Athapascan tribe, the Red Knives[22] (probably that now called Yellow
Knife). These people use a common term, _set-so_, for the father’s
sister, the mother’s brother’s wife, the wife’s mother and the
husband’s mother, a usage which would be the necessary result of
the cross-cousin marriage. Against this, however, is to be put the
fact that there are three different terms for the corresponding male
relatives, the two kinds of father-in-law being called _seth-a_,
the mother’s brother _ser-a_, and the father’s sister’s husband
_sel-the-ne_. Further, the term _set-so_, the common use of which for
the aunt and mother-in-law seems to indicate the cross-cousin marriage,
is also applied by a man to his brother’s wife and his wife’s sister,
features which cannot possibly be the result of this form of marriage.
These features show, either that the terminology has arisen in some
other way, or that there has been some additional social factor in
operation which has greatly modified a nomenclature derived from the
cross-cousin marriage.
[22] See Morgan, _Systems ..._, Table II.
A stronger case is presented by the terminology of three branches
of the Cree tribe, also recorded by Morgan. In all three systems,
one term, _ne-sis_ or _nee-sis_, is used for the mother’s brother,
the father’s sister’s husband, the wife’s father and the husband’s
father; while the term _nis-si-goos_ applies to the father’s sister,
the mother’s brother’s wife and the two kinds of mother-in-law. These
usages are exactly such as would follow from the cross-cousin marriage.
The terms for the sister’s son of a man and the brother’s son of a
woman, however, differ from those used for the son-in-law, and there
is also no correspondence between the terms for cross-cousin and any
kind of brother- or sister-in-law. The case points more definitely to
the cross-cousin marriage than in the case of the Red Knives, but yet
lacks the completeness which would allow us to make the inference with
confidence.
The Assiniboin have a common term, _me-toh-we_, used for the father’s
sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the two kinds of mother-in-law,
and also a common term, _me-nake-she_, for the mother’s brother and
the father’s sister’s husband, but the latter differs from the word,
_me-to-ga-she_, used for the father of husband or wife. The case here
is decidedly stronger than among the Red Knives, but is less complete
than among the Crees.
Among a number of branches of the Dakotas the evidence is of a
different kind, being derived from similar nomenclature for the
cross-cousin and certain kinds of brother- and sister-in-law.
Morgan[23] has recorded eight systems, all of which show the features
in question, but I will consider here only that of the Isauntie or
Santee Dakotas, which was collected for him by the Rev. S. R. Riggs.
Riggs[24] and Dorsey[25] have given independent accounts of this system
which are far less complete than that given by Morgan, but agree with
it in all essentials.
[23] _Loc. cit._
[24] _Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography: Contributions to North
American Ethnology_, Washington, vol. ix.
[25] Preface to above.
In this system a man calls the son of his mother’s brother or of
his father’s sister _ta-hang-she_ or _tang-hang-she_, while his
wife’s brother and his sister’s husband are _ta-hang_ or _tang-hang_.
Similarly, a woman calls her cross-cousin _she-chay-she_, while her
husband’s brother and her sister’s husband are called _she-chay_. The
terms for brothers-in-law are thus the same as those for cross-cousins
with the omission of the suffix _she_. One of these resemblances, that
when a woman is speaking, has been cited by Professor Kroeber[26] as an
example of the psychological causation of such features of relationship
as I am considering in these lectures. He rejects its dependence on the
cross-cousin marriage and refers the resemblance to the psychological
similarity between a woman’s cousin and her brother-in-law in that both
are collateral relatives alike in sex, of the same generation as the
speaker, but different from her in sex.
[26] _Op. cit._, p. 82.
As we have seen, however, the Dakota correspondence is not an isolated
occurrence, but fits in with a number of other features of the systems
of cognate peoples to form a body of evidence pointing to the former
prevalence of the cross-cousin marriage.
