Ethnography

“ That branch of anthropology which treats of the actual distribution of the human race in its different divisions, as distinguished by physical character, language, institutions, and customs, in contradistinction to ethnography, which treats historically of the origin and filiation of races and nations. ”

“ Reflections such as these teach us how closely the study of ethnographic science is related to practical politics. Ethnography, indeed, is the necessary basis of correct history and sound statesmanship. It offers to history a foundation on natural law; it explains events by showing their dependence on the physical structure, the mental pecularities, and the geographic surroundings of the peoples engaged in them; it presents, in its present pictures of savage life, the condition of the highest nations in the earlier stages of their culture. ”

“ Subdivisions of Races.—The further subdivisions of ethnography follow to some extent the important doctrine of the “areas of characterization,” that is, they are geographical; but as the classification of men advances in minuteness, other considerations become paramount, notably, language and government. These elements allow us to subdivide a race into its branches; a branch into its stocks; a stock into its groups, and these again into tribes, peoples, or nations. ”

“ In either case, it is for those 453among us whose minds are set on the advancement of civilization, to make the most of present opportunities, that even when in future years progress is arrested, it may be arrested at the higher level. To the promoters of what is sound and reformers of what is faulty in modern culture, ethnography has double help to give. ”

“ Nowhere can the real existence of a race be discovered, but we find two or three types, even among the most savage and most isolated tribes. Special ethnography relates to the description of each people; general ethnography to common questions of manners, customs, aptitudes, industries, beliefs, institutions; to the past of the race, the environment, circumstances in the evolution of humanity ”

“ The science which concerns itself more especially with the somatological characteristics of the genus Homo, whether considered as a whole in his relation to other animals, or in his varieties, bears the name of anthropology; that which deals with the ethnical characteristics is called ethnography in some countries and ethnology in others. ”

“ It will be obvious that, by ethnology, we do not mean ethnography, with which it has long been synonymous. Their meaning differs in the same manner, they bear almost the same relation to one another as geology and geography. While ethnography contents herself with the mere description and classification of the races of man, ethnology, to borrow the expressive language of the editor of the London Ethnological Journal, "investigates the mental and physical differences of mankind, and the organic laws upon which they depend ”

“ At the present day the progress of research has in practice, however, restricted the “ethnologist” as a rule to the study of one or more branches only of so wide a subject, and the word “ethnology” is used with a somewhat vague meaning for any ethnological study; each country or nation has thus its own separate ethnology. It becomes more convenient, therefore, to deal with the ethnology as a special subject in each case. “Ethnography,” in so far as it has a distinctive province, is then conveniently restricted to the scientific mapping out of different racial regions, nations and tribes ”

“ It has come back with a new commission and under a new title;—Ethnography is the name given by our continental neighbours to this new science, which, in its future developments, may bring to light some of the most obscure and important circumstances affecting the human race, from its origin through every succeeding epoch of its existence. ”

“ Its primary objective is to test one interpretation of it through a particular analytic technique, ethnographic in nature. Frontier ethnography has proved to be a reliable research tool, mainly because of its wide scope. It permits conclusions which a strictly confined study, given the data limitations of this and other frontier areas, would not allow.
Democracy, it is no doubt agreed, is a difficult thing to assess, particularly when there are so many conflicting interpretations of it. ”

“ Our ethnography was initiated for us by European investigators, and corrupted in its foundation from a misconception of the facts. The few Americans who have taken up the subject have generally followed in the same track, and intensified the original errors of interpretation until romance has swept the field. ”

“ On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes: while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future. To the investigation of these two great principles in several departments of ethnography, with especial consideration of the civilization of the lower tribes as related to the civilization of the higher nations, the present volumes are devoted. ”

“ This general law is the recognized basis of modern scientific ethnography.48 It is open to numerous limitations, and its application must never be made without the consideration of accessory and modifying circumstances. For instance, certain areas are much more potent than others in the influence they exert on man: some act more powerfully on his mind than on his body, or the reverse; some peoples are more susceptible to physical influences of a given class than others ”

“ The work in anthropology in the University of Chicago, for the present associated with that in sociology, includes courses in general anthropology, general ethnology, prehistoric archæology (European and American, in alternation) , ethnology (the American race) , physical anthropology (elementary and laboratory courses) , laboratory work, Mexican ethnography and archaeology, ethnology of Japan, the pueblos of New Mexico, and lectures by Dr. W. I. Thomas on folk psychology, primitive art, and Slavic ethnology. ”

“ The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil, and water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in their relations and connections with each other, their friendships, federations and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war. Around these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for they contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its only aim—the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of the species. ”

