Prichard calls them " a kind-hearted, docile, lazy race, invariably most courteous. Treat them as you desire to be treated and you will always receive grave, quiet consideration." " To see a race so kindly picturesque and gifted with fine qualities of body and mind, absolutely at hand-grip with extinction, seems to me one of the saddest results of the growing domination of the white man." " One of the strongest feelings which I brought away with me from Patagonia was a hatred of the trader, who battens upon the failings of the Tehuelches." If he hears of a festival or any tribal ceremony, he arrives on the spot with drink. He trades the vilest liquor for horses, and when the men are well steeped he makes some magnificent bargains. The horrors of the wars of civilization would pale beside their cold-blooded slaugh- ter. The pioneer trader with his stores of cheap, maddening liquor is free to sell as much as he pleases, although it is a well-known fact that such trading jneans ruin and extermination to the unhappy, ignorant folk who buy.
When the Argentine was unable to subdue the Patagonians some years ago, says Beech, a foreigner undertook this task by planting large areas with potatoes, from which a spirit was distilled that was very fatal to the natives.
The Indians of the two continents are generally well developed physically. Child life among them has peculiar charms. Despite 1 H. P. Beach: Geography and Atlas of Protestant Missions. New York, 1901.
2 Through the Heart of Patagonia, 1901.
ADOLESCENT RACES AND THEIR TREATMENT some common traits, their languages are more numerous than all those of Europe and Asia, and nearly all have the quality of holo- phrasm or encapsulation in high degree. They have little literature, but many myths. Their life is generally tribal or communal. The most common element of their religious life is totemism, often mer- ging into zootheism. They adore the heavenly bodies, have number- less prayers, fasts, and terpsichorean worship, and many call them the most religious people on earth. In Canada these men of the stone age, numbering over 100,000, have been treated kindly, after the French method. Agents are trained and kept in office for life, farms are allotted, liquor forbidden, and there is no Indian question. Their race is not very fecund or viable, and depression from feeling them- selves doomed is often thought a chief cause of their decline. Dr. Brown urges that too great cleanliness is especially unwholesome for them, and that to remove the dermal excretions too carefully is often fatal.
t Indigenous culture was most highly developed among them in Mexico and Peru. " The first effect of the voyages of Columbus and his successors," says Fiske,1 " was to arouse the spirit of romantic curiosity to a fever heat." The Toltecs or builders are compared to the Pelasgi, to whom Greek historians ascribed all their troublesome problems of origin. Over against this Toltec empire in Mexico were the Chichimecs or barbarians, who were not members of the con- federacies of the Pueblo towns. When Cortez landed he had the immense advantage of answering in outer respects the requirements of the national legends of Quetzalcoatl. His blond complexion, light hair and beard, all suggested the national sun god. He was a strange combination of bravery, craft, endurance, unscrupulousness, fertility of device, and devotion. Through his mistress, a native, he learned that the Aztec confederacy bore heavily upon the tributary towns, but burned all his ships and set forth like a quixotic knight-errant with four hundred and fifty mail-clad Spaniards, twelve small cannon, and fifteen horses. The latter, being unknown, seemed frightful monsters to the natives. When the chief was captured under the Indian system but not killed, his office could not be filled and the native phratries were paralyzed. At first the Spaniards were thought invulnerable, and Cortez faced vastly superior numbers successfully and released human victims caged and fattening for sacrifice in town after town among these people more than two ethnic periods behind his own, as if a modern German army had attacked ancient Nineveh, Babylon, or Thebes. The glory of the ancient Mexican civilization has no doubt been magnified, and it is so extinct that the facts can never be completely ascertained. Despite the awful blot of cannibalism devel- oped into an elaborate and imposing ceremonial, the civilization of Montezuma was in some respects superior to that of the Spaniards even in this age of their glory. He was war chief and high priest in 1The Discovery of America, vol. ii, p. 214.
680 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE one; the elaborate tribal system which here attained one of its highest developments focused in his person; and his capture, while it was an achievement of dazzling prowess, was an outrage upon every principle of international ethics, honor, or courtesy. The motive of the Span- iards to diffuse a higher Christian civilization was alloyed by the most heinous atrocity, and even if on the whole the Inquisition was better than cannibalism and human sacrifice, this and all missionary motives were here mere tinsel gilding of the buccaneering sentiments which underlay and actuated this invasion.
