[THE RED RACE.]
This race is sometimes designated as the American, because in the fifteenth century it formed in itself alone almost the whole population of the two Americas. But Europeans, and especially the English of the United States, constitute, at present, the greatest part of the inhabitants of America. They have to a certain extent monopolised the name of “Americans,” so much so that people generally call the nations of the Red Race Indians, a title which was given to them by the Spaniards, in the time of Christopher Columbus, in consequence of that strange mistake of the great Genoese navigator, who discovered the New World without knowing it, that is to say, while imagining that he had simply found a new passage by which to reach the “Great Indies,” in Asia.
The denomination of Red Race is, besides, a defective one, in so much that several tribes ranked in this group have no shade of red in their colour. This division is, in fine, rather imperfect from an ethnological point of view, but it possesses the advantage of fixing geographically the habitat of the nations included in it.
The American Indians approach closely to the Yellow Race belonging to Asia, in their hair, which is generally black, rough, and coarse, in the scarceness of their beard, and in their complexion, which varies from yellow to a red copper colour. Among one portion of them the very prominent nose and large open eyes recall to mind the White Race. Their forehead is extremely retreating, but no other race have the back part of the head more developed, or broader eye-sockets. Though usually hospitable and generous, they are cruel and implacable in their resentments, and make war for the most frivolous causes. Two of these nations, the primitive Mexicans and Peruvians, had formerly founded wide empires, and had attained a somewhat advanced civilization, though lower than that of Europeans of the same epoch. But these monarchies having been swept away by their Spanish conquerors, progress was checked. The Indians who escaped the destruction of their race, and submitted to the victors, are now no better than husbandmen or artisans, while as for those that remained independent, they wander in the woods and the prairies, and are the last representatives of man in the savage or semi-savage state. They live in the forests and savannahs, on the produce of their hunting and fishing; their wives are kept by them in a state of the greatest abjectness, and are loaded with the heaviest labour; while certain tribes still continue to offer human sacrifices to their idols.
A fact which deserves notice is, that the Indians who were already settled and who were husbandmen when the Spaniards arrived, speedily submitted to the strangers, but never has it been found possible to tame those who have shown themselves, from the fifteenth century to this day, rebels to foreign influence, and who have preferred to become masters of the forest solitudes rather than accept the yoke and customs of the Europeans. Moreover, the number and population of the wild tribes of the two Americas diminish every year, especially in the north, a result attributable to their continual wars, the ravages of the small-pox, and, above all, to the fatal passion of these savage nations for brandy.
Anthropologists have taken great trouble to discover the real origin of the Indians of America, and to establish their affinity with the other human families, but up to the present their studies have led to no satisfactory result. The Indians cannot be accurately brought into connection with either the White, Yellow, or Brown Race; nor on the other hand can the mingling of these three groups be explained, nor the American Indian be recognized as a determinate original type.
The great differences, both in the shape of the skull and the colour of the skin, which are known to exist among the Indian tribes, proclaim numerous crossings. Many circumstances prove that in very remote times some Europeans made their way into America by the north, and that they found there one or many native races, whom they partially overcame, and with whom they are mingled to the present day. The degree of civilization that had been reached by the Mexicans and Peruvians of old, when Columbus landed in the New World; the American tradition which holds that the founders of their empires were foreigners; the existence on the Northern continent of ruins announcing a state of things at least as far advanced as that of the Nahuath and the Quichuas, (the former Mexicans and Peruvians); such are the facts which establish that a blending formerly took place between the primitive Indians and Northern Europeans.
The shape of the body peculiar to the Indians of the north-east, has equally led to the supposition that they reckon some Europeans among their ancestors, an idea which appears all the more admissible, because in the tenth century the ancient Scandinavians undoubtedly had relations with America.
Consequently, the original race which has peopled the Western Hemisphere is almost impossible to be traced. Probably the population which existed in the New World before the arrival of the Europeans was made up of several types different from those that are extant at present in the other regions of the globe, types having a great tendency to modify themselves, and which were obliterated whenever they came in contact with the races of Europe. But to re-ascend back to this primordial population would now be impossible.