Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 3:58 pm Post subject: Joyce E. Chaplin Reading
Hope everyones having a great weekend!
This article was very interesting to me because I have never really explored how racism started in the United States. I have explored the roots of racism when talking about it but never went as far back as when what is now the United States was starting to be colonized. I would have liked this article to be split between the viewpoints of the colonists and Native Americans.
I feel like the Colonists although many times wrong about why they were different than the Native Americans or why they were inferior got some important things correct but strayed, from the main point, did not have enough science or twisted what they discovered to benefit them. For example: “that the significant human variation in North America was not due to external environment but instead lay within the bodies of its European and Indian peoples.” (62) The reason so many Native Americans died of diseases was because of their immune systems which “lay within the bodies of…Indian(s)” were not capable of fighting of the diseases because it was the first time Native Americans encountered them. For this point they were right that what is inside of people makes them different but than they used this observation and that the Native Americans were getting sick a lot and twisted that into the fact that they were inferior.
Going back to the idea of what is now the United States being Eden; the last few articles described the huge amount of resources and how beautiful it seemed to colonists when they arrived and what they told people when they got back to Europe. They briefly mentioned how some colonists realized how tough the winters were but did not mention that the colonists were going back to Europe and saying what was wrong with North America. I think this article demonstrated well the other aspects people hear about besides the beauty before they decided to leave Europe. “Promoters of colonization had therefore to combat the apprehension that new climates would damage or destroy English bodies.” (70) Then later in that same paragraph: “America’s indigenous products were bad for European bodies, which were suited to different foods and herbs.” (70) It gave me a bigger picture when this reading is combined with the others of what potential colonists might have heard about North America.
Like Gigi, the ideological root of racism in a historical (verses moral) context seems rarely explored on the high school level. For this reason, I thought the shift within natural history from "All humans are potentially the same and adult specimens differ owing to the physical and cultural milieux in which they taken final form" (61) to this still very prevalent idea that identity is truly innate and, while expressed in a given environment, remains essentially unchanging is big. Furthermore, its especially telling that "This was not an idea originally stated in Old World explication of human bodies buts instead emerged when it was applied to American phenomena," (62). Why??
What I also found particularly difficult to discern within this reading was the reality of the based "adaptions." Joyce states that this idea of "seasoning," was a right and proud thing for a colonist to accomplish at it demonstrated their ability to adjust and adapt to the climate, food, air and water and therefore---their general hardiness. Yet instead of looking to the habits of Indians as lessons in environmental assimilation, colonists were afeared environmental factors would make them like Indians, and therefore, not native but instead, inferior. "To distance themselves from the natives, the English explained that America's effects on them were cultural rather than physical," (75)
Similar to Gigi's assertion that Englishmen twisted theory and ideology in a way that best justified their actions and suited their means, the issue of adaption as it supplements or interferes with identity becomes dichotomous.
I understood the aforementioned statement to mean that Englishmen wished to adapt to the lands on their own terms, not allow the environment to affect them the way it had seemingly affected Indians (which doesn't make sense come the ideological emergence of innate identity).
But then what does one make of this:
"The Hippocratic tradition emphasized the relation between the elements and the four bodily humors...The Galenic tradition also related the elements to the bodily humors and elaborated a theory of of the qualities...and the faculties (principles of alteration that the soul caused within the body itself," (64)
SOUL??? in the same way the English had to attest "cultural effects" to the environment to separate themselves from Indians, once "soul" is included im not sure how real these adaptations are---or even what Englishmen want them to be. "Water was of particular concern because, according to Hippocratic theory, it could impart its region-distinct qualities to people, with disastrous consequences if they were not adapted to these properties," (70)
It actually makes sense to wonder if your literal BODY can handle an introduction to a new substance. But according to the Hippocratic theory? this is about science, not "bodily humor" or the SOUL...so is this real? at all?
Englishmen seemed very fickle. This was hard...help.
So, for a nice change, i really liked this reading. I'm going to try something different and make a little list of some of my active reading notes to mention what really stood out to me.
who are the real native americans?
races based on environment?
contrast is internal
diet changes a person?
colonists easily adapted
internal vs external change
did the native americans adapt or the english?
who are the real natives?
