# Omaha kinship

Part of a series on the :
Anthropology of kinship :
Basic concepts
Family
Lineage
Affinity
Consanguinity
Marriage
Incest taboo
Endogamy
Exogamy
Moiety
Monogamy
Polygyny
Polygamy
Concubinage
Polyandry
Bride price
Bride service
Dowry
Parallel / cross cousins
Cousin marriage
Levirate
Sororate
Posthumous marriage
Joking relationship
Clan
Cohabitation
Fictive / Milk / Nurture kinship
Descent
Cognatic / Bilateral
Matrilateral
Lineal
Collateral
House society
Avunculate
Linealities
Ambilineality
Unilineality
Matrilineality
Patrilineality
Household forms and residence
Extended
Matrifocal
Matrilocal
Neolocal
Nuclear
Patrilocal :
Terminology
Kinship terminology
Classificatory terminologies
By group
Iroquois
Crow
Omaha
Eskimo (Inuit)
Hawaiian
Sudanese
Dravidian (debated) :
Case studies
Australian Aboriginal
Burmese
Chinese
Philippine
Polyandry in Tibet / in India
Feminist
Chambri
Mosuo
Sexuality
Coming of Age in Samoa :
Major theorists
Diane Bell
Tom Boellstorff
Jack Goody
W. D. Hamilton
Gilbert Herdt
Don Kulick
Roger Lancaster
Louise Lamphere
Eleanor Leacock
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Bronisław Malinowski
Margaret Mead
Henrietta Moore
Lewis H. Morgan
Stephen O. Murray
Michelle Rosaldo
Gayle Rubin
David M. Schneider
Heinrich Schurtz
Marilyn Strathern :
Related articles
Alliance theory
Matrilineal / matrilocal societies
Feminist anthropology
Sex and Repression in Savage Society
Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship
"The Traffic in Women" :
Social anthropology Cultural anthropology :
vte :
Omaha kinship is the system of terms and relationships used to define family in Omaha tribal culture. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Omaha system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese) which he identified internationally.

## Kinship system

In function, the system is extremely similar to the Crow system. But, whereas Crow groups are matrilineal, Omaha descent groups are characteristically patrilineal.
In this system, relatives are sorted according to their descent and their gender. Ego's father and his brothers are merged and addressed by a single term, and a similar pattern is seen for Ego's mother and her sisters. (Marriages take place among people of different gentes or clans in the tribe.)
Like most other kinship systems, Omaha kinship distinguishes between parallel and cross-cousins. While parallel cousins are merged by term and addressed the same as Ego's siblings, cross-cousins are differentiated by generational divisions. On the maternal side, cross-cousins are raised a generation (making them Ego's Mother's Brother and Ego's Mother), while those on the paternal side are lowered a generation (making them the generational equivalent of Ego's Children).
The system is similar to that of Iroquois kinship. It uses bifurcate merging, but only the Iroquois system uses bifurcate merging as a label. In addition, Iroquois kinship is a matrilineal system.

## Usage

The system is named for the Omaha, a Native American tribe historically located on the Northern Plains in present-day Nebraska. The Omaha system has been found among some indigenous groups of Mexico, the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina, the Dani tribe of Indonesia, the Shona of Zimbabwe, the Igbo of Nigeria and is proposed to be reconstructuted for indoeuropean kinship.