The North American >Indian was a type of the sportsman warrior gentleman. The Periclean Athenian was a type of the intellectually and artistically cultivated gentleman. Both were political failures. The modern gentleman, without the hardihood of the one or the culture of the other, has the appetite of both put together. He will not succeed where they failed.
The name of "American >Indians" for the aborigines of America had its origin in the use by Columbus, in a letter (February 1493) written soon after the discovery of the New World, of the term _Indios_ (i.e. natives of India) for the hitherto unknown human beings, some of whom he brought back to Europe with him. He believed, as did the people of his age in general, that the islands which he had discovered by sailing westward across the Atlantic were actually a part of India, a mistaken idea which later served, to suggest many absurd theories of the origin of the aborigines, their customs, languages, culture, &c. From Spanish the word, with its incorrect connotation, passed into French (_Indien_), Italian and Portuguese (_Indio_), German (_Indianer_), Dutch (_Indiane_), &c. When the New World came to be known as _America_, the natives received, in English especially, the name "American >Indians," to distinguish them from the "Indians" of south-eastern Asia and the East Indies. The appellation "Americans" was for a long time used in English to designate, not the European colonists, but the aborigines, and when, in 1891, Dr D. G. Brinton published his notable monograph on the Indians he entitled it _The American Race_, recalling the early employment of the term. The awkwardness of such a term as "American >Indian," both historically and linguistically, led Major J. W. Powell, the founder of the Bureau of American Ethnology, to put forward as a substitute "Amerind," an arbitrary curtailment which had the advantage of lending itself easily to form words necessary and useful in ethnological writings, e.g. pre-Amerind, post-Amerind, pseudo-Amerind, Amerindish, Amerindize, &c. Purists have objected strenuously to "Amerind," but the word already has a certain vogue in both English and French. Indeed, Professor A. H. Keane does not hesitate, in _The World's Peoples_ (London, 1908), to use "Amerinds" in lieu of "American >Indians." Other popular terms for the American >Indians, which have more or less currency, are "Red race," "Red men," "Redskins," the last not in such good repute as the corresponding German _Rothäute_, or French _Peaux-rouges_, which have scientific standing. The term "American >Indians" covers all the aborigines of the New World past and present, so far as is known, although some European writers, especially in France, still seek to separate from the "Redskins" the Aztecs, Mayas, Peruvians, &c., and some American authorities would (anatomically at least) rank the Eskimo as distinct from the Indian proper. When the name "Indian" came to be used by the European colonists and their descendants, they did not confine it to "wild men," but applied it to many things that were wild, strange, non-European in the new environment (see _Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore_, 1902, pp. 107-116; _Handbook of Amer. Inds._, 1907, pt. i. pp. 605-607). Thus more than one hundred popular names of plants in use in American English (e.g. "Indian corn," "Indian pink," &c.) contain references to the Indian in this way; also many other things, such as "Indian file," "Indian ladder," "Indian gift," "Indian pudding," "Indian summer." The Canadian-French, who termed the Indian _sauvage_ (i.e. "savage"), remembered him linguistically in _botte sauvage_ (moccasin), _traîne sauvage_ (toboggan). The term "Siwash," in use in the Chinook jargon of the North Pacific coast, and also in the English of that region, for "Indian" is merely a corruption of this Canadian-French appellation. In the literature relating to the Pacific coast there is mention even of "Siwash Indians." Throughout Canada and the United States the term "Indian" occurs in hundreds of place-names of all sorts ("Indian River," "Indian Head," "Indian Bay," "Indian Hill," and the like). There are besides these _Indiana_ and its capital _Indianapolis_. In Newfoundland "Red Indian," as the special term for the Beothuks, forms part of a number of place-names. Pope's characterization of the American aborigine, Entry: INDIANS
