably traversed by the Hawaiians. Dr. Rivers also states that the Burmese, Karen, Chinese and Japanese systems conform to the Hawaiian principle. He seems to depend on Morgan’s statement of the case, which may require revision. But, accepting the data as given and assuming that the Malay proper classify kin according to the unforked method, we should still have a perfectly continuous distribution for the Hawaiian features.

This would no longer hold if we accepted Morgan’s view that the Zulu of South Africa share the Hawaiian form, on which slender basis he advances the hypothesis that Kaffir and Polynesian have a common ancestry.[10-v] As a matter of fact, the Zulu nomenclature secured by Morgan does in some instances slur over the difference of paternal and maternal lines, to the exclusive dominance of the generation factor. Thus, man and woman call all the brother’s and sister’s children their sons and daughters without distinction, and the children of the father’s sister are classed with one’s brothers and sisters.

Nevertheless, even Morgan’s list reveals fundamental deviations from the Hawaiian principle. As he notes, the mother’s brother is not classed with the father’s brother and father, and the assumption that he formerly was is mere guesswork. What particularly astonished Morgan, however, was that the father’s sister was not called mother, but father. This is, indeed, amazing, if we start from our own notions as to the necessity of distinguishing parental sex, and in addition assume that the Zulu system is a variant of the Hawaiian one. If we free our minds from these preconceptions, there is no mystery; the father’s sister is classed with the father simply in order to express the difference from the maternal line in accordance with the principle of bifurcation.

In order to gain greater clearness in this matter it is necessary to extend our investigation to other Bantu tribes, preferably to those whose territories approach that of the Zulu. The essential point to ascertain is whether paternal and maternal uncles and aunts are merged in one group or are distinguished.[11-v] Among the Thonga, who live north of the Zulu, the father’s sister, as in Zulu, is classed with the father, the word meaning literally ‘female father’ and thus emphasizing her separation from the mother’s side of the family. The Herero, according to Schinz, seem to class all aunts with the mother in vocative usage, but when not directly referring to these relatives they employ quite distinct expressions for the father’s and the mother’s sisters. In Baganda the difference between the two sides is marked. Mange is mother, and the same word with the qualifier muto means mother’s sister, while father’s sister is sengawe. Even clearer is the case for the maternal uncle. In the Ronga group of the Thonga he is called by a distinct word, malume, which almost coincides with Morgan’s Zulu term. In the Djonga division he is classed with the grandfather, not the father. By a quite distinct stem, the Herero sharply distinguish the mother’s brother from the father and his brothers. The same applies to the Baganda. As for the correlative term, from which Morgan infers that the Zulu once called the maternal uncle ‘father’, the Ronga have a distinct word for nephew, mupsyana, while the Djonga who class the mother’s brother with the grandfather consistently enough call the sister’s son ‘grandson’. Among the Herero, though uncles and aunts generally regard their nephews and nieces as their own children, the maternal uncle applies to them a distinct term, ovasia. Among the Baganda a man calls his son mutabani or mwana, but his sister’s son is mujwa. I may add that the altogether peculiar bond of familiarity that links together mother’s brother and sister’s son[12-v] among some Bantu people is inconsistent with Morgan’s assumption that the relationships of maternal uncle and father were once grouped under a single head among tribes of this family, for as stated above, such specific social relationships are generally expressed by specific terms for the relatives.

The conditions obtaining within the speaker’s generation at first seem to lend some support to the conception of the Bantu system as dominated by the Hawaiian principle, since the terms for brother and sister are more widely employed by some Bantu than is compatible with the forked division of kin. But closer inspection proves that, whatever may be at the root of the Bantu classification, it is not the Hawaiian notion of marking off generations. Even in Morgan’s Zulu series, while a man calls his maternal uncle’s children by a special term, they address him as brother; that is to say, members of the same generation and sex are not all classed together. Among the Herero, where the children of a brother and sister (but not of Geschwister of the same sex) regularly intermarry, they are placed in a category distinct from that of the children of two brothers and two sisters, who are one another’s brothers and sisters. In Thonga a boy calls his mother’s brother’s daughter ‘mother’, and she calls him ‘son’. To be sure, the Baganda draw no distinction between the brother, the father’s brother’s, the father’s sister’s, the mother’s brother’s and the mother’s sister’s son. On the other hand, only the father’s brother’s daughter and the mother’s sister’s daughter are a man’s sisters; his father’s sister’s and his mother’s brother’s daughter belong to the special category of kizibwewe, quite distinct from that of the sister, mwanyina.

To cut a long story short, all the evidence is opposed to Morgan’s assumption that the Bantu systems are patterned on the Hawaiian principle of grading relatives by generations. There are merely occasional suggestions of that principle which will be discussed below as to their theoretical bearing.

So far as I know, there is only one region of the globe outside of Oceania and the possible Asiatic range defined above, where a definitely Hawaiian classification of relatives by generations has been reported, viz., among the Yoruba of West Africa.[13-v] Unfortunately, no more recent check data for this section seem available. For another part of West Africa we have Mr. Northcote W. Thomas’ tables,[14-v] which reveal a rather perplexing condition of affairs that seems to demand intensive reinvestigation together with linguistic analysis. The principle of bifurcation seems to hold sway only in a very limited measure.

Thus, the Vai do not distinguish the father’s sister from the mother, though the mother’s brother is designated by a distinct term from that for father and father’s brother. Further, the term for child is extended also to brother’s child by both sexes contrary to customary ‘forked’ usage. But this cannot be interpreted as symptomatic of the Hawaiian principle since the sister’s child is designated by a special word, which, moreover, differs for men and women speaking. The Vai nomenclature is interesting in showing once more that a given ‘system’ is a complex growth that cannot be adequately defined as a whole by some such catchword as ‘classificatory’, ‘Hawaiian’, or what not. Not only do we find Hawaiian and Dakota elements in the same system, but even purely descriptive combinations of primary terms. Thus, the designation of the sister’s daughter’s husband is manifestly composed of the stems for sister’s child and husband, and a corresponding juxtaposition of stems results in the term for mother’s sister’s husband.

A similar phenomenon is presented by the terminology of the Timne, another Sierra Leone people. A superficial glance at the list suggests the Hawaiian principle: father’s brother and mother’s brother are grouped together, and so are the children of the maternal and the paternal aunt. But closer consideration shows that while uncles are classed together they are sharply separated from the father, that while aunts form a single group of ntene the word for mother is kara or ya, that there is no connection between the words for Geschwister and cousins. In short, the Hawaiian generation principle does not apply.

What Mr. Thomas’ schedules from eight tribes illustrate once more is the overwhelming importance of historical, geographical and linguistic considerations. A cursory examination of the lists shows that not only the mode of classifying kin but the words themselves are identical in a number of cases in two or more tribes. Thus, mama is grandmother in Karanko, Susu, Vai and Mendi. It is surely no accident that all of these belong to the same prefixless subdivision of the Sudanese languages: the similarity is due to historical relations. In some cases an identical word is shared by members of distinct subdivisions. Thus, the father’s sister is called ntene not only in the non-prefixing Susu and Koranko speech, but also in the prefixing language of the Timne. A glimpse at Mr. Thomas’ map shows, however, that the habitat of the Timne adjoins that of both of the other tribes; a kinship nomenclature is, in a measure, a function of geographical position.

The last-mentioned term is suggestive in another way. Restricted among the Koranko and Susu to the father’s sister, it is applied by the Timne to the maternal aunt as well. Turning once more to the map, we discover that this latter mode of grouping, though not the same word phonetically, occurs among the Bulem, the immediate coastal neighbors of the Timne, who belong to the same linguistic subdivision, and also to the Mendi and Vai, to the east and southeast, who are members of the complementary subdivision. So far, this only indicates the spread of a terminological trait over a continuous area. But the data further suggest that the word ntene may have been borrowed by the Timne rather than in the reverse direction, and that, as Mr. Thomas himself remarks, the Timne secondarily extended the term to include a maternal as well as a paternal aunt. This possibility is theoretically significant, first, because it indicates that Hawaiian analogies may develop independently of any such generation principle as dominates the Oceanian system; secondly, because it suggests that such simplicity of nomenclature, instead of being primitive as Morgan supposed, may represent a later development. To this point we shall have to revert later.

