OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 217 



with more than usual interest. Its present form would tend to illustrate how far, 

 if at all, its original features might become modified in those respects in which it 

 differed from that of the Atlantic Algonkiiis. Whether an established system 

 changes with facility, under external influence, or stubbornly resists innovation from 

 without, is a question that connects itself with the final estimate to be placed upon 

 systems of relationship as an instrument in ethnology. The more therefore the 

 evidence tending to establish the fact of its stability is multiplied the more reliable 

 will the inferences drawn therefrom become. 



First Indicative Feature. My brother's son and daughter, Ego a male, are my 

 son and daughter, Ne-kwe-thti' and Ni-to-no-tJiti' . With Ego a female, they are my 

 nephew and niece, No-la-gwol-thd' and Na-sa-me-tha! '. 



Second. My sister's son and daughter, Ego a male, are my nephew and niece. 

 With Ego a female, they are my son and daughter. 



Third. My father's brother is my father, No-tlia'. 



Fourth. My father's brother's son and daughter are my brother and sister, elder 

 or younger, N'-tha-tha' or N'-ihe-ma-tha' and Nirmirtha' or XT-tlie-ma-tha! '. 



Fifth. My father's sister is my aunt, Na-tha-gwe-fha' '. 



Sixth. My mother's brother is my uncle, Ni'si-tha'. 



Seventh. My mother's sister is my mother, Ne-lce~ali' ' . 



Eighth. My mother's sister's son and daughter are my brother and sister, elder 

 or younger. 



Ninth. My grandfather's brother is my grandfather, Na-ma-some-t7id' . 



Tenth. The grandchildren of my brothers and sisters, and of my collateral 

 brothers and sisters, are my grandchildren. 



With respect to the children of a brother and sister, they are uncle and nephew 

 if males, and mother and daughter if females. It agrees also with the Miami as 

 to the series of uncles. For the marriage relationships which are not less elabo- 

 rately discriminated reference is made to the Table. 



It thus appears that the Shawnees have not only maintained all of the radical 

 characteristics of the system, but also that they have tenaciously held to the second 

 form of the deviation which forms such a striking peculiarity of the system. The 

 minute and precise agreement of the Miami, Sawk and Fox, Kikapoo and Me- 

 nominee forms with each other, and with the Shawnee, is a forcible attestation of 

 the stability of the system as a whole, and of the like stability of the relationships 

 deviating from uniformity when they become permanently established. 



It should be observed, also, that the terms of relationship amongst all of the 

 Algonkin nations thus far considered, are, for the most part, the same original 

 words under dialectical changes. From this fact the inference arises that the 

 terms as well as the system, have come down to each from a common source ; thus 

 ascending to the time when all of these nations were represented by a single 

 nation, and their dialects by a single language. 1 



1 In December, 1858, I sent out the first printed schedule with an explanatory letter to the several 

 Indian Missions, and among the number, one to Friend Simon D. Harvey, Superintendent of the 

 Friends' Shawnee Mission School in Kansas. But three answers were returned, and the first was 



28 March, 1870. 



