Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/62

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KINSHIP AND

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 selthe-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.

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-