Nativism

“ We need the native to reach the native. Remember then, gentlemen, that you, the adopted children of European civilization, are the interpreters between the stranger and the Indian, between the Government and the subject, between the great and the small, between the strong and the weak ; that you walk armed with a two-fold knowledge between two nations that do not know each other, that cannot know each other, except through you. ”

“ The first dawn of civilization commences with a knowledge of our language. The native immediately adopts some English customs and ideas, and drops a corresponding number of his own. In fact, he is a soil fit to work up on, instead of being a barren rock as hitherto, firm in his own ignorance and prejudices.
In the education of the rising native generation lies the hope of ultimate conversion. You may as well try to turn pitch into snow as to eradicate the dark stain of heathenism from the present race. ”

“ With respect to the idea of a future life, or the immortality of the soul, the natives seem to have very contracted notions, principally confined to a superstitious dread of evil spirits, and to the very singular notion that after death they are converted into whites, and that the Englishmen who now people their hunting grounds are the spirits of their ancestors thus transformed! ”

“ Those who look upon the Native as being in every way a more primitive being than the European will naturally be disposed to believe that he is more a creature of instincts than a man of reason, and they will expect him to move in dependence upon certain fundamental intuitions where the European goes guided by reason alone. ”

“ The Natives, like most of the white people, prefer not to think overmuch about death and whether there be life for us beyond the grave; like the vast majority of Europeans they prefer to take the superstitions and beliefs of their forefathers for granted. Vague notions about ancestral and familiar spirits that emanate from the grave in the guise of snakes or other animals are accepted in the same spirit or traditional mood in which the doctrines and dogmas of the various religions of Europe are accepted by the bulk of white believers. ”

“ Directly a native begins to look upon himself as an educated being, equal to the white man, [Pg 117] in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he at once loses all respect for the European, whom he treats in an off-hand, condescending manner, intensely offensive to any one who has realized the wide gulf which separates the two races. ”

“ Nor do we, as Americans, affect to have suddenly succeeded to a better state of feelings respecting the natives than our English ancestry possessed. They were men of sterling enterprise; of undaunted resolution; of high sentiments of religious and political liberty. And we owe to them and to the peculiar circumstances in which Providence placed us, all that we are, as a free and a prosperous people. But while they bequeathed to us these sentiments as the preparatives of our own national destiny, they also bequeathed to us their peculiar opinions respecting the Indian tribes. ”

“ The native does not arrive at his conclusions through the same channel of thought as we do ourselves. How could he? And as we only use him to suit our own convenience, and remain reckless of the interpretation which he places upon our actions, we shall only have ourselves to blame, when, having pandered to the inherent vanity of the black, we suddenly find him at our throats. Not that we believe that the natives are sufficiently advanced to render our hold in the country insecure. ”

“ Call a native out of his house in the middle of the night, and he is likely to demand, “What name you sing out along me?”
Imagine the predicament of the Germans on the plantations of Bougainville Island, who are compelled to learn bêche de mer English in order to handle the native labourers. It is to them an unscientific polyglot, and there are no text-books by which to study it. It is a source of unholy delight to the other white planters and traders to hear the German wrestling stolidly with the circumlocutions and short-cuts of a language that has no grammar and no dictionary. ”

“ The more we English give our lives to educate the natives, the further we spread the propaganda of discontent; day by day we're teaching them to understand that we are no better than they, no more fit to rule; they are beginning to look up and to see over the rim of the world—and we have opened their eyes. ”

“ When uncontaminated by contact with the lower forms of our civilization, the native is courteous and polite. Even today, changed for the worse as he is declared to be by most authorities, a European could ride or walk alone, unarmed even with a switch, all through the locations of Natal and Zululand, scores of miles away from the house of any white man, and receive nothing but courteous deference from the natives. ”

“ We feel assured that those Natives who have learnt to think through the medium of our language, have been imbued with our literature and philosophy, have imbibed our ideas,—are faithful to us, and bear towards our nation that heartfelt allegiance which men may feel without at all relinquishing their own nationality. We believe that the education imparted by us to the Natives, so far from leading them towards disaffection, has, happily, the very opposite effect. ”

“ It is as strong to-day as ever, yet in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, what the natives say turns out to be true. At last some European happens to see, once, what they have seen and known all their lives. Then, perhaps, the natives are believed, but only, as it were, in the wake of the one European, who gets more credit for finding they were right than they do for having always told the truth. ”

“ Native American tradition unquestionably and unanimously ascribes to single individuals of aged and venerable aspect, or leaders of small bands of men and women of an alien race, the peaceable introduction of a definite plan of civilization, identical in its elements with that known to have existed in India, Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria from time immemorial, and said to have been spread to these countries by the Phœnicians. ”

“ The Natives have no difficulty in finding words wherewith to abstract the general essence from a plurality of facts or instances; their vocabulary is as apt and as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for abstracting the general nature and character from the particular experience or emotion into pithy expressions by way of simile or metaphor that admirably convey the perceived generalisation is as highly evolved in the Native as in any other human variety. ”

“ And it would be well to remember, those singular innovations which are being brought in on the tide of European civilisation are being entrusted to natives who are endowed by nature with characteristics of a different race type to ours and which are irrevocably unchangeable at the line of their limitations. European education and European laws along certain well-chosen, sure-set lines can cultivate those characteristics of the native to a certain standard—but not one step further. ”

