OF THE BUREAU OP ETHNOLOGY. LXIX 



within a body politic, and the belief that such personal rela- 

 tions ought to be regulated so as to confer authority upon the 

 elder, because age is supposed to give wisdom. 



Yet it is quite possible to suppose that this custom had its 

 origin among a people far back in antiquity, and that this 

 original people ultimately broke into segments and scattered 

 from time to time throughout the habitable earth; and in this 

 case this custom of the different tribes would have a syngenous 

 origin; the custom would have come down to the tribes by 

 cognation from the ancestral tribe who invented it. But such 

 a supposition would not be very probable for many reasons. 

 The tribes among which it is found speak very different lan- 

 guages, and belong to diverse stocks of language. The names 

 used do not belong to one language or to one family of lan- 

 guages. No possible genetic relationship has 3-et been discov- 

 ered between the languages or between these kindred terms as 

 used among the different stocks of people where the custom 

 prevails. To suppose, then, that the custom had an origin 

 anterior to all of the languages spoken at the present time by the 

 tribes among whom this phenomenon is discovered is not very 

 reasonable. Again, we are led to believe from archseologic 

 evidence that mankind was widely scattered throughout the 

 habitable earth anterior to the development of known stocks 

 of languages, and anterior to the development of any but the 

 very rudest arts, and this supposition demands that we should 

 believe that the institution should have been invented by a 

 people yet devoid of organized speech, and almost devoid of 

 all the arts of life. And we must further infer from this hy- 

 pothesis that this institution, in its primitive simplicity, existed 

 during all that period of time through which arts and insti- 

 tutions have had their growth to the present time. It will 

 be safer, therefore, to conclude that this custom is autogenous 

 by concausation in many centers. If we take a broader survey 

 of the habits and customs of a people we shall find many 

 other customs and regulations equally widespread; all of 

 which we are compelled to believe are autogenous from various 

 centers of origin. On the other hand many customs are found 

 which are not so widely distributed, and the reasons for which 