2. _North American Stories._--Theriomorphic creators are most fully attested for the Red Indian tribes, whose very backwardness renders them so valuable to an anthropologist. There is a painted image from Alaska, now in the museum of the university of Pennsylvania, which represents such an one. We see a black crow tightly holding a human mask which he is in the act of incubating. Let us pass on to the Thlinkît Indians of the N.W. coast. A cycle of tales is devoted to a strange humorous being called Yehl or Yelch, i.e. the Raven, miraculously born, not to be wounded, and at once a semi-developed creator and a culture hero.[2] His bitter foe is his uncle; the germs of dualism appear early. Like some other culture-heroes, he steals sun, moon and stars out of a box, so enlightening the dark earth. These people are at any rate above the Greenlanders, but are surpassed by the Algonkins described by Nicholas Perrot in 1700, and by the Iroquois, whom the heroic Father Brébeuf (1593-1649) learned to know so well.[3] The earth-maker of the former was called Michabo, i.e. the Great Hare.[4] He is the leader of some animals on a raft on a shoreless sea. Three of these in succession are sent to dive for a little earth. A grain of sand is brought; out of it he makes an island (America?). Of the carcases of the dead animals he makes the present men (N. Americans?). There is also a Flood-story, an episode in which has a bearing on the great dragon-myth[5] (see DELUGE). The Iroquois are in advance of the Algonkins; their creator-hero has no touch of the animal in him. Above the waters there existed a heaven, or a heavenly earth (cf. Mexico, Babylonia, Egypt), through a hole in which Aataentsic fell to the water. The broad back of a tortoise (cf. § 6) on which a diving animal had placed some mud, received her. Here, being already pregnant, she gave birth to a daughter, who in turn bore the twins Joskeha and Tawiscara (myth of hostile brothers). By his violence (cf. Gen. xxv. 22) the latter killed his mother, out of whose corpse grew plants. Tawiscara fled to the west, where he rules over the dead. Joskeha made the beasts and also men. After acting as culture-giver he disappeared to the east, where he is said to dwell with his grandmother as her husband.[6] Entry: 2
This establishment of the essential unity of the culture-type (language, mythology, certain arts, customs, beliefs, &c.) of the "Palaeo-Asiatic" peoples of north-eastern Siberia and that of the American >Indians of the North Pacific coast, as demonstrated especially by the investigations of Jochelson, Bogoras, &c., is one of the most notable results of recent organized ethnological research. No such clear proof has been afforded of the theory of Polynesian influence farther south on the Pacific coast of America, believed in, more or less, by certain ethnologists (Ratzel, Mason, &c.). This theory rests largely upon resemblances in arts (clubs, masks and the like in particular), tattooing, mythic _motifs_, &c. But several things here involved, if not really American in origin, are so recent that they may perhaps be accounted for by such Hawaiian and other Polynesian contact as resulted from the establishment of the whale and seal-fisheries in the 18th century. Entry: 1
AYMARA (anc. _Colla_), a tribe of South American >Indians, formerly inhabiting the country around Lake Titicaca and the neighbouring valleys of the Andes. They form now the chief ethnical element in Bolivia, but are of very mixed blood. In early days the home of the Aymaras by Lake Titicaca was a "holy land" for the Incas themselves, whose national legends attributed the origin of all Quichua (Inca) civilization to that region. The Aymaras, indeed, seem to have possessed a very considerable culture before their conquest by the Incas in the 13th and 14th centuries, evidence of which remains in the megalithic ruins of Tiahuanaco. When the Spaniards arrived the Aymaras had been long under the Inca domination, and were in a decadent state. They, however, retained certain privileges, such as the use of their own language; and their treatment by their conquerors generally suggested that the latter believed themselves of Aymara blood. Physically, the pure Aymara is short and thick-set, with a great chest development, and with the same reddish complexion, broad face, black eyes and rounded forehead which distinguish the Quichuas. Like the latter, too, the Aymaras are sullen and apathetic in disposition. They number now, including half-breeds, about half a million in Bolivia. Some few are also found in southern Peru. Entry: AYMARA
GREENOUGH, HORATIO (1805-1852), American sculptor, son of a merchant, was born at Boston, on the 6th of September 1805. At the age of sixteen he entered Harvard, but he devoted his principal attention to art, and in the autumn of 1825 he went to Rome, where he studied under Thorwaldsen. After a short visit in 1826 to Boston, where he executed busts of John Quincy Adams and other people of distinction, he returned to Italy and took up his residence at Florence. Here one of his first commissions was from James Fenimore Cooper for a group of Chanting Cherubs; and he was chosen by the American government to execute the colossal statue of Washington for the national capital. It was unveiled in 1843, and was really a fine piece of work for its day; but in modern times it has been sharply criticized as unworthy and incongruous. Shortly afterwards he received a second government commission for a colossal group, the "Rescue," intended to represent the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon and Indian races. In 1851 he returned to Washington to superintend its erection, and in the autumn of 1852 he was attacked by brain fever, of which he died in Somerville near Boston on the 18th of December. Among other works of Greenough may be mentioned a bust of Lafayette, the Medora and the Venus Victrix in the gallery of the Boston Athenaeum. Greenough was a man of wide culture, and wrote well both in prose and verse. Entry: GREENOUGH
