HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



plot them on some such map as that of Mooney in his paper on The 

 Cheyenne Indians. 1 We then find that the system in question is 

 spread over an absolutely continuous area, covering the territory of 

 the Menomini, Winnebago, Iowa, Omaha, Ponca, Oto, Kansas, 

 Osage, Illinois, Sauk and Fox, Miami, and Shawnee. But the Ojibwa 

 also form part of a fairly continuous area, — that including besides 

 their own habitat that of the Cree, Dakota, Wyandot, and Iroquois, 

 all of whom designate cross-cousins as cousins. Since within both 

 areas members of distinct linguistic families share the same kinship 

 features, the similarities, unless explicable by similar social conditions, 

 can be explained only by diffusion. 



The similarities cannot be explained by similar social conditions. 

 The Ojibwa do not possess either the clan or the moiety system of the 

 Iroquois, yet they have a similar nomenclature. They do possess the 

 gentile organization of the Central Algonquian, yet that similarity 

 was not an adequate cause for the production or maintenance of a 

 system similar to that of the Central Algonquians. No sociological 

 condition can be conceived that might account for the empirical dis- 

 tribution of traits. On the other hand that distribution corresponds 

 so closely to the criterion ordinarily demanded for a proof of diffusion 

 that diffusion, and diffusion only, must be accepted as the explanatory 

 principle. 



For the present discussion the distribution of systems with a clear 

 development of reciprocal terms is important. To choose a common 

 example, grandparent and grandchild are designated in these systems 

 by a common term, or at least by a common root to which a diminu- 

 tive affix is attached to distinguish the junior relative. So far as I 

 know, systems in which reciprocal terms figure at all conspicuously 

 are completely lacking in the Eastern Woodland, Southeastern, and 

 Plains areas. On the other hand, they have been recorded among the 

 Lillooet, Squawmish, Okinagan, Spokane, and Nez Perce; 2 the 

 Wishram, Takelma, Uintah Ute, and Kaibab Paiute; 3 the San Carlos 

 Apache; 4 the Navaho; 5 the Zuni; 6 the Tewa, Acoma and Cochiti; 7 



1 Memoirs Amer. Anthr. Assoc, vol. I, pt. 6, 1907. 



2 For the first three, only so far as great-grandparent and great-grandchild are concerned. 

 Boas in Report of the Sixtieth Meeting of the British Association for tlie Advancement of Science, 

 1890, pp. 688-692. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 245, 249. 



3 Sapir in American Anthropologist, 1913, pp. 132-138. 



4 Oral communication by Dr Goddard. 



6 Franciscan Fathers, An Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navaho Language, pp. 435-436. Per- 

 sonal communication by Dr Elsie Clews Parsons. 



* Communication by Dr Kroeber. 



' Communications by Drs Parsons and Radin; Harrington in American Anthropologist, 1912, 

 pp. 472-498- 



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