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The Chinese have generally been represented as developing in complete isolation from other peoples. This traditional conception, however, breaks down with more intimate knowledge. Dr. Laufer has demonstrated that Chinese civilization, too, is a complex structure due to the conflux of distinct cultural streams. As an originally inland people inhabiting the middle and lower course of the Yellow River, they gradually reached the coast and acquired the art of navigation through contact with Indo-Chinese seafarers. Acquaintance with the northern nomads of Turkish and Tungus stock led to the use of the horse, donkey and camel, as well as the practice of felt and rug weaving, possibly even to the adoption of furniture and the iron technique. Most important of all, it appears that essentials of agriculture, cattle-raising, metallurgy and pottery, as well as less tangible features of civilization are common to ancient China and Babylonia, which forces us to the conclusion that both the Chinese and Babylonian cultures are ramifications from a common Asiatic sub-stratum. It would be idle to speculate as to the relative contributions of each center to this ancient cultural stock. The essential point is that the most ancient Asiatic civilizations of which we have any evidence already indicate close contact of peoples and the dispersal of cultural elements.

Nevertheless, before peoples can communicate their cultures to others with whom they come into contact, they must first evolve these cultures. The question thus remains, What determines this evolution? In order to gain a proper perspective in this matter, we must for a moment consider the progress of human civilization as a whole. Archaeological research shows that the modern era of steel and iron tools was preceded by an age of bronze and copper implements, which in turn was preceded by a stone age subdivided into a more recent period of polished, and an earlier of merely chipped, stone tools. Now the chronological relations of these epochs are extremely suggestive. The very lowest estimate by any competent observer of the age of Palaeolithic man in Europe sets it at 50,000 years; since this is avowedly the utmost minimum value that can be assigned on geological grounds, we may reasonably assume twice that figure for the age of human culture generally. Using the rough estimate permissible in discussions of this sort, we may regard the end of the Palaeolithic era as dating back about 15,000 years ago. In short, for more than eight-tenths of its existence, the human species remained at a cultural level at best comparable with that of the Australian. We may assume that it was during this immense space of time that dispersal over the face of the globe took place and that isolation fixed the broader diversities of language and culture, over and above what may have been the persisting cultural sub-stratum common to the earliest undivided human group. The following Neolithic period of different parts of the globe terminated at different times and had not been passed at all by most of the American aborigines and the Oceanians at the time of their discovery. However, from the broader point of view here assumed, it was not relieved by the age of metallurgy until an exceedingly recent past. The earliest estimate I have seen does not put the event back farther than 6000 B. C. even in Mesopotamia. During nine-tenths of his existence, then, man was ignorant of the art of smelting copper from the ore. Finally, the iron technique does not date back 4,000 years; it took humanity ninety-six hundredths of its existence to develop this art.

We may liken the progress of mankind to that of a man a hundred years old, who dawdles through kindergarten for eighty-five years of his life, takes ten years to go through the primary grades, then rushes with lightning rapidity through grammar school, high school and college. Culture, it seems, is a matter of exceedingly slow growth until a certain 'threshold' is passed, when it darts forward, gathering momentum at an unexpected rate. For this peculiarity of culture as a whole, many miniature parallels exist in special subdivisions of culture history. Natural science lay dormant until Kepler, Galileo and Newton stirred it into unexampled activity, and the same holds for applied science until about a century ago.

This discontinuity of development receives strong additional illustration from a survey of special subdivisions of ancient culture. Though the Palaeolithic era certainly preceded the later Stone Age, archaeologists have hitherto failed to show the steps by which the later could develop out of the earlier. This gap may, of course, be due merely to our lack of knowledge. Yet when we take subdivisions of the Palaeolithic period, the same fact once more confronts us. There is no orderly progression from Solutrean to Magdalenian times. The highly developed flint technique of the former dwindles away in the latter and its place is taken by what seems a spontaneous generation of bone and ivory work, with a high development of realistic art.

As Professor Boas and American ethnologists generally have maintained, many facts are quite inconsistent with the theory of unilinear evolution. That theory can be tested very simply by comparing the sequence of events in two or more areas in which independent development has taken place. For example, has technology in Africa followed the lines ascertained for ancient Europe? We know today that it has not. Though unlike southern Scandinavia, the Dark Continent is not lacking in copper deposits, the African Stone Age was not superseded by a Copper Age, but directly by a period of Iron. Similarly, I have already pointed out that the possession of the same domesticated animals does not produce the same economic utilization of them while the Tungus rides his reindeer, other Siberians harness their animals to a sledge; the Chinaman will not milk his cattle, while the Zulu's diet consists largely of milk. That a particular innovation occurred at a given time and place is, of course, no less the result of definite causes than any other phenomenon of the universe. But often it seems to have been caused by an accidental complex of conditions rather than in accordance with some fixed principle.

