THE CONQUEST OF
A CONTINENT
THE CONQUEST OF
A CONTINENT
OR
THE EXPANSION OF RACES IN AMERICA
BY
MADISON GRANT
PRESIDENT, NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY
TRUSTEE, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
PRESIDENT, BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB
COUNCILLOR, AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
AUTHOR, "PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE"
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
PROF. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK · LONDON
MCMXXXIII
Copyright, 1933, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
_All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons_
[Illustration]
To
MY BROTHER
DE FOREST GRANT
INTRODUCTION
The character of a country depends upon the racial character of the men
and women who dominate it. I welcome this volume as the first attempt
to give an authentic racial history of our country, based on the
scientific interpretation of race as distinguished from language and
from geographic distribution.
The most striking induction arising through research into the
prehistory of man is that racial characters and predispositions,
governing racial reactions to certain old and new conditions of life,
extend far back of the most ancient civilizations. For example,
the characteristics which Homer, in the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_,
attributed to his heroes and to his imaginary gods and goddesses
were not the product of the civilization which existed in his time
in Greece; they were the product of creative evolution long prior
even to the beginnings of Greek culture and government. This creative
principle--the most mysterious of the recently discovered phenomena
of evolution, to which I have devoted the researches of nearly half
a century--is that racial preparation for various expressions of
civilization--art, law, government, etc.--is long antecedent to these
institutions.
Ripley missed this point in his superb researches into the racial
constitution of the peoples of Europe. Grant partly based his _Passing
of the Great Race_ on Ripley's researches, but did not carry out the
purely anatomical analysis to its logical end-point, namely, that
moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits are just as distinctive and
characteristic of different races as are head-form, hair and eye color,
physical stature, and other data of anthropologists.
In the present volume, which I regard as an entirely original and
essential contribution to the history of the United States of America,
Grant goes much further and in tracing back the racial origins of the
majority of our people he lays the foundation for an understanding
of the peculiar characteristics of American civilization, which, all
agree, is of a very new type, something the world has never before seen.
Grant supports Ripley in his distinction between three great European
stocks--Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean. He gives very strong additional
reasons for one of his own earlier inductions, namely, that the Aryan
language was invented by primitive peoples of the Nordic race before
its dispersal, in the third millennium B.C., from the Steppe country in
the southeast of Russia. This superb and flexible language doubtless
aided the Nordic race in its conquest of Europe, in its ever-westward
journey across the Atlantic, in its Anglo-Saxon occupation of our
continent, in its stamping of Anglo-Saxon institutions on American
government and civilization. We all recognize that, like all other
languages, Aryan is purely a linguistic and not a racial term, just as
French is spoken equally by the Norman Nordics of the north of France,
by the Alpines of the center, and by the Mediterraneans of the south.
My faith is unshaken in the ultimately beneficial recognition of racial
values and in the stimulating and generous emulation aroused by racial
consciousness. Let this stimulation be without prejudice to other
racial values--which should be duly recognized and evaluated--values
we Anglo-Saxons do not naturally possess. Moreover, I set great store
by the great mass of documentary evidence assembled by Grant in the
present volume. I think it explodes the bubble, of the opponents of
racial values, that they are merely myths. The theme of the present
work is that America was made by Protestants of Nordic origin and that
their ideas about what makes true greatness should be perpetuated. That
this is a precious heritage which we should not impair or dilute by
permitting the entrance and dominance of alien values and peoples of
alien minds and hearts.
Finally I would like to define clearly my own position on these very
important racial questions which arouse so much heat, so much bad
feeling, so much misrepresentation. I object strongly to the assumption
that one race is "superior" or "inferior" to another, just as I
object to the assumption that all races are alike or even equal. Such
assumptions are wholly unwarranted by facts. Equality or inequality,
superiority and inferiority, are all relative terms. For example,
around the Equator the black races and certain of the colored and
tinted races are "superior" to the white races and may be capable under
certain conditions of creating great civilizations. In a torrid climate
and under a burning sun witness the marvellous achievements of the
Mediterranean race in Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, Cambodia, and
India between 4000 B.C. and 1250 A.D. Or, coming nearer home to the
cool mountain regions, witness the great achievements of the Alpine
race in engineering, in mathematics, and in astronomy.
It follows that racial superiority and inferiority are partly matters
of the intellectual and spiritual evolution which guides one race after
another into periods of great ascent too often followed by sad and
catastrophic decline. In this as in all other interminglings of science
and sentiment, let us not extenuate nor write in malice, but always in
broad-mindedness and a truly generous spirit.
It is with the greatest pleasure that I have written a few words
endorsing this book as the first racial history of America, or, in
fact, of any nation. I stand with the author not only in nailing his
colors to the mast but in giving an entirely indisputable historic,
patriotic, and governmental basis to the fact that in its origin and
evolution our country is fundamentally Nordic.
