Culture & Ethnology: By Robert H. Lowie

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY

PEABODY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN
ARCHAEOLOGV AND ETHNOLOGY

Dr. A.M.Tozzer.
ceived Maroh 31, 1938.

CULTURE &^ ETHNOLOGY

CULTURE ^ ETHNOLOGY

BY

Robert H. Lowie, Ph.D.

Associate Curator, Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History

NEW YORK

DOUGLAS C. McMURTRIE

I917

1^9

6't

iEfU). U^S3 CL c.T.

CONTENTS

Page

I. Culture and Psychology ... 5

II. Culture and Race .... 27

III. Culture and Environment . . 47

IV. The Determinants of Culture . . 66
V. Terms of Relationship ... 98

PREFACE

This booklet is an attempt at popularization.
The first four chapters are practically identical
with as many lectures, delivered in 191 7 as
the January course offered by the Department
of Anthropology of the American Museum of
Natural History. The purpose of the January
series, which was instituted in 1914 by Dr.
P. E. Goddard and the writer, is to acquaint
an audience of intelligent laymen with some of
the results of modern ethnological work, the
emphasis being on principles and problems,
rather than on purely descriptive detail. The
course, in short, occupies an intermediate po-
sition between technical discourses addressed
to scientists and the more popular lectures
which are designed to furnish mainly entertain-
ment. Each year different topics have been
chosen and several members of the staff have
cooperated. Owing to the dearth of recent
ethnological literature reflecting the position of
American field-workers, and at the same time
accessible to the interested outsider, I was
easily persuaded to issue the 191 7 lectures in
the present form.

PREFACE

The last chapter may not seem to fit within
the scope of this publication. It is obviously
more technical than the rest in treatment and
may appear to deal with too special a topic.
My object, however, was to conclude with a
concrete illustration of ethnological method, and
I naturally selected a subject to which I had
paid considerable attention during the last two
years. It is a subject in which Morgan was able
to arouse the interest of hundreds of laymen;
and I can see no reason why an up-to-date
exposition of the problems involved should not
be able to hold their attention.

Robert H. Lowie

May^ 191 7

L CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY^

With the beginning of the European war the
word 'culture* acquired a sense in popular English
usage which had long prevailed in ethnological
literature. Culture is, indeed, the sole and ex-
clusive subject-matter of ethnology, as conscious-
ness is the subject-matter of psychology, life
of biology, electricity of a branch of physics.
Culture shares with these other fundamental
concepts the peculiarity that it can be prop-
erly understood only by an enlarged familiarity
with the facts it summarizes. There is no royal
shortcut to a comprehension of culture as a
whole by definition any more than to a compre-
hension of consciousness; but as every analysis
and explanation of particular conscious states
adds to our knowledge of what consciousness
is, so every explanation of particular cultural
phenomena adds to our insight into the nature
of culture. We must, however, start with
some proximate notion of what we are to
discuss, and for this purpose Tylor's definition
in the opening sentence of his Primitive CuUure
will do as well as any: "Culture ... is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, custom, and any other capa-

[5]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

bilities and habits acquired by man as a member
of society."

For purely practical reasons, connected with
the minute division of labor that has become
imperative with modern specialization, ethnology
has in practice concerned itself with the cruder
cultures of peoples without a knowledge of writ-
ing. But this division is an illogical and artificial
one. As the biologist can study life as manifested
in tlje human organism as well as in the amoeba,
so the ethnologist might examine and describe
the usages of modern America as well as those of
the Hopi Indians. In these lectures I shall there-
fore not hesitate to draw upon illustrations from
the higher civilizations where these seem most
appropriate.

Indeed, it may be best for pedagogical reasons
to commence with an enumeration of instances of
cultural activity in our own midst. And since
there is a persistent tendency to associate with
culture the more impressive phenomena of art,
science, and technology, it is well to insist at the
outset that these loftier phases are by no means
necessary to the concept of culture. The fact
that your boy plays 'button, button, who has the
button?' is just as much an element of our cul-
ture as the fact that a room is lighted by elec-
tricity. So is the baseball enthusiasm of our

[6]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

grown-up population, so are moving picture
shows, this dansants, Thanksgiving Day mas-
querades, bar-rooms, Ziegfeld Midnight Follies,
evening schools, the Hearst papers, woman
suffrage clubs, the single-tax movement, Riker
drug stores, touring-sedans, and Tammany
Hall.

These, then, represent the type of phenomena
comprised under the caption of culture. They
exist, and science, as a complete view of reality,
cannot ignore them. But a question ominous for
the worker who derives his bread and butter from
ethnological investigation arises. All the phe-
nomena mentioned and the rest of the same order
relate to man, and they relate to man not as an
animal but as an organism endowed with a higher
mentality. Tylor's definition expressly speaks of
'capabilities and habits*. But there is a science
that deals with capabilities and habits, to wit,
psychology. Is it, then, necessary to have a dis-
tinct branch of knowledge, or can we not simply
merge the cultural phenomena in those of the
older science of psychology? It is this question
that concerns us here. On the answer must de-
pend our conception of culture and our attitude
towards a science purporting to deal with cul-
tural phenomena as something distinct from
other data of reality.

[71

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

In seeking light on this subject we must under-
stand what sort of problems arise from the con-
templation of cultural facts and attempt to con-
nect them with the established principles of
psychology. A few concrete examples will illus-
trate the situation.

One of the striking characteristics of our
civilization, a trait of our material culture
that is nevertheless an invaluable, nay in-
dispensable, means for the propagation of
knowledge under modem conditions, is the
existence of paper, that is, of a cheap, readily
manufactured material for writing and printing.
The obvious problem that develops from this
fact is. How did we get the art of paper-
manufacture? Now we shall search in vain
our psychological literature in quest of an ex-
planation. Hoffding and James, Wundt and
Titchener have no answer to offer. An answer,
nevertheless, exists. Europe learnt the art
of paper-making from the Arabs, who as early as
795 A.D. had established a paper factory in
Bagdad. These in turn got their knowledge from
the Chinese, who must be regarded as the origi-
nators of the technique. The answer is a per-
fectly satisfactory one, but it is obviously not
couched in psychological terms: its nature is
purely historical.

[81

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Nevertheless, an objection may plausibly be
raised here. Though an explanation has cer-
tainly been given, it does not account for all as-
pects of the phenomena we are considering.
There is a psychological basis for each and every
one of the events in our historical series. This
series we may subdivide into three stages — the in-
vention by the Chinese, the borrowing of this inven-
tion by the Arabs, and its transmission from Arab
to European. Now the two last-named processes
of transmission may not suggest the necessity of
a special explanation at all. One may think that
all that was required was for the Europeans to
watch the Arabs and for the Arabs to watch the
Chinese, and presto! the thing was done. This
indeed, seems to be the view of an influential
school of modem ethnologists. But the case is
far from being so simple. We know of many
instances, in the higher no less than in the lower
cultures, corresponding to what the biologist
calls symbiosis — a, condition where distinct com-
munities or countries persist in a division of
labor for mutual benefit, each trading some of
its intellectual or material products for equiv-
alents secured from the other. In many parts
of Africa there are fixed markets in which ne-
groes from fairly remote localities congregate
for the barter of wares, which are thus diffused

[9l

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

far from their source of origin; but it is the fin-
ished products, not the arts, that are diffused.
In New Guinea trading- vessels carry such objects
as pottery hundreds of miles from the area of
manufacture to natives who remain as ignorant
of the ceramic technique as before. In northern
Arizona the Hopi Indians occupying three emi-
nences not more than eight miles distant from
one another have no perfect uniformity of indus-
trial knowledge. Pottery, which flourishes on
the eastern Mesa, is wholly unknown as an art,
though constantly used in its specimens, by the
people of the central Mesa; a certain type of
basketry plaque is made only at Oraibi village;
another type is manufactured exclusively on the
central Mesa. Conditions more ideal a priori
for a transfer of knowledge than among the prac-
tically homogeneous neighboring Hopi groups
could not be conceived. Nevertheless, it has not
taken place. Cultural diffusion, therefore, can-
not be taken for granted. We cannot take one
people, place it alongside of another, and effect a
cultural osmosis in the same way in which we
produce a chemical reaction when two sub-
stances are brought together under proper con-
ditions of temperature. We are face to face with
a selective, with a psychological condition. But
when we turn once more to our text-books of psy-

[10]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

chology, we again find nothing that fits the case.
About choice in general we get ample informa-
tion. But we may rummage all the psychologi-
cal seminar rooms in the world and yet shall find
no reason why the Arabs learned the technique
of paper-making from the Chinese instead of ig-
noring it or only importing Chinese paper.

Nor are we more fortunate when we turn to
psychology for an account of how the original
Chinese inventor came to conceive his epoch-
making idea. This fact, of course, falls under the
heading of Imagination', and about imagination
psychologists have much to tell us. But what,
after all, does their interpretation amount to?
We learn that imagination, as distinguished from
the power of abstract thought, is the power of
forming new concrete ideas. Since even the con-
crete individual idea is complex, being a product
of association, its elements may be linked differ-
ently so as to produce new combinations. ''The
inventor of a new mechanism," says Hoffding,
''combines given elements, the laws of whose ac-
tivity he knows, into a totality and a connection
which has no complete parallel in experience."
The scientist tries all possible combinations among
his elements of experiences, forming a succession
of individual ideas, which are rejected until the
one appears that adequately represents reality.

[II]

^

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

We need hardly go farther to realize the im-
potence of psychological science for illuminating
the psychology as well as the history of the paper-
making art. The formulation of psychological
science is admirable, but it is too general. It ex-
plains the invention of the steam-engine and the
phonograph, the sewing-machine and the har-
vester no less than the origin of paper-making.
We, however, do not want to know merely what
ultimate psychological processes the invention of
paper-making shares with all other inventions
/vhatsoever, but also the differential conditions
that produced this one and unique result under
the given circumstances. It is as though we
asked about a man's character and were told
that he was a vertebrate. The type of psycho-
logical explanation we want is by no means un-
known; however, we shall find its illustrations
not in text-books of psychology, but in histories
of literature, science, and art. When Taine
raises the question how such a bore as Dr. Sam-
uel Johnson could conceivably have attained his
position in English literature and answers that
it is because of the English predilection for Ser-
mons, he is giving the type of solution — ^whether
right or wrong — that we want to secure for our
cultural problem; it explains why the average
Englishman, as a member of English society, ac-

[12]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

quires the habit of regarding Johnson in a certain
way. When we inquire why Newton closes his
treatise on optics with a statement as to the van-
ity of human things, our curiosity is satisfied
when this expression appears as only one instance
of the blending of theological and scientific
thought current in his day. It is nonsense to say
that these explanations are purely historical;
they are psychological, for they take fully into
account the subjective attitudes involved in the
phenomena studied; and it is hopeless to expect
this sort of explanation from psychological sci-
ence, which deals with a quite distinct and far
more generalized form of mental activity.

To turn from the technique of paper manufac-
ture to a very different cultural feature in order
to test the possibility of merging the observed
phenomena in the principles of psychology. In
several parts of the globe, and most prominently
in parts of South America, the aborigines practise
a custom known as the 'couvade', which forces
the father of a new-bom child to subject himself
to a period of inactive confinement and a series
of rigorously observed dietary and other regula-
tions. Let us, for the sake of bringing out the
point in high relief, ignore all historical considera-
tions and concentrate exclusively on the sub-
jective elements involved. Whence, then, this

[i3l

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

strange and wholly irrational association of ideas
between fatherhood and a group of taboos? Now
the subject of the association of ideas occupies
hundreds of pages in psychological literature,
yet all this, in itself valuable enough, material
has no bearing on our problem, because it is
again far too general. We do not doubt for a
moment that the association we desire to have
illuminated is due either to contiguity or to a
perceived similarity of ideas, but why have we
this particular association instead of the limitless
multitude of associations that would be equally
intelligible by the same formulae?

Again, many aboriginal tribes of Australia are
subdivided into two halves, membership in which
is inherited through the father, in some cases,
through the mother in others. These moieties
are what is technically called 'exogamous*, i.e.,
marriage with a fellow-member is strictly forbid-
den. The regulation is, indeed, so stringent, the
feeling of horror evoked by a transgression so vio-
lent, that in former times offenders were promptly
put to death. This sentiment is so strong that
even when visiting a remote tribe, perhaps a
hundred miles away, where there is no possibility
of blood-kinship, an Australian will avoid mar-
riage with a member of the moiety bearing the
same name as his own. Here, surely, there is

[14I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

matter for psychology. An Australian has a
violent emotional reaction akin to our aversion
to incest, and may translate his feelings into the
most violent action. Or, looking at the matter
from another angle, the Australian exercises an
admirable self-control, eschewing on principle
marital relations with half the women of his
community. Yet all that psychologists tell us of
the ethical feelings and the will leaves the prob-
lem before us wholly untouched. Why this par-
ticular curious feeling developed, what place it
occupies in mental life, the psychologist fails to
explain. We get, again, simply general formulae
about feeling and will that are equally applicable
to the case of a man's beating his wife or a boy's
resisting the temptations of a lollypop. And
this, it must be noted, is dealing with the distinc-
tively psychological aspect of the data. Whether
the rule in question originated in a common
center and thence spread to other tribes, is also a
cultural question of great importance, and this
historical phase of the subject psychology is
avowedly incompetent to deal with. Psychology^^^
then, failsthroughout to supply us with the inter-
pretation we want. It is as impotent to reduce
to really interpretative psychological principles
the subjective aspect of cultural phenomena as
it is to explain the historical sequence of events.^

[i5l

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

It is not necessary to multiply examples to
establish the point. It is clear that cultural phe-
nomena contain elements that cannot be re-
duced to psychological principles. The reason
for the insufficiency is already embodied in Ty-
lor's definition of culture as embracing 'capabil-
ities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society*. The science of psychology, even in its
most modern ramifications of abnormal psychol-
ogy and the study of individual variations, does
4iot grapple with acquired mental traits nor with
the influence of society on individual thought,
feeling and will. It deals on principle exclusively

^with innate traits of the individual. Now,
whether the sharp separation assumed here be-
tween the innate and the acquired, between indi-
vidual activity as determined by uniquely indi-
vidual potentialities and as determined by social
environment, can be made in practice or not, one
thing is clear: there are phenomena that are ac-

^ quired and in no sense innate, that are socially
and not individually determined. When a Chris-
tian reacts in a definite way to the perception of
a cross, it is clearly not because of an individual
psychic peculiarity, for other Christians react in
the same way. On the other hand, we are not
dealing with a general human trait since the re-
actions of a Mohammedan or a Buddhist will be

[161

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

quite different. Innumerable instances of this
sort show that individual thought, feeling and vo-
lition are co-determined by social influences. In
so far forth as the potency of these social factors
extends we have culture; in so far forth as
knowledge, emotion, and will are neither the re-
sult of natural endowment shared with other
members of the species nor rest on an individual
organic basis, we have a thing sui generis that
demands for its investigation a distinct science.
Does it follow from the foregoing that there is
no possible relation between psychology and cul-
ture, that psychological results are a matter of
utter indifference to the ethnologist? In their
desire to vindicate for their own branch of knowl-
edge a place in the sun, some ethnologists have
come very near, if they have not actually reached
such a conclusion. To me the case appears in a
somewhat different light. Whatever division of
labor may be desirable for the economy of sci-
entific work, knowledge as a whole knows noth-
ing of watertight compartments. Further, the
nominally distinct sciences are not subordinated
to one another, but coexist in a condition of
democratic equality and cooperativeness. We
cannot reduce cultural to psychological phenom-
ena any more than we can reduce biology to
mechanics or chemistry, because in either case

[17]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the very facts we desire to have explained are
ignored in the more generalized formulation.
But for specific purposes, the student of culture
can call for aid upon each and all of the other
branches of learning. It is a very important
cultural problem whether the natives of South
America knew the bronze technique, i.e., whether
they consciously produced the observed alloy of
copper and tin. But how can the ethnologist
solve this problem? Only by requisitioning the
services of the chemist.

Now very few would deny that services of the
kind rendered by chemistry can also be rendered
to the study of culture by psychology. Indeed,
most people would at once admit that the rela-
tionship with psychology is a priori likely to be
far more extensive and thorough-going. A few
concrete examples will illustrate how this relation-
ship may be conceived.

Among the quaint conceits with which primi-
tive cultures abound is that of attaching to
particular numbers a peculiar character of sanc-
tity. ''Everything in the universe,'* a Crow
Indian once told me, ''goes by fours." As a
matter of fact, most things in Crow religious life
are adjusted to this conception. An important
ceremonial act is thrice feigned so as to be
actually performed at the fourth attempt;

[i8]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

religious processions halt four times; songs are
sung in sets of four; in mythic tales it is the
fourth trial that carries an heroic feat to a
successful issue. Now this cultural fact very
largely eludes psychological interpretation. The
first thing that strikes us is that this feature is
no peculiarity of the Crow, but is rather widely
distributed among their immediate neighbors
and even remote Indian tribes, though jointly
occupying a continuous area. Since outside of
this region other numbers figure as mystic, we
cannot regard the view of the sacredness of
Four as a general trait of human psychology
but must assume that the concept was borrowed
by most of the tribes now holding it. A wider
survey teaches us that corresponding, though
not identical, conceptions are very common.
Seven figures in parts of Asia, Three in European
folklore, Five in Oregon and northern Nevada,
Six among the Ainu of Yezo, Nine among the
Yakut, Ten among the Pythagorean philosophers
of ancient Greece, very much as Four does among
the Crow. Now the fact that a particular Crow
Indian regards Four as a sacred number does
not mean that this is an individual peculiarity
of his any more than the Christian's reaction to
a cross is a proof of some psychological idio-
syncrasy. Individually the Crow Indian may

[i9l

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

be quite indifferent to the number and yet he
would view it as sacred because he has been
taught so to regard it. This is, of course, the
vital difference between ethnology and psy-
chology which has already been emphasized.
Nevertheless, the association must at one time
have been formed in an individual mind, whether
among the Crow or elsewhere, and the question
arises as to what such an association means.
Francis Galton showed some time ago that such
associations of definite personal characteristics
with numbers occur by no means infrequently
among Europeans. The phenomenon we are
dealing with is thus linked with a group of re-
lated phenomena and in so far forth is explained.
There are ethnologists who would not admit
that such an explanation has anything to do
with ethnology. They would contend that as
soon as we cease to investigate the group as
such we are passing from ethnology, the science
of culture, to psychology, the science of indi-
vidual minds. This seems an unnecessarily
narrow doctrinaire view. Knowledge, as stated
above, is not subdivided by hard-and-fast
partitions. Interest certainly does not stop at
an arbitrary point in the investigation but is
centered on a comprehension of the whole
phenomenon. Where that phenomenon is an

[20]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

alloy of tin and copper, a decision as to its
nature is naturally left to chemistry; it seems
not unreasonable that where it is a type of
association we should turn for enlightenment to
psychology.

Another field supplies an additional illustra-
tion. One of the important subjects for ethno-
graphic study is artistic form. The ethnologist
notes in a purely descriptive way the decorative
patterns employed by various tribes, the fact that
curvilinear motives are prominent among the
Maori of New Zealand while the rawhide bags of
Plains Indians are covered with angular paint-
ings. Here, once more, it is clear that many of
the problems that arise are purely cultural.
There are, nevertheless, psychological elements
involved that may be misunderstood without
psychological knowledge. Let us assume, e, g.,
that a certain tribe is artistically characterized
by a fondness for squares. What does this
predilection signify? It is a psychological
commonplace that through an optical illusion
we exaggerate the height as compared with the
width of a rectangle; accordingly, the geometri-
cal square does not coincide with the psycho-
logical square. This simple piece of information
enables us to understand what we are actually
dealing with in the case of a square pattern. At

[21]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the same time it sharpens our observation
regarding such patterns. It is quite conceivable
that in one place tribal taste should prefer the
actual square while elsewhere the psychological
square occupies the seat of honor. This would
be a purely ethnographic fact, yet its discovery
might be considerably expedited by some knowl-
edge of experimental aesthetics.

Let us turn from mystic numbers and decora-
tive designs to another aspect of primitive life.
The Turkish tribes of western Siberia have a
form of religion based on the belief that certain
individuals enjoy the hereditary privilege of
acting as intermediaries between their ancestral
spirits and the people at large. With the aid of
his sacred drum the shaman, as such an inter-
mediary is technically called, is able to summon
the supernatural beings, cure the sick, foretell
the future, separate his own soul from his body
and send it to the upper realms of light or the
nether regions of darkness. Now, although a
particular individual inherits the shaman's office
from his father, he receives no formal instruction
nor does he make any active preparation for his
mission. His call comes in the form of a sudden
paroxysm. He is seized with a feeling of languor
and a fit of violent convulsions, with abnormal
yawning, and a powerful pressure on the chest,

[22]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

which causes him to utter inarticulate screams.
He begins to shiver with cold, rolls his eyes, sud-
denly leaps up and madly circles about until he
falls down covered with perspiration and writh-
ing in epileptic spasms on the ground. His mem-
bers are devoid of sensation, his hands grasp
without discrimination red-hot iron, knives, pins;
he swallows such objects without suffering the
slightest injury, and again ejects them from his
mouth. Finally, the prospective seer seizes a
shaman's drum and assumes the shaman's office.
Disobedience to the spirit's call would spell dis-
aster, madness and death amidst the most hor-
rible tortures.^

The naive reaction to this narrative on the
part of common sense in the familiar form of
common ignorance will probably be that the
European traveler who is our authority is a very
gullible individual if he believed his native in-
formant's statements. How can an individual be
seized with such a spasm as that described ? How
is it possible for him to become devoid of sensa-
tion? Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than
that the account given is substantially correct.
It is simply a particular form of nervous afflic-
tion very common throughout Siberia and at-
tested by dozens of trustworthy eyewitnesses.'
This Arctic hysteria, as it has been misnamed

[23 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

(for there is nothing distinctively Arctic about
it), manifests itself principally in two ways.
Either the individual falls victim to an indiscrim-
inate mania for mimicking the acts of others; or
he is seized with the sort of paroxysm described
for the Turkish shaman. Nothing is clearer than
that in neither case is there usually conscious
deception. Sometimes the imitation mania sub-
jects the sufferer to ridicule and pain, as when an
old woman in imitation of a Cossack, seized a
salmon with her teeth, ran up a hill and down
again, unable to prevent herself from plunging
into the water, though normally she was barely
able to walk. Similarly, the numerous hysterical
individuals of the other type who do not become
inspired shamans cannot possibly derive any ben-
efit from their fits.

Abnormal psychology here steps in and teaches
us that such trances are involuntary and not the
result of fraud, that they occur in our own civi-
lization and are accompanied with extraordinary
lack of sensibility to pain, in short, psychiatry
classifies the observed phenomena and tells us
what we are really dealing with. It prevents a
misconception alike of the shaman's activities
and of the attitude of his people towards him.