The Californian area, remarkable in respect to language and culture in general presents also some curious religious and mythological phenomena. According to Kroeber, "the mythology of the Californians was characterized by unusually well-developed and consistent creation-myths, and by the complete lack not only of migration but of ancestor traditions." The ceremonies of the Californian Indians "were numerous and elaborate as compared with the prevailing simplicity of life, but they lacked almost totally the rigid ritualism and extensive symbolism that pervade the ceremonies of most America." The most authoritative discussions of the religion and mythology of the Californian Indians are those of Dr Dixon and Dr Kroeber, the latter especially in the _University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology_ for 1904-1907. Entry: 1
The extreme north-western region of North America has recently been shown to be of great importance to the ethnologists. The investigations in this part of America and among the more or less primitive peoples of north-eastern Asia, carried on by the Jesup North Pacific expedition in 1897-1902, have resulted in showing that within what may be called the "Bering Sea culture-area" transmissions of culture have taken place from north-eastern Siberia to north-western America and vice versa. The only known example, however, of the migration of any people one way or the other is the case of the Asiatic Eskimo, who are undoubtedly of American origin, and it seems probable, in the language of Dr Boas, the organizer of the Jesup expedition and the editor of its publications, that "the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race rather than with the Asiatic race," and possibly also some of the other isolated Siberian tribes; also that, "in a broad classification of languages, the languages of north-eastern Siberia should be classed with the languages of America" (_Proc. Intern. Congr. Amer._, New York, 1902, pp. 91-102). It appears, further, that the arrival of the Eskimo on the Pacific coast (this, although not recent, is comparatively late) from their home in the interior, near or east of the Mackenzie, "interrupted at an early period the communication between the Siberian and Indian tribes, which left its trace in many cultural traits common to the peoples on both sides of the Bering Sea." Entry: 1
When once the existence of abundant remains of prehistoric man had been admitted, and their study had received recognition as a branch of science, the evidence supplied by the relics themselves and by their relation to extinct or existing animals would have sufficed to give a considerable insight into the conditions of primitive life. But, fortunately, corroborative evidence of the most useful kind was at hand, and has been of the greatest service in solving what might otherwise have been insoluble problems. Though the progress of civilization, and more especially the ever increasing rapidity of communication are rapidly changing the habits of life among the primitive peoples in various parts of the world, yet till past the middle of the 19th century, a certain number of tribes, if not races, were still in the Stone Age. Even at the present day stone-using tribes still exist, although by chance metal may be known to them. The importance of the study of their conditions of life and their technical processes, and of the collecting of their implements for the express purpose of illustrating prehistoric man, was recognized by Henry Christy (1810-1865), who had made extensive investigations and collected relics in conjunction with Edouard Lartet in the now famous caverns of the Dordogne, at a time when such explorations were somewhat of a novelty; and concurrently he formed a large collection of the productions of existing savage peoples, both collections after his death passing to the British Museum, his intention being that the one should elucidate the ether. (It is only fair to his memory, however, to state here that, by his express wish, the most important of the relics that he had obtained from the Dordogne caves were returned to France where they now are. Such instances of international courtesy are rare enough to deserve mention.) The value and interest of such a series can scarcely be over-rated. Almost till the 20th century, the Indians of North America, the Australian and Tasmanian natives, as