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Omaha / ‘omaha’ : networks and alliance Draft 1995 Draft 2008 incorporating some aspects of Thompson 1997 Douglas R. White, Janel Tortorice and Peter M. Thompson University of California, Irvine Abstract Robert H. Barnes’ transcripts of the Omaha genealogies, collected by James Dorsey after the publication of his classic monograph, provide an ideal test case for network analysis of kinship and marriage. Here we explore patterns of ‘omaha alliance,’ in which marriage relinking is banned with the lineages of grandparents. To test for the existence and effects of this proscription, e.g., in a pattern of ‘dispersed alliances,’ we decompose the network into blocks containing all relinkings between families, and examine patterns of relinking as well as connectivity between blocks (constituting the network cores). No blood marriage relinkings of any sort and no redoubling (by different men with different mates) of marriage alliances between lineages are found, with one exceptional marriage into the mother’s lineage. The marriage network is dispersed, with relatively few relinkings overall, but it is highly connected, and has a doubly-connected core of about 20% of the marriages, and one main block of relinkings within the core. Within blocks, a slight tendency is found for marriages to be between two opposing sides, a pattern that is reinforced by ‘sororal’ or ‘leviratic’ marriages and ‘automatic’ sidedness in the absence of relinking. Closer examination of the central block and smaller connected blocks in the core shows they are composed largely of marriage orbits among chiefly families and Midewiwin secret (Shell) society members, known to prefer status endogamy. These families display a variant inflection of a shared Omaha cultural pattern, with higher rates of polygyny, ‘sororal’ and WiBrDa marriages, and breaking of the sidedness pattern in remarriage. The types of disagreements among informants reported by Dorsey reflect differences between normal marriage practices and chiefly-orbit inflections. An appendix gives a sample of how the data are compiled, and graphs of the network with marriages as nodes and individuals as connectors gives a unique capability to display genealogical connectivities as labeled networks with a temporal (intergenerational) ordering, and to discern network patterns and processes visually. Keywords: Network analysis, blocking methods, Omaha, alliance theory, kinship graphs, visual anthropology, intracultural variation. This is a draft for eventual submission to L’Homme. Comments and critiques would be much appreciated.

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Omaha / ‘omaha’ : networks and alliance

Draft 1995 Draft 2008 incorporating some aspects of Thompson 1997

Douglas R. White, Janel Tortorice and Peter M. Thompson University of California, Irvine

Abstract Robert H. Barnes’ transcripts of the Omaha genealogies, collected by James Dorsey after the publication of his classic monograph, provide an ideal test case for network analysis of kinship and marriage. Here we explore patterns of ‘omaha alliance,’ in which marriage relinking is banned with the lineages of grandparents. To test for the existence and effects of this proscription, e.g., in a pattern of ‘dispersed alliances,’ we decompose the network into blocks containing all relinkings between families, and examine patterns of relinking as well as connectivity between blocks (constituting the network cores). No blood marriage relinkings of any sort and no redoubling (by different men with different mates) of marriage alliances between lineages are found, with one exceptional marriage into the mother’s lineage. The marriage network is dispersed, with relatively few relinkings overall, but it is highly connected, and has a doubly-connected core of about 20% of the marriages, and one main block of relinkings within the core. Within blocks, a slight tendency is found for marriages to be between two opposing sides, a pattern that is reinforced by ‘sororal’ or ‘leviratic’ marriages and ‘automatic’ sidedness in the absence of relinking. Closer examination of the central block and smaller connected blocks in the core shows they are composed largely of marriage orbits among chiefly families and Midewiwin secret (Shell) society members, known to prefer status endogamy. These families display a variant inflection of a shared Omaha cultural pattern, with higher rates of polygyny, ‘sororal’ and WiBrDa marriages, and breaking of the sidedness pattern in remarriage. The types of disagreements among informants reported by Dorsey reflect differences between normal marriage practices and chiefly-orbit inflections. An appendix gives a sample of how the data are compiled, and graphs of the network with marriages as nodes and individuals as connectors gives a unique capability to display genealogical connectivities as labeled networks with a temporal (intergenerational) ordering, and to discern network patterns and processes visually. Keywords: Network analysis, blocking methods, Omaha, alliance theory, kinship graphs, visual anthropology, intracultural variation. This is a draft for eventual submission to L’Homme. Comments and critiques would be much appreciated.

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Omaha / ‘omaha’ : networks and alliance1

January 1995 Janel Tortorice and Douglas R. White

University of California, Irvine The Omaha people and ‘omaha’ characteristics have intrigued the public and professional audience, judging from over 2,000 publications on these subjects2. Yet, until Barnes' publication of Two Crows Denies It in 1984, debates about generalized properties of ‘omaha’ type kinship systems continued as if the factual details of Omaha ethnography were unproblematic. The lack of scrutiny of the ethnographic "facts" in the intervening century between the works of Dorsey (1884) and Barnes (1984) is altogether strange. Dorsey's Omaha Sociology noted abundant disagreement among informants. Barnes, focusing his critical analysis of the historical sources on questions of interpreting Omaha relationship terminology and marriage rules, found Dorsey's voluminous account of these subjects regularly interspersed with "routine statements that Two Crows, usually in conjunction with Joseph La Flesche, denies something, often things that should be beyond dispute." Dorsey was meticulous in reporting discrepancies among informants. Fletcher and La Flesche (1911), however, thought Dorsey had not gone far enough in his critique of sources. They were partial to information by Joseph La Flesche (the latter’s father) and Two Crows, and hostile to informants Garner Wood, Thomas Wood, and Oliver Lyon. Fletcher and La Flesche did not think the divergent viewpoints worth a hearing (Barnes 1984: 20-21). With this high level of disagreement in the ethnographic sources, why did the issue of internal variability in both Omaha norms and practices not provoke scrutiny much earlier, especially since the Omaha have been so central to theoretical discussions regarding kinship and marriage? Barnes (p. 165-166) thought Dorsey’s ethnography might contribute to one of the ‘great unexplored questions’ about Omaha ‘systems’ (terminology) and Omaha marriage ‘alliance’ practices: “the extent to which the previous marriages of a man’s classificatory relatives affect his own range of choice. The question poses itself in various ways. Suppose, for example, that a man was not allowed to marry a woman in the clans of the wives of any of his father’s brothers or parallel cousins. This regulation is found among the Samos of Upper Volta, whose elaborate series of prohibitions Héritier (Izard 1968; Héritier 1976, 1981) has compared with that of the Omahas. All it would require to exclude all Omaha women would be for the men in father’s generation to have taken 1wives from each of the nine other clans.” In a preliminary inspection of the Omaha ethnographies, however, Barnes (p. xi) "felt that they contained gaps at just those points at which Lévi-Strauss' speculations might usefully be tested. The texts, however, suggested in several ways that the needed information might well exist in unpublished form," as indeed proved to be the case. To address the substance of the issues that the clash of informants and ethnographers cast in doubt, Barnes (p. xii) went back to the historical genealogies of the Omaha. He discovered Dorsey's

1 This research was supported by an NSF grant to DRW, “Kinship and Exchange.” This paper grows out of DRW's discussions at Maurice Godelier and Thomas Trautmann's (published 1998) conference on "Dravidian, Iroquois and Crow-Omaha Kinship Systems," Paris, 1993. Previous discoveries of sidedness in marriage networks are given in Houseman and White (in press). Order of authorship is conventionally alphabetic and does not reflect inequality of authorship. JT, a UCI honors-level anthropology major, invested many months of research in coding the Omaha genealogical materials provided to DRW by Robert Barnes of Oxford University. She familiarized herself with Barnes (1984) and Dorsey's (1884) work, and did the detailed kinship compilations. Following her completion of coding, DRW did the analysis, wrote the first drafts of the article, and provided the other compilations. Several years of his time are invested in conceptualization, development and testing of computer programs, and application of the methodology used in the analysis. 2 See bibliography in Tate (1991).

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handwritten Omaha genealogies, and the notebooks and records relating to Omaha families deriving from Alice Fletcher's allotment of Omaha lands, available in the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. He also located Paul Brill, who, without knowledge of Dorsey's genealogies, had carried out research into Omaha family lines in 1961-63 for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Barnes meticulously transcribed Dorsey's materials, and Brill give him access to an extensive independent record of Omaha family interviews and court records. The present article builds directly on Barnes' critical analysis of the original source materials for Omaha ethnography. Barnes generously provided us with unpublished results of his extensive research on the Omaha historical genealogical record. We have assembled his transcription of the Omaha materials in a form suitable for network analysis (White and Jorion 1992). Here, we report our preliminary analysis of this network of actual marriage and kinship ties among Omaha individuals. We are especially interested in how the structure of the network relates the concept of ‘omaha alliance,’ attributed to Lévi-Strauss by Héritier (1981) and contested by Barnes(1984). Narrowly defined, ‘omaha alliance’ consists of a set of prohibitions against repeating marriages into the clans of a person’s four grandparents (e.g., see Fox 1967:225). For Héritier, the function of ‘omaha alliance,’ broadly conceived, is to avoid the redoubling of ‘marriage alliances’ between kinship groups. The latter state of affairs is called ‘dispersed alliance’ in the terminology followed by Barnes. There are two empirical questions here: one is, how close is the connection between ‘omaha alliance’ rules and the ‘dispersed alliance’ marriage patterns remains? The other concerns the purported ‘type case:’ do the Omaha themselves have ‘omaha alliance,’ and, if not, should the concept be abandoned? Our findings concerning network structure, while consistent at the cultural level, do not present a picture of a homogeneous social structure. Rather, differences in rank and largely hereditary stratification and succession to office combine to give an image of a social system where different aspects of a shared cultural system are emphasized at different social levels, giving rise to different variations of network structure in the marriage system. The value of a network approach to social organization is particularly apparent in this study: beginning with a corpus of empirical data, particular network patterns (connected blocks and a ‘localized’ pattern of sidedness) discovered in a segment of the population (one that tends to be more endogamous than the rest) led us to inquire as to the sociological characteristics (e.g., leadership and ceremonial roles) of the members of this subpopulation. In order to interpret our findings, we had to consult all of the ethnographic sources: Dorsey’s (1884) account from the 1870s, Fletcher and La Flesche’s (1911) rich account, that extends through the next 25 year period, restudies of changing culture by Mead (1932) and of secret societies by Fortune (1932), as well as Barnes’ superb reconsideration of issues as they stood in 1984, and O’Shea and Ludwickson’s (1992) reanalysis of chieftainships. The present work constitutes part one of a three part study. Here we analyze the marriage network for five leading Omaha gens of “Earth Moiety” (although the moieties do not regulate marriage), those that contain the principal leaders of the Omaha. Because the present results focus on aspects of the network that are peculiar to the leadership segments of the society, the present data are particularly relevant to the problem and more than sufficient for a genealogical network study. The companion article (White and Tortorice n.d.) examines the implications of our findings in the context of the anthropological debates about ‘omaha system’ kinship terminologies. It addresses questions of how the network structure of marriages relates to the feature of ‘sidedness’ in Omaha kinship terminology. It also examines the cultural constructs that underlie ‘omaha alliance’ marriage rules and their consequences, in the Omaha and comparable cases. The third paper, a sequel, will analyze the larger