Now to try and answer some of my own questions or at least analyze them. Obviously I think we can all come to an agreement that the real native americans are the "native americans/indians/whatever other politically correct name is being used now" Although they did migrate to the Americas like the English thought, it was pretty far in the past. at least enough so consider them the original inhabitants. the next two questions/thoughts are pretty evolution based, in my opinion. No idea if the contrast between the English and Americans was internal or not. I suppose the differences were based on their environments. The idea Chaplin had of "the fact that another population had arrived before them meant little is people in the first group had bodies that never truly acclimated." (page 251) was so interesting to me. It really let me understand the thought process of the English, and why they thought they were better suited for the new world. In reality, we now know that the English were just more immune to certain diseases, but in their eyes, being in new territory and surviving better than the inhabitants you found there is pretty sketchy.
Hope some of that made sense. I'll post later, too.
So here’s the main thing I took away from the reading- the English either saw Indians as primitive and poorly adapted, and thus inferior, or physically and culturally developed and well-adapted…. and also thus inferior. When Indians were considered an original people- genuinely native- they were too alien to be fully human. But if they were considered transplants from other continents or wandering tribes, the English could justify invading and taking over their lands. No European theory on Indians’ national origins validated them as having equally legitimate lifeways as the English. Some quotes that jumped out at me (in relation to that dichotomy) include….
“the image was of a shared atmosphere of disease (global rather than local) in which the English survived better than the Indians” (80)
“Lawson concluded that native medicines were efficacious, ‘God having furnished every country with specifick remedies for their peculiar diseases’” (77)
“Mather deplored the idea that climate could Indianize the English by making them lazy and disrespectful … To have asserted a physical adaptation would have made [Indians], paradoxically, not proper inhabitants of America but inferior ones”. (75)
“colonists concluded that Indian suffering… resulted from inadequate seasoning to their native climate or a propensity within their bodies”(77)
“reports that native Americans were not only recently arrived, but continually wandering supplied more evidence of their unsettled nature”(81)
I’m still not sure if I understand why no European could flip these arguments, though (e.g., say that Indians had specific adaptations to their world but which did not make them inferior to the English). Who, if anybody, thought that Indians’ differences did not make them inferior to Europeans? It seems like the colonists had a sort of environmental ethnocentrism going on- not only were cultural aberrations from the English “norm” inherently bad or unnatural, but so were adaptive differences. There was no appreciation for the Indian’s adjustment to their conditions. Funnily enough, the idea that “adaptation = weakness” didn’t extend into natural history- naturalists and biologists in the same time period praised God’s ingenuity when they saw, for example, an African forest elephant that had evolved traits that suited them to life in dense cover. Differences between animals were marvels, but differences among people weren’t respected.
It looks like Chaplin was trying to argue that the European view of Indians shifted (albeit over many years) from alien natives to unnatural interlopers, but I didn’t quite follow that progression in the examples she gave. Help?
I was also a little unclear on how the text used two terms- “natural philosophy” and “native”. Can we get some definitions out there?
Native was used in the text mostly to describe people originative from a certain place; basically it was used the way we use it today. Chaplin mentioned, on page 247/78, that, "the English word native originally meant a person born into bondage, a legal meaning that persisted at least into the eighteenth century and perhaps beyond." This confused me too, but was I'm guessing it was included mainly to help us understand some of the primary sources Chaplin used, and to understand why other terms were used.
Whew, that reading was extremely dense, but extremely interesting. Like what Gigi and Rachel said, I agree in that this whole reading was basically explaining the European settlers justification of their answer to Jared Diamond’s big question: Why the Europeans are better, and how this eventually led to inherent racism. Chaplin argued that the Europeans believed in a physical (corporeal) justification rather than environmental: “The significant human variation in North America was not due to external environment but instead lay within the bodies of its European and Indian peoples.” (pg 62)
What I thought was really interesting was Chaplin’s point of Europeans “seasoning” and how they truly believed that since they adapted so well to the New World and the natives had such “weaker bodies” (inability to fight off diseases) that must mean the Europeans were truly destined and deserved to have this New World. The Colonists were desperate to prove that they were not only successful in this new Environment, but they’re bodies were inherently better at adapting and thus stronger than the clearly weak Indians:
“colonists explained permanent adaptations as behavioral,, not physical, similarities to Indians. To have asserted a physical adaptation would have made them, paradoxically not proper inhabitants of America, but inferior ones.”
