On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo. Broca Paul

On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

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Pretended examples of hybrid races (note on the Griquas of Southern Africa)

The question, where do we find hybrid races subsisting by themselves, has been asked before M. Pouchet. Dr. Prichard, in replying to it, could only find three instances: – 1. The Griquas, the progeny of the Hottentots and the Dutch. 2. The Cafusos of the forests of Varama (Brazil), a race described by Spix and Martius, and, according to them, the offspring of indigenous Americans and African Negroes. 3. The mop-headed Papuans inhabiting the island of Waigiou and the surrounding islands and the northern part of New Guinea, and who, according to MM. Quoy and Gaimard, are a hybrid race, the issue of a union of Malays and the Papuans proper.4

These three examples have been objected to, and are indeed liable to objections.5 We know next to nothing about the Cafusos, and no one can positively assert that they have remained unmixed with the indigenous race; but we know for certain that the Griquas have risen since the commencement of this century around a Protestant mission, by the fusion of some Dutch-Hottentot bastaard families with a large number of the Hottentot race, the Bosjesmen, and the Kaffir race. This example then proves, by no means, that a mixed race can perpetuate itself separately.6

With regard to the mop-headed Papuans, they live in a region the ethnography of which is scarcely known. MM. Quoy and Gaimard are of opinion that they are the issue of a mixture between the Malays and indigenous Negroes (sic); but they only advanced this opinion as an hypothesis: “They appeared to us to hold a medium place between those people (Malays) and the Negroes in regard to character, physiognomy, and the nature of their hair.”7 This is all those authors say; but Mr. Lesson instead of quoting this as a mere hypothesis, says, “These people have been perfectly described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, who were the first to demonstrate that they constitute a hybrid race, and are, unquestionably, the issue of Papuans (properly so called) and Malays located in those parts, and which form the mass of the population.” Mr. de Rienzi, on the other hand, has described two varieties of Papuan hybrids: one variety the issue of a crossing between the Papuans and the Malays, – the Papou-Malays; the second variety, the issue of an intermixture between the Papuans and the Alforian-Endamenes – the Pou-Endamenes.8 There is already a complication here. Now comes Mr. Maury, who maintains that the race issued from the Papuans and Malays is the Alforian race.9 What are we to conclude from these contradictions? M. Quoy and Gaimard had a certain impression, M. Rienzi entertained a somewhat different impression, to which the authorities cited by Mr. Maury are altogether opposed. All is then, as yet, an hypothesis, and the question is as yet doubtful. In this uncertainty it might well be asked whether the Malays, the Alfourous, the mop-headed Papuans, and the Papuans properly so called might not be as many pure races. It is not merely in the region of the mop-headed Papuans that the other three races are to be met with. The Malays, an invading people par excellence, have, like the English, established themselves on all the coasts accessible to their vessels, and if the mop-headed race occupies only a very confined district, and is perfectly unknown elsewhere where the same elements are present, we are permitted to conclude that it is not the result of an intermixture. Moreover, Dr. Latham, the most zealous of Dr. Prichard’s pupils, informs us that Mr. Earle has seen and described “the real and undoubted hybrids” of the Papuans and Malays, and that these are altogether different from the mop-headed Papuans.10

It will be perceived that the example of the Papuans is a worse selection than that of the Griquas, since it is very probable that those mop-headed men, the type of which was so perfectly described by Dampier two centuries ago, having been since preserved without alteration, are a pure race. Granting even that it is demonstrated that they belong to a hybrid race, they can scarcely be cited as a mixed race persisting by themselves, since, so far from living secluded from the two races from which they are said to be the issue, they live with them in the same localities. MM. Quoy and Gaimard, in their description of these pretended mongrels, add that there were Negroes among them (by which name they designate the Papuans proper) which formed a part of the tribe which visited us daily. There were even among them two individuals of a higher complexion, which, rightly or wrongly, were considered to be descended from Europeans or Chinese. It was thus a very mixed people. Mr. Lesson, speaking of the population of the small island of Waigiou,11 says that two races are found there, the Malays and the Alfourous, besides the hybrid races of the Papuans: “These are men without vigour or moral energy, subjected to the authority of the Malay rajahs, and frequently reduced to slavery by the surrounding islanders.”12 But it is well known what is the consequence of slavery, especially under an equatorial climate, and among a people given to incontinency. It is, then, simply impossible that the mop-headed race of the Isle of Waigiou should remain free from intermixture with the

Alfourous and the Malays, and if this race be really hybrid, it is not easy to see how Prichard and his adherents are authorised to assert that they persist by themselves.

