Read Ebook: The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies by Latham R G Robert Gordon

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 374 lines and 58155 words, and 8 pages

DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE. PAGE Heligoland and the Frisians.--Gibraltar and the Spanish Stock.-- Malta.--The Ionian Islands.--The Channel Islands. 1

DEPENDENCIES IN AFRICA.

The Gambia Settlements.--Sierra Leone.--The Gold Coast.--The Cape.--The Mauritius.--The Negroes of America. 34

BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES IN ASIA.

Aden.--The Mongolian Variety.--The Monosyllabic Languages.--Hong Kong.--The Tenasserim Provinces; Maulmein, Ye, Tavoy, Tenasserim, the Mergui Archipelago.--The M?n, Siamese, Avans, Kariens, and Silong.--Arakhan.--Mugs, Khyens.--Chittagong, Tippera, and Sylhet.--Kuki.--Kasia.--Cachars.--Assam.--Nagas.--Singpho.--Jili. --Khamti.--Mishimi.--Abors and Bor-Abors.--Dufla.--Aka.--Muttucks and Miri, and other Tribes of the Valley of Assam.--The Garo.-- Classification.--Mr. Brown's Tables.--The Bodo.--Dhimal.--Kocch. --Lepchas of Sikkim.--Rawat of Kumaon.--Polyandria.--The Tamulian Populations.--Rajmahali Mountaineers.--K?lis, Khonds, Goands, Chenchwars.--Tudas, &c.--Bhils.--Waralis.--The Tamul, Telinga, Kanara, and Malayalam Languages. 92

The Sanskrit Language.--Its Relations to certain Modern Languages of India; to the Slavonic and Lithuanic of Europe.--Inferences.-- Brahminism of the Puranas.--Of the Institutes of Menu.--Extract. --Of the Vedas.--Extract.--Inferences.--The Hind?s.--Sikhs.-- Biluchi.--Afghans.--Wandering Tribes.--Miscellaneous Populations. --Ceylon.--Buddhism.--Devil-worship.--Vaddahs. 150

British Dependencies in the Malayan Peninsula.--The Oceanic Stock and its Divisions.--The Malay, Semang, and Dyak Types.--The Orang Binua.--Jakuns.--The Biduanda Kallang.--The Orang Sletar.--The Sarawak Tribes.--The New Zealanders.--The Australians.--The Tasmanians. 203

DEPENDENCIES IN AMERICA.

The Athabaskans of the Hudson's Bay Country.--The Algonkin Stock. --The Iroquois.--The Sioux.--Assineboins.--The Eskimo.--The Kol?ch.--The Nehanni.--Digothi.--The Atsina.--Indians of British Oregon, Quadra's and Vancouver's Island.--Haidah.--Chimsheyan.-- Billichula.--Hailtsa.--Nutka.--Atna.--Kitunaha Indians.-- Particular Algonkin Tribes.--The Nascopi.--The Bethuck.--Numerals from Fitz-Hugh Sound.--The Moskito Indians.--South American Indians of British Guiana.--Caribs.--Warows.--Wapisianas.-- Tarumas.--Caribs of St. Vincent.--Trinidad. 224

PREFACE

The following pages represent a Course of Six Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, Manchester, in the months of February and March of the present year; the matter being now laid before the public in a somewhat fuller and more systematic form than was compatible with the original delivery.

ETHNOLOGY OF THE BRITISH DEPENDENCIES.

DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE.

HELIGOLAND AND THE FRISIANS.--GIBRALTAR AND THE SPANISH STOCK.--MALTA.--THE IONIAN ISLANDS.--THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.

Now we know, by name at least, five of the tribes who are thus connected by a common worship--mysterious and obscure as it is. They are the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and the Nuithones.

Two others we know by something more than name--the Varini and the Langobardi.

In respect to its inhabitants, it must serve as a slight text for a long commentary. A population of about two thousand fishers; characterized, like the ancient Venetians, by an utter absence of horses, mules, ponies, asses, carts, wagons, or any of the ordinary applications of animal power to the purposes of locomotion, confined to a small rock, and but little interrupted with foreign elements, is, if considered in respect to itself alone, no great subject for either the ethnologist or the geographer. But what if its relations to the population of the continent be remarkable? What if the source of its population be other than that which, from the occupants of the nearest portion of the continent, we are prepared to expect? In this case, the narrow area of an isolated rock assumes an importance which its magnitude would never have created.