“Indians susceptibility to disease was described as an innate weakness, more easily explained by internal factors that presented themselves as symptoms of imbalance than by climate. English bodily superiority became evidence for their superiority as natives of America.” (page 75)
This is especially interesting, because Chaplin’s points out on page 76 that this was not the original thought, but rather people believed the reason humans differed was not because they had fundamentally different bodies, but because of other factors such as the environment. As Rachel points out, this is a serious shift in thinking and I think its because once the Europeans came to America and needed a valid excuse for taking over. What’s a more valid excuse than saying the Europeans are truly the natives to America, not the Indians? (“unnatural natives”). There seemed to be constant reassurance to this belief; Indians died in huge quantities to diseases that Europeans survived from. There was never a thought that the Europeans were the ones who brought the diseases. The Europeans essentially blamed the Indians for their own mortality and then used that as the excuse for taking their land. “The assumption that diseases in America were indigenous to America …the settlers concluded that the Indian suffering resulted from some constitutional failing—either the inadequate seasoning to their native climate or a propensity within their bodies.”(page 77).
What I also found interesting what the belief the Europeans had about the Indians not really originating from the Americas but migrating from another part of the world, because they had already failed there. This is partially true; Native Americans did migrate from Africa/Asia across the Bering Strait but this was hundreds of thousands of years before the Europeans believed, and the migration was not because they had “failed” in some other part of the world, but rather because that was the natural course of human history and they originated from the exact same place every human had, including the Europeans. It wasn’t as if the English had lived in England forever, any more than the Native Americans had lived in America forever. However the Europeans didn’t see this, instead they just saw another piece of evidence for why the Indians were fundamentally inferior.
I think most of Chaplin’s argument can be summed up in this quote: “The desire to strip Indian bodies of any natural affinity with America was especially foreboding: they may have been natives but they were unnatural natives. Observing that Indians suffered from disease and declined in numbers while the English survived epidemics and grew in population, settlers congratulated themselves because they seemed to have been the foreordained inhabitants of America….At the deepest physical level, they were true and natural residents of America—the powerful, racist fiction that remains the basis of North American identity.” (page 83).
My question to the forum is: The Europeans didn’t actually thrive as much as they said they did—what about the horrible famines, diseases and aversion to food/water that the early settlers experienced when they first came here? Shouldn’t that be kind of a hole in their argument that they were physically so much more adept at “seasoning”?
ps sorry this was so long, I just thought this reading had a lot to unpack
Chaplin’s essay explored the roots of racism in America in a historical context, instead of a moral one (like Rachel said). Some of the arguments made by the English about how and why (according to them), the Native Americans were inferior to them reminded me of racial “science” and eugenics, since the English argued that the Native Americans had an “innate weakness” (75), “fundamentally different bodies” (76), “bodily inferiority” (79), and that they should be blamed “for their own mortality” (76).
How much these beliefs came from a feeling of moral superiority, or only came about because the English were trying to explain the differences between themselves and Native Americans is a question that I still have. Was it a combination of the two, or only the moral superiority part? Obviously these beliefs were exploited to justify their treatment of the Native Americans and the lands they inhabited, so a belief of moral superiority would make sense.
One thing that came up again and again was using Native Americans as scapegoats for...well almost everything. When Squanto, an ally of the Pilgrims, died from a European illness, it was described as being an “Indian Fever”. When thousands of Native Americans died from European diseases in general, the Europeans did not take any blame for it, they simply stated that Native Americans had “bodily inferiority”, instead of acknowledging that they brought new diseases that Native Americans had no immunities to.
The English’s view of Native American medicine interested me a lot. Since it was very different from European medicine/healing practices, they had trouble believing its reach (if it would work in England/Europe), and said that “if a region had an herbal cure for a disease, the disease itself must be native” (246). This made me wonder,did Native American pharmacology travel to Europe? How much credibility did they give it? How accepting/non accepting were the Native Americans of English medicine? They seemed to attribute smoking tobacco to good health (even though that was incorrect). Overall, they seemed much more accepting of Native American medicines than their religion or culture.
To answer Olivia's question about famines/diseases and Europeans, John Smith stated that the syphilis in Jamestown was an Indian disease, even though the English had brought it. I assume that when it came up, another group would be blamed, or it would be attributed to God.
