176 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINTY 



northwest shore of Lake Superior, along the Rainy Lake, and Lake of the Woods 

 towards Lake Winnipeg. They formed an alliance with the Crees for mutual 

 defence against the Dakotas, which has been maintained with more or less con- 

 stancy to the present time. They are now west of the Red River of the North, 

 and north of the Missouri, their range including a portion of the Hudson's Bay 

 Territory. In their system of relationship they agree so closely with the Yankton 

 that whatever is said of one is equally applicable to the other. A greater differ- 

 ence in dialect is found between the Asiniboine and Yankton than is found 

 among the remaining Dakota dialects as to each other, which is explained by the 

 isolation of the former from the Dakota speech for two hundred and fifty years and 

 upwards. But the amount of dialectical variation in the terms of relationship is 

 still inconsiderable. 



It thus appears that every indicative feature of the Seneca system is not only 

 present in that of the Dakota nations ; but that they are coincident throughout. 

 The diagrams used to illustrate the Seneca-Iroquois form will answer for either of 

 the Dakota nations as well. Every relationship I believe, without exception, 

 would be the same in the six diagrams. This identity of systems is certainly an 

 extraordinary fact when its elaborate and complicated structure is considered. 

 The significance of this identity is much increased by the further fact that it 

 has remained to the present time, after a separation of the Iroquois from the 

 Dakota nations, or from some common parent nation, for a period of time which 

 must be measured by the centuries required to change the vocables of their respec- 

 tive stock languages beyond recognition. The maintenance of a system which 

 creates such diversities in the domestic relationships, and which is founded upon 

 such peculiar discriminations, is the highest evidence of its enduring nature as a 

 system. Ideas never change. The language in which they are clothed is muta- 

 ble, and may become wholly transformed ; but the conceptions which it embodies, 

 and the ideas which it holds in its grasp, are alone exempt from mutability. When 

 these ideas or conceptions are associated together in such fixed relations as to 

 create a system of consanguinity, resting upon unchangeable necessities, the latter 

 is perpetuated by their vital force, or the system, in virtue of its organic structure, 

 holds these ideas in a living form. We shall be led step by step to the final infer- 

 ence that this system of relationship originated in the primitive ages of mankind, 

 and that it has been propagated like language with the streams of the blood. 



II. Missouri Nations. 1. Punkas. 2. Omahas. 3. lowas. 4. Otoes. (5. 

 Missouris, not in the Table.) 6. Kaws. 7. Osages. (8. Quappas, not in the 

 Table. 1 ) 



This name is proposed for the above group of nations whose dialects are closely 

 allied with each other, and all of which were derived from the same immediate 

 source as the dialects of the Dakota language proper. These nations, when first 



1 The orthography of some of these names is not in accordance with the common pronunciation in 

 the Indian countrj. To conform with it they should be written: Punkaws, Omaliaws, and Qnappaws. 

 Otoe is not the original name of this nation. Their own name, which has a vulgar signification, was 

 changed to Otoe at the suggestion of the traders. 



