AMERICAN ASPECTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 161 



der is not peculiar to America, but appears in Southeast Asia, as for 

 instance in the Kol languages of Bengal. In that Asiatic district also 

 appears the habit of infixing, that is, of modifying roots or words by 

 the insertion of a letter or syllable, somewhat as the Dakota language 

 inserts a pronoun within the verb-root itself, or as that remarkable 

 language, the Choctaw, alters its verbs by insertions of a still more 

 violent character. Again, the distinction between the inclusive and ex- 

 clusive pronoun loe, according as it means " you and I " or " they and I," 

 etc. (the want of which is perhaps a defect in English), is as familiar 

 to the Maori as to the Ojibway. Whether the languages of the Ameri- 

 can tribes be regarded as derived from Asia or as separate develop- 

 ments, their long existence on the American Continent seems unques- 

 tionable. Had they been the tongues of tribes come within a short 

 time by Behring Strait, we should have expected them to show clear 

 connection with the tongues of their kindred left behind in Asia, just 

 as the Lapp in Europe, whose ancestors have been separated for thou- 

 sands of years from the ancestors of the Ostiak or the Turk, still shows 

 in his speech the traces of their remote kinship. The problem how 

 tribes so similar in physical type and culture as the Algonquins, Iro- 

 quois, Sioux, and Athapascans, should adjoin one another, yet speaking 

 languages so separate, is only soluble by influences which have had a 

 long period of time to work in. 



The comparison of peoples according to their social framework of 

 family and tribe has been assuming more and more importance since 

 it was brought forward by Bachofen, McLennan, and Morgan. One 

 of its broadest distinctions comes into view within the Dominion of 

 Canada. The Esquimaux are patriarchal, the father being head of 

 the family, and descent and inheritance following the male line. But 

 the Indian tribes farther south are largely matriarchal, reckoning de- 

 scent not on the father's but the mother's side. In fact, it was through 

 becoming an adopted Iroquois that Morgan became aware of this sys- 

 tem, so foreign to European ideas, and which he supposed at first to be 

 an isolated peculiarity. No less a person than Herodotus had fallen 

 into the same mistake over two thousand years ago, when he thought 

 the Lykians, in taking their names from their mothers, were unlike all 

 other men. It is now, however, an accepted matter of anthropology, 

 that in Herodotus's time nations of the civilized world had passed 

 through this matriarchal stage, as appears from the survivals of it 

 retained in the midst of their newer patriarchal institutions. For 

 instance, among the Arabs to this day, strongly patriarchal as their 

 society is in most respects, there survives that most matriarchal idea 

 that one's nearest relative is not one's father but one's maternal uncle ; 

 he is bound to his sister's children by a " closer and holier tie " than 

 paternity, as Tacitus says of the same conception among the ancient 

 Germans. Obviously great interest attaches to any accounts of exist- 

 ing tribes which preserve for us the explanation of such social phe- 

 voL. xxyi. — 11 



