To revert to the Dakota principle, as Morgan points out,[18] 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’ offspring is likewise common to the two
terminologies, the case for historical connection becomes very strong.
This becomes a certainty when we find that in its essentials the
principle finds expression 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 type 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 generations 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 the Miwok and adjacent populations
in California. 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 Eskimo, 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 system’
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 practically altogether ignorant
of those of the Far West, and that since his time no one has
systematically 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.
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