Henry Fairfield Osborn.
August, 1933.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, the author desires to express his appreciation of
the assistance of his research associate, Doctor Paul Popenoe, who
collected authorities and statistics during an intensive study lasting
over four years.
He also desires to express his appreciation for the sympathy and aid
of Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, and of Charles Stewart Davison,
Esq. The latter carefully revised the text and made many valuable
suggestions.
The author owes a special debt of gratitude to Doctor Clarence G.
Campbell for much assistance and to Doctor Harry H. Laughlin for many
of the statistics and analyses used in this book. His thanks are due
also to Captain John B. Trevor, whose masterly study of the early
population has been a great help, as have the studies of Messrs. Howard
F. Barker and Marcus L. Hansen. He also wishes to acknowledge the
assistance of Mr. A.E. Hamilton.
Colonel William Wood, of Quebec, has been of great assistance in the
data given regarding the origin of the French "Habitants" in Canada.
The writer is also obligated to Professor E. Prokosch, of Yale
University, for his assistance on several critical points.
The American Geographical Society and Mr. Ray R. Platt were
instrumental in providing the maps used in this volume and the author
takes this opportunity to express his thanks to them both.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction, by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn vii
CHAPTER
I. Foreword 1
II. The Cradle of Mankind 17
III. The Nordic Conquest of Europe 39
IV. The Nordic Settlement of America 65
V. The Puritans in New England 81
VI. The Gateways to the West from New England and Virginia 102
VII. Virginia and Her Neighbors 130
VIII. The Old Northwest Territory 158
IX. The Mountaineers Conquer the Southwest 183
X. From the Mississippi to the Oregon 195
XI. The Spoils of the Mexican War 208
XII. The Alien Invasion 223
XIII. The Transformation of America 235
XIV. Checking the Alien Invasion 268
XV. The Legacy of Slavery 281
XVI. Our Neighbors on the North 296
XVII. Our Neighbors on the South 320
XVIII. The Nordic Outlook 347
Bibliography 359
Index 379
MAPS
FACING PAGE
Ireland 68
Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland 82
Ulster Scot and New England Origins 84
Puritan Emigration from England, 1620-1640 86
Territorial Growth of the United States 122
The Thirteen Colonies 144
Roman Catholics, 1930 160
Congregational Churches 218
Negro Population, 1930 282
Negro Population: Increase and Decrease, 1920-1930 286
Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland 300
Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies 324
Distribution of Mexicans by States 328
South America 334
THE CONQUEST OF A CONTINENT
I
FOREWORD
American public sentiment regarding the admission of aliens has
undergone recently a profound change. At the end of the nineteenth
century a fatuous humanitarianism prevailed and immigrants of all kinds
were welcomed to "The Refuge of the Oppressed," regardless of whether
they were needed in our industrial development or whether they tended
to debase our racial unity.
The "Myth of the Melting Pot" was, at that time, deemed by the
unthinking to be a part of our national creed.
This general attitude was availed of and encouraged by the steamship
companies, which felt the need of the supply of live freight. The
leading industrialists and railroad builders were equally opposed
to any check on the free entry of cheap labor. Restrictionists were
active, but in number they were relatively few, until the World War
aroused the public to the danger of mass migration from the countries
of devastated and impoverished Europe.
As a result of the problems raised by the World War, a stringent
immigration law was passed in 1924 and is now in force. This law[1] has
for its basic principle a provision that the total number of persons
allowed to enter the United States from countries to which quotas have
been assigned shall be so apportioned as to constitute a cross section
of the then existent white population of the United States. This is the
so-called National Origins provision.
A controversy immediately arose over this new basis, as it was to the
interest of every national and religious group of aliens now here
to exaggerate the importance and size of its contribution to the
population of our country, especially in Colonial times. This was
particularly true of immigrants from those nations, such as Germany
and Ireland, the quotas of which were greatly reduced under the new
law. The purpose of this opposition was to warp public opinion in
regard to the merits of various national groups and to exaggerate the
non-Anglo-Saxon elements in the old Colonial population.
This book is an effort to make an estimate of the various elements,
national and racial, existing in the present population of the United
States and to trace their arrival and subsequent spread.
In the days of our fathers the white population of the United States
was practically homogeneous. Racially it was preponderantly English
and Nordic. At the end of the Colonial period we had a population
about 90 per cent Nordic and over 80 per cent British in origin. In
spite of the intrusion of two foreign elements of importance, both
nevertheless chiefly Nordic, our population and our institutions
remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon down to the time of the Civil War.
Since that time there has been an ever-increasing tendency to change
the nature of this once "American" people into a mosaic of national,
racial, and religious groups. The question to what extent this
transformation has gone deserves careful study.
