to include cousins. It was assumed that if one called his mother's sister also mother, and his paternal uncle, father, this was a survival of a time when marriage was indefinite and the identity of the parent in doubt. Recently, a great deal of attention has been given the various tribal systems of relationship terms,[1] an abstract and rather difficult subject. From the New World data now at hand, it appears that where such systems are used, there is no actual confusion between one's real parent, for instance, and the uncle or aunt to whom the name may also be applied. We have, therefore, merely a system of designation which may be presumed to have an historical origin.
A precise statement of the varieties of systems and their distribution cannot be made, for want of full data, but one common form is that designated by Morgan as classificatory, or that in which a single term is used for both father and father's brothers, mother and mother's sisters. Its best-known area is practically the whole of the United States east of the Mississippi, comprising almost the entire eastern clan and gens area as designated on our map (p. 156). Again, on the North Pacific Coast, we find a similar system associated with the clan and gens organizations. The next trace of it appears in the clan area of New Mexico. For the other clan and gens areas, we lack full data. These are also the regions in which exogamy prevails. On the other hand, for the great stretch of North America, which we have designated as the band area, the relationship nomenclature tends to resemble our own in that it differentiates the father from his brothers. Thus, in a general way, we find that wherever there are exogamous clans or gentes, one form of designating relatives prevails, while among tribes having simple family groups, there is a different form. This is not without exception, for example, the Pawnee have the system of these exogamous tribes but are endogamous.
There are, however, other points of difference in relationship systems as, for example, the use of reciprocal terms, or the method by which the same word is used by uncle and nephew, grandparent and grandchild, to express the relation of the one
- ↑ Lowie, 1915. I, 1916. I; Rivers, 1914. I.
