A Brief Look at Traditional Social Organizations

The importance of kinship relations to pre-Contact and early Contact Eskimo societies is unchallenged. Robert Spencer (1959), in his estimable analysis of Inupiaq-speaking North Alaskan Eskimo society, generalized that the settlements from Point Hope to Point Barrow tended to form endogamous communities. In other words, persons found their spouses in their home settlements. In a more recent survey, Ernest Burch (1975), focusing on Inupiaq-speaking Northwest Alaskan Eskimos, affirms for that area the generalization that communities comprised kinship units.

The Bilateral Demes of Wainwright and Unalakleet

The units that were formed seem best characterized as demes (see Jorgensen 1980: 179-180), groups of people demonstrating descent from a common ancestor, regardless of the sex of the connecting ascendants (bilateral), which are united by some additional criterion, such as unilocal postnuptial residence or collective ownership. De facto, some of the recognized descendants of a given ancestor are potential members (who moved out on marriage, perhaps), and others are actual members. Demes often have stewards.

Among Alaska mainland Inupiaq and Yupik speakers, traditional demes appear to have observed the sort of marriage principles that maintained the nexus of the group (e.g., endogamy, whereby first-cousin marriage may be disapproved and second-cousin marriage preferred). They practiced post-nuptial residence principles, which also lent themselves to maintaining the loose boundaries of the group (patrilocal preferred in most areas, but the couple could reside where opportunities were best). And many groups also possessed some corporate features, such as rituals that they alone performed or prerogatives that they alone enjoyed. Among mainland Inupiaq and Yupik speakers, men's semisubterranean chambers (kashim for the Inupiaq, and karigi for the Yupik), where they resided during much of the periods in which they were in the village and in which ceremonials were performed, and unique rituals may well have represented the corporate character of the demes.

Yet demes, by dint of their bilateral descent organizations, were somewhat flexible and open. A couple could choose to live in the wife's section of the village or even in the wife's village if it was different from the husband's and if endogamy was not observed. A person traced descent equally on the mother's side and the father's side and could look to either or both sides for support. It is possible, in fact, likely, that demes came to be non-localized so that bilateral kinspersons were distributed in several villages over a continuous geographic area and that kinship bonds among them facilitated sharing and cooperation.

It is also possible that flexibility of kinship group membership, which itself facilitated sharing and cooperation, was

further enhanced by the widespread mainland Eskimo practices of adoption, wife exchange, and partnership. These features of traditional Eskimo social organization allowed for the expansion of the circle of kinspersons, the replacement of deceased members, and predictable, formalized relations, which were treated as kin relations (see Spencer 1959; Burch 1975).

As has been emphasized earlier, kinship principles do not stand alone. People who hunt, prepare, and share together—that is, rely on one another's skills and generosity—are the people among whom kinship obligations are most pertinent. In the past, extended families were the basic kinship organizations through which subsistence was achieved, although nuclear families or polygynous families might separate from larger extended families during some seasons of the year.

Kinship provided the nexus for community life. Spencer (1959: 65-71), himself considerably struck by the relations among naturally occurring resources, subsistence adaptations, trade, and such abiological factors as wind, temperature, ice, and sunlight, saw kinship and blood feud as the factors that provided collective responsibility and the basis for law and order. Burch (1975) concluded that kinship was relevant in all social contexts for traditional Northwest Alaskan Inupiaq speakers.

As we have learned, the Unalakleet area, originally settled by Yupik speakers who were decimated by an epidemic in the 1830s, came to be occupied by Malemiut (Inupiaq) and by a few speakers of the Kawerak dialect of Inupiaq who trailed in behind the Malemiut. Only a very few Yupik speakers remained, and the revitalized community reflected the endogamous bilateral kinship-based communities of Northwest Alaska.

