Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

II. The Sibiric Branch.

The branch of the Asian race which I have called the Sibiric, as geographically designating its pre-historic home, has also been called the Turanian, the Ural-Altaic, the Finno-Ugric, the Mongolic, etc. Its geographical location is north of the Altai range, and the Caspian and Black seas, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean. The languages of all its members are polysyllabic and agglutinative, contrasting as much with the Sinitic stock on the one hand as with the Aryac on the other. In physical appearance individuals of reasonably pure descent present good specimens of the Asian type, the skull brachycephalic, the face round, the nose flat at the root, the eye small and black, the hair straight and coarse, the color yellowish. They are divided into many tribes, most of whom were until recently addicted to a wandering pastoral life, and though on the lower levels of culture and without coherent social bonds, they have at times loomed up as the most powerful and pretentious figures in the history of the world.

Furthest to the east is

1. The Tungusic Group,

Which occupies the coast from the northern boundary of China to Kamschatka, and westward to the Yenissei river. It embraces the Manchus and the Tungus. The former, a bold hardy people, possessed themselves of the throne of China early in the seventeenth century, and continue to rule it by a military despotism, adapted with consummate skill to the peculiarities of Chinese character. This has led to an extensive fusion of Sinitic blood among the Manchus, and also an improvement in their social status. They have become Buddhists, and their language is losing ground before the Chinese.

The Tungus to the north of them, inhabiting a vast district of forest, swamp and mountain, east of the Yenissei river, are of ruder life. They depend for subsistence on the chase and on their large herds of reindeer. In religion they adhere to the worship of the powers of nature, and are under the control of their priests or “shamans.” They present a well marked Asiatic type, a brachycephalic skull (81°), round face and oblique eyes, the hair coarse and straight, the beard scanty. In stature they are of medium height, strongly built, and the senses of sight and hearing unusually keen.

Like most nations dwelling in or near the Arctic zone, the disposition of the Tungus is decidedly cheerful and affable. He is hospitable to strangers, and honorable in his dealings. In habits, however, he has no notion of cleanliness, and the Tatar name applied to him—tongus, hog—expresses what his not over-nice neighbors think of his mode of life.

The tribes were subjected to the Russian domination about 1650, and have been gradually improving their condition. A portion of them called Lamuts reside on the sea of Ochotsk, and have fixed villages with houses built in the Russian style.[135]

2. The Mongolic Group

had their original home in Mongolia, a vast arid country south of the Altai range, and west of Manchuria. Before the Christian era they had extended north beyond the mountains and occupied the land around Lake Baikal, whence they proceeded easterly, and under the name of Kalmucks have settled quite to the river Volga. Few of them are agriculturists, it being their preference to wander over the pastures with their flocks. Their religion is a debased form of Buddhism grafted on their ancient fetichism. In physical type they are true Asiatics, and are of a restless, warlike disposition.

In the extended region which they inhabit, stretching over seventy degrees of longitude, they have had space to multiply until their numbers once became a menace to all other nations of the Eurasian continent. Under Genghis Khan, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, they poured down in countless hordes on the cultivated nations of Asia and Europe, and in a few years established a monarchy, the then greatest in the world. About a century later his descendant, the sanguinary Tamerlane, swept Asia from the Indian Ocean to the Arctic circle; and at the close of yet another century Baber, of the same redoubted lineage, founded the empire of the Great Mogul (Mongol) in India, extending from the Indus to the Ganges. Based, however, on despotism, barbarism and fanaticism, these gigantic states disappeared in a few generations, leaving scarcely a trace of their existence except the ruins of the higher civilizations which they had destroyed.

3. The Tataric Group.

Derived its name from the Chinese word ta-ta, and is incorrectly written Tartar. Another Chinese name applied to them was Tu-kiu, from which is derived our word “Turk.”

The earliest home of the Tatars or Turks was in Turkestan, north of the Plateau of Pamir and in the immediate vicinity of the Persian Aryans. Long before the beginning of the Christian era their predatory bands had repeatedly invaded the territory of the Aryans and the Semites, and quite down to two centuries ago the states which they had founded were looked upon with dread by the mightiest potentates of Europe. The Chinese annals speak of their inroads into that empire more than 200 years before our era.

At the period of the migration of nations which accompanied the dismemberment and fall of the Roman Empire, the Tatars appeared frequently in Europe, always as ruthless devastators. Attila, “the scourge of God,” with his bands of Huns, the Avari, and the Bulgari, who followed in his wake, the Turcomans and the Cossacks, and finally the Osmanli Turks whose descendants now govern European and Asiatic Turkey, and whose Sultan is the political head of the Mohammedan world, all belong in this group.