“ Linguistic study being older than anthropological study, the classing of the best known peoples in Europe is that which is based on difference of language. Nearly every one knows that the ethnic groups of our continent are as a consequence distributed into “Aryan” and an-Aryan peoples. ”

“ To study these two categories of characteristics, either in their general aspect as a whole, or in describing successively the different peoples, is to study mankind with the object of trying to assign the limits to the “races” constituting the ethnical groups, and to sketch the reciprocal relations and connections of these groups with each other. ”

“ It is assumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must, it is held, pronounce both the first and last word regarding all matters of mythology, religion, and art in its numerous forms. ”

“ The science called ethnology claims as its field of research the study of all racial characteristics of man. It deals not only with his physical features, social grouping, and geographical distribution, but also with the products of his hand and mind, his thoughts and feelings. ”

“ Hence some of the most advanced ethnologists are ready to give up the ethnos itself as a subject of study. Those terms so popular a few years ago, Völkerpsychologie, Völkergedanken, racial psychology, ethnic sentiments, and the like, are looked upon with distrust. The external proofs of the psychical unity of the whole species have multiplied so abundantly that some maintain strenuously that it is not ethnic or racial peculiarities, but solely external conditions on the one hand and individual faculties on the other, which are the factors of culture evolution. ”

“ Ethnologists and anthropologists confine themselves now to systematizing the results obtained in all and each of these sciences; the latter striving to establish the relation existing between the various types of man for a classification of the human species into races; the former trying to analyze the natural and artificial forms of man in his social relations, in order to detect the forces which cause divergences and analogies among them, and to build thereon a classification of the human race into tribes and nations.—The ancient writers contributed very little to ethnology. ”

“ Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians, just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and turnspits,—"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human manifestation of humanity—language ”

“ This circumstance, together with the fact that ethnology has often been called upon by other sciences, such as history, sociology, law, ethics, to give a categorical answer to the problems of ultimate origins, is responsible for the over-crowding of anthropological books and journals with fantastic speculations which are at best of interest as material for the ethnologist rather than as contributions to ethnological science. The critical student is therefore doubly concerned about a careful methodology of historic reconstruction in ethnology. ”

“ THE QUESTION OF COMPLEXION.
The tendency of scientific thought in ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the result of conquest or migration. ”

“ The only sure and scientific method of grouping the tribes of men, to show their descent and affiliations, is by the evidence of language. The grouping of men by their languages constitutes the science of ethnology.
2. Ethnologically speaking, the terms "race" and "linguistic stock" are synonymous. The people of each linguistic stock, in their original and unmixed condition, are distinguished from those of other stocks by various peculiarities of physical traits and character, as well as of religion, customs, and arts. ”

“ They have died out or amalgamated with others. What I have to argue for is the study of the dead languages of extinct and barbarous tribes.
You will readily see that my arguments must be drawn from other considerations than those of immediate utility. I must seek them in the broader fields of ethnology and philosophy; I must appeal to your interest in man as a race, as a member of a common species, as possessing in all his families and tribes the same mind, the same soul. ”

“ By such comparisons ethnology aims to define in clear terms the influence which the geographical and other environment exercises on the individual, the social group, and the race; and, conversely, how much in each remains unaltered by the external forces, and what residual elements are left, defiant of surroundings, wholly personal, purely human. ”

“ The offspring of mixed unions present in their psychology a mixture, again a combination or fusion of the mental characters of the parent races: sometimes certain psychical characters of a race become the dominant characters.
All ethnic groupings have their destiny marked out by the grade attained in the human psycho-physical hierarchy. Nevertheless, it is necessary that each race or nation, when it knows its contribution to the development of [10] universal civilisation, should contemplate the preservation of its own ethnic type. ”

“ But the characteristics of race and language, which are the most important for ethnology, because they are the most ancient in their origin, are not often alluded to by them, and when the modern sciences of anthropology and ethnology had been established on solid principles many of these southern races had already disappeared or intermingled, and scientific inquiry came too late for their investigation. ”

“ The old term ethnology has a far more limited and definite meaning. It is the study of the different peoples or races who compose the varied population of the world, including their physical characters, their intellectual and moral development, their languages, social customs, opinions, and beliefs; their origin, history, migrations, and present geographical distribution, and their relations to each other. ”

“ Ethnology, a science which treats of the human race as grouped in tribes or nations, but limits itself to tracing the origin and distribution of races, and investigating the physical and mental peculiarities and differences exhibited by men over all parts of the globe; the chief problem of the science is to decide between the monogenous and polygenous theories of the origin of the race, and investigation inclines to favour the former view. ”