Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/495

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RACE MIXTURE]
INDIANS, NORTH AMERICAN
 467

the “Mongolian race” of eastern Asia, &c., there is a wide range in variation within the American tribes with respect to Physical characteristics. particular physical characteristics. Some authorities, like Dr Hrdlička (Handb. Amer. Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 53), separate the Eskimo from the “Indians,” regarding them as “a distinct sub-race of the Mongolo-Malay,” but this is hardly necessary if, with Boas (Ann. Archaeol. Rep. Ontario, 1905, p. 85), we “consider the inhabitants of north-eastern Asia and of America as a unit divided into a great many distinct types but belonging to one and the same of the large divisions of mankind.” Upon the basis of differences in stature and general bodily conformation, colour of skin, texture and form of hair, shape of nose, face and head, &c., some twenty-one different physical “types” north of Mexico have been recognized.

Although the variation in stature, from the short people of Harrison Lake (average 1611 mm.) to the tall Sioux (average 1726 mm.), Eastern Chippewa (average 1723 mm.), Iroquois (average 1727 mm.), Omaha and Winnebago (average 1733 mm.) and other tribes of the Plains and the regions farther east, is considerable, the North American Indian, on the whole, may be termed a tall race. The stature of women averages among the tall tribes about 92%, and among the short tribes about 94% of that of the men.

The proportion of statures (adult males) above 1730 mm. in certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache and Navaho, 25.3; Arapaho, 45.9; Arikara, 15.2; British Columbia (coast), 28.8; British Columbia (interior), 16.4; California (south), 32.7; Cherokee (eastern), 21.0; Cherokee (western), 40.7; Cheyenne, 72.2; Chickasaw, 23.8; Chinook, 36.2; Choctaw, 32.6; Coahuila, 14.2; Comanche, 27.1; Cree, 33.4; Creek, 53.6; Crow, 51.3; Delaware, 41.1; Eskimo (Alaska), 5.9; Eskimo (Labrador), 0.0; Flathead, 18.9; Harrison Lake, B.C., 1.0; Hupa, 18.7; Iroquois, 52.1; Kiowa, 41.3; Klamath, 20.0; Kootenay, 26.0; Micmac and Abnaki, 45.7; Ojibwa (eastern), 42.7; Ojibwa (western), 42.7; Omaha and Winnebago, 54.9; Oregon (south), 5.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 30.6; Paiute, 22.1; Pawnee, 39.0; Puget Sound and Makah, 6.5; Round Valley, Cal., 3.3; Sahaptin, 28.2; Shuswap, 15.9; Sioux, 50.8; Taos, 18.5; Ute, 12.4; Zuñi and Moqui, 1.9.

Very notable is the percentage of tall statures among the Cheyenne, Creek, Crow, Iroquois, &c. The form of the head (skull) varies considerably among the Indian tribes north of Mexico, running from the dolichocephalic eastern Eskimo with a cephalic index of 71.3 on the skull to the brachycephalic Aleuts with 84.8. Several tribes practising deformation of the skull (mound-builders, Klamath, &c.) show much higher brachycephaly.

The percentage of cephalic indices above 84 (on the heads of living individuals) among certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache, 87.6; Arapaho, 5.0; Arikara, 24.6; Blackfeet, 6.2; Caddo, 47.2; Cherokee, 20.0; Cheyenne, 10.4; Chickasaw, 14.4; Comanche, 65.3; Cree, 4.9; Creek, 25.0; Crow, 12.0; Delaware 12.0; Eskimo, (Alaska), 10.6; Harrison Lake, B.C., 88.8; Iroquois, 15.4; Kiowa, 25.0; Kootenay, 19.1; Mandan, 4.5; Micmac and Abnaki, 7.0; Mohave, 86.5; Montagnais, 21.7; Moqui, 54.3; Navaho, 49.4; Ojibwa (eastern), 26.6; Ojibwa (western), 10.2; Omaha, 23.0; Oregon (south), 50.9; Osage, 79.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 24.7; Pawnee, 4.8; Pima, 9.6; Round Valley, Cal., 4.8; Sahaptin, 57.4; Shuswap, 59.9; Sioux, 9.6; Taos, 6.0; Ute, 8.9; Wichita, 96.0; Winnebago, 66.8; Zuñi, 41.4.

