Before leaving the Dakota principle, it seems desirable to allude to two important theoretical problems with which it seems connected—its relations to the Hawaiian principle and its bearing on the antiquity of the clan organization. The Dakota scheme in its more usual form may be logically regarded as merely a complication of the simpler Hawaiian one. As Morgan pointed out, the two coincide in practically half of all the relationships. Inspired no doubt by the general trend of evolutionary thought in his day, Morgan converted the logical connection into an historical sequence and assumed the priority of the simpler system. He indicated how, if grafted on the Hawaiian scheme, the clan or gentile organization would transform it into the Dakota type. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the evolution might have taken place in the reverse direction. Development, as shown precisely by linguistic phenomena, such as the history of the English language—and kinship terms, no matter what else they may be, are elements of human speech—is not always from the simple to the complex. Morgan’s belief was influenced by the view that humanity started their social existence at an extremely low level, for which opinion he found support in the social conditions he inferred from the Hawaiian schedules. These, he argued, suggest brother-sister marriage since such marriages would explain the use of the same term for mother’s brother and father. Such unions certainly would produce the observed terminology but Morgan failed to consider that an alternative explanation was at hand. His fundamental error lay in attaching to the primary kinship terms of the Hawaiians and other peoples the notion of actual cohabitation. From this starting-point he consistently argued that all men addressed as father had actual access to the speaker’s mother. As Cunow has well shown,[52-v] there is not a tittle of evidence that this represents the native point of view, from which the term ‘father’ merely indicates tribal status with reference to the speaker. When we have once recognized this fact, there is nothing so intrinsically primitive in the Hawaiian scheme of ranging kin as to demonstrate hoary antiquity.
All empirical considerations, indeed, point in the opposite direction. For one thing, all the peoples whose systems are characterized by the Hawaiian feature rank relatively high in the scale of civilization. No one would dream of placing the Maori culture below that of, say, the Fijians. Secondly, we have the most powerful circumstantial evidence from distinct quarters of the globe to prove that Hawaiian features develop secondarily within the Dakota scheme. Thus, among some Iroquois tribes, the tendency has developed to call the father’s as well as the mother’s sister ‘mother’. The Crow differ from all other Siouan tribes, even from their closest relatives, the Hidatsa, in similarly extending the word for mother in direct address. Among the Torres Straits Islanders a corresponding change of usage was recorded by Dr. Rivers,[53-v] and similar developments seem to have occurred among the Gilyak.[54-v] Relevant data from West Africa have already been cited in another connection.
All this does not prove that as a general proposition Morgan’s sequence must simply be inverted. For this there is no evidence in North America, where complete Hawaiian schemes, or even approximations thereto, are lacking. But the data at our disposal do indicate that in so far as a tendency toward Hawaiian elements appears it is often due to secondary development.
To turn next to the problem of the exogamous kin group. Some theoretical writers have assumed the priority of the clan or gens to the ‘loose’, i.e., clanless or non-gentile, organization in which the family and local group usually form the only important social units. To support such a view appeals have sometimes been made to kinship nomenclatures. So far as North America is concerned, this argument is certainly without foundation. It was Dr. Swanton, I think, who first showed that in North America the exogamous system is found precisely among the more highly cultured tribes while generally speaking it is lacking among the more primitive peoples. Now as I have shown above, exogamy in North America largely goes hand in hand with the Dakota principle. It is therefore rather remarkable that the more primitive clanless North American tribes of the Plateau and neighboring regions also lack the Dakota principle. The suggestion sometimes offered that a clan or gentile system has once existed and simply eluded the field worker’s scrutiny on account of the degeneration of aboriginal life under modern conditions thus breaks down. We cannot argue positively that where the Dakota principle reigns exogamy must necessarily have occurred, because the correlation, while high, is not perfect and because the principle may have been borrowed without the social organization. But an exogamous organization is so frequently associated with the Dakota principle and there is so little reason for a change of kinship terminology provided the native language is preserved that the total lack of Dakota features over a wide area may be regarded as exceedingly strong evidence against the former or at least ancient existence of exogamous groups.
