32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Before endeavoring to go further with this account of the pres- 

 ent state of the negroes of this country, it is well to note the fact 

 that while much has been done to blend the original diversities of 

 their stock, these differences have by no means passed away. The 

 seekers after slaves in Africa were not choice as to their purchases 

 or captures; they reckoned as black if he were no darker than 

 brown, and they were not at all careful to see that his hair was 

 kinky. Thus it came about that from the wide ethnic range of 

 the Dark Continent there came to us a great variety of people — a 

 much more diverse population than we have received from Europe. 

 It might be supposed that the conditions of slavery would quickly 

 have effaced these differences, but even in that state there was 

 choice in mating, and certain stocks have such prepotency that a 

 small share of their blood stamps those who have it in a definite 

 manner. The result is that, under the mask of a common dark, 

 though really very variedly tinted skin, we have an exceeding 

 diversity of race and quality. 



It is discreditable to our students of anthropology that as yet 

 there has been no considerable effort made to determine the varie- 

 ties which exist in our negro population or the source of their 

 peculiarities in the tribes whence they come. In a small way, for 

 many years, on numerous journeys in the South, I have endeav- 

 ored to classify the blacks I have met. For a long time I kept 

 these results in a roughly tabulated form. Although such obser- 

 vations, including no measurements and giving only eye impres- 

 sions of the general form, can have no determinable value, they 

 may, in the absence of better work, deserve consideration. The 

 result of this rough inspection of many thousand of these peoples 

 in nearly every State in the South has been to indicate that there 

 are several, probably more than six, groups of so-called negroes 

 which represent original differences of stock or the mixed product 

 of their union. The more characteristic of these I will now briefly 

 describe. 



For convenience I will first note those who are termed mulat- 

 toes, in which there is an evident mixture of white blood. Such 

 admixture seems to be distinctly traceable if it amounts to as little 

 as one eighth; it is said that one sixteenth of negro blood, or less, 

 will be revealed on close study of the hair and skin. The pro- 

 portion of the negroes in our Southern States who have white 

 ancestry in any degree does not, in my opinion, exceed one tenth, 

 and may be as small as one twentieth of the whole number. Judg- 

 ing only by the hue of the skin, the observer will be likely to make 

 the proportion larger, for the reason that he will include many 

 persons who, because they come from stocks that were not black- 



