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Crow kinship is a kinship system used to define family. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Crow system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo kinship, Hawaiian kinship, Iroquois kinship, Crow, Omaha kinship, and Sudanese kinship).
The Crow system is distinctive because unlike most other kinship systems, it chooses not to distinguish between certain generations. The relatives of the subject's father's matrilineage are distinguished only by their sex, regardless of their age or generation. In contrast, within Ego's own matrilineage, differences of generation are noted. The system is associated with groups that have a strong tradition of Matrilineality. In doing so, the system is almost a mirror image of the Omaha kinship, which is patrilineal.
As with the Iroquois system, the Crow uses bifurcate merging, meaning that there is a distinction between collateral relatives of different gender in Ego's descent group. In this case, father's brother would be called "father's brother", and mother's brother would be called "uncle".Murdock, George Peter. "Bifurcate Merging, a Test of Five Theories." American anthropologist 49.1 (1947): 56-68. Only the Iroquois kinship uses bifurcate merging as a secondary name.
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