The draft lists for the American army in the large cities during the
World War showed an amazing collection of foreign names. These lists
are most dramatic indications of the substantial modifications of the
original Anglo-Saxon character of the population which have occurred. A
vivid illustration is found in a war poster issued by an enthusiastic
clerk of foreign extraction in the Treasury Department during one of
the appeals for Liberty Loans. A Howard Chandler Christy girl of pure
Nordic type was shown pointing with pride to a list of names, saying
"Americans All." The list was:
DuBois
Smith
O'Brien
Ceika
Haucke
Pappandrikopulous
Andrassi
Villotto
Levy
Turovich
Kowalski
Chriczanevicz
Knutson
Gonzales
Apparently the one native American, so far as he figures at all, is
hidden under the sobriquet of Smith, and there is possibly the implied
suggestion that the beautiful lady was herself the product of this
remarkable mélange.
Similar foreign names are beginning to appear and sometimes predominate
in the list of college graduates, successful athletes, and minor
politicians. In the words of the late President Theodore Roosevelt, we
are becoming a polyglot boarding house.
The modification of the religious complexion of the nation also is
very striking. In Colonial times Americans were almost unanimously
Protestants. Now the claim is made that one in seven is a Catholic and
one in thirty a Jew. To what extent this change is due to immigration
and to what extent to the differential birth rate should be carefully
considered.
In dealing with racial admixture, we should be certain that we are
not considering merely nationality, religion, or language. In popular
thought there is such a racial entity as the German, the Russian, the
Frenchman, or the Italian. These, however, are not racial, but national
terms. In a few cases of still unmixed peoples, like those of Sweden
and Norway, nationality, language, religion, and race coincide. But in
Germany, for instance, the Germans along the North Sea and the Baltic
coasts are Protestant Nordics, while those of Bavaria, of Austria, and
of other parts of the south are Catholic Alpines. Italy north of the
Apennines is largely Alpine, slightly mixed with Nordic, while Naples
and Sicily in the South are purely Mediterranean by race. In France,
where there is a mixed Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine population, a
single language and an ancient tradition have created an intense unity
of national feeling, and in recent decades there has been a marked
transfer of political control from the Nordic to the Alpine element,
as evidenced by the names and features of the present political
leaders. In Belgium there are two languages, in Switzerland four, to
say nothing of the medley of languages in the old Austrian Empire. Only
in Switzerland is there national unity, in spite of a diversity of
tongue.
In America the events of the last hundred years, especially the vast
tide of immigration, have greatly impaired our purity of race and
our unity of religion and even threatened our inheritance of English
speech. If our English language is saved it will be due in no small
degree to the growing world power of the language itself and of its
literature, as well as to the world-wide ocean commerce of Great
Britain and her overseas empire.
In the United States today this unity of language is vigorously
opposed by the foreign-language press. In all probability, however,
this foreign press is doomed to die out as the older generation of
immigrants passes from the scene. The fact that this non-English press
represents a score or more of different languages makes it impossible
for it in the long run to oppose successfully the English language.
In Canada the fact that the French language is officially recognized
in Quebec and, for that matter, in the Parliament at Ottawa, makes the
problem there more difficult. It may be here noted that the French
language as spoken in Quebec is sneered at and ridiculed by the
European French. The use of French speech in Quebec, like the attempted
use of Erse in Ireland and Czechish in Bohemia, is merely serving to
keep those speaking such language out of touch with modern literature
and culture.
The absurdity of attempting to revive an obsolete language such as
Erse is shown by its lack of literature of modern type. Sir Harry
H. Johnston once said to the author that Erse was a perfectly good
language, except for two facts--first, that nobody could pronounce it
and, second, that nobody could spell it.
In Louisiana French is still spoken by the Creoles of New Orleans
and by the French and Negro mixture called "Cajans." This linguistic
diversity will in due course of time also disappear. More serious
is the retention and use in New Mexico of the Spanish language by
its Mexican-Indian population. Few people know that New Mexico is
officially bi-lingual. Sooner or later this must be stopped, as it has
greatly hindered the development of the State.
As to race, as distinct from language, religion, and nationality, we
must consider our country today as being in large part a heterogeneous
mixture of racial groups and individuals. Since America's first duty is
to herself and to the people already here, she must weigh the effect
upon the present, as well as upon the future, of such racial admixture
as has already occurred and which promises to spread indefinitely.
A striking example of this was shown during the Washington Bicentennial
in 1932, when some historians, in their efforts to placate the
assertive groups of aliens in our midst, endeavored to show the
existence in the colonies of substantial groups of these same aliens.
