THE EVE OF “THE VASTEST TRAGEDY IN HISTORY”: COLUMBUS SIGHTING AMERICA
“The greatest event and the vastest tragedy in human history” is Dr. Archdall Reid’s striking description of the discovery of America by Columbus. It ended the long separation between the inhabitants of East and West, and the diseases of the Old World burst with cataclysmal results upon the New. The picture, by George Harvey, shows Columbus approaching America, his rebellious crew pleading for pardon.
All this is not mere hypothesis. It can be proved by reference to carefully collected and tabulated statistics published by every department of Public Health in America, Australasia, and Polynesia. The cause of the sterility cannot be demonstrated with the same precision; but it is hardly necessary to invent fanciful causes when a reasonable one is to hand. The high mortality indicates a high sick-rate, and presumably illness is as much a cause of sterility in the New World as in the Old, among savages as among civilised people.
The Spanish conquest of the West Indies was followed by the swift disappearance of the natives. To that end the Spaniards unconsciously adopted the most effectual means possible. They satisfied their greed by forcing the natives to labour in plantations and in mines, and their religious enthusiasm by compelling attendance in churches and cathedrals. In other words, they placed the natives under conditions the most favourable for acquiring the diseases which they imported by every vessel. When the native population dwindled, it was replaced by negro slaves from West Africa.
Africans Die in our Civilisation
The history of negro migrations is extremely interesting and illuminating. There are no accounts of negro conquest outside the limits of Africa, but from very ancient times a constant stream of slaves has passed to Southern Europe and Asia, where they have been employed mainly in domestic service, and in more modern times to America, where their occupation has been mainly agricultural. The invasion of Asia has continued to our own day. But one may search from Spain to the Malay peninsula and, except in recent importations, find scarcely a trace of a negro ancestry. Yet slaves, like cattle, are valuable property, more cheaply bred than imported. In Eastern countries they have often been kindly treated, and many have attained to wealth and power. Like the African soldiers in Ceylon, of whom it is recorded that, though many thousands were imported by the Dutch and English, hardly a descendant survives, all perished in a few generations, the elimination of the unfit being so stringent as to cause extinction, not evolution. A permanent colony of native Africans in the midst of an ancient consumption-infested civilisation is impossible.
Fate of Natives of America
The fate of the negro migrations into America has been different. The race had undergone some evolution against consumption in Africa, and, therefore, was more resistant than the vanishing aborigines. In its new home, employed in agriculture in a hot climate where white men and tubercle bacilli, also recent importations, were as yet few in numbers, it was placed under the best conditions possible. Gradually, as the stringency of selection waxed, it evolved resisting power. To-day, American negroes are able to dwell even in Northern cities, though it is said “every other adult negro dies of consumption.” After the discovery of America the principal maritime races of Western Europe competed for its possession. Spain and Portugal, then powerful nations, had the first start in the race, and chose the seemingly richer tropics. But the forests of the centre and south were defended by malaria, which raised a barrier against immigration, and by heat and light, which raised a barrier against tuberculosis. Moreover, the Spaniards and the Portuguese intermarried freely with the aborigines, and the mixed race which resulted inherits in half measure the resisting power of both stocks. At the present day this mixed race, with a leavening of mulattoes, pure Spaniards, Portuguese, and negroes, inhabits the cities and more civilised parts. Even in tropical America the pure aborigines are found, speaking generally, only beyond the verge of civilisation. Farther south the disappearance of the natives has been more complete, and the cooler, healthier, and more open pampas are settled by a race more purely European.