Natives and Primitives

A NEW realization is creeping over anthropologists. They are beginning to treat "primitive peoples" and their customs with some respect.

Often, during the nineteenth century, native races were regarded as a living sign of the greatness of Europeans. They were an argument for the belief that we had progressed almost infinitely beyond our forefathers. Oftener still they were treated as pets, as queer and rather delightful children. Sometimes, alas ! they obtained nothing but disdain from us, and were bidden to put on a shirt and duck trousers before they were spoken to.

But we observed that, as we carried about with us the

benefits of civilization, the ungrateful recipients of our favours would frequently die on our hands. In the South Seas entire islands were depopulated. It became notorious that a Europeanized native was a worse human being than the native who remained in his original environment. It was a particular blow to our self-esteem that a witch-doctor would often succeed in curing a patient when our own medical science had failed.

And yet this did not mean that we had nothing to bring to native races. Certainly our kindness was indiscriminate at first. We imagined that all our own customs were divinely arranged, better in themselves than other customs, and better

for the natives. It was taken for granted that there could be no higher ideal for a native than that he should become a

European. We found that some of our customs were harmful to the natives. We found that some of their own customs were better for themselves. A suspicion has even dawned on some anthropologists that there are native customs that would be better for us.

The late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers affords a good example of the change of view which is affecting the students of anthropology. Observers have often remarked upon the lack of concentration that natives show in their conversation with Europeans. They seem unable to keep to the point, and they soon tire of being interrogated. Dr. Rivers explains that they are bored. He confesses that, when he had succeeded in rousing -their interest, their powers of sticking strictly to the subject and producing all manner of facts to illustrate it were so great as to leave him absolutely fatigued.

" Two or three hours of such work have often reduced me, literally as well as metaphorically, to exhaustion, while my informant sat smiling and alert before me, apparently ready to go on with the topic for ever."

There is a growing recognition that the standards of European civilization are not absolute. It can hardly be doubted that most native races are in some way " backward,'' that there is a superior strength and value in our own culture, that we do in reality represent the apex of our own world period. Closer study of native customs, however, compels us to a revolutionary and astonishing inference. It is that we have not progressed beyond our forefathers nearly as much as we suppose. In specific ways we must be greater ; in specific ways it may turn out that we are smaller. But it seems undeniable that the native races of our own day cannot justly be taken as representatives of primitive man.

Native peoples are not truly primitive peoples. Their arts, their beliefs, their customs, are an inheritance. • It would be impossible now for an Australian aboriginal tribe to invent for itself the complicated system of marriage laws to which it holds so rigorously. We can see in many native customs evidence of degeneration. We can see how the same rite can come to be misapprehended by one tribe, and remain- as a superstitious relic, while another tribe apprehends it rightly and preserves in it a definite social purpose and use. In Mr. G. C. Wheeler's book, Mono-Ala Folklore (a spe- cialist's thesis, showing much research but not designed for the

general reader), there are good instances of this degeneration. A native will tell a story he has heard from his elders, as though it were a mere anecdote. Elsewhere we will find the

same story told with a definite religious and ritual signifi. cance. We have experience in our own civilization of how meaning can die out from ritual. Originally, it is evident, the vast body of folk-custom and folklore had definite creative meaning and use ; and we can best discover the nature of primitive man by comparing the customs of native races, and re-creating for ourselves the circumstances in which they had a genuine value for human life.

Dr. Rivers' essays on Psychology and Ethnology arc par- ticularly interesting. They were written during the period when his complex and rather arid mind had received a new stimulus from the school of " diffusionists." This school sees, in similarities of custom through widely dispersed regions, evidence that the culture of native races reached them from a common centre. With this view there is no need to conclude that native races themselves have degenerated---their arts and beliefs were importations, and it is natural that with the passing of time they should be misconceived.. Dr. Rivers covers much ground. He was an excellent " field-worker," unusually fitted to sympathise with native life and to gain information where others would fail.

But perhaps Mr. Hambly's two volumes are the most useful of all these works. He has made, compendiums of information on two very important subjects,, and he has written with alertness to the value of native customs. In .Tribal Dancing he points out that natives make constant use of dancing both as a social expression and as a therapeutic measure ; and that here, at any rate, we could very well learn something from them. " Dancing and music," he argues, " are the essence of communal life." In dancing, especially, Europe is poor. There is no general theory of the dance and comparatively little discussion, on a true cultural plane, of the expressive value of particular dances.

Even in his volume on the Origins of Education we see much to make us respect surviving customs ; and again and again it is driven home to us that the invention of these customs demanded a creative genius as great as any of which we can boast in our own day. Mr. Hambly himself inclines towards the views of the " diffusionists," and traces back the educa- tional customs of native races to the initiations of the priest- kings of Egypt.