Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

I. The Associative Elements.

The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men, who dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify. The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather in a herd.

These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:

1. The Social Instincts.

Strongest of them all is the sexual impulse. The foundation of every community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this bond is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture. It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly modified form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No instance of it has been known to history.[24] In the most brutal tribes the man asserts his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of “polyandry,” where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no general license.

It is equally true that the tender sentiments of love appear to be less known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence. Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.[25]

But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher in the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life. This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis of the words for love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins, Nahuas, Mayas, Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of the American Indians.[26]

Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.

The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through the development of parental affection. This instinct is as strong in many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than to a doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.

Akin to this is filial and fraternal affection, leading to a preservation of the family bond through generations, and in spite of local separation. It is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in conditions of low culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies through twenty generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island boast of fifteen or eighteen.

The sentiment of friendship has been supposed by some to be an acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among Australian cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in early social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the bond of fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.[27] This is often by a transfer of the blood of the one to the body of the other, or a symbolic ceremony to that effect, the meaning being that the stranger is thus admitted to the rights of kinship in the gens or clan. Springing from this clannish affection is the custom of ancestral worship, which adds a link to the bond of the family. It is so widely spread that Herbert Spencer has endeavored to derive from it all other forms of religion. But this is a hasty generalization. The religious sentiment had many other primitive forms of expression.

Through these various personal affections we reach the development of the family into the gens, the clan or totem, all of whose members, whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one interest.

The union of several gentes under one control constitutes the tribe, which is the first step toward what is properly a state. The tribe passes beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common interests persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it is curious to note that the tribal sentiments are among the very strongest mankind ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection. Brutus felt no hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal. Classical antiquity is full of admonitions and examples to the same effect. So powerful is the devotion of the Polynesians that they have been known when a canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a ring around their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the ravenous fish, that he might escape.

This sentiment of personal loyalty has been in history the main strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that to which we have arrived.

The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of the social organization, the bond under which first the primitive horde and later the members of the developed commonwealth consented to live. From first to last, wherever found, communities of men are bound together by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere self-interest. Those writers who pretend that society once existed without the idea of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation, and without some recognized controlling power, have failed to produce such an example from actual life.

These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans, “phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of property, which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the form of government, which was usually by a council appointed from the various clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas in the ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views respecting its institutions, and a better understanding of many of the events of history.[28]

In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is the position of woman. Upon this depends the life of the family and the development of morality. Those nations which have gained the most enduring conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman a prominent place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in republican Rome, women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights under the law. Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian tribes, progress is scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in Mohammedan countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not permanent. Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from his mother, and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring an education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing the way to engender citizens of inferior minds.

Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of the ethical standard differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the rights of property, and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation respects truth telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly desirable when it conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights of property are generally construed entirely differently to ourselves among nations in the lower grades of culture, because the idea of independent personal ownership does not exist among them. What they have belongs to the clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of it.

The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct conflict with the philosopher Kant’s famous “categorical imperative,” which makes the basis the welfare of the whole species. Hence, in primitive culture and survivals there is a dual system of morals, the one of kindness, love, help and peace, applicable to the members of our own clan, tribe or community; the other of robbery, hatred, enmity and murder, to be practiced against all the rest of the world; and the latter is regarded as quite as much a sacred duty as the former.[29] Ethics, therefore, while a powerfully associative element in the one direction, becomes dispersive or segregating in others, unless the sense of duty is taught as a universal and not as a class or national conception.

The sentiment of modesty is developed by man in society, and he alone among animals possesses it. Whatever has been said to the contrary, it is never absent. Frequently, indeed, its manifestation is not according to our usages, and is thus overlooked. Women with us expose their faces, which a Moorish lady would think most indelicate. The Bedawin women consider it immodest to have the back of the head uncovered; the Siamese think nothing of displaying nude limbs, but on no account would show the uncovered sole of the foot. In certain African courts, the men wear long robes while the women appear nude. The necessary functions of the body are everywhere veiled by retirement, and in the most savage tribes, a regard for decency is constantly noted.

The second chief associative principle is

2. Language.

Unlike the elements of affection which I have been tracing, language is not a legacy from a brute ancestor. It is the peculiar property of the genus Man, and no tribe has ever been known without a developed grammatical articulate speech, with abundance of expressions for all its ideas. The stories of savages so rude that they were forced to eke out their words with gestures, and could not make themselves intelligible in the dark, are fables. The languages of the most barbarous communities are always ample in forms, and often surprisingly flexible, rich and sonorous.

