DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE KINSHIP AND HISTORY

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE KINSHIP AND HISTORY I hasten to admit the contention of Radcliffe-Brown, made in Kinship Termi­ nologies in California in a recent number of this journal,! that I claimed too much in stating that the time for an attack on the problem of the relation of kin terminologies to coexistent institutions was on the whole after some insight into their history had been attained rather than before. Actually, of course, the factual problem of what the correlation is, especially in the norm or average, is not intrinsically affected by historical considerations. Brown is quite within his rights in attempting to solve the problem as he sees it, which is unhistorically, without reference to complicating antecedents. If one seeks to isolate constants, simplification of the issue and its extrication from the chaos of apparent phenomena are important, and anterior stages may be irrelevant. What I should have expressed was my conviction that the factors at work in the phenomena in question are numerous and variable enough to make it seem highly questionable whether determinations of constants other than of narrow range or vague nature can be made, or at any rate have yet been made, while historical considerations are omitted. I cheerfully make this correction. That I was not trying to say that probabilities or inferences or hypotheses should be allowed to supersede facts, will probably be believed without explicit reaffirmation. Among historical considerations in this connection I reckon language, of which kin terminologies are part. Hupa and Tolowa are Athabascan, and this fact therefore must enter ultimately into the problem of terminological-institutional correlation in northwest California. One can of course refrain from ultimates and limit the problem to the question of whether or not correlation exists in these par­ ticular tribes. This is perfectly legitimate, but seems rather narrow, and I do not believe Brown would wish to draw such a limit. In fact I admit without hesitation that there must expectably be some correlation: both because speech is not an in­ dependent universe, and because in other cases hitherto we have always found some accord between terminologies and institutions. A much more real problem is how much correlation there is, and what factors have made it stronger at some points and weaker at others. Here I believe language cannot be left out, in the sense that Hupa being Athabascan, and Yurok being if not Algonkin at least non-Athabascan, the speakers of the two languages must at one time have come into contact and into acquisition of a highly similar culture, not only with differently pronounced words, but-if all precedent holds-with kinship words of somewhat or considerably dif­ ferent meaning. The situation, in short, is characterized by the impingement on each other of a set of social institutions and usages at least highly uniform in the area and of several languages which are thoroughly different-so different that their contained terminologies still remain extremely diverse in plan or system of concepts. I do not doubt that detailed investigation will also reveal a number of differences of Vol. 37, 1935, pp. 530-35.