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marriage network for all 10 gens of the Omaha, as of the 1870s, and recapitulate the principal theoretical implications. Assembly of the Omaha Network Dataset Dorsey's ethnography of the Omaha (1884, 1890), not untypical for Bureau of American Ethnology research under John Wesley Powell, belies the myth "that intensive professional research using the language spoken in the field situation began with Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard" (Barnes 1984: 3). The Omaha case also illustrates Firth's view that "the significance of anthropological field material as historical record seems to ... be often undervalued" (Barnes p. 2). The best way to view Omaha ethnography, however, is through a critical composite analysis of the different sources, including unpublished archives, each of which adds an original source of richness. In the present case, Tortorice assembled Barnes’ compilation of Dorsey's and other Omaha genealogical materials3, and White, prior to analysis, cleaned the data using computer programs for cross-checking for consistency, and then consulting with Tortorice as well as Barnes’ (1984) and Dorsey’s indexed publications. In the form we see in appendix 1, each individual is given a unique identification number (col.1) and these numbers are used to refer to father (col. 7), mother (col. 8) and one or more spouses (col. 6, listed on separate lines), if known. Dorsey's codes (cols. 2-3) identify members within each gens by number and give spouses the same number followed by lower case letters. Individual names, both in Omaha and English (the latter from the census of 1883) and other cross-reference information are given (col. 4), along with birthdate and deathdate (cols. 9-10) where known. RESULTS OF THE NETWORK ANALYSIS Here we report the findings of our network analysis based on genealogies of 1513 individuals in the historic period (19th and late 18th century). First, we assess the frequencies of different types of marriages4 (e.g., with cross-cousins or other relatives). Next we assess the network of marriages5 in terms of constituent structures (blood marriage, secondary marriage, redoubling, relinking) and overall pattern (sides, cores, blocks). Lastly, we examine exceptional cases, and the relation of our network findings to membership in named moieties. 1. The Absence of Marriages between Blood-Related Omaha Kin Table 1 shows the female relatives more frequently available in the genealogical network as potential marriage partners. With exception of one MoBrSiDa marriage, no marriages with these or any other female relatives are actually observed to occur. We identified the number of men who had female first and second cross-cousins as 120 and 40, but in no case did these men marry a cousin. One could not rule out the possibility of third cousin marriages, however, that would not be detected given the relative shallowness of the genealogical record.

3 Primarily utilizing Barnes’ handwritten information on the Omaha genealogies, which had been compiled from sources at the Smithsonian’s National Archives for Anthropology, JT extracted and coded the information as needed for our analysis by computer. This process required a great amount of cross-checking for multiple listing of spouses. 4 Using White's program Par-Calc (White and Jorion 1992), which builds on the Jorion and Lally (1983) algorithm. 5 Using White's programs (White and Jorion 1992) PGraph and Par-Plot.

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Type of Female Relative

Freq-uency

Type of Female Relative

Freq-uency

Z 179 MFZ 14 FZ 123 MBDD 14 MZ 114 MZSD 11 BD 113 FBSDD 11 ZD 110 FZSDD 9 FBD 78 FFBSD (9)// MBD 63 FBSSD 9 ZSD 57 FFBDD (9)X BSD 57 FFMZ 8 FZD 57 FZSDD 8 FMZ 44 FFZSSD 8 FFZ 44 FMBSD (8)X MZD 34 BDSD 8 FBSD 34 ZDSD 8 FZSD 25 2nd COS. X 40 BDD 25 2nd COS. // 32 FFBD 25 others, common ZDD 25 ancestor back to MBSD 24 (1!) 6 generations 177 FMBD 22 Descent Analysis ZSSD 21 of 2nd Cousins: BSSD 21 FFF, patriline 9 FBDD 18 FFF, other descdt. 21 FFZD 14 MMF, patriline 5 MMZ 14 MMF, other dsdt. 5 BSDD 13 FMF, patriline 5 ZSDD 13 FMF, other dscdt. 8 FZDD 12 MFF, patriline 5 FMZD 11 MFF, other dscdt. 7 Table 1: Frequency of female relatives available for men's marriages (only one, a MoBrSoDa, actually married) The inset in the lower right of Table 1 shows a curious finding. Twenty four second cousins are patrilineal descendants of FFF, MMF, FMF and MFF who are forbidden in marriage, and none are actually married. However, there are also no marriage with any of the 41 other second cousins who are bilateral descendants of FFF, MMF, FMF and MFF who are supposedly permitted by the ‘omaha alliance’ rule. This raises the questions: are the Omaha marriage proscriptions actually against cognatic descendants of the common great-grandparents? Here we would agree with Héritier (1981:100-101 that cognatic prohibitions against third cousin marriage out to be considered as a possible component of ‘omaha systems,’ but ‘omaha alliance’ may not be a helpful concept without recurrence of a specific marriage rule, and if the actual marriage rules of the Omaha cannot be specified.

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2. Redoubling and Multiple Marriage6

Redoubling of kinship links refers to multiple ties between different men and different woman in the same two lineages. Multiple marriages are between the same men and different women in same or different lineages, or between the same women and different men in same or different lineages. Marriages between one person and several others in the same lineage (e.g., sororal polygyny, levirate) is usually not considered a redoubling of alliances (Héritier 1981:99) if the first marriage creates the secondary marriage claim. We call such cases ‘sororal’ (marriage with lineage ‘sisters’) or ‘leviratic’ (marriage with lineage ‘brothers’), or, more generally, ‘duplicate’ marriages. Descent lines and marriage alliances between lines are continued after the death of a spouse, for example, through the duplication of marriage to a lineage brother or sister. No redoubling is observed in the Omaha marriage network. The lack of redoubling in Omaha marriages agrees with Héritier’s (1981:98-100) conclusions regarding the ‘omaha alliance’ pattern. Table 2 gives the distribution of plural marriages for women (number of husbands) and men (number of wives), and the proportions classified as ‘fraternal’ (e.g. leviratic) or ‘sororal’ (same lineage). Since we do not have marriage and divorce dates, we cannot separate polygamy from serial marriages. The total number of marriages is 548. Married men have on average 1.33 wives (ranging up to six), and married women 1.14 (ranging to 4). The rate of ‘sororal’ marriages (among the plural marriages) is 11%, and that of ‘leviratic’ marriage 5%. We do not have comparable figures broken down for polygyny versus serial marriage, but the rates of leviratic marriage would be higher if we had data to exclude serial marriage, since there is no polyandry. No. of husbands

Frequency: nonfraternal husbands

Duplicate or ‘Fraternal’* husbands

No. of wives

Frequency: nonsororal wives <chiefs>

Duplicate or ‘Sororal’* wives <chiefs>

None Listed

251 women

0 None Listed

372 men 0

1 423 0 1 306 <22 537 2 45 3 =6% 2 83 <10 10=12% <4 3 8 0 3 11 <3 1 =9% <1 4 2 0 4 6 <5 0 1.14av. 5 2 <2 0 *same lineage 6 1 <0 *same lineage married 478 women 1.33av 409 men Totals 729 women 781 men Table 2: Distribution of Plural Marriages for 1513 Individuals

6 Redoubling, secondary marriage and two-family relinking frequencies are computed using White’s programs Par-Calc and Par-Link. The latter will eventually compute relinkings up to three or four families.