We must indeed suppose a time when the speech of primeval man had a feeble, imperfect beginning. “The origin of language” has been a favorite theme for philologists to speculate about, with sparse fruit for their readers. We can, indeed, picture to ourselves something like what it must have been in its very early stages, by studying a number of very simple languages, and noting what parts of the grammar and dictionary they dispense with. Following this plan, I once undertook to show what might have been the language of man far back in palæolithic times. It probably had no “parts of speech,” such as nouns, pronouns, prepositions or adjectives; it had no gender, number nor case, no numerals and no conjugations. The different sounds, vowels or consonants, conveyed specific significations, and each phrase was summed up in a single word.[30]

In some such way language began. But remember that this is quite another question from the origin of languages, or, to use the proper term, of linguistic stocks. They are very numerous, and many of comparatively late birth. Those convolutions of the brain which preside over speech once developed, man did not have to repeat his long and toilsome task of acquiring linguistic facility. Children are always originating new words and expressions, and if two or three infants are left much together, they will soon have a tongue of their own, unlike anything they hear around them. Numerous examples of this character have been collected by Horatio Hale, and upon them he has based an entirely satisfactory theory of the source of that multiplicity of languages which we find in various parts of the globe.[31] In the unstable life of barbarous epochs, very young children were often left without parents or protectors, or wandered off and were lost. Most of them doubtless perished, but those who survived developed a tongue of their own, nearly all whose radicals would be totally different from those of the language of their parents. Thus in early times numerous dialects, numerous independent tongues, came to be spoken within limited areas by the same ethnic stock.

It is a common error to suppose that there was once but one or a few languages, from which all others have been derived. The reverse is the case. Within the historic period, the number of languages has been steadily diminishing. We know of scores which have become extinct, as many American tongues; others, like the Celtic, are in plain process of disappearance. We can almost predict the time when the work and the thought of the world will be carried on in less than half a dozen tongues, if indeed that many survive as really active.

If we take a comprehensive survey of the grammatical structure of all known tongues, we are cheered by the discovery that they can be divided into a few great classes or groups. The similarities of each group are not in words or sounds, but in the plan of “expressing the proposition,” or placing words together in a phrase to convey an idea.

This may be accomplished in one of four ways:

1. By isolation. The words representing the parts of the phrase may be ranged one after another without any change. This is the case in the Chinese and the languages of Farther India.

2. By agglutination. The principal word in the phrase may have added to it or placed before it a number of syllables expressing the relations to it of the other ideas. Most African and North Asian tongues are agglutinative.

3. By incorporation. The accessory words are either inserted within the verbal members of the sentence, or attached to it in abbreviated forms, so that the phrase has the appearance of one word. Most American languages belong to this type.

4. By inflection. Each word of the sentence indicates by its own form its relation to the main proposition. All Aryan and Semitic idioms are more or less inflected.

These distinctions have great ethnographic interest. They almost deserve to be called racial traits. Thus, the inflected languages belonged originally solely to the European race; the isolating languages are still confined wholly to the Sinitic branch of the Asian race; the incorporative languages are found nowhere of such pure type and so numerous as in the American race; while the agglutinative type is that alone which is found in independent examples in every race.

Scheme of Languages.

1. Isolating	Chinese, Thibetan, Sifan, Tai.
	Siamese, Annamite, Burmese, Assamese.
2. Agglutinative	1. By reduplication and prefixes	Polynesian, Papuan, Bantu.
	2. By suffixes	Sibiric tongues, (Ural-altaic), Basque.
		Japanese, Korean, Dravidian.
3. Incorporative	1. With synthetic tendency	Algonkin, Nahuatl.
		Quichua, Guarani.
	2. With analytic tendency.	Otomi, Maya, Sahaptin.
4. Inflectional	1. By annexing grammatical elements.	Egyptian.
	2. By inner changes of stem.	Libyan, Semitic.
	3. By addition of suffixes.	Aryac tongues.

The principles on which languages should be compared are frequently misunderstood, and this is one of the reasons why the value of linguistics to ethnography has so often been underrated.

The first rule which should be observed is to rank grammatical structure far above verbal coincidences. The neglect of this rule will condemn any effort at comparison. For example, there have been writers who have sought to derive the Polynesian, an agglutinative, from the Sanscrit, an inflected tongue; or an American from a Semitic stock. Such attempts reveal an ignorance of the nature of language.

A second rule is that in tracing the etymology of words, the phonetic laws of the special group to which they belong must be followed. This is an even more frequent source of error than the former. Writers of high reputation will trace variations in African or American or Semitic names by the phonetic laws of the Aryac dialects—an absurd error, as the phonetic changes are not at all the same in different linguistic stocks.

Yet a third rule is to appraise correctly the value of verbal identities. Generally, it is placed too high. All developed tongues include many “loan words,” borrowed from a variety of sources. They are not prima facie evidence of ethnic relation; they have frequently been transmitted through other nations, as is the case with thousands of English words.