OLIVIA!! that is EXACTLY what i was trying to say! agree with everything you said there.
as for your seasoning question, i think the difference was our sources are primarily english, so of course they don't admit weakness too much, and the english didnt have nearly as much trouble and die in as large of numbers as the native americans. just a thought though, i'm sure there are other reasons.
That reading was, as others have stated, like WOAH.
What I got from the reading is not only did the English settlers see the Native Americans as inferior, but they thought that that inferiority could somehow rub off on them because they lived in America. Also, the settlers even were afraid to eat the same kinds of food as the Natives, as if the two were different species that could not survive on the same foods.
The English view on the diseases, especially after the last reading we did, really frustrated me. Saying that syphilis and other diseases were “an Indian fever” when we now know it was the Europeans that brought that disease to America.
Quote:
One thing that came up again and again was using Native Americans as scapegoats for...well almost everything. When Squanto, an ally of the Pilgrims, died from a European illness, it was described as being an “Indian Fever”. When thousands of Native Americans died from European diseases in general, the Europeans did not take any blame for it, they simply stated that Native Americans had “bodily inferiority”, instead of acknowledging that they brought new diseases that Native Americans had no immunities to.
What Michaela said here I strongly agree with. As well as she stated later in her post that sometimes the reasoning for the Natives misfortune was god, as if the diseases were Divine Punishment or something. I can see how they would reach that conclusion, because if the Native Americans were practically all dying from a disease none of the Europeans were catching (because they were now immune) how it could seem like the natives were being ‘exterminated’.
And finally, the Author’s use of the word ‘Bodies’ to refer to each race of people confused me a lot of the time. Part of me, however, thinks that Chaplin did this to make the writing objective, as many of the arguments of superiority related to physical features of different races.
And finally, this reading made me very curious about the development of cures and medicines and how certain ingredients were found to have medicinal qualities.
EVERYONE HAS ALREADY SAID ALL OF MY POINTS. and probably better than I could have. I guess thats what I get for going to school with a bunch of smarties.
this reading yeah… VERY confusing, VERY awesome and interesting. thumbs up. Because I'm a little overwhelmed with responding, I'm going to do what dylan did except include quotes:
- "the significant human variation in north america was not due to external environment but instead lay within the bodies of its European and Indian peoples" (pg 62)
- "examination of denigrations of all colonized peoples will be necessary for a full understanding of racism" (pg. 62) <-- ESSENTIALLY MY DEFINITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY. BAM. KIND OF.
- "natives lacked physical ability to thrive in their homeland… it is also significant that this argument about innate superiority and inferiority gradually emerged" (63) This concept was so baffling to me, but that makes sense, because racism is baffling. European settlers declared that native americans were unable to thrive in their homeland only when they had already spread their guns and germs and steel to the point that what used to be a functioning society collapsed.
This statement reminds me of (what I think is…?) the law of observation. The idea that functioning things change and mess up BY DINT of your observing them.
Essentially, the europeans just being there changed how native american cultures function, so even if they did start to break apart with the arrival of the settlers, it was not an empirically reliable set up. phew.
- I'm totally with Olivia on that question. Europeans were dropping off like flies because of diseases native to the america's that there immune systems couldn't handle. At least I think.
- (74) "It would have beena logical next step for colonists to speculate on the mechanism that maintained continuity of "englishness""
^OMG! THE START OF "WHITENESS"! OH MY GOSH! The idea of "whiteness" is something that is so commonplace in talking about diversity that this sentence strikes me as incredible, the idea that maybe this was the starting point to a mentality/facet of identity that has played SUCH an unavoidable role in the development of the United States' history.
- like the above quote, I felt the same way about the concept of "indianizing". So the beginning of racism. right there.
I wonder, if there was "indianizing" existed, "europeanizing" must have existed too. Could there be any accounts of that?
sorry about the length/craziness of this post.
Its very possible I'll post again later.
