Historical and Sociological Interpreta- 

 tions of Kinship Terminologies 



By Robert H. Lowie 



TUDENTS of kinship terminology have been interested 

 almost exclusively in the sociological inferences that may 

 be derived from systems of relationship. They have gen- 

 erally failed to note that Morgan himself drew not merely 

 sociological, but also startling historical conclusions from 

 the observed phenomena. Indeed, in this regard Morgan may fairly 

 be said to out-Graebner Graebner. He not only rejects the hypothesis 

 that similarities in relationship nomenclature can be explained by 

 independent development, but also summarily dismisses the sugges- 

 tion of diffusion by borrowing: nothing will do but racial affiliation. 



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, etc. . . . When the discoverers of the New World 

 bestowed upon its inhabitants the name of Indians, 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. 1 



This extravagant view was quite correctly criticized by Lubbock 

 when he pointed out that the Two-Mountain Iroquois can hardly be 

 recognized as more closely akin to remote Oceanian tribes than to 

 their fellow-Iroquois. But while this criticism (with an indefinite 

 number of similar instances that lie at hand) eliminates the use of 

 kinship terminologies for ascertaining racial affinity, it does not dis- 

 pose of them as evidence of cultural connection. Indeed, Morgan 

 himself repeatedly cites "resemblances that become intelligible only 

 from this point of view; yet with that characteristic lack of the logical 

 sense that detracts so largely from his otherwise superb pioneer 

 achievements he fails to see the bearing of his data. Professor 

 Kroeber — the only writer since Morgan who has departed funda- 

 mentally from the sociological point of view — assumes an historical 

 position when he points out that differences in terminology are 

 regional; but so far as I can see, he does not stress the obvious con- 



1 Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity, p. 508. 

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