The three examples adduced by Prichard having thus proved without any absolute value, a diametrically opposite doctrine has been advanced. It has been said that since this author was obliged to go so far for such indifferent examples, it amounts to a proof that he could not find any others,13 and the conclusion was arrived at that a mixed race neither has nor could have a permanent existence.

This novel assertion is perfectly erroneous, and if it found adherents, it is simply because the question has been badly put; because the word race has not received a precise signification, and consequently, a very confused acceptation has been given to the term.

Among the various characters which distinguish the numerous varieties of the genus homo, some are more or less important, and more or less evident. To distinguish two races, a single character, however slight, is sufficient, provided it be hereditary and sufficiently fixed. If, for instance, two peoples differed merely from each other by the colour of the hair and the beard, though they may resemble each other in every other respect, by the simple fact that the one has black, whilst the other has fair hair, it may be asserted that they are not of the same race. This is the popular and the true meaning of the term race, which, however, does not necessarily implicate the idea either of identity or diversity of origin. Thus all ethnologists and historians, all the monogenists, and polygenistic authors say that the Irish proper are not of the same race as the English. The Germans, the Celts, the Basques, the Sclaves, the Jews, Arabs, Kabyles, etc., etc., are considered more or less separate races, more or less easy to be characterised, and more or less distinguished by their manners, tongues, history and origin. There are thus a large number of human races; but if, instead of considering all the characters, we confine ourselves to take into consideration but a few of the more important, or if, after having by an analytical process, first studied the various races separately, we now subject them to a synthetic process, we soon recognise that there exists among them numerous affinities, which enable us to dispose them in a certain number of natural groups.

The ensemble of the characters common to each group, constitute the type of that group. Thus, all the races we have just enumerated, and many others, have the skin white, regular features, soft hair, oval face, vertical jaws, and elliptical cranium, etc. These points of resemblance give them in some sort a family likeness, by which they are recognised at once, and which has caused them to be designated by the collective name of Caucasian races. The hyperborean races, and those of Eastern Asia, constitute the family of Mongolian races; the group of Ethiopian races equally comprises a large number of black races with woolly hair, and a prognathous head. The American and the Malayo-Polynesian races form the two last groups.

It must not be believed that all human races can with equal facility be ranged in either of these divisions; nor must we believe that the characteristic traits of one group are equally marked in all the dependent races; nor even that they are found combined in any of these races; nor, finally, that in the centre of each group we find a typical race

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4

Prichard, Natural History of Man.

5

Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, p. 7, No. 4, London, 1856.

