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What kind of families did they have?
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For the most part, Plateau Indians had families similar to the ones we see today. The children saw themselves as members of a small family group consisting of a man and a woman. And like today, the average Plateau kinship group consisted of the nuclear family and the closest relatives on both the father's and the mother's side.
But unlike our society, all over the Plateau, it was permitted that a man could have more than one wife (polygyny). But this was not common.
These family ties are shown in the words used to designate family members. There was a connection between family relatives of the same generation on both the father's and the mother's side. All female cousins were called by the same terms as those used for sisters.
Marriages did not occur among first cousins (in distinction to the custom in clan organized Indian societies). Newly wedded couples could live either with the father's or the mother's group.
The Tenino show a patterned kinship behavior that has possibly existed in other Plateau groups, such as a "joking relationship" between a father's sister's husband and his wife's brother's child, and permitted sexual license between a man and his sister-in-law.
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