An absolute verbal identity is always suspicious; or rather it is of no ethnic value. There must be a series of words in the languages compared of the same or similar meanings, but whose forms have been altered by the phonetic laws peculiar to the group, for such lists of words to merit the attention of a scientific linguist.

The question how far languages can be accepted as indicating the relationships of peoples has been a bone of contention. One principle we may lay down, with unimportant exceptions—No nation has ever willingly adopted a foreign tongue. Whenever such a change has taken place, it has been under stress of sovereignty, vi coactum, as the lawyers say. Hence in the savage state, where prolonged domination of one tribe by another rarely occurs, language is an excellent ethnic guide, as in America and ancient Europe.

Another principle is that in a conflict of tongues, as after conquest, that tongue prevails which belongs to the more cultured people, whether this be conqueror or conquered. This is well illustrated by the survival of the Romance languages after the inroads of the Teutonic hordes at the Fall of the Western Empire.

A third maxim in linguistic ethnography is that mixture of languages, especially in grammatical structure, indicates mixture of blood. When, for instance, we find the Maltese a dialect partly Arabic, partly Romance, we may correctly infer that the people of the island are descended from both these stocks. This holds good even of loan words, when they are numerous; for though such have no influence on the grammatical structure of a tongue, they testify to some relations between nations, which we may be sure corresponded to others of a sexual nature.

The “American citizens of African descent” speak English only; and though they have been in contact with the white race for but three or four generations, the majority of those now living are related to it by blood, that is, are mulattoes.

The mental aptitude of a nation is closely dependent on the type of its idiom. The mind is profoundly influenced by its current modes of vocal expression. When the form of the phrase is such that each idea is kept clear and apart, as it is in nature, and yet its relations to other ideas in the phrase and the sentence are properly indicated by the grammatical construction, the intellect is stimulated by wider variety in images and a nicer precision in their outlines and relations. This is the case in the highest degree with the languages of inflection, and it is no mere coincidence that those peoples who have ever borne the banner in the van of civilization have always spoken inflected tongues. The world will be better off when all others are extinguished, and it is only in deep ignorance of linguistic ethnography that such a language as Volapük—agglutinative in type—could have been offered for adoption as a world-language.

I have said that alone of all animals, man has articulate speech; I now add that also alone of all animals, he is capable of

3. Religion.

Not only is he capable of it; he has never been known to be devoid of it. All statements that tribes have been discovered without any kind of religion are erroneous. Not one of them has borne the test of close investigation.[32] The usual mistake has been to suppose that this or that belief, this or that moral observance, constitutes religion. In fact, there are plenty of immoral religions, and some which are atheistic. The notion of a God or gods is not essential to religion; for that matter, some of the most advanced religious teachers assert that such a notion is incompatible with the highest religion. Religion is simply the recognition of the Unknown as a controlling element in the destiny of man and the world about him. This we shall find in the cult of every nation, and in the heart of every man.

Some nations identified this unknown controlling power with one real or supposed existence, some with another. Those in whom the family sentiment was well developed believed themselves still under the control of their deceased parents, giving rise to “ancestral worship;” more frequently the change from light to darkness, day to night, impressed the children of nature, and led to light and sun worship; in some localities the terrific force displayed in the cyclone or the thunder-storm seemed the mightiest revelation of the Unknown, and we have the Lightning and Storm Myths; elsewhere, any odd or strange object, any unexplained motion, was attributed to the divine, the super-natural. The last mentioned mental state gave rise to those low cults called “fetichism” and “animism,” while the former are supposed to be somewhat higher and are distinguished as “polytheisms.” In all of them, the prevailing sentiment is fear of the Unknown; the spirit of worship is propitiatory, the gods being regarded as jealous and inclined to malevolence; the cult is of the nature of sorcery, certain formulas, rites and sacrifices being held to placate or neutralize the ill-will or bad temper of the divinities. In its lowest forms this is called “shamanism;” in its highest, it is seen in all dogmatic religions.

In early conditions, each tribe has its own gods, which are not supposed to be superior, except in force, to the gods of neighboring tribes. No attempt is made to extend their worship beyond the tribe, and in their images they are liable to be captured, as are their votaries. Special prisons for such captive gods were constructed in ancient Rome and Cuzco.

These “tribal religions” prevailed everywhere in early historic times. The religion of the ancient Israelites, such as we find it portrayed in the Pentateuch, was of this character. In later days, profoundly religious minds of philosophic cast perceived that tribal cults do not satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the religious sentiment. The conceptions of the highest truths must be universal conceptions, and in obedience to this the Universal or World-religions were formed.

