sisters, and so do the children of sisters. But the children of a sister
call those of her brother cousins, and vice versa. And these are not
simply meaningless terms, but expressions of actually existing
conceptions of proximity and remoteness, equality or inequality of
consanguinity.

These conceptions serve as the fundament of a perfectly elaborated
system of relationship, capable of expressing several hundred different
relations of a single individual. More still, this system is not only
fully accepted by all American Indians--no exception has been found so
far--but it is also in use with hardly any modifications among the
original inhabitants of India, among the Dravidian tribes of the Dekan
and the Gaura tribes of Hindostan.

The terms of relationship used by the Tamils of Southern India and by
the Seneca-Iroquois of New York State are to this day identical for more
than two hundred different family relations. And among these East Indian
tribes also, as among all American Indians, the relations arising out of
the prevailing form of the family are not in keeping with the system of
kinship.

How can this be explained? In view of the important role played by
kinship in the social order of all the savage and barbarian races, the
significance of such a widespread system cannot be obliterated by
phrases.

A system that is generally accepted in America, that also exists in Asia
among people of entirely different races, that is frequently found in a
more or less modified form all over Africa and Australia, such a system
requires a historical explanation and cannot be talked down, as was
attempted, e. g., by McLennan. The terms father, child, brother, sister
are more than mere honorary titles; they carry in their wake certain
well-defined and very serious obligations, the aggregate of which
comprises a very essential part of the social constitution of those
nations. And the explanation was found. In the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii)
there existed up to the first half of the nineteenth century a family
form producing just such fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,
uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, as the old Indo-American system of
kinship. But how remarkable! The Hawaiian system of kinship again did
not agree with the family form actually prevailing there. For there all
the children of brothers and sisters, without any exception, are
considered brothers and sisters, and regarded as the common children not
only o