A man counts as uncles all those whom his mothers call “brothers”; and as aunts all the sisters of his father and the wives of his uncles. A man has for brothers-in-law the husbands of his father’s sister; for they are the real or virtual husbands of his sisters; a woman has them for virtual husbands.[935]
Various prohibitions of marriage result from these conventional kinships. A man may not marry the women that he calls daughters of a sister, or grand-daughters, etc. A woman may not marry the men who are her sons, the sons of her sister, of her aunt or of her niece, or who are her brothers, etc.[936]
But an Omaha may marry any woman who is not a blood relation, provided that she does not figure among the prohibited affinities.[937]
We have not such detailed information regarding the other Redskin tribes; but we know enough of them to be certain that their systems of kinship are very analogous to those of the Iroquois Senecas and the Omahas. Filiation is everywhere maternal, except in certain tribes in the course of evolution; nearly everywhere also it is a crime to marry a woman having the same totem.[938]
Among the Mandans, Pawnies, and Arickaries, a man calls his brother’s wife his wife also. Among the Crows a woman calls her husband’s brother’s wife her “comrade”; but among the Winebagos she calls her “sister.” In some tribes a man’s wife’s sister’s husband is called his “brother.”[939]
Some very severe and inconvenient rules of decency have resulted from these fictitious kinships, with their prohibitions of marriage.
Thus, among the Omahas, the young girls may only speak to their father, brother, and grandfather. A woman avoids passing before her daughter’s husband as much as possible; and, unless under extraordinary circumstances, a woman does not speak directly to the father of her husband. A man never addresses a word to the mother or grandmother of his wife.[940] In the last century, among the Iroquois, a young man was dishonoured if he stopped to converse in public with a young girl who was certainly within the prohibited degree of kinship.[941] For a young Iroquois girl to call the husband of her aunt by his personal name was considered a grave act, indicating a culpable liaison.[942]
From the manner in which the Redskins understand kinship, we may infer two things: first, that they must have passed through a familial stage, in which groups of brothers married groups of sisters and possessed them in common, thus combining polygamy and polyandry, since they attach little value to real consanguinity, and their kinships are very often fictitious; and secondly, that they make no difference between real filiation and adoption, and in this they resemble savages and even barbarians of all countries. Among the Omahas the word used to signify adoption means literally “to take for one’s own son.”[943] The adopted child is always treated as the first-born, and takes his place; the father who adopts him refuses him nothing, and gives him a share in all his wealth. The real father, on his side, makes presents to the adopted father. And lastly, there is a prohibition of marriage during four years between the two families, on account of the kinship created by the adoption.[944]
Sometimes an entire clan adopts another. Thus the Wolf-Iroquois were adopted by the Falcon-Iroquois, and the effect of this adoption was that the two clans became completely assimilated, the new-comers taking the kinships of the adoptive clan.[945]
The adoption of enemies, taken prisoners after a battle, is still more curious. This adoption has almost miraculous effects; it extinguishes the ferocious hatred which the Redskins always feel for men belonging to rival tribes; more than that, it makes the captive warrior become the husband of the woman whom he has perhaps rendered a widow, or of the daughter whose father he may have killed. The Redskins have, it should be said, very exaggerated ideas on the subject of warlike valour. A combatant must never surrender unless very severely wounded. Every warrior who is taken prisoner is dishonoured and held as dead by his tribe, and his captors generally torture him to death. However, in the last century, the most ferocious of the Redskins, the Iroquois, sometimes spared a few prisoners to offer them to the wives or daughters whose relations had been killed. The latter had the power either to put them to death, in order that their shades might serve as slaves to their father, brother, or husband, etc., who had fallen, or to pardon them, and even adopt them. In this last case, the enemies of the previous night took a place among the warriors of the clan, and were no longer distinguished from the others.[946]