The earliest of these was preached by Sakya Muni, Prince of Kapilavastu, in India, about 500 B. C. It is known as Buddhism, and has now the largest number of believers of any one faith. The second was that taught by Christ, and the third is Islam, introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century. It is noteworthy that all these world-religions were framed by members of the white race. None has been devised by members of the other races, for the doctrines advanced by Confutse and Laotse in China are philosophic systems rather than religions.

The three World-religions named have rapidly extinguished the various tribal religions, and it is easy to foresee that in a few generations they will virtually embrace the religious sentiments of all mankind. They are all three on the increase, Christianity the most rapidly by the extension of the nations adhering to it, but Mohammedanism can claim in the present century the greater number of proselytes, its fields being in Central Asia, India, and Central Africa.

In the ethnographic study of religions for the purpose of estimating their influence on the life and character of nations, we must take notice especially of three points: 1. The ethical contents of a faith; 2. The philosophic “theory of things” on which it is based (cosmogony, theosophy, etc.), and 3. Its power over the emotions, as upon this rests its practical potency.

As currently taught, no one of the three world-religions named is fully adequate on all these points. The cosmogony of Christianity is a series of Assyrian and Hebrew myths contradicted by modern science, and its ethical purity has been often sullied by efforts to place faith in dogmas above the law of conscience. Mohammedanism, a more genuine monotheism than Christianity, in some respects higher in practical morality (temperance, charity, equality), and certainly superior in power over the emotions, is weak in its doctrine of fatalism and in its degradation of woman. Buddhism is tainted by a profound distrust of the value of the individual life, by a false theory of the universe, and by its borrowed doctrine of metempsychosis; but rises high in its appeals to the sense of justice and right within the mind.

A religion tends to elevate its votaries in the proportion that it withdraws their minds from merely material aims, and sets before them stimulating ideals. This is the distinction between “material” and “ideal” cults. Where the rites are directed mainly to conjuration, where the prayers are for good luck in life, where the myths are mere stories of exaggerated human shapes, there the faith is material. Such were all the religions of the African blacks and of the Eastern and Northern Asiatic tribes. They have never developed any thing higher. Among the whites, however, and in a less degree among the American Indians, there were mythical ideal figures, ranked among the gods, who embodied grand ideal conceptions of the possible perfectibility of man, and served as examples and models for the religious sentiment.[33]

The associative influence of a religion, whether tribal or universal in theory, is singularly powerful. The Mohammedan who looks toward Mecca, the Christian who turns toward Rome, feels a like bond of sympathy with his fellow worshippers of every race and color, as did the Israelite who wended his way to Jerusalem, or the Nahuatl who travelled to the sacred city of Cholula. The pilgrimages, the Crusades, the ecclesiastical Councils of past ages, have collected nations together under the control of ideas stronger than any which practical life can offer.

Other bonds of union are those derived from the practice of

4. The Arts of Life.

Unquestionably the earliest of these to exert such an influence was the construction of a shelter, in other words architecture. We know that even glacial man had learned enough to make himself a house, though it was probably inferior to that of the muskrat. In early conditions one structure sheltered several families. Such are called “communal houses,” and some ethnologists have argued that they are well nigh universal down to a very late day in the evolution of domestic architecture. The temple, the fortified refuge, the city with its grouped homes shut in by a common wall of defence—all these illustrate how architecture has ever tended to bring men together, and strengthen their instincts of association.

Later in time but wider in its influence in the same direction was the growth of agriculture. This art completely revolutionized the habits of life, and rendered possible the advent of civilization. The tribe, dependent on hunting and fishing or on natural products for a livelihood, is necessarily migratory and separative in its habits. The tillage of the ground with equal necessity demands a stable residence and a centralization of individuals. The areas of primitive culture, the sites of the earliest cities, were always in situations favorable to agricultural pursuits.

Along with the cultivation of food-plants went hand-in-hand the domestication of animals. The horse was trained independently in both Europe and Asia, some species of the dog in all continents, the ox for draft and the cow for milk principally in Asia, and the camel for the deserts of Arabia and Africa. These humble aids brought together distant tribes, and assimilated their characters.

The prosecution of the various special arts, as pottery, metal work, textile-fabrics, etc., led to the formation of guilds and the association of workers in particular localities favorable to obtaining and utilizing the raw products. Each such conquest of the inventive faculties drew men into closer bonds of harmonious labor, and opened for them new avenues of joint industry. The pre-historic past of the race is measured by archæologists by the rise and extension of new arts, not because of themselves, but because they are indicative of improved social conditions, greater aggregations of men, more potent actions in history. The fine arts, in crowning the useful arts with the iridescent glory of the ideal, impart to the handiwork of men that universality of motive which unites all into one brotherhood.

The second class of psychic traits are: