Peoples differ in so many ways. There are tall Patagonians and short Bushmen. There are white peoples, and black, yellow, and brown peoples. There are peoples whose bodies are so covered with hair as almost to be called furry, and there are peoples whose faces even are hairless except for eyebrows and eyelashes. There are lively peoples and there are sluggish peoples; gay peoples and sad ones. Negroes do not think and feel like white men, and the Chinaman thinks and feels differently from either. All peoples have their own customs. When we speak of other peoples as Strange Peoples, we must never forget that we are as strange to them as they are to us. We think it curious that the Chinese dwarf, by bandaging, the feet of their women; they think it strange that we do not. To us the Chinese face seems much too flat; the Chinese think ours are like the face of an eagle and that they are harsh and cruel. We think the flat, wide nose of the negro is ugly; negroes think it far handsomer than ours. So we will remember that all these peoples are “strange” only because they are unlike us: that we ourselves are just as strange as they are. They have as much right to their ideas and customs as we have to ours: often indeed we might find theirs better than our own.
We begin with North America. We then pass to South America; then to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands in order. We shall find that the different peoples of the world are not scattered haphazard; on the contrary, they are quite regularly distributed by types. Thus until lately the peoples living in America were all Indians, with red-brown skin, straight and coarse black hair, and high and wide cheek bones. Europe and Northern Africa (which really belongs rather to Europe than Africa) form the land of the white peoples. South Africa—Africa proper—is the home of negroes and negroids, with dark brown, almost black, skin, narrow heads and faces, and woolly hair. The proper population of Asia is yellow peoples, with round heads, slant eyes, and straight, long, black hair. In Australia are brown peoples with curly or bushy hair. In Oceanica are several well-marked types—the little brown Malays, the dark, almost black, Melanesians with crinkly hair, and the tall, well-built, fine-featured, light Polynesians. This is, in general, the distribution of the human races. But there has been much movement. There are now both white and blacks in America; the English whites have crowded in upon the natives of Australia; in Asia there are white peoples, like the Ainu and Todas, who have certainly lived there a long time.
The different peoples are unlike in their culture. Some peoples live on wild food, having no cultivated plants or domestic animals. They hunt animals and catch fish; they search for birds’ eggs and honey; they grub up roots and gather barks, leaves, fruits, seeds, and nuts for food. To such tribes, who usually wander in little bands from place to place, the name savage is given. The word does not mean that they are fierce and cruel in disposition; most savage tribes, to-day living, are neither. The Eskimo and Mincopies are savages, but they are quite kind and gentle. When peoples settle down to cultivate the soil and build homes, or when they raise herds of animals with which they move from time to time for new pastures, their life is easier. To such peoples—so long as they do not know how to work iron by smelting, to write by means of characters that represent sounds, and to make animals assist them in tilling the ground—the name barbarian is applied. When any peoples have learned these three great helps, they are called civilized. There are then three great stages of culture,—savagery, barbarism, and civilization. The Eskimo is in savagery; the American Indians are mostly in barbarism; the Chinese are in civilization.
The way in which the life of peoples is affected by the lands in which they live is most interesting. The Eskimo live in the cold north; there is little wood there for construction; fuels such as are used elsewhere are rare; no fibre-yielding plants grow there. Yet the Eskimo has made full use of what nature gives him. He builds his house, when necessary, of the snow itself, heats it with animal fats and oils, clothes himself in excellent garments of skins, knows the ways of all the animals and birds around him for their destruction, and has invented an ideal hunter’s boat and devised a beautiful series of weapons and tools. The way in which he has fitted himself to the place in which he lives is wonderful. The world over we notice the same thing: man everywhere ransacks his home-land to find out what is useful and turns it to his needs.
Often where two different peoples live in the same district marriage takes place between them, and mixed types arise. Where one people has long occupied a country alone the type is very well-marked, and all look alike. Thus in the Andaman Islands, the little Mincopies look so much alike that a person needs to know them well to tell them apart. We, ourselves, are a great mixture. Even in one family there may be tall and short, light and dark, blue-eyed or brown-eyed persons. Such differences are only found where there has been much mixing between different peoples. In Mexico, once purely Indian, there has been since the coming of the Spaniards much mixture, and to-day a large part of the population is of a new type—part Indian, part Spanish. The people range in color from almost white to dark brown according to the amount of Spanish or Indian blood each has.
II.
THE PEOPLES OF NORTH AMERICA: ESKIMO.
For the larger part, North America is now occupied by populations of our own kind. The greater part of the people of Canada is of French or English descent; the people of our own country are mainly Europeans or of European descent. There are of course many negroes, especially in the South, who have descended from African slaves. There are also some Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Malays, and others. Formerly the United States and Canada were occupied by Indians, but now there are few left, who mostly live upon reservations. South of the United States lie Mexico and Central America. They, too, were Indian lands when first visited by white men. In Northern Mexico a new, mixed population live; Southern Mexico is yet quite purely Indian. In Central America we find the mixed Spanish-Indian in some districts, and pure Indians in others. In the northmost part of the continent live the Eskimo. We shall speak about the Eskimo, wild Indians, and Mexicans.
The home-land of the Eskimo is dreary. They live in Labrador, Greenland, and the Arctic country stretching from Greenland west to Northern Alaska. Generally, it is a land of snow and ice, where it is impossible to raise even the most hardy plants. The people are forced to live chiefly on animal food. Not only is the weather usually cold, but for a large part of the year the Eskimo do not see the sun, and for the rest of it they see the sun all the time. In some districts the swarms of mosquitoes in the warmer part of the year are a great trouble. There are few trees, and those are stunted; wood is precious, and drift wood is carefully gathered to make into tools and weapons. But notwithstanding his dreary home the Eskimo are rarely ugly and ill tempered.
They are little people with yellowish brown skin. Some Greenlanders are of fair stature. Their faces are broad and round, with coarse features. The eyes are small, dark, and often oblique, like the Chinese; the nose is narrow at the root, but fat; the cheeks are round and full; the mouth is big, with good, strong teeth. Eskimo are usually filthy and appear much darker than they really are.
The clothing is generally made of skins with the hair left on. Men and women dress much alike. Trousers are worn by both: a shirt or jacket with a hood attached is much used. That worn by men is often made of bird skins, and the feather side is worn next the body. The lower part of the legs and the feet are encased in kamiks, skin socks and boots. The little babies are carried naked in a great pouch at the back of their outer jacket. This pouch makes a fine nest for the little creatures, as it is lined with soft sealskin or reindeer skin. Formerly—and perhaps sometimes now—the Eskimo mothers used to wash their babies by licking them with their tongues.