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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 5. Race and Ancestry - 3. Changes in Physical Appearance - 4. Early Miscegenation
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Chapter 5. Race and Ancestry 123
with powder and bleaches. The Negro can—but does not, usually, because
of the high cost—remodel the shape of his nose and lips. The
changes which can be effected by this conscious type of modification of
physical appearance are not numerous, but they may increase with advances
in medical and surgical knowledge.
4. Early Miscegenation
The slaves imported from Africa by no means represented ^^pure Negro
races.” Of the original tribal stocks many had an admixture of Caucasoid
genes from crosses with Mediterranean peoples. During the slave trade
more white genes were added. The Portuguese who settled on the Guinea
Coast had relations with the natives. The slave traders themselves were
known frequently to have had promiscuous intercourse with their female
merchandise. Even more important as a source of infiltration of white blood
into the Negro slave population before arriving in what is now the United
States was slavery in the West Indies. While some of the slaves in these
islands came directly from Africa, others were brought indirectly by way
of Spain and Portugal. The importation of Negro slaves into those
European countries was in practice by the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and by 1539 there is some evidence that it reached the figure of
10,000 to 12,000 a year.“’*‘ It seems that there was extensive miscegenation
in these two European nations. Part of the offspring remained and became
engulfed in the population of the Iberian Peninsula. Those brought over
to the West Indies formed a large proportion of their slave population.
This continuously received further additions of non-Negro blood from the
white and Indian inhabitants of these islands. No one knows exactly what
proportion of the slave population of the United States was brought by way
of the West Indies, but the proportion would be significant. As the slave
import from the West Indies formed an increasing proportion of all slave
importation during the later periods of slavery in America, and as Negro
immigration after Emancipation has been largely from the West Indies,
the elements in the American Negro people with the shortest line of
ancestry in this country are, therefore, not of purer breed but rather the
contrary.^^
Upon their arrival in the New World, one type of mixture which is
important, although not often referred to in this relation, did not fer se
involve Indian and white stock. We refer to the wholesale mingling of the
various African stocks with each other. Historical sources from the period
often ascribe to the slaveholders a conscious purpose to break up tribal
coherence and allegiance between the slave masses in order to decrease their
resistance against slavery. It was part of their being ^^broken in.” But
even apart from such a purpose, a compulsory labor system managed by
persons who, in any case, had no feeling for upholding tribal differentia-
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