The Dakota Principle. Let us now turn to that principle which first aroused Morgan’s interest and which since his time has occupied perhaps more attention than any other, the classificatory principle par excellence in Dr. Rivers’ opinion, which finds expression among such tribes as the Iroquois and Dakota. Like the Hawaiian principle, the Dakota alignment groups together, regardless of proximity of relationship, members of the same generation, but differs because in the speaker’s generation, the first ascending and the first descending generations, it separates the paternal and the maternal line. Another way of expressing the facts is to say that collateral and lineal kin are merged irrespective of nearness of relationship but with strict bifurcation of the parental lines. Thus, in Dakota[15-v] the father, father’s brother, father’s father’s brother’s son, father’s father’s father’s brother’s son’s son are all addressed atÉ; the mother, mother’s sister, mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter are all called inÁ. So far we have a classing together of kin who in English are distinguished from one another. But there is separation of kin whom we class together, inasmuch as the mother’s brother is designated by a term distinct from that for father’s brother, viz., by dekcÍ, and the father’s sister by a term differentiating her from the mother’s sister, viz., by t ‘uwÍ. Now, relationship is a reciprocal phenomenon, and accordingly we may expect that all those whom I class together under the term atÉ or inÁ will address me by a correlative term. Actually, we find that the Dakota have a single word, mi tcÍÑkci, for son, brother’s son (man speaking), father’s brother’s son’s son (man speaking), etc., and for sister’s son (woman speaking), mother’s sister’s daughter’s son (woman speaking). To put the matter into our own speech, for the sake of simplification, those whom I call father and mother call me son. If logic shall prevail, the data hitherto cited involve the condition that the mother’s brother must not call his sister’s son ‘son’, but shall designate him by some distinct appellation correlative only with the term dekcÍ; and this holds for the Dakota system where a man (not a woman) calls the sister’s son mit ‘Úncka. Further this term is also used by a woman addressing her brother’s son, a point to which I shall have to return presently.

There are other logical implications in the features already mentioned. If the term for father embraces a number of other collateral relatives, we must expect a corresponding fusion of kin in the speaker’s generation. This is exactly what happens. Like many other primitive systems, that of the Dakota classifies brothers and sisters according to relative seniority and the speaker’s sex, but the same terms are applied to the other individuals who jointly designate the same members of the next higher generation as their fathers and mothers. In other words, a considerable number of cousins, irrespective of their varying degree, are classed with the brothers and sisters. But certain other cousins are not so classed: they are the offspring of the father’s sister and the mother’s brother. Corresponding exactly to the fact that sister’s son (man speaking) and brother’s son (woman speaking) are denoted by a single word, we have the correlative phenomenon that the children of the paternal aunt and the maternal uncle are relatives of a special order, the boys calling one another t ‘ahÁ ci and the girls hÀ ka´ cÍ, the girls calling one another tce´ paci and the boys citcÉ ci.

In short, so far as the three middle generations are concerned, there is at least an approach to a real system—a unified logical scheme by which blood relatives are classified. If I am called father by a group of people, they are my sons or daughters; if I am their uncle, they are my nephews or nieces. In the former case, my sons and daughters are their brothers and sisters; in the latter my offspring are their cousins, with various refinements of nomenclature that are immaterial from a broader point of view.

The system is not perfect, because of the terminology applied to the offspring of cousins. As might be expected, a man regards the children of those cousins whom he classes with his brothers as brother’s sons, i.e., from the foregoing scheme, with his own sons. But contrary to what might be expected, he puts into the same category the sons of those male cousins designated by a distinctive term where we should expect a distinct correlative designation. Even Herr Cunow, who lays stress on the rational character of primitive relationship systems, is obliged to admit that there is inconsistency here.[16-v]

It cannot be too strongly urged that a given nomenclature is molded by disparate principles. It is, therefore, worth while to point out that the principle by which brothers and sisters are distinguished by seniority and the principle by which Geschwister of the same sex use different designations from those of opposite sex have no functional relation whatsoever with the principle by which collateral and lineal kin are merged. Another trait of the Dakota system which is similarly independent of what I call the Dakota principle is the differentiation in stem for vocative and non-vocative usage or with the first, second and third person. Thus, the mother is addressed as inÁ, but ‘his mother’ is hu´ ku, from an entirely different root. Passing to the second ascending generation, we find a Hawaiian feature inasmuch as the principle of bifurcation no longer holds, grandfathers of both sides being designated by a common term. The Dakota case once more shows that, as Professor Kroeber long ago pointed out,[17-v] every system is in reality a congeries of systems or categories which must be analytically separated unless complete confusion is to result. There is no Hawaiian system, no Dakota system. But we can legitimately speak of the principle of generations and the bifurcation principle of merging collateral and lineal kin; and we can speak, by conventional definition of the geographical terms employed, of Hawaiian and Dakota features to express these and only these elements of the Hawaiian and Dakota nomenclatures.

To revert to the Dakota principle, as Morgan points out,[18-v] the same principle has in part molded the Iroquois system, and when we find that in addition to the logically related elements the apparently irrational classification of cousins’ offspring is likewise common to the two terminologies, the case for historical connection becomes very strong. This becomes a certainty when we find that in its essentials the principle finds expression in the system of the intermediate Ojibwa, while among other Algonkian tribes and among Siouan tribes other than the Dakota a marked variant from the Dakota type makes its appearance. In short, we have the Dakota principle spread over a continuous region, which is sharply separated from adjoining regions. It has, then, developed in a single center in this part of North America and has thence spread by borrowing.

If we ignore the mode of designating cross-cousins’, i.e., cousins who are children of a brother and a sister, and disregard certain other deviations constituting sub-types, we get a very much wider range of distribution for the Dakota principle in North America. The neglect of degree of kinship and the clear separation of the maternal and paternal line in the middle generations are features characteristic, probably, of the entire region east of the Mississippi and occur also in the Mackenzie River district, among the Tlingit and Haida of the Northwest Coast and most of the Plains tribes, in a part of the Pueblo territory (notably among the Hopi), and among the Miwok and adjacent populations in California. Since we are not by any means familiar with the kinship systems of the entire continent, it is necessary to supplement this statement with another indicating the regions where the Dakota principle is actually known to be lacking. The Dakota features are not found among the Eskimo, Nootka, Quileute, Chinook, various Salish tribes, the Kootenai, the Plateau Shoshoneans, nor in a large section of California to the north and east of the Miwok, and they are also absent from various Southwestern terminologies. The glib assumption of many writers that all of North America is characterized by a ‘classificatory system’ on the Dakota plan, is demonstrably false. The only reason for this belief is the historical accident that Morgan was conversant with the systems east of the Rocky Mountains and practically altogether ignorant of those of the Far West, and that since his time no one has systematically presented the data for what to him was a terra incognita.

Let us extend our search for evidences of the Dakota principle to other regions.

For Mexico, the data are not very satisfactory since we are obliged to rely on old Spanish sources and cannot be sure that our authorities were on the alert for differences from the familiar European nomenclature or always correctly represented what they did find. Thus, Dr. Paul Radin, who has kindly compiled for me a Tarascan list from Gilberti’s Diccionario de la Lengua Tarasca (1559), finds the children of the father’s brother and of the mother’s brother classed with the son and daughter (contrary to the generation principle), but distinguished from the children of the father’s and mother’s sister. This would indicate a departure from both the Hawaiian and the Dakota scheme. A bare suggestion of the latter is found in a common term for father and paternal uncle. The Nahuatl data supplied by Molina in his Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana (1571) show no difference between the paternal and maternal aunts and uncles. This does not apply to the Maya system reported by Beltran in his Arte del Idioma Maya(1742), but here the maternal and paternal uncle and aunt are not only distinguished from each other, but also from the father and mother, so that there is no merging of collateral and lineal lines in this generation. Accordingly, it is somewhat surprising to find that the children of a brother are classed with one’s own children (male speaking?) and that a woman applies the same term to her sister’s children, in accordance with Dakota usage. A very interesting feature of the Maya nomenclature is that differences in generation are conspicuously ignored in several instances. The paternal grandfather is classed with the elder brother, a single reciprocal term is used for daughter’s son and mother’s father, one word denotes the son’s son and the younger brother.

For Central and South America the data, from a cursory inspection, seem somewhat more adequate, though we must eagerly await a more thorough-going survey of this region than can at present be offered. The Miskito of Nicaragua call the mother’s sister yaptislip, which is merely a modification of yapti, mother, but while the father’s brother, urappia, is classed with the step-father, he is distinguished from the father, aisa. At all events, there is a distinctive term for maternal uncle, tarti, and correlatively a special designation, tubani, for the sister’s son (man speaking). For the father’s sister our authority gives only a descriptive term: saura may be the correlative term, but it is simply translated ‘brother’s child’. Of the four terms for cousin, one is descriptive (child of brother or sister), two coincide with the regular words for Geschwister, the fourth is unfortunately not clearly defined so that its application to the cross-cousin, which would conform to Dakota usage, remains problematical. The terms of affinity are interesting inasmuch as the principle of reciprocity appears here. Thus, dapna means both father-in-law and son-in-law, and the same descriptive expression, oddly enough, is applied to the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in female speech.[19-v] The former instance of reciprocity recurs among the Chibcha of Colombia and we may thus have here another case of the geographical localization of kinship features. The Chibcha list supplied by one of Morgan’s informants,[20-v] imperfect though it is, records some suggestive facts. The term for father’s brother seems only a variant of the word for father, and is clearly distinct from that for maternal uncle. The designations for both kinds of aunt are doubtful. In the speaker’s generation ‘parallel’ male cousins, i.e., the sons of two brothers and of two sisters, are grouped with brothers and distinguished from cross-cousins, as they are in the Dakota system. That a woman calls her father’s sister’s son by the same term as her husband is a fact of some theoretical importance since it suggests the possible occurrence of cross-cousin marriages.