When, however, abnormal psychology has so
far enlightened us, it has by no means exhausted

[24]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

even the purely subjective aspect of the case.
How does the prospective shaman seized with
his fit know about the shamanistic drum that
forms a necessary accessory of his office? How
does he know what mode of activity is expected
from him? These are not things which he can
get directly from his trance for we shall hardly
accept the aboriginal theory that he is inspired by
the ancestral spirits. He can derive his knowl-
edge, however informally, only as the member of
a group holding certain definite views as to the
shamanistic office. The cultural phenomenoiVv
then, even on its psychological side, comprises a
very appreciable plus over and above the facts
that psychology can explain, and these additional
data accordingly require treatment by another
science. .

My conclusions as to the relation of psychology
to culture are, accordingly, the following: The
cultural facts, even in their subjective aspect, are
not merged in psychological facts. They must
not, indeed, contravene psychological principles,
but the same applies to all other principles of the
universe; culture cannot construct houses con-
trary to the laws of gravitation nor produce
bread out of stones. But the principles of psy-
chology are as incapable of accounting for the
phenomena of culture as is gravitation to ac-

[251

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

cpunt for architectural styles. Over and above
the interpretations given by psychology, there is
an irreducible residuum of huge magnitude that
calls for special treatment and by its very exist-
\ence vindicates the raison d'itre of ethnology.
We need not eschew any help given by scientific
psychology for the comprehension of specifically
psychological components of cultural phenom-
ena; but as no one dreams of saying that these
phenomena are reduced to chemical principles
when chemistry furnishes us with an analysis of
Peruvian bronze implements, so no one can dare
assert that they are reduced to psychological
principles when we call upon psychology to eluci-
date specific features of cultural complexes. The
'capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society' constitute a distinct aspect
of reality that must be the field of a distinct
science autonomous with reference to psychology.

[26]

II. CULTURE AND RACE

If culture is a complex of socially acquired
traits, it might appear that race could not pos-
sibly have any influence on culture, since by
racial characteristics we understand those which
are innate by virtue of ancestry. This, however,
by no means follows. In order that certain
traits be acquired, a certain type of organic basis
is an absolute prerequisite; a chimpanzee or a
bat is not able to acquire human culture
through social environment. From an evolu-
tionary point of view it appears, therefore, very
plausible at first blush that within the human
species, likewise, differences in organization should
be correlated with the observed cultural mani-
festations of varying degree and complexity.
There was, undoubtedly, some stage in human
evolution where the organic basis for culture had
not yet been acquired. Can the several races be
regarded as transitional forms, each possessed of
certain capabilities determining and limiting its
cultural achievement? This question can be
viewed in two ways. Comparative psychology
may give us direct information as to qualitative
and quantitative racial differences that would
affect cultural activity. Or, we may infer such

[271

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

differences as the only possible causes for the
observed cultural differences. Both modes of ap-
proach are helpful for a comprehension of the
problem.

Until recent years the psychological evalua-
tion of primitive tribes rested largely on the off-
hand judgments of travelers and missionaries.
With the advent of more exact psychological
laboratory methods, these have been, in some
measure, applied by competent investigators to
aboriginal populations. Unfortunately, the re-
sults hitherto secured are somewhat meager.
There are technical difficulties, among them the
necessity of examining fairly large numbers of in-
dividuals in order to get a good sample of the
population. Worse still, laboratory methods are
most effective in regard to what may be called the
lower mental operations, which partake almost
more of a physiological than of a strictly psycho-
logical character. Clearly enough, what we
should be most desirous of knowing is how prim-
itive compares with civilized man in logical
thought and imagination. But these are pre-
cisely the things not readily tested, and here the
additional technical difficulty comes in that they
can hardly be examined at all without a far more
intimate knowledge of the native languages than
the investigator is likely to command. Never-

[28]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

theless, something has been done and I will at-
tempt to present as briefly as possible the essen-
tial results, following Thomdike's convenient
summary.^

Although some observers have attributed un-
usual acuity of sense perception to the more prim-
itive peoples of the globe, the investigations of
Rivers, Woodworth, and others in the main es-
tablish the psychic unity of mankind in this
regard. For example, though the Kalmuk are
renowned for their vision, only one or two of the
individuals tested exceeded the European record,
and while Bruner found Indians and Filipino in-
ferior in hearing a watch tick or a click trans-
mitted by telephone, the fairness of these tests
for natives unused to such stimuli has been rea-
sonably challenged. In their reaction-time tests,
widely different groups were very similar. In
the tapping test, measuring the rate at which
the brain can at will discharge a series of im-
pulses to the same muscle, marked differences
were also lacking; but when accuracy as well as
rapidity were examined, the Filipino seemed de-
cidedly superior to the whites. Optical illusions
were shared by all races tested, which indicates,
as Woodworth points out, that simple sorts of
judgments as well as sensory processes are com-
mon to the generality of mankind. Woodworth

[29 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

subjected his subjects to an intelligence test, de-
manding that blocks of different shapes be fitted
into a board with holes to match the blocks. In
speed the average differences between whites,
Indians, Eskimo, Ainu, Filipino, and Singha-
lese are small and there is considerable overlap-
ping. On the other hand, the Igorrote and Philip-
pine Negrito, as well as a group of supposed
Pygmies from the Congo, proved remarkably de-
ficient. 'This crumb," concludes our investiga-
tor, '*is about all the testing psychologist has yet
to offer on the question of racial differences in
intelligence."

It may well be, as Thorndike suggests, that if
higher functions were studied, more striking
differences would be revealed. But up to date
we can simply say that experimental psycholog-
ical methods have revealed no far-reaching
differences in the mental processes of the
several races. Even the Igorrote and Negrito
deficiency may be due, Woodworth suggests, to
their habits of life rather than to their native
endowment.

Since exact methods tell us nothing of those
higher operations we are most eager to know
about, it might be deemed advisable to fall back
on general estimates by the most competent ob-
servers. Unfortunately, the personal equation

l3o]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

enters here to an extent that completely nullifies
the value of individual judgments. Travelers in
foreign lands are likely to make quite unusual
demands on the capacities of the natives with
whose aid they are working, and in this way too
frequently arrive at an unfair conclusion as to
their mental characteristics. In a corresponding
test Europeans might do little better. It is, at
all events, remarkable that unbiased observers
who are fairly sympathetic and remain in long
contact with a primitive people usually entertain
a rather favorable opinion of their powers. Thus,
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, expresses
the view that, whether other varieties of man-
kind differ or not, the American aborigines are
not inferior to the whites,^ and corresponding es-
timates have been made of other races. Still,
these are merely personal opinions and we must
turn to our second method for possibly more ob-
jective, if indirect, evidence on the subject. Are,
then, cultural differences necessarily the result of
racial differences?

In thus investigating the relations between
race and civilization we may fruitfully employ
the method of variation. Making the racial fac-
tor a constant, we may inquire whether culture,
too, is thereby made a constant, and whether a
change in racial propinquity is correlated with a

[31 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

proportionate change of culture. On the other
hand, we may start with culture as a constant
and inquire whether each form or grade of
culture is the concomitant of definite racial
characteristics and whether a change in culture
is accompanied by a corresponding change of
race.

/ To begin with the latter method, which may
be briefly disposed of: Taking our own type of
culture, as represented in western Europe and
North America, we find that it is shared by at
least one people of quite distinct stock, the Jap-
anese, who have already made important con-
tributions to the general civilization of the world
in such lines as biology and scientific medicine.
An obvious objection is that the Japanese are not
the originators of our cultural foundation but
have borrowed it ready-made (as they once bor-
rowed that of China), and merely added a few
additional stones to the superstructure. This fact
cannot, of course, be questioned, but as soon as
we investigate historically the origin of our own
modern civilization we find that it, too, is largely
the product of numerous cultural streams, some
of which may be definitely traced to distinct
races or sub-races. Our immediate indebtedness
to Rome and Greece has been drilled into us with
such fulsomely exaggerated emphasis in our

[32]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

schooldays that the less said about it the better
for a fair estimate of general culture history. N.
That the Greeks were merely the continuators
and inheritors of an earlier Oriental culture,
must be considered an established fact. Our
economic life, based as it is on the agricultural
employment of certain cereals with the aid of
certain domesticated animals, is derived from
Asia; so is the technologically invaluable wheel.*
The domestication of the horse certainly origi-
nated in inner Asia; modern astronomy rests on
that- of the Babylonians, Hindu, and Egyptians;
the invention of glass is an Egyptian contribu-
tion; spectacles come from India;* paper, to
mention only one other significant element of our
civilization, was borrowed from China. What is
right for the goose, is right for the gander; and
if the Japanese deserve no credit for having ap-
propriated our culture, we must also carefully
eliminate from that culture all elements not dem-
onstrably due to the creative genius of our race
before laying claim to the residue as our distinc-
tive product. As Thomdike, among others, has
pointed out,** the races have not remained in
splendid isolation, but any particular one has ob-
tained most of its civilization from without, and
"of ten equally gifted races in perfect intercourse
each will originate only one-tenth of what it

[33 1 -^

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

gets." This, to be sure, represents an ideal con-
dition, and we have no right to assume gratui-
tously that the peoples in contact are all equally
gifted; but it is worth noting that momentous
ideas may be conceived by what we are used to
regard as inferior races. Thus, the Maya of
Central America conceived the notion of the
zero figure, which remained unknown to Euro-
peans until they borrowed it from India; and
eminent ethnologists suggest that the discovery
\p{ the iron technique is due to the Negroes.

In short, the possessors of a culture are not
necessarily its originators; often they are dem-
onstrably borrowers of specific elements of the
greatest significance. The same culture may
thus become the property of distinct races, as is
rapidly becoming the case in modern times.
Owing to the very extensive occurrence of dif-
fusion the question what a particular people or
race has originated becomes extremely compli-
cated; while it is an established fact that im-
portant additions to human civilization have
been made by diverse stocks.

It may not be out of place to point out that
not only the more tangible elements of culture,
but very much subtler ingredients than those
hitherto mentioned are shared by distinct groups
of mankind. Thus, common to ourselves and the

[34 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Chinese, though strikingly lacking among the
Hindu, who, nevertheless, are racially nearer to
us, is a marked sense for historical perspective.
Common to the ancient Romans, the modem
Germans, and the modem Japanese, is the talent
for rationalistic organization of administrative af-
fairs. We cannot assume under the circum-
stances that the Japanese are organically nearer
to the Germans than to other Asiatics. These
instances seem the more valuable because here
borrowing is excluded. The racial factor may in
some way be involved; it is conceivable that
only with a certain minimum of organic equip-
ment could a particular cultural trait be devel-
oped or even assimilated. But obviously the
same cultural traits may be coupled with differ-
ent racial characteristics.

But what results from making race a constant?
That no essential organic change has taken place
in the human race during the historic period is
universally admitted without question by biolo-
gists, physical anthropologists, and brain special-
ists. Accordingly, when we concentrate ouis
attention on a definite people and follow their
fortunes during historic times, we are dealing
with a genuine constant from the racial point of
view. It requires no very great acquaintance
with history to note startling cultural diversity

[35 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

correlated with this stability of organic endow-
ment.

The culture of the Mongol proper about the
beginning of the thirteenth century was that of
an essentially primitive people, sharing the sha-
manistic beliefs of their general habitat and ig-
norant of writing. Suddenly we find them at-
taining an extraordinary political importance,
dominating Asia and menacing Europe, con-
versant successively with several forms of script,
practising the art of printing, and becoming
ardent exponents of Buddhism. Today they ap-
pear fallen from their high estate, devoid of polit-
ical power, and with their semi-sedentary nomad
life again give the impression of primitiveness,
though tempered with evidences of a higher
civilization.* These changes are not only mani-
festly independent of the racial factor, but can
in part be directly traced to other causes. Bud-
dhism, of course, was derived ultimately from
India. Under Jenghis Khan both Chinese char-
acters and an alphabet derived from the Syrian,
which had been spread through central Asia by
Nestorian missionaries, came into use; while an-
other system of writing was based on that of
Tibet, and the art of printing was learned from
the Chinese.^ The political predominance of the
Mongols was due to a few powerful personalities;

[36 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

and economic factors seem to have been at least
potent agents in the degenerative process of
Mongol civilization. In short, we have a group
of determinants that are not even remotely con-
nected with hereditary racial traits.

Somewhat similar results appear from a con-^
sideration of Manchu history. The Manchu
were originally an insignificant and rude tribe of
the Tungusic family in eastern Siberia. Through
contact with the Mongols they became a literary
people. They subjected China in 1644, and
adopted the Chinese speech and mode of thinking
to such an extent that their language is no longer
spoken and almost every vestige of their formej
lore is irretrievably lost.^

An equally striking illustration is furnished by
the Arabs. Here, too, we have a people of crude
civilization suddenly emerging from an unim-
portant position in the world's affairs to blossom
forth not only as a military and political, but a
cultural power as well, deriving from Persia and
Babylonia the impulse to philological and his-
torical studies, from Byzantium the technique of
naval warfare, the art of paper-manufacture from
the Chinese, Euclid from the Syrian outposts of
Greek culture, and from India the decimal nota-
tion.* We find further that they were not passive
assimilators, but original elaborators and active

[37 1

CULTURE AND E.THNOLOGY

transmitters of the received elements, to whom
European science is under a lasting debt of grati-
tude and whose art constitutes at least a highly
creditable and individual achievement.

The conclusion suggested by these examples is
very strongly corroborated by an examination of
our own race. We need not enter into the sub-
tleties of sub-racial classifications for the present
purpose, but will simply regard the European
race in relation to European culture generally.
It is clear that all those startling technological
advantages that most sharply divide us from
other peoples are a mushroom growth little over
a century old. In the first half of the nineteenth
century matches were unknown and the processes
of fire-making were not superior to those of many
primitive tribes. The steam-engine and the in-
dustrial revolution are of very little greater an-
tiquity, not to speak of electrical contrivances
and applied chemistry. The difference between
ourselves and our forefathers is at first blush so
tremendous that a priori it would seem to be ex-
plainable only by very great mental differences,
yet nothing is more certain than that their in-
nate mentality was exactly the same. The
cultural difference becomes more and more glar-
ing as we proceed backwards, say, to the period
antedating the art of printing. A portion of our

[38 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Middle Ages compares rather unfavorably with
contemporaneous Arabian or Chinese civiliza-
tion. "If we go back to the fifteenth century,"
says Professor Giles, "we shall find that the
standard of civilization, as the term is usually
understood, was still much higher in China than
in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous Ve-
netian traveler of the thirteenth century, who
actually lived twenty-four years in China, and
served as an official under Kublai Khan, has
left it on record that the magnificence of
Chinese cities, and the splendor of the Chinese
court, outrivaled anything he had ever seen or
heard of/'i®

Certainly the racial factor, which is a constant,
cannot account for the amazing changes in cul-
ture which we encounter in passing from one
period of our era to another. If we are interested
in explaining these cultural phenomena, we must
cast about for some other determinants.

In a subject that is constantly confused by
partisanship it is important to make no greater
claims for an argument than the facts absolutely
warrant. Accordingly, I hasten to explain what
has really been shown and what I have failed to
show hitherto. It is, I think, fair to say that
culture cannot be adequately explained by race,
and that the same race varies extraordinarily in

[391

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

culture even within a very narrow space of time.
But we have not furnished proof that, say, the
Central African Pygmies, the Tasmanians, or the
aborigines of Australia would have been capable
of attaining unaided to the level of our civiliza-
tion. What we can say, however, is this: The
Chinese and some of our American Indians, such
as the ancient Central Americans and Peruvians,
did attain a very high level, which may be
equated with that of Europe at a relatively re-
cent period. The difference between European
culture then and now cannot be due to hered-
itary causes, and it would, therefore, be unjusti-
fiable to allege that such causes account for the
difference between Europe of today and China
or ancient Central America. Quite generally it
is true that the so-called primitive tribes are any-
thing but primitive in the strict sense of the term.
Ingenious contrivances, such as the boomerang,
occur among the Australians, usually regarded
as one of the lowliest of races, and here we also
find a remarkable complexity of social organi-
zation. The Negroes of Africa are not only
conversant with the art of metallurgy, which is
possibly their own invention, but are conspicu-
ous for their ability to form large and power-
ful political states and have shown at least the
ability of assimilating the culture of Islam.

[40]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

If we contrast Negro culture on the average not
with the highest products of Dutch, Danish, or
Swiss culture, but with the status of the illiterate
peasant communities in not a few regions of
Europe, the difference will hardly be so great as j
to suggest any far-reaching hereditary causes.
As the highly civilized Manchu of today have .
for their next racial kin very crude Siberian pop- ,
ulations, so the white race, even today, embraces
very primitive as well as highly advanced con-
stituent groups. We cannot wholly isolate the \
racial factor from others, and we cannot give an .
ocular demonstration of what the several inferior
races, so-called, are capable of achieving under ;
the most favorable conditions. But with great^
confidence we can say that since the same race
at different times or in different subdivisions at
the same time represents vastly different cultural
stages, there is obviously no direct proportional
relation between culture and race. And if great
changes of culture can occur without any change
of race whatsoever, we are justified in consider-
ing it probable that a relatively minute change
of hereditary ability might produce enormous dif-,
ferences. An analogy may render the matter
clearer. Suppose that it is of vital importance
to lift a heavy weight, say 400 pounds, to which
only a single individual has access at the same

[41]

I
I

CULTURE ANb ETHNOLOGY

time. Then a very slight difference in muscular
power will either accomplish or fail in producing
the desired effect, and the ultimate effect (say
in repelling an attack on a fortress under rel-
atively primitive conditions) will be entirely
incommensurate with the additional strength re-
quired to produce it. So we may readily under-
stand how a slightly greater mechanical aptitude
might render one race able to launch a remark-
able series of inventions for which another, by
barely missing the required degree of develop-
ment, would be forever debarred. This is only
a special form of the Darwinian doctrine of the
survival value of small variations, applied not to
the question of the struggle for existence (with
which, nevertheless, it may be most intimately
related), but to the creation of new cultural
values.

This aspect of the subject naturally leads to
another that is closely connected with it and is
essential to an understanding of the entire ques-
tion. Mental endowment is a variable phenom-
enon within any particular people or tribe.
However democratic may be our ideals, the
doctrine that all individuals are bom equal in
point of ability can no longer be seriously main-
tained. Every race must, therefore, be regarded
not as representing a single point of mental de-

[42]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

velopment, but as a continuum of mental values
with a certain range of variation. In compar\
ing the different races we must, accordingly,
apply the canons used by statisticians in com-
paring series of variable measurements. Here a
matter of vital importance challenges our atten-
tion. Two series may have the same average
value and yet differ considerably in range. Now
it is obvious that, where the number of individ-
uals considered is small, excessive values are less
likely to occur than in a larger series. In a gath-
ering of a hundred men, we are not likely to find
a man above 6 feet 6 inches in height; the aver-
age stature of all New Yorkers will probably not
be any greater than that of one hundred men
selected at random, yet in the entire city we shall
find a number of individuals of gigantic stature.
When we apply this fact to our special problem
we see at once that extraordinary deviations
from the norm cannot be expected to occur in a
tribe of 500 or even 5,000, while among the vast
populations of India, China or the Caucasian
countries of America and Europe such favorable
variants are likely to occur with considerable ab-
solute frequency. These variations, as has al-
ready been suggested, need not even be excessive
to produce significant cultural results. Again,
we may urge the principle of minimal variations.

[43]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

A little greater energy or administrative talent
may be just sufficient to found a powerful state;
a slightly greater amount of logical consistency
may lead to the foundation of geometrical rea-
soning or of a philosophical system ; a somewhat
keener interest, above the purely utilitarian one,
in surrounding nature may give a remarkable
impetus to the development of science.

y Now this puts an entirely different construc-
tion on the facts. Assume that racial differences
are at the bottom of some of the observed cultural
differences. This fact would not necessarily
mean, then, that the average ability of the inferior
races is less, but only that extreme variations of
an advantageous character occur less frequently

V among them. This, for example, is the view
taken by Professor Eugen Fischer, the physical
anthropologist, a very firm believer in racial
differences, but as regards variability rather than
in point of average intellectual equipment. It
is also essentially, if I understand him, the point
made by Professor Thorndike. But precisely
because the population of the several races differs
so enormously, we are for many of them without
a fair standard of comparison. Statistically, any
actual number of measurements is only a small
sample of an infinite series; but we have no

" means of ascertaining empirically what the ex-

[44]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

treme variations of which Veddas or Australians
are organically capable, would be like. This,
necessarily, leaves the ultimate problem of racial
differences unsolved. Nevertheless, our consid-
erations have not been in vain. They show, for
one thing, how many factors have to be weighed
in arriving at a fair estimate of racial capabilities,
factors which are naively ignored in most popular
discussions of the subject. We can, farther, say
positively that whatever differences may exist
have been grossly exaggerated. In the simpler
mental operations, comparative psychological
studies indicate a specific unity of mankind. Dif-
ferences in culture are certainly not proportion-
ate to mental differences, i.a., relatively slight
differences in native ability may well have pro-
duced tremendous cultural effects. Since, finally,
cultural differences of enormous range occur
within the same race, and even within very much
smaller subdivisions, the ethnologist cannot
solve his cultural problems by means of the rac^
factor. Even if an ultimate investigation should
definitely fix the cultural limits to which a given
race is hereditarily subject, such information
could not solve the far more specific problem
why the same people a few hundred years earlier
were a horde of barbarians and a few hundred
years later formed a highly civilized community.

[451

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

The supposed explanation by racial potentialities
would be far too general to interpret the actual
happenings. Racial psychology, no less than
general psychology, thus fails to solve the prob-
lems of culture.

[46 1

III. CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT^

The influence of geographical environment on
culture seems a matter not so much of logical
inference as of direct observation. Taking our
own continent, we know that cotton is raised in
the South, that our wheat belt lies in Minnesota
and the adjoining states and Canadian provinces,
that the Rocky Mountain and some of the
Plateau states are the seat of the mining industry
while Florida and California form our tropical
fruit orchards. With these obvious facts are
combined correlations not so clear, perhaps, yet
very convincing to the mind as yet undebauched
by ethnological learning. What seems more nat-
ural than that culture in its highest forms should
develop only in temperate regions, that the
gloomy forests of the North be reflected in a
mythology of ogres and trolls, that liberty
should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and
languish in the tepid plain, or that islanders
should be expert mariners?

This geographical theory of culture bears a
certain resemblance to the classical association-
ist theory in psychology. According to that doc-
trine, the mind is something in the nature of a
wax tablet on which the outer world produces

[471

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

impressions and all the higher mental activities
are, in the last instance, reducible to combina-
tions of the represented impressions or 'ideas'.
Modem psychology, however, regards this sys-
tem, fascinating as it appears at a first glance,
as little better than an historical curiosity. The
association of ideas itself is now conceived
merely as a special manifestation of the synthetic
nature of consciousness. In short, the tables are
completely turned, and association, instead of
explaining consciousness, is interpreted in terms
of consciousness. The analogy with the geo-
graphical view of culture will become apparent
in the course of our discussion.