It is needless to say that in these rovings they have undergone much admixture. The modern Turk has more of the blood of the Semite and the Circassian in his veins than of his Tartar ancestors; but his language has maintained a singular purity, and the Tartar hunter, the Jakout, in the delta of the Lena on the frozen ocean, finds no difficulty in understanding its ordinary expressions. The Jakout speaks indeed the purest and most ancient form of the idiom, “The Sanscrit of the Tatar,” as it has been called by Friedrich Müller.

The peculiarity of this language is that it has a law of vocalic harmony, by which the various suffixes added to the root change the vowels they contain in accordance with the vowel of the root. It has not only a pleasing sound, but superior flexibility and an unusual capacity to express fine shades of meaning. It is, however, losing ground both in Europe and Asia, as are all the agglutinative languages.

Next to the Turks, the Cossacks and Kirghis Tatars are prominent members of the stock. They are closely related, being branches of the same dialectic family. The former wander over the steppes between the Sea of Aral and the main chain of the Altai. It is not known when they occupied this region, but it was within historic times, and they drove from it a people of higher civilization, acquainted with the use of bronze and brass, and dwellers in cities.[136] The Kirghis themselves build no houses, but dwell in felt tents called “yourts.” They did not cultivate the soil, deriving their food from their flocks and herds, but of late years have begun a careless agriculture. In religion they profess Mohammedanism, but in reality they cling to their ancient Shamanistic superstitions.

4. The Finnic Group

Has lived for certainly two thousand years or more in Northern Europe. It is mentioned by Tacitus, and its traditions as well as its dialects support this antiquity. That it ever extended, as many theorists pretend, into Central or Southern Europe, may now be dismissed as an obsolete hypothesis, disproved by craniological studies and a closer scrutiny of the alleged linguistic resemblances which have been urged. The probability is that the Finns and Lapps had the same ancestors as the Samoyeds of Northern Siberia, who once lived on the upper streams of the Yenissei in the Sajanic mountains and around Lake Baikal. The Laplanders are said still to retain some reminiscence of the migration, and the verbal affinities of the Finnic and Samoyedic demonstrate an early relationship.[137]

The eastern members of the group are the Ugrians in the government of Tobolsk, some tribes on the Volga, and the Permians on the Kama river (an affluent of the Volga). The Magyars of Hungary are a branch of the Ugrians who possessed themselves of the land in the ninth century, and who still retain their language, not remote from the Finnish.

The present Finnland was first occupied by the Lapps or Laplanders, who were driven northward and westward by bands continually arriving from the east. The Finns, who call themselves “Suomi,” which is the same as the initial syllables of “Samo-yed,” are subdivided into the Esthonians and Livonians on the Baltic, south of the Gulf of Finland, the Tavastes, Karelians, and others to the north.

The physical type of the members of the Finnic group has given rise to much discussion. Many individuals are blondes, with light hair and eyes, and with dolichocephalic skulls. Such are especially numerous among the Esthonians, Karelians, and Tavastes. But it must be remembered that for two or three thousand years these tribes have been in contact with the blonde and dolichocephalic type of the Aryans, represented by the ancient Teutonic and Slavonic groups (see Lect. V). It is not in the least surprising therefore to find the Finnic group everywhere deeply infused with Aryac blood. Even the remote Lapps are no exception. Nominally there are 25,000 or more of them. But Prince Roland Bonaparte says as the result of his recent observations among them, “Pure Lapps no longer exist;”[138] and when this is true of that isolated people, how much more is it of the tribes in closer proximity to the Eurafrican race? We may conclude with Professor Keane that the genuine traits of the Finnic group are “fundamentally and typically Mongolic,” i. e., Sibiric.[139]

There is no reason to suppose that any of the Sibiric peoples extended southerly in Asia or Europe much beyond their present boundaries. It has been a mania with many ethnographers, especially linguistic ethnographers, to discover “Turanian” peoples and dialects in numerous parts of southern and central Europe. They would have it that the Basques, the Etruscans, the Ligurians, the Pelasgians, were “Turanian;” that the prehistoric inhabitants of Palestine, the Hittites, and the Shepherd Kings of Egypt, were also of this ilk. They are like those other ethnographers who find “Mongoloid” indications everywhere, in America, in Polynesia, even among the Bushmen of South Africa. As Friedrich Müller says of these writers, “Mongolian” is a sack into which everything is crammed by them. There is no true science in catching at superficial resemblances or exalting remote analogies while fixed distinctions are disregarded.

