Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/16

10 resources, come into political or social contact some one of four possible results follows. Either the weaker race dies out before the stronger, or it is absorbed into the stronger, the latter remaining practically unaffected, or the two become commingled into something different from what either was before, or, finally, the two continue to dwell together unmixed, each preserving a character of its own.

Let us consider each of these possible cases. Where the backward race is either small in numbers or of weak physical stamina, and is still in the savage stage, it vanishes quickly. This need not be the fault of the stronger race. Sometimes, no doubt, the invader or immigrant kills off the natives, who resent the seizure of their hunting-grounds or prove themselves thievish neighbours. Sometimes the conqueror reduces the natives to a slavery under which the latter perish, as in the awful instance of the extermination of the Indians of the Greater Antilles under Spanish rule, an extermination practically complete within half a century after Columbus discovered them. Sometimes the introduction of new diseases, which the bodies of the natives cannot resist, sweeps them off in vast numbers, as nearly the whole Hottentot nation died of small-pox, and a considerable part of the Fijian islanders of measles. Alcoholic drinks are specially pernicious to an aboriginal race, because it is usually wanting in self-control, and is supplied with liquor more fiery and poisonous than Europeans consume. Sometimes the mere change of habits of life induces physical decline, as when the pursuit of wild creatures ceases to be possible, or when