508 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



rived. In other words, the Turanian and Ganowanian families drew their common 

 system of consanguinity and affinity from the same parent nation or stock, from 

 whom both were derived ; and that each family has propagated it, with the streams 

 of the blood, to each of its subdivisions upon their respective continents through all 

 the centuries of time by which their separation from each other is measured. 



The magnitude and importance of this final conclusion are sufficiently obvious. 

 Before it will be admitted and recognized, as a demonstrated proposition, the facts 

 contained in the Tables will be subjected to a more rigid analysis and to a severer 

 scrutiny than they have yet received. By that ordeal this conclusion of the Asiatic 

 origin of the Ganowanian family must abide. 



The whole question seems to turn upon the point whether the radical forms of 

 the system are stable, and capable of self-perpetuation through the immense period 

 which has elapsed since the supposed separation of these families from each other. 

 It is believed that the affirmative has been established by the undoubted fact of its 

 perpetuation in the several branches of each family from a common sourca And 

 this conclusion is further strengthened by the extraordinary circumstance that the 

 system, in virtue of its organic structure, has survived for ages the causes in which 

 it originated, and is now in every respect an artificial system, because it is con- 

 trary to the nature of descents as they actually exist in the present state of Indian 

 society. It is also confirmed by the negative proposition that it is found impossible 

 to account for the present existence of the same system in the two families except 

 through its transmission with the blood. If the facts show that the Iroquois, Al- 

 gonkin, and Dakota nations derived their system from a common source, the re- 

 maining facts show, in a manner equally conclusive, that the Turanian and Gano- 

 wanian families derived their systems from a common source ; and also, that it was 

 a transmitted system in each of their several branches. 



Should the main conclusion of the Asiatic origin of the Ganowanian family 

 abide the test of criticism it will furnish an additional illustration of the toilsome 

 processes by which we strive to discover hidden truths when they lie open before 

 us in the pathway upon which we tread. Although separated from each other by 

 continents in space, and by unnumbered ages in time, the Tamilian Indian of the 

 Eastern hemisphere, and the Seneca Indian of the Western, as they severally address 

 their kinsmen by the conventional relationships established in the primitive ages, 

 -^daily proclaim their direct descent from a once common household. AVhen the 

 discoverers of the New World bestowed upon its inhabitants the name of Intlimts, 

 under the impression that they had reached the Indies, they little suspected that 

 children of the same original family, although upon a different continent, stood 

 before them. By a singular coincidence error was truth. 



VII. When the forms which prevail in different families are, to a limited extent, 

 radically the same, can any inference be drawn from this partial identity, and to 

 what effect I 



Several interesting questions are suggested with respect to the relation of the Ma- 

 layan system of relationship to the Turanian and Ganowanian. . The Malayan family 

 were foreordained to a stationary condition from the moment their fortunes became 

 permanently identified with the islands of the sea. Without the range of a conti- 



