Essays of an Americanist: I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic.Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Philosophy
Essays of an Americanist: I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic.
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
America -- Antiquities; Indians
_Physical._ Much more attention has been paid to the physical than the
linguistic data of the native Americans, but it may freely be said, with
not more satisfactory results. This failure is partly owing to the
preconceived notions which still govern the study of ethnology. Linnæus
offered the cautious division of the human species into races named from
the five great geographical areas it inhabited; Blumenbach pointed out
that this roughly corresponded with the division into five colors, the
white, black, yellow, brown and red races, occupying respectively
Europe, Africa, Asia, Polynesia and America. Unfortunately, Cuvier chose
to simplify this scheme, by merging the brown and red races, the
Polynesian or Malayan and the American, into the yellow or Mongolian.
The latest writers of the French school, and I am sorry to add various
Americans, servilely follow this groundless rejection of the older
scheme, and speak of Malayans and Americans alike as Mongolians or
Mongoloids. Neither in language nor ethnic anatomy is there any more
resemblance than between whites and Mongolians.
It is gratifying to see that the more accurate German investigators
decidedly reject the blunder of Cuvier, and declare that the American
race is as independent as any other of those named. Thus Dr. Paul
Ehrenreich, who has lately published an admirable monograph on the
Botocudos of Brazil, a tribe often quoted for its so-called “Mongoloid”
aspect, declares that any such assertion must be contradicted in
positive terms. Both in osteology and anatomy, in formation of the hair
and shape of the skull, the differences are marked, permanent and
radical.
What is true of the Botocudos is not less so of the other American
tribes which are claimed to present Mongolian traits. Such assertions
are based on the superficial observations of travellers, most of whom do
not know the first principles of ethnic anatomy. This is sufficiently
shown by the importance they attach to the oblique eye, a slight
malformation of the skin of scarcely any weight.[24]
The anatomy and physiology of the various American tribes present,
indeed, great diversity, and yet, beneath it all is a really remarkable
fixedness of type. We observe this diversity in the shape of the skull,
which may be, as among the Botocudos, strictly dolichocephalic, while
the Araucanians are brachycephalic; the nasal index varies more than in
the extremest members of the white race; the tint of the skin may be a
dark brown with an under-color of red, or of so light a hue that a blush
is easily perceptible. The beard is usually absent, but D’Orbigny
visited a tribe who wore it full and long.[25] The height varies from an
average of six feet four inches for adult males in Patagonia to less
than five feet among the Warraus of Guiana; and so it is with all the
other traits of the race. There is not one which is not subject to
extensive variation.
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