From Martius’ rather confusing Carib list we may reasonably infer that the paternal uncle was classed with the father in male speech and distinguished from the mother’s brother. One of three terms used by a man in designating his son coincides with that applied to a brother’s son, but differs from the word applied to the sister’s son. These are Dakota features; and the peculiar statement that children of sisters were allowed to marry while those of brothers were not, coupled with the remark that Geschwisterkinder call one another brothers makes us suspect that we have here merely an abortive attempt to describe the difference between parallel and cross-cousins recognized on the Dakota principle. The Tupi terminology furnished by the same writer does not suggest the bifurcate feature. Though a single word denotes the father, his brother and other paternal kinsmen, it seems to extend likewise to the corresponding relatives on the mother’s side. In the second ascending generation the grandfather’s brothers and male cousins are classed with the grandfather—a Hawaiian trait if both sides of the family are meant to be included, but one common to most systems on the Dakota plan for the middle generations.[21-v] From the third great South American family I can get no satisfactory evidence of bifurcation on the Dakota plan. According to an accessible glossary of various Arawak tongues, the Siusi is the only language that discriminates between the paternal and maternal uncle, and even here the former is also distinguished from the father, so that there is no merging of collateral and lineal kin. Similarly, the word for aunt is different from that for mother; and here the principle of bifurcation is completely discarded, since a single word denotes father’s and mother’s sister.[22-v]

Bifurcation may be a dominant feature of systems which nevertheless differ markedly from the Dakota nomenclature because of their demarcation of collateral and lineal kin. Thus, the Araucanians of Chile call the father chao, the father’s brother malle, the mother’s brother huecu; the mother is Ñuque, her sister Ñuquentu, the father’s sister palu.[23-v] Here the designation of the maternal aunt is clearly derived from that of the mother but we cannot tell whether this merging is an ancient feature which appears in other parts of the system or a recent development. We learn from another source that the brother’s sons are differentiated from the sister’s,[24-v] but unfortunately there is no statement as to whether the former in male speech and the latter in female speech are classed with one’s own sons.

Bifurcation without reduction of the collateral lines is characteristic of the system of the Sipibo, who inhabit the country about the Ucayali River. Here the father is papa; the father’s brother eppa, the maternal uncle cuca; the mother tita, her sister huasta, the paternal aunt yaya, and of the three words for brother’s son (pia, nusa, picha) none even remotely resembles that for son, baque.[25-v]

To sum up the facts hitherto cited. If the doctrine of the unity of the American race depended on the uniformity of kinship terminologies in the New World, it would have to be mercilessly abandoned. Meager as are our data for the area south of the United States, we can find positive indications of nomenclatures with Dakota features only among the Caribs and the Chibcha, with occasional suggestions elsewhere. The Tupi and Arawak systems are markedly unforked; the Araucanian and Sipibo terminologies are forked but non-merging. Taking into account the large section of North America already defined as lacking bifurcation with merging, we thus have an immense territory in America in which the Dakota principle does not occur.

But, as the African facts cited above show, the Dakota principle is not confined to a portion of the Western Hemisphere. It is impossible completely to define its distribution in various parts of the globe, but the main regions must be indicated. As Morgan pointed out on the basis of Rev. Fison’s information,[26-v] the principle occurs in the nomenclature of the Coastal Fijians, and corroborative evidence has recently been furnished.[27-v] Rivers has shown that the typical Dakota principle appears in other parts of Melanesia, often with a very interesting additional feature in the designation of cross-cousins, who are not only rigidly distinguished from the parallel cousins but classed simultaneously as brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, e. g., in Guadalcanar.[28-v] Bifurcation with merging of collateral and lineal relatives also characterizes at least some of the terminologies of New Guinea.[29-v] The same certainly holds for a large portion of Australia, though almost everywhere certain local refinements are apparent. Thus, the Urabunna apply one term to the father and the father’s brothers, as might be expected. But instead of merely separating the mother’s sisters from those of the father by grouping them with the mother, there is an additional dichotomy into the mother’s elder sisters, luka, who are classed with the mother, and the mother’s younger sisters who are differentiated as namuma. Corresponding differentiation occurs in the speaker’s generation, where the father’s elder sister’s daughters are distinguished not only from parallel cousins but from the father’s younger sister’s daughters. Nevertheless, the essentials of the Dakota principle are manifest.[30-v]

Here it is worth while to point out again how misleading it is to treat accidentally associated features of a given system as functionally correlated. The Urabunna system, like that of other tribes, is not an organically unified whole. Thus, over and above the usual trait of bifurcate merging, we find the feature that a grandparent and grandchild use a common term in addressing each other. This reciprocity is often referred to as characteristic of ‘classificatory systems’. It is nothing of the kind. In North America it occurs precisely in systems lacking the classificatory principle altogether. Apart from this, there is no manifest connection between the principles of grouping together relatives of alternate generations and the principle of classing under one head relatives of the same generation and side of the family. The mere fact that kinsfolk are united whom we happen to separate in nomenclature is a purely negative and insufficient reason for postulating an essential relationship between two modes of classification.

Finally, there are a number of Asiatic tribes whose systems reveal the essentials of the Dakota principle. At least a close approximation occurs in the nomenclature of the Gilyak of the Amur River country, where, except for the grouping together of father’s and mother’s sister, the two parental lines are kept apart while on either side the customary merging takes place.[31-v] The system of the Tamil, as Morgan emphatically pointed out, is almost identical with that of the Seneca Iroquois.[32-v] The essential resemblance to this type of the Toda,[33-v] Singhalese and Vedda[34-v] terminologies has since been established.

We are here again confronted by a problem in distribution that does not differ in principle from ethnological problems relating to other phases of culture. A sharply individualized feature is found not like the Hawaiian principle practically within the limits of a single continuous area but in several diverse and remote regions of the globe. It is impossible to hold with Morgan that the similarity found is an index of racial affinity unless we are willing to assume that the Indians of the eastern United States are not related at all to those west of the Rocky Mountains. The principle of diffusion obviously accounts for much. No one would hesitate to assume that the Singhalese and Vedda systems are connected and we should willingly regard both as historically related to the nomenclature of southern India. We might even be willing to grant that the Melanesian and Australian variants of the Dakota principle had the same source of origin. But how can we explain the predominance of the identical principle precisely in the eastern regions of North America and its absence in a great part of the Far West? And how can we account for the African approximations to the same pattern? We seem to have an independent evolution of the same highly characteristic trait in at least three distinct areas. Must we content ourselves with simply accepting the data as irreducible ethnological phenomena or can we carry our analysis a step further?

That the inclusiveness of terms which strikes us in the systems sharing the Dakota principle is somehow connected with the social divisions of the tribes concerned has been repeatedly noted. Even in his earlier, purely descriptive work Morgan remarked that among the Iroquois clan members were brothers and sisters as if children of the same mother.[35-v] Similarly among the Tlingit we are told that a single word is applied to the mother’s sister and all other women of the same moiety and generation.[36-v] The Yakut apply one term to any woman older than the speaker and belonging to the same gens.[37-v] Such instances might easily be multiplied. It is therefore rather natural to look to a clan or gentile system for the explanation of the ‘classificatory feature’, i.e., of bifurcate merging.

