Culture & Ethnology

by Robert Harry Lowie

The Hidatsa class the father’s sister’s son with the father and the father’s sister’s daughter and all her female descendants through females to infinity with the father’s sister; correlatively, the mother’s brother’s son, in the absence of special words for nephew or niece, is classed with the son, even by women. That the Crow scheme is almost identical, is readily intelligible from the historical relations of the two tribes, who speak very similar languages of the Siouan stock. But the essentials of the classification reappear among the geographically, linguistically, and culturally remote Hopi, with suggestions of similar features among the Tlingit and even in Melanesia. We are again confronted with a puzzling problem of distribution.

An analysis of the Hidatsa data clarifies the situation. According to the statements of the natives themselves, the term ‘father’ is applied to any father’s clansman irrespective of age and would accordingly include the father’s sister’s son. This suggests that the clue to the entire situation may lie in the clan feature. As a matter of fact, we find the daughter of the father’s sister’s son is not classed with the daughter of the father’s sister’s daughter. The only difference that can be connected with this distinction is that in clan membership: the former relative, owing to the exogamous clan system, can never, and the latter relative always must, belong to the father’s sister’s clan. Hence the former, being a father’s sister’s son’s, i.e., a ‘father’s’, daughter, becomes in Hidatsa speech a sister, while the latter is designated by a word translated paternal aunt’ but really embracing likewise all the lower generations of females in the paternal clan. That we are dealing with the clan factor, is corroborated by the fact that in Hidatsa terminology the mother’s brother, instead of being designated by a specific word, is classed with the elder brother, a term also applied to the mother’s mother’s brother. The last-mentioned kinsman may be similarly addressed in Hopi.

Powerful corroborative evidence is supplied by a second series of facts. Among the Omaha, where descent is reckoned in the paternal line, the father’s sister’s daughter is no longer classed with the father’s sister but with the sister’s daughter. These, it may be noted incidentally, would belong to the same division if the moieties of the Omaha were at one time exogamous, for which there is some evidence. But the essential point is that here the mother’s brother’s son and all his male descendants through males are indiscriminately classed with the maternal uncle. It is clear that they are all members of the same gens, and corresponding to our Hidatsa experiment we find that as soon as we pass outside the gens the terminology changes: my mother’s brother’s daughter’s son is not my maternal uncle but my brother since his mother, the uncle’s daughter, is called ‘mother’, belonging as she must to my mother’s gens.[49-v]

The Omaha phenomena are absolutely paralleled not only among other Southern Siouans but also among a number of Algonquians, viz., the Miami, Sauk and Fox, Kickapoo, Menomini and Shawnee. The area covered is an absolutely continuous one, and it is impossible not to explain such a distribution by diffusion. This conclusion is accentuated by the fact that the Ojibwa, though an Algonquian people with a gentile system, do not share the Omaha variant of the Dakota scheme but conform to the more usual type found among their neighbors, the Dakota. The mere presence of a gentile organization, though doubtless a favorable basis for the development or adoption of the Omaha scheme, is not the only determining condition; the presence of terminological features in a particular tribe is also a function of its geographical position or historical connections. This does not interfere with the ultimate interpretation of such features but it shows the necessity of taking into account the geographico-historical situation. At present I cannot suggest what may have been the differential condition that produced the Hidatsa variant among some tribes with a clan system but not among the Iroquois; or the Omaha variant among certain Algonquian tribes but not the Ojibwa.

The exogamy hypothesis, with special reference, to the phenomena just mentioned, has recently been discussed by Professor Kroeber.[50-v] He accepts the empirical correlation between exogamy and the merging of lineal and collateral kin with bifurcation of the parental lines, but interprets it as due rather to the differentiation of male and female lines of descent than to exogamy itself, which latter he regards as ‘perhaps a common but not necessary development, and an overlying development of the former’. “The basic condition,” argues Dr. Kroeber, “would be that in which a woman would be felt to be a very different thing from a man in relationship—less perhaps as an existing individual than as a factor in the relations of other people. Once this point of view prevailed, cross-cousins would necessarily be felt to be something very different from parallel cousins, and cross-uncles and aunts from parallel ones; and the distinction would find expression in nomenclature.” Accentuation of the male and female lines of descent with greater weighting of the one would possibly lead to clan groups.

