Part 14

Thus, the first station of their ancestors on leaving the western group, was the small island of Buru or Boru, between Celebes and New Guinea. Here they encountered the Papuas, some of whom still dwell in the interior, while the coast people are fair.[167] Leaving Boru, they passed to the north of New Guinea, colonizing the Caroline and Solomon Islands, but the vanguard pressing forward to take possession of Savai in the Samoan group and Tonga to its south. These two islands formed a second centre of distribution over the western Pacific. The Maoris of New Zealand moved from Tonga--“holy Tonga” as they call it in their songs--about six hundred years ago. The Society islanders migrated from Savai, and they in turn sent forth the population of the Marquesas, the Sandwich Islands and Easter Island.

The separation of the Polynesians from the western Malays must have taken place about the beginning of our era. This length of time permits the best adjustment of their several traditions, and is not so long as to render it difficult to explain the similarity of their dialects and usages.[168]

The disposition of the Polynesian is an improvement on that of the Malay. He is more to be trusted, and is more affable. In culture he is backward. Pottery is scarcely known, agriculture is not carried on, cannibalism was nigh universal, polygamy was prevalent, and the relation of the sexes was exceedingly loose, especially among the unmarried. The islanders, as may be expected, are singularly skilful navigators and build excellent canoes. They do not hesitate to undertake voyages of five or six hundred miles, and are such excellent swimmers that if the boat capsizes they are in no danger of drowning. Their weapons were the lance, the sling and club, but they were not acquainted with the bow and arrow.

Their religion, until the introduction of Christianity, was a frank polytheism. The deeds of the gods are related in long chants, which also contain many historic references.[169] The word “taboo” comes from Polynesia, and means “sacred,” “holy.” All objects which the priests declared “taboo” were considered to be consecrated to the supernatural powers, and to touch them was to incur sure death. They were accustomed to set apart enclosures which were “taboo,” and served as temples, and the images of the gods, in wood or stone, rudely carved, were there erected.

Although their houses were generally of brush and leaves, on several of the islands they constructed stone edifices. Such are found upon the Caroline islands, on sacred Tonga, on Pitcairn, and on Easter island, the last mentioned have excited particular attention, and have given rise to various foolish theories about a previous race of high culture, and about relationship to the civilized American nations of Peru and Central America. It is enough to say that nothing on Easter island is peculiar to its culture. There are stone platforms with rude stone images on them thirty or forty feet high; there are the foundations of stone houses; there are remains of a primitive ideographic writing. All these occur also on the other islands I have named, and the natives of Rapa-nui, as the island is called by the Tahitians, have nothing in their language or arts to distinguish them from other Polynesians. The pre-historic colossal structures on Ponape, Lalla and others of the Caroline group, are of basalt, and testify to a creditable ambition and skill on the part of the builders; but careful investigations prove that they are “without any doubt” to be attributed to the ancestors of the present inhabitants.[170]

III. THE AUSTRALIC STOCK.

Under the heading of the Australic branch, I would class together the primitive inhabitants of the peninsula of Hindostan and of the semi-continent of Australia.

The collocation may seem hazardous, but it has its reasons. The physical traits of the two are not remote. In both the hair is black and curly, showing Negritic blood, the skull is medium or long, the lips are full, the nose not prominent, the color brown, and there is a beard. The relationship of the Australians to some of the hill tribes of central India has been referred to as possible by the naturalist Wallace, and the linguist Caldwell finds Australian analogies in the Dravidian tongues, and points out that both are of the agglutinative type, and with family resemblances.[171] The suggestion seems close at hand that the Australian is a compound of the Negritic stock of Australasia with the Malay, the Dravidian perhaps with the Malay, and also with some other Asian people.[172] The English ethnologist, C. Staniland Wake, has advanced an almost equivalent theory to the effect that a straight-haired stock combined with the Australasian Negrito to form the Australians, but this straight-haired people he would attach to the “Caucasian” (Eurafrican) race, for which there is little or no evidence.[173]

_1. The Australian Group_

Occupies the whole semi-continent of Australia and the island of Tasmania south of it. The last of the Tasmanians perished some years ago, and Carl Lumholtz, one of the most recent of Australian explorers, calculates the survivors of the native inhabitants of that continent at not over 30,000 individuals of pure blood.