To begin with the culture of our own country:
The environmental features of southern Cali-
fornia, of Nevada, and the South have not
changed during the last few centuries. Yet, what
do we find on considering the aboriginal cultures
of these regions? Southern California and Ne-
vada were unreclaimed desert wastes inhabited
by a roving, non-agricultural population, the
natural mining resources of the latter state re-
mained untouched, no attempt was made to grow
cotton in the Southern cotton area. How can
such facts be interpreted on a geographical basis?
Quite obviously, the reverse holds. The utiliza-
tion of part of the environment, instead of being

[48]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

an automatic response, has for an indispensable
prerequisite a certain type of culture. Granted
the existence of an agricultural technique, at-
tempts may be made to apply it even in a for-
bidding arid climate, where a more primitive
culture would not be able to develop it. The un-
favorable environment may have checked such
development, and in so far forth exerted cultural
influence at one stage, but it is unable to check
it at another stage, where the preexisting cul-
ture, instead of 'remaining put', molds the en-
vironment to its own purposes.

The case I have chosen is an extreme one
because I have correlated environment with
extremes of culture — one of the lowest forms of
aboriginal North American culture and our
modem advanced scientific methods of subduing
nature to our will. But if we consider only the
cruder forms of civilization the same point
appears with equal clearness.

Professor Kirchhoff , by no means an extreme
adherent of the geographical school since he
does not reduce man to a mere automaton in the
face of his surroundings, nevertheless believes in
a far-reaching influence of the environment and
cites in particular the resemblances between
inhabitants of arid territories. Unfortunately
for his argument we have glaring instances in

[49 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

which desert-like conditions coexist with dis-
parate modes of culture not only in similar but in
identical regions of the globe.

Thus, the Hopi and Navajo Indians have both
occupied for a long period the same part of
northeastern Arizona and on the environmental
theory we should therefore expect among them
the same mode of life. In this, however, we are
thoroughly disappointed. The Hopi are inten-
sive farmers who succeed in raising crops where
white agriculturists fail; the Navajo also plant
corn but to a distinctly lesser extent and under
Spanish influence have readily developed into a
pastoral people, raising sheep for food and wool.
Though the same building material is available,
the Hopi construct the well-known terraced
sandstone houses with a rectangular cell as the
architectural unit, while the Navajo dwell in
conical earth-covered huts. North American
ceramic art attains one of its highwater marks
among the Hopi, while the pottery of the Navajo
is hopelessly crude in comparison. Cotton was
raised by the Hopi, but there is no trace of its
use by the neighboring people. What is true of
the material aspect of native life applies equally
to its less tangible elements. There is at least
one marked difference in the sexual division of
labor: with the Hopi it is the man's business to

[50]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

spin and weave while this work falls to woman's
share among the Navajo. The Hopi were always
strict monogamists, while among the Navajo
polygamy was permissible. In conjunction with
their agricultural pursuits Hopi ceremonialism
centered in the magico-religious production of
rain; the Navajo applied often the identical
ritualistic stock-in-trade to the cure of sickness.
A stringent regulation of the Navajo social code
forbids all conversation between son-in-law and
mother-in-law; but the Hopi merely view the
taboo as a Navajo idiosyncrasy. The general
cast of Hopi psychology, as fashioned by Hopi
society, is that of an eminently peaceable popu-
lation ; the Navajo rather recall in their bearing
the warlike and aggressive tribes of the Plains.
Where resemblances occur, as e. g., in the objec-
tive phase of the native cults, we are able to
prove that the parallelism is due not to an
independent response to environmental stimuli,
but to contact and borrowing. But quite apart
from such cases, the basic differences in Hopi
and Navajo civilization show that the environ-
ment alone cannot account for cultural phe-
nomena.

If we pass from the southwestern United States
to South Africa, a corresponding situation con-
fronts us. The same area at one time formed

[51]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the habitat of the Bushmen and the Hottentots;
yet, their mode of life varies fundamentally.
The Bushmen are essentially hunters and seed-
collectors, while the Hottentots are an eminently
pastoral people. Caves and crude windbreaks
form the Bushman's original dwellings, while
the Hottentots have mat-covered portable bee-
hive-shaped huts. The Bushman's principal
weapons are bow and arrow, with the Hottentot
these implements are of secondary importance
as compared with the spear. It is true that not
only material objects but even myths and folk-
tales are shared by both tribes, but in many
instances of this sort we have clearly a case not
of independent response to the same external
conditions but rather the result of borrowing.
Thus, some of the traits common to Hottentot
and Bushman, for example, a fair number of
mythic episodes, occur likewise among the
Bantu Negroes inhabiting contiguous but geo-
graphically different territory. One of the most
interesting traits of ancient Bushman culture is
the life-like representation of animals on rocks
and the walls of caves. Oddly enough, these
engravings and mural paintings, which dis-
tinguish the Bushmen from their South African
neighbors, have their nearest parallels in the
Spanish cave-paintings of Palaeolithic Europe.

[52]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

The picturing of the mammoth and reindeer by
these old South European artists clearly proves
that they belonged to a glacial epoch, during
which geographical conditions could hardly have
resembled those of the Kalahari desert.*

One other illustration from the same general
region of the Dark Continent is suggestive. The
Ovambo and Herero, neighbors though they are,
differ in the essential features of their economic
life. While the Ovambo depend only to a very
limited extent on their herds, deriving their
sustenance mainly from the cultivation of millet
and other plants, the Herero are the only non-
agricultural Bantu people, being predominantly
pastoral.

Instead of comparing the effect of environment
as a whole on different peoples, we can also
isolate its single factors, such as the presence of
particular species of plants or animals. One of
the strongest cases against the creative influence
of environment on culture lies in the phenomena
relating to the domestication of animals in the
Old and the New World. The one animal
domesticated in both hemispheres is the dog,
which occurs in Neolithic Europe and is also found
with archaeological remains in America. But
while in the Old World there is in addition an
imposing series of species subjected to man for

[53]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

definite economic utilization, it is only in Peru
that the American natives entered into a sym-
biotic arrangement with other animals, viz., the
llama and the alpaca. Why was not the bison
of the great Plains tamed like the buffalo of
southern Asia or the various races of cattle in
the Eastern Hemisphere? No valid reason can
be advanced on geographical grounds. More
striking still in this regard is the difference
between the hyperborean populations of Asia
and North America. The Chukchee of north-
easternmost Siberia and the Eskimo share the
same climatic conditions and their territories
are both inhabited by the reindeer (caribou).
Yet the Chukchee breed half-tamed reindeer on
a large scale, using the animals for food and
draught with sledges, while no attempt in this
direction was made by the Eskimo or any of
their Indian neighbors. The same external
condition fails to produce the same cultural
result. But even among the Chukchee there is
evidence that the use of reindeer did not take
place in response to an environmental stimulus.
It appears that the extraordinary development
of reindeer breeding is a relatively new thing
with the Chukchee, who were formerly hunters
of sea-mammals like the Eskimo. Before the
recent eflflorescence of their reindeer culture, the

[54]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Chukchee waged war on their southern neigh-
bors, the Koryak, for the purpose of carrying off
their herds; and altogether it seems that both
Chukchee and Koryak adopted the idea of
taming the reindeer from tribes of the Tungus
stock living to the west and south.* We are,
then, dealing with another instance of accultura-
tion due to contact.

The facts of domestication are unusually
suggestive as regards our general problem for
they show in an absolutely convincing manner
that even where the same animals have been
domesticated by different peoples the use to
which they are put may differ widely and give
a distinct aspect to this phase of culture. Thus,
we find that of Siberian reindeer-breeders the
Tungus and Lamut use their animals only for
transportation, not for slaughter, and that many
bands, unlike other Arctic populations, ride on
their reindeer instead of harnessing them to
sledges. It is true that a rationalistic motive
can be given for the fact that the Chukchee do
not ride reindeer-back since their variety seems
physically unfit for the saddle. That, however,
is not the essential point. We should like to
know how the Tungus came to use the saddle
with their animals while other tribes with the
same variety did not do so, and for this positive

[551

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

reaction to their faunal environment geography
furnishes no clue. A similar group of questions
arises in connection with the horse. Wild horses
were game animals in Solutrean times in Europe,
their flesh forming in fact the staple diet. Do-
mestication certainly set in at a very much later
period and its economic consequences vary
appreciably with different peoples and in
different times. The Kirgis, for example, milk
their mares, thus obtaining the famous kumyss,
though the operation is difficult and even
dangerous.* The ancient Babylonians, Chinese,
and East Indians used the horse as a draught-
animal harnessed to war-chariots. Its use for
riding was an invention of Central Asiatic
nomads. In the most recent period the con-
sumption of horse flesh is a matter of course
among the poorer classes of continental Europe,
revolting as the idea is not only to the white
American but to some of the Plains Indians as
well, according to the testimony of some of my
informants. There is thus no such thing as the
presence of the horse determining its cultural
use in a definite sense.

Again, the ancient Chinese kept both sheep and
goats, but the idea of utilizing wool for clothing
was foreign to them. We have historical
evidence for the fact that the use of wool for

[56]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

felt and rugs was taught to the Chinese in more
recent times by the nomadic populations of
central Asia. Most startling of all perhaps is
the different attitude assumed in different
countries towards cattle. To us nothing seems
more obvious than that cattle should be kept
both for meat and dairy products. This, how-
ever, is by no means a universal practice. The
Zulu and other Bantu tribes of South Africa use
milk extensively but hardly ever slaughter their
animals except on festive occasions. On the
other hand, we have the even more astonishing
fact that Eastern Asiatics, such as the Chinese,
Japanese, Koreans and Indo-Chinese, have an
inveterate aversion to the use of milk. Though
the Chinese, as Dr. Laufer points out, have
raised a variety of animals from which milk
could be derived and have been in constant
contact with Turkish and Mongol nations whose
staple food consists in dairy products, they have
never acquired what seems so obvious and useful
an economic practice. Accordingly, Dr. Laufer
justifiably concludes that "our consumption of
animal milk cannot be looked upon as a self-
evident and spontaneous phenomenon, for which
it has long been taken, but that it is a mere
matter of educated force of habit."* In other
words, the use of environmental factors is not

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

an automatic and necessary response to them
but varies with the culture of the peoples
concerned.

The creative impotence of environment and
more particularly the subordinate part it plays
as compared with purely cultural determinants
of culture, such as the influence of a certain trait
in a neighboring tribe or the preexistence of in-
digenous cultural features, may be instructively
illustrated by several other instances.

Thus, we find that of the Northern Atha-
baskans of western Canada, the southern Carrier
and the Chilcotin Indians share with the
Shuswap Indians of Salish stock the use of semi-
subterranean huts which even in winter seem
like ovens. Are we to recognize in this an
adaptation to the inclemencies of the climate?
Hardly, when we find that this type. of dwelling
is used precisely by those Athabaskans living
farthest south, where of course the climate is
much milder, while the more northern tribes of
the family get along with crude double shelters
about a central fireplace. The use of the semi-
subterranean lodge by the Carrier and Chilcotin
is perfectly explained as a contact phenomenon.
They have simply adopted the idea from their
Salish neighbors: the cultural environment has
proved more effective than the physical environ-

[58]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

ment in determining a cultural trait. Other
members of the same family furnish correspond-
ing instances. Though many of the Northern
Athabaskans have long, snowy winters, only the
Loucheux, who are in contact with the Eskimo,
have adopted the wooden goggles of the Eskimo,
which serve as a protection against snow-blind-
ness. Similarly, they are the only members of
the stock to substitute for the widespread
Canadian toboggan the Eskimo sledge with
runners.*

As the physical environment is overshadowed
in cultural significance by a neighboring culture,
so it may vanish into nothingness in the face of
what we may call cultural inertia — the tendency
of a preexisting cultural trait of indigenous
growth to assert itself. A familiar example of
this tendency is the exact imitation of forms of
implements in quite different and often refrac-
tory material. Thus, the Central Eskimo
generally make lamps and pots out of soapstone.
In Southampton Island, where this material is
lacking, they have not devised a new form but
have at the expenditure of much ingenuity and
labor cemented together slabs of limestone so as
to produce the traditional shape.^ The same
phenomenon appears in other fields. Grooved
copper axes have been found in parts of the

[591

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

United States; their shape is patterned exactly
on the stone axes characteristic of the same
localities. The beginnings of the copper and
bronze ages in Europe are equally suggestive in
this regard. The incipient metallurgist does not
automatically make the most of his material but
slavishly follows his stone or bone models. His
copper ornaments imitate bear's teeth or bone
beads, his implements resemble the stone celts
and hammers of an earlier era.* As Professor
Boas points out on the basis of Bogoras' descrip-
tions, an equivalent development may be traced
in the history of the Chukchee tent. This type
of habitation is extremely clumsy and not at
all well adapted to the roving life of the Rein-
deer division of the tribe, considerably hamper-
ing their progress. It represents, however, a
variety of the older form of stationary house
used when the Chukchee were a purely maritime
people.*

It might be objected that maladjustments of
this sort are transitional, that just as the copper
and bronze workers ultimately freed themselves
from the influence of the preexisting stone
technique so the Chukchee would finally have
abandoned their inconvenient tent and developed
a new and more readily transportable lodge.
This sounds, of course, very plausible but misses

[60]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the point of the argument. Undoubtedly, a more
and more perfect adaptation to elements of the
physical surroundings has repeatedly taken
place. But the very fact that culture history,
on its material side, implies this progressive
adjustment also implies that the cultural phe-
nomena at different periods of time differ where
the same environmental stimuli persist and
therefore cannot be explained by them, which is
what we have been trying to prove.

Indeed, environment is not only unable to
create cultural features, in some instances it is
even incapable of perpetuating them. Thus,
pottery was once distributed over an extensive
region in the New Hebrides but is now restricted
to a few isolated localities on a single island.
Again, in southeastern New Guinea ancient
pottery has been found that vastly surpasses its
present representatives in point of craftsman-
ship.^® A similar phenomenon has been noted in
the Southwest of the United States, where the
evolution and deterioration of glazed earthen-
ware may be clearly traced in the same region."
Dr. Rivers has pointed out an even more instruc-
tive example of cultural degeneration. In the
Torres Islands of Melanesia the natives have no
canoes for traversing the channels which separate
their islands from oiie another but are obliged to

[6i]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

use unseaworthy bamboo rafts inadequate even
for fishing purposes. Yet there is evidence that
the Torres Islanders once shared the art of
canoe-making with their fellow-Oceanians and
that it has died out in recent times independently
of European influence. It is difficult to con-
ceive of any people less likely a priori to lose the
art of navigation than a South Sea Island group;
yet, their maritime environment proved inade-
quate to preserve so vital a feature of their
daily life.

To sum up: Environment cannot explain
culture because the identical environment is
consistent with distinct cultures; because cul-
tural traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable
environment; because they do not develop
where they would be of distinct advantage to a
people; and because they may even disappear
where one would least expect it on geographical
principles.

Shall we then cavalierly banish geography
from cultural considerations? This would be
manifestly going beyond the mark. Geographi-
cal phenomena can no more 6e discarded than
can psychological phenomena. They repre-
sent in the first place a limiting condition.
As cultures cannot contravene psychological
principles so they cannot, except in a limited

[62]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

measure, override geographical factors. To use
some drastically clear if somewhat hackneyed
examples, the Eskimo do not eat coconuts nor do
the Oceanians build snow-houses; where the
horse does not occur it cannot be domesticated;
in the Hopi country where watercourses are
lacking navigation naturally did not develop.
As Jochelson points out, the Koryak of north-
eastern Siberia cannot cultivate cereals because
of the low temperature and they cannot succeed
as cattle-breeders because of the poor quality
of thegrasses.^2 This minimum recognition of
environment as a purely negative factor, how-
ever, does riot do full justice to it. Take the
bison out of the Plains Indian's life and his
cultural atmosphere certainly changes. Never-
theless, we have seen that the presence of the
bison by no means fully determined the cultural
employment possible. Instead of hunting it as
the Solutrean Europeans did the wild horse, the
Indian might have domesticated it as his name-
sake by misnomer in Asia domesticated the
buffalo. The environment, then, enters into
culture, not as a formative but rather as an
inert element ready to be selected from and
molded. It is, of course, a matter of biological
necessity for a people to establish some sort of
adaptation to surrounding conditions, but such

[63]

Culture and ethnology

adaptation is no more spontaneously generated
by the environment than are strictly biological
adaptations. There are alternatives to adapta-
tion — migration and destruction.

It is true, as Dr. Wissler has forcibly pointed
out, that when some kind of adjustment has
once been established it will tend to persist in
the region of its origin.^' This, however, illus-
trates not so much the active influence of envi-
ronment as rather the tremendous force of
cultural inertia which tends to perpetuate an
old muddling-along adjustment, however imper-
fect, provided only it has bare survival value.

Altogether we may illustrate the relations of
culture to environment by an analogy used by
Dr. Wissler in another connection, which also
brings us back to my initial analogy of the envi-
ronmental theory with the associationist system
in psychology. The environment furnishes the
builders of cultural structures with brick and
mortar but it does not furnish the architect's
plan. As the illustrations cited clearly prove,
there is a variety of ways in which the same
materials can be put together, nay, there is
always a range of choice as regards the materials
themselves. The development of a particular
architectural style and the selection of a special
material from among an indefinite number of

[64]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

possible styles and materials are what character-
ize a given culture. Since geography permits
more than a single adjustment to the same
conditions, it cannot give the interpretation
sought by the student of culture. Culture can
no more be built up of environmental blocks
than can consciousness out of isolated ideas;
and as the association of ideas already implies
the synthetizing faculty of consciousness, so the
assemblage and use of environmental factors
after a definite plan already implies the selective
and synthetic agency of a preexisting or nascent
culture.

[65 1

IV. THE DETERMINANTS OF CULTURE

Psychology, racial differences, geographical
environment, have all proved inadequate for the
interpretation of cultural phenomena. The
inference is obvious. Culture is a thing sui
generis which can be explained only in terms of
itself. This is not mysticism but sound scien-
tific method. The biologist, whatever meta-
physical speculations he may indulge in as to
the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his
workaday mood from the principle that every
cell is derived from some other cell. So the
ethnologist will do well to postulate the prin-
; ciple, Omnis cultura ex cuUura.^ This means
that he will account for a given cultural fact by
merging it in a group of cultural facts or by
demonstrating some other cultural fact out of
which it has developed. The cultural phe-
nomenon to be explained may either have an
antecedent within the culture of the tribe where
it is found or it may have been imported from
without. Both groups of determinants must be
considered.

The extraneous determinants of culture
summed up under the heading of 'diffusion' or
'contact of peoples' have been repeatedly

[66]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

referred to in the preceding pages. A somewhat
detailed examination seems desirable, for it is
difficult to exaggerate their importance.

* 'Civilization," says Tylor, **is a plant much
oftener propagated than developed;"* and the
latest ethnographic memoir that comes to hand
voices the same sentiment: *'It is and has always
been much easier to borrow an idea from one's
neighbors than to originate a new idea; and
transmission of cultural elements, which in all
ages has taken place in a great many different
ways, is and has been one of the greatest pro-
moters of cultural development."*

A stock illustration of cultural assimilation is
that of the Japanese, who in the nineteenth
century adopted our scientific and technological
civilization ready-made, just as at an earlier
period they had acquired wholesale the culture
of China. It is essential to note that it is not
always the people of lower culture who remain
passive recipients in the process of diffusion.
This is strikingly shown by the spread of Indian
corn. The white colonist '*did not simply borrow
the maize seed and then in conformity with his
already established agricultural methods, or on
original lines, develop a maize culture of his
own," but *'took over the entire material com-
plex of maize culture" as found among the

[671

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

, aborigines.* The history of Indian corn also
illustrates the remarkable rapidity with which
cultural possessions may travel over the globe.
Unknown in the Old World prior to the discovery
of America, it is mentioned as known in Europe
in 1539 and had reached China between 1540

,and 1570.^

The question naturally arises here, whether
this process of diffusion, which in modem times
is a matter of direct observation, could have been
of importance during the earlier periods of human
history when means of communication were of
a more primitive order. So far as this point is
concerned, we must always remember that
methods of transportation progressed very
slightly from the invention of the wheeled cart
until the most recent times. As Montelius
suggests, the periods of 1700 b. c. and 1700 A. D.
differed far less in this regard than might be

\supposed on superficial consideration. Yet we
know the imperfection of facilities for travel did
not prevent dissemination of culture in historic
times.

The great Swedish archaeologist has, indeed,
given us a most fascinating picture of the
commercial relations of northern Europe in
earlier periods and their effect on cultural
development." We learn with astonishment that

[68]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era,
trade was carried on with great intensity be-
tween the North of Europe and the Moham-
medan culture sphere since tens of thousands of
Arabic coins have been found on Swedish soil.
But intercourse with remote countries date^
back to a far greater antiquity. One of the
most powerful stimuli of commercial relations
between northern and southern Europe w£ls
the desire of the more southern populations to
secure amber, a material confined to the Baltic
region and occurring more particularly about
Jutland and the mouth of the Vistula. Amber
beads have been found not only in Swiss pile-
dwellings' but also in Mycenaean graves of the
second millennium b. c. Innumerable finds of
amber work in Italy and other parts of southern
Europe prove the importance attached to this
article, which was exchanged for copper and
bronze. The composition of Scandinavian
bronzes indicates that their material was
imported not from England but from the far- ^
away regions of central Europe. That bronze
was not of indigenous manufacture is certain
because tin does not occur in Sweden at all while
the copper deposits of northern Scandinavia
remained untouched until about 1500 years after
the end of the Bronze Age. Considering the

[69]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

high development of the bronze technique in
Scandinavia and the fact that every pound of
bronze had to be imported from without, it
would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of
contact with the southern populations. But
intercourse was not limited to the South. For
example, Swedish weapons and implements have
been discovered in Finland. Again, crescent-
shaped gold ornaments of Irish provenance have
been found in Denmark, while a Swedish rock-
painting represents with painstaking exactness
a type of bronze shield common at a certain
prehistoric period of England.

