VOL. VII. MARCH, 1922 EUGENICS IN SOUTH AMERICA. NO. 3 conclude in what way the several unit characters acted upon each other. But such an experimental procedure in the case of man is obviously impracticable. The eugenicist welcomes in the absence of controlled laboratory experiments natural, more or less controlled, crosses of human BY REGINALD G. HARRIS.1 Ever since the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance plant and animal breeders have been occupied with conducting experiments on a large number of widely varying types of organisms. These experiments races. Such crosses have no doubt have brought to light the method of inheritance of may unit characters (single traits). In some cases even the location of the factors or genes which influence the development of the unit characters has been graphically pictured. Among many animals, fowl, rats, mice, guineapigs, rabbits, vinegar-flies, etc., as well as among many plants, experiments have been conducted to ascertain the laws gov-periment occurred when a few Boers erning heredity. There are many human traits which are governed in their inheritance by laws similar to those which have been discovered among the lower forms of life. Unfortunately these laws may be applied only in their most general sense. The fact that a unit character, vermillion eye in Drosophila, for example, is a "recessive allelomorph' of the wild type red eye, does not prove that blue eye in human individuals is the allelomorph of, or is recessive to, brown eye; it merely shows that unit characters may be allelomorphic and that one is dominant over the other. If one wished to know the relationship of various eye colors to each other in other animals than human beings he would carry breeding experiments, and from observations on the resulting offspring been infrequent, though two notable examples are well known. One is the case of the colony of Pitcairn Island, and later of Norfolk Island. In these islands at the present time there are nearly one thousand individuals all descendants of a cross between English men and Tahiti women. The original crosses, in this case, occurred about a century ago. The second ex and Hottentots intermarried and continued to intermarry for some time without crossing with neighboring tribes. These two examples of human racial crossing are of unique interest to the eugenist because they afford him an opportunity of observing the resultant hybrid offspring uncontaminated with other genetic factors than those originally given by the two parent strains. Study of eugenics in South America offers the observer a no less fascinating, though no doubt more complex situation, than those presented in the foregoing cases. The observations which I shall present at this time are the result of facts which came to my notice, and impressions which I received during a recent excursion through South America with the Cornell University Entomological Expedition of 1919-1920. For this discus1 Mr. Harris is a young biologist who gave last year a course of lectures at sion, then, the term South America Brown University on the Races of South will designate those countries which America. on were visited, namely, Brazil, Argen- | types, that is to say, the hybrids show The problem of ascertaining the result of the interbreeding of the widely divergent human races in South America can not be solved by a superficial glance at the data which may be drawn from a study of European, Aboriginal, and Negro parent stock, and the resulting offspring. Given the parents and the hybrids, the effect of crossing is not at once apparent, for the parent stocks are widely variable, and the environment furnishes modifying influences the scope of which is only a subject of conjecture. But to say that there is a new people because an unusual crossing of races exists is wholly insufficient. The parent stock and resultant offspring must be carefully studied. If sterility and the chemistry of blood are true indicators of the limits of a species, man includes but one species. Thus far crosses between even the widest morphologically divergent types have failed to produce sterility in the offspring. In this respect human beings are similar to horses, cattle, dogs, fowl, etc., where there exists a striking variety of form and color within the same species. It is generally believed that crosses between human races of extremely different physical and mental traits produce offspring which are intermediate between the two parent An indiscriminate crossing of human races is considered unwise, not only on account of possible great psychic differences, but more especially because of the conflict of social inheritance which often results. Every biologist is aware of the snaillike progress of organic evolution. Morphological and other physical changes in existing organisms are infrequent. To the sociologist the importance of social inheritance as a method of rapidly bettering the human race is apparent. The eugenicist, however, is equally interested in the biological inheritance of the individual, for he sees, in encouraging crossing and fecundity among the higher types of human beings, and discouraging mating and the production of numerous offspring in the lower groups, an opportunity for permanent racial advancement. It is natural, then, that the eugenicist should turn with keen interest to South America, where racial crossing has been taking place, practically unchecked, for four centuries. There are in South America three widely different human races existing side by side: (1) the native peoples, all members of the Indian race; (2) the conquerors and early colonists of the continent, men of the white race from the Iberian peninsula; (3) representatives of the Negro race who were imported by the conquerors and colonists, especially in Brazil, as slaves. That these several races should continue to mingle with each other in none other than social and business relationships would form a sufficient basis for a study of unusual interest to the sociologist. But their juxtaposition has not been limited to social and commercial dealings. There has been an interchange of the blood | most without exception, a different of these several races. The ease and rapidity with which interbreeding has occurred is almost unparalleled. At the outset there existed a relationship between the aborigines and the conquerors quite different from that which occurred in the northern continent. Indians and whites (Latins from Southern Europe) crossed freely during the early periods of conquest and colonization, while later Negroes, Teutonic Europeans, and Asiatics were added to the "melting pot." 66 response was called forth. More decidedly is this true among the plateaus of the west coast, where today Indians of pure extraction are grouped by no such artificial means as reservations, but rather live in certain localities because their forebears lived there, and they themselves have never been exterminated or expelled. Whence came the native races of South America? There are unmistakably present in many of the western plateau Indians some of the earmarks" of the Mongolian type. In fact so strikingly similar are some of the Indians to Mongolians that I have, upon several occasions, found myself unable to decide whether an individual under observation was a pure Indian or a hybrid resulting from the crossing of Indian with the Oriental stock which now occurs