There is also indirect evidence leading in the same direction. In
Melanesia there is reason to believe that the cross-cousin marriage
stands in a definite relation to another form of marriage, that with
the wife of the mother’s brother. If there should be evidence for the
former existence of this marriage in North America, it would increase
the probability in favour of the cross-cousin marriage.
Among a number of peoples, some of whom form part of the Sioux,
including the Minnitarees, Crows, Choctas, Creeks, Cherokees and
Pawnees, cross-cousins are classed with parents and children exactly as
in the Banks Islands, and exactly as in those islands, it is the son of
the father’s sister who is classed with the father, and the children of
the mother’s brother who are classed with sons or daughters. Further,
among the Pawnees the wife of the mother’s brother is classed with
the wife, a feature also associated with the peculiar nomenclature
for cross-cousins in the Banks Islands. The agreement is so close as
to make it highly probable that the American features of relationship
have been derived from a social institution of the same kind as that
to which the Melanesian features are due, and that it was once the
custom of these American peoples to marry the wife of the mother’s
brother. Here, as in the case of the cross-cousin marriage itself,
the case rests entirely upon the terminology of relationship, but we
cannot ignore the association in neighbouring parts of North America of
features of relationship which would be the natural consequence of two
forms of marriage which are known to be associated together elsewhere.
I am indebted to Miss Freire-Marreco for the information that the Tewa
of Hano, a Pueblo tribe, call the father’s sister’s son _tada_, a term
otherwise used for the father, thus suggesting that they also may once
have practised marriage with the wife of the mother’s brother. The
use of this term, however, is only one example of a practice whereby
all the males of the father’s clan are called _tada_, irrespective of
age and generation. The common nomenclature for the father and the
father’s sister’s son among the Tewa thus differs in character from
the apparently similar nomenclature of the Banks Islands and cannot
have been determined directly, perhaps not even remotely, by marriage
with the wife of the mother’s brother. This raises the question whether
the nomenclature of the Sioux has not arisen out of a practice similar
to that of the Tewa. The terms for other relatives recorded by Morgan
show some evidence of the widely generalised use of the Tewa, but such
a use cannot account for the classing of the wife of the mother’s
brother with the wife which occurs among the Pawnees. Nevertheless, the
Tewa practice should keep us alive to the possibility that the Sioux
nomenclature may depend on some social condition different from that
which has been effective in the Banks Islands in spite of the close
resemblance between the two.
The case for the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage will be
much strengthened if this form of marriage should occur elsewhere in
North America. So far as I am aware, the only people among whom it has
been recorded are the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Island.[27] It is
a far cry from this outpost of North American culture to Dakota, but
it may be noted that it is among the Crees who formerly lived in the
intermediate region of Manitoba and Assiniboia that the traces of the
cross-cousin marriage are most definite. This mode of distribution of
the peoples whose terminology of relationship bears evidence of the
cross-cousin marriage suggests that other intermediate links may yet
be found. Though the existing evidence is inconclusive, it should be
sufficient to stimulate a search for other evidence which may make it
possible to decide whether or no the cross-cousin marriage was once a
widespread practice in North America.
[27] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haidahs, Jesup
North Pacific Expedition_, 1905, vol. v., pt. i., p. 62. Miss
Freire-Marreco tells me that the cross-cousin marriage occurs among
some of the Hopi Indians.
I can only consider one other kind of marriage here. The discovery of
so remarkable a union as that with the daughter’s daughter in Pentecost
and the evidence pointing to a still more remarkable marriage between
those having the status of grandparent and grandchild in Fiji and
Buin have naturally led me to look for similar evidence elsewhere
in Melanesia. Though there is nothing conclusive, conditions are to
be found here and there which suggest the former existence of such
marriages.
