8 



It is not necessary in this place to discuss the variations from 

 uniformity which a careful comparison of the several schedules 

 has revealed ; but the one most important may be adverted to, 

 in this connection, as it may appear in the systems of other 

 nations, and finally receive an explanation. It is this : the son of 

 a man's father's sister is his cousin among the Iroquois, the Da- 

 kotas, and the Otawas, &c., who represent three stock languages ; 

 while among the lowas, Otoes, Kaws and Shawnees, who repre- 

 sent two of the same stock languages, he is a nephew ; and among 

 the Choctaws, who represent a fourth stock language, he is a 

 father; so that in one case the same persons are cousins to each 

 other, in another, uncle and nephew, and in another, son and 

 father. 



The universal prevalence, among the North American Indians, 

 of a system of consanguinity and relationship so exceedingly com- 

 plex, was sufficiently remarkable to suggest some questions as to 

 what might be its ethnological value. Its permanency was suffi- 

 ciently illustrated by its universal prevalence through a period of 

 time, in which every word of some of the languages had under- 

 gone such changes as to be wholly unintelligible to the people of 

 other languages, in which the system itself had undergone no ma- 

 terial modification. Consequently it seemed to indicate the unity 

 of origin of all these Indian nations, which though probable be- 

 fore, was not so well established as to leave undesirable the fur- 

 ther evidence to be derived from this source. The ancientness 

 upon this continent of the Red race, assuming its original unity, 

 was rendered' manifest by the number of ages which would be re- 

 quired for an original language to fall into several languages so 

 entirely changed in their vocabularies as to lose all internal evi- 

 dence, from this source, of their original connection ; and for these, 

 in turn, to fall into the multitudinous dialects in which they are 

 now spoken. This permanency and this universality of the sys- 

 tem, therefore, could scarcely be understood in any other way, 

 than by the assumption that this system itself was as old as the 

 Indian race on this continent. If, then, the Hed race was of 

 Asiatic origin, it became very probable that they brought it with 

 them from Asia, and left it behind them in the stock from which 

 they separated. 



