Indigenous tribe

“ By indigines I mean the various sedentary tribes generally called Pueblos as distinguished from the intrusive Utes, Navajos and Apaches, which tribes cames in chiefly for predatory reasons after the indigenous tribes had acquired sufficient property 294to make them desirable prey. This indigenous culture was doubtless composite as to blood and the uniformity developed was the natural result of living for a long period of time under definite uniform environmental conditions. ”

“ The higher culture of the indigenous tribes of the interior has been introduced, we believe, by invasions of peoples less widely separated from them in cultural level, who have penetrated far into the interior and have mingled intimately with them. Three such invasions may be distinguished as of principal importance: that of the Kayans in the south and perhaps in the south-east, of the Muruts in the north, and of the Ibans in the south-west. ”

“ Where these tribes have come so much in contact with other peoples, and even with well-meaning white enterprise on their behalf, that they have attempted to substitute for their old ways a method and mode of living indigenous neither to the climate nor to their own physique, they have invariably degenerated. ”

“ It is among these tribes, inhabiting a wild and forbidding country, undisturbed by the march of progress and civilization, that one may find the indigenous races living under the same conditions and maintaining the traditions and customs that prevailed before the coming of the white man to the western world. ”

“ The foreign elements intermingled with the native culture in sections of the Eastern hemisphere produced an abnormal condition of society, where the arts of civilized life were remolded to the aptitudes and wants of savages and barbarians.476 Tribes strictly nomadic have also social peculiarities, growing out of their exceptional mode of life, which are not well understood. Through influences, derived from the higher races, the indigenous culture of many tribes has been arrested, and so far adulterated as to change the natural flow of their progress. ”

“ The second is that, for the first time in these five centuries of colonial invasion, indigenous peoples have sought to extend their uprising to other indigenous peoples and are linked with to non-indigenous civil society, as well as giving an international character to their struggle. ”

“ Throughout the whole region of the backwoods, there still exists a sparse population of the indigenous race: dwelling, as their ancestors did, under tents or in the open air; trafficking in small articles of their own manufacture; in short, performing very much the same métier as the Gitanos in Europe. ”

“ The highland and coast people were those who formed the population under the Inca government, and under whose control they had reached a high degree of aboriginal civilisation; whilst the indigenes of the forests were more or less roving bands of savages, dwelling on the river banks, without other forms of government than that of the curacas, or petty chiefs of families or tribe. ”

“ There is no reason why a custom may not be indigenous in many parts of the world, among peoples labouring under like conditions; and if the same customs be evolved the same cultural types will also be found to exist. Thus it is easy to find even striking resemblances between these Indians of Amazonia and such distant peoples as the Arunta of Central Australia, the cannibal tribes of pagan Malay, or, to go even wider afield, the Basque people of Southern Europe. ”

“ In those parts of the country which are in a prosperous condition ideas and manners imported from the coast districts are gradually overcoming and absorbing all aboriginal conceptions, but on the other hand, in jungle-covered and backward lands the colonists are always corrupted by the superstitions of the indigenous races. ”

“ These colonists began by buying land of the native tribes; but, increasing in numbers and in strength, they found it more convenient to rob them, thus forcing the Red Indians to retreat towards the north and west; and for reasons of self-respect, or on account of religious principles, no deliberate attempt was made to mingle with the indigenous population. ”

“ Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans, possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to have constituted virtually a native race. ”

“ But in the New World the inaptitude of the native race for useful serfdom largely contributed to the introduction there of other and very diverse races from Africa and Asia; so that now within a well-defined North American area, indigenous populations of the three continents of the Old World are displacing its native races. ”

“ The contempt that we have inherited from the five centuries of colonialism keeps us from valuing and respecting the indigenous peoples, our Old Grandparents and even ourselves. It is very clear when we disparagingly call them "Indians". ”

“ We are just, indeed, beginning to comprehend the true character of the indigenous Indian civilisation of the era of the discovery. These remarks are sufficient to show how feebly the obligations of letters and Christianity have been performed, with respect to the red men, by the colonists of those types of the early European civilisation, who rested themselves on feudal tenures, military renown, and an ecclesiastical system of empty ceremonies. ”

“ The legitimate children were in the proportion of one to every one hundred and twenty-eight of the ladino population, and one to every forty-one of the Indios. The natural births stand one to each one hundred and eighty-three ladinos, and one to each two hundred and seven Indios,—proportions which speak volumes for the superior morality of the indigenous population. ”

“ Bring them up in the proper way, impressing moral truths and industrious habits when young and fostering the same in maturity. The Government can do this, should do it, and would be extending a charity to a part of the human race but few sympathize with, and opening a way for the remnant of aborigines to become a useful and intelligent people. We repeat it, there are no objections to this among the Indians. Proffers of the kind would be readily acceded to by any tribe, even the Blackfeet, and all sensible traders would assist. ”

“ But it is curious to note in this nineteenth century the lingering traces of the old sentiment; and to see men of science still finding it difficult to emancipate themselves from the idea that this continent is so essentially another world, that it is inconceivable to them that the races by which it is peopled should bear any affinity to themselves or to others of the Old World. American ethnologists long clung to the idea of an essentially distinct indigenous race ”

“ How can we account for an indigenous population, first imagining itself to be immigrant, and then developing a contempt for the rest of the race, equally indigenous with itself, on account of a fictitious difference in origin? Finally, there is the archaeological evidence. The older civilization comes to an abrupt end, and it does so, on the mainland at least, at the very period to which tradition assigns the Dorian migration. ”

