Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/67

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SOCIAL ORGANISATION
55

of Queen Charlotte Island.[1] 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 possible to decide whether or no the cross-cousin marriage was once a widespread practice in North America.

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

  1. 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.