I. The races which had been developed by the sole action of the conditions of life and of heredity, did not remain isolated. The earliest emigrants from the centre of appearance certainly did not pass at once to the extremity of the area determined by their first stages. They stopped on the way; they formed secondary centres, round which fresh emigrations spread. The history of the Lenni Lenapes, as of the Polynesians, proves that this must have been the case. Consequently, in many cases, the races first formed must frequently have come in contact. Then, as the waves of emigration followed each other, the last comers would meet on their way with those who preceded them. It will further on be proved that facts of this nature have occurred since Quaternary times.
Whether peaceful or otherwise, these contacts would result in reciprocal penetrations, and consequently inintercrossings.
The founders of anthropology, Buffon, Blumenbach, and even Prichard, have taken very little notice of crossings between human races, and have neglected their importance. It can scarcely be brought as a serious reproach against them. The two former were unacquainted with many of the facts which we possess at present. Prichard was neither a naturalist nor a physiologist. Moreover, nothing forcibly directed their attention towards crossings which might have occurred in more or less distant times, or among nations still insufficiently known.
At the present time this indifference is impossible. Onthe one hand, the better the various nations are known, the greater becomes the number of those which derive their origin from intercrossing; on the other hand, it is impossible not to pay attention to everything which happens to mankind in consequence of the impulse to expansion and mixture which takes place on every side. From seeing the phenomena which occur in the present times, we are naturally led to investigate those which may have taken place in times past.
II. Aremixed human racesformed now? In the presence of the general facts which I have related in a preceding chapter, this question might appear strange. Nevertheless, the question has been asked, and in a more or less formal manner has been answered in the negative. A few words on the subject are therefore necessary.
We may consider the era of modern crossings as dating from the discovery of the new world. Nevertheless the mixture of bloods has only taken place on a large scale at a later period, at the utmost after the conquest of the Indies in 1515, that of Mexico in 1520, and that of Peru in 1534. We are not separated from this epoch by more than three centuries and a half. And yet M. d’Omalius, only counting the products of the crossing of the European White with the different coloured races, estimates the number of half-breeds at eighteen millions. The population of the globe being estimated as 1200 millions, the product of cross-unions is already represented by about1/65th.
We know, moreover, how irregular is the distribution of half-breeds. Immense tracts of country have not been affected. But where the peoples are in intimate contact, the proportion is much greater. In Mexico and South America half-breeds constitute at least one-fifth of the population.
But, say Knox and the other anthropologists who more or less explicitly adopt his views, the number of half-breeds is entirely kept up by incessant cross-unions. If abandoned to themselves, and if they no longer had access to the pureraces, they would rapidly disappear. I will confine myself to quoting a few facts in opposition to these assertions.
At the Cape, the intercrossing of the Dutch and the Hottentots has resulted in half-breeds calledBasters, who soon became sufficiently numerous to inspire alarm. They were banished beyond the Orange river. Here they settled under the name of Griquas, and they increased in numbers rapidly. A portion remained behind in the colony, and formed villages, among others that of New Platberg. The Basters intermarried between themselves, and travellers testify to the fertility of these unions.
Martins has seen theCafusos, the result of the crossing of escaped Negroes with the Brazilian indigenes. Having retired into the woods, where they found a refuge, they have formed a separate race there.
Admiral Jurien de la Gravière informs us that at Manilla the half-breeds of Spaniards, Chinese, and Tagals, are much more numerous than the original stocks. At Mindanao half-breeds of Spaniards and Tagals form the majority of the inhabitants. “The fusion of races,†he adds, “has taken place with marvellous facility in this isolated corner of the earth.â€
The Marquesas Islands, suffering the fate of the other Polynesian countries, have been depopulated by that mysterious malady which seems capable of annihilating oceanic populations. M. Jouan informs us that they are repeopled by half-breeds.
Upon the whole of the littoral zone of South America, according to M. Martin de Monosy, mixed peoples are prospering and rapidly on the increase.
We may close this enumeration by a detailed account of a fact which is well known, and which has all the value of a precise experiment.