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3. Relinking If we define families as set of relatives linked by common ancestry, relinking refers to marriage between families already linked (possibly indirectly) by marriage. Direct relinking, if it is between lineages, is called redoubling. We use the term proper relinking to exclude redoubling and ‘sororal’ or ‘leviratic’ marriage. The minimal such relinking is between two families or kindreds. Table 3 shows all relinkings in the broadest sense, including secondary marriages and proper relinking. Among the ‘sororal’ marriages list in the top ten rows are sororal polygyny (6 cases) and WBD or WFZ (4 cases); there are 4 ‘leviratic’ marriages. All of these (except for a case of FW inheritance) are preferred marriage forms among the Omaha. Nine proper relinkings our data are listed in the last nine rows of Table 3. Relinked families are defined bilaterally, so two families may be relinked through more than two patrilines. We have one example in our data, involving two men, one of whom marries his MZDHFZ, the other his FZHMZD (four patrilines). We also have a case of relinking among three families (four patrilines), involving remote relatives. The Omaha do not apply kinship terms to remote relatives, however, and terms for remote affines remain to be fully worked out. # of families Husband(s)

Wives #Patri lines

Type of Relinking by Marriage Type

Marriage Rule

Male Sides

Blocs/ Core

Two Families Duplicate Marriages 27 (chief) 28,29,30 two Sororal Preferred Yes b1 - c1 207 206,208 two Sororal Preferred Yes b2 - c1 358 357,361 two Sororal Preferred Yes b3 - c1 1292 1291,1293 two Sororal Preferred Yes b4 - c1 1541 1540,1546 two Sororal Preferred Yes b5 - c1 1052 (chief) 1599=?1604 two Sororal WFD Preferred Yes b6 - c1 409 (chief?) 408,418 two ‘Sororal’ WBD/WFZ Preferred Yes b7 - c1 499 (chief) 500,501 two ‘Sororal’ WBD/WFZ Preferred Yes b8 - c1 1031 (chief) 1030,1044 two ‘Sororal’ WBD/WFZ Preferred Yes main b 1032 1030,1035? two ‘Sororal’ WBD/WFZ Preferred Yes b9 -c1 291,306 293 two Levirate Preferred Yes main b 867,871 613 two ‘Leviratic’ FBW inher. Preferred Yes Core 2 1538,1544 1539 two ‘Leviratic’ FBW inher. Preferred Yes b10 -c1 718,725 720 two ‘Leviratic’ FW inher. Preferred? Yes b11 -c1 Two Families Proper Relinking 1069*/1497 (*mo in doubt)

1505/1498 four MZDHFZ/FZHMZD => ‘ZHZ’?

? ‘grandch.’?

Yes main block

Three Families 807 806/810 four WMHZ ? Yes b12 -c1 1033/1047/1016(w1034=Ponca)

1017/1015/1017

four FFBSWZSWHW => ‘BW’?

permitted? ‘in-law’

Yes main block

1357/1357/1495 1505/528/ 528

three WBW Violation No main block

Four Families

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1114/1069/1069/688

147/147/ 1505/1158

five BSDHMFBDHW ? No main block

1277/1230/1240/448

789/789/ 147/761

six FWHFBDD ? Yes main block

Five Families 1365/1357/688/1138/1583

1366/1505/1158/1578/1366

six BWFBDSWFFBWBWZ ? Yes main block

Six Families 627/442/448/ 753/731/291

628/667/ 761/1618/1618/746

six 627’s mo?

SDHWFWHDFBSD ? Yes main block

1568/1554/178/170/1184/1184

1167/1555/1558/1055/133?/1183

nine is 1184m to133?

MZHFZSSWFDDHWFBDD

? No main block

Table 3: Frequency of Relinkings in the Marriage Network The fourteen duplicate marriages and six of the nine (p=.05) proper relinkings listed have one structural feature in common: they are consistent with male sidedness, or an even number of relinked patrilines (see below). The fewer the number of bilateral families in the relinkings, the more likely the sidedness. 75% of the proper relinkings between two or three families are sided (p=.125) , but only 60% (i.e., a random expectation) of the more distant relinkings are sided. There is only one exception to sidedness in close relinkings: a man who takes WBW as a secondary wife, from a category of kin that is generally prohibited. Our discussion thus far -- of the absence of blood marriages and redoubling, on the presence and types of relinking -- has focused on circuits in the marriage network. A circuit is simply a closed path of parent-child links (regardless of direction) between couples. Any non-directed graph which does not contain a circuit is, by definition, a tree. The concept of sidedness, which we now examine in more detail, applies both to circuits and trees. 4. Global Structure in the Marriage Network: Sidedness of Secondary Marriages In those portions of our marriage network (involving some 1500 individuals thus far in the compiled genealogies) where couples or families are not connected in some way by circuits of intermarriage, the network has the shape of a tree. Genealogical trees contains little information that is useful in evaluating marriage structure in other ways than aggregate statistical counts such as intermarriage between clans. Hence, it is not of much interest to show graphically the entire network of kinship and marriage constructed from the list of individuals and their parents, and spouses in Appendix 1. The property of sidedness, explored below, is one which, if it applies to all of the circuits in the marriage network, also applies, by default as it were, to the remaining network. Trees can always be mapped into a two-sided structure where the links (or links of a particular gender) alternate between sides. What we will say below about sidedness, then, in the circuits of the marriage network, will also apply to the entire network. If the circuits are sided, one could also draw a graph of the entire network as a sided structure.

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In figure 1(a,b), only those couples are retained from the total network who (1) interconnect via circuits such as relinkings between families (blood marriages would also count as circuits, but none were observed to occur), or (2) interconnect those in the circuits of the network. Circuits of relinking may be: immediate, as in marriage to sister, or more remote, as in marriage to a distant affine, affine of affine, or affine of an affine of an affine. There is really only one underlying figure here: the labels in 1a are id numbers for males, as in Appendix 1, while those in 1b are labels for females. One or two such labels may be attached to a given marriage (represented by points in the graph), but are also labels for the two types of lines, the one dotted for females, the other solid for males, that come into the marriage from parents in a higher generation7. < Insert figures 1 a & 1b about here > Figure 1 is drawn to show the structural property in the marriage graph of patrilineal sides (Houseman and White 1998, White and Houseman ms.), in which marriage circuits (and by default: trees) always involve an even number of patrilines8. In the kinship diagram in figure 1, there are 30 relinkings (circuits) beyond a minimal spanning tree, 25 consistent and 12 inconsistent with sides. Couples with circuits with Ponca tribal origin, however, were removed from the diagram (these circuits did not tend towards sidedness). The eleven excluded

7 This unusual graphic convention, with lines for persons and points for marriages, reverses the conventions of the normal social network graph, but allows a more compact and visually interpretable representation (White and Jorion 1992). 8 For females, the graph is bipartite (all lines between the two parts): daughters go from parents on one side to husbands on the other. For males, the graph is bi-disjoint (all lines within each of two parts): sons on each side descend from parents of the same side. Another way of expressing the structure of this graph is by the cross-male-sides rule: a relative comes from the opposite side of ego if and only if the parent-child links connecting them contain an odd number of females (the 'cross' sex for male sidedness). Thus, a man's MoBrDa or FaSiDa come from the opposite side. Their marriages, however, are on ego's side. Note that we can extend the idea of connections as used here to include marriage links or couples so long as husband and wife are defined as coming from opposite sides. By this definition MoBrSoWi comes from the same side as ego under the cross-male-sides rule. MoBrDa or FaSiDa marriages with ego are consistent with the cross-male-sides rule, while MoBrSoWi, FaBrDa and MoSiDa marriages are not. The parallel-male-sides rule is equivalent to that of cross-male-sides, but stated in reverse: a relative comes from the same side as ego if and only if the parent-child links connecting them contain an even number of females. Note that anyone connected to ego only through father-son links is by definition a parallel or same-side relative. Parallel sides, however, are a more inclusive concept than parallel descent and would, and include males such as MoBrSoWiFa. Consistency with male sidedness can be maintained by marriage with the patrilineal kin of an affine of ones patrilineal kin, which we call relation A , or by marriage with AAA, or AAAAA, but not with AA (affine's affine) or AAAA., etc. An one example from Figure 1a will illustrate how the principle of relinking operates. The following circuit from Figure 1a is not atypical of the relinking process: husband 291 (lower left) marries a daughter of 202 (right side), who also marries a daughter of 915 (left side),. but this daughter also marries 696 (right) side whose father 627 marries a daughter of 324 (left side, middle) who is a parallel cousin in the patrilineage of 291. Note the number of plural marriages that make up this circuit, which, as we have seen, are extremely common. The wife of 291, then, is a lineage mate's daughter's (H's) son's (W's) (H's) (W's) daughter, which is we drop the (step) relations (FBSDSD=>), simplifies to a lineage mate Br's Da So Da, a male-sided cross relative. Of the various step-relatives, half-siblings are treated terminologically as siblings, and step- parents and children classified with parents and children (Kronenfeld 1989: 80-83). What might seem like a distant relation, then, is not difficult to keep track of cognitively in terms of sidedness.

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couples9 are: 202&201, 202&919, 708&709, 1033&1034, 1067&1066, 1373&1372, 1114&1115, 1497&1498, 1508&1509, 1665&1684, 1666&1664, and. In figure 2, ‘duplicate’ (sororatic/leviratic) marriages are deleted, and the core is recalculated (core membership is relative to others in the core). A substantial core remains, as does sidedness, but the ratio of consistent to inconsistent relinkings is not sufficient to reject the null hypothesis of global sidedness, even after removing non-Omaha who are not bound by the rules of gens membership. < Insert figure 2 about here > Sidedness rules treat affinal relatives in a precise way that depends on the gender of parent-child links. Relatives W, H, WZ, HB, WB, HZ, BW, and ZH for example, are cross relatives. A minimum of two parent-child links are implied, as in the female to parents connecting link, and the Da link back to alter as W or WZ10. In contrast, WH, HW, WZH, and HBW are parallel-relatives. By these criteria, WMHZ is a ‘cross’ relative (see example of this marriage in Table 3), but WBW is ‘parallel’ (see the WBW marriage violation of sidedness in Table 3). Sidedness in the network is present for the most part in ‘close’ affinal relinking (with one exception of WBW marriage). There is little evidence to suggest that sidedness is a ‘global’ property of the marriage network, like a moiety. Almost all of the fully consistent evidence for sidedness comes not from ‘proper’ relinkings but from duplicate marriage. Sidedness is clearly only a ‘localized’ phenomena in this case, but we would need additional data to determine just how far ‘localized’ sidedness is generalized in terms of relatively close kin. 5. The Network Core and Its Blocks How do the various components of the marriage network connect? The sets of all couples relinked by marriage (including marriages between blood kin) are the cyclic blocks11 of a network; they, plus the couples that link them,, constitute the cores12 of the network. In a maximal (cyclic) block, every couple is part of a circuit of connections, and every pair of couples is connected by a common circuit (Menger’s theorem). Unlike maximal connected segments of the core, two distinct blocks may share a common element. In a maximal block, all couples are multiply linked by kinship and marriage ties. A segment of the network core, on the other hand, merely contains couples linked to two or more other couples in the core. In the Omaha case, the cores of the network consist of two disconnected segments, but the major connected segment contains 13 cyclic blocks (the other core segment contains a FBW marriage). Eleven of these blocks, as shown in Table 3, are formed by duplicate (sororatic/leviratic) marriages that relink two patrilines. A twelfth block is formed by a proper relinking (a WMHZ marriage), in this case, involving four patrilines. Each of these twelve blocks is connected by a single path of kinship 9 Those with one or more Ponca spouse but not connected by circuits were 1063&1065, 1069&1070, 1187&1188, 1513&1512, 1520&1521, 1516&528, 1536&1537, and 1563&1565. 10 The White-Jorion (1992) kinship graph and kinship algebra is especially useful in identifying sidedness. If a person is multiply married, for example, they will be multiply drawn in the graph. 11 Acyclic blocks are connected pairs of elements that are not part of any circuit, but are connected to the core (Chartrand and Lesniak 1986:48) . 12 An equivalent definition of a network core is that it consists of all couples who are connected by two or more parent-child links to other couples (not individual parents) in the core. Children are not necessarily in the core since they have but a single link to their parental couple. Hence, couples are in the core only if both sets of parents are in the core, or if two or more or their children or children’s marriages are in the core, or if one of the parents and one or more child is in the core.