A difference like that between the Frisians of Heligoland and the Germans of Hanover, is always suggestive of an ethnological alternative; since it is a general rule, supported both by induction and common sense, that, except under certain modifying circumstances, islands derive their inhabitants from the nearest part of the nearest continent. When, however, the populations differ, one of two views has to be taken. Either some more distant point than the one which geographical proximity suggests has supplied the original occupants, or a change has taken place on the part of one or both of the populations since the period of the original migration.

Which has been the case here? The latter. The present Germans of the coast between the Elbe and Weser are not the Germans who peopled Heligoland, nor yet the descendants of them. Allied to them they are; inasmuch as Germany is a wide country, and German a comprehensive term; but they are not the same. The two peoples, though like, are different.

But all is not bare from Dan to Beersheba. The German of the old Germanic type is to be found if sought for. His locality, however, is away from the more frequented parts of his country. Still it is the part which Tacitus knew best, and which he more especially described. This is the parts on the Lower rather than the Upper Rhine; and it is the parts about the Ems and Weser rather than those of the Rhine at all--sacred as is this latter stream to the patriotism of the Prussian and Suabian. It is Lower rather than Upper Germany, Holland rather than Germany at all, and Friesland rather than any of the other Dutch provinces. It is Westphalia, and Oldenburg, as much, perhaps, as Friesland. The tract thus identified extends far into the Cimbric Peninsula,--so that the Jutlander, though a Dane in tongue, is a Low German in appearance.

Such is the physiognomy. What are the other peculiarities of the Frisian? His language, his distribution, his history.

If the Frisian differ from the Dutch, it differs still more from the proper Low German dialects of Westphalia, Oldenburg, and Holstein; all of which have the differential characteristics of the Dutch in a greater degree than the Dutch itself.

The closest likeness to the Frisian has ceased to exist as a language. It has disappeared on the Continent. It has changed in the island which adopted it. That island is Great Britain.

No existing nation, as tested by its language, is so near the Angle of England as the Frisian of Friesland. This, to the Englishman, is the great element of its interest.

The history of the Frisian Germans must begin with their present distribution. They constitute the present agricultural population of the province of Friesland; so that if Dutch be the language of the towns, it is Frisian which we find in the villages and lone farm-houses. And this is the case with that remarkable series of islands which runs like a row of breakwaters from the Helder to the Weser, and serves as a front to the continent behind them. Such are Ameland, Terschelling, Wangeroog, and the others--each with its dialect or sub-dialect.

It was spoken in parts of East Friesland as late as the middle of the last century--but only in parts; the Low German, or Platt-Deutsch, being the current tongue of the districts around.

It is spoken--as already stated--in Heligoland.

And, lastly, it is spoken in an isolated locality as far north as the Duchy of Sleswick, in the neighbourhood of Husum and Bredsted.

It was these Frisians of Sleswick who alone, during the late struggle of Denmark against Germany, looked upon the contest with the same indifference as the frogs viewed the battles of the oxen. They were not Germans to favour the aggressors from the South, nor Danes to feel the patriotism of the Northmen. They were neither one nor the other--simply Frisians, members of an isolated and disconnected brotherhood.

The remainder of the displacement of the Frisians was, most probably, effected by the introduction of the Low Germans of the empire of Charlemagne, into the present countries of Oldenburg and Hanover; and I believe that the same series of conquests, which then broke up the speakers of the Frisian, annihilated the Germanic representatives of the Anglo-Saxons of England; since it is an undeniable fact that of the numerous dialects of the country called Lower Saxony, all are forms of the Platt-Deutsch, and none of them descendants of the Anglo-Saxon. Hence, as far as the language represents the descent, whatever we Anglo-Saxons may be in Great Britain, America, Hindostan, Australia, New Zealand, or Africa, we are the least of our kith and kin in Germany. And we can afford to be so. Otherwise, if we were a petty people, and given to ethnological sentimentality, we might talk about the Franks of Charlemagne, as the Celts talk of us; for, without doubt, the same Franks either exterminated or denationalized us in the land of our birth, and displaced the language of Alfred and AElfric in the country upon which it first reflected a literature.

