Page:Biological Analogies in History.djvu/24

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

less of the general European type, as shown in Portugal, Spain, and England. The differences between these 'new' American and these 'old' European nations are not as great as those which separate the 'new' nations one from another, and the 'old' nations one from another. There are in each case very real differences between the new and the old nation; differences both for good and for evil; but in each case there is the same ancestral history to reckon with, the same type of civilization, 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,