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links to the thirteenth and largest block in this large core segment. Eight of the nine proper relinkings and two of the ‘duplicate’ marriage relinkings in Table 3 are contained in the largest block of the network, containing 81 marriages. < Insert figures 3 and 4 about here > Figure 3 represents the blocks in the main core of our marriage network. It contains a number of distinct but connected blocks, each block minimally defined by a particular relinking. The removal of duplicate (‘sororatic’ or ‘leviratic’) marriages is sufficient to decompose the majority of the blocks in this diagram, leaving only the nine proper relinkings between kindreds. The core and blocks in figure 3 do not offer evidence of global sidedness in the marriage network, but of local relinkings through ‘sororal’ or ‘leviratic’ marriage-blocks, and of connections between these blocks. But while only the relinkings in the blocks can offer specific counter-evidence to the structure of sidedness, sidedness in the blocks generalizes to sidedness in the rest of the network structure (like a tree: by default). Figure 4 shows the largest block, including all but one of the proper relinkings. What is shown by the relationship betweeen core and blocks in this case is that the blocks of the network are connected, and that, relative to the rest of the network, the blocks in the core are relatively closely connected. 13 The core of connected blocks in the network structure is thus an object of considerable sociological significance, worth closer examination. Figure 5 shows the Omaha kin connected component of 1060 out of 1277 (including singles). The larger (yellow) nodes are the marriages in the cohesive bicomponent of the marriage network.

Figure 5: Bicomponent marriages in the connected component of Omaha Kinship (1060/1277)

13 The statistical demonstration of this point uses repeated random samples with a comparable number of marriages to those in ‘sororate’ or ‘levirate’ blocks, and compares the size distribution of the largest connected component with that observed.

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It is evident visually from Figure 1 that the percentage of nodes that represent relinking marriages decreases over time, and this is confirmed in Table 9, where the Kendall’s tau = .207 (p=.00000001) between greater cohesion and deeper ancestries. In generation 4 through 8 (the deepest ancestors) the percentage of relinking nodes goes from 9% up to 41%,

Omaha Bicomponent relinking

marriages

Non-relinked singles

1 1 0 0 Total

1 1 4.8% 20 95.2% 21

2 3 17.6% 14 82.4% 17

3 7 15.6% 38 84.4% 45

4 18 8.7% 188 91.3% 206

5 36 12.7% 248 87.3% 284

6 60 22.6% 205 77.4% 265

7 50 32.9% 102 67.1% 152

8 29 41.4% 41 58.6% 70

Generation

Level,

1=latest

8=earliest Total 204 19.2% 856 80.8% 1060

Table 9: Increases in relinking marriages with depth of ancestry

6. Unusual Cases One marriage of a Teton Sioux woman that violated sidedness was the source of Dorsey’s notes that members of other tribes are not assigned to gens, since kinship is not reckoned with respect to their parents. Because outsiders are not assigned to gens, we left off the enumeration of this Teton woman’s parents, and this exception to sidedness (like those of couples one of whose members were Ponca, Oto, or white -- see footnote 9) did not appear in figure 1. Barnes also discusses this case:14 her third marriage was with the older brother of her daughter’s husband, by whom she had become pregnant15. Another case commented upon by Barnes (p.164) in terms of cases that violated the Omaha prohibitions against marriage into the mother’s gens involved a marriage, to a MBSD, justified by the husband (in Dorsey’s penned comments in the margin of the genealogies) on the grounds that the wife’s previous marriage had been with a member of his gens and he had “obtained a quasi right to marry her, tho even that occasioned much comment among the Omahas.” This marriage did not violate sidedness, but the same woman (528) also married again with a HuSiHu, which strongly violates sidedness. This is the case of WBW marriage referred to above. Even when we excluded this woman’s marriage from the analysis, we still did not obtain consistent evidence on global sidedness.

14 p. 165; the mother of our number 298: not commented upon by Dorsey. 15 From the husband’s point of view, it is not clear from the kinship terminology if BWM is a prohibited spouse. It is also possible that since the 3rd husband was unrelated to earlier husbands, that he is not treated as a ‘brother’ of the latter, and they are consequently not required to be of the same side. This would raise the possibility that prior relatedness is one of the ‘actual’ genealogical criteria needed to mobilize emergent sidedness in the marriage network.

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7. Sides cross-cut the Earth and Sky Moieties, which do not regulate marriage generally, but may do so for the chiefly lineages If Omaha patrilineal moieties did regulate marriage, we would surely expect a marriage graph such as figure 116. What is remarkable, as shown in Table 4, is that only 59% of Omaha marriages are exogamous in terms of named moiety alignments of Omaha gens and gens membership of individuals (Barnes p. 188-191). There is no evidence that Omaha moieties were exogamous at any time in the 1800s. Fletcher and La Flesche (1911:135) maintain that older Omaha regarded moiety division as at one time related to marriage patterns, but this conclusion is suspect (see Barnes pp. 186-193). Pairs of spouses* Earth Moiety Sky Moiety % Exogamous % Expected Earth Moiety 93 109 54% Sky Moiety 105 53 66% Total 198 162 59% (n=360) 56% Table 4: Named Omaha Moieties (do not regulate marriage) *If there are 201 “relinked marriages” what do these numbers represent? Individuals in those marriages? Marriages where moiety identification of individuals are known?) The present analysis is based on a completed compilation of data for members of gens of Earth Moiety or those listed in their genealogies, which is a meaningful segment for analysis because moieties do not regulate marriage. We do have Sky Moiety men and women in our present compilation, hence it is conceivable that the core of the marriage network in figure 1 might show an alignment between sides and moieties. In fact, however, the sides in figure 1(a&b) are not composed respectively of members of entirely contrastive moieties. The two sides we see in figure 1 are mostly within the Earth moiety, but also include members of Sky moiety on each side. The sides, then, are independent of the named moieties. We also find members of the same gens on different sides. Omaha ‘sides,’ emergent only from local tendencies, cross-cut both moiety and gens divisions. Since our data are not yet a complete inventory of Omaha marriages (as in Table 6), we will have more evidence about sidedness once data entry is complete. Complete analysis including genealogies for Sky Moiety will appear in a sequel. New data, however, will not change our conclusion for the Earth moiety, however, within which the marriage network tends to be only locally and not globally sided. Thompson’s (1997) analysis of chiefly succession, kin of chiefs, and marriages between chiefly lines does show, however, by inspection of his Figure 1, from data compiled by Barnes (personal notes) that the chiefly lineages were sided. 8. Consistency with Barnes' Conclusions (Network "Microworlds") Our results concerning sidedness are unexpected from but consistent with Barnes' (1984:175, 193) findings. His survey permitted the definite conclusions in his chapters 6 and 7 that:

16 White and Houseman (ms.) do not go so far as to say that sides are "unnamed" moieties for two reasons. First, we have no indication that people are aware of membership in sides at a societal level. Second, "moiety" typically implies that descent groups regulate marriage. It may be the egocentric strictures implied by prohibitions defined in categories of kin through kinship terminology that 'regulate' marriage in the sense only of generalized norms and egocentric strictures.