Their appearance differs considerably, although it is generally conceded that they speak related idioms, and originally came from one lineage and language. The Tasmanians had quite frizzly or woolly hair, and according to reliable observers correspond closely in habits and appearance to the Papuas.[174] Among the Australians of the north and northeast coast this resemblance is still accentuated, and no wonder, when the islands in Torres straits, one in sight of the other, form natural stepping stones from New Guinea to Australia. On the west coast the hair is straighter, and the signs of Malay blood are obvious. The color varies from dark to light brown, and the beard is generally full, the body being also well supplied with hair.[175]

The culture status of the Australians is generally put at the very lowest. Their roving tribes are without government, they do not till the ground, they go naked, and do not know the bow and arrow. Their weapons are the spear and the boomerang, a crooked club which they throw at the object. The story that it returns to the thrower is only true of some used in sport (Lumholtz). Marriage among them is by robbery or purchase, and the women are treated with deliberate cruelly. Cannibalism in its most revolting form is usual, and the sick are deserted. Their religion is a low fetichism, and they have no idols nor forms of worship. Certain rites, as fasting, sacrificing, and solemn dancing, clearly have reference to the supposed supernatural powers. In some parts, however, they draw figures of animals with charcoal on the sides of caves, and manufacture rude stone carvings.[176] They chip flakes into spear-points, and are skilful in making fire from friction, in catching animals and other simple arts. Their songs are numerous, and are chanted in correct time.

The _corroborees_, or dances, constitute their principal religious and social festivals. These are usually celebrated at night, by the light of great fires, and accompanied by a horrible clangor, which passes for music, produced from drums, flutes, and a sort of tambourine. The chants relate to adventures in war and love, in boasting recitals, and in descriptions of ancestral power. The initiation of the young of both sexes into the duties of adult life is always accompanied with some solemnities, such as fasting, incising the flesh in lines so as to leave prominent scars, cutting the hair, breaking one or more teeth, and with local mutilations of a painful and shocking character.

As usual among the primitive peoples, sickness and death are regarded, not as natural events, but as the maleficent action of evil spirits or living enemies. When ill, therefore, the services of the priest or magician is called in to counteract the sorcery and to name the adversary who sets it on foot. These adepts employ the same Shamanistic practices, rubbing, blowing, sucking, howling, which are popular with them everywhere, and if these fail, at least at death they can suggest who the hidden enemy has been, and thus furnish a pretext for the avenger of blood to start forth on his murderous mission.

In some parts the dead are burned; in others, the flesh is scraped from the bones, or the body is exposed until they are cleaned by the ants and other animals, and then they are carefully collected and placed in an ossuary; or again, the body is buried in the hut where the death took place, this is torn down and thrown on the grave, and the place is deserted. The spirits of the dead are supposed to haunt the place where the body is left, and as a rule to exercise an evil influence on the living. Food is occasionally placed on the grave, and some ceremonies of mourning are repeated for eleven months; usually, the survivors refrain from repeating the name of the deceased, even if it is a word of common use.[177]

Rudimentary as was their culture, it is interesting to notice that they had developed the conception of writing. They were accustomed to send information, and even describe events, by incising peculiarly formed notches, lines and figures on pieces of wood, called “message sticks.” These would be sent by runners for hundreds of miles, and could be read by the recipient through the conventional meanings assigned to the characters.[178]

_2. The Dravidian Group._

I have already given you a description of the general appearance of the Dravidas or Dravidians. There is some physical resemblance among them all, but here the similarity ceases, as they vary greatly in culture and language. They are held to have been the pre-Aryac population of India, and one of their tribes, the Brahui, is found north of the mountains, in Beloochistan. When the Aryans entered India, about two thousand years before our era, they either subjugated, destroyed or drove to the south these earlier possessors of the soil. They either became the lowest caste in the Aryac states, the “sudras,” or they fled to the swamps and hills. Their total number at present is about 50,000,000.

Linguistically they are divisible into two distinct groups, the Dravidas proper, and the Mundas. To the former belong the Tamuls, the Telugus, the Canarese, the Malayalas, the Todas, the Khonds, and other tribes of less importance. The skin of all these is brown, the hair curly, the head tending to dolichocephaly. The Todas of the Neilghery hills are regarded as of unusually pure blood. They are tall, with full beards and prominent noses, the hair black and bushy. Undoubtedly many of the Dravidas partake of Aryac blood through the long domination of that stock.

Most of the Dravida nations are cultured, possessing a written language and a literature. They are pastoral and agricultural in habits, and usually the women are well treated, and enjoy a certain degree of freedom. Monogamy is the prevalent custom, but polyandry (see p. 53) is frequent, and infanticide, particularly of female children, is looked upon with approval. Their religion is a nature-worship of a low order, consisting principally of conjurations against evil spirits and divination by sorcerers.

The Munda tribes include the Kohls, the Santals, the Bhillas and others, dwelling on the highlands of the interior, northwest of Calcutta. They are hunting and agricultural peoples, having a better reputation among the Europeans than their Hindoo neighbors. The physical type among them is variable, natives of the same village differing in color and hair, indicating frequent crossings with the Aryac and other foreign stock.