This hypothesis, which has recently been discussed by Swanton,[38-v] was already advanced only to be proved inadequate by Morgan himself. Taking the Seneca for illustration, where descent is in the maternal line, Morgan shows that the children of two sisters would indeed be members of the same clan and hence clan brothers and sisters but that this explanation no longer holds for the children of two brothers. By the law of exogamy these would be required to marry into another clan and there is no reason why their wives should belong to the same clan. Hence the brothers’ children will not be clan brothers and sisters, yet, according to Seneca terminology, the offspring of brothers no less than of sisters are classed with own brothers and sisters. Accordingly, the clan system—though it has a definite place in Morgan’s scheme of evolution—is not regarded by him as the determining factor of the Seneca-Dakota principle.[39-v]

But the objection vanishes if we accept the theory that the Dakota principle arose as a reflection not of a multiple clan system but of an organization with exogamous moieties. This theory, which to my knowledge was first developed by Tylor[40-v] and has since been advocated by Rivers,[41-v] has obvious advantages. Even on the simple clan hypothesis it is clear why the father’s brothers should be classed with the father and separated from the maternal uncles, since the latter by exogamy must belong to a different clan. The term which we translate ‘father’ would really be seen to mean ‘male member of the father’s clan and generation’. With the moiety theory the same facts are explained, but also in addition the designations for other relatives. To take again the Seneca instance, the sons of two brothers must be members of the same social division because with a dual organization the brothers are restricted to the same division in the choice of a mate; hence it is quite natural that the sons of brothers should call one another brothers. Again, the difference between parallel cousins and cross-cousins is perfectly intelligible. The mother’s brother’s and the father’s sister’s son can never be of my moiety; if descent is matrilineal they belong to my father’s moiety, if patrilineal to my mother’s. Hence it is natural that they should not be classed with my brothers who in either case are my moiety-mates. This hypothesis also explains features not yet referred to, but often found in conjunction with those grouped under the heading of the Dakota principle, e. g., the frequent classification of the father’s sister’s husband with the maternal uncle. Given exogamous moieties, these relatives must belong to the same half of society, to my own moiety if descent is maternal, to my mother’s if it is patrilineal. The Tylor-Rivers theory thus explains very satisfactorily the rather numerous features that jointly constitute what I have called the Dakota principle; we can at once see that here is not an arbitrary rule of classification but a definite rationale.

However, it is worth noting that while the moiety theory explains a number of traits better and more simply than the hypothesis of multiple clans or gentes of which it is a special form, the latter is not in so bad a plight as Morgan would have us believe. That I should call my father’s brothers and male cousins of the paternal line ‘father’ and my mother’s sisters and female cousins of the female line ‘mother’, follows from the general hypothesis of exogamy no less than from the moiety theory. The difficulty urged is the grouping together of brothers’ sons who are not clansmen under a matrilineal organization with sisters’ sons who are. But all terms of relationship are correlative: the concept of elder brother is meaningless without the correlated concept of younger brother; so the very fact that I address my father’s brother as ‘father’ has as a necessary consequence that he should address me as ‘son’ regardless of whether his own son is in my clan. Similarly, the fact that my father’s brother’s son and I both address my own father as father makes us brothers irrespective of clan affiliation. Clan affiliation is still the primary determinant since it fixes the connotation of the word translated ‘father’, while the other usages mentioned are derivative applications. The objection that naturally obtrudes itself is why the term for father should be taken as the starting-point rather than that for son or brother. The answer lies in the fact that in a number of instances the term for father has an emphatically clan or gentile significance, being extended even to father’s clansmen of the speaker’s generation, as among the Crow and Arizona Tewa. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that from the point of view of summarizing the data comprised under the caption of ‘Dakota principle’ or intimately linked with them the moiety theory is distinctly superior. Thus, the union of father’s sister’s husband and mother’s brother under a single head does not follow from a multiple clan or gentile organization but is intelligible on the basis of a dual division.

The weakness of the moiety theory lies in another direction. In order that the dual organization may fashion kinship nomenclature, it must of course exist. Now it does occur in Australia and Melanesia, though not universally, and in part of North America, but it is lacking in many regions of this continent and, so far as I know, in Africa. If we derive the Dakota principle exclusively from the dual organization we are therefore obliged to assume either that this institution once had a far wider range of distribution or that the nomenclature it produced traveled independently of the moieties to a considerable number of other peoples. This is a difficulty that must be frankly recognized.

In this regard the exogamy hypothesis in the broader sense enjoys an obvious superiority. Exogamous kin groups occur both in southern Africa and in many sections of America from which exogamous moieties have never been reported. Doubtless here, too, we must reckon to a considerable extent with the effect of diffusion, which repeatedly carried the Dakota principle to non-exogamous tribes. Yet when we apply the method of variation to the best-studied regions of the globe, our confidence in the essential correctness of the exogamy hypothesis is considerably strengthened. In Oceania it is the non-exogamous Polynesians who fail to distinguish the maternal and paternal sides, while the generally exogamous Melanesians recognize the principle of bifurcation. In North America, the non-exogamous tribes are either bifurcating but fail to merge the collateral and lineal lines or neither bifurcate nor merge.[42-v]

Certain instances are especially illuminating because they permit a refinement of the method of variation by the practical or total elimination of other factors to account for the phenomena. Thus on the northwest coast of America we find certain tribes like the Kwakiutl and Nootka who are not organized in strictly exogamous groups, and here neither merging nor bifurcation occurs. “The terms for ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’ refer equally to the father’s and mother’s fraternity;” and specific terms distinguish father and mother from more remote kindred. When we compare such systems with those of the more northern and exogamous tribes, viz., the Tsimshian, Haida and Tlingit, we discover at once a striking difference. In all these terminologies men of the father’s are distinguished from those of the mother’s moiety or clan; and the collateral lines are wholly, or almost entirely, merged in the lineal lines.[43-v] Here we are not dealing simply with a contact phenomenon, for no good reason can be given why the Tlingit system should not have extended southward or the Kwakiutl system to the north. Nor are we simply confronted by a difference of tribal affiliation: while the Kwakiutl and Nootka belong to the same stock, and affinity has recently been claimed for the Tlingit and Haida languages, the Tsimshian stand apart. It is the difference in social organization that runs parallel with the difference in nomenclature.

A similar case is afforded by the Shoshonean stock. Within this family specific terms for father and mother as opposed to uncles and aunts are the rule and cross-cousins are generally not distinguished from parallel cousins and brothers. There is thus a combination of extreme Hawaiian inclusiveness in the speaker’s generation with the tendency to non-classificatory nomenclature in the first ascending generation. But among the Hopi, the only member of the group organized into exogamous clans, the Dakota principle holds sway. Since no Southwestern system is known that so clearly reveals the forked and merging principle, the possibility of borrowing seems barred and we have proof of the independent evolution of this feature in correlation with a clan system.

So far, then, as the distribution of the Dakota principle over discontinuous regions of the globe is concerned, the hypothesis of exogamy gives a reasonably satisfactory explanation of the facts, while within each continuous area we shall assume a greater or lesser degree of dissemination. Applying this, e. g., to the Northwestern Indians as a whole, we shall indeed regard the evolution of Dakota features as a response to the exogamous organization, but when we turn to the three exogamous tribes individually, we shall face the problem whether the terminology did not spread from one tribe to its two neighbors. It is quite true that theoretically there is the possibility that the clan system, not the terminology, was the diffused feature and that the organization in each case independently produced an appropriate nomenclature. However, we have undoubted instances in which features of nomenclature were not associated with any social institution, indeed, where the very words have been borrowed. Further the development of an appropriate terminology is not an absolutely automatic process, as is shown by the failure of some tribes with exogamy to develop one. Hence it seems probable that within a limited continuous area the Dakota principle developed only once and then spread to neighboring tribes. That the existence of an exogamous organization among the borrowers would be a favorable condition for the adoption of the nomenclature is obvious, also that the organization and the terminology may be borrowed jointly.

In order to strengthen the case for the exogamous theory it is necessary to show that the same results could not be accomplished, or not so well, by other conditions of equally wide distribution. As a matter of fact, an alternative interpretation has recently been advanced.[44-v] In the case of the non-exogamous Californian Yahi Dr. Sapir connects the merging of lineal and collateral lines with the marriage regulations obtaining there and suggests that these rules “may no doubt not infrequently be examined as an equally or more plausible determining influence”. The practices referred to comprise the levirate, i.e., a man’s marriage with his brother’s widow, and marriage with the deceased wife’s sister. (Why, deceased? we may well ask Dr. Sapir, since a man’s preËmptive right to his wife’s younger sisters is a widespread custom in North America.)

I do not doubt for a moment that the customs in question have affected kinship nomenclature, but I seriously question whether they constitute an adequate substitute for exogamy as an interpretation of the empirical distribution of the Dakota principle. The levirate, it is true, is an exceedingly widespread institution: Tylor found it among one hundred and twenty out of some three hundred peoples.[45-v] But the levirate alone will not do since it only explains the extension of the father term to the father’s brother and the correlative extension of the term ‘son’ to the brother’s son (man speaking). It remains to be seen, therefore, to what extent the levirate is united in different regions of the globe with the usage of marrying two or more sisters, which would further explain the classification of mother’s sister with mother and of the sister’s children with the children (woman speaking). So far as I know, the range of the two usages jointly has not been ascertained; pending its determination, the distribution of the Dakota principle is not accounted for, as it approximately is by exogamy.