well as those of New Zealand and the many archipelagoes of the Pacific, were, if not ignorant of the use of metals, at least habitually using stone where civilized man would use metal. The Maori made his war club of jade and the pounders for preparing his food of stone. The Australian had his stone axe-blade; and low as he stands in the culture scale, his spear-heads are chipped with an exquisite precision. The Papuan of inland New Guinea is still making his weapons of stone and wood; while until quite recently the North American >Indian was making his delicate stone arrow points, and the Solomon islander his beautiful polished stone axe-blades. The knowledge gained by the study of a large series of such objects enables us to fill up very many gaps in the story of early man as told by his own remains. In fact, in this respect, the value of the comparison is much greater than could reasonably be expected; for, whatever may be the reason, nothing is more marked than the extraordinary similarity of stone implements at all times and over the whole world. An arrow-point made by a Patagonian Indian, one from a Japanese shell mound, and a third of the Stone Age from Ireland, are found to be practically identical. Whether it is that the same material and the same necessity naturally produce a like result, or whether there has existed throughout a continuity of type, is a question that will never be satisfactorily answered. The results, however, are of eminently practical value. The arrow-heads of neolithic man, which are found by hundreds all over Europe, may be seen fixed in their shafts in the hands of an American >Indian; rude pieces of quartz, which unmounted would escape notice as implements, are seen to make excellent tools when mounted in a handle by the Australian black, while flakes of slate find a use when mounted as skinning knives by the Eskimo. Entry: A
MAYA, an important tribe and stock of American >Indians, the dominant race of Yucatan and other states of Mexico and part of Central America at the time of the Spanish conquest. They were then divided into many nations, chief among them being the Maya proper, the Huastecs, the Tzental, the Pokom, the Mame and the Cakchiquel and Quiché. They were spread over Yucatan, Vera Cruz, Tabasco, Campeche, and Chiapas in Mexico, and over the greater part of Guatemala and Salvador. In civilization the Mayan peoples rivalled the Aztecs. Their traditions give as their place of origin the extreme north; thence a migration took place, perhaps at the beginning of the Christian era. They appear to have reached Yucatan as early as the 5th century. From the evidence of the Quiché chronicles, which are said to date back to about A.D. 700, Guatemala was shortly afterwards overrun. Physically the Mayans are a dark-skinned, round-headed, short and sturdy type. Although they were already decadent when the Spaniards arrived they made a fierce resistance. They still form the bulk of the inhabitants of Yucatan. For their culture, ruined cities, &c. see CENTRAL AMERICA and MEXICO. Entry: MAYA
From the Indians of North America the white man has borrowed not only hosts of geographical names and many common terms of speech, but countless ideas and methods as to food, medicines, clothes and other items in the conduct of life. Even to-day, as G. W. James points out in his interesting little volume, _What the White Race may learn from the Indian_ (Chicago, 1908), the end of the instruction of the "lower" race by the "higher" is not yet. The presence of the Indians and the existence of a "frontier" receding ever westward as the tide of immigration increased and the line of settlements advanced, have, as Prof. Turner has shown (_Ann. Rep. Amer. Hist. Assoc._, 1893), conditioned to a certain extent the development of civilization in North America. Had there been no aborigines here, the white race might have swarmed quickly over the whole continent, and the "typical" American would now be much different from what he is. The fact that the Indians were here in sufficient numbers to resist a too rapid advance on the part of the European settlers made necessary the numerous frontiers (really "successive Americas"), which began with Quebec, Virginia and Massachusetts and ended with California, Oregon, British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska. The Indians again are no exception to the rule that one of the fundamentally important contributions of a primitive people to the culture-factors in the life of the race dispossessing them consists of the trails and camping-places, water-ways and trade-routes which they have known and used from time immemorial. The great importance of these trails and sites of Indian camps and villages for subsequent European development in North America has been emphasized by Prof. F. J. Turner (_Proc. Wisconsin State Histor. Soc._, 1889 and 1894) and A. B. Hulbert (_Historic Highways of America_, New York, 1902-1905). It was over these old trails and through these water-ways that missionary, soldier, adventurer, trader, trapper, hunter, explorer and settler followed the Indian, with guides or without. The road followed the trail, and the railway the road. Entry: 1