Bastian 1 estimates that the conquest of Mexico cost about 150,000 lives; that the Spanish governors of Salazai and Chirino worked 15,000 Indians to death; that by the export of slaves to the West Indies Panuco was almost depopulated; and that many thousands died of the hard labor to which the Spaniards condemned them in Mexican mines. Smallpox, introduced in 1545, is said to have slain 80,000, and the epidemic which began in 1576 to have swept away about 2,000,000 more. The Spaniards did not understand the complex system of native irrigation, and the droughts and floods caused by their destruction of it caused famines, while the sudden disturbance of all social and industrial relations, the banishing of natives used to the warm valleys to the cold plateaus, and sometimes conversely, were fatal to many more. D'Alva estimates that King Ahuitzotzin had about 80,000 war captives slain to dedicate his new temple — a lust of murder that, as Bastian well remarks, would shame the despot of Dahomey. " As we bore the banner of the cross," wrote a contem- porary Spanish historian, " and fought for our faith, God gave us victory and we slew great multitudes of the heathen." On one Ash Wednesday order was given, " in honor of the day, to shoot about 300 wretched excommunicants." " It is," says Bastian, " an indisputable fact that the introduction of Christianity into Mexico, instead of fulfilling "its mission of exalting the race, demoralized the inhabitants and introduced the condition of dull apathy in which we now see the Indians sunk."
The Peruvians were probably the first in all America to rise above barbarism and develop a truer nationality than any other, despite the fact that they had no system of writing save the knotted cords or quipus. In a region about Lake Titicaca, not far below the summit of the Matterhorn in elevation, still marked by colossal architecture which is comparable in magnitude and as imperishable as the Pyra- mids and the Colosseum, the Incas had slowly developed a most unique, interesting, and instructive life, with food, dress, government, religion, habits, and social customs distinct from anything else known in the world. They had, moreover, abolished cannibalism, established garri- sons to secure their conquests, built military roads comparable with those of Rome, storehouses and barracks, and, though ignorant of the principals of the arch, their masonry defies modern methods. In many 1 Mexico. Virchow und von Holtzendorff: Sammlung Wiss. Vortrage, 1874.
ADOLESCENT RACES AND THEIR TREATMENT 68 1 other respects besides their colonial system, the Peruvian polity was not unlike that of ancient Assyria. Pizarro was inspired by the ex- ample of Cortez, but he was less educated, fonder of gold, and prob- ably less under the influence of religious motives. He was less subtle and more brutal. From the captured Inca he took some $15,000,000 worth of gold besides the silver as a ransom, and then put his captive to death. The splendor of gold dazzled Spain, and Spaniards flocked to the New World by ship-loads, seizing estates, spoiling the tem- ples, enslaving the people, and always aiming at the control of the mechanism of native administration. At best the story is a sickening one, and the apologetic attitude of Fiske seems utterly unwarranted by the facts which he himself records.
The infernal picture of slavery in Hispaniola is one of the blackest pages in human history, and is marked by hideous cruelties and tor- tures usually unpunished. In 1511 the Dominican, Montesino, began his scathing impeachment of the slave trade, and one of his first con- verts, Las Casas, once a slave owner, himself began his extraordinary crusade for the abolishment of negro slavery. His work diminished the amount of slaver^ and mitigated its evils, and though it by no means led to its abolition, made the torch of Wilberforce, Garrison, and Lincoln burn the brighter.
Even here we have the most striking contrast, such as has since been so common, between admirable laws made at home and the most flagrant violation of their spirit and letter in every item by those actually in contact with the natives. No part of American colonial history, says Captain Bourke,1 has been more neglected than that which relates to the laws of the Spanish dominions. These show that the Spanish crown from the first aimed at the elevation, civilization, and Christianity of its new subjects. An elaborate code in four vol- umes, published in 1681, shows that assimilation and not destruction was deliberately aimed at, and that many aborigines were sensibly improved by the Spanish introduction of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and chickens, planting of orchards, and new trades like carpen- try, wagon-making, blacksmithing, stone masonry, etc. In 1504, in Queen Isabella's will, all are solemnly charged that " they neither con- sent nor allow any of the Indians, native of or resident in said isles and mainland, to receive any harm whatever, either in person or property," but that they be treated justly, compensated for injury, etc. The laws enforced monogamy; forbade the sale of daughters; compelled Spanish men to support women who had children by them; urged schools for the aborigines in every village; established the Universities of Lima and Mexico in 1551, as before this Charles V had established the Fran- ciscan University of Tzintzontin, which " had become the great uni- versity, whose ruins are among the most impressive on our.conti- nent." The sale of Indian captives taken in war was forbidden in 1 The Laws of Spain in their Application to the American Indians. American Anthropologist, 1894, p. 193.