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1) marriage proscriptions discouraged males from repeating marriages into subclans into which their progenitors in recent generations had previously married17, but "only the marriages of persons in a direct line of filiation affect marriage choices." We would add here that marriage in SW and DH subgens are also prohibited if direct filiation is involved. 2) "marriage preferences encouraging repeated marriage by males within the same generation (with WFZ, WBD, WZ, or where brothers marry sisters) parallel features of the relationship terminology."18

3) "Omaha moieties were not exogamous, that their symmetrically structured prohibitions covered only a small field of traceable kin, that direct exchange was otherwise permissible, and that between larger groups marriages tended to go both ways, giving rise in the aggregate to a de facto, but culturally insignificant, pattern of direct exchange." Marriage rules as stated by Dorsey (p. 255-258) are summarized by Barnes (174-175), but Barnes’ conclusions further define and analyze the list of marriage prohibitions and permissions. Dorsey (1884:257), for example, states “If a man has several kindred whom he calls his brothers, and his wife has several female relations who are his ihanga, the men and women can intermarry.” This is what Barnes is saying in #2 above, but with greater precision. Dorsey also discusses prohibitions against males remarrying into subgens married into by their M, MM, F, and FM. For the Omaha, then, marriage prohibitions and preferences are microworlds of rule-governed behavior that may be consistently linked at the multiple-ego network level, but do not aggregate into a macro-world of rules at the level of named society-wide moieties. Our finding is that 2-sided microworlds are linked at the level of networks of repeated marriages. It is important not to conclude, however, that "sidedness" represents a prescription as to who one may marry. We have found that of 1500 couples, 201 are "relinked" by marriage ties, yet all these circuits are consistent with matrimonial sides. In principle we can "deduce" assignment of sides for other couples to whom kinship ties, no matter how remote, are traceable. But while this is true theoretically, the empirical question is: does "deduced" sidedness place a prescriptive restriction on future marriages? The answer is "no" for the very reasons discovered by Barnes: the Omaha take no interest in regulating marriage by the remote tracing of kinship ties, and it would be very difficult practically to do so. We would argue that there is considerable latitude for open ended choice in marriage partners, a characteristic that Lévi-Strauss has alluded to as the 'aleatory' or 'semi-complex' quality of "Omaha alliance." Moreover, the consistency of "sidedness" that we do see -- which might seem surprising given the principle articulated above -- is not one of abstract principle but of the empirical and sociological tendency for "new" marriages that relink or add couples in the "core" structure of figure 1-2 to take place in close actual genealogical proximity to an emergent pattern locally visible to social actors that aggregates microworlds into a localized sidedness structure. Marriage choices for the Omaha, then, are not bound by "gens" or clan affiliations with generic moieties, but by close proximity in actual genealogical networks. The network structure is, then, emergent, not prescriptive. We would argue that the 1300 other marriages are "open" with respect to ways they might be "remotely" relinked in subsequent generations, or with respect to additional data on genealogical linkage. According to Barnes' principles adduced from Omaha ethnography, we would expect only those marriages between

17 Thus, remarriage is prohibited with not only with subgens of the FM, MM, F(FF), and M(MF), and the gens of the latter two, but with subgens of FMM, MMM, FFM, and MFM (see also Fortune 1932:18). 18 These preferred repeat marriages may also be with BW subgens, e.g., BWFZ, BWBD, BWZ. This is a line of investigation opened by Kohler that Barnes thinks especially promising, consistent with our results.

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people closely connected to the existing structure of relinkings to fall under a constraint of sidedness. This is, in fact, exactly what we find: sides are not a consistent global network structure. THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF ALLIANCES Here we depart from the issue of sides and explore the differentiation of ‘core’ network structure in terms of the types of persons involved, the ethnographic background related to the structures we find, and sources of variability both in marriage practices and beliefs. At the end of this section, having identified sources of variability in the social structure, we return to the sidedness question to ask whether the variability we find might account for exceptions to sidedness as well. 1. Political Roles in Relation to the Network Core and Variability in Marriage Practice O’Shea and Ludwickson (1992) , after comparing the different accounts of chieftainship in Dorsey, Fletcher and La Flesche and other sources, examined the order of chiefs in signing treaties representing the Omaha Nation, and matched these against written Barnes’ transcription of Dorsey’s genealogies. They establish firm evidence for most of the membership in the Council of Seven Chiefs throughout the 19th century. The tribal chiefs typically held office for a lifetime, but worked their way up the ranking of chiefs by valorious deeds. The top two chiefs were paramount, but the third, or Quorum Chief, was needed to make decisions. Offices were hereditary within families. When the top two tribal chiefs changed, a large number of subchiefs, of lesser importance (Brown and Dark Chiefs), were elected. The War chief and chief of the Buffalo hunt were also important offices. Table 5 is the concordance of individuals in genealogical data with the Tribal Council Chiefs listed by O’Shea and Ludwickson (1992) for the various treaties they examined. Twenty two chiefs are identified in our genealogies. Stable or achieved upward ranks are seen for 6, 1046, 76, BB, Wh1 (twice: if two people), D., W.A., L.C. (Little Chief), 11, 1343, 1114, 1683, 1025, 763, and 767. Those occurring only once are O.W., P.M., 913, L.S., 769, 627, P.K., N.T., SSP, 498, 445, C., LBB, 1047, 36 and 207. Only H.W. (Hard Walker I), O.C. (Old Chief), 1022, V.M. (Village Maker) and N. move downward 1815 1820 1825 1826 1828 1830 1833 1834 1835 1836 1838 1845 1847 1849 1854 1854 1865 1870 1 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 11 1343 1343 1683 1025 2 HW1 1046 1046 1046 Wh1 1046 1046 1046 1046 1046 11 V.M. 1683 1683 1025 1047 3 O.C. 1022 HW1 HW1 1022 76 HW1 HW1 HW1 HW1 498 1114 V.M. 1025 178 763 4 O.W 769 Wh1 76 76 W.A W.A Wh1 Wh1 Wh1 1025 1683 1025 178 V.M. 36 5 P.M. 76 D. PK B.B. D. Wh1 1022 11 L.C. C. N. V.M. N. 767 6 913? O.C. B.B. N.T. SSP WM W. L.C. L.C. 1114 Wh1 178 N. 763 Wh3 7 L.S. 627 W.A A. V.M. W.A W.A 445 LBB 763 763 767 207 1826,1845: Fletcher and La Flesche 1046=Little Cook=Yellowish Skin (Waha’xi): but in 1838-47 looks like a son Table 5: Orders of Treaty-Signing by Omaha Chiefs 1815-1870 (concordance with O’Shea and Ludwickson 1992) Table 6 lists references from O’Shea and Ludwickson (1992), Dorsey (1890: e.g., D3 for p.3) and Barnes (1984) to tribal or gens chiefs in the left half and elected, war, or buffalo hunt chiefs on the right. Each chief’s reference number (ref. no.) in our dataset, block or core segment memberships, and number of non-sororal and sororal wives (e.g., 4+2=6 wives total for ref. no. 11, Black Elk the Younger:D3) are also shown. Tribal chief names (on the left) are in boldface. At the bottom the

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average number of wives are computed for each column for members of the core network versus others. Chief’s ref. no.

Tribal or Gens Chief’s Names

Block #Wives

Chief’s ref. no.

Elected, War etc. Chief’s Names

Block #Wives

6 Anpantanngainc’age 4 99 Teu’-kanha 1 11 Anpantanga jinga D3 1 27 Anpanskaincage b1-c1 4+2 213 Kida-ha-nu 1 36 Mahi*$ingeWaka*dagi 76 Ictama*ze 431 Jingagahige (linking 2+1 162 Gahige/Pe$anba D2 main 1 178 Gahigejinga D409 main 5 499 Dúbaman$sin D4 b8-c1 2 207 Wanita-waae (lnkng 2+1 409? Qi$a’nika b7-c1 2+1 734 Mactcinge- D382 ???? 1 445Buf Manzeguhe main 1 498 Wa’qu-pa’g$an (b8-c1 1 994war Gian-habi elder 2 562 Gahigawacuce 1 627 Tenuga na*pewa$e 1052 Kanzhanga D450 475m’in 3 731 Mantcananba D2 main 3 763 Cu'denazi 1069 Gianhabi D404 main 3 767 Waka*'ma*$i 769 ? Hard Walker I 1079 Wa$i’daxi 1 913 ? Buffalo Ribs 1022 Te’san D447 main 1 1107wr A’gahaman’$i 1 1025 G$edan’naji D458 main 4 ? Wajinagahige (main) 1 1031 Wanukige incage D458 main 2+1 1180 Tenugajan$inke main 2 1046 Waha’xi 1 1047 Pe’dega’hi D773 main 5 1240 Pahetape main 1 1114 Na*beduba i* c'age main? 3 1200 Uhnananba D458 1 1269 Cageska 1 1294 Akidagahige 1 1343 Logan Fontanelle ? 2 1274 Watannaji main 2 1554 Pasiduba main 1 1580 Gahi’jinga 1 1419 Eenanhanga 2 1674 Pa$ingahige 1 1329 Ponca chief (c1) 2 1683 Joseph LaFlesche 1 noncore 12/10 =1.2 wives 9/7=1.3 wives core 33/13 =2.6 wives 9/7=1.3 wives Table 6: Plural wives of Omaha Leaders

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Omaha chiefs were the most likely to have multiple marriages, as shown in Tables 2 and 4: hence, tribal chiefs should be commonly found in the core of the marriage network, relinked through plural marriages. Indeed, those chiefs in the core have two wives on average, while those not in the core average only 1.2 wives (Table 5). Only one man with more than 4 nonsororal wives (1047) was not a chief, and was a vocal opponent of their governance. Traders also sometimes had multiple wives, but are not listed in the table. The correlation between leadership status and core-membership is strong, as shown in Table 7. Tribal Chiefs Elected Chiefs Non-

Chiefs Total Males

Male Members of Core 13* 11** 130 154 Non-Core Males 10 8 586 604 notes: r=.25, gamma=.82 Chi-sq=15, p=.0001

*27,162,178,409?498,731,734,1022,1025,1031,1047,1554,445

**207,431,445,499,734?,1052,1069,1180,1225,1240,1274

Total: 758

Table 7: Association between Leadership Status and Core-Membership (p <.001, gamma=.85) Chiefs 499, 1031, and possibly 409,19 along with 1032, who marries a daughter and grandaughter of Chief 1481 (Blackbird), are the only persons in this sample with ‘sororal’ WBD/WFZ marriage (Table 2). This type of marriage claim, then, is mainly used by chiefs. (Final drawings to show the position of chiefs in the marriage network will include the core plus ancestors and the core plus descendants.) WHERE TO PUT CHIEFS ONLY GENEALOGIES? 2. The Sources of Relative Endogamy In Mead’s (1932:88-89) ethnography we found our first potential explanation for the finding that the blocks of the core are closely connected: Besides the exogamic rules governing marriage as between gentes, there was an endogamic tendency controlled by the hereditary medicine societies. Because of the great secrecy with which it was necessary to develop the paraphernalia of the societies and because of the sorcery and other malpractices involved, a spouse who was not a member of the society became a threat to the continued secrecy. The society teaching contains injunctions to marry within the initiated group if possible. Given these special requirements, we got a first inkling of why not only do our blocks of “duplicate” marriages link up to form a core, but why also this type of marriage is restricted to elites, and why it is extended to ‘sororal’ WBD or WFZ marriages. Mead cloaks her ethnography in pseudonyms, but she describes the Midewiwin or Shell Society of the Omaha (Fletcher and LaFlesche’s 1911v.2:509-565), a principal dance and medicine society for which membership was largely hereditary among the leading chiefly families. The Society’s sacred medicine bundle of each member were not buried with the dead, but passed for generations within the same families. Fortune (1932: 19,170) stressed that many of the positions in the secret ceremonial societies were passed from father to son, father-in-law to son-in-law, father or mother to daughter, etc. Sororal co-wives also played a role in these societies. 19 We are uncertain with the identification of 409 (Qi$sa’nika) as Qi$sa-ska, a head chief, but we cannot locate Qi$sa-ska, and Qi$sa’nika is the most likely candidate.

