The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

There is, at the present day, upon the banks of the Cattaraugus, an agricultural and laborious population, formed from the remnants of the Iroquois, which has its schools, its printing establishments, and its journals. It is useless to insist upon what the Kreecks, Cherokees and Choctaws have become. We know that these nations of the South had, of their own accord, started on the high road of settled civilization, that they cultivated and exported cotton, and published journals written in their own language, and printed in characters invented by one of their own nation. The government of Washington drove them from their lands, and transported them to the basin of the Arkansas. They there set themselves to work again, and travellers tell us that some of their farms even rival those of the Yankees.

But in reply to this the objection will be made that the Algonquins and the Dacotahs have resisted every attempt which has been made to assimilate them to Whites, and to civilization. This is an error, or rather it is but half the truth, and for this very reason affords important information to those who are inclined to receive it. The Algonquins (true Red-Skins), and the Dacotahs (Sioux) separated. Some renounced their ancient mode of life, and imitated that of the Cherokees, others adhered to it; how variable, then, is this supposed indelible character; how completely subordinate to a thousand insignificant local circumstances!

In fact, nothing has taken place with regard to the American Aborigines which could not also be observed among Whites. Side by side with the Arab of the town, dwells the Arab of the desert and the tent. In the same manner the natives of North America, when left to themselves, differed upon certain points. In the basin of the Rio del Norte, and beyond it, side by side with the urban and agricultural inhabitants of the pueblos, dwelt nomad and hunting tribes. The latter sometimes pillaged the former, but they did not the less recognise the kinship existing between them.

What here took place spontaneously still takes place under the pressure of the White. Is there anything strange in this? In every case when the half of a nation transforms its social condition, we cannot draw our conclusion from the backwardness of the other half, and say that it would be incapable of doing so as a whole. We might, with equal reason, maintain that a great number of Europeans were incapable of learning to read.

There remain the Australians.

I approach this subject very unwillingly. In no part of the globe has the White shown himself so merciless towards inferior races as in Australia; nowhere has he so audaciously calumniated those whom he has plundered and exterminated. In his opinion, the Australians are not even men. They are beings “in whom are combined all the worst characters which mankind could present, at many of which, monkeys, their congeners, would blush.” (Butler Earp.) Noble minds have doubtless protested against these terrible words, addressed to convicts who were about to seek their fortunes in Australia; but what could be expected of them when every evil passion was called forth and supported by similar arguments, which, again, rested upon assertions given as scientific? The result of these experiences in Australia and Tasmania is well known; and those who wish for further information have only to consult travellers of every country, Darwin as well as Petit-Thouars.

To maintain at the present day that the Australians are what Bory de Saint-Vincent and the anthropologists of that school endeavoured to prove them to be, is to deny unquestionable facts established by travellers of every description. This race has no more shown itself to be absolutely savage than any other human race. It organised the family and divided the tribe and nation into true clans, the account of which is still extant. The Australians, more advanced upon this point than the Tahitians, understood the division of land amongst themselves, and the fixed limits agreed upon were religiously respected, except in time of war. I shall speak about their religious and moral characters at another time. We have here only to consider their intellectual characters, and I shall only add that these savages possessed villages of from 800 to 1000 inhabitants, that they knew how to hollow out canoes, and made nets for hunting and fishing, which were sometimes 80 feet long and of sufficient strength to resist the struggles of a kangaroo.

It will, however, be objected that all this does not constitute a well advanced social condition. Granted; but are the Australians incapable, as it has so often been said, and as it still is asserted, of raising themselves above this condition?

We have only to consult the writings of Dawson, who made a kind of farmers out of these savages, those of Salvado, who found them to be both devoted and useful workmen, those of Blosseville, declaring that he thought himself fortunate to be able to turn to them when the gold fever robbed him of European hands, and we shall be convinced of the inaccuracy of the assertions made on the subject of the radical incapacity of the Australians. Finally, if we still retain some feeling of doubt, we need only look back upon those tribes which were settled and civilized by William Buckley, the deserter, and we shall be forced to allow that the faculty of raising themselves above their past condition exists among the Australians as among other human populations.

XIII. There are two causes which tend to lead us into error when we are dealing with the question of the appreciation of the social condition of races.