prescriptorial

A third device, which found much favor among the American aborigines and among some other primitive peoples, may be called _ordination_, or the arrangement of individuals and groups classified from the prescriptorial point of view of Self, Here, and Now, with respect to each other or to some dominant personage or group.

The Siouan Indians 1882

Sometimes the function and development of these curious concepts, which constitute perhaps the most striking characteristic of prescriptorial culture, are obscure at first glance, and hardly to be discovered even through prolonged research; yet, so far as they have been detected and interpreted, they are especially adapted to fixing demotic relations; and through them the manifold relations of individuals and groups are crystallized and kept in mind.

The Siouan Indians 1882

Thus the American Indians, including the Siouan stock, are made up of families organized into clans or gentes, and combined in tribes, sometimes united in confederacies, all on a basis of kinship, real or assumed; and the organization is shaped and perpetuated by a series of devices pertaining to the plane of prescriptorial culture, whereby each member of the organization is constantly reminded of his position in the group.

The Siouan Indians 1882

The Siouan domiciles were thus adapted with remarkable closeness to the daily habits and environment of the tribesmen, while at the same time they reflected the complex social organization growing out of their prescriptorial status and militant disposition.

The Siouan Indians 1882

Among civilized peoples, institutions are crystallized in statutes about nuclei of common law or custom; among peoples in the prescriptorial culture-stage statutes are unborn, and various mnemonic devices are employed for fixing and perpetuating institutions; and, as is usual in this stage, the devices involve associations which appear to be essentially arbitrary at the outset, though they tend to become natural through the survival of the fittest.

The Siouan Indians 1882

The aborigines were at the time of discovery, and indeed most of them remain today, in the prescriptorial stage of culture, i.e., the stage in which ideas are crystallized, not by means of arbitrary symbols, but by means of arbitrary associations, (18) and in this stage names are connotive or descriptive, rather than denotive as in the scriptorial stage.

The Siouan Indians 1882

48 Ordination, as the term is here used, comprehends regimentation as defined by Powell, yet relates especially to the method of reckoning from the constantly recognized but ever varying standpoint of prescriptorial culture.

The Siouan Indians 1882

"spirit," much less into "Great Spirit;" though it is easy to understand stand how the superficial inquirer, dominated by definite spiritual concept, handicapped by unfamiliarity with the Indian tongue, misled by ignorance of the vague prescriptorial ideation, and perhaps deceived by crafty native informants or mischievous interpreters, came to adopt and perpetuate the erroneous interpretation.

The Siouan Indians 1882