“ It is difficult for people who know nothing of Natives to understand and appreciate the value they set on cherished customs, peculiar idiosyncrasies, and fixed prejudices, all of which must be carefully studied by those who are placed in the position of their Rulers, if the suzerain Power is to keep their respect and gain their gratitude and affection. ”

“ Of course the natives in time learn that there is no magic in all this, but a knowledge of the reality brings them no comfort. They are obliged to admit that their own weapons, such as rude spears or feeble bows and arrows, are no match for the arms of thunder and lightning in the hands of the white man. ”

“ A friend who has lived in South Africa, and who has had natives working for and with him, tells me of this confusion of ideas among some of the more vulgar stamp of white colonists, who, my friend observes, amuse themselves by assuming a familiarity in intercourse with the natives, which works badly. It does not at all increase their respect for the white man, but quite the contrary, while it is as little calculated to produce self-respect in the native. ”

“ Such a measure has long been desired by all who wish for the improvement of the natives. Of old it was believed—or careless and idle minds found it convenient to believe—that it was dangerous to meddle with any native practice, however immoral or revolting, that was connected with or claimed the sanction of religion. But times are changed, and innovations which might not safely have been attempted a century or half a century ago, the age is now ripe for. ”

“ Although it may seem rather paradoxical, yet I do not hesitate to say, that the natives, far from being such untameable savages as originally represented, are, in reality, a mild and merciful race of people. ”

“ A modified form of the hypothesis of mutual borrowing is put forth by some who are indisposed to admit the essential oneness of Indo-European speech. Some tribe or race, they say, of higher endowments and culture, has leavened with its material and usages the tongues of all these scattered peoples, engrafting upon their original diversity an element of agreement and unity. ”

“ In Natal there are half a million of natives who look to the white man as the child looks to his father, and as a matter of fair dealing, to put the matter in its mildest aspect, we must safeguard, as far as possible, the rights of the natives of Natal, as the legitimate labourers of the Colony. Then, there are Indians already in the Colony. We brought most of them here, and it is only our duty to see that they are not subjected to the disabilities and disadvantages that would follow on such an influx of their countrymen as would make it a difficult matter for them to make an honest living. ”

“ We must treat the native, not as a machine to work when required under any conditions, but as a raw son of nature, very often without any moral force to control him and to raise him much above the lower animal world in his passions, except that which native custom has given him. ”

“ With us Europeans, as already pointed out, between the claims of religion and of the body, nationality has staked out its domain. But it may be said respecting by far the major portion of humanity, and certainly of the Asiatics, that for them this conception of nationality, as the sphere where the impulses of the body, the reasoning of the mind, and the aspirations of the soul can be co-ordinated for the good of humanity, is new. ”

“ The sharp contrast between European beliefs and customs and those of primitive people is in itself an incentive to study and interest. In addition to this, a sympathetic understanding of the many native races who are controlled by English statesmanship is necessary for the material and moral progress of dominions in the British Empire. ”

“ Native tradition, therefore, is seen unanimously to controvert the independent development of the cosmical schemes of government and most advanced forms of civilization which prevailed in America at the Columbian period. This, of course, in no wise excludes the existence of purely native people, with a certain degree of civilization, more rudimentary in form, founded on impressive natural phenomena, which the natives had always been in a position to observe for themselves. ”

“ The mere struggle to live must occupy the energies of the vast majority, but among the more educated and leisured classes of natives there is a growing feeling of what we should call nationalism192 in Europe, though it may be more strictly racial than national. It is difficult, however, to see how anything like a universal movement over the whole peninsula could arise, considering the differences of caste, race and religion, or the wide differences which separate Hindus and Mohammedans. ”

“ If you reason with them, and tell them that such and such things are ill thought of by the natives, they look at you blankly and answer: ‘What does it matter to us? Their ways are not ours, thank goodness! and we prefer our own. ”

“ In all these cases, where nationality and government are altogether divorced, language becomes yet more distinctly the test of nationality than it is in Western lands where nationality, and government do to some extent coincide. And when nationality and language do not coincide in the East, it is owing to another cause, of which also we know nothing in the West. In many cases religion takes the place of nationality ”

“ Conscious as they were of the existence of some Supreme Being, but worshipping no God, true or false, the white man's religion which makes such a worship obligatory through a mediator found easy access among so susceptible a people; and with equal ease they likewise adopted the civilization of the white man. But the Natives received not only the white man's civilization and his religion, but have even gullibly imbibed his superstitions. ”

“ We need to fuse in one the diverse colonies of the white race annually reaching our shores. A century should efface every trace of the German, the Irish, the Frenchman, the English, the Norwegian, and leave nothing but the American. ”

“ The intending emigrant from Europe does not, it is true, understand the ins and outs of the Natal native question, but he does now that it is a place where there are wars and rumours of wars, and where he might possibly be killed, and the result is that he wisely goes to some other colony, that has equal advantages to offer and no Kafirs. ”

“ It is indeed becoming more apparent every day that the natives have a very genuine respect and admiration for the Europeans and credit them with powers which neither they nor any other people possess. ”