In 1789, in consequence of a mutiny, nine English sailors went and established themselves upon the small island of Pitcairn, in the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by six Tahitian men and fifteen Tahitian women. In consequence of theWhites becoming tyrannical, the war of race began. In 1793 the population was reduced to four Whites and to ten Tahitian women. Soon war broke out afresh between the four chiefs of the colony, and Adams only was left. But marriages had been fruitful; the first half-breeds grew up, intermarried, and had numerous children. In 1825, Captain Beechey found sixty-six individuals on Pitcairn Island. Towards the end of 1830 the population numbered eighty-seven. In spite of the deplorable conditions of the outset, the mixed Pitcairn race had then almost doubled in twenty-five years, and almost tripled in thirty-three years. Now England, the most favoured country in Europe in this respect, only doubles its population in forty-nine years. Thus the half-breeds of banished English and Polynesians had on Pitcairn Island about double the number of offspring that pure Anglo-Saxons have when placed in their customary conditions of life.
Thus the white race, when crossed with races most different in characters and habit, have given rise to mixed peoples, which have continued to increase since their appearance. No reason can be given why this movement of increase should stop or even slacken.
III. There remains the intercrossing of the White and the Negro. It is with reference to this that some facts have been quoted tending to prove that half-breeds cannot propagate among themselves. Let us examine them rapidly.
Etwick and Long, in theirHistory of Jamaica, have asserted that Mulattoes cease to be reproductive in that island beyond the third generation. Dr. Yvan has pointed out an analogous fact in Java. Dr. Nott has found that in South Carolina, Mulattoes are endowed with low fertility, that they have a shorter life than other human races, and that they frequently die at an early age. Without going so far, Dr. Simonnot attributes to these half-breeds a sort of ethnological neutrality, “which only assures them an ephemeral duration as soon as they are abandoned to themselves.â€
Nothing is easier than to oppose contrary facts to theforegoing. I can even invoke the testimony of some of the same authors whom I have just quoted. Nott, after having in a general manner formulated the aphorisms which I have just summed up, admits that they only apply to South Carolina, whilst in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama, the Mulattoes are robust, fruitful, and energetic. I find that Dr. Yvan himself states that his observations only concern Java, and that he had pointed out the fact as exceptional.
On the other hand, Hombron declares that in our colonies “Negresses and Whites show a moderate fertility; Mulatto women and Whites are extremely fertile as well as Mulatto men and women.â€
“Even in such conditions of life as those of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mulatto,†according to M. Rufz, “is well developed, strong, alert, more adapted than the Negro for industrial application, and very productive.†According to M. Audain, in the Dominican Republic of St. Domingo, “one-third are Negroes, two-thirds Mulattoes, and an insignificant proportion Whites.†For a long time this population has not been fed by any fresh arrivals; its continuance is entirely due to itself.
More quotations, I think, are useless. When added to the numbers of M. Martin de Moussey, who makes no exception concerning Mulattoes, they are sufficient to demonstrate the following general fact, viz., that the Mulatto is as energetic and as fruitful as other races, at least in a very great majority of those parts of the globe where this mixed population has been formed.
IV. Nevertheless, I do not deny the facts advanced by Etwick, Long, Nott, Yvan, and Simonnot. I accept them without so much as discussing them. But what do they prove in the presence of the remaining facts which are so numerous and so conclusive? At the most that the development of the mulatto race can be favoured, retarded, or hindered bylocalcircumstances. In other terms, that it depends upon the influences exercised by the whole of the conditions of life (milieu).
We see, then, in the formation of the mixed races, the reappearance of this element, whose action plays so large a part in the natural history of man, and great attention should be paid to it.
In the result of the crossing of the Negro and the White in Jamaica, Java, &c., its intervention could be foreseen. The two races are strangers to these countries, which are known to be very destructive to foreign races. The question of crossing is complicated in these cases, by the phenomena and difficulties ofacclimatisation. Can we feel surprised that unions contracted under such conditions of existence should only present precarious guarantees for the future?
We must here, moreover, take into account an element which is constantly neglected, and whose importance in questions of this nature has always struck me strongly. I meanmorality. It therefore formsone of the conditions of life(milieu). Now, if we pay attention to the details, which are not numerous, but which are very significant, given by some travellers upon the existence of Europeans in the colonies, in Jamaica in particular; if we compare these melancholy facts with those furnished by daily observation, an entirely new light will be thrown upon the questions ofcrossingandacclimatisation. We shall be obliged to recognise that the death of the fathers, and the extinction of the descendants, are often only the consequence of, and the punishment for, the deplorablemoral conditions of life, in which they have lived.
V. But thephysical conditions of lifehave also their peculiar action. The following example may be quoted as a proof.
M. Simonnot has noticed natives of Senegambia, “who combine a perfectly black skin, with all the characteristic forms of the Moor, even at all ages.†According to him, theseblack Moorsare a mixed race. If this is the case, it must, at least, be recognised that the white blood predominates considerably, since all the forms belong to this type. In order that thecolourof the Negro should be persistent, in spite ofthis profound semitic influence, alocal action, that is, anaction of the conditions of life, must have neutralised the ordinary laws of the mixture of races, and united thecolourof one race with thefeaturesandformsof another.
