tribes that are organised on the same plan. In them it is the clan which is the social unit, or cellule, to keep to the metaphor favoured by H. Spencer, and it is feminine filiation which determines the kinship. What is this kinship in the female line in its details? That is what we must now proceed to inquire.
II. The Family among the Redskins.
The manner in which the different degrees of kinship are understood and named varies somewhat among the diverse Redskin tribes; but, in general, the similarity is very great, and great also is the confusion between real consanguinity and fictitious kinship. Among the Omahas, for example, five classes of kinship are recognised—1st, the nikie kinship, arising from a very distant common ancestor; 2nd, the clan kinship; thus the families whose tents adjoin each other when the tribe is assembled, are of this kinship; 3rd, kinship by the calumet dance—that is to say, by adoption; 4th, kinship by marriage, including the husband, wife, son, and daughter's husband; 5th, kinship of blood-relation, including the clans of the mother, grand-*mother, and father.[1] The Omahas admit, therefore, entire groups of so-called kinsfolk quite unknown in our individualist societies; and moreover, the adopted kinsmen are held exactly on the same footing as the others. If we confine ourselves to real kinship, we shall see that it is understood in a very wide manner. I will simply give, as a detailed example, a description of the family among the Iroquois Senecas and the Omahas. With the Iroquois Senecas, the direct line, both ascending and descending, is very short. It does not go farther than grandfather and grandmother, and grandson and grand-daughter. The more distant ancestors and descendants are all comprised without distinction in the same categories; they form groups of grandfathers or grandsons. In a collateral line, they proceed by groups, in the same manner. Thus, for a
- ↑ Owen Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, p. 252, in Reports of Smithsonian Institution, 1885.
