THE HALF-BLOOD INDIAN. 761 



THE HALF-BLOOD INDIAN. 



AN ANTHROPOMETRIC STUDY. 

 BY FRANZ BOAS.* 



rpHERE are few countries in which the effects of intermixture 

 -L of races and of change of environment upon the physical 

 characteristics of man can be studied as advantageously as in 

 America, where a process of slow amalgamation between three 

 distinct races is taking place. Migration and intermarriage have 

 been a fruitful source of intermixture in the Old World, and have 

 had the effect of effacing strong contrasts in adjoining countries. 

 While the contrasts between European, negro, and Mongol are 

 striking, their territories are connected by broad stretches of 

 land which are occupied by intermediate types. For this reason 

 there are only few places in the Old World in which the compo- 

 nent elements of a mixed race can be traced to their sources by 

 historical methods. In America, on the other hand, we have a 

 native race which, although far from being uniform in itself, 

 offers a marked contrast to all other races. Its affiliations are 

 closest toward the races of Eastern Asia, remotest to the Euro- 

 pean and negro races. Extensive intermixture with these foreign 

 races has commenced in recent times. Furthermore, the Euro- 

 pean and African have been transferred to new surroundings on 

 this continent, and have produced a numerous hybrid race, the 

 history of which can also be traced with considerable accuracy. 

 We find, therefore, two races in new surroundings and three 

 hybrid races which offer a promising subject for investigation : 

 the Indian-white, the Indian-negro, and the negro-white. The 

 following study is devoted to a comparison of the Indian race 

 with the Indian- white hybrid race. 



It is generally supposed that hybrid races show a decrease in 

 fertility, and are therefore not likely to survive. This view is 

 not borne out by statistics of the number of children of Indian 

 women and of half-blood women. The average number of chil- 

 dren of five hundred and seventy-seven Indian women and of one 

 hundred and forty-one half-blood women more than forty years 

 old is 5'9 children for the former and 7'9 children for the latter. It 

 is instructive to compare the number of children for each woman 

 in the two groups. While about ten per cent of the Indian 



* The material for this study was collected for the Department of Ethnology of the 

 World's Columbian Exposition. Prof. F. W. Putnam, chief of the department, organized 

 a Section of Physical Anthropology, in charge of the writer. It was one of the objects of 

 this section to collect anthropometric material illustrating the racial characteristics of the 

 North American Indians. 



