The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America

by Madison Grant

Since the sixteen million residents of Mexico are the nearest large body of people in a position to supply immigrants to the United States and ready to do so, a study of their composition is of the highest importance at the present time. Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest had seen the rise and fall of several relatively high native civilizations, and that of the Aztecs, which was destroyed by the Spaniards, had many noteworthy features. The combination of brutality and piety which dominated the conquerors led to the extermination as far as possible of every salient feature of the native culture. The country was, thereafter, exploited ruthlessly by the Spaniards, but the Spanish civilization, such as it was, did not succeed in establishing itself in this foreign soil. The history of the last four centuries has been a history of the gradual absorption of the foreigners by the Indian element. This is true alike of race and culture.

MEXICO CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES

The large native population found here by the Spaniards was quickly reduced in numbers. A Spanish priest enumerates ten plagues which had decimated the people during his time, that is, during the first quarter of a century after the conquest. First the smallpox, brought by a Negro in one of Narvaez' ships. It is said to have destroyed more than half of the people in many of the provinces. The others were: the slaughter in the capture of Mexico City, the famine resulting from the widespread warfare; the abuses of overseers of the towns given in vassalage; the heavy tributes; the tremendous abuses in connection with the mines; the reconstruction of Mexico City by forced labor; the traffic in branded slaves; the abuses of transportation, with Indians as human beasts of burden; and the factional warfare among the Spaniards themselves, in which the Indians bore the brunt of the fighting. To these should be added particularly the other infectious diseases that the Spaniards introduced, such as tuberculosis and syphilis, as to which the aboriginal inhabitants had not the slightest immunity or resistance, through previous racial experience.

Under such conditions the native population of the hemisphere was probably reduced by 50 or 75 per cent in a few generations, and in the West Indies it was exterminated. Since then it has been steadily regaining ground on the mainland, though not in the islands, in many of which the Negro has replaced it.

The number of Spaniards who came at any time to Mexico is placed at 300,000 at the outside. Many of these certainly did not remain in the country and few of them brought their families. Under the conditions that existed in Mexico and the other conquered territories, it was universally recognized that the situation was not suitable for a white woman. While the Spanish Government encouraged men to take their wives out from Spain, few of them cared to do so, and probably most of the men who came to the colonies were unmarried. Spain put insuperable difficulties in the way of unmarried women who wanted to emigrate, so that Spanish women throughout the history of Mexico were few. The resulting population is therefore made up of the offspring of the Indians and of a few Spanish men mated to Indian women. Most of the Mexican population is still pure or nearly pure Indian. There is a considerable hybrid element which does most of the talking, and a negligible element that can be considered white in the strict sense of the term.

Mexican statistics commonly designate about 10 per cent of the population as white. But most of these have much Indian blood, and recent students doubt whether 3 per cent are properly to be described as white. Much of this genuine white element is in Mexico City, though the various states have their local and reputable white aristocracies, of which that in Yucatan is conspicuous for the maintenance of high standards of racial integrity.

The Mexican revolution which began in 1810 dislodged the overseas Spanish and substituted exploitation by the local hybrid group. Since then the general trend has been toward the rise to control of the Indians. The last period of revolution, which began in 1910 and may be said to be still in progress, has been marked by attempts to take away from the hybrid oligarchy the immense land properties which it had obtained and to distribute them to the Indians. While this has met with many difficulties, and has been realized only to a small extent, it has been at least the avowed objective of most of the revolutionists in the past two or three decades.

During recent years there has been a glorification of the Mexican Indian and his culture by North American writers. No doubt the Mexican Indian is well suited to his environment, and his traditional habits are well suited to him. This does not mean, however, that either has any important contribution to make to the United States which would be realized by a northward mass migration of agricultural and industrial serfs. On the contrary, the Mexican immigration to the United States, which is made up overwhelmingly of the poorer Indian element, has brought nothing but disadvantages. It has created, particularly in the Southwestern States, an exploited peasant class unconformable with the principles of American civilization. This population, neither physically nor mentally up to the prevailing standards, is producing a large contribution to the future American race, since every one of its numerous children born in the States becomes an American citizen by birth.