If this conclusion requires confirmation, the facts quoted by Prosper Lucas will be sufficient. He treats of unions between Negroes and Whites accomplished in Europe. In the same family we find the black blood predominate at first, then lose its influence, and by degrees become effaced almost entirely in the children of the later generations. In one of these observations, the mother belonged to the black race; so that infidelity was unable to effect any change in the conditions of the experiment. It was then the conditions of life which gradually blanched these half-breeds, who would all have been black upon the borders of Senegal.
VI. Some anthropologists, although recognising the multiplicity and fertility of the crossings between human races, only see in this fact aconfusion of blood, and complain that nowhere do they find a mixed race of recent origin which is well characterised. Consequently they deny that the crossing can have any influence in the formation of the races with mixed but constant characters which form part of the population of the globe.
This objection rests upon a disregard of the phenomena which accompany the formation of animal races by the production of mongrels. All breeders know well that a determinate and settled race cannot at once be produced by crossing. In such a case, the conflict and the compromises, of which I have spoken above, become more marked, for the very reason that we have to blend two natures which are dissimilar in some respects.Immediateanddirect heredityalone continually produces phenomena offusionor ofjuxtaposition, or else causes the appearance of new features, theresultantof two different characters.Mediateandindirect heredity, as well asatavism, continually intervene and produce numerous irregularities in the succeeding generations. The more the races differ and areequal in respect toblood, the more marked and persistent are these irregularities. In 1800 the Ancon race still gave irregular products. For more than twenty years M. Malingié has failed in settling his charmois race, so that it might itself serve for fresh crossings.
The clever breeder, whom I have just mentioned, as well as all other breeders, have moreover only attained their end by means of minute care in the choice of the animals from which they breed. Now, between human races there can be no question ofselection. The unions have always taken place by chance. Moreover, in the immense majority of cases, the continual intervention of individuals of pure race increases, and prolongs the confusion. This absence of uniformity, which astonishes polygenists, is easily explained by those who only consider human groups asraces. From a general point of view it is very instructive; if it brings forwarddiversity of races, it attestsspecific unity. It is not between species that crossing presents similar phenomena. But nevertheless, through this disorder, there appear in the mixed populations of our colonies, general common characters, which have attracted the attention of travellers, and have been described.
Moreover, when, in consequence of some circumstance, the products of these crossings are isolated and protected from new mixtures, the race becomes characterised with rapidity. The Cafusos, Basters, and Griquas, may be quoted as examples. Even the Pitcairn islanders, at the time of Beechey’s visit, were beginning to become uniform.
VII. In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost always belongs to the superior race. In every case, and especially in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less delicate.
From the point of view of the future of the mixed races, the predominant action of one sex over the product should have then great importance. The question has been put since the origin of societies, as is testified by the laws of Manou; it has been repeatedly discussed by thinkers andphysiologists. Each sex has had its champions; and numerous facts have been quoted on both sides. Considering everything, it appears to me impossible to avoid deciding in favour ofequality of action.
Nevertheless this equality is purely virtual; it can, in fact, only exist on the condition of an equal generating energy in both parents. As soon as the equilibrium is interrupted, the stronger sex predominates, and the product shows this superiority. The experiments ofGirou de Buzareingueupon the procreation of the sexes, appeared to me to be most decisive in this respect.
Now what is true of the whole of the organism is equally true of its different parts, functions, and energies. In the formation of a new being, the action of heredity is divided into as manycasesas there arecharactersto transmit. Both father and mother tend to reproduce themselves in their offspring; there is, consequently, a struggle between both natures. But the battle, if we may use the expression, results in a number of single combats in which each parent may be in turn victor or vanquished.
This very simple consideration, which is deduced from a number of facts of detail, explains many results which cause surprise to physiologists, anthropologists, etc. After having attributed a preponderating action to the mother, Nott declares with surprise, that, in point of intelligence, the Mulatto approaches more to his white father. But is not the intellectual energy of the latter superior to that of the mother? And is it not natural that it should gain the ascendant in the struggle between the two hereditary powers? We know how far this victory can go, and how the two natures can, so to speak, divide the product of this crossing between them. Lislet Geoffroy, entirely a Negro physically, though entirely a White in character, intelligence, and aptitudes, is a striking example of it.
