Indigenous

“ 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. ”

“ Relying mainly on these resemblances of speech, certain writers have in fact endeavoured, rightly or wrongly, to establish a common origin for all the indigenous races of North Africa and Western Asia. ”

“ With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To be sure, some of the wealthy, who in early childhood were sent to England to be educated there, and who spent there perhaps the greater part of their lives, may have preserved the native vigor of their race; but I refer to the multitude born on West Indian soil, and their children who had continually inhabited it. Have they not become a race, if possible, as miserable as that mixed element which is acknowledged as the indigenous one of the American tropics? You will find that fact confirmed by every intelligent traveller. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 well, however, to remark that our lack of definite knowledge about the origin of this civilization is not practically so important as might appear at first thought. True, we know not for certain whether it is indigenous or exotic ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ This tribe is indigenous, and formerly owned a large part of the territory which is now assigned to others. Their habits and condition have been, however, but little benefited by the use which they have made of their annuities. Great exertions have been made by the local agents to induce them to give up their erratic mode of life, and become agriculturists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 custom, as observed by the most ancient amongst the peoples of the earth, is, and was some thousands of years ago, a religious rite, and differs altogether from the practice of the blacks, who in this merely endeavour to test the powers of endurance of a candidate for admission to a certain rank in the tribe. In considering the effect, however, of this and other practices that are mentioned, one may believe that they are really indigenous, and that they have originated either in consequence of a peculiarity of climate or from the necessity of limiting the population. ”

“ It is true that assimilative colouration seems to have little modified the colour of indigenous races, even in Africa, if we take a comprehensive view of the whole area. But we must not forget that men have so often migrated from their original birthplaces, and more than that, much mixture has taken place. ”

“ For, as in the Pacific and other regions, so in India, civilisation is bringing about a radical change in indigenous manners and customs, and mode of life. It has, in this connection, been well said that "there will be plenty of money and people available for anthropological research, when there are no more aborigines. ”

“ What is still more consolatory is, that the indigenous population, far from declining, has been considerably on the increase for the last fifty years; as is proved by registers of capitation, or tribute. ”

“ Had the ambition of the chiefs of some of these industrious tribes been turned to the acquisition of wealth, probably we should have seen indigenous civilised nations in the heart of South America similar to those found on the Andes of Peru and Mexico. ”

“ The traditional norms of indigenous peoples have been and continue to be an essential element for the social regulation of the life of the communities and, consequently, for the maintenance of their cohesion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The descriptions of the Pueblo Indians given by the first visitors from civilized peoples would, to a great extent, apply to them at the present day, although in reality their lives have been profoundly modified and their indigenous development checked. ”

“ What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; ”

“ Another striking trait of the race is found in their legends and tales. Those of the aboriginal race who excel in private conversation, become to their tribes oral chroniclers, and are relied on for historical traditions as well as tales. It is necessary, in listening to them, to distinguish between the gossip and the historian, the narrator of real events, and of nursery tales. For they gather together everything from the fabulous feats of Manebozho and Misshozha, to the hair-breadth escapes of a Pontiac, or a Black Hawk. ”

“ 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 opinion assumed, rather than advocated, by a large class of writers on this and kindred subjects is, that the aboriginal inhabitants of any country are the proprietors of every part of its soil of which they have been accustomed to make any use, or to which they have been accustomed to assert any title. This claim is represented as sacred, however ignorant such natives may be of the arts or of the habits of civilised life, however small the number of their tribes, however unsettled their abodes, and however imperfect or occasional the uses they make of the land. ”

“ It is time for us now to turn to the aboriginal tribes, to inquire what had been and were their territorial rights before and while they were being ground in the mill by rival European nationalities, all intruders. ”

“ We have learned that the remnant of an aboriginal people, now living in the inhabited pueblos of the West, present us, in their primitive usage, with the fading outlines of a culture once widespread in the section of country we have examined. Many of the early sedentary tribes have vanished completely. Traditions state that other tribes have moved southward into regions unknown. ”

“ I have listened to thousands of old Native men of many different tribes in my time, I have heard them speak their inmost thoughts, not through interpreters—who ever learned anything through an interpreter?—I have studied these people in and out of Court, officially and privately, in their kraals and in the veld during many years, and I say that I can find nothing whatever throughout the whole gamut of the Native's conscious life and soul to differentiate him from other human beings in other parts of the world. ”

“ It is painful to turn from reviewing the progress of the European population and their descendants established in this portion of America, to contemplate the condition and prospects of the aboriginal tribes. It cannot, I fear, be affirmed with truth, that the difficult problem of reconciling the interests of an inferior and native race with those of an intrusive and superior one, has as yet been satisfactorily solved on this continent. ”

“ I need not inform you that the aborigines, who inhabit the valley of the Amazon, are all of the so-called Indian race—though there are so many distinct tribes of them that almost every river of any considerable magnitude has a tribe of its own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reliable and learned authors who have made the aboriginal race of America an object of deep study and research, have arrived at the conclusion, that the numerous tribes into which they are divided, belong not to the same primitive family or generic stock, but are to be ranged under several well-defined heads or types. ”

“ It is expedient with respect to the condition of the North American Indians, to take into consideration some of the circumstances relating to their languages, customs, and superstitions; particularly such of them as may appear to have remote analogies with the observances of other races, or with the more advanced state of civilisation that existed in the fifteenth century, among the tribes who had conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan. ”

“ Now our aborigines present to us these singular conditions: having a fine physique, vigor of body, acuteness of senses, few demoralizing habits, good natural understandings, and living under a stimulating and healthful, not enervating climate, on good soil, they were nevertheless torpid, unaroused, unambitious, idle, listless, indifferent to everything but hunting and fighting. ”

“ Some of these various objects are the more interesting, as furnishing, so to speak, the last proofs of the aboriginal skill which, in proportion to the increasing intercourse of the savage tribes with European civilization, is rapidly diminishing, and in all the principal colonies may be considered as already extinguished. ”