Montelius shows that historical connections
of the type so amply attested for the Bronze
Age also obtained in the preceding Neolithic era.
Swedish hammers of stone dating back to the
third pre-Christian millennium and flint daggers
have been found in Finland, and earthenware
characteristic of Neolithic Scandinavia also
turns up on the Baltic coast of Russia. Stone
burial cists with a peculiar oval opening at one
end occur in a limited section of southwestern
Sweden and likewise in England. Since such
monuments have been discovered neither in
other parts of Sweden nor in Jutland or the
Danish islands, they point to a direct intercourse
between Britain and western Sweden at about

[70]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

2,000 B. c. A still older form of burial unites
Scandinavia with other parts of the continent.
Chambers built up of large stones set up edge-
wise and reaching from the floor to the roof, the
more recent ones with and the older without a
long covered passage, are highly characteristic of
Sweden, Denmark, the British Isles, and the
coasts of Europe from the Vistula embouchure
to the coasts of France and Portugal, of Italy,
Greece, the Crimea, North Africa, Syria, and
India. Specific resemblances convince the most
competent judges that some, at lesist, of these
widely diffused 'dolmens' are historically con-
nected with their Swedish equivalents, and
since the oldest of these Northern chambers go
back 3,000 years before our era, we thus have
evidence of cultural diffusion dating back,
approximately five millennia. ^

It is highly interesting to trace under Mon-'^
telius* guidance the development of culture as it
seems to have actually taken place in southern
Sweden. Beginning with the earliest periods, we
find the coastal regions inhabited by a popula-
tion of fishermen and hunters. At a subsequent
stage coarse pottery appears with articles of bone
and antler, and there is evidence that the dog
has become domesticated. In the later Neo-
lithic era perfectly polished stone hammers and

[71 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

exquisitely chipped flint implements occur,
together with indications that cattle, horses,
sheep and pigs are domesticated and that the
cultivation of the soil has begun. Roughly
speaking, we may assume that the culture of
Scandinavia at the end of the Stone Age re-
sembled in advancement that of the agricultural
North American and Polynesian tribes as found
by the first European explorers. We may assume
a long period of essentially indigenous cultural
growth followed towards its close by intimate
relations with alien populations. Nevertheless,
it was the more extensive contact of the Bronze
period that rapidly raised the ancestral Swedes
to a cultural position high above a primitive
level, with accentuation of agriculture, the use
of woolen clothing, and a knowledge of metal-
lurgy. It was again foreign influence that later
brought the knowledge of iron and in the third
century of our era transformed the Scandi-
navians into a literary people, flooded their
country with art products of the highest then
existing Roman civilization, and ultimately
X introduced Christianity.
^ The case of Scandinavian culture is fairly
typical. We have first a long-continued course
of leisurely and relatively undisturbed develop-
ment, which is superseded by a tremendously

l72]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

rapid assimilation of cultural elements from
without. Through contact with tribes possessing
a higher civilization the ancient Scandinavians
came to participate in its benefits and even to
excel in special departments of it, such as
bronze work, which from lack of material, they
would have been physically incapable of devel-
oping unaided. Piffusion was the determinant,
of Scandinavian cultural progress from savagery
to civilization.

It is obvious that this insistence on contact of
peoples as a condition of cultural evolution does
not solve the ultimate problem of the origin of
culture. The question naturally obtrudes itself:
If the Scandinavians obtained their civilization
from the Southeast, how did the Oriental cultures
themselves originate? Nevertheless, when we ex-
amine these higher civilizations of the Old World,
we are again met with indubitable evidence that
one of the conditions of development is the con-
tact of peoples and the consequent diffusion of
cultural elements. This appears clearly from a
consideration of the ancient civilizations of
Egypt, Babylonia, and China.

We now have abundant evidence for a later
Stone Age in Egypt with an exceptionally high
development of the art of chipping, as well as
specimens of pottery and other indications of a

[73]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

sedentary mode of life. About 5,000 b. c. this
undisturbed evolution began to suffer from a
series of migrations of West Asiatic tribes,
bringing in their wake a number of cultivated
plants and domesticated animals, as well as vari-
ous other features which possibly included the art
of smelting copper, while the ceramic ware of the
earlier period agrees so largely with that of Elam
in what is now southern Persia that a cultural
connection seems definitely established.
^ If from Egypt we turn to the most probable
source of alien culture elements found there, wz.,
to the region of Mesopotamia, possibly the oldest
seat of higher civilization in Asia, we find again
that the culture of Babylonia under the famous
lawgiver Hammurabi (about 2,000 b. c.) is not
the product of purely indigenous growth but rep-
resents the resultant of at least two components,
that of the Sumerian civilization of southern
Babylonia and the Accadian culture of the
North. It is certain that the Accadians adopted
the art of writing from the Sumerians and were
also stimulated by this contact in their artistic
development. The evolution of Sumerian civili-
zation is lost in obscurity but on the basis of well-
established historical cases we should hesitate to
assign to them an exclusively creative, and to
other populations an exclusively receptive, rdle.

[74I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

We may quite safely assume that the early
splendor of Sumerian civilization was also in
large part due to stimuli received through foreiga
relations. That cultural elements of value may
be borrowed from an inferior as well as from a
higher level, has already been exemplified by the
case of maize. It is also, among other things,
illustrated by the history of the Chinese. ^^

The Chinese have generally been represented
as developing in complete isolation from other
peoples. This traditional conception, however,
breaks down with more intimate knowledge. Dr.
Laufer has demonstrated that Chinese civiliza-
tion, too, is a complex structure due to the con-
flux of distinct cultural streams. As an originally
inland people inhabiting the middle and lower
course of the Yellow River, they gradually
reached the coast and acquired the art of naviga-
tion through contact with Indo-Chinese sea-
farers. Acquaintance with the northern nomads
of Turkish and Tungus stock led to the use of the
horse, donkey and camel, as well as the practice
of felt and rug weaving, possibly even to the
adoption of furniture and the iron technique.^
Most important of all, it appears that essentials
of agriculture, cattle-raising, metallurgy and pot-
tery, as well as less tangible features of civiliza-
tion are common to ancient China and Baby-

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Ionia, which forces us to the conclusion that both
the Chinese and Babylonian cultures are rami-
fications from a common Asiatic sub-stratum.
It would be idle to speculate as to the relative
contributions of each center to this ancient
cultural stock. The essential point is that the
most ancient Asiatic civilizations of which we
have any evidence already indicate close contact
^f peoples and the dispersal of cultural elements.

Contact of peoples is thus an extraordinary
promoter of cultural development. By the free
exchange of arts and ideas among a group of
formerly independent peoples, a superiority and
complexity is rendered possible which without
such diffusion would never have occurred. The
part played in this process by the cruder popu-
lations must not be underestimated. They may
/contribute both actively and passively; actively,
by transmitting knowledge independently ac-
quired, as in the case of the felt technique the
Chinese learned from the northern nomads;
passively, by forming a lower caste on which the
economic labors devolve and thus liberating
their conquerors for an enlarged activity in the
Vess utilitarian spheres of culture.

Nevertheless, before peoples can communicate
their cultures to others with whom they come in-
to contact, they must first evolve these cultures.

[76]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

The question thus remains, What determines this
evolution? In order to gain a proper perspective
in this matter, we must for a moment consider
the progress of human civilization as a whole.
Archaeological research shows that the modern
era of steel and iron tools was preceded by an
age of bronze and copper implements, which in
turn was preceded by a stone age subdivided
into a more recent period of polished, and an
earlier of merely chipped, stone tools. Now the
chronological relations of these epochs are ex-
tremely suggestive. The very lowest estimate
by any competent observer of the age of Palaeo-
lithic man in Europe sets it at 50,000 years;®
since this is avowedly the utmost minimum value
that can be assigned on geological grounds, we
may reasonably assume twice that figure for the
age of human culture generally. Using the rough
estimate permissible in discussions of this sort,
we may regard the end of the Palaeolithic era as
dating back about 15,000 years ago. In shorf^
for more than eight-tenths of its existence, the
human species remained at a cultural level at
best comparable with that of the Australian.
We may assume that it was during this immense
space of time that dispersal over the face of the
globe took place and that isolation fixed the
broader diversities of language and culture, over

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

and above what may have been the persisting
cultural sub-stratum common to the earliest un-
divided human group. The following Neolithic
period of different parts of the globe terminated
"^at different times and had not been passed at all
by most of the American aborigines and the
Oceanians at the time of their discovery. How-
ever, from the broader point of view here as-

/sumed, it was not relieved by the age of metal-
lurgy until an exceedingly recent past. The earli-
est estimate I have seen does not put the event
back farther than 6000 b. c. even in Mesopo-
tamia. During nine-tenths of his existence, then,
man was ignorant of the art of smelting copper
from the ore. Finally, the iron technique does
not date back 4,000 years; it took humanity
ninety-six hundredths of its existence to develop
this art.

We may liken the progress of mankind to that
of a man a hundred years old, who dawdles
through kindergarten for eighty-five years of his
life, takes ten years to go through the primary
grades, then rushes with lightning rapidity
through grammar school, high school and col-

i lege. Culture, it seems, is a matter of exceedingly
slow growth until a certain 'threshold' is passed,
when it darts forward, gathering momentum at
an unexpected rate. For this peculiarity of

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

culture as a whole, many miniature parallels ex-
ist in special subdivisions of culture history.
Natural science lay dormant until Kepler, Gali-
leo and Newton stirred it into unexampled activ-
ity, and the same holds for applied science untiK
about a century ago.

This discontinuity of development receives •
strong additional illustration from a survey of
special subdivisions of ancient culture. Though
the Palaeolithic era certainly preceded the later
Stone Age, archaeologists have hitherto failed to
show the steps by which the later could develop
out of the earlier. This gap may, of course, be
due merely to our lack of knowledge. Yet when
we take subdivisions of the Palaeolithic period,
the same fact once more confronts us. There is
no orderly progression from Solutrean to Magda-
lenian times. The highly developed flint tech-
nique of the former dwindles away in the latter
and its place is taken by what seems a sponta-
neous generation of bone and ivory work, with a
high development of realistic art.

In view of the evidence, it seems perfect non^
sense to say that early European civilization, by
some law inherent in the very nature of culture,
developed in the way indicated by archaeological
finds. Southern Scandinavia could not possibly
have had a bronze age without alien influence/"

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

In this case, discontinuity was the result of
cultural contact. It may be that the lack of
definite direction observed throughout the Stone
Age may in part be due to similar causes, the
migrations and contact of different peoples, as
Professor Sollas suggests. But it is important to

• note that discontinuity is a necessary feature of
cultural progress. It does not matter whether
we can determine the particular point in the
series at which the significant trait was intro-

,/auced. It does not matter whether, as I have
suggested in the discussion of racial features, the

• underlying causes of the phenomena proceed with
perfect continuity. Somewhere in the observed

' cultural effects there is the momentous innova-
N^ tion that leads to a definite break with the past.
From a broad point of view, for example, it is
immaterial whether the doctrine of evolution
clings to the name of the younger pr the elder
Darwin, to Lamarck or St. Hilaire; the essential
thing is that somehow the idea originated, and
that when it had taken root it produced incal-
culable results in modem thought.
"^ If culture, even when uninfluenced by foreign
contact, progresses by leaps and bounds, we
should naturally like to ascertain the determi-
nants of such 'mutations.' In this respect, the

• discontinuity of indigenous evolution differs

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

somewhat from that connected with cultural de-
velopment due to diffusion. It was absolutely
impossible that Scandinavia should produce
bronze in the absence of tin. . But a priori it is
conceivable that an undisturbed culture might
necessarily develop by what biologists call *or-
thogenetic evolution', i.e., in a definite direction
through definite stages. This is, indeed, what is
commonly known as the classical scheme of
cultural evolution, of which men like Morgan are
the protagonists. Now, how do the observed
facts square with this theoretical possibility?

As Professor Boas and American ethnologists
generally have maintained,^® many facts are quite
inconsistent with the theory of unilinear evolu- •
tion. That theory can be tested very simply by^
comparing the sequence of events in two or more
areas in which independent development has
taken place. For example, has technology in
Africa followed the lines ascertained for ancient
Europe? We know today that it has not.
Though unlike southern Scandinavia, the Dark
Continent is not lacking in copper deposits, the
African Stone Age was not superseded by a Copp,
per Age, but directly by a period of Iron. Sinrfi-
larly, I have already pointed out that the posses-
sion of the same domesticated animals does not
produce the same economic utilization of them

[81]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

while the Tungus rides his reindeer, other Si-
berians harness their animals to a sledge; the
Chinaman will not milk his cattle, while the
Zulu's diet consists largely of milk. That a par-
•'^icular innovation occurred at a given time and
place is, of course, no less the result of definite
causes than any other phenomenon of the uni-

• verse. But often it seems to have been caused
by an accidental complex of conditions rather
than in accordance with some fixed principle.

For example, the invention of the wheel revo-
lutionized methods of transportation. Now, why
did this idea develop in the Old World and never
take root among the American Indians? We are
here face to face with one of those ultimate data
that must simply be accepted like the physicist's
fact that water expands in freezing while other
^§ubstances contract. So far as we can see, the
invention might have been made in America as
well as not; and for all we know it would never
h^ve been made there until the end of time.
This introduces a very important consideration.

• A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique
phenomenon. In so far as this is true it must
defy generalized treatment, and the explanation
of a cultural phenomenon will consist in referring
it back to the particular circumstances that pre-
ceded it. In other words, the explanation will

[82]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

consist in a recital of its past history; or, to put
it negatively, it cannot involve the assumption of
an organic law of cultural evolution that would
necessarily produce the observed effect. /

Facts already cited in other connections may
be quoted again by way of illustration. When a
copper implement is fashioned not according to
the requirements of the material, but in direct
imitation of preexisting stone patterns, we have
an instance of cultural inertia: it is only the past
history of technology that renders the phenom-
ena conceivable. So the unwieldy Chukchee
tent, which adheres to the style of a pre-nomadic
existence, is explained as soon as the past history
of the tribe comes to light.

Phenomena that persist in isolation from their
original context are technically known as 'sur-
vivals', and form one of the most interesting
chapters of ethnology. One or two additional
examples will render their nature still clearer.
The boats of the Vikings were equipped for row-
ing as well as for sailing. Why the superfluous
appliances for rowing, which were later dropped?
As soon as we learn that the Norse boats were
originally rowboats and that sails were a later
addition, the rowing equipment is placed in its
proper cultural setting and the problem is solved.
Another example may be offered from a different

[83]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

phase of life. Among the Arapaho Indians there
is a series of dance organizations graded by age.
Membership is acquired by age-mates at the
same time, each receiving the requisite ceremo-
nial instructions from some older man who passed
through the dance in his day. These older men,
who are paid for their services by the candidates,
may belong to any and all of the higher organiza-
tions. Oddly enough, each group of dancers is
assisted by a number of 'elder brothers', all of
whom rank them by two grades in the series of
dancers. This feature is not at all clear from the
Arapaho data alone. When, however, we turn
to the Hidatsa Indians, with whom there is evi-
dence this system of age-societies originated, we'
find that here the youngest group of men does
not buy instructions from a miscellaneous as-
semblage of older men, but buys the dance out-
right from the whole of the second grade; this
group, in order to have the privilege of perform-
ing a dance, must buy that of the third grade, and
so on. In all these purchases the selling group
seeks to extort the highest possible price while
the buyers try to get off as cheaply as possible
and are aided by the second higher group, i.e.,
the group just ranking the sellers. Here the
sophomore-senior versus freshman- junior rela-
tionship is perfectly intelligible; both the fresh-

[84]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

man and the junior, to pursue the analogy, bear
a natural economic hostility against the soph-
omore, and vice versa. The Arapaho usage is
intelligible as a survival from this earlier Hidatsa
condition.

Our own civilization is shot through with sur-
vivals, so that further illustrations are unneces-
sary. They suggest, however, another aspect of
our general problem. Of course, in every culture •
different traits are linked together without there
being any essential bond between them. An il-
lustration of this type of association is that men-
tioned by Dr. Laufer for Asiatic tribes, vis., that
all nations which use milk for their diet have epic
poems, while those which abstain from milk have
no epic literature. This type of chance associa-
tion, due to historical causes, has been discussed
by Dr. Wissler^^and Professor Czekanowski.^ But
survivals show that there may be an organic re- -
lation between phenomena that have become
separated and are treated as distinct by the de-
scriptive ethnologist. In such cases, one trait is •
the determinant of the other, possibly as the
actually preceding cause, possibly as part of the
same phenomenon in the sense in which the side
of a triangle is correlated with an angle.

A pair of illustrations will elucidate the matter.
Primitive terms of relationship often reveal char-

[85]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

acteristic differences of connotation from their
nearest equivalents in European languages. On
the other hand, they are remarkably similar not
only among many of the North American Indians
but also in many other regions of the globe, such
as Australia, Oceanica, Africa. The most strik-
ing peculiarity of this system of nomenclature
lies in the inclusiveness of certain terms. For
example, the word we translate as 'father' is
applied indiscriminately to the father, all his
brothers, and some of his male cousins; while
the word for 'mother* is correspondingly used for
Ahe mother's sisters and some of their female
' cousins. On the other hand, paternal and mater-
nal uncle or aunt are rigidly distinguished by a
difference in terminology. As Morgan divined
and Tylor clearly recognized, this system is con-
nected with the one-sided exogamous kin organi-
zation by which an individual is reckoned as be-
longing to the exogamous social group of one,
and only one, of his parents. The terminology
that appears so curious at first blush then re-
solves itself very simply into the method of
calling those members of the tribe who belong to
the father's social group and generation by the
same term as the father, while the maternal
uncles, who must belong to another group be-
cause of the exogamous rule, are distinguished

[86]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

from the father. In short, the terminology ♦
simply expresses the existing social organization.
In a world-wide survey of the field Tylor found
that the number of peoples who use the type of
nomenclature I have described and are divided
into exogamous groups, is about three times that
to be expected on the doctrine of chances: in
other words, the two apparently distinct phe-
nomena are causally connected.^' This interpreta-
tion has recently been forcibly advocated by Dr.
Rivers, and I have examined the North American
data from this point of view. It developed, as a
matter of fact, that practically all the tribes with
exogamous 'clans', i.e., matrilineal kin groups, or
exogamous 'gentes', i.e., patrilineal kin groups,
had a system of the type described, while most
of the tribes lacking such groups also lacked the
nomenclature in question. Accordingly, it fol-
lows that there is certainly a functional relation -
between these phenomena, although it is con-
ceivable that both are functionally related to still
other phenomena, and that the really significant .
relationship remains to be determined. ^'

As a linked illustration, the following phenom-
ena may be presented. Among the Crow bt^
Montana, the Hopi of Arizona, and some Mela-
nesian tribe?, the same term is applied to a
father's sister and to a father's sister's daughter;

[87]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

indeed, among the Crow and the Hopi the term
is extended to all the female descendants through
females of the father's sister ad infinitum. Such
a usage is at once intelligible from the tendency
to call females of the father's group belonging to
his and younger generations by a single term, re-
gardless of generation, if descent is reckoned
through the mother, for in that case, and that
case only, will the individuals in question belong
to the same group. And the fact is that in each
of the cases mentioned, group affiliation is traced
through the mother, while I know of not a single

N^^nstance in which paternal descent coexists with
the nomenclatorial disregard of generations in
the form described.
My instances show, then, that cultural traits
• may be functionally related, and this fact renders
possible a parallelism, however limited, of cul-
tural development in different parts of the globe.
The field of culture, then, is not a region of com-

» plete lawlessness. Like causes produce like effects
here as elsewhere, though the complex condi-
tions with which we are grappling require unusu-
al caution in definitely correlating phenomena.
It is true that American ethnologists have shown
that in several instances like phenomena can
be traced to diverse causes; that, in short, un-
like antecedents converge to the same point.

[88]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

However, at the risk of being anathematized as a
person of utterly unhistorical mentality, I must
register my belief that this point has been over-
done and that the continued insistence on it by
Americanists is itself an illustration of cultural
inertia. Indeed, the vast majority of so-called
convergenqies are not genuine, but false analogies
due to our throwing together diverse facts from
ignorance of their true nature, just as an un-
tutored mind will class bats with birds, or whales
with fish. When, however, rather full knowledge
reveals not superficial resemblance but absolute
identity of cultural features, it would be mirac-
ulous, indeed, to assume that such equivalence
somehow was shaped by different determinants.
When a Zulu of South Africa, an Australian, and
a Crow Indian all share the mother-in-law taboo
imposing mutual avoidance on the wife's mother
and the daughter's husband, with exactly the
same psychological correlate, it is, to my mind,
rash to decree without attempt to produce evi-
dence that this custom must, in each case, have
developed from entirely distinct motives. To be
sure, this particular usage has not yet, in my
opinion, been satisfactorily accounted for. Nev-
ertheless, in contradistinction to some of my col-
leagues and to the position I myself once shared,
I now believe that it is pusillanimous to shirk

[89]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the real problem involved, and that in so far as
any explanation admits the problem, any ex-
planation is preferable to the flaunting of fine
phrases about the unique character of cultural
phenomena. When, however, we ask what sort
of explanation could be given, we find that it is
by necessity a cultural explanation. Tylor, e.g.,
thinks that the custom is correlated with the
social rule that the husband takes up his abode
with the wife's relatives and that the taboo
merely marks the difference between him and the
rest of the family. We have here clearly one

• cultural phenomenon as the determinant of

N^another.

It is not so difficult as might at first appear to

'' harmonize the principle that a cultural phenom-
enon is explicable only by a unique combination
of antecedent circumstances with the principle
that like phenomena are the product of like ante-
cedents. The essential point is that in either

' case we have past history as the determinant.
It is not necessary that certain things should
happen; but if they do happen, then there is at
least a considerable likelihood that certain other
things will also happen. Diversity occurs where
the particular thing of importance, say the wheel,
has been discovered or conceived in one region
but not in another. Parallelism tends to occur

[90]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

when the same significant phenomenon is shared
by distinct cultures. It remains true that in
culture history we are generally wise after the
event. A priori, who would not expect that
milking must follow from the domestication of
cattle?

When we find that a type of kinship terminol-
ogy is determined by exogamy or matrilineal
descent, we have, indeed, given a cultural ex-
planation of a cultural fact; but for the ultimate
problems how exogamy or maternal descent came
about, we may be unable to give a solution. Very
often we cannot ascertain an anterior or corre-
lated cultural fact for another cultural fact, but
can merely group it with others of the same kind.
Of this order are many of the parallels that figure
so prominently in ethnological literature. For
example, that primitive man everywhere be-
lieves in the animation of nature seems an irre-
ducible datum which we can, indeed, paraphrase
and turn hither and thither for clearer scrutiny
but can hardly reduce to simpler terms. All we
can do is to merge any particular example of such
animism in the general class after the fashion of
all scientific interpretation. That certain ten-
dencies of all but universal occurrence are char-
acteristic of culture, no fair observer can deny,
and it is the manifest business of ethnology to

[91 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

ascertain all such regularities so that as many
cultural phenomena as possible may fall into
their appropriate categories. Only those who
would derive each and every trait similar in dif-
ferent communities of human beings from a
single geographical source can ignore such gen-
eral characteristics of culture, which may, in a
sense, be regarded as determinants of specific
cultural data or rather, as the principles of
which these are particular manifestations.

Recently I completed an investigation of
Plains Indian societies begun on the most rigor-
ous of historical principles, with a distinct bias in
favor of the unique character of cultural data.
But after smiting hip and thigh the assumption
that the North American societies were akin to
analogous institutions in Africa and elsewhere, I
came face to face with the fact that, after all,
among the Plains Indians, as among other tribes,
the tendency of age-mates to flock together had
formed social organizations and thus acted as a
cultural determinant.