Supposed Features of ‘Classificatory’ Systems. Under the misnomer ‘classificatory systems’ some writers have included consideration of the principle of differentiating elder and younger brothers and sisters. The distribution of this distinction is simply staggering when one attempts to trace it more or less systematically. Of North American systems, I can offhand recall only two, the Pawnee and Kiowa, in which it does not appear. We find it in association with the Hungarian and Chukchee terminologies, both of which lack the Dakota principle, and it occurs with the Hawaiian no less than the vast majority of bifurcate systems. So far as I know, the only one who has offered any explanation of the phenomenon is Dr. Rivers, who once connected it with a difference in the time of tribal initiation.[55-v] But since there are many peoples, e. g., in North America, who do not practise any form of tribal initiation, the hypothesis hardly seems tenable and we must rest content to accept the facts of distribution.
Another feature that is often erroneously treated in association with the Dakota principle is that of reciprocity, which has already been referred to as the usage of designating a pair of relatives, more particularly two belonging to different generations, by a single term. Thus, the Shoshone call the mother’s father and the daughter’s son (man speaking) by one term. Such usage would be manifestly opposed to the Hawaiian principle with which it does not seem to be associated. It is found in connection with the Dakota scheme in Melanesia and particularly in Australia, but is markedly absent from the merging systems of North America. Since here it is highly developed where the Dakota principle does not occur, it cannot be regarded as an essential element of ‘classificatory systems’. The question remains how we are to account for the facts of distribution. Australian data forcibly suggest that, there at least, the reciprocal feature is a reflection of social organization. Grandparents and grandchildren, by the curious rule of descent that regulates affiliation with the matrimonial classes of the area, are necessarily in the same class, i.e., a father’s father and a son’s son or a mother’s father and a daughter’s son (man speaking) are fellow-members of a class. The fit seems too close to admit of an accidental association. But when we turn to the North American region of reciprocal features the interpretation no longer holds since no vestige is found there of any institution that might align the relatives under discussion in a common group. The inference is that there has been convergent development, and perhaps the most plausible explanation of the North American terms is that they are designations not so much of the relatives as of the relationship itself.[56-v]
If we cannot give more than this general interpretation of the reciprocal feature as found in North America, we can on the other hand show quite definitely that its occurrence is a function of geographical position there. The practical absence of this trait in the immense region particularly dealt with by Morgan is as remarkable as its spread over a practically continuous region in the Far West, among the Lillooet, Spokane, Kootenai, Nez Percé, Wishram, Takelma, and various Californian and Shoshonean Plateau populations, as well as in a considerable number of Southwestern tribes. The Pacific, Plateau and Southwestern regions obviously define the distribution of reciprocity in North America, which thus becomes intelligible only through diffusion.
Various Features. The principles of kinship nomenclature that have been treated hitherto are far from exhausting the variety found in a survey of the world. A very odd mode of addressing relatives after presentation of a gift has been mentioned for the Masai (p. 104), and there is little doubt that more extensive knowledge will reveal equally quaint notions elsewhere. Here I merely wish to enumerate a few examples from the particular point of view assumed in this chapter.
It is a remarkable fact that while in Australia the principle of bifurcation is consistently carried to the grandparental stratum of society in conjunction with the reciprocal feature, the North American region in which the Dakota principle is especially prominent lacks the distinction between mother’s and father’s parents, so that Morgan does not even dedicate special columns to these relationships in his elaborate schedules and notes the discrimination with some surprise for the Spokane.[57-v] This feature is nevertheless widely spread in the Far West, coinciding to some extent with that of reciprocity. We find it among Salish and Shoshonean tribes, in California, among the Takelma and Wishram, and to some extent in the Southwest. Both the positive and the negative facts of distribution indicate the occurrence of diffusion.