The Patrilineal Clans of Gambell

St. Lawrence Island Eskimos, Central Siberian Yupik speakers, are more closely related linguistically to the Asiatic Eskimo languages than to the mainland Yupik languages (Woodbury 1984). The St. Lawrence Island dialectal and language differences from Inupiaq, as well as from mainland Yupik, suggest that early Yupik speakers separated from Inupiaq speakers

many centuries ago, perhaps as many as twenty, and that mainland Yupik separated from the Asiatic branch more recently.

Traditional Asiatic Eskimos differed markedly both from Inupiaq and from mainland Yupik (see Hughes 1084: 243-246). Whereas Inupiaq and mainland Yupik had institutionalized the men's communal houses—kashim and karigi—and observed bilateral descent, the Asiatic Yupik had no men's communal houses, and they observed patrilineal descent. The origin of patrilineal descent reckoning among Asiatic Yupik is unknown, and, to my knowledge, no person has sought to reconstruct the proto-Eskimo kinship system to shed light on whether the patrilineal kinship terms preceded or followed bilateral kinship terms among them.

Whatever the urform (the hypothetical original Eskimo kinship system) may have been, the Asiatic Yupik became organized into unilineal descent groups, which traced descent through the paternal line. An interesting feature of the descent groups that were formed along patrilineal principles was that on marriage, the bride moved near her husband's father's home and became a member of his patrilineal descent group. At this time, the bride gave up membership in her natal descent group. Such groups are referred to by Murdock (1949), Driver (1956), and Jorgensen (1980) as "compromise" descent groups, inasmuch as unilineal descent principles are compromised by marriage. In patrilineal clan societies, wives (but not other affines) become members of the descent group.

It is possible that these compromise patrilineal descent groups were localized (residing in one place) at one time and that each member could trace his or her relation to every other member through a known, apical ancestor. Perhaps each resided in one of the thirteen villages that appear on the nineteenth-century Russian and Danish maps. Such patrilineal descent groups are usually referred to as patrilineages (see Jorgensen 1980: 180-190). When two or more patrilineal descent groups recognize bonds of common descent but the relations among them are stipulated to some mythical being, or presumed ancestor, rather than being traced and demonstrated, those groups are usually called patrisibs. When patrisibs

gain members from in-marrying spouses, these "compromise" kinship groups are referred to as patricians.

Lineages, sibs, or clans can be either localized or non-localized. For example, all members of a clan can reside in the same village, or members can reside in different segments of the clan in different villages. St. Lawrence Island Eskimos are organized into eleven nonlocalized patricians. All but one of those patricians currently have segments (usually more than one) in each of the island's two villages.

Traditionally, membership in an Asiatic Eskimo patrician was corporate; that is, its members were jointly liable for the actions of any member of the clan, and they observed special customs and owned special property, privileges, and prerogatives. Clans were exogamous, in that men sought their wives from outside their own clan. Boat crews were composed of clan members. A section of the village was recognized as the property of a clan. Members of a clan were buffed in particular locales that were reserved only for clan members. Clans performed hunting and other rituals that were unique to themselves and that they alone were privileged to perform. And patriclans possessed unique tales about themselves, their relations to others, and their cosmogony (see Hughes 1984: 24-277). In the mid-1950s, Hughes (1060) noted that even kickball games were played between children of two different clans.

Kinship terminologies employed by Asiatic Eskimos distinguished cross-cousins from siblings, as do mainland terminologies. On the mainland, terms for cross-cousins and parallel cousins were the same. Among Asiatic Eskimos, however, a distinctive term was used for patrilineal parallel cousins (father's brother's children) and another for matrilineal parallel cousins (mother's sister's children). This separation of parallel patrilineal cousins marks patriclan relations.

It should be apparent that traditional patricians and demes shared many features in common, although the organizing principles of clans allowed for less flexibility of membership than did those of demes. It is likely that there were more formalized requirements of the clan members as well, particularly in the clan steward's role in overseeing the distribution of the results of extraction.