The Biloxi

The tribal organization of this people has disappeared. When the few

survivors were visited by the author at Lecompte, Louisiana, in 1892 and

1893, they gave him the names of three of the clans of the Biloxi, descent

being reckoned in the female line. These clans are: 1, Ita anyadi, Deer

people; 2, On{~LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED T~}i anyadi, Bear people; 3, Naqotodca anyadi, Alligator

people. Most of the survivors belong to the Deer clan. The kinship system

of the Biloxi is more complicated than that of any other tribe of the

stock; in fact, more than that of any of the tribes visited by the author.

The names of 53 kinship groups are still remembered, but there are at

least a dozen others whose names have been forgotten. Where the cegiha

language, for example, has but one term for grandchild, and one grandchild

group, the Biloxi has at least fourteen. In the ascending series the

Dakota and cegiha do not have any terms beyond grandfather and

grandmother. But for each sex the Biloxi has terms for at least three

degrees beyond the grandparent. The cegiha has but one term for father's

sister and one for mother's brother, father's brother being father, and

mother's sister mother. But the Biloxi has distinct terms (and groups)

for father's elder sister, father's younger sister, father's elder

brother, father's younger brother, and so on for the mother's elder and

younger brothers and sisters. The Biloxi distinguishes between an elder

sister's son and the son of a younger sister, and so between the daughter

of an elder sister and a younger sister's daughter. A Biloxi man may not

marry his wife's brother's daughter, nor his wife's father's sister,

differing in this respect from a Dakota, an Omaha, a Ponka, etc; but he

can marry his deceased wife's sister. A Biloxi woman may marry the brother

of her deceased husband. Judging from the analogy furnished by the Kansa

tribe it was very probably the rule before the advent of the white race

that a Biloxi man could not marry a woman of his own clan.