Bancroft also made the following conclusions: “we see the human race classified under from one to sixty-three distinct species, according to individual opinions; and when we see that the several tests which govern classification are by no means satisfactory, and that those who have made this subject the study of their lives, cannot agree as touching the fundamental characteristics of such classification—we cannot but conclude, either that there are no absolute lines of separation between the various members of the human family, or that thus the touchstone by which such separation is to be made remains undiscovered.” Bancroft further concluded, that “The color of human skin, for example, is no certain guide in classification. Microscopists has ascertained that the normal colorations of the skin are not the results of organic differences in race; that complexions are not permanent physical characters, but are subject to change. Climate is a cause of physical differences and frequently in a single tribe may be found shades of color extending through all the various transitions from black to white. In one people, part occupying a cold mountainous region, and part a heated lowland, a marked difference in color is always perceptible. Peculiarities in the texture of the hair are likewise no proof of race. The hair is more sensibly affected by the action of the climate than the skin. Every degree of color and crispation may be found in the European family alone; and even among the frizzled locks of negroes every gradation appears, from crisped to flowing hair. The growth of the beard may be cultivated or retarded according to the caprice of the individual; and in those tribes which are characterized by an absence or thinness of beard, may be found the practice, continued for ages, of carefully plucking out all traces of beard at the age of puberty.” As I am often heard reminding all having ears willing to hear, early Ethnologists were mandated by a Congressional directive and appropriation of funds to collect data on the fast vanishing aboriginal American population and it became the mission and life’s work of many, including J.W. Powell, the very first Director the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology that became the Smithsonian Institution, along with Hubert Howe Bancroft, and others. However, the two men (in particular) saw their life’s works diminished because of an insistence upon telling the truth about aboriginal Americans in the face of tremendous pressure to advance the political theory of isolationism, even though Powell and Bancroft’s works clearly supported the idea that the ancient ancestors of Native Americans was a diverse group of DNA contributors, including Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Australoids and Melanesians. Ergo, selective bits of a proto-American aboriginal story have been offered in hind-sight to naïve students unaware of a contrived politically motivated Eurocentric perspective of isolationism (vs. diffusionism) in the development of aboriginal American populations. What that means is that the amassed information taken from the various Congressionally funded studies on the vanishing races, allowed a modern Nicene-(type) Council to begin a process of culling out undesirable or (Politically Incorrect) information, while concurrently retaining more desirable information on tribes that were more pleasing to political will and European tastes. The great thing about Government funded studies is that the information is usually retained and many times hidden in plain sight within the Library of Congress. Thankfully, Bancroft and Powell left their own writings and research which have become major collections for prominent Universities, although access is still very limited. From 1824 through the 1880s, information about American Aboriginals became centralized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Thus began a process of recognition and assignment of extinct status, along with development of public policies for dealing with First Americans and promotion/elevation of the theory of Asiatic Peoples (only) crossing the Bering Land Bridge to settle the Americas. This has been the story predominating the American mindset and imagination, despite evidence of differing probabilities over thousands of years and different eras of settlement. To that end, the Australo-African remains of Luzia (in Brazil) are remains of an even more ancient age than the Bering arrivals, but her trek would have been 10,000+ miles south of the Bering Strait. So, the bend of ones imagination is stretched towards the impossible if we adhere to the one arrival theory fits all. Denial, contentious treatment and archaeological bias, including cover-ups alleged by many (to include, David Hatcher Childress) has proven that the true Aboriginal American story directly contributed towards development of National Indian Policies that have been exclusionary and damaging to Black Aboriginal and Indigenous Nations and Peoples in the Americas. Childress contends that cover-ups include vast areas maintained by the Federal Government which remain inaccessible to the general public, including public lands, parks and artworks (like cave paintings, etc). He also found news paper articles informing the public of controversial tribal items taken from Native Nations, held by the Smithsonian institution that have mysteriously vanished amid scandals alleging destruction of valuable art objects at sea. Into whatsoever part of the newly discovered lands the European conquerors penetrated, they found a people within the Americas seemingly one in color, physiognomy, customs, and in mental and social traits. Their vestiges of antiquity and their languages presented “a coincidence which was generally observed by travelers. Hence physical and psychological comparisons are advanced to prove ethnological resemblances among all the peoples of America, and that they meanwhile possess common peculiarities totally distinct from the nations of the old world. Morton and his confreres, the originators of the American homogeneity theory, even go so far as to claim for the American man an origin as indigenous as that of the fauna and flora. They classify all the tribes of America, excepting only the Eskimos who wandered over from Asia, as the American race, and divide it into the American family and the Toltecan family. Blumenbach classified the Americans as a distinct species. The American Mongolidae of Dr. Latham are divided into Eskimos and American Indians. Dr. Morton perceives the same characteristic lineaments in the face of the Fuegian and the Mexican, and in tribes inhabiting the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi Valley, and Floria. The same osteological structure, swarthy color, straight hair, meagre beard obliquely cornered eyes, prominent cheek bones, and thick lips are common to them all.” Finally, in reiterating the advanced occupation of all the Aboriginal Americans within North America, and admitted differing complexions, Bancroft still confirmed their antiquity by the following; “All the writers however agree in giving to the nations of America a remote antiquity; and all admit that there exists a greater uniformity between them than is to be found in the old world; “The races of the Pacific States (Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico) embrace all the varieties of species known as American under any of the classifications mentioned, ‘the semi-civilized tribes of Mexico and Peru as the Toltecan family, and the savage nations as the Appalachian branch of the American family.” “The Californians, therefore he calls Malays” “Californians, in the eyes of this traveler, differ from their northern neighbors in complexion and physiognomy. The only physiological test that Mr. Pickering was able to apply in order to distinguish the Polynesian in San Francisco from the native Californian, was that the hair of the former was wavy, while that of the latter was straight. Both have more hair than the Oregonian. The skin of the Malay of the Polynesian Islands, and that of the California are alike, soft and very dark.”
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 16:22:41 +0000
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