82 682 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE extreme and emphatic terms; those thinking themselves oppressed could write directly to the king; liquor-selling was forbidden; natives were not allowed to sell their property holdings save in due legal form. An Indian servant could break a contract if he did not receive proper medical treatment when he was ill; his master had to pay all dues and had no further claim upon his services when he recovered. The dark side was the progressive reduction to imprisonment, which is little less than another name for slavery for debt.
In Mexico the native Indian population, now some forty-three per cent of the whole, has been steadily decreasing during the cen- tury, although as a whole this race is very prolific. During the sixty- five years ending in 1875 the European race, now nineteen per cent, nearly doubled; the mixed race, thirty-eight per cent, trebled; but the native race diminished slightly but steadily. If, however, we include mixed bloods, they are steadily increasing, and a recent esti- mate places the pure whites at only twenty per cent of the population. The causes usually assigned to this decrease are bad food, shelter, medical treatment, especially the ravages of smallpox, and premature marriages. Of the perhaps one hundred. and fifty tribes originally here, the Spaniards give us records of thirty-three, but these are dying out, as did the edible dumb dog when the Spaniards began to tax it. Members of an Indian tribe rarely mix with white races but inter- marry among themselves, and this prevents assimilation. Starr has revived the old theory that all inhabitants of the New World are grad- ually assuming the Indian type, and some hold that in Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico Indian blood will ultimately rule. The Mexican of Spanish descent is generally less energetic and less vascular than the Spaniard, just as the American is less so than the Englishman; so that it would seem that the problem of acclimatizing Anglo-Saxons here, and perhaps in the New World generally, is perhaps not yet solved. The American in Mexico, who often excites fears of ultimate dominance, is always a speculator and a " dreamer of golden dreams." He introduces improved hotels, electric lights, and better modes of transportation, but much farther than this he rarely goes, for his push and restlessness find insuperable barriers of climate and tradition. He does not take kindly to the midday siesta or the many feasts, saints' days, and holidays, while the very productiveness of nature neutralizes one of the chief incentives to work, and the monotony of the seasons does not compel extra effort in summer to prepare for the winter. Such facts, with others, incline Le Plongeon to regard the natives, despite their present decline, as likely to survive the less adapted Europeans, and the vast and mysterious monuments of Cho- lula, Palenque, Teotihuacan, and Mitla prompt him to reverse the once current view that the natives were of Asiatic origin and to urge that the empire of the Mayas centering at Yucatan was the original source of civilization, which proceeded thence to India, Egypt, Greece, etc. It is certain that the Mexican Indians have lost a well-developed civilization and literature, and that many of their languages have be- ADOLESCENT RACES AND THEIR TREATMENT 683 come primitive and others died out, and that since the Spanish con- quest they have fallen into a semi-barbarous state.1 No historian or philosopher can ever estimate the loss to the world hy this wreckage of an ancient and highly developed civilization, so completely exter- minated that we can never know very definitely what it was, contain- ing for us perhaps priceless scientific and practical lessons which might do us as much good in dealing with this race as what they got from us did them harm. Race pedagogy has irretrievably lost we know not what arts of irrigation, taxation, high tribal organization, native agriculture, industries, new solutions of family, social, and ethical relations. Even the Aztec religion would very likely seem less repulsive if we knew it fully and in the inner sympathetic way in which religions are now studied. The new solutions of so many of our own problems, dimly seen here, should suggest how many more things than 'our philosophy dreams of or our history records have been in and vanished from the world, and wring our hearts with pity not only for vanished races but for ourselves.