A lot of the arguments that the colonists used for their superiority just completely made no sense. I thought it was odd how they claimed that the Indian suffering was due to “either the inadequate seasoning to their native climate or a propensity within their bodies” the colonists in New England almost died out because of the harsh winter conditions. They were in fact only able to survive because the Native Americans were so well adapted to the environment and were able to help them. Using this as evidence for superiority it makes more logical sense to say that the Native Americans were in fact superior because without them the Colonists would not necessarily have survived. There didn’t seem to be much of any support behind these arguments, or example regarding the food in the New World “although the barbarous Indians which know no better, are constrained to make a virtue of necessitie.” I may not be entirely correct here but I do not think that they were eating corn because they thought it was good for them, they ate it because it was plentiful and easy to produce. This is also not proof to the Native Americans being inferior but proof to the land of the New World being inferior because the only food that grew naturally was “hard to digest and better suited to animals”
Also regarding the fact that they thought Native Americans died from diseases like small pox because it was foreign to America, how did they explain the Europeans of these same diseases?
I thought that it was interesting that a lot of the ideas the colonists had about the world are were fundamentally correct (although rather primitive). For example the idea that Native Americans themselves were colonists of the Americas and that people are different because of climate of the area they are from (I am pretty sure this is accurate, correct me if I am wrong)
I think that the idea of colonists being behaviorally Indianized was an interesting thing for the colonists to think. I’ve never heard that before, but I think that that should be showing the Europeans that its not that big of a leap from them to the Native Americans even if the Indianized people’s skin is not dark. Also the fact that to be Indian was to be lazy, to not respect higherarky, to be dark skin, and weak or sickly, was a weird point of view for me of the Native Americans. I took Native American history last mod and I learned that they were definitely not lazy that they respected their elders and usually they were strong and forth going.
Relating to the beginning of the paper, those Europeans who were becoming more Indian, were they not American anymore? (because to Europeans the natives were not Americans).
One of the things that I thought and that I think I’m getting from some of the posts is that Chaplin kind of goes back and forth. He says one thing then doesn’t exactly contradict it but it got a little confusing for me sometimes. Like the fact that becoming Native Americans is bad but getting the characteristics or “culturally” adapting to the environment (like the native Americans) was good.
There's been a lot of talk above me about how the colonists used the ideas about innate physical differences between themselves and Native Americans to justify the colonization/conquest (or whatever on that spectrum you want to call it) of the continent, but I'm not sure if that's the case. Joyce describes the transition from an environmental/adaptive theory of race to an inherent one as gradual, so the physical superiority of Europeans could only have been used as a retrospective justification for the early conquest of Native Americans. But I guess a lot of historical rationalizations of injustice have come after the deed. Maybe sometimes people just do things, and then try to justify them later, which means there isn't anything particularly interesting about that aspect of the colonial development of a racial theory (or "idiom")
I don't really have that much to say about the reading. I appreciated that unlike other readings we have done it was first and foremost a historical account rather than an ideological tract. I also liked the sentence on page 82, "Each such phrase undermined any sense in which Indian bodies could be fixed to parts of the natural landscape of interest to English-speaking migrants". Thus the idea of innate Native American characteristics removed them from their environment conceptually, which justified their physical removal from land that the colonists wanted. From an environmental history perspective, I think it's a really interesting idea that rootlessness is a form of dehumanization.
Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 9:42 pm Post subject: Racial superiority
Joyce Chaplin made some very interesting points. By far this is my favorite reading so far because of how interesting the true beginning of racism is. As many of you had said, no one has really talked about the origin of racism in American. Unlike Issac, I think the idea of colonist using superiority makes complete sense. Issac states that “They were in fact only able to survive because the Native Americans were so well adapted to the environment and were able to help them. Using this as evidence for superiority it makes more logical sense to say that the Native Americans were in fact superior because without them the Colonists would not necessarily have survived.” Although this might be extremely true, looking back at who we think were superior is pointless. We live in a different era. To put colonist’s views of superiority against ours is much different as is the same against Native Americans of the time.
Superiority is a theory that is always changing and is different for everyone. We seem to only talk about The English’s ideas that they were superior. Chaplin states, “This article examines only the English comparison between their own bodies and those of North American Indians.” Through the eyes of the natives, there must have been a belief that they were “superior” to these novice settlers. I think the reason the English’s views stand out is because of the saying, “History is told by the victors.” Is being the victor give you the right to call yourself superior to others? This topic of superiority and inferiority was brought up by Chaplin to help explain the origin of not only racism, but racial superiority as well.
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