There are certain other objections to the levirate hypothesis. One of them was already urged by Morgan, who examined it under the heading of polygamy and polyandry, which together might obviously lead to the same results as the Yahi usages.[46-v] These customs do not necessarily take in the entire population. A man may not have a brother to inherit his widow, nor have all women sisters to join or follow them in wedlock. On the other hand, clan or gentile affiliation is an automatic affair not touched by such contingencies.

Further, we may ask, what is really explained by the Yahi rules? The relationships of paternal uncle and maternal aunt and their discrimination from the mother’s brother and father’s sister are certainly accounted for; and correlatively, the distinction between the offspring of such relatives. But though discussion has hitherto for simplicity’s sake been mainly restricted to these nearer kindred, the Dakota principle involves far more remote relatives. It is not only the father’s brother but the father’s father’s brother’s son and the greatgrandfather’s brother’s son’s son that are classed with the father; not only the mother’s sister but the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter and mother’s mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s daughter that are classed with the mother. No doubt an explanation can be patched together on the levirate-polygyny hypothesis. Since my father is brother to my father’s father’s brother’s son, the latter is my potential father under the levirate rule, and so forth. But even with the multiple clan or gentile hypothesis, the facts are more directly explained. From this point of view the relative in question is simply a father’s clansman with paternal descent, while with matrilineal descent the designations for the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter et al. are at once clear. The moiety theory, of course, accounts for all the relevant data in the simplest manner.

It is, indeed, manifest that the levirate-polygyny rule stands to the exogamous principle somewhat in the relation of a part to the whole or of a special instance to a broader principle. Assume exogamous divisions, and my wife becomes ipso facto my brother’s potential wife while my wife’s sisters are my and my brothers’ potential wives even though marriage be never actually consummated except monogamously. Incidentally, it is by no means certain that in reported cases the levirate is limited to the real brother or the multiple sister marriages to own sisters; indeed, in some cases the reverse is stated, cousins or members of the same clan or gens being expressly included. With the dual organization the case is especially clear. The kinship terms then appear simply as status names. I am brother to those who are potential husbands of the same group of women and since all of us males occupy this common status there is correlatively a single term by which all of us are called by our children. The status assumption is supported by such facts as the Gilyak rule by which men of a gens must take wives from a particular gens and where the gentes as units are regarded as standing to each other in the relationship of father-in-law and son-in-law.[47-v]

In short, where the levirate-polygyny usages coexist with exogamy, it would be rash to derive a merging and bifurcate nomenclature from the former rather than from the latter.

Still another objection is implied in Dr. Sapir’s own statement of the case. It is not necessary for the natives to look at the levirate from the point of view hitherto assumed. Instead of defining the paternal uncle in terms of his potential fatherhood, they may have a word distinct from that for father to designate the step-father and the paternal uncle. Dr. Sapir cites the Upper Chinook by way of illustration. In other words, the action of the levirate is equivocal. It may affect nomenclature so as to produce the semblance of the Dakota principle, but it may also produce quite different results. It may also fail to affect terminology at all, as apparently is the case in Semitic languages with their descriptive nomenclature.

In this connection a qualification must be made that applies equally to the exogamy hypothesis. Though the ultimate cause of a terminological feature be the levirate, the immediate cause in a given instance may well be an historico-geographical one. If the Chinook nomenclature is differently affected by the levirate from that of the Yahi, the proximate reason may be simply the fact that the Chinook did not come into contact with the same peoples as the Yahi and thus had no chance to borrow their nomenclature. In other words, admitting an influence of the levirate, it is not necessary to assume that it has repeatedly produced the same terminological effects independently.

I know of at least one instance in which the hypothesis advanced by Dr. Sapir seems definitely excluded, leaving exogamy in the field as the efficient cause. The Hopi system conforms to the essentials of the Dakota type, but neither the levirate nor the marriage with two sisters is in vogue. It cannot be argued that the Dakota features were borrowed from some other Southwestern tribe possessing these usages, first, because the Dakota features are far more highly developed among the Hopi than among other Pueblo Indians; secondly, because it is very doubtful whether the practices in question occur among other Pueblo tribes.[48-v]

In justice to Dr. Sapir it must be pointed out that he does not advance his hypothesis as a general interpretation of the phenomena. As he suggests, it is most serviceable where the exogamous factor does not occur, or, as I should add, where diffusion of features from a system affected by exogamy seems improbable. I have examined his hypothesis as if it were designed to account for all the relevant phenomena simply in order to bring out clearly its inferiority from this point of view to the theory of exogamy.

There are two series of cases which strongly corroborate the theory of the effect of the exogamous organization on the kinship nomenclature. They constitute a distinct variant of the Dakota principle, the deviation being in the designation of cross-cousins. While these are still differentiated from parallel cousins, they are not placed together in a single category but are classed, one group of cousins with the first ascending and the complementary group with the first descending generation. In short, the generation factor which is fundamental in the Hawaiian scheme and only modified by dichotomy in the usual type of bifurcate merging schemes is here overridden by some other factor. Now what is the nature of this new determinant? Let us look at the facts.

The Hidatsa class the father’s sister’s son with the father and the father’s sister’s daughter and all her female descendants through females to infinity with the father’s sister; correlatively, the mother’s brother’s son, in the absence of special words for nephew or niece, is classed with the son, even by women. That the Crow scheme is almost identical, is readily intelligible from the historical relations of the two tribes, who speak very similar languages of the Siouan stock. But the essentials of the classification reappear among the geographically, linguistically, and culturally remote Hopi, with suggestions of similar features among the Tlingit and even in Melanesia. We are again confronted with a puzzling problem of distribution.

An analysis of the Hidatsa data clarifies the situation. According to the statements of the natives themselves, the term ‘father’ is applied to any father’s clansman irrespective of age and would accordingly include the father’s sister’s son. This suggests that the clue to the entire situation may lie in the clan feature. As a matter of fact, we find the daughter of the father’s sister’s son is not classed with the daughter of the father’s sister’s daughter. The only difference that can be connected with this distinction is that in clan membership: the former relative, owing to the exogamous clan system, can never, and the latter relative always must, belong to the father’s sister’s clan. Hence the former, being a father’s sister’s son’s, i.e., a ‘father’s’, daughter, becomes in Hidatsa speech a sister, while the latter is designated by a word translated paternal aunt’ but really embracing likewise all the lower generations of females in the paternal clan. That we are dealing with the clan factor, is corroborated by the fact that in Hidatsa terminology the mother’s brother, instead of being designated by a specific word, is classed with the elder brother, a term also applied to the mother’s mother’s brother. The last-mentioned kinsman may be similarly addressed in Hopi.

Powerful corroborative evidence is supplied by a second series of facts. Among the Omaha, where descent is reckoned in the paternal line, the father’s sister’s daughter is no longer classed with the father’s sister but with the sister’s daughter. These, it may be noted incidentally, would belong to the same division if the moieties of the Omaha were at one time exogamous, for which there is some evidence. But the essential point is that here the mother’s brother’s son and all his male descendants through males are indiscriminately classed with the maternal uncle. It is clear that they are all members of the same gens, and corresponding to our Hidatsa experiment we find that as soon as we pass outside the gens the terminology changes: my mother’s brother’s daughter’s son is not my maternal uncle but my brother since his mother, the uncle’s daughter, is called ‘mother’, belonging as she must to my mother’s gens.[49-v]

The Omaha phenomena are absolutely paralleled not only among other Southern Siouans but also among a number of Algonquians, viz., the Miami, Sauk and Fox, Kickapoo, Menomini and Shawnee. The area covered is an absolutely continuous one, and it is impossible not to explain such a distribution by diffusion. This conclusion is accentuated by the fact that the Ojibwa, though an Algonquian people with a gentile system, do not share the Omaha variant of the Dakota scheme but conform to the more usual type found among their neighbors, the Dakota. The mere presence of a gentile organization, though doubtless a favorable basis for the development or adoption of the Omaha scheme, is not the only determining condition; the presence of terminological features in a particular tribe is also a function of its geographical position or historical connections. This does not interfere with the ultimate interpretation of such features but it shows the necessity of taking into account the geographico-historical situation. At present I cannot suggest what may have been the differential condition that produced the Hidatsa variant among some tribes with a clan system but not among the Iroquois; or the Omaha variant among certain Algonquian tribes but not the Ojibwa.