For instance, they claimed that most of the Revolutionary personages of
Irish descent were the same as the South Irish Catholics of today. That
is wholly error. The so-called "Irish" of the Revolution were Ulster
Scots either from the Lowlands of Scotland or from North England, who
came to the colonies by way of the North of Ireland after having lived
there for two or three generations. These Ulster Scots were reinforced
by Protestant English who emigrated from Leinster and both were widely
removed, religiously and culturally, from the South Irish Catholics,
who did not come to this country in any numbers until the potato famine
in Ireland in the 1840's drove them across the seas.
To take an example: In the Convention of 1787, which formulated the
Constitution, certain individuals were put down as "Irish." These were
Protestant Ulster Scots. In the Senate of today, a few of the senators
are put down as "Irish." These are South Irish Catholics. To use the
same term for these two different types of population is erroneous.
They were widely separated religiously, racially, and culturally.
The same thing is true of that part of our population which was
referred to as "French." The French of the American Revolution and
of our Constitutional Convention were Huguenot French, who, though
few in numbers, took a prominent part in public affairs at the time
of the Revolution. They were, for the most part, Nordic and were
English-speaking. They were a distinguished group which had nothing
whatever in common with the "Habitant" French of Quebec, who are
Catholic Alpines. To call them both "French" is erroneous. A similar,
but less marked distinction, exists between the North Germans and the
Palatines, and they both differ from the South Germans in America, who
are mostly Catholic Alpines.
In this connection it should be clearly understood that in discussing
the various European races we are concerned only with such individuals
of those races as came to America, and not with the populations which
remained in the original homeland.
In Colonial times the Anglo-Saxon American avoided the danger arising
from intermarriage with natives, which ruined the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies in the New World and threatened the destruction of
the French colonies in Quebec. There was some crossbreeding between
Englishmen and Indian squaws along the frontier, but the offspring was
everywhere regarded as an Indian, just as a mulatto in the English
colonies was regarded as belonging to the Negro race. This racial
prejudice kept the white race in America pure, while its absence and
the scarcity of white women ultimately destroyed European supremacy in
the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
At the time of the settlement of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies,
the Roman Church was dominant. Its chief motive was to save souls for
heaven rather than to perpetuate the control of Europeans. That church,
therefore, favored marriage of the Europeans, Spaniard and Portuguese,
with the native women and considered the children to be white. The
same was true of the mixtures of French and Indians in Quebec, and the
church recognized the resulting half-breed offspring as French and not
native.
This policy of the church was aided by the lack of race dignity which
is even today found sometimes among the French, the Spaniards, and the
Portuguese. For example, in the South of Portugal there was a large
Negro slave element introduced in the sixteenth century which is now
absorbed into the surrounding population. Similar conditions exist in
South Italy, where there is a substantial Negroid element, probably
descended from the Negro slaves introduced by the Romans from Africa
some two thousand years ago.
One of the unfortunate results of racial mixture, or miscegenation
between diverse races, is disharmony in the offspring, and the more
widely separated the parent stocks, the greater is this lack of harmony
likely to be in both mental and physical characters. Herbert Spencer,
in response to a request for advice, writing in 1892 to the Japanese
statesman, Baron Keneko Kentaro, stated this biological fact very
clearly when he said:
"To your remaining question respecting the intermarriage of
foreigners and Japanese, which you say is 'now very much agitated
among our scholars and politicians' and which you say is 'one of the
most difficult problems,' my reply is that, as rationally answered,
there is no difficulty at all. It should be positively forbidden.
It is not at root a question of social philosophy. It is at root a
question of biology. There is abundant proof, alike furnished by the
intermarriages of human races and by the interbreeding of animals,
that when the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight
degree the _result is inevitably a bad one in the long run_.... When,
say of the different varieties of sheep, there is an interbreeding
of those which are widely unlike, the result, especially in the
second generation, is a bad one--there arises an incalculable mixture
of traits, and what may be called a chaotic constitution. And the
same thing happens among human beings--the Eurasians in India, the
half-breeds in America, show this. The physiological basis of this
experience appears to be that any one variety of creature in course
of many generations acquires a certain constitutional adaptation
to its particular form of life, and every other variety similarly
acquires its own special adaptation. The consequence is that, if you
mix the constitution of two widely divergent varieties which have
severally become adapted to widely divergent modes of life, you get
a constitution which is adapted to the mode of life of neither--a
constitution which will not work properly, because it is not fitted
for any set of conditions whatever. By all means, therefore,
peremptorily interdict marriages of Japanese with foreigners."
The relative diminution of Anglo-Saxon blood in America and the present
check to the expansion of the British Empire are due partly to a
curious sentimental quality of the Anglo-Saxon mind, the effect of
which is almost suicidal.
It is a striking fact that tragic and even fatal consequences may arise
from the noblest motives. The abolition of the obsolete institution of
slavery occupied the minds of some of the best men of the nineteenth
century and serfdom was only stamped out finally at immense cost to
the finest elements of our Anglo-Saxon stock. Looking back over these
events at a distance of a half-century there appear many considerations
which were neglected by those who were too close to the conflict to see
into the future. Let us consider the consequences in the world at large
of the abolition of slavery and of the breaking down of the barrier
maintained by that institution between the Whites and the Blacks.