The languages of the Dravidians, though of the type called agglutinative, have no demonstrative connection with those of the Sibiric (Altaic) stock, and the efforts to connect them historically are visionary. The original roots are monosyllabic, which are modified by the addition of suffixes. These suffixes often show the same “vocalic harmony” to which I have referred in some of the Sibiric idioms (above, p. 212); but its action is reversed, as while in Turkish, for example, the vowel of the suffix alters the vowel of the root, in Telugu it is the latter which controls the former.

Although all the Dravida tongues have borrowed more or less from the Sanscrit, it has been in words only, and their peculiar structure stands as ever wholly apart from all Aryac speech. There is something that looks like inflection in them, but the case-endings are merely particles referring to place, and not true grammatical cases. They are still in that stage of growth where the distinction of verb and noun is ill-defined, and relative pronouns are absent.

The literature which has been developed in these tongues is of respectable extent. That of the Tamils of southern Hindostan and northern Ceylon stands in the front rank. It is in both prose and poetry, special forms of expression being characteristic of the latter. Everywhere it reveals Aryac inspiration, and illustrates the general traits of the Dravidian intellect, ready facility in imitating and adapting the forms of a higher civilization, but limited originality and independence of thought.

LECTURE IX.

THE AMERICAN RACE.

CONTENTS.--Peopling of America. Divisions.

1. The Arctic Group. Members. Location. Character. 2. The North Atlantic Group. Tinneh, Algonkins, Iroquois, Dakotas, Muskokis, Caddoes, Shoshonees, etc. 3. The North Pacific Group. Tlinkits, Haidahs, Californians, Pueblos. 4. The Mexican Group. The Aztecs or Nahuas. Other nations. 5. The Inter-Isthmian Group. The Mayas. Their culture. Other tribes. 6. The South Atlantic Group. The Caribs, the Arawaks, the Tupis. Other tribes. 7. The South Pacific Group. The Qquichuas or Peruvians. Their culture. Other tribes.

The American Race includes those tribes whom we familiarly call “Indians,” a designation, as you know, which perpetuates the error of Columbus, who thought the western land he discovered was a part of India.

I shall not undertake to discuss those extensive questions, Who are the Indians? and, When was America peopled? and, By what route did the first inhabitants come here? These knotty points I treat in another course of lectures, where I marshal sufficient arguments, I think, to show satisfactorily that America was peopled during, if not before, the Great Ice Age; that its first settlers probably came from Europe by way of a land connection which once existed over the northern Atlantic, and that their long and isolated residence in this continent has moulded them all into a singularly homogeneous race, which varies but slightly anywhere on the continent, and has maintained its type unimpaired for countless generations. Never at any time before Columbus was it influenced in blood, language or culture by any other race.

So marked is the unity of its type, so alike the physical and mental traits of its members from Arctic to Antarctic latitudes, that I cannot divide it any other way than geographically, as follows:

1. Arctic Group. 2. North Atlantic Group. 3. North Pacific Group. 4. Mexican Group. 5. Inter-Isthmian Group. 6. South Atlantic Group. 7. South Pacific Group.

All the higher civilizations are contained in the Pacific group, the Mexican really belonging to it by derivation and original location. Between the members of the Pacific and Atlantic groups there was very little communication at any period, the high Sierras walling them apart; but among the members of each Pacific and each Atlantic group, the intercourse was constant and extensive. The Nahuas, for instance, spread down the Pacific from Sonora to the straits of Panama; the Inca power stretched along the coast for two thousand miles; but neither of these reached into the Atlantic plains. So with the Atlantic groups; the Guarani tongue can be traced from Buenos Ayres to the Amazon, the Algonkin from the Savannah River to Hudson Bay; but neither crossed the mountains to the west. The groups therefore are cultural as well as geographical, and represent natural divisions of tribes as well as of regions.

The northernmost of this division is

_1. The Arctic Group._

This group comprises the Eskimo and Aleutian tribes.

The more correct name for the former is that which they give themselves, _Innuit_, “men.” They are essentially a maritime people, extending along the northern coasts of the continent from Icy Bay in Alaska on the west, almost to the Straits of Belle Isle on the Labrador side. Northward they reach into Greenland, where the Scandinavians found them about the year 1000 A. D., although it is likely that these Greenland Eskimos had come from Labrador no long time before.[179]

Throughout the whole of this extensive distribution, they present a most remarkable uniformity of appearance, languages, arts and customs. The unity of their tribes is everywhere manifest.

The physical appearance of the Eskimos is characteristic. Their color is dark, hair black and coarse, stature medium, skull generally long (dolichocephalic, 71-73). The beard is scant and the cheek bones high.