Beyond such interpretative principles for
special phases of civilization, there are still
broader generalizations of cultural phenomena.
One has been repeatedly alluded to under the
caption of cultural inertia, or survival— the
irrational persistence of a feature when the

[92]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

context in which it had a place has vanished.
But culture is not merely a passive phenomenon
but a dynamic one as well. This is strikingly
illustrated in the assimilation of an alien cultural
stimulus. As I have already pointed out, it is
not sufficient to bring two cultures into contact
in order to have a perfect cultural interpenetra-
tion. The element of selection enters in a signifi-
cant way. Not everything that is offered by a
foreign culture is borrowed. The Japanese have
accepted our technology but not our religion
and etiquette. Moreover, what is accepted may
undergo a very considerable change. While the
whole range of phenomena is extremely wide and
cannot be dismissed with a few words, it appears
fairly clear that generally the preexisting culture
at once seizes upon a foreign element and models
it in accordance with the native pattern. Thus,
the Crow Indians, who had had a pair of rival
organizations, borrowed a society from the
Hidatsa where such rivalry did not exist.
Straightway, the Crow imposed on the new
society their own conception, and it became the
competitor of another of their organizations.
Similarly the Pawnee have a highly developed
star cult. Their folklore is in many regards
sinlilar to that of other Plains tribes, from which
some tales have undoubtedly been borrowed.

[93]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Yet in the borrowing these stories became
changed and the same episodes which elsewhere
relate to human heroes now receive an astral
setting. The preexisting cultural pattern syn-
thetizes the new element with its own precon-
ceptions.

Another tendency that is highly characteristic
of all cultures is the rationalistic explanation of
what reason never gave rise to. This is shown
very clearly in the justification of existing
cultural features or of opinions acquired as a
member of a particular society. Hegel's notion
that whatever exists is rational and Pope's
'whatever is, is right' have their parallels in
primitive legend and the literature of religious
and political partisanship. In the special form
of justification employed we find again the
determining influence of the surrounding cul-
tural atmosphere. Among the Plains Indians
almost everything is explained as the result of
supernatural revelation ; if a warrior has escaped
injury in battle it is because he wore a feather
bestowed on him in a vision; if he acquires a
large herd of horses it is in fulfilment of a spiri-
tistic communication during the fast of adoles-
cence. In a community where explanations of
this type hold sway, we are not surprised to find
that the origin of rites, too, is almost uniformly

[94]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

traced to a vision and that even the most trivial
alteration in ceremonial garb is not claimed as
an original invention but ascribed to super-
natural promptings. Thus, the existing culture
acts doubly as the determinant of the explana-
tion offered for a particular cultural phenomenon.
It evokes the search for its own raison d*itre;
and the type of interpretation called forth con-
forms to the explanatory pattern characteristic
of the culture involved.

Culture thus appears as a closed system. ^
We may not be able to explain all cultural
phenomena or at least not beyond a certain
point; but inasmuch as we can explain them at
all, explanation must remain on the cultural
plane.

What are the determinants of culture? We
have found that cultural traits may be trans-
mitted from without and in so far forth are
determined by the culture of an alien people.
The extraordinary extent to which such diffusion
has taken place proves that the actual develop-
ment of a given culture does not conform to
innate laws necessarily leading to definite
results, such hypothetical laws being overridden
by contact with foreign peoples. But even
where a culture is of relatively indigenous growth
comparison with other cultures suggests that

[95]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

one step does not necessarily lead to another,
that an invention like the wheel or the domesti-
cation of an animal occurs in one place and does
not occur in another. To the extent of such
diversity we must abandon the quest for general
formulae of cultural evolution and recognize as
the determinant of a phenomenon the unique
course of its past history. However, there is not
merely discontinuity and diversity but also
stability and agreement in the sphere of culture.
The discrete steps that mark culture history may
not determine one another, but each may
involve as a necessary or at least probable con-
sequence other phenomena which in many
instances are simply new aspects of the same
phenomenon, and in so far forth one cultural
element as isolated in description is the deter-
minant or correlate of another. As for those
phenomena which we are obliged to accept as
realities without the possibility of further analy-
sis, we can, at least, classify a great number of
them and merge particular instances in a group
of similar facts. Finally, there are dominant
characteristics of culture, like cultural inertia or
the secondary rationalization of habits acquired
irrationally by the members of a group, which
serve as broad interpretative principles in the
history of civilization.

[96]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

In short, as in other sciences, so in ethnology *
there are ultimate, irreducible facts, special func-
tional relations, and principles of wider scope
that guide us through the chaotic maze of detail.
And as the engineer calls on the physicist for a
knowledge of mechanical laws, so the social
builder of the future who should seek to re- ,
fashion the culture of his time and add to its
cultural values will seek guidance from eth-
nology, the science of culture, which in Tylor's
judgment is 'essentially a reformer's science.'

[97]

V. TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP

Most descriptive monographs on primitive
tribes contain lists of the words with which the
natives designate their relatives by blood and
marriage. The reason is far from obvious. Why
should not this topic be left in the hands of a
linguist-lexicographer? It is true that primitive
usage in this regard is very quaint from our point
of view, but so are primitive conceptions on a
variety of subjects that likewise find expression
in speech. The refinement of spatial distinctions
in North American languages, the classification
of colors or animals or other groups of natural
phenomena are of equal intrinsic interest from a
psychological point of view. Why, then, single
out a particular department of the aboriginal
vocabulary in a treatise on culture? The answer
is simply this, that kinship terms have a direct
relation to cultural data.

The very fact that primitive tribes frequently
use terms of kinship as words of address where
we should substitute personal names is a social
practice of ethnological interest. But the essen-
tial point is that the terms used are often very
^ definitely correlated with specific social usages.
Generally speaking, the use of distinct words for

[98]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

two types of relatives is connected with a real
difference in their social relations to the speaker.
Thus, a majority of primitive tribes draw no dis-
tinction between the father's sister's daughter
and the mother's brother's daughter. But among
the Miwok of California, where one of the
cousins may be married while the other is within
the prohibited degrees, a discrimination is made
in language. Again, in many regions of the globe
an altogether special bond connects the maternal
uncle with the sister's son, and accordingly we
find that he is very often sharply distinguished
from the paternal uncle in nomenclature.

On the other hand, we can often explain very
naturally the use of a single word for two or more
relatives whom we designate by as many distinct
words. The Vedda of Ceylon, for example, call
the man's father-in-law and maternal uncle by
the same term. The reason is that here a man
commonly marries his mother's brother's daugh-
ter; the mother's brother is his father-in-law,
and this identity is expressed in the terminology.
A different illustration is supplied by the Crow
of Montana, who have one term for the man's
mother-in-law and his wife's brother's wife. The
simple explanation is that both stand to him in
the relationship of mutual avoidance, and it is
this social fact that is expressed by the common

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

designation. The same Indians apply the word
for 'father' in a very inclusive manner, possibly
to dozens of individuals; but closer examination
shows that all of the people so addressed are en-
titled to the same kind of treatment by the
speaker, to a peculiar form of reverence, and to
a preferential rank in the distribution of gifts.

These few and casual examples possibly suffice
to show why kinship terms deserve the ethnol-
ogist's attention. Terms of relationship are, in
• some measure, indices of social usage. Where
relatives whom other people distinguish are
grouped together, there is some likelihood that
the natives regard them as representing the same
relationship because they actually enjoy the same
privileges or exercise the same functions in tribal
life. Where relatives whom other peoples group
together are distinguished, there is some proba-
bility that the distinction goes hand in hand with
a difference in social function.

Lewis H. Morgan, the pioneer in this domain
of knowledge, was keenly alive to the social im-
plications of kinship nomenclature. But while
he endeavored to give an ultimate interpretation
of it in terms of various social conditions, he was
confronted with the fact that not every tribe
had a terminology sui generis, but that nomen-
clatures of remote peoples were sometimes mar-

[lOO]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

velously similar. Morgan boldly argued that
such community of nomenclature established ulti-
mate racial unity and on this ground coolly
suggested a racial connection between the Ha-
waiians and the South African Zulu, between the
natives of India and those of the Western
Hemisphere.^

These speculations as to racial affinity have
been rightly disregarded by later students, be-
cause to accept Morgan's premises means run-
ning counter to the most obvious facts of physical
anthropology. As Lubbock pointed out, we can-
not assume that the Two-Mountain Iroquois are
more closely akin to remote Oceanians than to
their fellow Iroquois because some of their kin-
ship terms resemble in connotation those of the
Hawaiians. Nevertheless, Morgan was right in
feeling that some historical conclusions could be
drawn from similarities of relationship nomen-
clature. We must simply bring this particular
group of ethnological data under the same prin-
ciple as other cultural phenomena. When the
same feature occurs within a definite continuous •
region, we shall assume that it has developed in
a single center and spread by borrowing to other
parts of the area. When the same feature occurs .
in disconnected regions, we shall incline to the
theory of independent development and shall in-

[loij

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

quire whether the course of evolution may have
been due to the same cultural determinants, i.e.,
in this case, to the same social institutions.

After these preliminary remarks, we may turn
to a closer scrutiny of the facts.

^Systems'. Abstractly considered, it is con-
ceivable that every individual relative might be
designated by a different term of relationship by
every other individual, just as each object in
nature might theoretically be defined by some
distinctive word instead of being placed in some
such category as 'tree', 'animal*, or 'book'. In-
deed, primitive people go rather far in their
distinctions. Thus, in the Menomini family circle
boys are not called 'son' or 'brother', but each is
addressed by a word indicating the order of his
birth, the oldest being 'mudjikiwis', the second
'osememau', the third 'akotcosememau', the
fourth 'nanaweo'.^ But in this, as in every other
department of language, economy has been ex-
ercised and instead of a chaotic number of dis-
tinct terms for every possible relationship, there
is always a limited series, many distinct individ-
ual relationships being always grouped together
under a single head. Thus, in English we apply
the word 'brother' to a number of individuals
regardless of their age relatively to ourselves or
to one another and irrespective of the sex of the

[102]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

speaker. Yet, as the Menomini instance shows,
the age distinction might very well have been
expressed in speech and there are many Indian
languages in which one set of terms is used by
female and another by male speakers.

All the terms used by a people to designate
their relatives by blood or marriage are jointly
called their 'kinship system'. This phrase is
wholly misleading, if it is understood to imply
that all the constituent elements form a well-
articulated whole, for this probably never applies
to more than a limited number of them, as will
appear presently. But as a convenient word for
the entire nomenclature of relationship found in
a particular region the word 'system' may be
provisionally retained. We may say, then, that
systems of different peoples vary in their mode
of classifying kin and it seems the ethnographer's
first duty to determine the types of system found
and their geographical distribution.

At the present moment a satisfactory grouping
of the world's kinship systems is impossible, ow-
ing to our lack of knowledge of many areas. The
task is also rendered very difficult by the fre-
quent coexistence of distinct and even contra-
dictory principles in the same 'system'. Each of
these may be defined separately, but to weld
both or all of them into a unified whole defies

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

our efforts. For example, the Masai of E^st
Africa, in referring to the paternal uncle, simply
combine the stems for 'father', baba, and *broth-
er', alasche, thus forming by juxtaposition of
these primary terms the compound expression
ol alasche le baba, which means literally 'the
brother of the father'. This mode of defining a
relative's status by combining primary terms of
relationship or a primary term with a qualifying
adjective as in our 'grandfather', is technically
known as 'descriptive', and ethnologists are
wont to speak of descriptive systems. As a
matter of fact, this descriptive principle is highly
characteristic of the Masai — ^but not when rel-
atives are directly addressed by them. In such
vocative usage, as it may be called, the father's
brother is called baba like the father himself; the
mother's brother is not designated by a phrase
composed of primary stems but by a new stem,
abula, which is also used reciprocally for the
nephew; while koko serves to call both a pater-
nal and a maternal aunt. These connotations
introduce into the Masai 'system' a discordant
principle by which relatives, instead of
being defined descriptively, are grouped together
in classes. But this 'classificatory' feature by
no means characterizes all the vocative nomen-
clature. By far the majority of relatives are

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

addressed by terms suggestive of the presents
of live stock presented to them by the speaker;
if the gift consisted of a bull, the word used is
b-ainonif from oinoni, bull; if an ass was given
away, the vocative term is ba-sigiria, from si-
giria, ass; and so forth. Accordingly, the voc-
ative terms cited above are only employed by
children, who have not yet presented stock to
their kin.* In short, Masai terminology is molded
by at least three entirely disparate principles.

We shall, accordingly, do well to amend our
phraseology and to speak rather of kinship cat-
egories, features, or principles of classification
than of types of kinship systems.

The Descriptive Principle. When we approach
our subject in a purely empirical way, we are
confronted with the fact that features do not, as
a rule, occur sporadically but are distributed over
continuous areas. Imperfect as is our knowledge
of African systems, for example, we know that
the descriptive feature of the Masai nomen-
clature does not appear everywhere, but flour-
ishes especially among East African tribes, such
as the Shilluk, Dinka, and other Upper Nile pop-
ulations, and perhaps more widely where Arabic
influence extends, the Arabian terminology being
of a markedly descriptive character. In East
Africa, indeed, there is almost quantitative proof

[105 J

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

of the dependence of kinship terminology on his-
torical connection and geographical proximity.
Among the Baganda, as among most Bantu
Negroes, the descriptive feature is lacking and
such a relative as the mother's brother's son, in-
stead of being designated by a compound expres-
sion, is classed with the brother.* The Masai,
who live surrounded by Bantu tribes, have a
purely descriptive system for non-vocative usage
but their vocative forms are in part classificatory,
while some neighboring Bantu peoples have a
correspondingly mixed system. The Shilluk and
Dinka seem to use the descriptive principle ex-
clusively, as do the Arabs. The Masai are un-
doubtedly closely allied with the Nilotes and
markedly different from the Bantu. The con-
clusion is, therefore, inevitable that their termi-
nology — ^whatever may be its ultimate raison
d'Ure — is a function of their historical relations.
They have descriptive features because they be-
long to a group of peoples of whom such features
are characteristic. They have classificatory fea-
tures because they have come into contact with
peoples whose systems were characterized by
such features and from whom they have bor-
rowed them. The Shilluk lack the classificatory
principle because they have not had the same
alien influences as the Masai. The restriction of

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

descriptive features to a definite part of Africa
and their amalgamation with other features in
the marginal section of this area show that kin-
ship nomenclatures follow precisely the same
rules as other elements of culture and that their
distribution indicates probable or corroborates
known tribal relations.

The descriptive principle is not restricted to
East Africa and the Semitic family, but has been
found in the Persian, Armenian, Celtic, Estho-
nian, and Scandinavian languages.** Although
guesses might be offered, I do not feel that our
present knowledge permits definite statements as
to the historical relations suggested by the total
range of the descriptive principle on the face of
the globe.

The Hawaiian Principle, While the term 'de-
scriptive' admits of a fairly unambiguous defi-
nition, the same cannot be said for the word
'classificatory*. Morgan, after explaining his use
of the former, states that a system of the second
type reduces blood-relatives to great classes by
a series of apparently arbitrary generalizations,
applying the same terms to all the members of the
same class. '*It thus confounds relationships,
which, under the descriptive system, are dis-
tinct, and enlarges the signification both of the
primary and secondary terms beyond their seem-

[107]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

ingly appropriate sense."* This is looking at the
matter from the arbitrarily selected point of view
of our own nomenclature (which Morgan im-
properly, as Rivers has shown, regarded as de-
scriptive). Objectively considered, even descrip-
tive terminologies are classificatory, inasmuch as
they do not individualize, but content themselves
with such generalizations as classing together,
say, all the father's brothers instead of uni-
formly specializing according to age. For this
reason I regard as misplaced Dr. Rivers' empha-
sis on whether a term designates a single individ-
ual or a wider group. What, then, lies at the
basis of the classificatory principle? Dr. Rivers,
following Tylor, reduces it to the clan factor or
rather to the influence of the dual organization
of ancient society, by which it was divided into
exogamous moieties. But this important sug-
gestion, to which we shall have to revert, applies
avowedly only to one form of the classificatory
system and involves, therefore, the hypothesis
that this preceded other forms. This may prove
to be valid, but we cannot prejudice an empirical
survey by taking its proof for granted and can-
not, therefore, simply substitute 'clan' for *classi-
ficatory* systems — apart from the fact that to
talk of systems instead of principles or features
in this connection is demonstrably misleading.

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

It is quite clear that 'classificatory' can be used
only in a loose sense, to indicate wider groupings
of kin than those to which we are accustomed;
and that there is no necessary evolutionary rela-
tion between the two forms usually classed under
this head. The empirical data are simply these.
In certain systems, blood-relatives are classed
according to generation regardless of nearness of
kinship and of their maternal or paternal affilia-
tions; in others, there is bifurcation, the mater-
nal and paternal kin of at least the generations
nearest to the speaker being distinguished. We
may call the former the *unforked merging', or
geographically the 'Hawaiian' mode of classifi-
cation; the latter may be correspondingly re-
ferred to as 'forked merging', or 'Dakota'. One
point which it is essential to remember even at
this early stage of our survey is that these prin-
ciples, together with the descriptive one, are
very far from exhausting the varieties found.

Let us now consider the 'unforked' principle
somewhat more closely as it finds expression
among the Hawaiians. These people apply a
single term, makua, to both parents and to all
their parents' brothers and sisters, sex being dis-
tinguished only by qualifying words meaning
'man' and 'woman'. All related individuals of
one's generation are classed as brothers and sis-

[109]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

ters, certain distinctions being drawn according
to the age of their parents relatively to that of
one's own parents and also according to the
speaker's sex, but none resulting fronfi the differ-
ences in nearness of kinship. The children of all
these brothers and sisters are classed with one's
own children, and their children with one's grand-
children, while a single term embraces grand-
parents and all related members of their gene-
ration J This age-stratification of blood-relatives
with disregard of differences as to father's or
mother's side occurs not only in Hawaii, but also
in New Zealand, Kusaie, the Gilbert and Mar-
shall Islands.® It is not uninteresting to note that
Hawaii and New Zealand, though far removed
from each other, coincide closely in other cultural
features not shared with fellow-Polynesians, as
Professor Dixon has recently shown in his treat-
ment of Oceanian mythology. The geographical
proximity of Micronesia to Hawaii hardly re-
quires mention. Dr. Rivers points out® that cer-
tain Polynesian tribes in contact with Mela-
nesians, whose systems display essentially the
forked principle, e.g., the Tongans, use an inter-
mediate nomenclature. We are thus again able to
summarize the data in terms of historical con-
nection. The assumption may be made that the
ancient Polynesian terminology was that of

[110]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Hawaii and New Zealand, which was modified
where the Polynesians came into contact with
diverse populations, and is shared by populations
whose territory was presumably traversed by the
Hawaiians. Dr. Rivers also states that the
Burmese, Karen, Chinese and Japanese systems
conform to the Hawaiian principle. He seems to
depend on Morgan's statement of the case, which
may require revision. But, accepting the data
as given and assuming that the Malay proper
classify kin according to the unforked method,
we should still have a perfectly continuous dis-
tribution for the Hawaiian features.

This would no longer hold if we accepted Mor-
gan's view that the Zulu of South Africa share
the Hawaiian form, on which slender basis he
advances the hypothesis that Kaffir and Poly-
nesian have a common ancestry.^® As a matter of
fact, the Zulu nomenclature secured by Morgan
does in some instances slur over the difference of
paternal and maternal lines, to the exclusive
dominance of the generation factor. Thus, man
and woman call all the brother's and sister's chil-
dren their sons and daughters without distinction,
and the children of the father's sister are classed
with one's brothers and sisters.

Nevertheless, even Morgan's list reveals fun-
damental deviations from the Hawaiian principle.

[ml

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

As he notes, the mother's brother is not classed
with the father's brother and father, and the
assumption that he formerly was is mere guess-
work. What particularly astonished Morgan,
however, was that the father's sister was not
called mother, but father. This is, indeed,
amazing, if we start from our own notions as to
the necessity of distinguishing parental sex, and
in addition assume that the Zulu system is a
variant of the Hawaiian one. If we free our
minds from these preconceptions, there is no
mystery; the father's sister is classed with the
father simply in order to express the difference
from the maternal line in accordance with the
principle of bifurcation.

In order to gain greater clearness in this matter
it is necessary to extend our investigation to
other Bantu tribes, preferably to those whose
territories approach that of the Zulu. The es-
sential point to ascertain is whether paternal and
maternal uncles and aunts are merged in one
group or are distinguished." Among the Thonga,
who live north of the Zulu, the father's sister, as
in Zulu, is classed with the father, the word
meaning literally 'female father' and thus em-
phasizing her separation from the mother's side
of the family. The Herero, according to Schinz,
seem to claiss all aunts with the mother in voca-

[112]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

tive usage, but when not directly referring to
these relatives they employ quite distinct ex-
pressions for the father's and the mother's sisters.
In Baganda the difference between the two sides
is marked. Mange is mother, and the same word
with the qualifier muto means mother's sister,
while father's sister is sengawe. Even clearer is
the case for the maternal uncle. In the Ronga
group of the Thonga he is called by a distinct
word, malume, which almost coincides with Mor-
gan's Zulu term. In the Djonga division he is
classed with the grandfather, not the father. By
a quite distinct stem, the Herero sharply dis-
tinguish the mother's brother from the father and
his brothers. The same applies to the Baganda.
As for the correlative term, from which Morgan
infers that the Zulu once called the maternal
uncle 'father', the Ronga have a distinct word
for nephew, mupsyana, while the Djonga who
class the mother's brother with the grandfather
consistently enough call the sister's son 'grand-
son'. Among the Herero, though uncles and
aunts generally regard their nephews and nieces
as their own children, the maternal uncle applies
to them a distinct term, ovasia. Among the
Baganda a man calls his son mutabani or mwana,
but his sister's son is mujwa. I may add that
the altogether peculiar bond of familiarity that

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

links together mother's brother and sister's son^^
among some Bantu people is inconsistent with
Morgan's assumption that the relationships of
maternal uncle and father were once grouped
under a single head among tribes of this family,
for as stated above, such specific social relation-
ships are generally expressed by specific terms
for the relatives.

The conditions obtaining within the speaker's
generation at first seem to lend some support to
the conception of the Bantu system as dominated
by the Hawaiian principle, since the terms for
brother and sister are more widely employed by
some Bantu than is compatible with the forked
division of kin. But closer inspection proves
that, whatever may be at the root of the Bantu
classification, it is not the Hawaiian notion of
marking off generations. Even in Morgan's Zulu
series, while a man calls his maternal uncle's
children by a special term, they address him
as brother; that is to say, members of the same
generation and sex are not all classed together.
Among the Herero, where the children of a
brother and sister (but not of Geschwister of the
same sex) regularly intermarry, they are placed in
a category distinct from that of the children of
two brothers and two sisters, who are one anoth-
er's brothers and sisters. In Thonga a boy calls

[114]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

his mother's brother's daughter 'mother', and she
calls him 'son'. To be sure, the Baganda draw
no distinction between the brother, the father's
brother's, the father's sister's, the mother's
brother's and the mother's sister's son. On the
other hand, only the father's brother's daughter
and the mother's sister's daughter are a man's
sisters; his father's sister's and his mother's
brother's daughter belong to the special category
of kizibwewe, quite distinct from that of the
sister, mwanyina.