For instance, in the British Empire, the abolition of slavery a hundred
years ago contributed in large part to the decline and finally to the
almost complete disappearance of pure Nordic blood in the West Indies,
where previously there had been rich and flourishing colonies of white
men employing black slaves.
In South Africa the revolt and outtrekking of Boers beyond the
Vaal River were due largely to the abolition of slavery and to the
sentimental treatment of the slaves by the Home Government. The
passions engendered at that time ultimately led to two bloody and
useless wars between the Nordic peoples of South Africa.
Other European nations suffered similarly from the abolition of
slavery in their American colonies. Undiluted white blood has almost
disappeared in Jamaica and Puerto Rico, while the natives of the Virgin
Islands are nearly all Negroes and Mulattoes.
The most tragic result of the loss of White control of the Blacks was
shown in the history of Haiti and Santo Domingo. The freeing of the
slaves and the disturbances resulting from the French Revolution had as
a consequence the massacre or exile of practically every white person
in the island. The French doctrinaires were responsible to some extent
for this. Even Lafayette was President of the "Société des Amis des
Noirs." Today the black inhabitants of this great island have reverted
almost to barbarism.
The islands and coasts of the entire Caribbean Sea with much of
the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico are fast becoming Negro Land and
apparently in the near future the European element will be more and
more in a hopeless minority.
In the United States we have a startling example of the effect of
sentimentalism upon Nordic survival. The North was entirely right in
endeavoring to keep slavery out of Kansas and the new States of the
West, to that extent avoiding the color problem there. The sentimental
interference with slavery, however, on the part of the Northern
Abolitionists helped to precipitate the bloody Civil War and to destroy
a very large portion of the best stock of the nation, especially in the
South. The Southerners also were greatly to blame for their utter folly
in seceding as a means of maintaining their peculiar institution, as
they termed it.
If the question of slavery had been left alone, the issue of the
preservation of the Union would have been postponed for at least a
generation. In time the overwhelming numbers and wealth of the North
would have made any serious question of secession an absurdity. As a
consequence of the Civil War hundreds of thousands of men of Nordic
stock were cut off in the full vigor of manhood, who otherwise would
have lived to propagate their kind and populate the West. Besides this,
slavery as an institution was outside of the pale of civilization long
before the Civil War and it would have been peacefully abolished in a
few decades through economic causes.
The Blacks themselves were raised by slavery from sheer savagery to a
feeble imitation of white civilization, and they made more advance in
America in two centuries than in as many thousand years in Africa. The
presence of slaves, however, was injurious to the Whites. Serfdom has
been a curse wherever it has flourished in the New World and it has had
a profoundly demoralizing effect on the masters.
American democracy at the start rested on a base of population that
was, as already said, homogeneous in race, religion, tradition, and
language, and in a relative equality of wealth. All these features
are things of the past and democracy has virtually broken down in
spite of the fatuous ecstasy which characterizes the utterances of
sentimentalists, who even claimed that the World War was fought "to
make the World Safe for Democracy."
It seems strange that this so-called liberal point of view is so
short-sighted that we have in our midst today organizations and groups
who, with the best intentions, are encouraging the Negro within and
the black, brown, and yellow men without, to dispute the dominance over
the world at large of Christian Europeans and Americans. Throughout
the world, there has gone forth a challenge to white supremacy and
this movement in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere has been fostered by the
Christian missionaries. It has even gone so far that it is openly
stated that any assertion of race supremacy, or even discussion of race
distinctions in this country, should be suppressed in the interests
of the spread of Christianity in foreign countries--notably Japan. In
the long run, however, these doctrines will work great injury to the
Protestant churches if they persist in taking an anti-national point
of view. While many of the individual ministers are well-meaning and
kindly, their education is undeveloped in world affairs and their
advice in such matters, on which they are uninstructed, is often very
dangerous.
Sentimental sympathy for other races of mankind is manifest today
all over the world, but especially among Anglo-Saxons. It received a
great impetus from President Wilson's doctrine of the right of Self
Determination. The fruits of this doctrine can be seen in the rise
of so-called nationalism everywhere, as in Ireland, Bohemia, Poland,
Egypt, the Philippines, China, and India.
The racially suicidal result of all this is the undermining of the
control of the Nordic races over the natives. The upper classes and, in
many cases, the peasantry in eastern Germany, for example, are Nordics.