The Apache, Mohave, Navaho, Osage, Sahaptin, Wichita and Winnebago practised skull-deformation, which accounts in part for their high figures. The brachycephalic tendency of the Caddo, Moqui, Shuswap and Zuñi is marked; the Comanche, with an average cephalic index of 84.6 and the Harrison Lake people with one of 88.8, are noteworthy in this respect. As in the case of stature, so in the case of head-form, there seems to have been much mingling of types, especially in the Huron-Algonkian region, the Great Plains and the North Pacific coast.

The North American Indian may be described in general as brown-skinned (of various shades, with reddish tinge, sometimes dark and chocolate or almost black in colour) with black hair and eyes varying from hazel brown to dark brown. Under good conditions of food, &c., the Indian tends to be tall and mesocephalic as to head-form, and well-proportioned and symmetrical in body. The ideal Indian type can be met with among the youth of several different tribes (Plains Indians, Algonkians, Iroquoians, Muskogians and some of the tribes of the south-western United States). Beauty among the aborigines of America north of Mexico has been the subject of brief studies by Dr R. W. Shufeldt and Dr A. Hrdlička (Boas Anniv. Vol., New York, 1906, pp. 38-42).

The extent to which the red and white races have mixed their blood in various parts of North America is greater than is generally thought. The Eskimo of Greenland have intermarried with the Danes, and their kinsmen of Labrador with the English settlers and “summerers.” Race mixture. The eastern Algonkian Indians in New England and Acadia have now considerable French, English and Scottish blood. Many of the Canadian Iroquois are more than half French, many of the Iroquois of New York half English. The Cherokee, an Iroquoian people of the Carolinas, have some admixture of Scottish and German blood, to which Mooney would attribute some, at least, of their remarkable progress. In the state of Oklahoma, which has absorbed the old “Indian Territory,” the results of race-amalgamation are apparent in the large number of mixed bloods of all shades. In spite of the romance of Pocahontas, the intermarriages of the two races in the Virginian region seem not to have been very common or very important. Nor does there appear to have been much intermarriage between Spaniards and Indians in the south Atlantic region, though in Texas, &c., there was a good deal. In New France, in spite of the efforts of some recent Canadian-French writers to minimize the fact, intermixture between whites and Indians began early and continued to be extensive. In parts of New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, some of the northern American states and regions of the Canadian north-west, there are Indian villages and white settlements where hardly a single individual of absolutely pure blood can now be found. In the veins of some of the “Iroquois” of Caughnawaga and New York state to-day flows blood of the best colonial stock (Rice, Hill, Williams, Stacey, &c., captives adopted and married within the tribe). In the great Canadian north-west, and to a large extent also in the tier of American states to the south, the blood of the Indian, through the mingling of French, Scottish and English traders, trappers, employees of the great fur companies, pioneer settlers, &c., has entered largely and significantly into the life of the nation, the half-breed element playing a most important rôle in social, commercial and industrial development.

In 1879, besides those whose mixed blood had not been remembered and those who wished to forget it, there were, according to Dr Havard (Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1879), at least 22,000 métis in the United States and 18,000 in Canada (i.e. in the north-west in each case). When the province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation it numbered within the borders some 10,000 mixed-bloods, one of whom, John Norquay, afterwards became its premier. In the Columbia river region and British Columbia some intermixture has taken place, originating in the conditions due to the establishment of trading-posts, the circumstances of the early settlement of the country, &c.—this has been both French and English and Scottish. Farther north in Alaska the Russian occupation led to not a little intermixture, both with the Aleuts, &c., and the coast Indians. In some parts of the far north intermixture of the whites with the Athabaskans is just beginning. In Canada no prohibition of marriage between whites and Indians exists, but such unions are forbidden by law in the states of Arizona, Oregon, North Carolina and South Carolina.

A considerable number of the chiefs and able men of the various Indian tribes of certain regions in recent times have had more or less white blood—Iroquois, Algonkian, Siouan, &c.—who have sometimes worked with and sometimes against the whites. In the case of some tribes there have been “pure blood” and “mixed blood” factions. Some tribes have frowned upon miscegenation; even the Pueblos (except Laguna, which is Keresan) have never intermarried with the whites. Both in Canada and the United States strains of Indian blood run in the veins of prominent families. Some of the “first families of Virginia” are proud to descend from Pocahontas, the Algonkian “Princess,” who married the Englishman Rolfe. In Maine may still be discovered perhaps those whose line of life goes back to the Baron de St Casteins and his Abnaki bride, while in Ontario and New York are to be met those who trace their ancestry back to the famous Iroquois Joseph Brant and his half-English wife. In the early history of Pennsylvania and Ohio were noted the Montours, descendants of a French nobleman who about