Premium
proscription of cross‐cousin marriage among the southwestern Ojibwa 1
Author(s) -
SMITH JAMES G. E.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1974.1.4.02a00090
Subject(s) - proscription , cousin , kinship , history , genealogy , reservation , politics , period (music) , demography , geography , sociology , ethnology , archaeology , law , political science , anthropology , philosophy , aesthetics
Hickerson (1962:73–86) argued that the proscription of cross‐cousin marriage among the Southwestern Ojibwa occurred during the Chequamegon phase of the late seventeenth century. It is argued here that changes in the kinship system, including the loss of the cross‐cousin marriage pattern, were a consequence of environmental, economic, political, and demographic factors of the early nineteenth century that became even more acute during the reservation period of the latter half of the century. The changes during the nineteenth century provide a solution to the problem of the persistence of terminological and behavioral patterns into the twentieth century, and for change to a lineal rather than generational system. Data from contemporary Rocky Cree and Caribou Eater Chipewyan, who have recently encountered similar problems, are utilized to indicate the process by which the shift occurred.