ABSTRACT
Although the patrilineage is the structural basis of Chiga group organization, every individual in the lineage is set in a nexus of other affiliations. Not only the frequent pacts of blood-brotherhood, but also the kinship bonds arising out of the exogamous marriage relations cut across the divisive clan lines, forming a network of inter-personal relations which reach out in all directions. Close kinship bonds, with members of one’s mother’s lineage and with the families into which one’s sisters and father’s sisters have married, as well as with one’s wife’s kinsmen, are an important basis of much social action. Chiga kinship terminology is a simple one of the standard Dakota type, though with some fuller use of compound descriptive terms. Kinship terms established in childhood tend to be permanent. When a woman marries one of her husband’s sons, outsiders may speak of him as father to her children, but within the household his half-brothers and sisters remain his siblings.