5. The Arctic Group.

In northeastern Siberia, close to the Arctic circle, and occupying the territory between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, dwell a number of tribes in a condition of barbarism. Their languages are in general form of the Sibiric type; their physical traits vary, indicating frequent admixture. In color they are rather dark, and the skull is generally slightly dolichocephalic.

Of these the Chukchis occupy the extreme northeast of the continent. Nordenskjold, who saw much of them, considers them the mixed descendants of various tribes, driven from more hospitable regions to the south.[140] Some of them have a marked Mongolic aspect, but the majority differ from that type. They are yellowish-brown in color, prominent nose, tall in stature, and well built. They are active hunters and fishermen. The Namollos are a sedentary branch of the Chukchis, and both are related to the Koraks and Kamschatkans. The Namollos live along the Arctic coast, near East Cape, while the Koraks live to the south. “Kora” means “reindeer,” and they are essentially the reindeer people, that useful animal being their chief wealth. Close to East Cape, and southward along the coast of Behring sea, are Eskimo tribes. They have lived there from the first discovery of the coast, and doubtless long before. Indeed, as far as tradition goes, the movements of the Eskimos have been from America into Asia, and not the reverse, until they were driven back by the advancing Chukchis.[141]

The Kamschatkans to the south are of small stature, but strongly formed. They live upon fish, and are skillful in the use of dogs for sleds. They number only about 2000 souls, and are disappearing.

The Ghiliaks live near the mouth of the Amoor river and on the Saghalin islands. They are a mixed people, the cephalic index varying from 74 to 85; some of them have abundant beards, which is very rare among the pure Asiatics.[142]

The Aleutians, who occupy the long chain of islands reaching from Kamschatka to Alaska, are of medium height, flat nose, black eyes and hair, and mesocephalic. They belong to the American, not to the Asian race.

Most of these peoples speak tongues differing widely among themselves, but of the agglutinative type. They are in no way related to the American languages, and are equally remote from the Mongolian.

6. The Japanese Group.

The Japanese cannot claim purity of descent. Their complexion and frequent crisp or wavy hair indicate that their Asian origin has been modified by other blood. They were not the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago they occupy, but moved into it probably about a thousand years before the Christian era.[143] The immigrants seem from some linguistic evidence to have come from Manchuria or Mongolia, and to have found upon the islands a different people, the Ainos (properly Ainu) remarkable for their heavy beards and hairy persons. These have now been driven to the northernmost portion of the archipelago, where about 1200 of them still reside. It was long thought that the languages of the Ainos and Japanese have some affinities, but except in loan words and a general phonetic resemblance, this has now been disproved. The Ainos seem physically related to the Ghiliaks, and came from the north and west. They are supposed to have been the first occupants of the Kurile islands.

Like other mixed peoples, the Japanese vary so much in height, form of skull, hue and bodily proportion, that it is impracticable to set up any fixed type for them, further than to say that their general Asiatic aspect is usually unmistakable to the trained eye.[144] In mental qualities they are gifted, being intelligent, artistic, brave, kind, and honorable, fully alive to the benefits of a high civilization, and able to accept with profit all that the western world has to offer.[145] They are monogamists, and the position of woman has always been respected among them. The prevailing religion is the Shintoism or worship of the powers of nature, but Buddhism, introduced in the 7th century, has also many votaries. At heart, however, they are an irreligious people, like the Chinese, and are unconcerned about the ideal and the mystical. Many of their arts, like that of writing, were at first learned from the Chinese; but they have improved upon them, and given them other directions, as in the development of their phonetic from the Chinese syllabic alphabet.

Japanese art has attracted in recent years the admiration of the European world, and many motives in it have been accepted by our lovers of decorative effects. It is indeed wonderful in its technical finish, and its theory of composition has novelties which are worthy of imitation, but it is devoid of that something which we call the ideal; and its canon of proportion of the human body has never been developed to approach the classical models.

There is an extensive literature in the Japanese tongue. Most of it deals with practical subjects, and even the poetry is usually didactic in spirit.

The Koreans seem originally to have come from the same stock as the ancestors of the Japanese. They are of more positive Asiatic type, and are a mixed people, the ruling class (the Kaoli) having conquered the peninsula in the second century before our era. They closely resemble the Loochoo islanders, and doubtless are consanguine with them. Their industries are similar to those of Japan, which country, indeed, obtained many of its arts from China by way of the Korean peninsula.

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LECTURE VIII.
INSULAR AND LITTORAL PEOPLES.

Contents.—Variability of islanders and coast peoples. Physical geography of Oceanica. Ethnographic divisions.

I. The Negritic Stock. Subdivisions. 1. The Negritic Group. Members. Former extension. Physical aspect. Culture. 2. The Papuan Group. Location. Physical traits. Culture and language. 3. The Melanesian Group. Physical traits. Habits. Languages. Ethnic affinities of Papuas and Melanesians.

