MICHELSON— PIEGAN CONSANGUINITY 



writer confirms all terms given by Uhlenbeck. Uhlenbeck is to be 

 congratulated on independently discovering the allocative cases of 

 the terms of relationship, though anticipated by Curtis in this. The 

 phonetics employed are immensely superior to those of his predeces- 

 sors. The glottal stop in ni"sa, "my elder brother", distinguishes the 

 word nicely from nisa, "my son-in-law"; and the present writer is 

 happy to confirm it. See the discussion of Grinnell's work. The 

 phonetic system of Uhlenbeck was reviewed some time ago by the 

 present writer, so there is no need of doing so here, except to add that 

 occasionally the present writer hears a resonant vowel after a glottal 

 stop where Uhlenbeck records nothing. Examples are ni'm e sa ea , "my 

 daughter-in-law" =ni'msa; ni'^sa^, "my elder brother" =ni"sa. 

 Summing up, we may say that Uhlenbeck's work marks a distinct 

 advance, and that it is a matter of regret that he did not give us a 

 systematic account of the Piegan system of consanguinity. 



Let us now turn to the work of Spier. He saw clearly that the 

 existing published data were both deficient and contradictory; and 

 it was his aim to re-describe the system on the basis of the published 

 material in such a way that would be intelligible to investigators. 

 Spier himself had no independent material to check that already 

 published ; and it was for this reason that the present writer gave his 

 detailed criticism of Morgan, in spite of Spier's brief but scathing 

 rebuke. Spier's work has recently been severely criticized by Uhlen- 

 beck. * As Spier is not a philologist, Uhlenbeck has rightly criticized 

 him for not apparently trying to get in touch with one who had, 

 moreover, been among the Piegan, Blood, or Blackfeet. Uhlenbeck 

 concludes his review with the statement that "his [Spier's] notes are 

 absolutely valueless". The present writer regretfully has to give 

 at least a qualified assent to this; but it should be borne in mind that 

 his reasons for this are very different from those set forth by Uhlen- 

 beck. Spier's attempt was commendable; his failure is due to two 

 facts, viz., that he had no independent information, and that the 

 published material was too poor to afford any basis for conclusions. 2 

 From the present writer's review of Morgan's work (vide supra), it 

 will be seen that hardly a single statement based on Morgan's data is 

 tenable: it is too invidious a task to repeat all the mistakes. It will 

 also be seen that the Blood and Piegan systems do not differ from 

 one another in the way Morgan indicates; and it will be observed 

 that in most cases where Morgan's Blood schedules differ from those 

 for the Piegan, the former can also be substantiated for Piegan. 



1 Internal. Archiv f. Ethnographie, 1915, xxm, p. 140. 



2 See Lowie in American Anthropologist, N. s., xvm, p. 148, Jan.-Mar. 1916. 



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