With the experience of years of travel in Australia, Lumholtz 2 made good use of the provisions for his five years of exploration among the relatively unknown inhabitants of the mountains of Mex- ico, many of them, at least, supposed to be descendants of the ancient Peruvians, whose semicivilization was destroyed by Pizarro. The most representative of these tribes, the Huichols, are remarkable for their vast body of legendary lore, which is to them gospel, truth, and history; their music and the great endurance of the singing shamans, who can sing each night for at least a fortnight of " how the gods in the beginning composed the world out of chaos and darkness "; how they instituted the customs of the Huichols and taught the people all they had to do to please them; to build temples, hunt deer, go for the hikuli plant, to raise corn, make bows and arrows, and ceremonial objects. " There are no written records kept of these traditions. They live on the lips of the people as national heirlooms, passing from one generation to the next as originally did the sagas and folk- songs of the ancient Northmen. The gods are supposed to be stand- ing all around the horizon seeing and hearing everything, and the shaman in his prayers turns toward the four quarters or the four winds of the world, because if one god does not respond another may. Rarely does he address a long prayer to any one direction. The gods are angry with man and begrudge him everything, particularly the rain, which is of paramount importance to the very existence of the tribe, but when the shamans sing of their deeds they are pleased and 1 Matias Romero: Geographical and Statistical Notes on Mexico. 1898.
2 Unknown Mexico, by Carl Lumholtz. 2 vols. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1902, pp. 530 and 487. See also Sappel: Mittelamerikanische Reisen u. Studien, Braunschweig, 1902, p. 420. Also K. v. d. Steinen unter den Natur- volkern Braziliens, Berlin, 1894. Also, e.g., Squier's: Peru, New York, 1877. Also Paul Marcou: Travels in South America, New York, 1875, 2 vols.
684 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE relent, and they liberate the clouds, which they have been keeping back for themselves, and rain results/' " Taking it all in all, their great gift of music, combined with their ready response to emotional influences, the immense wealth and depth of their religious thought and their ingenuity in expressing it pictorially, can not fail to fasci- nate the observer." They are secretive, and it is very hard to gain their confidence. " Will these natives," exclaims Lumholtz. " ever reveal to me their thoughts and throw any light on the early stages of human culture? " In some of their great feasts and fasts they would " rise and pray aloud with so much fervor that they and all the rest would be moved to tears. Frequently, too, they would make circuits inside of the temple, stopping in front of little chairs and talking to them as if the gods were sitting in them." The philosophy of their entire life may be summed up in the sentence which one of their shamans once gave utterance to, " To pray to Grandfather Fire and to put up snares for catching deer, that is to lead a perfect life " Their customs and ceremonials are extremely numerous and elab- orate, with a ritual minutely prescribed. " Every man among the Huichols is the son of some special god; every woman the daughter of some goddess, and their names often indicate this." The main ideas of these people are religious. Their life is " one continual wor- ship." " No woman ever undertakes any handiwork without first asking the gods for help in her undertaking." Their ceremonial arrows stuck upright in the ground, the sacred plumes of which they make great use in their worship, the symbolic eyes of God, the prayers for luck in weaving and textile work — everything is religious. " No flower is ever plucked unless with some pious intention" (p. 215). " Religious feeling pervades the thoughts of the Huichols so com- pletely that every bit of decoration he puts on, the most trivial of his every-day garments or utensils, is a request for some benefit, a prayer for protection against evil, or an expression of adoration of some deity. In other words, the people always carry their prayers and devotional sentiments with them in visible form."
It appears that the Huichols were better off before than after the white man's arrival, when there was not much to steal, when there was nothing for judges to " grab," neither cattle nor money, and when there were no police and no prisons. In building a house, they pause to pray with every level and row of thatch. Every one has an idol buried in his fields. They are also kept in the houses, and especially in the granaries. It is ill luck to show, and still more to part with, these monos. In their religious festivals, which are often strangely fused with Catholicism, they sometimes proceed on bare knees for miles. " It makes an ethnologist sad to think how completely the ancient customs have been destroyed in the course of a few centuries by the Spanish friars." They made the pagans forget the profound thoughts their ancient ceremonies at once hid and revealed by sub- stituting the gorgeous splendor of their feasts without the inner mean- ADOLESCENT RACES AND THEIR TREATMENT 685 ing of Christianity. " Nothing but a senseless jumble remains of the splendor of the olden times. Then every movement, every adornment, even the clothing itself, had its special object and meaning. Now the intellect of the race has become blunted and the Indian himself de- graded and poor. His religious devotion alone remains unchanged. He dances to-day before the Miraculous Christ with the same zeal as his ancestors did before the same gods and for the same purpose, to acquire health, and for the same benefits." " Many an Indian here is capable of composing music that would delight civilized audiences. This devotion to music imparts to the general character of the masses in Mexico a gentleness and refinement of manner that distinguishes them favorably from the plebeian in the big cities of the North " (p. 388). "It seems to me, after my long experience with the Mexico Indians, that in their natural state they are in certain points superior not only to the average Mexican half-caste, but to the common run of whites. We are brought up to look upon primitive people as syno- nyms of all that is crude, evil, and vicious. Nothing could be more erroneous. I could oite a heathen tribe in India who consider a lie the blackest dishonor, and a tribe on the islands of Bering Sea who, when discovered by Russian missionaries, were leading a life so nearly in accord with the Gospel of Christ that the teachers con- fessed they had better let them alone." An otherwise fanatical mis- sionary, the Monk Duran, in his book on Mexico, written sixty years after the conquest, in referring to the false opinions of the Spaniards regarding the native Indians, said: " There never was a nation in the world where harmony, order, and politeness reigned so supreme as in this infidel nation. In what country of the world were there ever so many laws and regulations of the state at once so just and so well appointed? In regard to their laws and ancient modes of living, all is much changed or wholly lost. Nothing but a shadow remains now of that good order."