II. The Malayic Stock. Location. Subdivisions. Affinities with the Asian Race and original home. 1. The Western or Malayan Group. Physical traits. Character. Extension. Culture. Presence in Hindostan. 2. The Eastern or Polynesian Group. Physical traits. Migrations. Character and culture. Easter Island.

III. The Australic Stock. Affinities between the Australians and Dravidians. 1. The Australian Group. Tasmanians and Australians. Physical traits. Culture. 2. The Dravidian Group. Early extension. Members. Culture. Languages.

Before proceeding to the ethnography of the American continent, I would have you take a rapid survey of the inhabitants of that extensive archipelago whose islands are thickly dotted in the Indian and Pacific oceans, and ascertain as far as may be the relationship in which they stand to the population of the adjacent coasts.

Scheme of Insular and Littoral Peoples.

I. Negritic Stock.	1. Negrito Group.	Mincopies, Aetas, Schobaengs, Mantras, Semangs, Sakaies.
	2. Papuan Group.	Papuas, New Guineans.
	3. Melanesian Group.	Natives of Feejee Islands, New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, New Hebrides, etc.
II. Malayic Stock.	1. Malayan Group.	Malays, Sumatrese, Javanese, Battaks, Dayaks, Macassars, Tagalas, Hovas (of Madagascar).
	2. Polynesian Group.	Polynesians, Micronesians, Maoris.
III. Australic Stock.	1. Australian Group.	Tasmanians, Australians.
	2. Dravidian Group.	Dravidas, Tamuls, Telugus, Canarese, Malayalas, Todas, Khonds, Mundas, Santals, Kohls, Bhillas.

It was Darwin’s theory that the distant progenitor of man was an amphibious marine animal, and certainly from earliest times he has had a predilection for water-ways and the sea-coast. The lines of these have always directed his wanderings, and it is not surprising therefore that nowhere do we find the physical types of the race so confusingly amalgamated as in the insular littoral peoples. Not only is transit easier in these localities, but on islands especially there is a more rapid intermingling and a closer interbreeding than is apt to occur in continental areas. This not only blends types, but it has another effect. It is well known from observation on the lower animals that such close unions result in the formation of more plastic organisms, liable to present wide variations, and to develop into contrasting characters.[146] This holds good also of mental products. For instance, you might suppose that the dialects of the same island or the same small archipelago would offer very slight differences. The reverse is the case. In the same area the dialects of an island differ far more than on the mainland. This is a fact well known to linguists, and is parallel to the physical variations.[147] The ethnographer, therefore, is prepared to attach less importance to corporeal and linguistic differences in insular than in continental peoples.

Physical Geography of Oceanica.—The island world of the Indian and Pacific Oceans is divided geologically into two regions, Australasia and Polynesia. The former, as its name denotes, is really a southeasterly prolongation of the continent of Asia, and was united to it in late tertiary times. The huge islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo are separated from the Malayan and Siamese peninsulas by channels scarcely a couple of hundred feet deep; and from these a chain of islands extends uninterruptedly to the semi-continent of Australia. All these islands are of tertiary formation, and the subsidence which separated them from the main took place at the close of that geologic epoch.

The Polynesian islands, on the other hand, are of recent construction. They are submarine towers of coral, erected on the crests of sunken mountain ranges rising on the floor of a profoundly deep sea. Nevertheless the flora and fauna of Polynesia resemble that of Australasia in its strongly Asiatic character.

The islands of the Indian Ocean present some singular anomalies. Ceylon, though so close to the Indian peninsula, is not a geological fragment of it; while Madagascar, though four thousand miles away, was unquestionably once a part of Southern Hindostan.[148] This, however, was in remote eocene tertiary times, and long before man appeared. The hypothesis, therefore, advanced by Hæckel and favored by Peschel and other ethnographers, that the Indian Ocean was once filled by the continent “Lemuria,” and that there man appeared on the globe, must be dismissed so far as man is concerned, as in conflict with more accurate observations.

Yet one must acknowledge that it has some plausibility from the present ethnography of the islands and coasts of the Indian Ocean. There is a general consensus of opinion that the earliest occupants of these regions were an undersized black race, resembling in many respects the negrillos of Austafrica. Upon these was superimposed an Asiatic stock represented by the modern Malays; and the union of these two strains gave rise to the anomalous tribes which occupy Southern Hindostan, Australia, and some of the islands.

This historic scheme, which has a great deal in its favor, permits me to classify the great island-world and its adjacent mainland into three ethnographic categories as represented on the diagram.

Of these the most ancient is