“ In the composition of our people, the indigenous element has never played an important rôle, except for very short periods. In regions where the settlement progressed 253for a long time entirely by the immigration of unmarried males of the white race, families of mixed blood have been of some importance during the period of gradual development, but they have never become sufficiently numerous in any populous part of the United States to be considered as an important element in our population. ”

“ The core values of life, death, nature, the cosmos, the divine and the sacred are harmoniously and intimately shared by all the so-called "indigenous" peoples of the American continent. What bonds and identifies peoples with indigenous roots is the philosophical-cultural matrix that gives us structure us and not the alleged "Latinity" (“Latin ethnicity”) which was invented by Napoleon III to seize the non-Anglo Saxon America in the 19th century or the "Hispanic ethnicity” with which English speakers catalogue us in the 20th century. ”

“ There is in the nature of the aboriginal races a religious fervour which apparently forms an integral part of their character. They are also submissive and inoffensive, and it can be understood how any invading and warlike tribe would, without difficulty, conquer and control people having this mild disposition. ”

“ For even if the aboriginal peoples of America could be assumed to be as strictly indigenous in their habitat as the negroid peoples are generally held to be in theirs, you have still to explain an isolated outburst of civilisation in Central America marking off an extraordinarily restricted area, comparatively speaking, from the vast continental expanses north and south. But the ethnical problems of the Negro and the American are not even so far analogous ”

“ Now that the idea of their being a separate race of high antiquity has died out, and their earthworks, with the implements and ornaments found among them, are brought into comparison with those of other tribes of the country, they have settled into representatives of one of the most notable stages of the northward drift of culture among the indigenes of America. ”

“ The indigenous nature of the EZLN has been reinforced, and it continues to be an important driving force in the struggle for the rights of the Indian peoples. The indigenous peoples are national actors today, and their destinies and their platforms form part of the national discussion. The word of the first inhabitants of these lands now holds a special place in public opinion. The "indigenous" is no longer tourism or artisanry, but rather the struggle against poverty and for dignity. ”

“ When he wrote, the robust race mixture was yet going on, the amalgam of peasant northern Spain and of the Basque, after two centuries of transplantation, with the fierce Araucanian Indian blood. Not all of the aboriginal amalgam has been Araucanian. There are ten distinct aboriginal tribes known in Chile, and in the northern part the mixture has been more that of the Indians of the historic Upper Peru or Bolivia. All of these tribes have been habituated to hardship, and the grosser qualities of civilization have been developed aggressively. ”

“ The same processes of the absorption or extinction of tribal names, which began among the aborigines on the sea-coast, have followed the extension of invasions and settlements through the whole breadth of the continent. One tribe has adopted the remnant of one or more other tribes, giving to them its own name, or appropriating a new one. ”

“ Indian migrations are gradual outflows from an overstocked area, followed by organization into independent tribes, and continuing through centuries of time, until the ethnic life of each tribe is expended, or a successful establishment is finally gained in a new and perhaps far distant land. ”

“ That the question of identity and rights of indigenous peoples is a vital issue of historic importance for the present and future of Guatemala; That the indigenous peoples include the Maya people, the Garifuna people and the Xinca people, and that the Maya people consist of various socio-cultural groups having a common origin ”

“ But if you do not arouse their suspicions or deal with them unfairly, there is no danger of that, I know, and you will find them safe."
"What are the names of these Indian tribes in the southwest?" inquired Jim.
"Well, there are the Navajos, a fine tribe in many ways, with rather good features, not like the fierce Apaches, much more human. They, too, are skilled in making blankets, stained natural colors of gray and brown and red and woven from sheep's wool. They roam above the San Juan. ”

“ It is difficult to describe an Indian tribe by the affirmative elements of its composition. Nevertheless it is clearly marked, and is the ultimate organization of the great body of the American aborigines. The large number of independent tribes into which they had fallen by the natural process of segmentation is the striking characteristic of their condition. Each tribe was individualized by a name, by a separate dialect, by a supreme government, and by the possession of a territory which it occupied and defended as its own. ”

“ In numbers they did not at any time exceed 20,000 souls, if they ever reached that number. Precarious subsistence and incessant warfare repressed numbers in all the aboriginal tribes, including the Village Indians as well. ”

“ The natives generally cannot retreat before the colonial invasion, because their exclusive tribal system surrounds each separate native community with aliens or enemies of its own race; each tribe ever watchful of its own territorial boundaries, each often at variance with its neighbours, and many of the tribes, in consequence of these alienating circumstances, speaking a dialect mutually unintelligible. ”

“ The houses of these people are not like the dwellings of other African tribes: built in the form of a cone, they resemble Hutsul hats... made of clay. Both men and women of the tribe are smear over their body and hair a mixture of ochre, fat and ash to protect themselves from the sun that is too hot in those places. ”

“ I met with some of them in the Rio Negro, and obtained some information as to their customs and language. In most particulars they much resemble the last-mentioned tribe, particularly in their circular houses, their food, and mode of life. Like them they weave the fibres of the Tucúm palm-leaf (Astrocaryum vulgare) to make their hammocks, whereas the Uaupés and Isánna Indians always use the leaf of the Mirití (Mauritia flexuosa) . They are distinguished from other tribes by a small blue mark on the upper lips. They have from one to four wives, and the women always wear a small apron of bark. ”