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3. Types of Marriage To understand the role of sororal marriage in Omaha society, we must deal with variability in social practices. Of the several types of arranged marriage, sororal marriage occupied an ambivalent position. It was more likely in wealthier and more privileged kin groups. The two other types of arranged marriage reflected the relative status of the families. Where status was relatively equal, the bridegroom or his family took the initiative, and the exchange of gifts was carefully balanced. Ordinarily, after the marriage and the gifts of the groom’s side, residence began with a few months to a year in the husband’s father’s house. Once the bride’s family had repaid the marriage gifts (the material debts being precisely cancelled, e.g.,, a horse for a horse), however, the groom had to work off his obligation for the gift of the bride by a period of bride-service, residing with her family for one or two years. Even in elopement, the common alternative to arranged marriage,“ approval ... had to be won before a marriage was socially recognised and validated by gift exchange between the families of groom and of bride.” Further (Fortune 1932: 22): “There was very strong feeling that a person should marry his or her own class, chief’s daughter to chief’s son, doctor’s daughter to doctor’s son, priest’s daughter to priest’s son. This feeling was even narrowed down to a strong favouring of marriage between potential members of the same secret society... all of which were cliques with hereditary succession. It was felt more proper that a man and his wife should belong to the same secret society.” (emphasis ours) During the annual summer period of communal hunting, when the Buffalo migrated north, each couple was assigned a position in the tribal circle according to the husband’s gens. In the winter families dispersed to private hunting activities, and residence was in tipis, loosely cluster by subgens. In the spring and fall, however, when the tribe lived in earth-lodges in villages: “There is some doubt concerning where the couple ultimately took up residence.... Fortune (1932:24) ... writes that ... residence was matrilocal.... No other authority gives precise information about residence location in the village, and the possibility remains that Fortune may have become confused about the temporary period when the new son-in-law served his wife’s father” (Barnes p. 178). Barnes’ doubts are not convincing given the specificity of Fortune’s (1932: 24) report on this matter, and the lack of contradiction by other sources: “In strong contrast to the patrilocal residence of the times of tipi dwelling (winter and summer) the times of earth lodge dwelling and of religious ceremonial (spring and fall) were times of matrilocal residence. Mother and daughter commonly owned the earth lodge, and father-in-law and son-in-law resided together (in place of father and son). This seasonal alternation of kin association is possibly the basis of the Omaha inheritance of religious privilege, partly from father to son, but also very considerably from father-in-law to son-in-law.... Fortune had access to Dorsey’s genealogies and lists of names, and says of his own work “I may detail the social organization somewhat more minutely, relying on accounts of previous authorities, checked by myself. I have some new points to make in this connection...” (p. 12), including the note on residence post-scripted as a chapter note. At the time of Fortune and Mead’s (1932:84-86) fieldwork, village residence in the Omaha Allotments was normally matrilocal. It is not altogether clear from Mead’s description of residence rules in aboriginal times whether this was the case generally. However, she describes a second form of arranged marriage, where the wife’s family, having higher status, took the initiative to attract a man who would contribute economically to the household. Residence in the village earth lodges, probably matrilocal in general, was certainly matrilocal in this instance20. 20 Mead also refers to “under a system of matrilocal residence,” although her view would hardly be independent from that of her husband. Fletcher and La Flesche (1911: 334) make clear that matrilocality did occur at least as an alternative residence pattern: “There are stories told in which a man and his son-in-law were very close friends, living and hunting together,” possibly at two different times of the year. Fletcher’s (1897:253) report, “In the large communal houses, such as the Omaha earth-lodges of the last generation, where more than one family lived...,” given her fascination with the gens

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In sororal polygyny, where the second wife joins the husband even if he resides matrilocally: “the customary affinal exchange was abandoned, in tacit recognition of the loss of balance implied in polygamy.... [A] man ... merely presented [the wife’s] parents with a horse or other valuables, and they were obligated to no return.... There are cases reported where the husband first took unto himself the young relative of his wife and afterwards paid her father a horse, which suggests that this apparent purchase may possibly be more of an indemnity, after exercising a permitted license.... [G]enealogies and records suggest that [polygyny] was infrequent... and not a definite way in which the rich and powerful showed their prestige. (p. 85-86). Far from polygyny showing ‘prestige,’ however, the members of the hereditary medicine society -- often high-ranking families -- were under additional obligations to discharge duties attendant to generosity at society-wide ceremonies: “[Omaha] society is organized in a way which relies upon marriage not only to provide economically for the women and children, but also as an institution integrally related to the proper conduct of social ceremonials. The unit for a ceremony was a man and his wife, not a man and his sister, which is found so commonly in unilateral societies. In informal affairs where a wife was lacking, a woman who stood in the ‘sister-in-law’ and consequently ‘potential-wife’ relationship could discharge the social obligations incumbent upon the wife of the master of ceremonies. The only point at which husband and wife did not function socially together was in the medicine societies and the attempt to attain society endogamy sought to overcome even that (p. 89). Avoidance of the possibility that wives might reveal ceremonial secrets of their husband’s lineage by virtue of co-participation with their husbands is underscored by Fortune’s (1932: 174) account of how secret society members might, as they lay dying, ask their wife to agree to submit to the use of poison. 4. Membership in the Secret Societies To test the idea that Omaha secret societies were class specific, and that society membership had an effect on marriage choices, Table 8 compiles the evidence of membership lists for various societies from Dorsey (1884:342-355; but no lists for Ghost or Bear) and Fortune (1932:170-174), plus what is known about chiefly status and membership in the core of the marriage network. Of the secret societies, the Midewiwin (Shell) and Horse society were associated with chiefly families. The Buffalo society overlapped with the Midewiwin in a few cases of chiefly families, but the two were largely exclusive of one another, and neither overlapped with the Ghost, Grizzly and Water Monster ‘doctoring’ societies. The latter overlapped one another but not with the Midewiwin or chiefly status. Fortune’s statement as to a class-like structure in the secret societies appears confirmed for the principal hereditary societies. The indicators of class are: (1) differential power, (2) differential ceremonial obligations, (3) polygamy of the higher classes vs. monogamy as the ordinary marriage form, (4) relative endogamy in the higher classes, (5) hereditary tendencies (not strictly so) in the transmission of status, (6) permeability between classes, and possibilities for achievement. Priestly functions and the Witcita society overlap membership with the top two “classes” (Midewiwin and Buffalo, the latter involving chiefly families to a lesser degree), but not the third set of ‘doctoring’ societies. Thunderbird, a dream society with private feasting, actually not a secret society at all (and not discussed in that context by Dorsey), overlaps in memberships with groups in all three strata. The strongest correlation in Table 8 is that: of the members in the network core, all those listed as society members are of chiefly status; and conversely, only four such chiefs lack membership in the and the fact that she lived in the Earth lodges of the 1880s, surely would have noted a uniform patrilocal residence. Instead, she refers to the place of the grandparents in the dwelling, without specify which. Given the fact that dwellings were owned by women and that fixed dwellings passed from mother to daughter, the maternal grandparents (reciprocally, a couple’s married daughter) certainly had a strong claim to co-residence. Bilocal or matrilocal residence patterns, then, in that order, are the most likely for the pre-1870 earth lodges.

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core (including, for example, monogamous Big Elk, whose brother and son died young, linked into the core only through step-brother 1325). There is also a strong correlation between Midewiwin membership and core network status. *Chiefs Council

Shell:Midewiwin+Horse

Buffalo + Witcita

Thunder Bird

Priest Ghost Grizzly Bear

Water Monster

Netwrk Core

Ref. No.

X* X 11X* X Y 178,498X* X Y 1114 X* X Horse Witcita Y 1025 X* X X X 767 X* X X Y 1047 X X 984* X Y 1016* (+2) X Witcita 1552*No X Horse X Y 1575*X X Horse Witcita 1419,431X* X Horse Y 207 X X Horse Y 1274 ? X 1004 X X Ista’thabi

Horse Y 195,915/1138 Horse (4:***) Witcita Y 1495 Witcita (4:****)X X Y 1069/994NX* X Y 36 X 101?(+1)X X X X 162 X (+4) X X 764 X X X Y 499X Server X Witcita 99 X X Witcita Y 1225 X X Witcita X 1674 X Witcita 373 War X 632 TwoCrows X 151 X 1094 X 436 X X 246

X X X X 264*(+1) X (+4) X (+4) X X 749 (+5) Horse X X 1007 X X (+3) X 1134 (+2) X X X (+1) X X 1003 (+1) X X X 1355 X X 831?**(+2) X X 1463 Chiefs Shell+horse Buffalo,W Thund Priest Ghost Grizzly Water Core Ref.No.

