September 3, 1891] 



NATURE 



433 



or relied on as an authority on the customs, traditions, and more 

 particularly on the religious ideas of uncivilized races who has 

 not acquired an acquaintance with their language, sufficient to 

 enable him to converse with them freely on these difficult subjects. 

 No one would object to this rule when we have to deal with 

 civilized and literary nations. But the langxiages of Africa, 

 America, Polynesia, and even Australia, are now being studied 

 as formerly Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit only were 

 studied. You have only to compare the promiscuous descrip- 

 tions of the Hottentots in the works of the best ethnologists 

 with the researches of a real Hottentot scholar like Dr. Hahn to 

 see the advance that has been made. When we read the books 

 of Bishop Callaway on the Zulu, of William Gill and Edward 

 Tregear on the Polynesians, of Horatio Hale on some of the 

 North American races, we feel at once that we are in safe hands, 

 in the hands of real scholars. Even then we must, of course, 

 remember that their knowledge of the languages cannot compare 

 with that of Bentley, or Hermann, or Burnouf, or Ewald. Yet 

 we feel that we cannot go altogether wrong in trusting to their 

 guidance. 



I venture to go even a step further, and I believe the time 

 will come when no anthropologist will venture to write on any- 

 thing concerning the inner life of man without having himself 

 acquired a knowledge of the language in which that inner life 

 finds its truest expression. 



This may seem to be exacting too much, but you have only 

 to look, for instance, at the description given of the customs, 

 the laws, the legends, and the religious convictions of the people 

 of India about a hundred years ago, and before Sanskrit began to 

 be studied, and you will be amazed at the utter caricature that is 

 often given there of the intellectual state of the Brahmans com- 

 pared with what we know of it now from their own literature. 



And if that is the case with a people like the Indians, who 

 are a civilized race, possessed of an ancient literature, and well 

 within the focus of history for the last two thousand years, what 

 can be expected in the case of really savage races ? One can 

 hardly trust one's eyes when one sees the evidence placed before 

 us by men whose good faith cannot be questioned, and who 

 nevertheless contradict each other flatly on the most ordinary 

 subjects. We owe to one of our Secretaries, Mr. Roth, a most 

 careful collection of all that has been said on the Tasmanians by 

 eye-witnesses. Not the least valuable part of this collection is 

 that it opens our eyes to the utter untrustworthiness of the evi- 

 dence on which the anthropologist has so often had to rely. In 

 an article on Mr. Roth's book in Nature, I tried to show that 

 there is not one essential feature in the religion of the Tas- 

 manians on which different authorities have not made assertions 

 diametrically opposed to each other, ^ome say that the Tas- 

 manians have no idea of a Supreme Being, no rites or cere- 

 monies ; others call their religion Dualism, a worship of good 

 and evil spirits. Some maintain that they had deified the 

 powers of Nature, others that they were Devil-worshippers. 

 Some declare their religion to be pure monotheism, combined 

 with belief in the immortality of the soul, the efficacy of prayers 

 and charms. Nay, even the most recent article of faith — the 

 descent of man from some kind of animal — has received a 

 religious sanction among the Tasmanians. For Mr. Horton, 

 who is not given to joking, tells us that they believed "they 

 were originally formed with tails, and without knee-joints, by a 

 benevolent being, and that another descended from heaven, and, 

 compassionating the sufferers, cut off their tails, and with grease 

 softened their knees." 



I would undertake to show that what applies to the descrip- 

 tions given us of the now extinct race of the Tasmanians applies 

 with equal force to the descriptions of almost all the savage 

 races with whom anthropologists have to deal. In the case of 

 large tribes, such as the inhabitants of Australia, the contra- 

 dictory evidence may, no doubt, be accounted for by the fact 

 that the observations were made in different localities. But the 

 chief reason is always the same — ignorance of the language, and 

 therefore want of sympathy and impossibility of mutual explana- 

 tion and correction. 



Let me, in conclusion, give you one of the most flagrant in- 

 stances of how a whole race can be totally misrepresented by 

 men ignorant of their language, and how these misrepresenta- 

 tions are at once removed if travellers acquire a knowledge of 

 the language, and thus have not only eyes to see, but ears to 

 hear, tongues to speak, and hearts to feel. 