To cut a long story short, all the evidence is
opposed to Morgan's assumption that the Bantu
systems are patterned on the Hawaiian principle
of grading relatives by generations. There are
merely occasional suggestions of that principle
which will be discussed below as to their theoret-
ical bearing.

So far as I know, there is only one region of the
globe outside of Oceania and the possible Asiatic
range defined above, where a definitely Hawaiian
classification of relatives by generations has been
reported, viz., among the Yoruba of West Africa.^*
Unfortunately, no more recent check data for
this section seem available. For another part of
West Africa we have Mr. Northcote W. Thomas'
tables,^* which reveal a rather perplexing condi-
tion of affairs that seems to demand intensive

[115I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

reinvestigation together with linguistic analysis.
The principle of bifurcation seems to hold sway
only in a very limited measure.

Thus, the Vai do not distinguish the father's
sister from the mother, though the mother's
brother is designated by a distinct term from that
for father and father's brother. Further, the
term for child is extended also to brother's child
by both sexes contrary to customary 'forked'
usage. But this cannot be interpreted as sympto-
matic of the Hawaiian principle since the sister's
child is designated by a special word, which,
moreover, differs for men and women speaking.
The Vai nomenclature is interesting in showing
once more that a given 'system' is a complex
growth that cannot be adequately defined as a
whole by some such catchword as 'classificatory',
'Hawaiian', or what not. Not only do we find
Hawaiian and Dakota elements in the same
system, but even purely descriptive combina-
tions of primary terms. Thus, the designation
of the sister's daughter's husband is manifestly
composed of the stems for sister's child and hus-
band, and a corresponding juxtaposition of
stems results in the term for mother's sister's
husband.

A similar phenomenon is presented by the
terminology of the Timne, another Sierra Leone

[116]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

people. A superficial glance at the list suggests
the Hawaiian principle: father's brother and
mother's brother are grouped together, and so
are the children of the maternal and the paternal
aunt. But closer consideration shows that while
uncles are classed together they are sharply sep-
arated from the father, that while aunts form a
single group of tUene the word for mother is kara
or ya, that there is no connection between the
words for Geschwister and cousins. In short, the
Hawaiian generation principle does not apply.

What Mr. Thomas' schedules from eight tribes
illustrate once more is the overwhelming impor-
tance of historical, geographical and linguistic
considerations. A cursory examination of the
lists shows that not only the mode of classifying
kin but the words themselves are identical in a
number of cases in two or more tribes. Thus,
mama is grandmother in Karanko, Susu, Vai and
Mendi. It is surely no accident that all of these
belong to the same prefixless subdivision of the
Sudanese languages: the similarity is due to
historical relations. In some cases an identical
word is shared by members of distinct subdivi-
sions. Thus, the father's sister is called ntene not
only in the non-prefixing Susu and Koranko
speech, but also in the prefixing language of the
Tinme. A glimpse at Mr. Thomas' map shows,

[117]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

however, that the habitat of the Timne adjoins
that of both of the other tribes ; a kinship nomen-
clature is, in a measure, a function of geograph-
ical position.

The last-mentioned term is suggestive in an-
other way. Restricted among the Koranko and
Susu to the father's sister, it is applied by the
Timne to the maternal aunt as well. Turning
once more to the map, we discover that this latter
mode of grouping, though not the same word
phonetically, occurs among the Bulem, the im-
mediate coastal neighbors of the Timne, who
belong to the same linguistic subdivision, and
also to the Mendi and Vai, to the east and south-
east, who are members of the complementary
subdivision. So far, this only indicates the
spread of a terminological trait over a continuous
area. But the data further suggest that the word
ntene may have been borrowed by the Timne
rather than in the reverse direction, and that, as
Mr. Thomas himself remarks, the Timne secon-
darily extended the term to include a maternal as
well as a paternal aunt. This possibility is the-
oretically significant, first, because it indicates
that Hawaiian analogies may develop inde-
pendently of any such generation principle as
dominates the Oceanian system; secondly, be-
cause it suggests that such simplicity of nomen-

[ii8]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

clature, instead of being primitive as Morgan
supposed, may represent a later development.
To this point we shall have to revert later.

The Dakota Principle. Let us now turn to that
principle which first a/oused Morgan's interest
and which since his time has occupied perhaps
more attention than any other, the classificatory
principle par excellence in Dr. Rivers* opinion,
which finds expression among such tribes as the
Iroquois and Dakota. Like the Hawaiian prin-
ciple, the Dakota alignment groups together, re-
gardless of proximity of relationship, members of
the same generation, but differs because in the
speaker's generation, the first ascending and the
first descending generations, it separates the pa-
ternal and the maternal line. Another way of
expressing the facts is to say that collateral and
lineal kin are merged irrespective of nearness of
relationship but with strict bifurcation of the
parental lines. Thus, in Dakota ^^ the father,
father's brother, father's father's brother's son,
father's father's father's brother's son's son are
all addressed at6; the mother, mother's sister,
mother's mother's sister's daughter are all called
ind. So far we have a classing together of kin
who in English are distinguished from one an-
other. But there is separation of kin whom we
class together, inasmuch as the mother's brother

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

is designated by a term distinct from that for
father's brother, viz., by dekcif and the father's
sister by a term differentiating her from the
mother's sister, viz.y by^^ *uwi. Now, relation-
ship is a reciprocal phenomenon, and accordingly
we may expect that all those whom I class to-
gether under the term ati or ind will address me
by a correlative term. Actually, we find that the
Dakota have a single word, mi tcinkci, for son,
brother's son (man speaking), father's brother's
son's son (man speaking), etc., and for sister's
son (woman speaking), mother's sister's daugh-
ter's son (woman speaking). To put the matter
into our own speech, for the sake of simplifica-
tion, those whom I call father and mother call
me son. If logic shall prevail, the data hitherto
cited involve the condition that the mother's
brother must not call his sister's son 'son', but
shall designate him by some distinct appellation
correlative only with the term dekci; and this
holds for the Dakota system where a man (not a
woman) calls the sister's son mit *iincka. Further
this term is also used by a woman addressing her
brother's son, a point to which I shall have to
return presently.

There are other logical implications in the
features already mentioned. If the term for
father embraces a number of other collateral rel-

[I20]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

atives, we must expect a corresponding fusion of
kin in the speaker's generation. This is exactly
what happens. Like many other primitive sys-
tems, that of the Dakota classifies brothers and
sisters according to relative seniority and the
speaker's sex, but the same terms are applied to
the other individuals who jointly designate the
same members of the next higher generation as
their fathers and mothers. In other words, a
considerable number of cousins, irrespective of
their varying degree, are classed with the brothers
and sisters. But certain other cousins are not so
classed: they are the offspring of the father's
sister and the mother's brother. Corresponding
exactly to the fact that sister's son (man speak-
ing) and brother's son (woman speaking) are
denoted by a single word, we have the correla-
tive phenomenon that the children of the pa-
ternal aunt and the maternal uncle are relatives
of a special order, the boys calling one another
t *ahd ci and the girls M kd ciy the girls calling
one another tee pqci and the boys citcS ci.

In short, so far as the three middle generations
are concerned, there is at least an approach to a
real system — ^a unified logical scheme by which
blood relatives are classified. If I am called
father by a group of people, they are my sons or
daughters; if I am their uncle, they are my

[121]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

nephews or nieces. In the former case, my sons
and daughters are their brothers and sisters; in
the latter my offspring are their cousins, with
various refinements of nomenclature that are
immaterial from a broader point of view.

The system is not perfect, because of the ter-
minology applied to the offspring of cousins. As
might be expected, a man regards the children of
those cousins whom he classes with his brothers
as brother's sons, i.e., from the foregoing scheme,
with his own sons. But contrary to what might
be expected, he puts into the same category the
sons of those male cousins designated by a dis-
tinctive term where we should expect a distinct
correlative designation. Even Herr Cunow, who
lays stress on the rational character of primitive
relationship systems, is obliged to admit that
there is inconsistency here.^*

It cannot be too strongly urged that a given
nomenclature is molded by disparate principles.
It is, therefore, worth while to point out that the
principle by which brothers and sisters are dis-
tinguished by seniority and the principle by
which Geschwister of the same sex use different
designations from those of opposite sex have no
functional relation whatsoever with the principle
by which collateral and lineal kin are merged.
Another trait of the Dakota system which is

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similarly independent of what I call the Dakota
principle is the differentiation in stem for voca-
tive and non-vocative usage or with the first,
second and third person. Thus, the mother is
addressed as ind, but 'his mother* is h4 ku, from
an entirely different root. Passing to the second
ascending generation, we find a Hawaiian feature
inasmuch as the principle of bifurcation no longer
holds, grandfathers of both sides being designated
by a common term. The Dakota case once more
shows that, as Professor Kroeber long ago
pointed out," every system is in reality a congeries
of systems or categories which must be analyti-
cally separated unless complete confusion is to
result. There is no Hawaiian system, no Dakota
system. But we can legitimately speak of the prin-
ciple of generations and the bifurcation principle
of merging collateral and lineal kin; and we can
speak, by conventional definition of the geo-
graphical terms employed, of Hawaiian and Da-
kota features to express these and only these
elements of the Hawaiian and Dakota nomen-
clatures.

To revert to the Dakota principle, as Morgan
points out,^^ the same principle has in part molded
the Iroquois system, and when we find that in
addition to the logically related elements the
apparently irrational classification of cousins'

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offspring is likewise common to the two termi-
nologies, the case for historical connection becomes
very strong. This becomes a certainty when we
find that in its essentials the principle finds ex-
pression in the system of the intermediate
Ojibwa, while among other Algonkian tribes and
among Siouan tribes other than the Dakota a
marked variant from the Dakota t5q>e makes its
appearance. In short, we have the Dakota
principle spread over a continuous region, which
is sharply separated from adjoining regions. It
has, then, developed in a single center in this
part of North America and has thence spread by
borrowing.

If we ignore the mode of designating 'cross-
cousins', i.e., cousins who are children of a
brother and a sister, and disregard certain other
deviations constituting sub-types, we get a very
much wider range of distribution for the Dakota
principle in North America. The neglect of
degree of kinship and the clear separation of the
maternal and paternal line in the middle gene-
rations are features characteristic, probably, of
the entire region east of the Mississippi and occur
also in the Mackenzie River district, among the
Tlingit and Haida of the Northwest Coast and
most of the Plains tribes, in a part of the Pueblo
territory (notably among the Hopi), and among

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the Miwok and adjacent populations in .Califor-
nia. Since we are not by any means familiar
with the kinship systems of the entire continent,
it is necessary to supplement this statement with
another indicating the regions where the Dakota
principle is actually known to be lacking. The
Dakota features are not found among the Es-
kimo, Nootka, Quileute, Chinook, various Salish
tribes, the Kootenai, the Plateau Shoshoneans,
nor in a large section of California to the north
and east of the Miwok, and they are also absent
from various Southwestern terminologies. The
glib assumption of many writers that all of North
America is characterized by a 'classificatory sys-
tem' on the Dakota plan, is demonstrably false.
The only reason for this belief is the historical
accident that Morgan was conversant with the
systems east of the Rocky Mountains and prac-
tically altogether ignorant of those of the Far
West, and that since his time no one has sys-
tematically presented the data for what to him
was a terra incognita.

Let us extend our search for evidences of the
Dakota principle to other regions.

For Mexico, the data are not very satisfactory
since we are obliged to rely on old Spanish
sources and cannot be sure that our authorities
were on the alert for differences from the familiar

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European nomenclature or always correctly rep-
resented what they did find. Thus, Dr. Paul
Radin, who has kindly compiled for me a Taras-
can list from Gilberti's Diccionario de la Lengua
Tarasca (1559), finds the children of the father's
brother and of the mother's brother classed with
the son and daughter (contrary to the generation
principle), but distinguished from the children
of the father's and mother's sister. This would
indicate a departure from both the Hawaiian and
the Dakota scheme. A bare suggestion of the
latter is found in a common term for father and
paternal uncle. The Nahuatl data supplied by
Molina in his Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana
(1571) show no difference between the paternal
and maternal aunts and uncles. This does not
apply to the Maya system reported by Beltran
in his Arte del Idioma Maya (1742), but here the
maternal and paternal uncle and aunt are not
only distinguished from each other, but also from
the father and mother, so that there is no merg-
ing of collateral and lineal lines in this generation.
Accordingly, it is somewhat surprising to find
that the children of a brother are classed with
one's own children (male speaking?) and that a
woman applies the same term to her sister's
children, in accordance with Dakota usage. A
very interesting feature of the Maya nomen-

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

clature is that differences in generation are con-
spicuously ignored in several instances. The
paternal grandfather is classed with the elder
brother, a single reciprocal term is used for
daughter's son and mother's father, one word
denotes the son's son and the younger brother.
For Central and South America the data, from
a cursory inspection, seem somewhat more ad-
equate, though we must eagerly await a more
thorough-going survey of this region than can at
present be offered. The Miskito of Nicaragua
call the mother's sister yaptislip, which is merely
a modification of yapti, mother, but while the
father's brother, urappia, is classed with the
step-father, he is distinguished from the father,
aisa. At all events, there is a distinctive term
for maternal uncle, tarti, and correlatively a
special designation, tubaniy for the sister's son
(man speaking). For the father's sister our
authority gives only a descriptive term: saura
may be the correlative term, but it is simply
translated 'brother's child'. Of the four terms
for cousin, one is descriptive (child of brother or
sister), two coincide with the regular words for
Geschwister, the fourth is unfortunately not
clearly defined so that its application to the cross-
cousin, which would conform to Dakota usage,
remains problematical. The terms of affinity are

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interesting inasmuch as the principle of reci-
procity appears here. Thus, dapna means both
father-in-law and son-in-law, and the same de-
scriptive expression, oddly enough, is applied to
the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in female
speech.^* The former instance of reciprocity recurs
among the Chibcha of Colombia and we may
thus have here another case of the geographical
localization of kinship features. The Chibcha
list supplied by one of Morgan's informants,^ im-
perfect though it is, records some suggestive
facts. The term for father's brother seems only
a variant of the word for father, and is clearly
distinct from that for maternal uncle. The desig-
nations for both kinds of aunt are doubtful. In
the speaker's generation 'parallel' male cousins,
i.e.f the sons of two brothers and of two sisters,
are grouped with brothers and distinguished from
cross-cousins, as they are in the Dakota system.
That a woman calls her father's sister's son by
the same term as her husband is a fact of some
theoretical importance since it suggests the pos-
sible occurrence of cross-cousin marriages.

From Martins' rather confusing Carib list we
may reasonably infer that the paternal uncle was
classed with the father in male speech and dis-
tinguished from the mother's brother. One of
three terms used by a man in designating his

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son coincides with that applied to a brother's
son, but differs from the word applied to the
sister's son. These are Dakota features; and
the peculiar statement that children of sisters
were allowed to marry while those of brothers
were not, coupled with the remark that Ge-
sckwisterkinder call one another brothers makes
us suspect that we have here merely an abortive
attempt to describe the difference between par-
allel and cross-cousins recognized on the Dakota
principle. The Tupi terminology furnished by
the same writer does not suggest the bifurcate
feature. Though a single word denotes the
father, his brother and other paternal kinsmen,
it seems to extend likewise to the corresponding
relatives on the mother's side. In the second
ascending generation the grandfather's brothers
and male cousins are classed with the grand-
father — a Hawaiian trait if both sides of the
family are meant to be included, but one com-
mon to most systems on the Dakota plan for the
middle generations.21 From the third great South
American family I can get no satisfactory evi-
dence of bifurcation on the Dakota plan. Ac-
cording to an accessible glossary of various Ara-
wak tongues, the Siusi is the only language that
discriminates between the paternal and maternal
uncle, and even here the former is also dis-

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

tinguished from the father, so that there is no
merging of collateral and lineal kin. Similarly,
the word for aunt is different from that for
mother; and here the principle of bifurcation is
completely discarded, since a single word de-
notes father's and mother's sister.^

Bifurcation may be a dominant feature of
systems which nevertheless differ markedly from
the Dakota nomenclature because of their
demarcation of collateral and lineal kin. Thus,
the Araucanians of Chile call the father chaOf the
father's brother wa/te, the mother's brother
huecu; the mother is nuque, her sister nuquentUf
the father's sister palu.^ Here the designation
of the maternal aunt is clearly derived from that
of the mother but we cannot tell whether this
merging is an ancient feature which appears in
other parts of the system or a recent develop-
ment. We learn from another source that the
brother's sons are differentiated from the
sister's,^ but unfortunately there is no state-
ment as to whether the former in male speech
and the latter in female speech are classed with
one's own sons.

Bifurcation without reduction of the collateral
lines is characteristic of the system of the Sipibo,
who inhabit the country about the Ucayali
River. Here the father is papa; the father's

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

brother eppa^ the maternal uncle cuca; the
mother tita^ her sister huasta^ the paternal aunt
yaya^ and of the three words for brother's son
{pia^ nusa, picha) none even remotely resembles
that for son, baque,^

To sum up the facts hitherto cited. If the
doctrine of the unity of the American race
depended on the uniformity of kinship termi-
nologies in the New World, it would have to be
mercilessly abandoned. Meager as are our data
for the area south of the United States, we can
find positive indications of nomenclatures with
Dakota features only among the Caribs and the
Chibcha, with occas'onal suggestions elsewhere.
The Tupi and Arawak systems are markedly
unforked; the Araucanian and Sipibo termi-
nologies are forked but non-merging. Taking
into account the large section of North America
already defined as lacking bifurcation with
merging, we thus have an immense territory in
America in which the Dakota principle does not
occur.

But, as the African facts cited above show,
the Dakota principle is not confined to a portion
of the Western Hemisphere. It is impossible
completely to define its distribution in various
parts of the globe, but the main regions must be
indicated. As Morgan pointed out on the basis

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

of Rev. Fison's information,^ the principle
occurs in the nomenclature of the Coastal
Fijians, and corroborative evidence has recently
been furnished.*^ Rivers has shown that the
typical Dakota principle appears in other parts
of Melanesia, often with a very interesting
additional feature in the designation of cross-
cousins, who are not only rigidly distinguished
from the parallel cousins but classed simultane-
ously as brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, e, g.,
in Guadalcanar.^ Bifurcation with merging of
collateral and lineal relatives also characterizes
at least some of the terminologies of New
Guinea.2* The same certainly holds for a large
portion of Australia, though almost everywhere
certain local refinements are apparent. Thus,
the Urabunna apply one term to the father and
the father's brothers, as might be expected. But
instead of merely separating the mother's sisters
from those of the father by grouping them with
the mother, there is an additional dichotomy
into the mother's elder sisters, luka^ who are
classed with the mother, and the mother's
younger sisters who are differentiated as nam-
uma. Corresponding differentiation occurs in
the speaker's generation, where the father's
elder sister's daughters are distinguished not
only from parallel cousins but from the father's

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younger sister's daughters. Nevertheless, the
essentials of the Dakota principle are manifest.*®

Here it is worth while to point out again how
misleading it is to treat accidentally associated
features of a given system as functionally cor-
related. The Urabunna system, like that of
other tribes, is not an organically unified whole.
Thus, over and above the usual trait of bifurcate
merging, we find the feature that a grandparent
and grandchild use a common term in addressing
each other. This reciprocity is often referred to
as characteristic of 'classificatory systems'. It
is nothing of the kind. In North America it
occurs precisely in systems lacking the classifica-
tory principle altogether. Apart from this,
there is no manifest connection between the
principles of grouping together relatives of
alternate generations and the principle of class-
ing under one head relatives of the same genera-
tion and side of the family. The mere fact that
kinsfolk are united whom we happen to sepa-
rate in nomenclature is a purely negative and
insufficient reason for postulating an essential
relationship between two modes of classification.

Finally, there are a number of Asiatic tribes
whose systems reveal the essentials of the
Dakota^ principle. At least a close approxima-
tion occurs in the nomenclature of the Gilyak of

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the Amur River country, where, except for the
grouping together of father's and mother's sister,
the two parental lines are kept apart while on
either side the customary merging takes place.'^
The system of the Tamil, as Morgan emphati-
cally pointed out, is almost identical with that
of the Seneca Iroquois.'^ The essential resem-
blance to this type of the Toda,^ Singhalese and
Vedda'^ terminologies has since been established.
We are here again confronted by a problem in
distribution that does not differ in principle from
ethnological problems relating to other phases of
culture. A sharply individualized feature is
found not like the Hawaiian principle practically
within the limits of a single continuous area but
in several diverse and remote regions of the
globe. It is impossible to hold with Morgan
that the similarity found is an index of racial
affinity unless we are willing to assume that the
Indians of the eastern United States are not
related at all to those west of the Rocky Moun-
tains. The principle of diffusion obviously
accounts for much. No one would hesitate to
assume that the Singhalese and Vedda systems
are connected and we should willingly regard
both as historically related to the nomenclature
of southern India. We might even be willing to
grant that the Melanesian and Australian

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

variants of the Dakota principle had the same
source of origin. But how can we explain the
predominance of the identical principle precisely
in the eastern regions of North America and its
absence in a great part of the Far West? And
how can we account for the African approxima-
tions to the same pattern? We seem to have an
independent evolution of the same highly
characteristic trait in at least three distinct
areas. Must we content ourselves with simply
accepting the data as irreducible ethnological
phenomena or can we carry .our analysis a step
further?

That the inclusiveness of terms which strikes
us in the systems sharing the Dakota principle is
somehow connected with the social divisions of
the tribes concerned has been repeatedly noted.
Even in his earlier, purely descriptive work
Morgan remarked that among the Iroquois clan
members were brothers and sisters as if children
of the same mother.^ Similarly among the
Tlingit we are told that a single word is applied
to the mother's sister and all other women of
the same moiety and generation.^® The Yakut
apply one term to any woman older than the
speaker and belonging to the same gens.^ Such
instances might easily be multiplied. It is there-
fore rather natural to look to a clan or gentile

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

system for the explanation of the *classificatory
feature*, i. e., of bifurcate merging.

