Kinship and marriage among the Omaha, 1886-1902

Abstract

"Omaha" kinship is a major model for patrilineal kinship and marital exchanges. However, some authors have suggested that kinship rules and unilineal descent are merely theoretical constructs of anthropologists or cultural ideals usually not followed in practice. Given the importance of "Omaha" kinship for theory, this article tests the normative rules for marriage against empirical data on actual marriage behavior among the late-nineteenth-century Omaha tribe of Nebraska using Bureau of Indian Affairs census rolls. The results confirm that the majority of Omaha did indeed follow the normative rules upon which the "Omaha" model is based. The implications for kinship studies is that descent theory and alliance models can still be considered valid approaches to societies prior to historic changes. (Omaha, Crow-Omaha exchange, patrilocal, patrilineal) ********** A trend among some anthropologists is to claim that classificatory kinship models are theoretical constructs imposed upon cultures by Euro-American ethnographers or that the models are normative descriptions of cultural ideals rarely practiced. Schneider (1984) critiques several preconceived assumptions on kinship that influence ethnographers' interpretations. One of Schneider's main criticisms is the assumption that non-Western cultures conceptualize biological relations in the same way as Western cultures, which he claims is the basis for descent theory (Carsten 2000; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Schneider 1984). The realization that biological affinity is not conceptualized, operationalized, or even important to social life from one culture to another has given way to studies on relatedness in an effort to reinvent understandings of kinship (e.g., Carsten 2000; Franklin and McKinnon 2001). These studies emphasize multiple ways that individuals relate to one another: through descent relations, affinal relations, friendship relations, political relations, and economic relations (e.g., Hutchinson 2000; Stafford 2000). Relations are thus seen as actively manipulated and reconceptualized within changing cultural contexts. Another manner in which anthropologists are beginning to understand relatedness is through "house" theory. Although Levi-Strauss (1982, 1987) originally thought of his proposed house societies as one category alongside descent categories, more recent proponents of house theory tend to argue that people's relations rarely conform to the descent models (e.g., Gillespie 2000a; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). Gillespie (2000b: 1) summarizes this view in her opening paragraph: "Ethnographic descriptions have dispelled the notion that prescriptive and proscriptive kinship `rules' govern social life." Schneider (1984) also claimed that an illogical separation of biological relations from political and economic relations characterized much of kinship theory prior to the 1970s. However, there is a tradition in anthropology for viewing a relationship between these inseparable parts. Social organization, and hence descent, are interrelated with political and economic relations, while marriage preferences and postmarital residence reproduce those social relations (e.g., Gjessing 1975; Godelier 1984; Morgan 1870; Moore 1991; Peletz 1995; Schweizer and White 1998; Wolf 1982:88-96). If we accept this premise, which seems to be the direction the "reinvented" (e.g., Carsten 2000) understanding of kinship is going, then in a modern era of intensified incorporation in global capitalism we should expect changes in the ways people understand their relatedness. However, we should not conclude that modern changing cultures reflect social relations in their nineteenth-century and earlier ascendant cultures, which much of descent theory was based upon. With the exception of Levi-Strauss's (1982, 1987) house societies that were based on ethnohistorical documentation, many ethnographies purported to contradict descent theory are in fact post-World War II. …