The exogamy hypothesis, with special reference, to the phenomena just mentioned, has recently been discussed by Professor Kroeber.[50-v] He accepts the empirical correlation between exogamy and the merging of lineal and collateral kin with bifurcation of the parental lines, but interprets it as due rather to the differentiation of male and female lines of descent than to exogamy itself, which latter he regards as ‘perhaps a common but not necessary development, and an overlying development of the former’. “The basic condition,” argues Dr. Kroeber, “would be that in which a woman would be felt to be a very different thing from a man in relationship—less perhaps as an existing individual than as a factor in the relations of other people. Once this point of view prevailed, cross-cousins would necessarily be felt to be something very different from parallel cousins, and cross-uncles and aunts from parallel ones; and the distinction would find expression in nomenclature.” Accentuation of the male and female lines of descent with greater weighting of the one would possibly lead to clan groups.

As a theory of the origin of exogamous groups I have no particular objection to offer to the foregoing. For reasons to be stated below (p. 163) I heartily concur in the assumption that the family, in America at all events, preceded the clan or gens. If I understand him correctly, Dr. Kroeber’s remarks merely paraphrase the fact of this sequence. But I do not see that acceptance of his view on this point involves a rejection of the influence of the clan when that has once developed. Of course it is not directly exogamy that is expressed but the alignment in groups which exogamy brings about. On Dr. Kroeber’s assumption it is unintelligible why father’s sister’s son and mother’s brother’s son should so frequently be classed together since the one is clearly related through the father, the other through the mother. We can hardly credit the native mind with a tendency to algebraic equalization of a plus and minus quantity by which the product of a male and a female relationship shall be standardized by a common designation. Generally speaking, Dr. Kroeber’s factors explain only bifurcation but not merging. The fact that even remote father’s cousins are grouped with the father is what the clan or gentile hypothesis explains over and above the dichotomy of relatives. That such merging occurs among tribes with definite exogamous groups, and generally not in loosely organized ones, can hardly be an accident. Dr. Kroeber’s case is, however, weakest as regards the Hidatsa and Omaha variants of the Dakota scheme. If ‘unilaterality of descent’ rather than clan or gentile affiliation is the determinant here, then why is the Hidatsa variant uniformly found among matrilineal tribes and the Omaha variant uniformly with a gentile system? In other words, why does not the Omaha call his father’s sister’s son ‘father’ and his father’s sister’s daughter ‘aunt’? The cross-cousins in question are as clearly related to me through the father among the Omaha as among the Hidatsa, but in the former case they are not, and in the latter they necessarily are, my father’s clansfolk. Similarly, the mother’s brother’s son and his male offspring are as emphatically related to me through my mother among the Hidatsa as anywhere, but they are not aligned in the same social group with one another and they are not classed together in terminology. For the sake of clearness I will, at the risk of repetition, formulate what I consider the probable course of events. Among certain loosely organized tribes the bifurcation of immediate kin evolved, as we find it among a number of our Far Western tribes. This tendency was amplified and became superseded by a definite clan or gentile scheme. As this scheme developed, possibly as a part of its growth, kinship terminology became not only forked but more inclusive as well. Finally, the fully established organization was able, in certain instances to exert the extreme retro-active influence on nomenclature revealed in the Hidatsa and Omaha variants.

In his extremely valuable paper on Miwok organization[51-v] Mr. Gifford also suggests a rival explanation in place of exogamy. The Miwok of California are organized in approximately exogamous moieties, and their nomenclature bears some resemblance to that of the Omaha. More particularly is the mother’s brother’s son (and his male descendants through males?) classed with the mother’s brother. According to Mr. Gifford, this is due to the custom of a man marrying, either polygamously or after his wife’s decease, the daughter of his wife’s brother. This form of marriage is actually practised among the Miwok in addition to the more generally diffused marriage with the mother’s brother’s daughter. Obviously, the facts of terminology are consistent both with this usage and with the moiety principle. Mr. Gifford objects that among the Miwok “there are no clan or moiety brothers and sisters, all relationship being based on blood and marriage ties.” This, however, is not the essential point. It does not matter whether the unrelated members are called brother or sister provided they are aligned together in the same social group; the very existence of such social groups implies a differential attitude towards fellow-members as compared with the rest of the tribe. That mere affiliation along moiety lines does not solve all the mysteries of Miwok terminology, is quite true since a sharp distinction is drawn between the mother’s brother’s daughter and the father’s sister’s daughter. Since both these relatives are eligible mates from the point of view of exogamy while as a matter of fact marriage with the paternal aunt’s daughter is prohibited, Mr. Gifford’s objection seems to be sustained. That is to say, here the social organization explains the classing together of certain relatives but not the exclusion of certain other relatives, while the specific marriage regulations of the tribe do account for this phenomenon. But on the other hand, the marriage rules fail where the moiety hypothesis succeeds. Why are the mother’s younger sister, who cannot be married, and the father’s brother’s wife classed with the marriageable cross-cousin and the wife’s brother’s daughter unless it is because they are all members of the same moiety?

So far as the merging of a maternal uncle’s male descendants through males with the uncle himself is concerned, I do not see how any marriage rule would directly explain the extension of the term ad infinitum while moiety alignment at once renders it intelligible. An advantage which the exogamous principle enjoys over every special marriage rule is the universality of its sway over the population. An individual’s wife may not have a brother and her brother may not have a daughter for the husband to marry, but where exogamous groups exist every tribesman is by birth a member of a particular group.

To the subject of specific marriage rules I shall have to revert below. My position as to the Miwok nomenclature is that special regulations undoubtedly account for some of its features while the dual organization successfully explains others and more particularly the Omaha variant of the Dakota principle.

We may sum up our discussion of the Dakota principle with the statement that its distribution, coupled as it is with exogamous groups, supports the theory of an organic connection between the two phenomena. On the question which I have hitherto shelved, viz., whether it is exogamy in any form or more particularly the dual organization that gave rise to the features under discussion, I am at present unable to reach a definite decision. Though the distribution of the moiety is far more restricted than that of exogamous groups generally, there is no doubt that not a few elements of the Dakota principle are most readily derived from a dual organization. It remains for the future to determine what is the relative part taken by the multiple kin group and the moiety organization in fashioning kinship nomenclature.

Before leaving the Dakota principle, it seems desirable to allude to two important theoretical problems with which it seems connected—its relations to the Hawaiian principle and its bearing on the antiquity of the clan organization. The Dakota scheme in its more usual form may be logically regarded as merely a complication of the simpler Hawaiian one. As Morgan pointed out, the two coincide in practically half of all the relationships. Inspired no doubt by the general trend of evolutionary thought in his day, Morgan converted the logical connection into an historical sequence and assumed the priority of the simpler system. He indicated how, if grafted on the Hawaiian scheme, the clan or gentile organization would transform it into the Dakota type. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the evolution might have taken place in the reverse direction. Development, as shown precisely by linguistic phenomena, such as the history of the English language—and kinship terms, no matter what else they may be, are elements of human speech—is not always from the simple to the complex. Morgan’s belief was influenced by the view that humanity started their social existence at an extremely low level, for which opinion he found support in the social conditions he inferred from the Hawaiian schedules. These, he argued, suggest brother-sister marriage since such marriages would explain the use of the same term for mother’s brother and father. Such unions certainly would produce the observed terminology but Morgan failed to consider that an alternative explanation was at hand. His fundamental error lay in attaching to the primary kinship terms of the Hawaiians and other peoples the notion of actual cohabitation. From this starting-point he consistently argued that all men addressed as father had actual access to the speaker’s mother. As Cunow has well shown,[52-v] there is not a tittle of evidence that this represents the native point of view, from which the term ‘father’ merely indicates tribal status with reference to the speaker. When we have once recognized this fact, there is nothing so intrinsically primitive in the Hawaiian scheme of ranging kin as to demonstrate hoary antiquity.

All empirical considerations, indeed, point in the opposite direction. For one thing, all the peoples whose systems are characterized by the Hawaiian feature rank relatively high in the scale of civilization. No one would dream of placing the Maori culture below that of, say, the Fijians. Secondly, we have the most powerful circumstantial evidence from distinct quarters of the globe to prove that Hawaiian features develop secondarily within the Dakota scheme. Thus, among some Iroquois tribes, the tendency has developed to call the father’s as well as the mother’s sister ‘mother’. The Crow differ from all other Siouan tribes, even from their closest relatives, the Hidatsa, in similarly extending the word for mother in direct address. Among the Torres Straits Islanders a corresponding change of usage was recorded by Dr. Rivers,[53-v] and similar developments seem to have occurred among the Gilyak.[54-v] Relevant data from West Africa have already been cited in another connection.

