Sept. 4, 1884J 



NA TURE 



45i 



yet even here some divide the Algonquins into two groups by 

 their varying breadtli of skull. What may be the interpretation 

 of the cranial evidence as bearing on the American problem it 

 would be premature to say ; at present all that can be done is 

 to systematise facts. It is undisputed that the Esquimaux in 

 their complexion, hair, and features approximate to the Mongo- 

 loid type of North Asia ; but when it comes to cranial measure- 

 ment the Esquimaux, with their narrower skulls, whose propor- 

 tion of breadth to length is only 75 to 80, are far from conform- 

 ing to the broad-skulled type of North Asiatic Mongoloids, 

 whose average index is toward 85. Of this divergence I have 

 no explanation to offer ; it illustrates the difficulties which have 

 to be met by a young and imperfect science. 



To clear the obscurity of race-problems, as viewed from the 

 anatomical standing point, w : e naturally seek the help of lan- 

 guage. Of late years the anthropology of the Old World has 

 had ever-increasing help from comparative philology. In such 

 investigations, when the philologist seeks a connection between 

 the languages of distant regions, he endeavours to establish both 

 a common stock of words and a common grammatical structure. 

 For instance, this most perfect proof of connection has been 

 lately adduced by Mr. R. H. Codrington in support of the view 

 that the Melanesians and Polynesians, much as they differ in 

 skin and hair, speak languages which belong to a common 

 stock. A more adventurous theory is that of Lenormant and 

 Sayce, that the old Chaldean language is connected with the 

 Tatar group ; yet even here there is an a priori case based at 

 once on analogies of dictionary and grammar. The compara- 

 tive method becomes much weaker when few or no words can be 

 claimed as similar, and the whole burden of proof has to be 

 borne by similar modes of word-formation and syntax, as, for 

 example, in the researches of Aymonier and Keane tending to 

 trace the Malay group of languages into connection with the 

 Khmer or Cambodian. Within America the philologist uses 

 with success the strong method of combined dictionary and gram- 

 mar in order to define his great language-groups, such as the 

 Algonquin, extending from Hudson's Bay to Virginia, the Atha- 

 bascan, from Hudson's Bay to New Mexico, both crossing 

 Canada in their vast range. But attempts to trace analogies 

 between lists of words in Asiatic and American languages, 

 though they may have shown some similarities deserving further 

 inquiry, have hardly proved an amount of correspondence beyond 

 what chance coincidence would be capable of producing. Thus 

 when it comes to judging of affinities between the great Ameri- 

 can language-families, or of any of them, with the Asiatic, there 

 is only the weaker method of structure to fall back on. Here 

 the Esquimaux analogy seems to be with North Asiatic lan- 

 guages. It would be defined as agglutinative-suffixing, or, 

 to put the definition practically, an Esquimaux word of how- 

 ever portentous length, is treated by looking out in the dictionary 

 the first syllable or two, which will be the root, the rest being a 

 string of modifying suffixes. The Esquimaux thus presents in 

 an exaggerated form the characteristic structure of the vast Ural- 

 Altaic or Turanian group of Asiatic languages. In studying 

 American languages as a whole, the first step is to discard the 

 generalisation of Duponceau as to the American languages from 

 Greenland to Cape Horn being united together, and distin- 

 guished from those of other parts of the world by a common 

 character of polysynthetism, or combining whole sentences into 

 words. The real divergences of structure in American language- 

 families are brought clearly into view in the two dissertations of 

 M. Lucien Adam, which are the most valuable papers of the Congres 

 International des Americanistes. Making special examination 

 of sixteen languages of North and South America, Adam con- 

 siders these to belong to a number of independent or irreducible 

 families, as they would have been, he says, "had there been 

 primitively several human couples." It maybe worth suggesting, 

 however, that the task of the philologer is to exhaust every 

 possibility of discovering connections between languages before 

 falling back on the extreme hypothesis of independent origins. 

