Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/63

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SOCIAL ORGANISATION
51

cousin and any kind of brother- or sister-in-law. The case points more definitely to the cross-cousin marriage than in the case of the Red Knives, but yet lacks the completeness which would allow us to make the inference with confidence.

The Assiniboin have a common term, me-toh-we, used for the father's sister, the mother's brother's wife and the two kinds of mother-in-law, and also a common term, me-nake-she, for the mother's brother and the father's sister's husband, but the latter differs from the word, me-to-ga-she, used for the father of husband or wife. The case here is decidedly stronger than among the Red Knives, but is less complete than among the Crees.

Among a number of branches of the Dakotas the evidence is of a different kind, being derived from similar nomenclature for the cross-cousin and certain kinds of brother- and sister-in-law. Morgan[1] has recorded eight systems, all of which show the features in question, but I will consider here only that of the Isauntie or Santee Dakotas, which was collected for him by the Rev. S. R. Riggs. Riggs[2]and Dorsey[3] have given independent accounts of this system which are far less complete than that given by Morgan, but agree with it in all essentials.

In this system a man calls the son of his mother's

  1. Loc. cit.
  2. Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography: Contributions to North American Ethnology, Washington, vol. ix.
  3. Preface to above.