When I was in the Solomons I met a native of the Trobriand Islands,
who told me that among his people the term _tabu_ was applied both
to grandparents and to the father’s sister’s child. I went into the
whole subject as fully as was possible with only one witness, but in
spite of his obvious intelligence and good faith, I remained doubtful
whether the information was correct. The feature in question, however,
occurs in the list of Trobriand terms drawn up for Dr. Seligmann[28]
by Mr. Bellamy, and with this double warrant it must be accepted. It
is a feature which would follow from marriage with the daughter’s
daughter, for by this marriage one who was previously a father’s
sister’s daughter becomes the wife of a grandfather and thereby attains
the status of a grandparent. The feature exists alone, and, further,
it is combined with other applications of the term which deprive it
of some of its significance; nevertheless, the fact that a peculiar
and exceptional feature of a Melanesian system of relationship is such
as would follow naturally from a form of marriage which is practised
in another part of Melanesia cannot be passed over. Standing alone,
it would be wholly insufficient to justify the conclusion that the
marriage with the daughter’s daughter was ever prevalent among the
Massim, but in place of expressing a dogmatic denial, let us look for
other features of Massim sociology which may have been the results of
such a marriage.
[28] See _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, Cambridge, 1910, p.
707.
In Wagawaga[29] there is a peculiar term, _warihi_, which is used
by men for other men of their own generation and social group, but
the term is also applied by an old man or woman to one of a younger
generation. Again, in Tubetube[30] the term for a husband, _taubara_,
is also a term for an old man, and the term for the wife is also
applied to an old woman. These usages may be nothing more than
indications of respect for a husband or wife, or of some mechanism
which brought those differing widely in age into one social category,
but with the clue provided by the Trobriand term of relationship it
becomes possible, though even now only possible, that the Wagawaga and
Tubetube customs may have arisen out of a social condition in which
it was customary to have great disparity of age between husbands and
wives, and social relations between old and young following from such
disparity in the age of consorts.
[29] _Ibid._, pp. 482 and 436.
[30] _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, Cambridge, 1910, p. 482.
In Tubetube there is yet another piece of evidence. Mr. Field[31]
has recorded the existence in this island of three named categories
of persons, two of which comprise relatives with whom marriage is
prohibited, while the third groups together those with whom marriage
is allowed. The grandparents and grandchildren are included in one of
the two prohibited classes, so that we can be confident that marriage
between these relatives does not now occur. The point to which I call
your attention is that the class of relative with whom marriage is
allowed is called _kasoriegogoli_. _Li_ is the third person pronominal
suffix, and we do not know the meaning of _kasorie_, but _goga_ is
the term used in Wagawaga and Wedau for the grandparents, its place
being taken by the usual Melanesian term _tubu_ in Tubetube. The term
_kasoriegogoli_ applied to marriageable relatives thus contains as one
of its constituent elements a word which is probably the ancient term
for grandparent in the island, since it is still used in this sense in
the closely allied societies of the mainland.
[31] Rep. Austral. Ass., 1900, viii., 301.
We have thus a number of independent facts among the Massim, all of
which would be the natural outcome of marriage between persons of
alternate generations. To no one of them standing alone could much
importance be attached, but taken in conjunction, they ought at least
to suggest the possibility of such a marriage, a possibility which
becomes the more probable when we consider that the Massim show clear
evidence of the dual organisation of society with matrilineal descent
which is associated with the granddaughter marriage of Pentecost and
the Dieri of Australia. It adds to the weight of the evidence that
indications of this peculiar form of marriage should be found among a
people whose social organisation so closely resembles that in which the
marriages between persons of alternate generations elsewhere occur.
I have no time for other examples. I hope to have shown that there are
cases in which it is possible to infer with certainty the ancient
existence of forms of marriage from the survival of their results in
the terminology of relationship. In other cases, differences of culture
or the absence of intermediate links make it unjustifiable to infer
the ancient existence of the forms of marriage from which features of
terminology might be derived. Other cases lie between the two, the
confidence with which a form of marriage can be inferred varying with
the degree of likeness of culture, the distance in space, and the
presence or absence of other features of culture which may be related
to the form of marriage in question. Even in the cases, however, where
the inference is most doubtful, we have no right dogmatically to deny
the origin of the terminology of relationship in social conditions, but
should keep each example before an open mind, to guide and stimulate
inquiry in a region where ethnologists have till now only scratched the
surface covering a rich mine of knowledge.