One of the tragic consequences of the World War was the taking of
political power in this region from the Nordics and transferring it,
under the guise of democratic institutions, to Alpine Slavs. In Soviet
Russia, also, through the massacre and exile of the Nordic upper
classes, political power has passed into the hands of Alpines, exactly
as in France during the Revolution the Alpine lower classes destroyed
the Nordic nobility and assumed control of the state. The Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars which followed killed off an undue proportion of
Nordics in France and are said to have greatly shortened the stature of
the French soldiers.
The revolt against European control, especially in the Orient, is
becoming more and more pronounced. As said above it has been encouraged
unintentionally by the missionaries, who, in educating the natives,
succeed only in arousing them to assert their equality with the
European races. Probably the greatest tragedy in the world today is the
corrosive jealousy of the fair skin of the white races felt by those
whose skin is black, yellow, or brown. The world will hear more of this
as the revolt of the lower races spreads.
One of the manifestations of this jealousy of the fair skin of the
Nordics is shown in those numerous cases where members of the colored
races, or even dark-skinned members of the Nordic race regard the
possession of a blonde woman as an assertion and proof of race
equality. This has been true historically since the earliest times. It
is more than ever in evidence at the present day.
All the foregoing points to the value of a critical consideration
of the racial composition of the original thirteen colonies and an
analysis of the situation as it is today.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This bill was framed and passed through the efforts
of Honorable Albert Johnson of Washington. "A new Declaration of
Independence," it has been happily called.]
II
THE CRADLE OF MANKIND
Man is an immensely ancient animal. Over a million years have elapsed
since he first made fire and more millions since he became a bipedal
prehuman. He left the forests, at the latest, at the end of the
Miocene, not less than seven million years ago and ventured out into
the plains of Central Asia as a savage, powerful, clever biped, hunting
in packs, or by sheer wit securing his prey single handed by pitfalls
and other devices, the invention of which marks the development of
growing intelligence.
Man's initial differentiation from his simian ancestry probably began
when he came down from the trees and began to walk erect. The hand was
then liberated from its use as an instrument of locomotion and was
devoted primarily to defense, attack, discovery, and invention. It is
by means of the opportunities afforded by the hand that the human brain
has evolved into man's most important factor in racial survival.
Clear evidence of man's remote arboreal ancestry is offered by his
stereoscopic or double-eyed vision. The great majority of ground
animals, especially those living in the forest, have eyes on the sides
of their heads; but in man's arboreal ancestors, by the recession of
the intervening nasal and facial bones, the eyes were brought around
to the front of the face. The resulting stereoptic vision enabled him
to judge distance far more accurately than most mammals. Such power of
determining distance is of course vital to an arboreal animal. Failure
to judge accurately the length of a leap from branch to branch would be
fatal.
One often hears it stated that man has lost his sense of smell; but
this sense was probably never better developed within the human period
than it is now. In the trees a sense of smell is not of much value. The
monkey can sit on a branch and jabber with impunity at the leopard on
the ground below. To forest animals, like the deer or boar, however,
the sense of smell is the surest protection against attack and is much
more highly developed than the sense of sight, which latter is often
quite feeble. In fact, in the thick jungle it is almost useless (and at
"black night" completely so).
Eurasia, where it is probable that mankind originated, was the greatest
land mass on the globe in Tertiary times. Modern Europe and North
Africa formed relatively small peninsulas in the extreme west of this
Tertiary land mass. It is probably from Eurasia that man spread out
to the uttermost parts of the habitable globe, carrying with him his
language and such cultural features as had developed at the time of
each successive migration. No race or language or cultural invention
seems to have entered Eurasia from adjoining land areas. All went out.
None came in. While the original center of dispersal of the Hominidæ
or human family was probably Eurasia, it was at a later date also the
center of the evolution of the higher types of man.
To the northeast of Eurasia lay the ancient land connection with North
America via Alaska, over which various species of animals passed back
and forth, some of them having their origin in Asia and others in
western North America. It was undoubtedly over this land connection
that man first entered America at a relatively recent period and
probably he came in successive waves. The American Indians appear to
have been derived from the Mongoloid tribes of northeastern Asia before
the latter had developed some of those extreme specializations which
characterize the typical Mongols of Central Asia and China proper
today. Judging from the culture which these American Indians brought
with them, this migration began before 10,000 B.C.
The existing races of mankind, and those either entirely extinct or now
absorbed in other races, had their distinctive areas of differentiation
and periods of radiation from Eurasia over the habitable globe. The
most primitive types are now found farthest from this original centre
of distribution in countries where through isolation they escaped
competition with the higher types which evolved later.
The weight of evidence appears to show that Africa, or Ethiopia, lying
far to the southwest of Eurasia, was peopled in earliest times, by way
of Arabia, by a most primitive negroid type of mankind. While north
of the Sahara migrations from Asia have continued until recent times,
the south was left for a vast period in possession of the Negro. Even
today, aside from the recent infiltration of Whites and Browns, Africa
south of the Sahara belongs to three negroid groups; the Negroes
proper, the Pigmies or Negrillos, and the Bushmen and Hottentots.