 These American language-families have grammatical tendencies 

 in common, which suggest original relationship, and in some of 

 these even correspond with languages of other regions in a way 

 which may indicate connection rather than chance. For instance, 

 the distinction of gender, not by sex as male and female, but by 

 life as animate and inanimate, is familiar in the Algonquin 

 group; in Cree muskesin — shoe (mocassin) makes its plural 

 muskesina, while eskwayu — woman (squaw) makes its plural 

 eshwaywuk. Now, this kind of gender is not peculiar to America, 

 but appears in South-East Asia, as for instance in the Kol lan- 



guages of Bengal. In that Asiatic district also appears the habit 

 of infixing, that is, of modifying roots or words by the insertion 

 of a letter or syllable, somewhat as the Dakota language inserts 

 a pronoun within the verb-root itself, or as that remarkable lan- 

 guage, the Chocta, alters its verbs by insertions of a still more 

 violent character. Again, the distinction between the inclusive 

 and exclusive pronoun we, according as it means "You and I " 

 or "they and I," &c. (the want of which is perhaps a defect in 

 English), is as familiar to the Maori as to the Ojibwa. Whether 

 the languages of the American tribes be regarded as derived 

 from Asia or as separate developments, their long existence on 

 the American continent seems unquestionable. Had they been 

 the tongues of tribes come within a short time by Behring's 

 Straits, we should have expected them to show clear connection 

 with the tongues of their kindred left behind in Asia, just as the 

 Lapp in Europe, whose ancestors have been separated for thou- 

 sands of years from the ancestors of the Ostyak or the Turk, still 

 shows in his speech the traces of their remote kinship. The 

 problem how tribes so similar in physical type and culture as the 

 Algonquins, Iroquois, Sioux, and Athabascans, should adjoin 

 one another, yet speaking languages so separate, is only soluble 

 by influences which have had a long period of time to work in. 



The comparison of peoples according to their social framework 

 of family and tribe has been assuming more and more importance 

 since it was brought forward by Bachofen, McLennan, and 

 Morgan. One of its broadest distinctions comes into view with- 

 in the Dominion of Canada. The Esquimaux are patriarchal, 

 the father being head of the family, and descent and inheritance 

 following the male line. But the Indian tribes further south are 

 largely matriarchal, reckoning descent not on the father's but the 

 mother's side. In fact, it was through becoming an adopted 

 Iroquois that Morgan became aware of this system, so foreign 

 to European ideas, and which he supposed at first to be an 

 isolated peculiarity. No less a person than Herodotus had fallen 

 into the same mistake over 2000 years ago, when he thought the 

 Lykians, in taking their names from their mothers, were unlike all 

 other men. It is now, however, an accepted matter of anthropology 

 that in Herodotus's time nations of the civilised world had passed 

 through this matriarchal stage, as appears from the survivals of it 

 retained in the midst of their newer patriarchal institutions. For 

 instance, among the Arabs to this day, strongly patriarchal as 

 their society is in most respects, there survives that most matri- 

 archal idea that one's nearest relative is not one's father but 

 one's maternal uncle ; he is bound to his sister's children by a 

 "closer and holier tie" than paternity, as Tacitus says of the 

 same conception among the ancient Germans. Obviously great 

 interest attaches to any accounts of existing tribes which pre- 

 serve for us the explanation of such social phenomena. Some 

 of the most instructive of these are too new to have yet found 

 their way into our treatises on early institutions ; they are ac- 

 counts lately published by Dutch officials among the non-Islam- 

 ised clans of Sumatra and Java. G. A. Wilken, "Over de 

 Verwantschap en het Huwelijks en Erfrecht bij de Volken van 

 den Indischen Archipel," summarises the account put on record 

 by Van Hasselt as to the life of the Malays of the Padang 

 Highlands of Mid-Sumatra, who are known to represent an 

 early Malay population. Among these people not only kinship 

 but habitation follows absolutely the female line, so that the 

 numerous dwellers in one great house are all connected by de- 

 scent from one mother, one generation above another, children, 

 then mothers and maternal uncles and aunts, then grandmothers 

 and maternal great-uncles and great-aunts, &c. There are in 

 each district several suiu or mother-clans, between persons born 

 in which marriage is forbidden. Here then appear the two well- 

 known rules of female descent and exogamy, but now we come 

 into view of the remarkable state of society that, though mar- 

 riage exists, it does not form the household. The woman 

 remains in the maternal house she was born in, and the man 

 remains in his ; his position is that of an authorised visitor ; if 

 he will, he may come over and help her in the rice-field, but he 

 need not ; over the children he has no control whatever, and 

 were he to presume to order or chastise them, their natural 

 guardian, the mother's brother {mamai), would resent it as 

 an affront. The law of female descent and its connected 

 rules have as yet been mostly studied among the native 

 Americans and Australians, where they have evidently under- 

 gone much modification. Thus 150 years ago Father Lafitau 

 mentions that the husband and wife, while in fact moving into 

 one another's hut, or setting up a new one, still kept up the 

 matriarchal idea by the fiction that neither he nor she quitted 