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Dorsey p.342, 348 p.347,349 none p.353 p.349 p.346 *Dorsey L&L p.509 p.487 p.490 p.489 p.486 p.565 **Dorsey .347 Fortune p.109 p.58 p.146 p.173 p.75 p.82 p.85

Table 8: Membership in Dancing Societies in Relation to Marriage Core ***142,982/991,1347, 1397 ****637,1354,1478,1481??? /=possible numbers for name given

We may suppose, then, that men like Big Elk (#11, a tribal chief and member of the hereditary medicine society) may have practiced polygyny (although Big Elk himself is an exception) within an endogamous circle of medicine society members in order that the additional wives help them to discharge the ceremonial duties of membership in hereditary medicine societies. As of 1820, the period of our genealogical data, “the Indian agent Dougherty wrote than many Omaha girls were betrothed in infancy (James 1905,14:322). He seems to have had in mind principally the younger sisters of a woman already married. An Omaha man who marries the oldest daughter ‘espouses all the sisters successively, and receives them into his house when they arrive at the proper age,’ ... between nine and twelve. La Flesche and Two Crows expectably denied that such was the Omaha practice....” (Barnes p. 177; our emphasis with respect to informant disagreement). 5. Understanding Variation among Informants Ethnographer Francis La Flesche, as descendant of a French grandfather and his Ponca wife on one side and a White grandfather and Oto wife on the other, was excluded from the hereditary medicine or secret societies, as was his father, Joseph La Flesche, Jr., an Omaha by adoption. If the practice of sororal polygyny was characteristic of members of the societies from which they were excluded, is it any wonder that Joseph La Flesche, Jr., would deny the practice as foreign to his experience? He and Two Crows, neither of whom were members of the Midewiwin, shared the agenda of La Flesche’s Progressive party (Barnes p. 21). Were the informants they sought to discount in the ethnographic record members of the chiefly secret societies, and were the differential practices of society members a basis some of the disagreements? Tribal chief Garner Wood (162: wives unknown, Thunderbird) was one of the last keepers of the sacred pipes, son of one of the most recalcitrant of the Omaha leaders (178: Thomas Wood, 4 wives), and a member of our network core (which also connects Garner Wood to the core). Oliver Lion (207: 2 sisters as wives; Midewiwin) was keeper of the sacred pipes of the Deer Head Pipe subclan. Jordon Stabler (831: 2 wives), although a member of the Progressive party, was one of Dorsey’s best ‘traditional’ informants (and possibly the Water Monster and Thunderbird member mentioned by Fortune). 6. A Concentric Social Structure What is the overall social structure implied by our findings? The Omaha have a center-periphery social structure, if not an outright class structure. In the center are the chiefly lines and relatively more endogamous families who participate in the central ‘hereditary’ and ‘secret’ ceremonial societies. These families have ceremonial obligations that necessitate the taking of multiple wives, and there is a preference for ‘duplicate’ relinking marriages with the same lineage (e.g., sororal polygyny or sororate replacement of a deceased wife). Other than these marriages, which are not a redoubling of alliance in a strict sense (Héritier 1981:99), there are relatively few proper relinkings, but most of them are within this central group, and the close relinkings tend to preserve ‘sidedness’ by relinking an even number (four or six) patrilines. From this center, kinship connections radiate outwards in a form that approximates a spanning tree, reaching most of the segments of the society. The ‘peripheries,’ on the other hand, tend to be connected only or largely through the more central families.

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To test the hypothesis that the chiefly lines in Tables 5-6 are in fact the center of Omaha, independently of the relinkings that occur through ‘duplicate’ marriages, we eliminated the 14 ‘sororatic’ and ‘leviratic’ marriages in Table 2, and produced a kinship graph that was then fit to a center-periphery model21. The results are shown in figure 5, with the dark dots representing the chiefs in Tables 5-6. As can be seen, the chiefs are indeed at the center of the social network. < Insert figure 5 about here > Inflections of Chiefly Families in Marriage Rules Marriage in chiefly families, and those in the highest secret societies, with those of commensurate status, placed an additional constraint on the circle of available mates along with ceremonial obligations necessitating additional wives, preferably from among this circle. Chiefly families, and those associated with the Midewiwin, had exceptional marriage practices: they married more wives, sometimes married closely related women (‘sororally’) from the same patriline, sometimes made demands for the WBD in marriage, engaged in more relinkings, and were more involved in the central connected ‘core’ and major ‘block’ of relinkings in the marriage network. As we have, seen there are also many exceptions to sidedness in the blocks of relinkage. Are the exceptions to sidedness also associated with marriages by chiefly families, for whom sidedness would add another constraint to their already constrained circle of status equals? Figure 6 shows the major block of relinkings in which exceptions to sidedness occur, and labels the couples by the status of the husband (G= Gahige or tribal chief, W= War chief, B=Buffalo Hunt chief, P=Priest, M=Midewiwin member, if none above) . Of the seven exceptions to sidedness, four are women taken by the sons of chiefs, two are daughters of Chiefs, and one is a granddaugher of a Chief. Marriages with chiefly families, then, generate all of the exceptions to sidedness, although seventeen other such marriages are not exceptions. For the fifteen marriages in the central block which are not between chiefly families, none are exceptions to sidedness. The differences between these two rates (7:17 vs. 0:15) is statistically significant (p=.02). We can conclude, then, that “normal” marriages are consistent with sidedness, with exceptions concentrated in the chiefly marriage circles. < Insert figure 6 about here > Conclusions ‘Network’ concepts of relinkage, redoubling, blood marriage, ‘sororal’ and ‘leviratic’ (“duplicate”) marriage are already in standard use in the anthropological literature, and include the concepts used by alliance theorists. The standard definitions we use for these concepts allow some of the properties of a marriage network to be identified in terms familiar to “alliance” theory. We will review again below what we have found for the Omaha. Network concepts of circuits, core, blocks, and sides of marriage networks (following White and Jorion 1992, Houseman and White 1998) help to identify particular subsets of the network in which relinkage, redoubling, “duplicate” marriage, blood marriage, or moiety-like marriage structures are in play. A particular network may or may not have subgraphs that exhibit these structures. Sidedness is a property that may or may not characterize a network globally.

21 Our thanks to Jeff Stern and his network-graphs implementation for the program Mathematica.

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Our Omaha network findings support those of Houseman and White (1998) to underscore that marriage sidedness (male sides, for example) is: 1) consistent with marriage circuits which contain an even number of female links (i.e., an even number of linked patrilines), 2) consistent with an enormous variety of marriage circuits (including cross-cousin marriage), 3) not necessarily connected with or dependent on cross-cousin marriage per se, 4) inconsistent with a enormous variety of marriage circuits, 5) falsifiable only if there are marriage circuits to test for consistency or inconsistency, 6) an empirically meaningful pattern only if the frequency of consistent over inconsistent marriage circuits is sufficient to reject the null hypothesis (see White and Tortorice 1995), 7) always relative to particular bounded network (e.g., members of the Omaha tribe), with no assumption that this network constitutes a closed or fully endogamous system, 8) not necessarily uniform even within a given society. In the present case we have not tried (nor is it necessary) to exhaust the social universe of the Omaha to arrive at a network analysis. Our present “Earth Moiety” sample (since the moieties have nothing to do with regulation of marriage) of 1500 cases is sufficient in its own right for analysis, and has proven its value in providing insights into the workings of a network-stratified social universe. These data contain sufficient evidence to accept an hypothesis of ‘localized’ male sidedness, at least within the Earth Moiety (see White and Tortorice for a sidedness test of the null hypothesis), with exceptions to sidedness in the marriage circles of chiefly families. Whether this hypothesis will apply as well to Sky moiety, to cross-moiety marriages, and to the Omaha marriage network as a whole will be seen in subsequent publications (we do not know the answer at this time, since we have not finished data compilation for the last article planned in this series, an examination of the entire Omaha marriage network). Omaha sidedness such as we have observed, however, is of a very particular sort. The evidence for sidedness in a marriage network appears only in a network core where couples are multiply linked, and even then not without a substantial rate of exceptions in chiefly marriage circles. It might appear that sidedness, since it is empirically demonstrated within the core, is incompatible with ‘dispersed alliance,’ where couples are not multiply linked by the redoubling of alliances. However, if we treat ‘sororal’ and ‘leviratic’ secondary marriages as duplicate (i.e., single) links between families22, the multiple linkages between couples in the core are relatively few in terms of proper relinkings, and the pattern of maximally dispersed alliance characterizes much of the marriage network. The argument could be raised, then, that sidedness itself is simply an artifact of secondary marriages, and ought to be simply ignored. The core of the Omaha marriage network, however, has a particular structure. First, the network core and the matrimonial sides within the core (given ‘chiefly’ exceptions) are not generalized phenomena throughout the entire network, but are found only within a fraction of the population which includes disproportionate numbers of tribal chiefs and polygynists (the two features often overlapping within the core). Second, there is abundant evidence that the existence of this core is linked to the practice of endogamy among the members of the high-status secret societies, especially the Midewiwin. Societies members took many of their wives from among the daughters of other members, benefiting from their help in society ceremonies while not risking betrayal of secrets to close kin outside the circle of membership.

22 In our graphic representation, ‘duplicate’ couples have the same nodes for wife’s parents and husband’s parents and can be collapsed homomorphically into a single ‘generic’ couple if we equate their children as well.