6

See the voyages of Truter and Somerville (1801), Lichtenstein (1805), Campbell (1813), John Philips (1825), Thompson (1824), etc., in the Collection of Voyages by Walkenaer, t. xv-xxi, Paris, 1842. In 1801 Truter and Somerville found near the Orange or Gariep river, in the district where now Griqua town stands, a horde of Bastaards and Bosjesmen, commanded by a Bastaard of the name of Kok (t. xvii, p. 364). On their return they found a considerable village, composed of Kaffirs, Hottentots, and mongrel breeds of several varieties, under the command of a chief named Kok (p. 393). In the same year Kitchener, the missionary, assembled the horde in a village. There came pure Hottentots and Namaquas (t. xviii, p. 126). In 1802 Anderson, the missionary, in organising the growing nation, gave authority to the Bastaards (p. 127). The village of Laawater or Klaarwater, which has since become Griqua-town, consisted in 1805, when Lichtenstein visited it, of about thirty families, one-half of which belonged to the Bastaard race, the rest were Namaquas or Hottentots. The village enlarged rapidly “by the arrival of refugees, and by marriages with the women of the Bosjesmen and the Koramas, who lived in the vicinity” (t. xix, p. 355). They practised polygamy. “They constituted a horde of nomadic naked savages, living by pillage and the chase; their bodies were besmeared with red paint, the hair covered with grease, living in ignorance, without any trace of civilisation” (p. 356). After the lapse of five years the missionaries commenced civilising them by giving them the taste for agricultural pursuits. The name, however, of Bastaards, which indicated their European origin, was no longer suitable to this nation, in which the African blood was greatly predominating. They took, therefore, the name of Griquas. Campbell asserts that they chose that name, as it was that of the principal family (t. xviii, p. 395). This explanation appears to me very doubtful. Ten Rhyne, who explored Southern Africa in 1673, twenty year after the first disembarkation of Europeans, already mentions the existence of a Hottentot people who went by the name of Gregoriquos (t. xv, p. 122). Thirty years after (1705) Kolbe designates the same people Gauriquas (t. xv, p. 253). There existed at that time another people, called Chirigriquas. In 1775 Thunberg still speaks of Gauriquas (t. xvi, p. 201), and of Chirigriquas. All these names have evidently the same root, and the singularity of Hottentot enunciation induced probably the various travellers to adopt a different orthography. It is thus presumable that the Hottentots of Klaarwater, in calling themselves Griquas, merely adopted the old name Gauriquas. There exists to this day the people Koraquas, signifying “people who wear shoes” (Burchell, t. xx, p. 60). They live in the neighbourhood of Klaarwater. Be this as it may, the new people of the Griquas gave to Klaarwater, influenced by the English missionaries, the name of Griqua-town. This town, called by Malte-Brun Kriqua, grew rapidly by the adjunction of the Koranas. In 1813 there were not less than 1,341 Koranas in a population of 2,607 inhabitants (t. xviii, p. 393). In 1814 the governor of the Cape tried to force the Griquas to furnish men for the indigenous army. The proposal was very badly received, and the nation was nearly in a state of dissolution. A portion of the inhabitants of Griqua-town escaped to the surrounding mountains, and formed bands of robbers, who, under the name of Bergmaars, devastated the country, and, associating with bands of Koranas, pillaged and massacred the Betchouanas and the Bosjesmen, and carried off their women and children. In 1825, owing to the intervention of John Philips, the Bergmaars were reduced to order, and returned to Griqua-town. They had now crossed with the Koranas, the Betchouanas, and Bosjesmen (t. xviii, p. 357). Some time previously a grave dissension had broken out among the settled Griquas. The governor of the Cape had sent an agent, John Melvil, with an important charge to a certain Waterboer, a Bosjesman by origin. The supremacy had hitherto belonged to the family Kok, who, proud of the drops of European blood in their veins, would not recognise the authority of Waterboer, and emigrated accordingly. Waterboer was, however, not dismissed; and in 1825 John Philips found the Griquas divided in three kraals, under the chiefs Kok, Berend, and Waterboer (t. xix, p. 370). If Dr. Prichard had taken the trouble to consult these documents he would have recognised that the Griquas had, by so many consecutive crossings, become almost a pure African race. Modern geographers range therefore the Griquas among the Hottentots, calling them Hottentot-Griquas. It is also noteworthy that Prichard, in citing the Griquas as an example of a mixed race, has given no description of them. In order that the example should be of any value, it is requisite that the Griquas should present an intermediate type between the Europeans and the natives. Neither Dr. Prichard nor any travellers say so. There is another consideration. The origin of the Griqua nation dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dr. Prichard last speaks of them in 1843. Two generations had not yet elapsed. There is another point. In 1800 the tribe of Kok was a horde but little numerous; in 1824 it was a people of five thousand souls, including seven hundred armed warriors (Thompson, loc. cit., t. xxi, p. 22). It is clear that this people were not descended from the primitive tribe, but had increased by numerous adjunctions. Father Peteam himself, if he were still alive, would be obliged to admit this. I have been very minute as to the Griquas, but I flatter myself that this is sufficient to discard from science the assertion of Prichard, which all modern monogenists have received with so much favour.

7

Quoy et Gaimard, Observat. sur la constitution physique des Papous, reproduit dans Lesson. Complement des Œuvres de Buffon, t. iii., Paris, 1829.

8

Domeny de Rienzi, l’Oceanie, t. iii, p. 303. Paris, 1837.

9

Maury, La terre et l’homme, p. 365. Paris, 1847.

10

Latham, The Natural History of the Varieties of Man, p. 213. London, 1850. Dr. Latham designates the Malays by the somewhat fantastic name, of Protonesians. There are a great number of neologisms of this kind in his work.

11

Some geographers say that Waigiou is a large Island; but they give no dimensions. It is, however, scarcely as large as the Island of Majorca. It is of an irregular form, long and narrow; it is about 80 leagues in circumference (Dumont d’Urville in Rienzi, l’Oceanie). It is only 25 leagues long and 10 leagues broad, says Henricy (Histoire de l’Oceanie. Paris, 1845.) The Island of Majorca is only 22 leagues in length by 16 leagues in breadth. Three races united in such a small territory, cannot long remain strangers to each other.

12

Lesson, loc. cit. t. ii. p. 19.

13

Davis, Crania Britannica. Introduction, p. 8, note.