In tribal society, both clan and gentile, the entire social structure is
based on real or assumed kinship, and a large part of the demotic devices
are designed to establish, perpetuate, and advertise kinship relations. As
already indicated, the conspicuous devices in order of development are the
taboo with the prohibitions growing out of it, kinship nomenclature and
regulations, and a system of ordination by which incongruous things are
brought into association.
Among the American Indians the taboo and derivative prohibitions are used
chiefly in connection with marriage and clan or gentile organization.
Marriage in the clan or gens is prohibited; among many tribes a vestige of
the inferential primitive condition is found in the curious prohibition of
communications between children-in-law and parents-in-law; the clan taboos
are commonly connected with the tutelar beast-god, perhaps represented by
a totem.
The essential feature of the kinship terminology is the reckoning from
ego, whereby each individual remembers his own relation to every other
member of the clan or tribe; and commonly the kinship terms are classific
rather than descriptive (i.e., a single term expresses the relation which
in English is expressed by the phrase "My elder brother's second son's
wife"). The system is curiously complex and elaborate. It was not
discovered by the earlier and more superficial observers of the Indians,
and was brought out chiefly by Morgan, who detected numerous striking
examples among different tribes; but it would appear that the system is
not equally complete among all of the tribes, probably because of immature
development in some cases and because of decadence in others.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95