All this does not prove that as a general proposition Morgan’s sequence must simply be inverted. For this there is no evidence in North America, where complete Hawaiian schemes, or even approximations thereto, are lacking. But the data at our disposal do indicate that in so far as a tendency toward Hawaiian elements appears it is often due to secondary development.

To turn next to the problem of the exogamous kin group. Some theoretical writers have assumed the priority of the clan or gens to the ‘loose’, i.e., clanless or non-gentile, organization in which the family and local group usually form the only important social units. To support such a view appeals have sometimes been made to kinship nomenclatures. So far as North America is concerned, this argument is certainly without foundation. It was Dr. Swanton, I think, who first showed that in North America the exogamous system is found precisely among the more highly cultured tribes while generally speaking it is lacking among the more primitive peoples. Now as I have shown above, exogamy in North America largely goes hand in hand with the Dakota principle. It is therefore rather remarkable that the more primitive clanless North American tribes of the Plateau and neighboring regions also lack the Dakota principle. The suggestion sometimes offered that a clan or gentile system has once existed and simply eluded the field worker’s scrutiny on account of the degeneration of aboriginal life under modern conditions thus breaks down. We cannot argue positively that where the Dakota principle reigns exogamy must necessarily have occurred, because the correlation, while high, is not perfect and because the principle may have been borrowed without the social organization. But an exogamous organization is so frequently associated with the Dakota principle and there is so little reason for a change of kinship terminology provided the native language is preserved that the total lack of Dakota features over a wide area may be regarded as exceedingly strong evidence against the former or at least ancient existence of exogamous groups.

Supposed Features of ‘Classificatory’ Systems. Under the misnomer ‘classificatory systems’ some writers have included consideration of the principle of differentiating elder and younger brothers and sisters. The distribution of this distinction is simply staggering when one attempts to trace it more or less systematically. Of North American systems, I can offhand recall only two, the Pawnee and Kiowa, in which it does not appear. We find it in association with the Hungarian and Chukchee terminologies, both of which lack the Dakota principle, and it occurs with the Hawaiian no less than the vast majority of bifurcate systems. So far as I know, the only one who has offered any explanation of the phenomenon is Dr. Rivers, who once connected it with a difference in the time of tribal initiation.[55-v] But since there are many peoples, e. g., in North America, who do not practise any form of tribal initiation, the hypothesis hardly seems tenable and we must rest content to accept the facts of distribution.

Another feature that is often erroneously treated in association with the Dakota principle is that of reciprocity, which has already been referred to as the usage of designating a pair of relatives, more particularly two belonging to different generations, by a single term. Thus, the Shoshone call the mother’s father and the daughter’s son (man speaking) by one term. Such usage would be manifestly opposed to the Hawaiian principle with which it does not seem to be associated. It is found in connection with the Dakota scheme in Melanesia and particularly in Australia, but is markedly absent from the merging systems of North America. Since here it is highly developed where the Dakota principle does not occur, it cannot be regarded as an essential element of ‘classificatory systems’. The question remains how we are to account for the facts of distribution. Australian data forcibly suggest that, there at least, the reciprocal feature is a reflection of social organization. Grandparents and grandchildren, by the curious rule of descent that regulates affiliation with the matrimonial classes of the area, are necessarily in the same class, i.e., a father’s father and a son’s son or a mother’s father and a daughter’s son (man speaking) are fellow-members of a class. The fit seems too close to admit of an accidental association. But when we turn to the North American region of reciprocal features the interpretation no longer holds since no vestige is found there of any institution that might align the relatives under discussion in a common group. The inference is that there has been convergent development, and perhaps the most plausible explanation of the North American terms is that they are designations not so much of the relatives as of the relationship itself.[56-v]

If we cannot give more than this general interpretation of the reciprocal feature as found in North America, we can on the other hand show quite definitely that its occurrence is a function of geographical position there. The practical absence of this trait in the immense region particularly dealt with by Morgan is as remarkable as its spread over a practically continuous region in the Far West, among the Lillooet, Spokane, Kootenai, Nez PercÉ, Wishram, Takelma, and various Californian and Shoshonean Plateau populations, as well as in a considerable number of Southwestern tribes. The Pacific, Plateau and Southwestern regions obviously define the distribution of reciprocity in North America, which thus becomes intelligible only through diffusion.

Various Features. The principles of kinship nomenclature that have been treated hitherto are far from exhausting the variety found in a survey of the world. A very odd mode of addressing relatives after presentation of a gift has been mentioned for the Masai (p. 104), and there is little doubt that more extensive knowledge will reveal equally quaint notions elsewhere. Here I merely wish to enumerate a few examples from the particular point of view assumed in this chapter.

It is a remarkable fact that while in Australia the principle of bifurcation is consistently carried to the grandparental stratum of society in conjunction with the reciprocal feature, the North American region in which the Dakota principle is especially prominent lacks the distinction between mother’s and father’s parents, so that Morgan does not even dedicate special columns to these relationships in his elaborate schedules and notes the discrimination with some surprise for the Spokane.[57-v] This feature is nevertheless widely spread in the Far West, coinciding to some extent with that of reciprocity. We find it among Salish and Shoshonean tribes, in California, among the Takelma and Wishram, and to some extent in the Southwest. Both the positive and the negative facts of distribution indicate the occurrence of diffusion.

The change of terms after the death of a connecting or other relative is another feature of considerable interest. Thus, the Kawaiisu of California address the father as muwuni, but by the quite distinct term kuguni after the loss of a child.[58-v] Again, the Kootenai have one word for the father-in-law before and another after the wife’s or husband’s death. This peculiarity appears also among Californian tribes, the Chinook, Quileute, and several Salish tribes. This distribution again demonstrates diffusion from a common center. On the other hand, the probably even higher development of post-mortem nomenclature among the Timucua of Florida[59-v] cannot be ascribed, in the present state of our knowledge, to anything but independent origin, though we are not in a position to state what common cause, lacking in the intervening area, produced the common effect in the southeastern United States and in the remote regions of the Far West.

I will only call attention to one other kinship usage of more general interest, that embraced in the term ‘teknonymy’, the custom of denoting an individual in terms of his relationship to a child, viz., ‘father of Mary’, ‘grandmother of John’. This practice exists in South Africa and India,[60-v] in Melanesia,[61-v] and in the Pueblo area and on the Northwest coast of North America.[62-v] Tylor connected it with the custom of the husband’s residence with his wife’s kin, of the father’s assertion of his paternity and his ultimate recognition as more than a stranger by the wife’s family with whom a condition of ceremonial avoidance obtains. However, it should be noted that among the ZuÑi and the Hopi, though the husband lives with his wife’s people, there is no parent-in-law taboo, and the wife is as often referred to teknonymously as the husband. Thus, my Hopi interpreter always spoke to me of his wife as ‘Herman’s mother’. Tylor’s explanation is accordingly inadequate and would seem to require at least amplification. But whatever result a systematic survey of the subject may lead to, it is certain that the effect of diffusion will have to be taken into account. It is inconceivable, e. g., that the practice originated independently among tribes so geographically situated and so intimately related in culture as the ZuÑi and Hopi.

Special Forms of Marriage and Social Customs. There can be little doubt that a well-established marriage rule often finds expression in nomenclature. Even the exogamous principle can be brought under this head since it expresses the potential matrimonial status of members of the community. In a dual organization my ‘father’ is one who potentially, if not actually, is a mate of women of my mother’s group, while a ‘mother’s brother’ is one who can under no condition occupy that status.

Of the specific forms of marriage the levirate has already been considered and the cross-cousin marriage briefly mentioned. Dr. Rivers has demonstrated the close dependence of nomenclature on the latter practice in Melanesia. Here the custom itself is found in full swing, and it would be unreasonable to deny that the terminology had its origin in this usage even in parts of Melanesia where it cannot be observed. This does not mean that cross-cousin marriage necessarily obtained throughout the range of distribution of the corresponding terminology but that the terminology spread from a center where it reflected the social institution. Thus, in Guadalcanar the cross-cousin marriage still persists and we find cross-cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law comprised under a single appellation. In Anaiteum, cross-cousins of opposite sex address one another by the terms used for husband and wife.[63-v] It seems to me methodologically quite justifiable to interpret similar features in neighboring islands as having their ultimate origin in cross-cousin marriage. But the argument fails where similar connotations of terms occur without evidence of the marriage rule unless it can be demonstrated that no other cause could have produced the result. Thus, I must consider unsuccessful Dr. Rivers’ attempt to deduce, though with qualifications, the former existence of the institution in question from the system of the Dakota Indians.[64-v] The classification of brothers-in-law with cross-cousins might be simply a reflection of the dual organization, by which these relatives would fall within the same group; or, to put it differently, if the term cross-cousin is given the wide significance with which we are familiar in primitive systems, so as to include members of the opposite moiety and one’s own generation, a man’s brothers-in-law are necessarily members of the cross-cousin class. The superiority of the moiety hypothesis in this instance lies in the fact that the dual organization occurs among several contiguous and related tribes while the cross-cousin marriage is extremely rare in North America and its highest development occurs among remote peoples of the Pacific region. Regarding special forms of marriage, it is rather important to ascertain whether the terms used by our authorities are to be interpreted in our own or in the more inclusive primitive sense. For example, Tylor reduced the institution of cross-cousin marriage to the principle of exogamous moieties by assuming the wider significance.[65-v] As Dr. Rivers points out,[66-v] the two rules are not identical if marriage is prescribed with the own daughter of the own mother’s brother. In that case, the moiety rule is only a larger framework with which the specific institution is not incompatible but which does not determine cross-cousin marriage. Looking at the matter chronologically, I can even conceive the development of larger social groups from such specific marriage regulations. If in the absence of an own cross-cousin, a more remote cousin comes to be regularly substituted, we should have a whole class of possible mates, of whom the nearest cross-cousin would be only primus inter pares.

