Culture & Ethnology

by Robert Harry Lowie

There are certain other objections to the levirate hypothesis. One of them was already urged by Morgan, who examined it under the heading of polygamy and polyandry, which together might obviously lead to the same results as the Yahi usages.[46-v] These customs do not necessarily take in the entire population. A man may not have a brother to inherit his widow, nor have all women sisters to join or follow them in wedlock. On the other hand, clan or gentile affiliation is an automatic affair not touched by such contingencies.

Further, we may ask, what is really explained by the Yahi rules? The relationships of paternal uncle and maternal aunt and their discrimination from the mother’s brother and father’s sister are certainly accounted for; and correlatively, the distinction between the offspring of such relatives. But though discussion has hitherto for simplicity’s sake been mainly restricted to these nearer kindred, the Dakota principle involves far more remote relatives. It is not only the father’s brother but the father’s father’s brother’s son and the greatgrandfather’s brother’s son’s son that are classed with the father; not only the mother’s sister but the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter and mother’s mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s daughter that are classed with the mother. No doubt an explanation can be patched together on the levirate-polygyny hypothesis. Since my father is brother to my father’s father’s brother’s son, the latter is my potential father under the levirate rule, and so forth. But even with the multiple clan or gentile hypothesis, the facts are more directly explained. From this point of view the relative in question is simply a father’s clansman with paternal descent, while with matrilineal descent the designations for the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter et al. are at once clear. The moiety theory, of course, accounts for all the relevant data in the simplest manner.

It is, indeed, manifest that the levirate-polygyny rule stands to the exogamous principle somewhat in the relation of a part to the whole or of a special instance to a broader principle. Assume exogamous divisions, and my wife becomes ipso facto my brother’s potential wife while my wife’s sisters are my and my brothers’ potential wives even though marriage be never actually consummated except monogamously. Incidentally, it is by no means certain that in reported cases the levirate is limited to the real brother or the multiple sister marriages to own sisters; indeed, in some cases the reverse is stated, cousins or members of the same clan or gens being expressly included. With the dual organization the case is especially clear. The kinship terms then appear simply as status names. I am brother to those who are potential husbands of the same group of women and since all of us males occupy this common status there is correlatively a single term by which all of us are called by our children. The status assumption is supported by such facts as the Gilyak rule by which men of a gens must take wives from a particular gens and where the gentes as units are regarded as standing to each other in the relationship of father-in-law and son-in-law.[47-v]

In short, where the levirate-polygyny usages coexist with exogamy, it would be rash to derive a merging and bifurcate nomenclature from the former rather than from the latter.

Still another objection is implied in Dr. Sapir’s own statement of the case. It is not necessary for the natives to look at the levirate from the point of view hitherto assumed. Instead of defining the paternal uncle in terms of his potential fatherhood, they may have a word distinct from that for father to designate the step-father and the paternal uncle. Dr. Sapir cites the Upper Chinook by way of illustration. In other words, the action of the levirate is equivocal. It may affect nomenclature so as to produce the semblance of the Dakota principle, but it may also produce quite different results. It may also fail to affect terminology at all, as apparently is the case in Semitic languages with their descriptive nomenclature.

In this connection a qualification must be made that applies equally to the exogamy hypothesis. Though the ultimate cause of a terminological feature be the levirate, the immediate cause in a given instance may well be an historico-geographical one. If the Chinook nomenclature is differently affected by the levirate from that of the Yahi, the proximate reason may be simply the fact that the Chinook did not come into contact with the same peoples as the Yahi and thus had no chance to borrow their nomenclature. In other words, admitting an influence of the levirate, it is not necessary to assume that it has repeatedly produced the same terminological effects independently.

I know of at least one instance in which the hypothesis advanced by Dr. Sapir seems definitely excluded, leaving exogamy in the field as the efficient cause. The Hopi system conforms to the essentials of the Dakota type, but neither the levirate nor the marriage with two sisters is in vogue. It cannot be argued that the Dakota features were borrowed from some other Southwestern tribe possessing these usages, first, because the Dakota features are far more highly developed among the Hopi than among other Pueblo Indians; secondly, because it is very doubtful whether the practices in question occur among other Pueblo tribes.[48-v]

In justice to Dr. Sapir it must be pointed out that he does not advance his hypothesis as a general interpretation of the phenomena. As he suggests, it is most serviceable where the exogamous factor does not occur, or, as I should add, where diffusion of features from a system affected by exogamy seems improbable. I have examined his hypothesis as if it were designed to account for all the relevant phenomena simply in order to bring out clearly its inferiority from this point of view to the theory of exogamy.

There are two series of cases which strongly corroborate the theory of the effect of the exogamous organization on the kinship nomenclature. They constitute a distinct variant of the Dakota principle, the deviation being in the designation of cross-cousins. While these are still differentiated from parallel cousins, they are not placed together in a single category but are classed, one group of cousins with the first ascending and the complementary group with the first descending generation. In short, the generation factor which is fundamental in the Hawaiian scheme and only modified by dichotomy in the usual type of bifurcate merging schemes is here overridden by some other factor. Now what is the nature of this new determinant? Let us look at the facts.