This victory of the superior energies is again shown in another very remarkable manner, in the crossing of white and black races. The former is, of all races, most sensibleto malarious influences, the latter best able to resist them. On this account it is almost exempt from yellow fever. The Mulatto inherits this double power of resistance. Nott assures us that a proportion of one fourth of black blood is as sure a protection against the yellow fever, as vaccination against the small-pox.
We may now understand, that, in crossing between different races, the half-breeds possess the characters which, in each of them, predominate over the corresponding characters of the other. If the energies are in equilibrium, there will generally be a compromise. The Negro and the White differ essentially in colour and the texture of the hair; the colour of the eyes varies almost as much in one as in the other. In the Mulatto, the two first characters almost always betray the double origin of the individual; the third is uncertain.
On the contrary, in half-breeds of the white and the indigenous American, the eyes and hair are almost always derived from the latter. Humboldt has remarked that these two characters are persistent even after several generations, in unilateral crossing towards the White. M. Ferdinand Denis recognised a descendant of the caciques by the eyes. On the other hand, in the same crossings, the colour of the White overcomes that of the American at the second, and sometimes even at the first generation.
The crossing of the Slav and the Bouriate presents similar facts. The half-breeds invariably have the hair and eyes of the second.
VIII. “In Brazil,†says Martin de Moussy, “mixed races of every origin increase, and form a new population which becomes moreindigenousevery day, if we may use the expression, and always more similar to the white type, which, according to what takes place in the whole of South America, will, in the end, absorb all the rest.†An analogous fact has been pointed out at Buenos Ayres, in Paraguay, etc.
Can we then consider this result as a sign of the ascendancy of the white race? I do not think so. I ratherconsider it as the consequence of the general tendency pointed out above.
In the countries which we are discussing, the Negress or Indian woman readily crosses with the White. The female issue of these unions, proud of the blood of her father, would consider herself degraded if wedded to an individual of coloured race, and reserves all her favours for those to whom she approximates by reason of the crossing. The Quadroon reasons and acts in the same manner. In these regions, where colour decides caste, it is always men of whiter race, and especially the pure white, that the women prefer to marry.
The consequence of this is, that the crossing, although apparently left to chance, is in realityunilateral, and always directed towards the superior race. It is accomplished under the influence of a realunconscious selection, and the predominance of the white blood is the result of this selection.
Sooner or later it will also result in the fulfilment of the prediction of Martin de Moussy. The mixed races will in a great measure return to the superior race. But, when brought back to the white type by this circuitous path, and through all these degrees of crossing, they will possess one very great advantage over their European counterpart: they will be acclimatised.
The reverse phenomena appear, according to Squiers, to be taking place in Peru. Here the mixed population tends to return to the indigenous type. The fact is explained, at least in part, by the relations which, since the commencement of the conquest, were established between the conquerors and the conquered race.
The former could not affect unlimited contempt for a conquered race who were as civilised as themselves. Their leaders made alliances at an early period with the families of the Incas, and this example was followed. Consequently colour cannot exercise the same influence in Peru as in Brazil or at Buenos Ayres. The numerical predominance ofthe local race and the conditions of life had then a free field, and their double influence is shown in the result pointed out by Squiers.
IX. Can human crossing, so general in our days, be a new phenomenon in the history of mankind? Evidently not. In the past as in the present, every contact between two races of any continuance, every immigration, and every conquest has led to the formation of a mixed race. It is one of the inevitable consequences of human instincts and of physiological laws.
It is quite natural that polygenists should have neglected facts of this nature. In their opinion a population withmixedcharacters is aspeciesas much as any other, which is intermediate between two given specific types. But the indifference or the mistake of monogenists is less easily explained. They are evidently ignorant of the phenomena of crossings among plants and animals. When they meet with a race of undecided characters, and which presents more or less distant analogies with two different types, they have generally felt embarrassed, and have put the question on one side, or have at most invoked the action of conditions of life in a vague manner.
It is quite true that the latter, when effecting a resemblance between foreign races and the local race, leads to results analogous to those which result from crossing. We have seen an example of it in the United States. Yet crossing has its peculiar phenomena, which are persistent even after several generations. Moreover, to the indications drawn from physical and physiological characters we may add others borrowed from very different orders of facts, and which, in many cases, permit us to draw a conclusion with remarkable certainty. The mixture of beliefs, customs, and manners often furnishes valuable information. But the comparison of languages generally throws an unexpected light upon problems apparently most difficult. From time to time legends and history confirm inductions drawn from the orders of facts which I have just pointedout, and testify to the correctness of views which, at first sight, might appear conjectural.
