Biological analogies in historyRoosevelt, Theodore
Philosophy
Biological analogies in history
Roosevelt, Theodore
History -- Philosophy
with its attendant benefits and shortcomings; and, after the pioneer
stages are passed, the problems to be solved, in spite of superficial
differences, are in their essence the same; they are those that
confront all civilized peoples, not those that confront only peoples
struggling from barbarism into civilization.
So, when we speak of the ‘death’ of a tribe, a nation, or a
civilization, the term may be used for either one of two totally
different processes, the analogy with what occurs in biological
history being complete. Certain tribes of savages, the Tasmanians, for
instance, and various little clans of American Indians, have within
the last century or two completely died out; all of the individuals
have perished, leaving no descendants, and the blood has disappeared.
Certain other tribes of Indians have as tribes disappeared or are
now disappearing; but their blood remains, being absorbed into the
veins of the white intruders, or of the black men introduced by those
white intruders; so that in reality they are merely being transformed
into something absolutely different from what they were. In the
United States, in the new State of Oklahoma, the Creeks, Cherokees,
Chickasaws, Delawares, and other tribes, are in process of absorption
into the mass of the white population; when the state was admitted a
couple of years ago, one of the two senators, and three of the five
representatives in Congress, were partly of Indian blood. In but a
few years these Indian tribes will have disappeared as completely as
those that have actually died out; but the disappearance will be by
absorption and transformation into the mass of the American population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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