It must be understood that while special marriage regulations, like exogamy, tend to be mirrored in nomenclature, there is no absolute necessity for this occurrence. As the New Mexican Tewa have exogamous groups without the Dakota principle, so the Miwok of California have the cross-cousin marriage with little or no indication of it in terminology.[67-v] One factor that must always be considered in this connection is the time element. A recently acquired custom may not yet have developed an appropriate nomenclature, while, as Morgan supposed, the nomenclature may survive after the custom has become obsolete. That the frequency of marriage according to a certain rule, and the coexistence of other rules, possibly antagonistic in their effects, must have an influence, is obvious. As regards the latter point, Mr. Gifford shows that while marriage with the cross-cousin is not suggested in Miwok nomenclature, marriage with the wife’s brother’s daughter is reflected by twelve terms.

Among the Thonga of South Africa several interesting forms of preferential matrimonial union occur. As among the Miwok, marriage with the wife’s, younger sisters and wife’s brother’s daughter is considered peculiarly appropriate, and these affinities are subsumed under a common caption. Levirate extends only to the elder brother’s, not to the younger brother’s, wife, and quite consistently these affinities are distinguished by distinct words. A man may inherit his maternal uncle’s wife and therefore classes her with the wife. On the other hand, logic does not hold sway undisputedly. A man calls cross-cousins by the same term as parallel cousins and brothers, yet it is possible for a man to inherit his parallel cousin’s, but not his cross-cousin’s (father’s sister’s son’s), wife. The explanation given by Junod seems quite satisfactory from a comparative point of view. My cross-cousin cannot belong to my gens, my parallel cousin must belong to it.[68-v] Since the Thonga usually distinguish marriage potentialities with considerable nicety, we may reasonably infer that the present terminology for cousins is a recent innovation, which conclusion once more indicates the relatively late development of Hawaiian features.

A systematic comparison of the effect of definite forms of marriage on nomenclature, in different parts of the world is highly desirable. When we shall have examined how such an institution as the inheritance of a maternal uncle’s wife affects the systems of the Tlingit of northwestern America, of the Banks Islands in Melanesia, and the Thonga of South Africa, and know the action of whatever coexisting institutions may occur, we shall have gained considerably more insight into a very suggestive problem. It is fairly clear that a form of marriage does not determine nomenclature univocally, as the facts relating to the levirate indicate. To ascertain in how far parallelism actually occurs, is a matter of great moment.

Conclusion. The question with which this chapter opens has now received an answer. Terms of relationship form a proper topic of investigation for the ethnologist, first because they are often directly correlated with cultural phenomena, such as social usages regulating marriage; secondly, because the features of kinship nomenclature are an index of tribal relationship. Any particular system is not a unified logical whole but a complex product of internal development and foreign connections. Accordingly, its features cannot be understood by themselves any more than other cultural phenomena, but only in association with concomitant traits of the native culture and in the light of a comparative survey of like features among neighboring tribes and ultimately throughout the world. By utilizing our ethnographical knowledge in applying the method of variation it is possible to ascertain, at least to a considerable extent, the causes, whether primary or secondary, that have shaped a given system.

When, for example, we endeavor to explain the system of the Hopi, we can start with the fact that their speech constitutes them a member of the Shoshonean family, i.e., we can begin by comparing Hopi nomenclature with that of the Paiute, Paviotso, Ute and Shoshone. One fact that strikes us here is the great difference in the actual vocables employed by the Hopi from those of their congeners, an observation which by no means extends to all of their language. Morgan held the view that kinship words were the most persistent elements of speech, but however this rule may work in other stocks, such as the Athabaskan, it certainly does not obtain among the Shoshoneans, nor, I may add, within the Siouan family, where even such closely related languages as Crow and Hidatsa reveal far greater differences in the lexicon of relationships than might be expected from other vocables. It is, however, in the classification of kin that the distinctiveness of the Hopi seems most remarkable. Their system is not characterized by the prominent features of the Plateau Shoshonean terminologies, such as reciprocity and the separation of paternal from maternal grandparents. On the other hand, they employ the Dakota principle with the Hidatsa variation. That variant occurs, so far as we now know, only among peoples historically quite unrelated to the Hopi so that neither genetic connection nor dissemination accounts for the similarity. On the other hand, all the tribes having this feature share exogamous groups with maternal descent. Such clans are characteristic of the Hopi also, but are lacking among the other Shoshoneans. We infer from this that the Hidatsa variant among the Hopi is functionally connected with their clan system. If the neighboring ZuÑi do not share this characteristic, a possible explanation may be found in the relative weakness of the ZuÑi clan concept, as recently expounded by Professor Kroeber, when contrasted with its dominance in the social life of the Hopi. In other features the intimate cultural contact between the ZuÑi and Hopi is emphatically apparent. Probably for no other tribes is there evidence for such exaggerated reliance on teknonymy, while a certain looseness in the use of terms common to both seems to be a general Southwestern trait. The Hopi system thus reflects both the social fabric of the tribe and its historical relations,—the ancient ones reduced to a few lexical resemblances, while the more complex tribal organization and recent cultural affiliations with the Southwest, and particularly with the ZuÑi, stand out in bold relief.

A strictly similar inquiry might be made into the system of the Crow. Here the almost complete coincidence of certain very unusual features with Hidatsa ones bears eloquent testimony to the exceptionally close genetic relationship of the two tribes. Thus, a wife who has been married before is distinguished by a specific word, and spouses generally refer to each other not by a specific term, which seems restricted to non-vocative usage, but by a demonstrative expression. Not only is there a confusion of generations according to the Hidatsa variant, but the mother’s brother is classed with the elder brother and so is the mother’s mother’s brother. The last-mentioned features are partly found among the Mandan. All three tribes differ from the other Siouans, and indeed from all other Plains Indians in having matrilineal descent. Since this is likewise the rule among genetically unconnected peoples sharing the Hidatsa variant, we regard the latter as functionally connected with the clan organization. But there are other traits in which the terminology of the Crow differs from that of their nearest congeners, and here we must systematically consider the possible effect of all such peoples as the Oglala, or Blackfoot, with whom they have come into contact. Such divergence may be merely the effect of internal readjustment. Thus, the Crow classification of the father’s sister’s husband with the father admits of a plausible interpretation as the result of another peculiarity—the classing of the father’s sister with the mother in direct address. Instead of having two deviations from the Hidatsa norm, we should thus have at bottom only one.

It is clear that a far more intensive investigation of kinship terminologies must take the place of what has hitherto been attempted. Precisely the so-called minor peculiarities of a system are important historically because they are the differential indications of cultural contact with definite tribes. The phonetic inadequacy of Morgan’s schedules, which has been brought to light by Dr. Michelson and Mr. Spier,[69-v] requires a reËxamination of the entire field covered. Still more important is the thorough-going determination of the innumerable systems, both in and outside of America, not touched upon by Morgan at all. Fortunately the work of Dr. Rivers, Mr. A. R. Brown and Mr. A. M. Hocart in England, of Dr. R. Thurnwald in Germany, of Dr. J. R. Swanton, Mr. Leslie Spier and Mr. E. W. Gifford in America bids fair to reduce our ignorance of the facts. With our lamentable absence of knowledge on some of the most essential points it would be rash indeed to claim for the present sketch a more than preliminary value. I am content with calling attention to the tremendous ethnological significance of kinship terminologies, with combating premature confidence in generalizations based on sheer ignorance, and above all with suggesting that the most rigorous logical formulation of problems is possible in this too long neglected domain of the science of culture.