As a theory of the origin of exogamous groups I have no particular objection to offer to the foregoing. For reasons to be stated below (p. 163) I heartily concur in the assumption that the family, in America at all events, preceded the clan or gens. If I understand him correctly, Dr. Kroeber’s remarks merely paraphrase the fact of this sequence. But I do not see that acceptance of his view on this point involves a rejection of the influence of the clan when that has once developed. Of course it is not directly exogamy that is expressed but the alignment in groups which exogamy brings about. On Dr. Kroeber’s assumption it is unintelligible why father’s sister’s son and mother’s brother’s son should so frequently be classed together since the one is clearly related through the father, the other through the mother. We can hardly credit the native mind with a tendency to algebraic equalization of a plus and minus quantity by which the product of a male and a female relationship shall be standardized by a common designation. Generally speaking, Dr. Kroeber’s factors explain only bifurcation but not merging. The fact that even remote father’s cousins are grouped with the father is what the clan or gentile hypothesis explains over and above the dichotomy of relatives. That such merging occurs among tribes with definite exogamous groups, and generally not in loosely organized ones, can hardly be an accident. Dr. Kroeber’s case is, however, weakest as regards the Hidatsa and Omaha variants of the Dakota scheme. If ‘unilaterality of descent’ rather than clan or gentile affiliation is the determinant here, then why is the Hidatsa variant uniformly found among matrilineal tribes and the Omaha variant uniformly with a gentile system? In other words, why does not the Omaha call his father’s sister’s son ‘father’ and his father’s sister’s daughter ‘aunt’? The cross-cousins in question are as clearly related to me through the father among the Omaha as among the Hidatsa, but in the former case they are not, and in the latter they necessarily are, my father’s clansfolk. Similarly, the mother’s brother’s son and his male offspring are as emphatically related to me through my mother among the Hidatsa as anywhere, but they are not aligned in the same social group with one another and they are not classed together in terminology. For the sake of clearness I will, at the risk of repetition, formulate what I consider the probable course of events. Among certain loosely organized tribes the bifurcation of immediate kin evolved, as we find it among a number of our Far Western tribes. This tendency was amplified and became superseded by a definite clan or gentile scheme. As this scheme developed, possibly as a part of its growth, kinship terminology became not only forked but more inclusive as well. Finally, the fully established organization was able, in certain instances to exert the extreme retro-active influence on nomenclature revealed in the Hidatsa and Omaha variants.

In his extremely valuable paper on Miwok organization[51-v] Mr. Gifford also suggests a rival explanation in place of exogamy. The Miwok of California are organized in approximately exogamous moieties, and their nomenclature bears some resemblance to that of the Omaha. More particularly is the mother’s brother’s son (and his male descendants through males?) classed with the mother’s brother. According to Mr. Gifford, this is due to the custom of a man marrying, either polygamously or after his wife’s decease, the daughter of his wife’s brother. This form of marriage is actually practised among the Miwok in addition to the more generally diffused marriage with the mother’s brother’s daughter. Obviously, the facts of terminology are consistent both with this usage and with the moiety principle. Mr. Gifford objects that among the Miwok “there are no clan or moiety brothers and sisters, all relationship being based on blood and marriage ties.” This, however, is not the essential point. It does not matter whether the unrelated members are called brother or sister provided they are aligned together in the same social group; the very existence of such social groups implies a differential attitude towards fellow-members as compared with the rest of the tribe. That mere affiliation along moiety lines does not solve all the mysteries of Miwok terminology, is quite true since a sharp distinction is drawn between the mother’s brother’s daughter and the father’s sister’s daughter. Since both these relatives are eligible mates from the point of view of exogamy while as a matter of fact marriage with the paternal aunt’s daughter is prohibited, Mr. Gifford’s objection seems to be sustained. That is to say, here the social organization explains the classing together of certain relatives but not the exclusion of certain other relatives, while the specific marriage regulations of the tribe do account for this phenomenon. But on the other hand, the marriage rules fail where the moiety hypothesis succeeds. Why are the mother’s younger sister, who cannot be married, and the father’s brother’s wife classed with the marriageable cross-cousin and the wife’s brother’s daughter unless it is because they are all members of the same moiety?

So far as the merging of a maternal uncle’s male descendants through males with the uncle himself is concerned, I do not see how any marriage rule would directly explain the extension of the term ad infinitum while moiety alignment at once renders it intelligible. An advantage which the exogamous principle enjoys over every special marriage rule is the universality of its sway over the population. An individual’s wife may not have a brother and her brother may not have a daughter for the husband to marry, but where exogamous groups exist every tribesman is by birth a member of a particular group.

To the subject of specific marriage rules I shall have to revert below. My position as to the Miwok nomenclature is that special regulations undoubtedly account for some of its features while the dual organization successfully explains others and more particularly the Omaha variant of the Dakota principle.

We may sum up our discussion of the Dakota principle with the statement that its distribution, coupled as it is with exogamous groups, supports the theory of an organic connection between the two phenomena. On the question which I have hitherto shelved, viz., whether it is exogamy in any form or more particularly the dual organization that gave rise to the features under discussion, I am at present unable to reach a definite decision. Though the distribution of the moiety is far more restricted than that of exogamous groups generally, there is no doubt that not a few elements of the Dakota principle are most readily derived from a dual organization. It remains for the future to determine what is the relative part taken by the multiple kin group and the moiety organization in fashioning kinship nomenclature.