These three human types are characterized by very dark or yellow skin,
tightly curled hair, very scanty body hair, flaring nostrils, flattened
noses and an absence of supraorbital ridges.
Again, Australia, Tasmania, and some of the adjoining islands are,
or recently were, inhabited by what used to be considered one of the
great divisions of mankind, the Australoids. These people have the
black skin and certain features of the Negro; but differ from him in
the possession of abundant body hair and of marked supraorbital ridges.
Also the Australoid head hair is wavy, and not closely curled, a most
important characteristic. The profound cleavage between the Negroes and
the Australoids is now questioned in some quarters.
The differentiation of the human species into types so distinctly
contrasted as Whites and Blacks and the problems of the evolution
of higher types of man from original stocks bring us to a new
classification of the genus Homo. Some anthropologists still maintain
that all human beings are included in the species _Homo sapiens_; but
this is an old-fashioned grouping. Sooner or later a new system must
be formulated based on the same fundamental rules that are applied
to the classification of other mammals. For instance, the physical
differences between the Nordics and the Negroes, the Australoids and
the Mongols, if found among the lower mammals, would be much more than
sufficient to constitute not only separate species, but even subgenera,
and they are now so regarded by some anthropologists.
Race is hard to define. It consists in the presence of a collection of
hereditary characters common to the great majority of individuals in a
given group. It lies in the preponderance of such characters as color
of skin, hair, and eyes, facial and nasal contour, shape of skull, and
even mental characteristics, which are more difficult to classify, but
which are distinctly typical of specific human groups. Many individuals
possess all the hereditary characters of a given race. But man is so
ancient a being and intermixture has been so widespread that nearly
every race shows signs of blending with others. This is especially true
in Europe, where the intermingling of peoples has been extensive during
the past twenty centuries.
Just as the classification of man according to race needs revision in
the light of recent discoveries, so the definition of race must be
understood anew in the light of genetics. Thirty years ago we talked
glibly about the Aryan or Indo-European race, or the Caucasian or
Germanic race. All these terms must be discarded. Aryan, Indo-European,
and Germanic are only linguistic terms and Caucasian has no meaning
except as used in America to distinguish between whites and colored.
Language or culture may spread quickly and widely among the peoples
of the earth irrespective of race. For example, the bow and arrow
may have originated with some specific race of mankind, yet we find
this invention in use all over the globe and in the hands of the most
diverse peoples. The use of firearms and of horses by the American
Indians indicates nothing more than their contact with the Whites. It
is unsafe to attribute the inception of any cultural feature to a given
race.
Civilization itself, that is, agriculture and the domestication of
animals, probably arose in West Central Asia, spreading east, south,
southwest, and west. Although the earliest remains of the dog, the
first animal tamed, are found in the Maglemose in Denmark approximately
8000 B.C., it may have been domesticated far earlier in Asia.
There were two centers of the development of civilization--two foci.
The first was in southwestern Eurasia: the Valley of the Syr-Daria;
Mesopotamia and its city states; Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria;
then Egypt, Crete, Greece, Rome, and modern Europe. There is the
possibility, or even the probability, of finding in the unexplored
portions of southern Arabia, connecting links of early culture between
the Valley of the Euphrates and the Valley of the Nile. Recent
discoveries indicate a very early civilization in the Valley of the
Indus, which apparently had been brought down from the north. All
these regions formed a single group and were the first center.
The second focus was an independent, but similar and parallel expansion
of civilization in southeastern Asia, now China. There was apparently
little intercourse until modern times between the Far East and the
Far West of Eurasia, except by caravan routes across Central Asia.
The Romans knew the silk of China and there was a certain amount of
trade in jewels, precious metals, and spices down through the Middle
Ages, but the extraordinary fact that these two cultures developed
independently with slight mutual influence of the one on the other is
little appreciated. Both cultures seem, as said, to have had their
origin in West Central Asia and to have radiated southwest, south, and
east.
One of the periodic cycles of drought desiccated the central area, and
separated the Western and Eastern worlds by an almost impassable series
of deserts, like the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. In the west, even as late
as the time of Alexander the Great, Bactria and Sogdiana, northwest of
India, were populous and flourishing states. Here it is that future
exploration may uncover the first beginnings of agriculture and the
domestication of animals--perhaps, also, the first written language.
Language, like culture, is not identical or co-extensive with race to
any great degree. Witness the neighboring islands in the West Indies
where Negroes speak Spanish in one, French in another, and English in a
third. The language of a given group at a given time, however, being
possibly a much more recent acquirement than its cultural inventions,
does show either that it was originated by those who speak it or that
it was imposed upon them by another race long in contact with them.
