Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-GeographySemple, Ellen Churchill
History
Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography
Semple, Ellen Churchill
Human beings -- Effect of environment on; Human geography
Every active historical movement which enters an already populated
country gives rise there to passive movements, either compression of the
native folk followed by amalgamation, or displacement and withdrawal.
The latter in some degree attends every territorial encroachment. Only
where there is an abundance of free land can a people retire as a whole
before the onslaught, and maintain their national or racial solidarity.
Thus the Slavs seem largely to have withdrawn before the Germans in the
Baltic plains of Europe. The Indians of North and South America retired
westward before the advance of the whites from the Atlantic coast. The
Cherokee nation, who once had a broad belt of country extending from the
Tennessee Valley through South Carolina to the ocean,[166] first
retracted their frontier to the Appalachian Mountains; in 1816 they were
confined to an ever shrinking territory on the middle Tennessee and the
southern end of the highlands; in 1818 they began to retire beyond the
Mississippi, and in 1828 beyond the western boundary of Arkansas.[167]
The story of the Shawnees and Delawares is a replica of this.[168] In the
same way Hottentots and Kaffirs in South Africa are withdrawing
northward and westward into the desert before the protruding frontier of
white settlement, as the Boers before the English treked farther into
the veldt. [See map page 105.]
Where the people attacked or displaced is small or a broken remnant, it
often takes refuge among a neighboring or kindred tribe. The small
Siouan tribes of the Carolinas, reduced to fragments by repeated
Iroquois raids, combined with their Siouan kinsmen the Catawbas, who
consequently in 1743 included twenty dialects among their little
band.[169] The Iroquoian Tuscaroras of North Carolina, defeated and
weakened by the whites in 1711, fled north to the Iroquois of New York,
where they formed the Sixth Nation of the Confederation. The Yamese
Indians, who shifted back and forth between the borders of Florida and
South Carolina, defeated first by the whites and then by the Creeks,
found a refuge for the remnant of their tribe among the Seminoles, in
whom they merged and disappeared as a distinct tribe[170]--the fate of
most of these fragmentary peoples. [See map page 54.]
[Sidenote: Dispersal in flight.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account