No race has been so cruelly maligned for centuries as the in- 

 habitants of the Andaman Islands. An Arab writer of the ninth 



NO. I 1 40, VOL. 44] 



century states that their complexion was frightful, their hair 

 frizzled, their countenance and eyes terrible, their feet very large, 

 and almost a cubit in length, and that they go quite naked. 

 Marco Polo (about 1285) declared that the inhabitants are no 

 better than wild beasts, and he goes on to say: "I assure you 

 all the men of this island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, 

 and teeth and eyes likewise ; in fact, in the face they are just 

 like big mastiff dogs." 



So long as no one could be found to study their language, 

 there was no appeal from these libels. But when, after the 

 Sepoy mutiny in 1857, it was necessary to find a habitation for 

 a large number of convicts, the Andaman Islands, which had 

 already served as a penal settlement on a smaller scale, became 

 a large penal colony under English officers. The havoc that 

 was wrought by this sudden contact between the Andaman 

 Islanders and these civilized Indian convicts was terrible, and 

 the end will probably be the same as in Tasmania — the native 

 population will die out. Fortunately one of the English officers 

 (Mr. Edward Horace Man) did not shrink from the trouble of 

 learning the language spoken by these islanders, and, being a 

 careful observer and perfectly trustworthy, he has given us some 

 accounts of the Andaman aborigines which are real masterpieces 

 of anthropological research. If these islanders must be swept 

 away from the face of the earth, they will now, at all events, 

 leave a good name behind them. Even their outward appear- 

 ance seems to become different in the eyes of a sympathizing 

 observer from what it was to casual travellers. They are, no 

 doubt, a very small race, their average height being 4 feet 

 lof inches. But this is almost the only charge brought against 

 them which Mr. Man has not been able to rebut. Their hair, 

 he says, is fine, very closely curled, and frizzly. Their colour is 

 dark, but not absolutely black. Their features possess little of 

 the most marked and coarser peculiarities of the Negro type. 

 The projecting jaws, the prominent thick lips, the broad and 

 flattened nose of the genuine Negro, are so softened down as 

 scarcely to be recognized. 



But let us hear now what Mr. Man has to tell us about the 

 social, moral, and intellectual qualities of these so-called 

 savages, who had been represented to us as cannibals ; as 

 ignorant of the existence of a deity ; as knowing no marriage ; 

 except what by a bold euphemism has been called communal 

 marriage ; as unacquainted with fire ; as no better than wild 

 beasts, having heads, teeth, and eyes like dogs— being, in fact, 

 like big mastiffs. 



"Before the introduction into the islands of what is called 

 European civilization, the inhabitants," Mr. Man writes, 

 " lived in small villages, their dwellings built of branches and 

 leaves of trees. They were ignorant of agriculture, and kept 

 no poultry or domestic animals. Their pottery was hand- made, 

 their clothing very scanty. They were expert swimmers and 

 divers, and able to manufacture well-made dugout canoes and 

 outriggers. They were ignorant of metals, ignorant, we are 

 told, of producing fire, though they kept a constant supply of 

 burning and smouldering wood. They made use of shells for 

 their tools, had stone hammers and anvils, bows and arrows, 

 harpoons for killing turtle and fish. Such is the fertility of the 

 island that they have abundance and variety of food all the year 

 round. Their food was invariably cooked, they drank nothing 

 but water, and they did not smoke. People may call this a 

 savage life. I know many a starving labourer who would 

 gladly exchange the benefits of European civilization for the 

 blessings of such savagery." 



These small islanders, who have always been represented by a 

 certain class of anthropologists as the lowest stratum of humanity, 

 need not fear comparison, so far as their social life is concerned, 

 with races who are called civilized. So far from being addicted 

 to what is called by the self-contradictory name of communal 

 marriage, Mr. Man tells us that bigamy, polygamy, polyandry, 

 and divorce are unknown to them, and that the marriage con- 

 tract, so far from being regarded as a merely temporary contract, 

 to be set aside on account of incompatibility of temper or other 

 such causes, is never dissolved. Conjugal fidelity till death is 

 not the exception but the rule, and matrimonial differences, 

 which occur but rarely, are easily settled with or without the 

 intervention of friends. One of the most striking features of 

 their social relations is the marked equality and affection which 

 exist between husband and wife, and the considerati >n and re- 

 spect with which women are treated might, with advantage, be 

 emulated by certain classes in our own land. As to cannibalism 

 or infanticide, they are never practised by them. 