to a limited extent on the west coast. Not only do the native races of South America show similarities in physical appearance to exotic races, but some of their customs and beliefs, exemplified by placing silver in the mouth of the dead, mummification, the belief in a flood, etc., resemble those of the early peoples of the old world. These similarities, however, do not necessarily denote a common origin with these old races, but quite as logically early. Should the defeated aborig-point to exotic influence which might ines be slaughtered or spared, slave have entered by the Northwestern or free? In the northern continent Asiatic-Bering Sea route, or by the northeast Atlantic route. From archeological data it may be safely conIcluded that whether or not the early peoples of the old and the new world experienced an interchange of ideas, they surely exhibit a partial parallelism of development. Ever since races and struggles have been studied the significant question concerning what the attitude of conquerors to conquered should be has occupied a position of just importance. With the presence of international justice in civilized warfare, defeated nations are no longer butchered or enslaved. But whenever cultured peoples contend with uncultured, and white races overcome races with red or black pigmented skins, then the question of the treatment of the conquered arises. The conquerors will in such cases be comparatively unchecked by the laws and customs which influence civilized peoples during periods of post-conquest reorganization. In the Americas the problem arose the native races were driven continually inland by the invading Caucasians. Finally, when the newcomers had conquered for themselves nearly the whole continent, north of Mexico, they adopted the unusual procedure of gathering the aborigines together and placing them in reservations Father than exterminating or enslaving them. South of the United States, al The evi 1 In southern and southwestern Brazil, notably in the state of Matto Grosso, many Indians are at present gathered in reservations similar to those occurring in the United States. 66 dence of heredity (physical resem- conditions, etc. Among the plateau dwellers, however, intra-species strife had been greatly reduced. The Incas had already established a large and powerful empire in which wandering aggressive tribes were absent (although to be sure a civil dynastic | strife was in progress at the time of the arrival of the conquistadores). They had successfully carried on a warfare against the ravages of nature until at the close of the fifteenth century their subsistence was assured in the crops which they produced. The plateau Indians were in an environmental position suitable for making original contributions to the social inheritance of mankind. A consideration of the character Among the aborigines of South istics and the social inheritance of America there are various types which may be confined to typicial geographical areas: those living on high plateaus, typified by the inhabitants of the Andes, and those of the lowlands, typified by the Indians of Eastern Peru, Brazil and Guyana. Both classes of Indians may be characterized as individuals with the following easily distinguishable physical features thick black straight hair, thin beards, high cheek bones, small eyes, and short chins. Of the two groups the plateau dwellers were more civilized, and engaged for the most part in agricultural pursuits. Their food consisted largely of vegetables. On the other hand the inhabitants of the arid and tropical lowlands were gathered in wild and nomadic tribes. They lived largely by the chase, wandering about to a certain extent in quest of their food, which had a high meat content. Among this wilder type of aborigines natural selection was still being actively carried on by the agencies of strife between species, and a continual struggle against the climate, food the aborigines should demonstrate Stones of enormous) of authority. Initiative was broken, and independence of thought and action was unknown among the masses. Such was the nature of the social in size were fitted together with extreme | fence was to commit, at the same care so that no space would exist be- time, a sin against the religious tween the adjacent stones. A well- order. Consequently the aborigines known striking example of such had early learned the necessity of masonry is found in the twelve-cor- unquestioning obedience to the voice nered stone. This has, as its name implies, twelve right-angle corners. Each corner fits into the neighboring stones like the lost zig-zagged piece of a picture puzzle. But their achieve-heritance of the Indians who were, ments were far inferior to those of the Greeks and Romans. The develop ment of decorative art among the Incas was not high. The walls which remain are seldom decorated; and the temple of the Sun itself must have depended upon the gold and silver hangings of the walls for the splendor which it possessed. In the University of San Marcos, incidentally the oldest university in the new world, at Lima, there is a newly organized museum containing extremely interesting Inca relics. Pottery displaying extraordinary coloring, but inferior figures (another example of the inferiority of the Incas in art) is common. Crude metal images, shawl-pins, hammers, primitive mining implements, cloth, etc., furnish evidence of the degree of civilization which had been attained. Numerous mummified figures in a sitting posture, elbows resting on the knees, and the chin in the palms of the hands, supply evidence that the physical appearance of the Inca peoples was similar to that of the Plateau Indians of to-day. During Inca rule the Indians had lived under a union of civil and religious authority for several centuries. The Inca was a duality in the opinion of his subjects. He was at the same time god and man. He was supposed to be a direct descendant of the Sun; and in him was vested the highest authority of the church and of the state. To commit a civil of in reality, the representatives of the highest native civilization when the Spaniards came to the continent. Compared with other Indians they had achieved a high degree of civilization. But in comparison with the social heritage of the whites, transmitted and accumulated by Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, the social inheritance of the Indians was far less in quantity and inferior in quality. In spite of the fact that the Incas had a comparatively favorable environment for the expression of the possibilities within their germinal complex they made no great contributions to civilization. The conclusion is natural that the germinal complex was lacking in the necessary possibilities. Even the highest types of Indians were inferior to the whites. In Chile the Araucanians or Mapocho Indians were a fairly civilized people, endowed with extraordinary courage and bravery which enabled them to be the only aborigines upon the continent against whom, for a long time, the conquistadores waged unsuccessful war. Their government was a military aristocracy. Their residences were better than those of many savages in that even houses were not unknown. They engaged to some extent in agriculture. Southern Chile and Southern Argentina was the land of the Patagonian Indians, but they interest us scarcely at all in this discussion, since they have not introduced their ་ |