LXVIII ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 



are likewise used. Thus in the body of kinship terms relative age 

 is usually expressed. It is found among these same tribes that 

 within a elan or other body of kindred superior age confers au- 

 thority, and as people in this stage of culture have no record of 

 births, and have such a limited arithmetic that ages are not kept, 

 so that a man never knows his age, this linguistic device serves a 

 valuable purpose. Among the Algonkian tribes the same phe- 

 nomena are discovered, and kinship terms express relative age, 

 and within certain limits authority inheres in seniority. The 

 same thing- is true among 1 the Wintun Indians of California, 

 among the Shoshonian Indians of Utah, among the Atha- 

 baskan Indians, and in every tribe that has yet been inves- 

 tigated in North America. The same phenomena are observed 

 in the tribes of South America, in Australia, in Africa, and 

 Asia, and even to some extent in Europe; and we know his- 

 torically that peoples who have passed beyond the grade of 

 savagery once had such a system of kinship names. It would 

 appear from this that in savage society the legislators or coun- 

 cil-men established customary laws regulating personal rela- 

 tions, by which under certain conditions the elder should 

 exercise authority or control over the younger. It is a very 

 simple method of regulating personal relations, quite in conso- 

 nance with what we know of the methods of reasoning among 

 savage peoples. In order that this rule should be observed it 

 was a very obvious and simple plan to establish the further 

 regulation that the individuals composing bodies of kindred 

 should address each other by terms which claim or recognize this 

 authority by the use of words expressing relative age. Now, 

 we may suppose that such a custom, scattered as it is through- 

 out the world, may have arisen at many independent centers. 

 It may have been autogenous here and there; and it may, 

 however, have been borrowed sometimes — one tribe may 

 have learned it from another, and, thinking it a wise device, 

 adopted it. But it seems probable, and most anthropologists 

 would perhaps agree, that we ought to consider such a custom 

 so widely spread as this as being substantially autogenous, and 

 that it sprung up in its several centers of development from 

 like causes, namely, the desire to regulate personal relations 