This hypothesis, which has recently been
discussed by Swanton,^ was already advanced
only to be proved inadequate by Morgan him-
self. Taking the Seneca for illustration, where
descent is in the maternal line, Morgan shows
that the children of two sisters would indeed be
members of the same clan and hence clan
brothers and sisters but that this explanation no
longer holds for the children of two brothers.
By the law of exogamy these would be required
to marry into another clan and there is no reason
why their wives should belong to the same clan.
Hence the brothers' children will not be clan
brothers and sisters, yet, according to Seneca
terminology, the offspring of brothers no less
than of sisters are classed with own brothers and
sisters. Accordingly, the clan system — though
it has a definite place in Morgan's scheme of
evolution — ^is not regarded by him as the deter-
mining factor of the Seneca-Dakota principle.'^

But the objection vanishes if we accept the
theory that the Dakota principle arose as a
reflection not of a multiple clan system but of an
organization with exogamous moieties. This
theory, which to my knowledge was first devel-
oped by Tylor^ and has since been advocated by

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Rivers,*^ has obvious advantages. Even on the
simple clan hypothesis it is clear why the father's
brothers should be classed with the father and
separated from the maternal uncles, since the
latter by exogamy must belong to a different
clan. The term which we translate 'father'
would really be seen to mean 'male member of
the father's clan and generation'. With the
moiety theory the same facts are explained, but
also in addition the designations for other
relatives. To take again the Seneca instance,
the sons of two brothers must be members of the
same social division because with a dual organ-
ization the brothers are restricted to the same
division in the choice of a mate; hence it is
quite natural that the sons of brothers should
call one another brothers. Again, the difference
between parallel cousins and cross-cousins is
perfectly intelligible. The mother's brother's
and the father's sister's son can never be of my
moiety; if descent is matrilineal they belong to
my father's moiety, if patrilineal to my mother's.
Hence it is natural that they should not be
classed with my brothers who in either case are
my moiety-mates. This hypothesis also expleiins
features not yet referred to, but often found in
conjunction with those grouped under the head-
ing of the Dakota principle, e. g., the frequent

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

classification of the father's sister's husband with
the maternal uncle. Given exogamous moieties,
these relatives must belong to the same half of
society, to my own moiety if descent is maternal,
to my mother's if it is patrilineal. The Tylor-
Rivers theory thus explains very satisfactorily
the rather numerous features that jointly
constitute what I have called the Dakota princi-
ple; we can at once see that here is not an
arbitrary rule of classification but a definite
rationale.

However, it is worth noting that while the
moiety theory explains a number of traits better
and more simply than the hypothesis of multiple
clans or gentes of which it is a special form, the
latter is not in so bad a plight as Morgan would
have us believe. That I should call my father's
brothers and male cousins of the paternal line
'father' and my mother's sisters and female
cousins of the female line 'mother', follows
from the general hypothesis of exogamy no less
than from the moiety theory. The difficulty
urged is the grouping together of brothers' sons
who are not clansmen under a matrilineal
organization with sisters* sons who are.
But all terms of relationship are correlative:
the concept of elder brother is meaningless
without the correlated concept of younger

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

brother; so the very fact that I address my
father's brother as 'father* has as a necessary
consequence that he should address me as 'son'
regardless of whether his own son is in my clan.
Similarly, the fact that my father's brother's
son and I both address my own father as father
makes us brothers irrespective of clan affiliation.
Clan affiliation is still the primary determinant
since it fixes the connotation of the word trans-
lated 'father', while the other usages mentioned
are derivative applications. The objection that
naturally obtrudes itself is why the term for
father should be taken as the starting-point
rather than that for son or brother. The answer
lies in the fact that in a number of instances the
term for father has an emphatically clan or
gentile significance, being extended even to
father's clansmen of the speaker's generation,
as among the Crow and Arizona Tewa. Never-
theless, it cannot be denied that from the point
of view of summarizing the data comprised
under the caption of 'Dakota principle' or
intimately linked with them the moiety theory
is distinctly superior. Thus, the union of
father's sister's husband and mother's brother
under a single head does not follow from a
multiple clan or gentile organization but is
intelligible on the basis of a dual division.

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The weakness of the moiety theory lies in
another direction. In order that the dual
organization may fashion kinship nomenclature,
it must of course exist. Now it does occur in
Australia and Melanesia, though not universally,
and in part of North America, but it is lacking
in many regions of this continent and, so far as
I know, in Africa. If we derive the Dakota
principle exclusively from the dual organization
we are therefore obliged to assume either that
this institution once had a far wider range of
distribution or that the nomenclature it pro-
duced traveled independently of the moieties to
a considerable number of other peoples. This is
a difficulty that must be frankly recognized.

In this regard the exogamy hypothesis in the
broader sense enjoys an obvious superiority.
Exogamous kin groups occur both in southern
Africa and in many sections of America from
which exogamous moieties have never been
reported. Doubtless here, too, we must reckon
to a considerable extent with the effect of diffu-
sion, which repeatedly carried the Dakota
principle to non-exogamous tribes. Yet when
we apply the method of variation to the best-
studied regions of the globe, our confidence in
the essential correctness of the exogamy hypoth-
esis is considerably strengthened. In Oceania it

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

is the non-exogamous Polynesians who fail to
distinguish the maternal and paternal sides,
while the generally exogamous Melanesians
recognize the principle of bifurcation. In
North America, the non-exogamous tribes are
either bifurcating but fail to merge the col-
lateral and lineal lines or neither bifurcate nor
merge.^

Certain instances are especially illuminating
because they permit a refinement of the method
of variation by the practical or total elimination
of other factors to account for the phenomena.
Thus on the northwest coast of America we find
certain tribes like the Kwakiutl and Nootka
who are not organized in strictly exogamous
groups, and here neither merging nor bifurcation
occurs. "The terms for 'uncle' and 'aunt* refer
equally to the father's and mother's fraternity;"
and specific terms distinguish father and mother
from more remote kindred. When we compare
such systems with those of the more northern
and exogamous tribes, viz., the Tsimshian,
Haida and Tlingit, we discover at once a strik-
ing diflFerence. In all these terminologies men
of the father's are distinguished from those of
the mother's moiety or clan; and the collateral
lines are wholly, or almost entirely, merged in
the lineal lines.^ Here we are not dealing

[141]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

simply with a contact phenomenon, for no good
reason can be given why the Tlingit system
should not have extended southward or the
Kwakiutl system to the north. Nor are we
simply confronted by a diflFerence of tribal
affiliation: while the Kwakiutl and Nootka
belong to the same stock, and affinity has
recently been claimed for the Tlingit and Haida
languages, the Tsimshian stand apart. It is the
diflFerence in social organization that runs paral-
lel with the diflFerence in nomenclature.

A similar case is aflforded by the Shoshonean
stock. Within this family specific terms for
father and mother as opposed to uncles and
aunts are the rule and cross-cousins are generally
not distinguished from parallel cousins and
brothers. There is thus a combination of
extreme Hawaiian inclusiveness in the speaker's
generation with the tendency to non-classifica-
tory nomenclature in the first ascending genera-
tion. But among the Hopi, the only member of
the group organized into exogamous clans,
the Dakota principle holds sway. Since no
Southwestern system is known that so clearly
reveals the forked and merging principle, the
possibility of borrowing seems barred and we
have proof of the independent evolution of this
feature in correlation with a clan system.

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

So far, then, as the distribution of the Dakota
principle over discontinuous regions of the globe
IS concerned, the hypothesis of exogamy gives a
reasonably satisfactory explanation of the facts,
while within each continuous area we shall
assume a greater or lesser degree of dissemina-
tion. Applying this, e. g,y to the Northwestern
Indians as a whole, we shall indeed regard the
evolution of Dakota features as a response to
the exogamous organization, but when we turn
to the three exogamous tribes individually, we
shall face the problem whether the terminology
did not spread from one tribe to its two neigh-
bors. It is quite true that theoretically there is
the possibility that the clan system, not the ter-
minology, was the diffused feature and that the
organization in each case independently pro-
duced an appropriate nomenclature. However,
we have undoubted instances in which features
of nomenclature were not associated with any
social institution, indeed, where the very words
have been borrowed. Further the development
of an appropriate terminology is not an absolute-
ly automatic process, as is shown by the failure
of some tribes with exogamy to develop one.
Hence it seems probable that within a limited
continuous area the Dakota principle developed
only once and then spread to neighboring tribes.

[143]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

That the existence of an exogamous organiza-
tion among the borrowers would be a favorable
condition for the adoption of the nomenclature
is obvious, also that the organization and the
terminology may be borrowed jointly.

In order to strengthen the case for the exoga-
mous theory it is necessary to show that the same
results could not be accomplished, or not so
well, by other conditions of equally wide dis-
tribution. As a matter of fact, an alternative
interpretation has recently been advanced.** In
the case of the non-exogamous Califomian Yahi
Dr. Sapir connects the merging of Imeal and
collateral lines with the marriage regulations
obtaining there and suggests that these rules
"may no doubt not infrequently be examined as
an equally or more plausible determining
influence". The practices referred to comprise
the levirate, i. e., a man's marriage with his
brother's widow, and marriage with the deceased
wife's sister. (Why, deceased? we may well ask Dr.
Sapir, since a man's preemptive right to his wife's
younger sisters is a widespread custom in North
America.)

I do not doubt for a moment that the customs
in question have affected kinship nomenclature,
but I seriously question whether they constitute
an adequate substitute for exogamy as an inter-

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

pretation of the empirical distribution of the
Dakota principle. The levirate, it is true, is an
exceedingly widespread institution : Tylor found
it among one hundred and twenty out of some
three hundred peoples.^ But the levirate alone
will not do since it only explains the extension of
the father term to the father's brother and the
correlative extension of the term *son' to the
brother's son (man speaking). It remains to be
seen, therefore, to what extent the levirate is
united in different regions of the globe with the
usage of marryinig two or more sisters, which
would further explain the classification of
mother's sister with mother and of the sister's
children with the children (woman speaking).
So far as I know, the ra^ge of the two usages
jointly has not been ascertained; pending its
determination, the distribution of the Dakota
principle is not accounted for, as it approximately
is by exogamy.

There are certain other objections to the
levirate hypothesis. One of them was already
urged by Morgan, who examined it under the
heading of polygamy and polyandry, which
together might obviously lead to the same results
as the Yahi usages.^ These customs do not
necessarily take in the entire population. A
man nxay not have a brother to inherit his

[1451

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

widow, nor have all women sisters to join or
follow them in wedlock. On the other hand,
clan or gentile affiliation is an automatic affair
not touched by such contingencies.

Further, we may ask, what is really explained
by the Yahi rules? The relationships of paternal
uncle and maternal aunt and their discrimina-
tion from the mother's brother and father's
sister are certainly accounted for; and correla-
tively, the distinction between the offspring of
such relatives. But though discussion has
hitherto for simplicity's sake been mainly
restricted to these nearer kindred, the Dakota
principle involves far more remote relatives. It
is not only the father's brother but the father's
father's brother's son and the greatgrand-
father's brother's son's son that are classed with
the father; not only the mother's sister but the
mother's mother's sister's daughter and mother's
mother's mother's sister's daughter's daughter
that are classed with the mother. No doubt an
explanation can be patched together on the
levirate-polygyny hypothesis. Since my father
is brother to my father's father's brother's son,
the latter is my potential father under the
levirate rule, and so forth. But even with the
multiple clan or gentile hypothesis, the facts are
more directly explained. From this point of

[146]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

view the relative in question is simply a father's
clansman with paternal descent, while with
matrilineal descent the designations for the
mother's mother's sister's daughter et al, are at
once clear. The moiety theory, of course,
accounts for all the relevant data in the simplest
manner.

It is, indeed, manifest that the levirate-
polygyny rule stands to the exogamous principle
somewhat in the relation of a part to the whole
or of a special instance to a broader principle.
Assume exogamous divisions, and my wife
becomes ipso facto my brother's potential wife
while my wife's sisters are my and my brothers'
potential wives even though marriage be never
actually consummated except monogamously.
Incidentally, it is by no means certain that in
reported cases the levirate is limited to the real
brother or the multiple sister marriages to own
sisters; indeed, in some cases the reverse is
stated, cousins or members of the same clan or
gens being expressly included. With the dual
organization the case is especially clear. The
kinship terms then appear simply as status
names. I am brother to those who are potential
husbands of the same group of women and since
all of us males occupy this common status there
is correlatively a single term by which all of us

[1471

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

are called by our children. The status assump-
tion is supported by such facts as the Gilyak
rule by which men of a gens must take wives
from a particular gens and where the gentes as
units are regarded as standing to each other in
the relationship of father-in-law and son-in-law.*'

In short, where the levirate-polygyny usages
coexist with exogamy, it would be rash to derive
a merging and bifurcate nomenclature from the
former rather than from the latter.

Still another objection is implied in Dr.
Sapir's own statement of the case. It is not
necessary for the natives to look at the levirate
from the point of view hitherto assumed. In-
stead of defining the paternal uncle in terms of
his potential fatherhood, they may have a word
distinct from that for father to designate the
stepfather and the paternal uncle. Dr. Sapir
cites the Upper Chinook by way of illustration.
In other words, the action of the levirate is
equivocal. It may aflFect nomenclature so as to
produce the semblance of the Dakota principle,
but it may also produce quite diflFerent results.
It may also fail to aflFect terminology at all, as
apparently is the case in Semitic languages with
their descriptive nomenclature.

In this connection a qualification must be made
that applies equally to the exogamy hypothesis.

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Though the ultimate cause of a terminological
feature be the levirate, the immediate cause
in a given instance may well be an historico-
geographical one. If the Chinook nomen-
clature is diflFerently aflFected by the levirate
from that of the Yahi, the proximate reason
may be simply the fact that the Chinook
did not come into contact with the same
peoples as the Yahi and thus had no chance
to borrow their nomenclature. In other words,
admitting an influence of the levirate, it is not
necessary to assume that it has repeatedly
produced the same terminological eflFects inde-
pendently.

I know of at least one instance in which the
hypothesis advanced by Dr. Sapir seems definitely
excluded, leaving exogamy in the field as the
efficient cause. The Hopi system conforms to
the essentials of the Dakota type, but neither
the levirate nor the marriage with two sisters is
in vogue. It cannot be argued that the Dakota
features were borrowed from some other South-
western tribe possessing these usages, first,
because the Dakota features are far more highly
developed among the Hopi than among other
Pueblo Indians; secondly, because it is very
doubtful whether the practices in question occur
among other Pueblo tribes.^

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In justice to Dr. Sapir it must be pointed out
that he does not advance his hypothesis as a
general interpretation of the phenomena. As
he suggests, it is most serviceable where the
exogamous factor does not occur, or, as I should
add, where diffusion of features from a system
affected by exogamy seems improbable. I have
examined his hypothesis as if it were designed to
account for all the relevant phenomena simply
in order to bring out clearly its inferiority from
this point of view to the theory of exogamy.

There are two series of cases which strongly
corroborate the theory of the effect of the
exogamous organization on the kinship nomen-
clature. They constitute a distinct variant of
the Dakota principle, the deviation being in the
designation of cross-cousins. While these are
still differentiated from parallel cousins, they
are not placed together in a single category but
are classed, one group of cousins with the first
ascending and the complementary group with
the first descending generation. In short, the
generation factor which is fundamental in the
Hawaiian scheme and only modified by dichot-
omy ,in the usual type of bifurcate merging
schemes is here overridden by some other factor.
Now what is the nature of this new determinant?
Let us look at the facts.

. [150]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

The Hidatsa class the father's sister's son with
the father and the father's sister's daughter and
all her female descendants through females to
infinity with the father's sister; correlatively,
the mother's brother's son, in the absence of
special words for nephew or niece, is classed
with the son, even by women. That the Crow
scheme is almost identical, is readily intelligible
from the historical relations of the two tribes,
who speak very similar languages of the Siouan
stock. But the essentials of the classification
reappear among the geographically, linguisti-
cally, and culturally remote Hopi, with sugges-
tions of similar features among the Tlingit and
even in Melanesia. We are again confronted
with a puzzling problem of distribution.

An analysis of the Hidatsa data clarifies the
situation. According to the statements of the
natives themselves, the term 'father' is applied
to any father's clansman irrespective of age and
would accordingly include the father's sister's
son. This suggests that the clue to the entire
situation may lie in the clan feature. As a matter
of fact, we find the daughter of the father's
sister's son is not classed with the daughter of
the father's sister's daughter. The only difference
that can be connected with this distinction is
that in clan membership: the former relative,

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

owing to the exogamous clan system, can never,
and the latter relative always must, belong to the
father's sister's clan. Hence the former, being
a father's sister's son's, i,e., a 'father's', daughter,
becomes in Hidatsa speech a sister, while the
latter is designated by a word translated 'pater-
nal aunt' but really embracing likewise all the
lower generations of females in the paternal
clan. That we are dealing with the clan factor,
is corroborated by the fact that in Hidatsa
terminology the mother's brother, instead of
being designated by a specific word, is classed
with the elder brother, a term also applied to
the mother's mother's brother. The last-
mentioned kinsman may be similarly addressed
in Hopi.

Powerful corroborative evidence is supplied
by a second series of facts. Among the Omaha,
where descent is reckoned in the paternal line,
the father's sister's daughter is no longer classed
with the father's sister but with the sister's
daughter. These, it may be noted incidentally,
would belong to the same division if the moieties
of the Omaha were at one time exogamous, for
which there is some evidence. But the essential
point is that here the mother's brother's son
and all his male descendants through males are
indiscriminately classed with the maternal

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

uncle. It is clear that they are all members of
the same gens, and corresponding to our Hidatsa
experiment we find that as soon as we pass out-
side the gens the terminology changes: my
mother's brother's daughter's son is not my
maternal uncle but my brother since his mother,
the uncle's daughter, is called 'mother',
belonging as she must to my mother's gens.**
The Omaha phenomena are absolutely paral-
leled not only among other Southern Siouans but
also among a number of Algonquians, viz,, the
Miami, Sauk and Fox, Kickapoo, Menomini and
Shawnee. The area covered is an absolutely
continuous one, and it is impossible not to ex-
plain such adistribution by diffusion. This conclu-
sion is accentuated by the fact that the Ojibwa,
though an Algonquian people with a gentile
system, do not share the Omaha variant of the
Dakota scheme but conform to the more usual
type found among their neighbors, the Dakota.
The mere presence of a gentile organization,
though doubtless a favorable basis for the
development or adoption of the Omaha scheme,
is not the only determining condition; the
presence of terminological features in a particular
tribe is also a function of its geographical posi-
tion or historical connections. This does not
interfere with the ultimate interpretation of

[153I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

such features but it shows the necessity of
taking into account the geographico-historical
situation. At present I cannot suggest what
may have been the differential condition that
produced the Hidatsa variant among some
tribes with a clan system but not among the
Iroquois: or the Omaha variant among certain
Algonquian tribes but not the Ojibwa.

The exogamy hypothesis, with special reference,
to the phenomena just mentioned, has recently
been discussed by Professor Kroeber.^ He
accepts the empirical correlation between exog-
amy and the merging of lineal and collateral
kin with bifurcation of the parental lines, but
interprets it as due rather to the differentiation
of male and female lines of descent than to
exogamy itself, which latter he regards as
'perhaps a common but not necessary develop-
ment, and an overlying development of the
former*. "The basic condition," argues Dr.
Kroeber, * 'would be that in which a woman would
be felt to be a very different thing from a man in
relationship — less perhaps as an existing indi-
vidual than as a factor in the relations of other
people. Once this point of view prevailed,
cross-cousins would necessarily be felt to be
something very different from parallel cousins,
and cross-uncles and aunts from parallel ones;

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

and the distinction would find expression in
nomenclature." Accentuation of the male and
female lines of descent with greater weighting of
the one would possibly lead to clan groups.

As a theory of the origin of exogamous groups
I have no particular objection to offer to the
foregoing. For reasons to be stated below (p.
163) I heartily concur in the assumption that
the family, in America at all events, preceded
the clan or gens. If I understand him correctly,
Dr. Kroeber's remarks merely paraphrase the
fact of this sequence. But I do not see that
acceptance of his view on this point involves a
rejection of the influence of the clan when that
has once developed. Of course it is not directly
exogamy that is expressed but the alignment in
groups which exogamy brings about. On Dr.
Kroeber's assumption it is unintelligible why
father's sister's son and mother's brother's son
should so frequently be classed together since
the one is clearly related through the father, the
other through the mother. We can hardly
credit the native mind with a tendency to alge-
braic equalization of a plus and minus quantity
by which the product of a male and a female
relationship shall be standardized by a common
designation. Generally speaking. Dr. Kroeber's
factors explain only bifurcation but not merging.

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

The fact that even remote father's cousins are
grouped with the father is what the clan or
gentile hypothesis explains over and above the
dichotomy of relatives. That such merging
occurs among tribes with definite exogamous
groups, and generally not in loosely organized
ones, can hardly be an accident. Dr. Kroeber's
case is, however, weakest as regards the Hidatsa
and Omaha variants of the Dakota scheme. If
'unilaterality of descent' rather than clan or
gentile affiliation is the determinant here, then
why is the Hidatsa variant uniformly found
among matrilineal tribes and the Omaha variant
uniformly with a gentile system? In other
words, why does not the Omaha call his father's
sister's son 'father' and his father's sister's
daughter 'aunt'? The cross-cousins in question
are as clearly related to me through the father
among the Omaha as among the Hidatsa, but in
the former case they are not, and in the latter
they necessarily are, my father's clansfolk.
Similarly, the mother's brother's son and his
male offspring are as emphatically related to me
through my mother among the Hidatsa as any-
where, but they are not aligned in the same
social group with one another and they are not
classed together in terminology. For the sake
of clearness I will, at the risk of repetition,

[156]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

formulate what I consider the probable course
of events. Among certain loosely organized
tribes the bifurcation of immediate kin evolved,
as we find it among a number of our Far Western
tribes. This tendency was amplified and
became superseded by a definite clan or gentile
scheme. As this scheme developed, possibly as
a part of its growth, kinship terminology became
not only forked but more inclusive as well.
Finally, the fully established organization was
able, in certain instances to exert the extreme
retro-active influence on nomenclature revealed
in the Hidatsa and Omaha variants.

In his extremely valuable paper on Miwok
organization^^ Mr. Gifford also suggests a rival
explanation in place of exogamy. The Miwok
of California are organized in approximately
exogamous moieties, and their nomenclature
bears some resemblance to that of the Omaha.
More particularly is the mother's brother's son
(and his male descendants through males?)
classed with the mother's brother. According
to Mr. Gifford, this is due to the custom of a
man marrying, either polygamously or after his
wife's decease, the daughter of his wife's brother.
This form of marriage is actually practised
among the Miwok in addition to the more
generally diffused marriage with the mother's

[1571

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

brother's daughter. Obviously, the facts of
terminology are consistent both with this usage
and with the moiety principle. Mr. Gifford
objects that among the Miwok "there are no
clan or moiety brothers and sisters, all relation-
ship being based on blood and marriage ties."
This, however, is not the essential point. It
does not matter whether the unrelated members
are called brother or sister provided they are
aligned together in the same social group; the
very existence of such social groups implies a
differential attitude towards fellow-members as
compared with the rest of the tribe. That mere
affiliation along moiety lines does not solve all
the mysteries of Miwok terminology, is quite
true since a sharp distinction is drawn between
the mother's brother's daughter and the father's
sister's daughter. Since both these relatives are
eligible mates from the point of view of exogamy
while as a matter of fact marriage with the
paternal aunt's daughter is prohibited, Mr.
Gifford's objection seems to be sustained. That
is to say, here the social organization explains
the classing together of certain relatives but not
the exclusion of certain other relatives, while
the specific marriage regulations of the tribe do
account for this phenomenon. But on the other
hand, the marriage rules fail where the moiety

[158]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

hypothesis succeeds. Why are the mother's
younger sister, who cannot be married, and the
father's brother's wife classed with the marriage-
able cross-cousin and the wife's brother's
daughter unless it is because they are all mem-
bers of the same moiety?