Says Lumholtz: " It is a very common mistake to look upon a barbarian as a third-rate white man. The Indian's physique is better developed and his senses are better trained than the white man's. His intellect and clearness of thought average higher than the com- mon people of Europe and America. The mental gifts of many In- dians would entitle them to fill responsible positions. Primitive man is as modest in his ambitions as he is in his demands upon nature." The aborigines here have a high artistic sense, as shown in their textiles, which live among the remains of their former greatness. Some beautiful bits of pottery are sometimes* excavated from the mounds. The patterns are infinitely varied, but all have a meaning. Monogamy is the recognized basis of the family. " What we call their vices are due not to depravity but to their religious practises. Personal modesty is innate in the race; justice with them is inexor- able; immortality of the soul is universally recognized. In their religious fervor the aborigines of Mexico have no equals, certainly not among Christians. Their entire life is one continuous worship 686 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE of their gods, that they may gain happiness. Every act in their lives, every work undertaken, is guided by religious thoughts. All that we should call ornament on their clothing and implements owes its very existence to the prayerful thoughts it expresses. Of all that man has, the gods get their share. No crop is. so scanty but that some of it is ungrudgingly sacrificed to the deity who gave it. When I saw them perform their religious dances indefatigably for days and nights, and when I heard them in their humble temples invoke divine help in tears, I felt in my heart that their pitiful appeals would be as readily answered as the most eloquent oration of the high priest at the most elaborate altar Christianity ever raised to the greater glory of God. In drifting into the new condition of life, the native may lose his worldly possessions, but he still retains the wealth of his religiosity and is as eager to comply with the new code as he was with the worship of his ancestral idols. ' The Indians have too much religion/ a padre once said to me, ' and they want more than is good for them.' When the chief of the Zunis, whom Mr. Gushing had taken to Boston, was asked what had impressed him and his companions mostly in the great city of the whites, he replied, ' That the people are not religious. Great crowds are constantly hurrying hither and thither, but no one is praying. I had thought that they would be very religious because they sent missionaries to us, but I find they are not.' It is not among primitive races that we have to seek for the lowest types of humanity. The most depraved and degenerate individuals are found in the slums of the great cities. People who live in close touch with nature are in fact not capable of being as perverted as civilized criminals are in mind and body." The work of missionaries is often needed much more among the conquering soldiers and the prospectors, brandy traders, and adventurers that follow in their wake than among the unsophisticated barbarians. " Doubtless there are no natives on earth so wicked as those who profess Christianity," said James Russell Lowell.
Belt,1 who was an observer of long experience, care, and training, says: " Probably nowhere but in tropical America can it be said that the introduction of European civilization has been a retrogression; and that those communities are the happiest and the best governed who retain most of their old customs and habits. Yet there it is so. The civilization that Cortez overthrew was more suitable for the Indians than that which has supplanted it. Who can read the ac- counts of the populous towns of Mexico and Central America, in the time of Montezuma, with their magnificent buildings and squares; their gardens, both zoological and botanical; their markets, attended by merchants from the surrounding countries; their beau- tiful cloth and feather work, the latter now a lost art; their cunning artificers in gold and silver; their astronomical knowledge; their schools; their love of order, of cleanliness, of decency; their morality 1 The Naturalist in Nicaragua. 1874, p. 282.
ADOLESCENT RACES AND THEIR TREATMENT 687