LECTURE III
Thus far in these lectures I have been content to demonstrate the
dependence of the terminology of relationship upon forms of marriage.
In spending so much time upon this aspect of my subject I fear that
I may have been helping to strengthen a very general misconception,
for it is frequently supposed that the sole aim of those who think
as I do is to explain systems of relationship by their origin in
forms of marriage. Marriage is only one of the social institutions
which have moulded the terminology of relationship. It is, however,
so fundamental a social institution that it is difficult to get far
away from it in any argument which deals with social organisation. In
now passing to other examples of the dependence of the terminology of
relationship upon social conditions, I begin with one in which features
of this terminology have come about, not as the result of forms of
marriage, but of an attitude towards social regulations connected with
marriage. The instance I have now to consider is closely allied to one
which Professor Kroeber has used as his pattern of the psychological
causation of the terminology of relationship.
Both in Polynesia and Melanesia it is not infrequent for the
father-in-law to be classed with the father, the mother-in-law with
the mother, the brother-in-law with the brother, and the sister-in-law
with the sister. The Oceanic terminology of relationship has two
features which enable us to study the exact nature of this process in
more detail than is possible with our own system. Oceanic languages
often distinguish carefully between different kinds of brother- and
sister-in-law, and, if it be found that it is only certain kinds of
brother- or sister-in-law who are classed with the brother or sister,
we may thereby obtain a clue to the nature of the process whereby
the classing has come about. Secondly, Oceanic terminology usually
distinguishes relationships between men or between women from those
between persons of different sex, and there is a feature of the
terminology employed when brothers- or sisters-in-law are classed with
brothers or sisters in Oceania which throws much light on the process
whereby this common nomenclature has come into use.
The first point to be noticed in the Oceanic nomenclature of
relationship is that not all brothers- and sisters-in-law are classed
with brothers and sisters, but only those of different sex. Thus,
in Merlav, in the Banks Islands, it is only the wife’s sister and
a man’s brother’s wife who are classed with the sister, and the
husband’s brother and a woman’s sister’s husband who are classed with
the brother, while there are special terms for other categories
of relative whom we include under the designations brother- and
sister-in-law. Similar conditions are general throughout Melanesia. If,
as Professor Kroeber has supposed, the classing of the brother-in-law
with the brother be due to the psychological similarity of the
relationships, we ought to be able to discover why this similarity
should be greater between persons of different sex than between persons
of the same sex.
If now we study our case from the Banks Islands more closely and
compare the social conditions in Merlav with those of other islands
of the group, we find definite evidence, which it will not now be
possible to consider in detail, showing that sexual relations were
formerly allowed between a man and his wife’s sisters and his brothers’
wives, and that there is a definite association between the classing
of these relatives with the sister and the cessation of such sexual
relations. If such people as the Melanesians wish to emphasise in the
strongest manner possible the impropriety of sexual relations between
a man and the sisters of his wife, there is no way in which they can
do it more effectually than by classing these relatives with a sister.
To a Melanesian, as to other people of rude culture, the use of a
term otherwise applied to a sister carries with it such deeply-seated
associations as to put sexual relations absolutely out of the question.
There is a large body of evidence from southern Melanesia which
suggests strongly, if not conclusively, that the common nomenclature
I am now considering has arisen out of the social need for emphasising
the impropriety of relations which were once habitual among the people.
The second feature of Melanesian terminology which I have mentioned
helps us to understand how the common nomenclature has come about.