For example, the invention of the wheel revolutionized methods of transportation. Now, why did this idea develop in the Old World and never take root among the American Indians? We are here face to face with one of those ultimate data that must simply be accepted like the physicist's fact that water expands in freezing while other substances contract. So far as we can see, the invention might have been made in America as well as not; and for all we know it would never have been made there until the end of time. This introduces a very important consideration. A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique phenomenon. In so far as this is true it must defy generalized treatment, and the explanation of a cultural phenomenon will consist in referring it back to the particular circumstances that preceded it. In other words, the explanation will consist in a recital of its past history; or, to put it negatively, it cannot involve the assumption of an organic law of cultural evolution that would necessarily produce the observed effect.

Facts already cited in other connections may be quoted again by way of illustration. When a copper implement is fashioned not according to the requirements of the material, but in direct imitation of pre?xisting stone patterns, we have an instance of cultural inertia: it is only the past history of technology that renders the phenomena conceivable. So the unwieldy Chukchee tent, which adheres to the style of a pre-nomadic existence, is explained as soon as the past history of the tribe comes to light.

When we find that a type of kinship terminology is determined by exogamy or matrilineal descent, we have, indeed, given a cultural explanation of a cultural fact; but for the ultimate problems how exogamy or maternal descent came about, we may be unable to give a solution. Very often we cannot ascertain an anterior or correlated cultural fact for another cultural fact, but can merely group it with others of the same kind. Of this order are many of the parallels that figure so prominently in ethnological literature. For example, that primitive man everywhere believes in the animation of nature seems an irreducible datum which we can, indeed, paraphrase and turn hither and thither for clearer scrutiny but can hardly reduce to simpler terms. All we can do is to merge any particular example of such animism in the general class after the fashion of all scientific interpretation. That certain tendencies of all but universal occurrence are characteristic of culture, no fair observer can deny, and it is the manifest business of ethnology to ascertain all such regularities so that as many cultural phenomena as possible may fall into their appropriate categories. Only those who would derive each and every trait similar in different communities of human beings from a single geographical source can ignore such general characteristics of culture, which may, in a sense, be regarded as determinants of specific cultural data or rather, as the principles of which these are particular manifestations.

Recently I completed an investigation of Plains Indian societies begun on the most rigorous of historical principles, with a distinct bias in favor of the unique character of cultural data. But after smiting hip and thigh the assumption that the North American societies were akin to analogous institutions in Africa and elsewhere, I came face to face with the fact that, after all, among the Plains Indians, as among other tribes, the tendency of age-mates to flock together had formed social organizations and thus acted as a cultural determinant.

What are the determinants of culture? We have found that cultural traits may be transmitted from without and in so far forth are determined by the culture of an alien people. The extraordinary extent to which such diffusion has taken place proves that the actual development of a given culture does not conform to innate laws necessarily leading to definite results, such hypothetical laws being overridden by contact with foreign peoples. But even where a culture is of relatively indigenous growth comparison with other cultures suggests that one step does not necessarily lead to another, that an invention like the wheel or the domestication of an animal occurs in one place and does not occur in another. To the extent of such diversity we must abandon the quest for general formulae of cultural evolution and recognize as the determinant of a phenomenon the unique course of its past history. However, there is not merely discontinuity and diversity but also stability and agreement in the sphere of culture. The discrete steps that mark culture history may not determine one another, but each may involve as a necessary or at least probable consequence other phenomena which in many instances are simply new aspects of the same phenomenon, and in so far forth one cultural element as isolated in description is the determinant or correlate of another. As for those phenomena which we are obliged to accept as realities without the possibility of further analysis, we can, at least, classify a great number of them and merge particular instances in a group of similar facts. Finally, there are dominant characteristics of culture, like cultural inertia or the secondary rationalization of habits acquired irrationally by the members of a group, which serve as broad interpretative principles in the history of civilization.

In short, as in other sciences, so in ethnology there are ultimate, irreducible facts, special functional relations, and principles of wider scope that guide us through the chaotic maze of detail. And as the engineer calls on the physicist for a knowledge of mechanical laws, so the social builder of the future who should seek to refashion the culture of his time and add to its cultural values will seek guidance from ethnology, the science of culture, which in Tylor's judgment is 'essentially a reformer's science.'

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.

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.

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

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.

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 is not restricted to East Africa and the Semitic family, but has been found in the Persian, Armenian, Celtic, Esthonian, and Scandinavian languages. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

To revert to the Dakota principle, as Morgan points out, 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.

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

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.

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. The system of the Tamil, as Morgan emphatically pointed out, is almost identical with that of the Seneca Iroquois. The essential resemblance to this type of the Toda, Singhalese and Vedda 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?

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.

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.

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. 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 . 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 . 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. 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.

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.

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.

The exogamy hypothesis, with special reference, to the phenomena just mentioned, has recently been discussed by Professor Kroeber. 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 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.

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.

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, and similar developments seem to have occurred among the Gilyak. 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.

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 Perc?, 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.

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. 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.

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. 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 , 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. 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.

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