Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Omaha system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese)[1] which he identified internationally.
(Marriages take place among people of different gentes or clans in the tribe.)
While parallel cousins are merged by term and addressed the same as Ego's siblings, cross-cousins are differentiated by generational divisions.
The system is named for the Omaha, a Native American tribe historically located on the Northern Plains in present-day Nebraska.
The Omaha system has been found among some indigenous groups of Mexico, the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina, the Dani tribe of Indonesia, the Shona of Zimbabwe,[2] the Igbo of Nigeria and is proposed to be reconstructuted for indoeuropean kinship.