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Within the highly endogamous segments of Omaha society such as the core of our network, and in the population at large, there are all kinds of possible marriages between individuals who are outside of the range of one another’s prohibitions, e.g., on marrying anyone having as ancestor one of ego’s grandparents (‘omaha alliance’). If spouses were chosen at random within these possibilities, we would expect more affinal relinking between Omaha kindreds than actually does occur. These relinkings would necessarily show up in the core. At random, half of these marriages would be expected to violate sidedness, and half to conform to sidedness. The evidence for ‘dispersed alliances,’ then, is that redoubling of alliances never occurs, and relinking rarely occurs (except in the context of secondary marriages among families centrally involved in Omaha ceremonial life and the eight proper relinkings), and barring the exceptional cases in chiefly circles, the proper relinkings, where only a few families are involved, tend to be correctly sided. Again, this outcome is not a likely certainty that follows from ‘omaha alliance.’ Further evidence for sides, in this context, is that violations to sidedness through proper relinking rarely occurs outside chiefly families (with exception of one WBW marriage) even in the more densely intermarried network of ceremonially-involved families, with their tendency towards endogamy. How is this possible, as again it does not follow in consequence of from ‘omaha alliance’ prohibitions? These two questions raise the more critical question that lays at their foundation: in the core of the marriage network, as throughout Omaha society generally, kindreds are affinally linked. How is it possible -- since this is indeed the case that we observe empirically -- for the Omaha to avoid incorrectly-sided affinal relinking, if the only ‘omaha alliance’ prohibitions are those between blood kin? The answer to all three questions is simple and forceful: the evidence of the marriage network suggests the idea of a missing marriage rule: avoidance of improperly sided affinal relinking. For such a rule to operate, the Omaha must have ways of specifying such prohibitions in terms of their concepts or kinship-term classes of relatively close affinal kin (by this criteria, the one observed case of marriage with WBW is a true exception, but it occurs in a second marriage). This question takes us unto the subject of our companion article, but we have already seen this process at work within the network core. The principles are these: first, while multiple marriages are very common in Omaha society, the kinship terminology collapses half-sibling and step-parent relations as if they were full siblings and true parents; second, the classificatory extension of kinship terms to living kin, and the lumping of others in other kindreds defined by living kinship links, make it rather easy to cognize and describe classes of close affinal kin. Thus, affinally related relatives who might appear distant to us are likely to be identified by kinship terms23, and the terms themselves are likely to carry the prohibition against improperly sided marriages: not to marry any relative (consanguineal or affinal), except those classed as opposite-side siblings-in-law. Barnes shows convincingly in his analysis of Omaha marriages that Dorsey’s characterization of the Omaha ‘omaha alliance’ prohibition was correct. Beyond the prohibition against marriage into the father’s or the mother’s gens, those against descendants in the FM or MM gens apply only at the actual subgens level (i.e., traceable genealogical connections). Further, these prohibitions do not apply to descendants of classificatory grandparents: "only the marriages of persons in a direct line of filiation affect marriage choices." With respect to affinal kin, a similar pattern is evident. It is not that the Omaha call everyone by a ‘classificatory’ kin term that divides their world into those who are marriageable and those who are

23 It remains to be worked out, however, how Kronenfeld’s (1989) rules for generating Omaha terminological classifications apply to distant affinals.

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not. It is, rather, that specific and traceable affinal kin, if sufficiently close, carry specific kinship-term designations that preclude marriage. Close-affine sidedness, then, a special type of ‘localized’ sidedness, is an operative characteristic of Omaha marriage, although not a general feature of ‘omaha’ alliance. It does tend to produce a statistically significant ‘emergent’ sidedness at the global level, but not as a conscious product of global rules, as in a moiety system. Putting these ‘structural’ issues aside, the other findings of substantial interest that arise out of the network approach include documentation that supports Fortune’s controversial description of a kind of class stratification of leaders versus ordinary citizens. This operates in terms of ceremonial society memberships, relative endogamy of the higher strata, distinctive marriage practices (polygyny, sororal marriage, and WiBrDa or WiFaSi marriage), and the breaking of sidedness rules among these strata. Differences in the class position of Dorsey’s leading informants (especially Joseph La Flesche, Jr., and Two Crows versus some of the more ceremonial leaders) may well account for some of the discrepancies in their statements concerning Omaha practices. Our finding, then, is that there is a distinctive high-status ‘inflection’ to Omaha culture and social structure, similar to what has been found in lowland South Amerindian cultures using similar network methods (Houseman and White, in press). Whereas most members of the society would recognize the right of a man to ask for a wife’s sister or WiBrDa, for example, as a second wife, it is typically only those in the higher sociopolitical stratum who do so in practice. Differences in social practices, however, may well account for elements of Omaha culture that Joseph La Flesche, Jr., ‘never did,’ or that Two Crows, for example, would deny (Barnes 1984). References Cited Barnes, Robert. H. 1984. Two Crows Denies it: A History of Controversy in Omaha Sociology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Barnes, Robert. H. (personal notes loaned to Douglas R. White, circa. 1994) Chartrand, Gary, and Linda Leskiak. 1986. Graphs and Digraphs. Monterey, CA: Wadsworth & Brooks-Cole. Dorsey, James O. 1884. Omaha Sociology. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1881-1882: 205-307. Fletcher, Alice C. 1897. Home Life among the Indians. Century Magazine 54 (n.s.): 252-263. Fletcher, Alice C., and Francis La Flesche. 1911. 2 vols. The Omaha Tribe. 27th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, D.C. Fortune, Reo F. 1932. Omaha Secret Societies. Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, vol. 14. New York: Columbia University Press. Fox, Robin. 1967. Kinship and Marriage. London: Penguin Books. Héritier, Françoise. 1981. L'Exercise de la parenté. Paris: Hautes Études, Gallimard, Seuil. Houseman, Michael and Douglas R. White. 1998. Taking Sides: Marriage Networks and Dravidian

Kinship in South America, Pp.214-243, In, Maurice Godelier and Thomas Trautmann, eds., Dravidian, Iroquois and Crow-Omaha Kinship Systems. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press.

Jorion, Paul, and E. Lally. 1983. An algorithm for the analysis of genealogies as to prior kin connection between spouses. Ms. Dept. of Anthropology, Cambridge University. Kronenfeld, David B. 1989. Morgan vs. Dorsey on the Omaha Cross/Parallel Contrast: Theoretical Implications. L'Homme 109:76-106. Mead, Margaret. 1932. The changing culture of an Indian tribe. New York: Columbia University Press.

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O’Shea, John M., and John Ludwickson. 1992. Omaha Chieftainship in the Nineteenth Century. Ethnohistory 39(3):316-352. Tate, Michael L. 1991. The Upstream People: An Annotated Research Bibliography of the Omaha Tribe. Metuchen, N.J. & London: Scarecrow Press. Thompson, Peter M. Thompson. 1997. The Competitive Inheritance of [Chiefly] Title in the 19th Century Omaha Tribe. Independent study paper with Douglas R. White White, Douglas R. and Michael Houseman. ms. in draft. Sidedness. White, Douglas R. and Paul Jorion. Representing and Analyzing Kinship: A Network Approach.

Current Anthropology 33:454-462. White, Douglas R., and Janel Tortorice, n.d. Omaha / ‘omaha’: networks and cognition. (part 2 of a 3 part series). Alternate Abstract This work reopens our understanding of Omaha sociology and the riches of the ethnographic record by a network analysis of existing primary data on genealogical relations, marriage, clan membership, leadership position, succession to office, and membership in ceremonial societies. The network data newly compiled in this study build on Robert Barnes’ transcription of Dorsey’s genealogies. Genealogical data for this analysis (one of a series) are complete only for gens of ‘Earth Moiety,’ which contains most of the important leadership positions, but is not involved in regulating marriage. Except for ‘sororal’ and ‘leviratic’ marriages with members of the same lineage, the network contains no redoubling of alliances and little ‘proper’ relinking of affines (except through plural nonsororal marriages). and fits quite closely the concept of ‘dispersed alliances.’ The major block of the network in which relinking occurs is examined to ascertain whether a pattern of sidedness among affinals is present, as if different types of affinals conformed to a distinction of cross (e.g., wife’s lineage) versus parallel (e.g., affines of wife’s lineage) analogous to a moiety division, but operating only on a localized basis. Relinkings in this block, plus additional ‘sororate’ and ‘levirate’ marriages (intensifying rather than dispersing alliances), link up to form a sizable marriage network core (in a network core, marriages are connected by parent-child links to two or more other marriages in the core, counting a child’s link to one or both parents as but a single connection. By this definition, the core is isomorphic with the set of relinked or blood-linked couples, and couples linking them). The marriage core shows a higher rate of endogamy for families of tribal chiefs and members of hereditary medicine societies, who seek as wives the daughters of other society members. The alliance structure of the core exemplifies a thematic variant within the culturally shared Omaha marriage rules emphasizing claims for secondary marriage into wife’s lineage, and relinking with ‘cross’ affinals (affines of affines of affines, where affinal links are between patrilines). Membership in the marriage core is associated with the hereditary transmission of certain social positions involving ceremonial obligations that require additional wives. Membership in the marriage core is correlated with systematic variation in statements about marriage customs made by the principal 19th century informants: those who are excluded tend to de-emphasize, for example, the importance of ‘sororal’ polygyny and secondary marriage claims, claims that are central to the intensification of alliances in the marriage core. When we reexamine sidedness in the network, we see that the errors to sidedness are all associated with marriages in chiefly families. miscellaneous notes European Disruption of Omaha Society?

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p. 7 "the Omaha under their famous Chief Blackbird were generally successful at intimidating rival tribes..., but a smallpox epidemic during the winter of 1800-1801..., broke their strength. Thereafter they became especially vulnerable to assault by various bands of Sioux. Smith... lists no fewer than twelve attacks by the Sioux or Sauks between 1804 and 1848 in which the Omahas were worsted, losing as many as seventy-three persons each time."

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