The system of ordination, like that of kinship, is characterized by
reckoning from the ego and by adventitious associations. It may have been
developed from the kinship system through the need for recognition and
assignment of adopted captives, collective property, and other things
pertaining to the group; yet it bears traces of influence by the taboo
system. Its ramifications are wide: In some cases it emphasizes kinship by
assigning members of the family group to fixed positions about the
camp-fire or in the house; this function develops into the placement of
family groups in fixed order, as exemplified in the Iroquoian long-house
and the Siouan camping circle; or it develops into a curiously exaggerated
direction-concept culminating in the cult of the Four Quarters and the
Here, and this prepares the way for a quinary, decimal, and vigesimal
numeration; this last branch sends off another in which the cult of the
Six Quarters and the Here arises to prepare the way for the mystical
numbers 7, 13, and 7x7, whose vestiges come down to civilization; both the
four-quarter and the six-quarter associations are sometimes bound up with
colors; and there are numberless other ramifications. Sometimes the
function and development of these curious concepts, which constitute
perhaps the most striking characteristic of prescriptorial culture, are
obscure at first glance, and hardly to be discovered even through
prolonged research; yet, so far as they have been detected and
interpreted, they are especially adapted to fixing demotic relations; and
through them the manifold relations of individuals and groups are
crystallized and kept in mind.
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