In most of the Melanesian cases in which a wife’s sister is denoted
by a term otherwise used for a sister, or a husband’s brother by a
term otherwise used for a brother, the term employed is one which is
normally used between those of the same sex. Thus, a man does not apply
to his wife’s sister the term which he himself uses for his sister, but
one which would be used by a woman of her sister. In other words, a man
uses for his wife’s sister the term which is used for this relative
by his wife. This shows us how the common nomenclature may have come
into use. It suggests that as sexual relations with the wife’s sister
became no longer orthodox, a man came to apply to this woman the word
with which he was already familiar as a term for this relative from
the mouth of his wife. The special feature of Melanesian nomenclature
according to which terms of relationship vary with the sex of the
speaker here helps us to understand how the common nomenclature arose.
The process is one in which psychological factors evidently play an
important part, but these psychological factors are themselves the
outcome of a social process, viz., the change from a condition of
sexual communism to one in which sexual relations are restricted to
the partners of a marriage. Such psychological factors as come into
action are only intermediate links in a chain of causation in which the
two ends are definitely social processes or events, or, perhaps more
correctly, psychological concomitants of intermediate links which are
themselves social events. We should be shutting our eyes to obvious
features of these Melanesian customs if we refused to recognise that
the terminology of relationship here “reflects” sociology.
This leads me to question for a moment whether it may not be the same
with that custom of our own society which Professor Kroeber has taken
as his example of the psychological causation of the terminology
of relationship. Is it as certain as Professor Kroeber supposes
that the classing of the brother-in-law with the brother, or of the
sister-in-law with the sister, among ourselves does not reflect
sociology? We know that there are social factors at work among us which
give to these relationships, and especially to that of wife’s sister,
a very great importance. If instead of stating dogmatically that this
feature of our own terminology is due to the psychological similarity
of the relationships, Professor Kroeber’s mind had been open even to
the possibility of the working of social causes, I think he might
have been led to inquire more closely into the distribution and exact
character of the practice in question. He might have been led to see
that we have here a problem for exact inquiry. Such a custom among
ourselves must certainly own a cause different from that to which I
have ascribed the Melanesian practice, but is it certain that there is
no social practice among ourselves which would lead to the classing
of the wife’s sister with the sister and the sister’s husband of a
woman with the brother? I will only point to the practice of marrying
the deceased wife’s sister, and content myself with the remark that I
should be surprised if there were any general tendency to class these
relatives together by a people among whom this form of marriage is the
orthodox and habitual custom.
Till now I have been dealing with relatively small variations of the
classificatory system. The varieties I have so far considered are such
as would arise out of a common system if in one place there came into
vogue the cross-cousin marriage, in another place marriage with the
wife of the mother’s brother, in another that with the granddaughter
of the brother or with the wife of the grandfather, and in yet
other places combinations of these forms of marriage. I have now to
consider whether it is possible to refer the main varieties of the
classificatory system to social conditions; as an example with which
to begin, I choose one which is so definite that it attracted the
attention of Morgan, viz., the variety of the classificatory system
which Morgan called “Malayan”. It is now generally recognised that
this term was badly chosen. The variety so called was known to Morgan
through the terminology of the Hawaiian Islands, and as the system
of these islands was not only the first to be recorded, but is also
that of which even now we have the most complete record, I propose
to use it as the pattern and to speak of the Hawaiian system where
Morgan spoke of the Malayan. If now we compare the Hawaiian system
with the forms of the classificatory system found in other parts of
Oceania, in Australia, India, Africa or America, we find that it is
characterised by its extreme simplicity and by the fewness of its
terms. Distinctions such as those between the father’s brother and the
mother’s brother, between the father’s sister and the mother’s sister,
and between the children of brothers or of sisters and the children
of brother and sister, distinctions which are so generally present in
the more usual forms of the classificatory system, are here completely
absent. The problem before us is to discover whether the absence of
these distinctions can be referred to any social factors. If not, we
may be driven to suppose that there is something in the structure of
the Polynesian mind which leads the Hawaiian and the Maori to see
similarities where most other peoples of rude culture see differences.