They usually have a cheerful, lively disposition, and are much given to stories, songs and laughter. Neither the long nights of the polar zone, nor the cruel cold of the winters, dampens their glee. Before their deterioration by contact with the whites, they were truthful and honest. Their intelligence in many directions is remarkable, and they invented and improved many mechanical devices in advance of any other tribes of the race. Thus, they alone on the American continent used lamps. They make them of stone, with a wick of dried moss. The sledge with its team of dogs is one of their devices; and gloves, boots and divided clothing are articles of dress not found on the continent south of them. Their “kayak,” a light and strong boat of sealskins stretched over a frame of bones or wood, is the perfection of a sea-canoe. Their carvings in bone, wood or ivory, and their outline drawings, reveal no small degree of technical skill; and they independently discovered the principle of the arch and apply it to the construction of their domed snow-houses. The principal weapons among them are the bow and arrow and the lance.

The Aleutians proper live on the central and eastern islands of the Archipelago named from them. Their language differs wholly from the Eskimo. At present they are largely civilized.

_2. The North Atlantic Group._

The spacious water-shed of the Atlantic stretches from the crests of the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Ocean. Whether the streams debouch into Hudson Bay or the Gulf of Mexico, their waters find their way to the Atlantic. The most of this region was in the possession of a few linguistic stocks, whose members, generally at war with each other, roved widely over these lowlands.

The northernmost of them was the _Athapasca_ stock. Its members called themselves Tinnéh, “people,” and they are also known as Chepewyans, an Algonkin word meaning “pointed skins,” applied from the shape of the skin robe they wore, pointed in front and behind.[180]

Their country extended from Hudson Bay to the Cascade Range of the Rocky Mountains, and from the Arctic Ocean southward to a line drawn from the mouth of the Churchill river to the mouth of the Frazer river. The northern tribes extend westward nearly to the delta of the Yukon river, and reach the seacoast at the mouth of the Copper river. At some remote period, some of its bands forsook their inhospitable abodes in the north, and following the eastern flanks of the Cordillera, migrated far south into Mexico, where they form the Apaches and Navajos, and the Lipans near the mouth of the Rio del Norte.

The general trend of the pre-historic migrations of the Tinnéh, seems to have been from a centre west of Hudson Bay, whence they diverged north, west, and southwest.

In physical features they are of average stature and superior muscular development. The color varies considerably, even in the same village, but tends toward a brown. The skull is long, the face broad, and the cheek-bones prominent.[181]

In point of culture the Tinnéh stand low. The early missionaries who undertook the difficult task of bringing them into accord with Christian morals have left painful portraitures of the brutality of the lives of their flocks. The Apaches have for centuries been notorious for their savage dispositions and untamable ferocity. They are, however, skilful hunters, bold warriors, and of singular physical endurance.

Immediately south of the Athabascans, throughout their whole extent, were the _Algonkins_. They extended uninterruptedly from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the Rocky Mountains, on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. The Blackfeet were their westernmost tribe, and in Canada they embraced the Crees, Montagnais, Micmacs, Ottawas, etc. In the area of the United States they were known in New England as the Abnakis, Passamaquoddies, Pequots, etc.; on the Hudson, as Mohegans; on the Delaware, as Lenape; in Maryland, as Nanticokes; in Virginia, as Powhatans; while in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, were of this stock. Its most southern representatives were the Shawnees, who once lived on the Tennessee, and, perhaps, the Savannah river, and were closely related to the Mohegans of New York.

Most of these tribes were agricultural, raising maize, beans, squash and tobacco; they occupied fixed residences in towns most of the year; they were skilled in chipping and polishing stone, and they had a definite, even rigid, social organization. Their mythology was extensive, and its legends, as well as the history of their ancestors, were retained in memory by a system of ideographic writing, of which a number of specimens have been preserved. Their intellectual capacities were strong, and the distinguished characters that arose among them--King Philip, Tecumseh, Black Hawk, Pontiac, Tammany, Powhatan--displayed, in their dealings of war or peace with the Europeans, an ability, a bravery and a sense of right, on a par with the famed heroes of antiquity.

The earliest traceable seat of this widely extended group was somewhere between the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Bay. To this region their traditions point, and there the language is found in its purest and most archaic form. They apparently divided early into two branches, the one following the Atlantic coast southward, the other the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes westward. Of those that remained, some occupied Newfoundland, others spread over Labrador, where they were thrown into frequent contact with the Eskimos.

Surrounded on all sides by the Algonkins, the _Iroquois_ first appear in history as occupying a portion of the area of New York State. To the west, in the adjoining part of Canada, were their kinsmen, the Eries and Hurons; on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, the Conestogas; and in Virginia, the Tuscaroras. All were closely related, but in constant feud. Those in New York were united as the Five Nations, and as such, are prominent figures in the early annals of the English colony. The date of the formation of their celebrated league is reasonably placed in the fifteenth century.

Another extensively dispersed stock is that of the _Dakotas_. Their area reached from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Saskatchewan to the Arkansas rivers, covering most of the valley of the Missouri. A fragment of them, the Tuteloes, resided in Virginia, where they were associated with the Monacans, now extinct, but who were probably of the same stock.