The whites in their turn have influenced greatly the culture, institutions and ideas of the American aborigines. The early influence of the Scandinavians in Greenland has had its importance exaggerated by Dr Tylor (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 1879). French influence in Canada and Acadia began early and was very marked, affecting the languages (several Algonkian dialects have numerous loan-words, as have the Iroquois tongues still spoken in Quebec) and the customs of the Indians. French authorities, missionaries and traders seemed to get into more sympathetic relations with the Indians, and the intermarriage of the races met with practically no opposition. Hence the French influence upon many tribes can be traced from the Atlantic past the Great Lakes and over the Plains to the Rocky Mountains and even beyond, where the trappers, _voyageurs, coureurs des bois_ and missionaries of French extraction have made their contribution to the modern tales and legends of the Canadian north-west and British Columbia. In one of the tales of the North Pacific coast appears _Shishé Tlé_ (i.e. Jesus Christ), and in another from the eastern slope of the Rockies _Mani_ (i.e. Mary). Another area of French influence occurs in Louisiana, &c. The English, as a rule, paid much less attention than did the French to the languages, manners and customs and institutions of the aborigines and were in general less given to intermarriage with them (the classical example of Rolfe and Pocahontas notwithstanding), and less sympathetically minded towards them, although willing enough, as the numerous early educational foundations indicate, to improve them in both mind and body. The supremacy of the English-speaking people in North America made theirs the controlling influence upon the aborigines in all parts of the country, in the Pacific coast region to-day as formerly in the eastern United States, where house-building, clothing and ornament, furniture, weapons and implements have been modified or replaced. Beside the Atlantic, the Micmac of Nova Scotia now has its English loan-words, while among the Salishan tribes of British Columbia English is "very seriously affecting the purity of the native spech" (Hill-Tout), and even the Athabaskan Nahané are adding English words to their vocabulary (Morice). Entry: 1
3. The works of early man everywhere present the most startling resemblance. The palaeolithic implements all over the globe are all of one pattern. "The implements in distant lands," writes Sir J. Evans, "are so identical in form and character with the British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the same hands.... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of the European types have been discovered; while in Somaliland, in an ancient river-valley at a great elevation above the sea, Sir H.W. Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent." This identity in the earliest arts is repeated in the later stages of man's culture; his arts and crafts, his manners and customs, exhibit a similarity so close as to compel the presumption that all the races are but divisions of one family. But perhaps the greatest psychical proof of man's specific unity is his common possession of language. Theodore Waitz writes: "Inasmuch as the possession of a language of regular grammatical structure forms a fixed barrier between man and brute, it establishes at the same time a near relationship between all people in psychical respects.... In the presence of this common feature of the human mind, all other differences lose their import" (_Anthropology_, p. 273). As Dr J.C. Prichard urged, "the same inward and mental nature is to be recognized in all races of men. When we compare this fact with the observations, fully established, as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the Universe we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one species and one family." It has been argued that stock languages imply stock races, but this assumption is untenable. There are some fifty irreducible stock languages in the United States and Canada, yet, taking into consideration the physical and moral homogeneity of the American >Indian races, he would be a reckless theorist who held that there were therefore fifty separate human species. If it were so, how have they descended? There are no anthropoid apes in America, none of the ape family higher than the Cebidae, from which it is impossible to trace men. Again, in Australia there is certainly one stock language, yet there are not even Cebidae. In Caucasia, there are many distinct forms of speech, yet all the peoples belong to the Caucasic division of mankind. Entry: 3