LOWIE— KINSHIP TERMINOLOGIES 



Morgan. x As he points out, the Seneca, Ojibwa, and Dakota designate 

 a mother's brother's and a father's sister's child as "cousin"; the 

 Southern Siouans (and Winnebago) call the mother's brother's son 

 "uncle" and the father's sister's son "nephew"; the Crow and Hidatsa 

 class the former with the son and the latter with the father: and at 

 least part of the Crow-Hidatsa scheme occurs among the Choctaw 

 and related tribes. 2 



I have elsewhere shown that the striking difference between the 

 Southern Siouans and their northern congeners, the Crow and 

 Hidatsa, is a function of the difference in rules of descent. 3 Owing to 

 the very close linguistic affiliation of the Crow and Hidatsa, most 

 ethnologists will agree that their kinship systems (which coincide in 

 many points besides those cited) were neither borrowed from each 

 other in recent times nor arose independently, but are survivals from 

 the system of the parent tribe, which pristine system, then, expressed 

 the maternal (clan) organization. For like reasons, a corresponding 

 conclusion will be deemed permissible for the Omaha and their 

 immediate relatives, whose pristine system, as already noted by 

 Kohler and Cunow, reflected their paternal (gentile) organization. 



But as the example of the matrilineal Seneca and the patrilineal 

 Ojibwa indicates, the rule of descent need not be reflected in the kin- 

 ship nomenclature ; for here we have tribes of different rules of descent 

 with the same mode of designating cross-cousins, who are not placed 

 in a generation above or below that of the speaker. I will not now 

 attack the more general problem why certain tribes emphasize rules 

 of descent while others do not. I prefer to render the problem more 

 specific, and therefore more amenable to solution by confining atten- 

 tion to a single linguistic stock and to a single branch of that stock, 

 among whose members there is a cultural bond as well. Of the 

 Central Algonquians, the Miami, Sauk and Fox, Kickapoo, Menomini, 

 and Shawnee agree among themselves and differ from the Ojibwa 

 in classing the mother's brother's son and father's sister's son with 

 the uncle and nephew, respectively; the corresponding female cousins 

 with the mother and daughter, respectively. 4 But this is precisely 

 like the system of the Winnebago and Southern Siouans, as Morgan 

 himself expressly states ! Why do the Algonquian terminologies cited 

 resemble those of a group of Siouan tribes rather than the Ojibwa 

 nomenclature? 



In order to appreciate the significance of the actual facts, we must 



1 Op. cit., p. 189. 



2 For the sake of simplicity I cite only some of the relevant data. 



3 American Anthropologist, 1915, p. 237 f. 



* Morgan, op. cit., pp. 211-217. My attention was drawn to these facts by Mr Leslie Spier. 



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