San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-08-20
A PRIMITIVE RACE.
The North American Indians and
Civilization.
Although the Aborigines Have Been Ed
ucated Somewhat, They Still Retain
Their WIND and Barbsrous
Instincts.


of discussion whether the North Amer
lean Indian could be civilized. 1t was
admitted that he could be "converted;"
it was demonstrated, in individual cases,
that he could be educated. But could
he be civilized? In our observation, the
process of civilization is very slow one
in race. 1t must pass through a num-
Der of long stages of development, and
the process cannot be fastened by arti-
fetal means. In our dav, writes Charles
Dudley Warner in Harper's Magazine,
we have seen a number of races brought
into sudden contact with civilization
shrivel and shrink away before it to the
point of disappearance. The physical
development seemed to be arrested,
and the moral nature to be set from a
savage non-moral condition into an
day, belief in the omuipotent power
of education, of the beneficent effect of
the dollhouse system applied to bar
barians, or semi-barbarians. When we
come in contact with a race like that in
the Sandwich islands, or in Tahiti, or
the Africans, we fancy that all we need
to do is to teach them our knowledge in
order to put tn EN- at once in the line Of
civilized peoples. 1t seems to us that
by this forcing process we can cut short
the slow natural phases of develop
ment. And we are surprised when the
race thus being operated on does not
respond to our treatment, but fades
away under it, and, in fact, finds civil
cation fatal to its life.
We go upon the assumption that
every race is capable of as high a civili-
zation as we have attained, and that it
is only question Of means and time
that Is, that nature has no failures in
its plan, and is not satisfied, in many
instances, with a very limited develop
ment. The careful and intimate study
of the hairy Ainoo, on the Japanese
island of Yezo, made recently by Mr..
A. ii. Savage Landor-the grandson of
Walter Savage Landor-throws some
light upon this subject. The Ainoo
were once supposed to be the aboriginal
Japanese, for they overran the islands;
but they are distinct and, so far as we
know, unique race. They are wholly
savages, but gentle savages, like
the more amiable of the wild ami
mails, and as filthy in their habits as
animals usually are not. They are
ideally near the conception of our sup
posititious ancestors, whose habits
were chiefly arboreal. They are COW
cred with hair like monkeys: but they
aredistinctly human, and not m onkeys.
They have no social organization, no
laws, no religion, though many of the
superstitions which are common in
civilized communities, a meager vo-
cabulary, and no written language.
They show susceptibility to kindness,
and form attachments as animals do.
Here is no case of degeneration. They
have never been civilized; they have
never been in any higher intellectual
or moral condition than they are now,
and they never can be civilized. They
are in process of slow extinction in con-
tact with the japanese. There is much
evidence to show that here is race as
near primeval conditions as any we
have found, who ages ago advanced to
certain stage and there stopped. The
advance that they have made is that
they wear clothes in the win
ter weather, that they dwell in
huts, that certain communities adhere
together, that they intermarry in the
community, and that there is certain
sketchy outline of family life. If one
could say that they live without crime
it would be because they live without
law. The monkey has the advantage of
them in having a tail and mischievous
and malignant disposition. But hairy
and savage as the Ainoo is, he is just as
far from monkey as is a Frenchman
or senator of the United States.
Even to the capacity of being insane,
he is distinctly human being, and yet
apparently the end of a chain of de-
velopment, incapable of ever going a
step further. He seems to have been
preceded in Yezo by a race of pit dwell
ers, savages who lived in pits excavated
in the ground, in the bottom of which
fires were built, and which were prob
ably rooted over in inclement weather
These would seem to be a lower order
of beings than cave jewellers. Have
we, in them, another race that was only
capable of a certain degree of develop
ment; and must these perish, without
handing anything on or contributing
anything TO the progress of the human
race? Wenever can tell. Theymay have
been cut off in their experiment by too
early a contact with a higher grade of
development. 1t is possible that the
North American Indian would have
grown into civilization in time, if he
had not been prematurely discovered,
and confronted with our whitening in
fuence. 1t is possible that Africa,
which has so many distinct types,