As an example I will quote the Zulu Kaffirs. They are one of the groups of which some polygenists make a distinct species. They are in fact distinguished from other negro races by several characters. But by these characters they are brought nearer to the white type. Moreover, various travellers inform us that they present a great variability of feature. Missionaries who have lived among them add that, in the same family, and under conditions which render all crossing impossible, individuals are met with who have the hair and colour of a Negro, and others whose hair is smooth and whose colour is brown. These facts alone would authorise the conclusion that the Zulus are a mixed race.
Philology confirms this conclusion. Philologists agree in placing the Kaffir languages in the group of Zimbian languages, whose grammar and vocabulary are fundamentally negro, but which also include arab, nilotic, and malgach elements. Thus language, as well as physical characters, points to a mixture of blood.
The chronicle discovered by Captain Guillain justifies these conclusions by giving the history of the arab colonies from Quiloa to Sofala. It relates the wars which were raised for the possession of the gold mines; it shows the conquerors driving out the conquered, and compelling them to go southwards to seek a new country. It is evident that the latter have crossed Delagoa Bay, where they have left the black race in its state of original inferiority, and have gone further to ally themselves voluntarily or involuntarily with tribes whose type has thus risen.
In fact, far from being aspecies, the Zulus are amixed raceof Negroes and Arabs, whose formation is so recent that mediate heredity and atavism still betray the double origin, which is also attested by philology, but in which the negro element preserves a very great superiority.
X. The investigation of mixed populations, the determination of the part played by each of the elements whichhave assisted in their formation, belong to the most interesting questions of anthropology. This study ought not to stop at populations in which the mixture of characters is evident at first sight. It ought also to bear upon those which are generally regarded as quite pure. We should then find that mixture of races has penetrated where it was scarcely suspected.
In China and especially in Japan, the white allophylian blood is mixed with the yellow blood in different proportions; the white semitic blood has penetrated into the heart of Africa; the negro and houzouana types have mutually penetrated each other and produced all the Kaffir populations situated west of the Zulus of Arabian origin; the Malay races are the result of the amalgamation, in different proportions, of Whites, Yellows, and Blacks; the Malays proper, far from constituting aspecies, as polygenists consider them, are only onepopulation, in which, under the influence of Islamism, these various elements have been more completely fused, etc.
I have quoted at random the various preceding examples, to show how the most extreme types of mankind have contributed to form a certain number of races. Need I insist upon the mixtures which have been accomplished between the secondary types derived from the first? In Europe what population can pretend to purity of blood? The Basques themselves, who apparently ought to be well protected by their country, institutions, and language against the invasion of foreign blood, show upon certain points, in the heart of their mountains, the evident traces of the juxtaposition and fusion of very different races.
As for the other nations ranging from Lapland to the Mediterranean, classical history, although it does not go back a great distance in point of time, is a sufficient proof that crossings are the inevitable result of invasions, wars, and political and social events. Asia presents, as we know, the same spectacle; and, in the heart of Africa, the Jagas, playing the part of the hordes of Gengis-Khan, havemixed together the African tribes from one ocean to the other.
XI. I need scarcely allude here to the general facts which follow from the detailed history of races. Short though it be, this appeal to the reader’s memory will, I hope, give a sufficient motive for the following conclusions.
Conditions of life and heredity have fashioned the first human races, a certain number of which, on account of their isolation, have been able to preserve for an indefinite time this first characteristic.
Perhaps it was during this very distant period that the three great types of the Negro, the Yellow, and the White were characterised.
The migratory and conquering instincts of man have brought about a meeting between these primary races, and consequently a crossing between them.
Since the appearance of mixed races, crossing itself has only acted under the domination of the conditions of life and heredity.
The great movements of nations have only taken place at long intervals, and as it were form so many crises. In the interval between these crises, the races which have been formed by the crossing have had time to settle and become uniform.
The consolidation of the mixed races, the relative uniformity of characters effected by the crossing, have taken place very slowly, in consequence of the absolute want of selection. Consequently every mixed race which has become uniform is also very ancient.
Human instincts have produced the mixture of mixed races, just as they have produced that of the primary races.
Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest part, by the successive crossing of a number of races at present undetermined.
The most ancient races which we know, the quaternary races, are still represented in our own days, either by populations generally small in number, or by isolated individuals, in whom atavism reproduces the characters of our remote ancestors. This is a fact which will be proved further on.