Since we are to deal principally with the racial groups of Europe,
namely the Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine, we might glance for a
moment in more detail at this distinction between race and language.
The Mediterraneans of Arabia speak a Semitic language, while the
Berbers of North Africa, also a people of Mediterranean stock, speak
a Hamitic language. This same Hamitic tongue was probably spoken all
around the coast of the inland sea and up the west coast of Europe to
the British Islands before Aryan speech was brought there by Nordic
invaders from the north and east. Meanwhile the Alpines spoke languages
related to Turki, a Ural-Altaic language--of course, non-Aryan--as they
still do in Turkestan, Hungary, and Finland.
As to the Nordics, it would appear that this race originated the
so-called Aryan or Indo-European group of languages. The Aryan tongue
was probably developed in South Russia before the long isolation from
Asia had been broken. At a period in the third millennium B.C. the
Aryan language split into two groups: one, the Western or Centum group,
which pushed west and north; the other, the Eastern or Satem group
which pushed south and east. The Centum group included the Greek,
Latin, Celtic, and Germanic languages. Curiously enough, an outlying
member of this group, the Tokarian, was spoken in Turkestan as late as
the seventh century A.D. The Satem group, sometimes called Iranian,
included the Lithuanian, all the Slavic languages and those of ancient
and modern Persia and the various forms of Sanscrit spoken in India and
Burma.
Light-skinned invaders from the northwest appear to have entered India
in successive waves and to have introduced the Aryan language known
as Sanscrit. They were probably the Sacae or Scythians from South
Russia. These Nordics in India can properly be called "Aryans." As used
otherwise, however, the term Aryan is purely linguistic. Originally all
the tribes who spoke the languages of the Centum and Satem groups were
members of the Nordic race.
According to recent discoveries in the Valley of the Indus, a very
elaborate civilization flourished at least five thousand years ago
at Mohenjo-Daro, four hundred miles north of the mouth of the river.
This civilization was as elaborate as the corresponding culture of
Mesopotamia or of Egypt. The racial characters found in the bodies in
the burials indicate that the mass of the population was then, as now,
of Mediterranean race, but that the ruling class was long-headed and
long-faced, and of a tall stature and sturdy build--a type clearly
Nordic. In the earliest graves of Ur, in Mesopotamia, the skulls are
very clearly of a race akin to those on the Indus. All this would tend
to throw back the date of the invasion of men from the north by another
thousand years or more. The same appears to be true of the invasions
into Greece of the Achæans and of the Osco-Umbrians into Italy.
The wide distribution of the Satem or Iranian group to the south and
west of Asia shows that the Nordics in great numbers conquered the
aboriginal inhabitants of these countries and imposed on them the Aryan
speech. They invented the caste system to maintain the purity of their
blood. In fact, the Hindu word "varna" means both color and caste. In
spite of all their efforts, however, the conquering invaders died out
almost completely in India and Persia--leaving behind them only their
language, and, in some cases, their religion.
With this brief review of the essential difference between race and
language or culture, we may return to a consideration of humanity in
terms of essentially racial characters.
The world as a whole can be roughly mapped racially according to the
most obvious human differentiation--namely, color: white, yellow, red,
black, and brown. The white race at the present day dominates Europe,
northern Asia in part, Australia, and North America as far south as
Mexico, with outposts scattered all over the globe. Eastern Asia is
yellow. Southern Asia and northern Africa are brown. Africa south of
the Sahara Desert is black, and there is a black tinge across southern
Asia, as we shall see. The red men, or Amerinds, with but a small
remnant in the United States and Canada, inhabit Latin America, where
in some cases their blood is mixed with that of the descendants of
Negro slaves, and, of course, to a still larger extent with that of
South Europeans.
Color, however, is not the only character upon which a racial map of
the world could be based. Perhaps a more satisfactory division could
be made according to the cross section of human hair. However, in
dealing with the racial groupings of Eurasia, we find different types
of humanity arranged in definite zones according to certain outstanding
physical characters.
Farthest south on the great land area of Eurasia lies a belt of
Negroids, extending from Ethiopia with intervals through Arabia to the
South Seas. The principal racial characteristics of these people are
very dark or black skin, dark eyes, tightly curled black hair, and
long, _i.e._, dolichocephalic skulls. In southern Persia the population
shows a Negro admixture, and a distinctly Negroid type is numerous
among the Pre-Dravidians of India. The Hindus themselves are very dark
brown with wavy black hair.
A few decades ago there was much talk of the English officer and the
Hindu in the ranks being of the same Aryan blood, because they both
spoke widely diverse forms of the great group of Aryan languages. This,
of course, did not imply the slightest trace of blood relationship--the
Aryan speech of the Hindu had been imposed upon him by his conquerors
from the north. Such fallacies were common a generation ago.