Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/48

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12
ESSAYS OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER

steal from an outsider is not wrong unless it brings harm on one's own tribe.[1] Strabo[2] says of the Scythians that they were just and kind to each other, but very savage towards all outsiders. The sentiment of cohesion, internal comradeship, and devotion to the in-group, which carries with it a sense of superiority to any out-group and readiness to defend the interests of the in-group against the out-group, is technically known as ethnocentrism. It is really the sentiment of patriotism in all its philosophic fullness; that is, both in its rationality and in its extravagant exaggeration. The Mohaves and the Seri of southern California will have no relations of marriage or trade with any other people; they think themselves superior. The Mohaves are wild and barbarous and the Seri are on a lower grade of civilization than any other tribe in America. Therefore, we see that ethnocentrism has nothing to do with the relative grade of civilization of any people. The Seri think that "the brightest virtue is the shedding of alien blood, while the blackest crime in their calendar is alien conjugal union."[3] Perhaps nine-tenths of all the names given by savage tribes to themselves mean "Men," "The Only Men," or "Men of Men"; that is, We are men, the rest are something else. A recent etymology of the word Iroquois makes it mean "I am the real man."[4] In general Indians held that they were a favored race, due to a special creation.[5] Nansen[6] gives a letter written by an Eskimo in 1756 when he heard of the war between England and France. He burst into a rhapsody about Greenland. "Your unfruitfulness makes us happy and saves us from moles-

  1. Bureau of American Ethnology, 18, I, 293.
  2. 300, 302.
  3. Bur. Eth., 17, I, 11; Am. Anth., N. S., IV, 279.
  4. Am. Anth., N. S.. IV. 558.
  5. Bur. Eth., VIII, 36.
  6. Eskimo Life, 180.