Since the white man has gone and the Indian is preparing to wrest the sceptre of authority from the mongrel’s worthless hands, let us examine this Indian race, to see what potentiality it possesses of restoring order and initiating progress.
To begin with, there can be no doubt that the Indian is superior to the negro. The negro, even when quickened by foreign influences, never built up anything approaching a real civilization; whereas the Indian, though entirely sundered from the rest of mankind, evolved genuine polities and cultures like the Aztec of Mexico, the Inca of Peru, and the Maya of Yucatan. The Indian thus possesses creative capacity to an appreciable degree. However, that degree seems strictly limited. The researches of archæologists have sadly discounted the glowing tales of the Conquistadores, and the “Empires” of Mexico and Peru, though far from contemptible, certainly rank well below the achievements of European and Asiatic races in mediæval and even in classic times.
The Indian possesses notable stability and poise, but the very intensity of these qualities fetters his progress and renders questionable his ability to rise to the modern plane. His conservatism is immense. With incredible tenacity he clings to his ancestral ways and exhibits a dull indifference to alien innovation. Of course the Indian sub-races differ considerably among themselves, but the same fundamental tendencies are visible in all of them. Says Professor Ellsworth Huntington: “The Indians are very backward. They are dull of mind and slow to adopt new ideas. Perhaps in the future they will change, but the fact that they have been influenced so little by four hundred years of contact with the white man does not afford much ground for hope. Judging from the past, there is no reason to think that their character is likely to change for many generations.... Those who dwell permanently in the white man’s cities are influenced somewhat, but here as in other cases the general tendency seems to be to revert to the original condition as soon as the special impetus of immediate contact with the white man is removed.”[80] And Lord Bryce writes in similar vein: “With plenty of stability, they lack initiative. They make steady soldiers, and fight well under white or mestizo leaders, but one seldom hears of a pure Indian accomplishing anything or rising either through war or politics, or in any profession, above the level of his class....”[81]
The truth about the Indian seems to be substantially this: Left alone, he would probably have continued to progress, albeit much more slowly than either white or Asiatic peoples. But the Indian was not left alone. On the contrary, he was suddenly felled by brutal and fanatical conquerors, who uprooted his native culture and plunged him into abject servitude. The Indian’s spiritual past was shorn away and his evolution was perverted. Prevented from developing along his own lines, and constitutionally incapable of adapting himself to the ways of his Spanish conquerors, the Indian vegetated, learning nothing and forgetting much that he knew. This has continued for four hundred years. Is it not likely that his ancestral aptitudes have atrophied or decayed? Slavery and mental sloth have indeed scarred him with their fell stigmata. Says Garcia-Calderon: “Without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy.”[82]
Furthermore, the Indian degenerates from another cause—mongrelization. Miscegenation is a dual process. It works upward and downward at one and the same time. In Latin America hybridization has been prodigious, the hybrids to-day numbering millions. In some regions, as in Venezuela and parts of Central America, there are very few full-blooded Indians left, hybrids forming practically the entire population. Now, on the whole, the white or “mestizo” crossing seems hurtful to the Indian, for what he gains in intelligence he more than loses in character. But the mestizo crossing is not the worst. There is another, much graver, racial danger. The hot coastlands swarm with negroes, and the zambo or negro-Indian is universally adjudged the worst of matings. Thus, for the Indian, white blood appears harmful, while black blood is absolutely fatal. Yet the mongrelizing tide sweeps steadily on. The Indian draws no “color line,” and continually impairs the purity of his blood and the poise of his heredity.
Bearing all the above facts in mind, can we believe the Indian capable of drawing mongrel-ruled America from its slough of despond? Can he set it on the path of orderly progress? It does not seem possible. Assuming for the sake of argument complete freedom from foreign intervention, the Indian might in time displace his mongrel rulers—provided he himself were not also mongrelized. But the present “Indianista” movement is not a sign of Indian political efficiency; not the harbinger of an Indian “renaissance.” It is the instinctive turning of the harried beast on his tormentor. Maddened by the cruel vagaries of mongrel rule and increasingly conscious of the mongrel’s innate worthlessness, the Indian at last bares his teeth. Under civilized white tutelage the “Indianista” movement would have been practically inconceivable.
However, guesses as to the final outcome of an Indian-mongrel conflict are academic speculation, because mongrel America will not be left to itself. Mongrel America cannot stand alone. Indeed, it never has stood alone, for it has always been bolstered up by the Monroe Doctrine. But for our protection, outside forces would have long since rushed into this political and economic vacuum, and every omen to-day denotes that this vacuum, like all others, will presently be filled. A world close packed as never before will not tolerate countries that are a torment to themselves and a dangerous nuisance to their neighbors. A world half bankrupt will not allow vast sources of potential wealth to lie in hands which idle or misuse. Thus it is practically certain that mongrel America will presently pass under foreign tutelage. Exactly how, is not yet clear. It may be done by the United States alone, or, what is more probable, in “Pan-American” co-operation with the lusty young white nations of the antipodean south. It may be done by an even larger combination, including some European states. After all, the details of such action do not lie within the scope of this book, since they fall exclusively within the white man’s sphere of activity.
There is, however, another dynamic which might transform mongrel America. This dynamic is yellow Asia. The Far East teems with virile and laborious life. It thrills to novel ambitions and desires. Avid with the urge of swarming myriads, it hungrily seeks outlets for its superabundant vitality. We have already seen how the Mongolian has earmarked the whole Far East for his own, and in subsequent pages we shall see how he also beats restlessly against the white world’s race-frontiers. But mongrel America! What other field offers such tempting possibilities for Mongolian race-expansion? Vast regions of incalculable, unexploited wealth, sparsely inhabited by stagnant populations cursed with anarchy and feeble from miscegenation—how could such lands resist the onslaught of tenacious and indomitable millions? The answer is self-evident. They could not resist; and such an invasion, once begun, would be consummated with a celerity and thoroughness perhaps unexampled in human history.
Now the yellow world is alive to this momentous possibility. Japan, in particular, has glimpsed in Latin America precious avenues to that racial expansion which is the key-note of Japanese foreign policy. For years Japanese statesmen and publicists have busied themselves with the problem. The Chinese had, in fact, already pointed the way, for during the later decades of the nineteenth century Chinamen frequented Latin America’s Pacific coast, economically vanquishing the natives with ease, and settling in Peru in such numbers that the alarmed Peruvians hastily stopped the inflow by drastic exclusion acts. The successes of these Chinese pioneers, humble coolies entirely without official backing, have fired the Japanese imagination. The Japanese press has long discussed Latin America in optimistic vein. Count Okuma is a good exemplar of these Japanese aspirations. Some years ago he told the American sociologist Professor Ross: “South America, especially the northern part, will furnish ample room for our surplus.”[83] To his fellow countrymen Count Okuma was still more specific. In 1907 he stated in the Tokio Economist that the Japanese were to overspread the earth like a cloud of locusts, alighting on the North American coasts, and swarming into Central and South America. Count Okuma expressed a strong preference for Latin American countries as fields for Japanese immigration, because most of them were “much easier to include within the sphere of influence of Japan in the future.”[84]
And the Japanese have supplemented words with deeds. Especially since 1914, Japanese activity in Latin America has been ubiquitous and striking. The west coast of South America, in particular, is to-day flooded with Japanese goods, merchants, commercial missions, and financial agents seeking concessions of every kind. Our State Department has had to exercise special vigilance concerning Japanese concession-hunting in Mexico.