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CHAPTER XXIII

FORMATION OF MIXED HUMAN RACES.

I. THE races which had been developed by the sole action of the conditions of life and of heredity, did not remain isolated. The earliest emigrants from the centre of appearance certainly did not pass at once to the extremity of the area determined by their first stages. They stopped on the way; they formed secondary centres, round which fresh emigrations spread. The history of the Lenni Lenapes, as of the Polynesians, proves that this must have been the case. Consequently, in many cases, the races first formed must frequently have come in contact. Then, as the waves of emigration followed each other, the last comers would meet on their way with those who preceded them. It will further on be proved that facts of this nature have occurred since Quaternary times.

Whether peaceful or otherwise, these contacts would result in reciprocal penetrations, and consequently in intercrossings.

The founders of anthropology, Buffon, Blumenbach, and even Prichard, have taken very little notice of crossings between human races, and have neglected their importance. It can scarcely be brought as a serious reproach against them. The two former were unacquainted with many of the facts which we possess at present. Prichard was neither a naturalist nor a physiologist. Moreover, nothing forcibly directed their attention towards crossings which might have occurred in more or less distant times, or among nations still insufficiently known.

At the present time this indifference is impossible. On

the one hand, the better the various nations are known, the greater becomes the number of those which derive their origin from intercrossing; on the other hand, it is impossible not to pay attention to everything which happens to mankind in consequence of the impulse to expansion and mixture which takes place on every side. From seeing the phenomena which occur in the present times, we are naturally led to investigate those which may have taken place in times past.

II. Are mixed human races formed now? In the presence of the general facts which I have related in a preceding chapter, this question might appear strange. Nevertheless, the question has been asked, and in a more or less formal manner has been answered in the negative. A few words on the subject are therefore necessary.

We may consider the era of modern crossings as dating from the discovery of the new world. Nevertheless the mixture of bloods has only taken place on a large scale at a later period, at the utmost after the conquest of the Indies in 1515, that of Mexico in 1520, and that of Peru in 1534. We are not separated from this epoch by more than three centuries and a half. And yet M. d'Omalius, only counting the products of the crossing of the European White with the different coloured races, estimates the number of half-breeds at eighteen millions. The population of the globe being estimated as 1200 millions, the product of cross-unions is already represented by about th.

We know, moreover, how irregular is the distribution of half-breeds. Immense tracts of country have not been affected. But where the peoples are in intimate contact, the proportion is much greater. In Mexico and South America half-breeds constitute at least one-fifth of the population.

But, say Knox and the other anthropologists who more or less explicitly adopt his views, the number of half-breeds is entirely kept up by incessant cross-unions. If abandoned to themselves, and if they no longer had access to the pure

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races, they would rapidly disappear. I will confine myself to quoting a few facts in opposition to these assertions.

At the Cape, the intercrossing of the Dutch and the Hottentots has resulted in half-breeds called Basters, who soon became sufficiently numerous to inspire alarm. They were banished beyond the Orange river. Here they settled under the name of Griquas, and they increased in numbers rapidly. A portion remained behind in the colony, and formed villages, among others that of New Platberg. The Basters intermarried between themselves, and travellers testify to the fertility of these unions.

Martins has seen the Cafusos, the result of the crossing of escaped Negroes with the Brazilian indigenes. Having retired into the woods, where they found a refuge, they have formed a separate race there.

Admiral Jurien de la Gravière informs us that at Manilla the half-breeds of Spaniards, Chinese, and Tagals, are much more numerous than the original stocks. At Mindanao half-breeds of Spaniards and Tagals form the majority of the inhabitants. "The fusion of races," he adds, "has taken place with marvellous facility in this isolated corner of the earth."

The Marquesas Islands, suffering the fate of the other Polynesian countries, have been depopulated by that mysterious malady which seems capable of annihilating oceanic populations. M. Jouan informs us that they are repeopled by half-breeds.

Upon the whole of the littoral zone of South America, according to M. Martin de Monosy, mixed peoples are prospering and rapidly on the increase.

We may close this enumeration by a detailed account of a fact which is well known, and which has all the value of a precise experiment.

In 1789, in consequence of a mutiny, nine English sailors went and established themselves upon the small island of Pitcairn, in the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by six Tahitian men and fifteen Tahitian women. In consequence of the

Whites becoming tyrannical, the war of race began. In 1793 the population was reduced to four Whites and to ten Tahitian women. Soon war broke out afresh between the four chiefs of the colony, and Adams only was left. But marriages had been fruitful; the first half-breeds grew up, intermarried, and had numerous children. In 1825, Captain Beechey found sixty-six individuals on Pitcairn Island. To wards the end of 1830 the population numbered eightyseven. In spite of the deplorable conditions of the outset, the mixed Pitcairn race had then almost doubled in twentyfive years, and almost tripled in thirty-three years. Now England, the most favoured country in Europe in this respect, only doubles its population in forty-nine years. Thus the half-breeds of banished English and Polynesians had on Pitcairn Island about double the number of offspring that pure Anglo-Saxons have when placed in their customary conditions of life.

Thus the white race, when crossed with races most different in characters and habit, have given rise to mixed peoples, which have continued to increase since their appearance. No reason can be given why this movement of increase should stop or even slacken.

III. There remains the intercrossing of the White and the Negro. It is with reference to this that some facts have been quoted tending to prove that half-breeds cannot propagate among themselves. Let us examine them rapidly.

Etwick and Long, in their History of Jamaica, have asserted that Mulattoes cease to be reproductive in that island beyond the third generation. Dr. Yvan has pointed out an analogous fact in Java. Dr. Nott has found that in South Carolina, Mulattoes are endowed with low fertility, that they have a shorter life than other human races, and that they frequently die at an early age. Without going so far, Dr. Simonnot attributes to these half-breeds a sort of ethnological neutrality, "which only assures them an ephemeral duration as soon as they are abandoned to themselves."

Nothing is easier than to oppose contrary facts to the

foregoing. I can even invoke the testimony of some of the same authors whom I have just quoted. Nott, after having in a general manner formulated the aphorisms which I have just summed up, admits that they only apply to South Carolina, whilst in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama, the Mulattoes are robust, fruitful, and energetic. I find that Dr. Yvan himself states that his observations only concern Java, and that he had pointed out the fact as exceptional.

On the other hand, Hombron declares that in our colonies "Negresses and Whites show a moderate fertility; Mulatto women and Whites are extremely fertile as well as Mulatto men and women."

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Even in such conditions of life as those of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mulatto," according to M. Rufz, "is well developed, strong, alert, more adapted than the Negro for industrial application, and very productive." According to M. Audain, in the Dominican Republic of St. Domingo, "onethird are Negroes, two-thirds Mulattoes, and an insignificant proportion Whites." For a long time this population has not been fed by any fresh arrivals; its continuance is entirely due to itself.

More quotations, I think, are useless. When added to the numbers of M. Martin de Moussey, who makes no exception concerning Mulattoes, they are sufficient to demonstrate the following general fact, viz., that the Mulatto is as energetic and as fruitful as other races, at least in a very great majority of those parts of the globe where this mixed population has been formed.

IV. Nevertheless, I do not deny the facts advanced by Etwick, Long, Nott, Yvan, and Simonnot. I accept them without so much as discussing them. But what do they prove in the presence of the remaining facts which are so numerous and so conclusive? At the most that the development of the mulatto race can be favoured, retarded, or hindered by local circumstances. In other terms, that it depends upon the influences exercised by the whole of the conditions of life (milieu).

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