So far as the merging of a maternal uncle's male
descendants through males with the uncle himself
is concerned, I do not see how any marriage rule
would directly explain the extension of the term
ad infinitum while moiety alignment at once
renders it intelligible. An advantage which the
exogamous principle enjoys over every special
marriage rule is the universality of its sway
over the population. An individual's wife may
not have a brother and her brother may not
have a daughter for the husband to marry, but
where exogamous groups exist every tribesman
is by birth a member of a particular group.

To the subject of specific marriage rules I
shall have to revert below. My position as to
the Miwok nomenclature is that special regula-
tions undoubtedly account for some of its
features while the dual organization successfully
explains others and more particularly the Omaha
variant of the Dakota principle.

We may sum up our discussion of the Dakota
principle with the statement that its distribu-

[159I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

tion, coupled as it is with exogamous groups,
supports the theory of an organic connection
between the two phenomena. On the question
which I have hitherto shelved, viz., whether it
is exogamy in any form or more particularly the
dual organization that gave rise to the features
under discussion, I am at present unable to
reach a definite decision. Though the distribu-
tion of the moiety is far more restricted than
that of exogamous groups generally, there is no
doubt that not a few elements of the Dakota
principle are most readily derived from a dual
organization. It remains for the future to
determine what is the relative part taken by
the multiple kin group and the moiety organiza-
tion in fashioning kinship nomenclature.

Before leaving the Dakota principle, it seems
desirable to allude to two important theoretical
problems with which it seems connected — ^its
relations to the Hawaiian principle and its bearing
on the antiquity of the clan organization. The
Dakota scheme in its more usual form may be
logically regarded as merely a complication of
the simpler Hawaiian one. As Morgan pointed
out, the two coincide in practically half of all
the relationships. Inspired no doubt by the
general trend of evolutionary thought in his
day, Morgan converted the logical connection

[i6o]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

into an historical sequence and assumed the
priority of the simpler system. He indicated
how, if grafted on the Hawaiian scheme, the
clan or gentile organization would transform it
into the Dakota type. It does not seem to have
occurred to him that the evolution might have
taken place in the reverse direction. Develop-
ment, as shown precisely by linguistic phenom-
ena, such as the history of the English language
— and kinship terms, no matter what else they
may be, are elements of human speech — is not
always from the simple to the complex. Mor-
gan's belief was influenced by the view that
humanity started their social existence at an
extremely low level, for which opinion he found
support in the social conditions he inferred from
the Hawaiian schedules. These, he argued,
suggest brother-sister marriage since such mar-
riages would explain the use of the same term
for mother's brother and father. Such unions
certainly would produce the observed termi-
nology but Morgan failed to consider that an
alternative explanation was at hand. His
fundamental error lay in attaching to the
primary kinship terms of the Hawaiians and
other peoples the notion of actual cohabitation.
From this starting-point he consistently argued
that all men addressed as father had actual

[i6i]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

access to the speaker's mother. As Cunow has
well shown,*^^ there is not a tittle of evidence
that this represents the native point of view,
from which the term 'father' merely indicates
tribal status with reference to the speaker.
When we have once recognized this fact, there is
nothing so intrinsically primitive in the Hawai-
ian scheme of ranging kin as to demonstrate
hoary antiquity.

All empirical considerations, indeed, point in
the opposite direction. For one thing, all the
peoples whose systems are characterized by the
Hawaiian feature rank relatively high in the
scale of civilization. No one would dream of
placing the Maori culture below that of, say,
the Fijians. Secondly, we have the most power-
ful circumstantial evidence from distinct quarters
of the globe to prove that Hawaiian features
develop secondarily within the Dakota scheme.
Thus, among some Iroquois tribes, the tendency
has developed to call the father's as well as the
mother's sister 'mother'. The Crow differ
from all other Siouan tribes, even from their
closest relatives, the Hidatsa, in similarly extend-
ing the word for mother in direct address.
Among the Torres Straits Islanders a corre-
sponding change of usage was recorded by Dr.
Rivers,*^ and similar developments seem to have

[162]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

occurred among the Gilyak." Relevant data
from West Africa have already been cited in
another connection.

All this does not prove that as a general
proposition Morgan's sequence must simply be
inverted. For this there is no evidence in North
America, where complete Hawaiian schemes, or
even approximations thereto, are lacking. But
the data at our disposal do indicate that in so
far as a tendency toward Hawaiian elements
appears it is often due to secondary development.

To turn next to the problem of the exogamous
kin group. Some theoretical writers have
assumed the priority of the clan or gens to the
'loose*, i. e., clanless or non-gentile, organiza-
tion in which the family and local group usually
form the only important social units. To sup-
port such a view appeals have sometimes been
made to kinship nomenclatures. So far as
North America is concerned, this argument is
certainly without foundation. It was Dr.
Swanton, I think, who first showed that in
North America the exogamous system is found
precisely among the more highly cultured tribes
while generally speaking it is lacking among the
more primitive peoples. Now as I have shown
above, exogamy in North America largely goes
hand in hand with the Dakota principle. It is

[163]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

therefore rather remarkable that the more
primitive clanless North American tribes of th^
Plateau and neighboring regions also lack the
Dakota principle. The suggestion sometimes
offered that a clan or gentile system has once
existed and simply eluded the field worker's
scrutiny on account of the degeneration of
aboriginal life under modern conditions thus
breaks down. We cannot argue positively that
where the Dakota principle reigns exogamy
must necessarily have occurred, because the
correlation, while high, is not perfect and because
the principle may have been borrowed without
the social organization. But an exogamous
organization is so frequently associated with the
Dakota principle and there is so little reason for
a change of kinship terminology provided the
native language is preserved that the total lack
of Dakota features over a wide area may be
regarded as exceedingly strong evidence against
the former or at least ancient existence of
exogamous groups.

Supposed Features of 'Classificatory* Systems,
Under the misnomer 'classificatory systems'
some writers have included consideration of the
principle of differentiating elder and younger
brothers and sisters. The distribution of this
distinction is simply staggering when one

[164]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

attempts to trace it more or less systematically.
Of North American systems, I can offhand
recall only two, the Pawnee and Kiowa, in
which it does not appear. We find it in associa-
tion with the Hungarian and Chukchee termi-
nologies, both of which lack the Dakota principle,
and it occurs with the Hawaiian no less than the
vast majority of bifurcate systems. So far as I
know, the only one who has offered any explana-
tion of the phenomenon is Dr. Rivers, who once
connected it with a difference in the time of
tribal initiation.^ But since there are many
peoples, e.g., in North America, who do not
practise any form of tribal initiation, the
hypothesis hardly seems tenable and we must
rest content to accept the facts of distri-
bution.

Another feature that is often erroneously
treated in association with the Dakota principle
is that of reciprocity, which has already been
referred to as the usage of designating a pair of
relatives, more particularly two belonging to
different generations, by a single term. Thus,
the Shoshone call the mother's father and the
daughter's son (man speaking) by one term.
Such usage would be manifestly opposed to the
Hawaiian principle with which it does not seem
to be associated. It is found in connection with

[165]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the Dakota scheme in Melanesia and particu-
larly in Australia, but is markedly absent from
the merging systems of North America. Since
here it is highly developed where the Dakota
principle does not occur, it cannot be regarded
as an essential element of 'classificatory sys-
tems'. The question remains how we are to
account for the facts of distribution. Australian
data forcibly suggest that, there at least, the
reciprocal feature is a reflection of social organ-
ization. Grandparents and grandchildren, by
the curious rule of descent that regulates
affiliation with the matrimonial classes of the
area, are necessarily in the same class, i. e,, a
father's father and a son's son or a mother's
father and a daughter's son (man speaking) are
fellow-members of a class. The fit seems too
close to admit of an accidental association. But
when we turn to the North American region of
reciprocal features the interpretation no longer
holds since no vestige is found there of any
institution that might align the relatives under
discussion in a common group. The inference is
that there has been convergent development,
and perhaps the most plausible explanation of
the North American terms is that they are
designations not so much of the relatives as of
the relationship itself.^®

[166]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

If we cannot give more than this general inter-
pretation of the reciprocal feature as found in
North America, we can on the other hand show
quite definitely that its occurrence is a function
of geographical position there. The practical
absence of this trait in the immense region
particularly dealt with by Morgan is as remark-
able as its spread over a practically continuous
region in the Far West, among the Lillooet,
Spokane, Kootenai, Nez Perc6, Wishram, Ta-
kelma, and various Californian and Shoshonean
Plateau populations, as well as in a considerable
number of Southwestern tribes. The Pacific,
Plateau and Southwestern regions obviously
define the distribution of reciprocity in North
America, which thus becomes intelligible only
through diffusion.

Various Features. The principles of kinship
nomenclature that have been treated hitherto
are far from exhausting the variety found in a
survey of the world. A very odd mode of
addressing relatives after presentation of a gift
has been mentioned for the Masai (p. 104), and
there is little doubt that more extensive knowl-
edge will reveal equally quaint notions else-
where. Here I merely wish to enumerate a few
examples from the particular point of view
assumed in this chapter.

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CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

It is a remarkable fact that while in Australia
the principle of bifurcation is consistently carried
to the grandparental stratum of society in
conjunction with the reciprocal feature, the
North American region in which the Dakota
principle is especially prominent lacks the dis-
tinction between mother's and father's parents,
so that Morgan does not even dedicate special
columns to these relationships in his elaborate
schedules and notes the discrimination with
some surprise for the Spokane.^ This feature is
nevertheless widely spread in the Far West,
coinciding to some extent with that of reci-
procity. We find it among Salish and Sho-
shonean tribes, in California, among the Takelma
and Wishram, and to some extent in the South-
west. Both the positive and the negative facts of
distribution indicate the occurrence of diffi|sion.

The change of terms after the death of a
connecting or other relative is another feature of
considerable interest. Thus, the Kawaiisu of
California address the father as tnuwuni, but by
the quite distinct term kuguni after the loss of
a child.^ Again, the Kootenai have one word
for the father-in-law before and another after
the wife's or husband's death. This peculiarity
appears also among Califomian tribes, the
Chinook, Quileute, and several Salish tribes.

[168]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

This distribution again demonstrates diffusion
from a common center. On the other hand, the
probably even higher development of post-
mortem nomenclature among the Timucua of
Florida'* cannot be ascribed, in the present
state of our knowledge, to anything but inde-
pendent origin, though we are not in a position
to state what common cause, lacking in the inter-
vening area, produced the common effect in the
southeastern United States and in the remote
regions of the Far West.

I will only call attention to one other kinship
usage of more general interest, that embraced in
the term 'teknonymy', the custom of denoting
an individual in terms of his relationship to a
child, viz.y 'father of Mary', 'grandmother of
John'. This practice exists in South Africa and
India,^ in Melanesia,®^ and in the Pueblo area
and on the Northwest coast of North America.®^
Tylor connected it with the custom of the
husband's residence with his wife's kin, of the
father's assertion of his paternity and his ulti-
mate recognition as more than a stranger by the
wife's family with whom a condition of cere-
monial avoidance obtains. However, it should
be noted that among the Zuiii and the Hopi,
though the husband lives with his wife's people,
there is no parent-in-law taboo, and the wife is

[169]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

as often referred to teknonymously as the hus-
band. Thus, my Hopi interpreter always spoke
to me of his wife as 'Herman's mother'. Tylor's
explanation is accordingly inadequate and would
seem to require at least amplification. But
'whatever result a systematic survey of the
subject may lead to, it is certain that the effect
of diffusion will have to be taken into account.
It is inconceivable, e. g., that the practice
originated independently among tribes so geo-
graphically situated and so intimately related
in culture as the Zufii and Hopi.

Special Forms of Marriage and Social Customs.
There can be little doubt that a well-established
marriage rule often finds expression in nomen-
clature. Even the exogamous principle can be
brought under this head since it expresses the
potential matrimonial status of members of the
community. In a dual organization my 'father'
is one who potentially, if not actually, is a mate
of women of my mother's group, while a 'moth-
er's brother' is one who can under no condition
occupy that status.

Of the specific forms of marriage the levirate
has already been considered and the cross-cousin
marriage briefly mentioned. Dr. Rivers has
demonstrated the close dependence of nomen-
clature on the latter practice in Melanesia. Here

[170I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

the custom itself is found in full swing, and it
would be unreasonable to deny that the termi-
nology had its origin in this usage even in parts of
Melanesia where it cannot be observed. This
does not mean that cross-cousin marriage neces-
sarily obtained throughout the range of distribu-
tion of the corresponding terminology but that
the terminology spread from a center where it
reflected the social institution. Thus, in Gua-
dalcanar the cross-cousin marriage still persists
and we find cross-cousins, brothers-in-law and
sisters-in-law comprised under a single appella-
tion. In Anaiteum, cross-cousins of opposite sex
address one another by the terms used for hus-
band and wife.^ It seems to me methodologically
quite justifiable to interpret similar features in
neighboring islands as having their ultimate ori-
gin in cross-cousin marriage. But the argument
fails where similar connotations of terms occur
without evidence of the msirriage rule unless it
can be demonstrated that no other cause could
have produced the result. Thus, I must consider
unsuccessful Dr. Rivers* attempt to deduce,
though with qualifications, the former existence
of the institution in question from the system of
the Dakota Indians.®* The classification of
brothers-in-law with cross-cousins might be
simply a reflection of the dual organization, by

[171]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

which these relatives would fall within the same
group; or, to put it differently, if the term cross-
.cousin is given the wide significance with which
we are familiar in primitive systems, so as to
include members of the opposite moiety and one's
own generation, a man's brothers-in-law are
necessarily members of the cross-cousin class.
The superiority of the moiety hypothesis in this
instance lies in the fact that the dual organiza-
tion occurs among several contiguous and re-
lated tribes while the cross-cousin marriage is
extremely rare in North America and its highest
development occurs among remote peoples of the
Pacific region. Regarding special forms of mar-
riage, it is rather important to ascertain whether
the terms used by our authorities are to be inter-
preted in our own or in the more inclusive prim-
itive sense. For example, Tylor reduced the in-
stitution of cross-cousin marriage to the principle
of exogamous moieties by assuming the wider
significance.^ As Dr. Rivers points out,^ the two
rules are not identical if marriage is prescribed
with the own daughter of the own mother's
brother. In that case, the moiety rule is only
a larger framework with which the specific in-
stitution is not incompatible but which does not
determine cross-cousin marriage. Looking at the
matter chronologically, I can even conceive the

[172]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

development of larger social groups from such
specific marriage regulations. If in the absence
of an own cross-cousin, a more remote cousin
comes to be regularly substituted, we should have
a whole class of possible mates, of whom the near-
est cross-cousin would be only primus inter pares.
It must be understood that while special mar-
riage regulations, like exogamy, tend to be mir-
rored in nomenclature, there is no absolute ne-
cessity for this occurrence. As the New Mexican
Tewa have exogamous groups without the Da-
kota principle, so the Miwok of California have
the cross-cousin marriage with little or no indi-
cation of it in terminology.*' One factor that
must always be considered in this connection is
the time element. A recently acquired custom
may not yet have developed an appropriate
nomenclature, while, as Morgan supposed, the
nomenclature may survive after the custom has
become obsolete. That the frequency of mar-
riage according to a certain rule, and the co-
existence of other rules, possibly antagonistic
in their effects, must have an influence, is ob-
vious. As regards the latter point, Mr. Gifford
shows that while marriage with the cross-cousin
is not suggested in Miwok nomenclature, mar-
riage with the wife's brother's daughter is re-
flected by twelve terms.

[173 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Among the Thonga of South Africa several
interesting forms of preferential matrimonial
union occur. As among the Miwok, marriage
with the wife's, younger sisters and wife's
brother's daughter is considered peculiarly
appropriate, and these affinities are subsumed
under a common caption. Levirate extends
only to the elder brother's, not to the
younger brother's, wife, and quite consistently
these affinities are distinguished by distinct
words. A man may inherit his maternal
uncle's wife and therefore classes her with
the wife. On the other hand, logic does not
hold sway undisputedly. A man calls cross-
cousins by the same term as parallel cousins
and brothers, yet it is possible for a man to
inherit his parallel cousin's, but not his cross-
cousin's (father's sister's son's), wife. The
explanation given by Junod seems quite satis-
factory from a comparative point of view. My
cross-cousin cannot belong to my gens, my
parallel cousin must belong to it.®^ Since the
Thonga usually distinguish marriage potential-
ities with considerable nicety, we may reason-
ably infer that the present terminology for
cousins is a recent innovation, which conclusion
once more indicates the relatively late develop-
ment of Hawaiian features.

[174I

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

A systematic comparison of the effect of
definite forms of marriage on nomenclature, in
different parts of the world is highly desirable.
When we shall have examined how such an
institution as the inheritance of a maternal
uncle's wife affects the systems of the Tlingit of
northwestern America, of the Banks Islands in
Melanesia, and the Thonga of South Africa, and
know the action of whatever coexisting institu-
tions may occur, we shall have gained consider-
ably more insight into a very suggestive problem.
It is fairly clear that a form of marriage does not
determine nomenclature univocally, as the facts
relating to the levirate indicate. To ascertain
in how far parallelism actually occurs, is a
matter of great moment.

Conclusion. The question with which this
chapter opens has now received an answer.
Terms of relationship form a proper topic of •
investigation for the ethnologist, first because
they are often directly correlated with cultural
phenomena, such as social usages regulating
marriage; secondly, because the features of
kinship nomenclature are an index of tribal
relationship. Any particular system is not a
unified logical whole but a complex product of
internal development and foreign connections.
Accordingly, its features cannot be understood

[175]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

by themselves any more than other cultural
phenomena, but only in association with con-
comitant traits of the native culture and in the
light of a comparative survey of like features
among neighboring tribes and ultimately through-
out the world. By utilizing our ethnographical
knowledge in applying the method of variation
it is possible to ascertain, at least to a consider-
able extent, the causes, whether primary or
secondary, that have shaped a given system.
When, for example, we endeavor to explain
the system of the Hopi, we can start with the
fact that their speech constitutes them a member
of the Shoshonean family, i. e., we can begin by
comparing Hopi nomenclature with that of the
Paiute, Paviotso, Ute and Shoshone. One fact
that strikes us here is the great difference in the
actual vocables employed by the Hopi from
those of their congeners, an observation which
by no means extends to all of their language.
Morgan held the view that kinship words were
the most persistent elements of speech, but
however this rule may work in other stocks, such
as the Athabaskan, it certainly does not obtain
among the Shoshoneans, nor, I may add, within
the Siouan family, where even such closely
related languages as Crow and Hidatsa reveal
far greater differences in the lexicon of relation-

[176]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

ships than might be expected from other voc-
ables. It is, however, in the classification of
kin that the distinctiveness of the Hopi seems
most remarkable. Their system is not character-
ized by the prominent features of the Plateau
Shoshonean terminologies, such as reciprocity
and the separation of paternal from maternal
grandparents. On the other hand, they employ
the Dakota principle with the Hidatsa variation.
That variant occurs, so far as we now know,
only among peoples historically quite unrelated
to the Hopi so that neither genetic connection
nor dissemination accounts for the similarity.
On the other hand, all the tribes having this
feature share exogamous groups with maternal
descent. Such clans are characteristic of the
Hopi also, but are lacking among the other
Shoshoneans. We infer from this that the
Hidatsa variant among the Hopi is functionally
connected with their clan system. If the neigh- .
boring Zuni do not share this characteristic, a
possible explanation may be found in the rela-
tive weakness of the Zuiii clan concept, as
recently expounded by Professor Kroeber, when
contrasted with its dominance in the social life
of the Hopi. In other features the intimate
cultural contact between the Zuiii and Hopi is
emphatically apparent. Probably for no other

[177 1

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

tribes IS there evidence for such exaggerated
reliance on teknonymy, while a certain looseness
in the use of terms common to both seems to be
a general Southwestern trait. The Hopi system
thus reflects both the social fabric of the tribe
and its historical relations, — the ancient ones
reduced to a few lexical resemblances, while the
more complex tribal organization and recent
cultural affiliations with the Southwest, and
particularly with the Zufii, stand out in bold
relief.

A strictly similar inquiry might be made into
the system of the Crow. Here the almost com-
plete coincidence of certain very unusual features
with Hidatsa ones bears eloquent testimony to
the exceptionally close genetic relationship of
the two tribes. Thus, a wife who has been
married before is distinguished by a specific
word, and spouses generally refer to each other
not by a specific term, which seems restricted to
non-vocative usage, but by a demonstrative
expression. Not only is there a confusion of
generations according to the Hidatsa variant,
but the mother's brother is classed with the
elder brother and so is the mother's mother's
brother. The last-mentioned features are partly
found among the Mandan. All three tribes
differ from the other Siouans, and indeed from

[178]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

all other Plains Indians in having matrilineal
descent. Since this is likewise the rule among
genetically unconnected peoples sharing the
Hidatsa variant, we regard the latter as func-
tionally connected with the clan organization.
But there are other traits in which the termi-
nology of the Crow differs from that of their
nearest congeners, and here we must systemati-
cally consider the possible effect of all such
peoples as the Oglala, or Blackfoot, with whom
they have come into contact. Such divergence
may be merely the effect of internal readjust-
ment. Thus, the Crow classification of the
father's sister's husband with the father admits
of a plausible interpretation as the result of
another peculiarity — the classing of the father's
sister with the mother in direct address. Instead
of having two deviations from the Hidatsa
norm, we should thus have at bottom only one.
It is clear that a far more intensive investiga-
tion of kinship terminologies must take the
place of what has hitherto been attempted.
Precisely the so-called minor peculiarities of a
system are important historically because they
are the differential indications of cultural
contact with definite tribes. The phonetic
inadequacy of Morgan's schedules, which has
been brought to light by Dr. Michelson and Mr.

[179]

CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY

Spier,* requires a reexamination of the entire
field covered. Still more important is the
thorough-going determination of the innumer-
able systems, both in and outside of America,
not touched upon by Morgan at all. Fortunately
the work of Dr. Rivers, Mr. A. R. Brown and
Mr. A. M. Hocart in England, of Dr. R. Thum-
wald in Germany, of Dr. J. R. Swanton, Mr.
Leslie Spier and Mr. E. W. Gifford in America
bids fair to reduce our ignorance of the facts.
With our lamentable absence of knowledge on
some of the most essential points it would be
rash indeed to claim for the present sketch a
more than preliminary value. I am content
with calling attention to the tremendous eth-
nological significance of kinship terminologies,
with combating premature confidence in general-
izations based on sheer ignorance, and above all
with suggesting that the most rigorous logical
formulation of problems is possible in this too
long neglected domain of the science of culture.

[180]

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