Lastly, we have the evidence of Procopius that "three numerous nations inhabit Britain,--the Angles, the Frisians, and the Britons."

Whatever interpretation we may put upon the preceding extracts, it is certain that the Frisians are the nearest German representatives of our Germanic ancestors; whilst it is not uninteresting to find that the little island of Heligoland, is the only part of the British Empire where the ethnological and political relations coincide.

In the next place, the Celtic frontier was by no means so near the geographical boundary of the Peninsula as it is often supposed to have been. Instead of the Celtic of Gaul reaching the Pyrenees, the Iberic of Spain reached the Loire--so that the province of Aquitania, although Gallic in politics, was Iberic in ethnology. This, again, is shown by Humboldt.

Yet it is only by means of the Basque language that the problem can be attempted. The physical conformation of the still extant Iberians, has nothing definitely characteristic about it. The ancient mythology has died away. The tribes most immediately allied have ceased to be other than unmixed. So the language alone remains--and that has yet to find its interpreter.

An Iberic basis--Greek, Phoenician, and Mauritanian intermixtures--possibly a Celtic element--Roman sufficient to change the language through four-fifths of the Peninsula--Gothic blood introduced by the followers of Euric--Arabian influences, second in importance to those of Rome only--such is the analysis of ethnological elements of the Spanish stock. The proportions, of course, differ in different parts of the Peninsula, and, although they are nowhere ascertained, it is reasonable to suppose that the Arab blood increases as we go southwards, and the Gothic and Iberic as we approach the Pyrenees. This makes Gibraltar the most Moorish part of Europe; and such I believe it to be.

Now this language is a form of the Arabic; and, with the exception of some of the dialects of Syria, it is the only instance of that language in the mouth of a Christian population. So thoroughly are the language and the religion of the Koran co-extensive.

The only other Arabic dependency of Great Britain is Aden.

Hence, in treating of the Maltese, there was no description of the Arabic stock at all. All that was stated was a reason for believing that the Maltese belonged to it. Such also, to a great degree, was the case with the Gibraltar population, and the Heligolanders. And such will be the case with the Ionian Islanders. It will not be thought necessary to enlarge upon the Greeks; it will only be requisite to ask how far the group in question is Grecian.

In respect to the stock to which these early and ante-Hellenic islanders belonged, the presumption is in favour of its having been the Illyrian; a stock known only in its probable remains--the Skipitar of Albania.

Time, however, made them all equally Hellenic, a result which was, probably, completed before the decline of Greek independence; since which epoch there have been the following elements of intermixture:--

Upon the whole, however, I believe the Ionian islanders to be what their language represents them--Greek. At the same time they are Greeks of an exceedingly mixed blood.

Again--of the foreign elements I imagine the Italian to be the chief. This, however, is an impression rather than a matured opinion.

The Slavonic element, too, is likely to be considerable. The Byzantine historians speak of numerous and permanent settlements, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both in Thessaly, and in the Morea; statements which the frequency of Slavonic names for Greek geographical localities confirms. Neither, however, outweighs the undoubted Hellenic character of the language, which is still the representative of the great medium of the fathers of literature and philosophy.

Its language is Roman--all that remains of the old tongues of the tribes which Caesar conquered being certain words in the present French, the Breton of Brittany, which is closely akin to the Welsh Celtic, and the Basque dialects of Gascony, which is Iberic.

FRENCH. NORSE. ENGLISH.

Names of places thus ending are almost exclusively limited to Normandy; occurring, even there, most numerously within a few miles of either the sea or the Seine.

Taking in the account the preceding invasions, and remembering that, both from Germany and Italy, Normandy is one of the most distant of the French provinces, we arrive at the following analysis.

The Channel Islanders are what the Normans are.

The Normans are Romanized Celts; the Roman element being somewhat less than it is elsewhere.

The Frank and Burgundian elements are also less.

But a Saxon element is greater.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet