The Aboriginal Races of North America by Drake, Samuel Gardner, 1798-1875; Williams, H. L

Engraving of Samuel Gardner Drake. Stephen Alonzo Schoff – Memoir of Samuel G. Drake by John Hannibal Sheppard

 

Drake was educated in the common schools, and from 1818 to 1825 taught in a district school. He was fond of literary pursuits, and in 1828 he went to Boston, where he established an antiquarian bookstore — the first of its kind in the United States — and devoted himself to the study of early United States history. He continued to do business as a bookseller and publisher during his life, and the most noted writers of his day availed themselves of the store of information that he had collected.[5]

CHAPTER II. ORIGINS OF THE INDIANS BOOK I.

“For the inhabitants of the same latitude in Asia are of a different complexion, as are the inhabitants of Cambodia and Java; in so much that some coercive the negro is properly a native of Africa; and that those places in Asia, inhabited now by Moors are but the intrusions of negroes, arriving first from Africa, as we generally conceive of Madagascar, and the adjoining islands, who retain the same complexion unto this day. But this defect [of latitude upon complexion] is more remarkable in America, which, although subjected unto both the tropics, yet are not the inhabitants black between, or near, or under either: neither to the southward in Brazil, Chili, or Peru; nor yet to the northward in Hispaniola, Castilla, del Oro, or Nicaragua. And although in many parts, therefore, there be at present, swarms of negroes, serving under the Spaniard, yet where they all transported from Africa, since the discovery of Columbus and are not indigenous, or proper natives of America. ” (Page 28)

 

Source: The aboriginal races of North America : comprising biographical sketches of eminent tribes, from the first discovery of the continent to the present period; with a dissertation on their origin, antiquities, manners and customs by Drake, Samuel Gardner, 1798-1875; Williams, H. L

An Inquiry into the distinctive characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America By Samuel George Morton, M. D.,

“A portion of the Moorish population of Africa is very mixed race of Arabs, Berbers, Negroes, &c  (Page. 6)”

“The observations of Molina and Humboldt are sometimes quoted in disproof of this pervading uniformity of physical characters. Molina says that the difference between an inhabitant of Chili and Peruvian is not less than between an Italian and German; to which Humboldt adds, that the American race contains nations whose features differ as essentially from one another as those of the Circassians, Moors and Persians. But all these people are of one and the same race, and readily recognized as such, not withstanding their differences of feature and complexion;* and the American nations present precisely parallel case.” (Page. 6)

“No stronger example need be adduced than that which presents itself in the great Arabian family; for the Saracens who established their kingdom in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every subsequent age;—these very Saracens belong not only to the same race but to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit-trees, or to build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered through period of three thousand years.” (Page. 15)

“The Egyptian form differs from the Pelasgic in having narrower and more receding forehead, while the face being more prominent, the facial angle is consequently less. The nose is straight or aquiline, the face angular, the features often sharp, and the hair uniformly long, soft, and curling. In this series of crania include many of which the conformation is not appreciably different from that of the Arab and Hindoo; but have not, as rule, attempted to note these distinctions, although they are so marked as to have induced me, in the early stage of the investigation, and for reasons which will appear in the sequel, to group them, together with the proper Egyptian form, under the provisional name of Austral Egyptian crania.” (Page. 46)

NEGRO RACE

“The true Negro conformation requires no comment; but it is necessary to observe that practised eye readily detects few heads with decidedly mixed characters, in which those of the Negro predominate. For these propose the name of Negroid crania for while the osteological development is more or less that of the Negro, the hair is long but sometimes harsh, thus indicating that combination of features which is familiar in the mulatto grades of the present day. It is proper, however, to remark in relation to the whole ‘series of crania, that while the greater part is readily referable to some one of the above subdivisions, there remain few other examples in which the Caucasian traits predominate, but are partially blended with those of the Negro, which last modify both the structure and expression of the head and face.” (Page.46)

Source: An Inquiry into the distinctive characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America 

The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam By David M. Goldenberg

 

Note too that the early Arab (not African) leader ‘Ubada inb al-Samit is described as a black (aswad) man, and consider the expression used by the Arabic writers to mean “non Arabs and Arabs” (i.e., the whole world), al-ahmar wa’l-aswad, “the red and the black” respectively. Similarly the explanation of al-Jahiz, which he puts in the mouths of the Zanj (black Africans): “The Arabs belong with us not with the whites, because their color is nearer to ours… For the Prophet, God bless and save him, said, ‘I was sent to the red and the black,’ and everyone knows that the Arabs are not red.” Jahiz concludes: “Our blackness, O people of the Zanj, is not different from the blackness of the Banu Sulaym and other Arab tribes. We can add several other authors including those who use the term in the context of Ham’s curse of dark skin.

Ka’b al-Ahbar (d. ca. 652), a Jewish Yemeni convert to Islam, spoke of the cursed descendants of Ham “begetting black [aswadayn] male and female children until they multiplied and spread along the shore. Among them are the Nubians [nuba], the Negroes [zanj], the Barbars [brb], the Sindhis [sind], the Indians [hind] and all the blacks [sudan]: they are the children of Ham. We saw earlier that Wahb inbn Munabbih (d. ca. 73), “a celebrated authority on the traditions of the ahl al-kitab,” reported that God “changed [Ham’s] color and the color of his descendants in response to his father’s curse,” and that Ham’s descendants are Kush, Canaan, and Fut; Fut Fut’s descendants are the Indians; and Kush and Canaan’s descendants are the various races of blacks [sudan]: Nubians, Zanj, Qaran, Zaghawa, Ethiopians, Copts and Barbar. In another source Wahb is reported to have said that Canaan’s descendants were the blacks [al-aswid], Nubians [nuba], Fezzan [Fazzan], Zanj [zanj], Zaghawah [zaghawa], and all the peoples of the Sudan [sudan]. The Akhbar al zaman counts “among the descendants of Sudan, son of Kan’an…the Ishban, the Zanj, and many peoples that multiplied in the Maghrib, about 70 of then.

Clearly, the rabbinic story of sex in the ark is an etiology that is meant to account for the existence of all dark skinned people, not just the Black African. Although, to the best of my knowledge, rabbinic literature does not mention the skin color of the Putites and Canaanites, who descended from Ham, it does refer to the dark skin of Ham’s other descendant, the Egyptians. In the next chapter, we will see two examples of Egyptians referred to as Kushites because of their dark skin color. (107)

Archaeological and epigraphic (South Arabian) evidence in East Africa indicates that already in the early first millennium B.C.E. there were strong trade contracts between East Africa and Arabia. Similarly, “topographical names with Sabean foundations testify.. to the relations between ancient Yemen and Abyssinia. The anonymous author of the Periplus says that in his time a significant part of the East African coast (“Azania” was subject to the kingdom of Arabia “by ancient right” and that Arab traders “through continual intercourse and intermarriage, are familiar with the area and its language. Lewicki notes that the name Azania itself indicates the existence of South Arabian traders in East Africa, “many centuries BC,” for the name is a Greek transcription of the Arabic name Ajam. In light of the evidence from the Greek and Latin texts of a slave trade in black Africans during the first six centuries of the Common Era, it is likely that these trad contacts between Africa and Arabia included slaves.

Another reflection of biblical imagery may be indicated in the midrashic play on the Arabic word Kuwayyis to describe the Kushites as particularly handsome people. (195)

Source: The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam By David M. Goldenberg

The Moroccan, or Moorish ties of U.S. Negroes

Foreign Affairs; Our Strongest African Link? By C.L. SULZBERGER; April 25, 1964,

“FEZ, Morocco—Morocco has a special relationship with the United States that is generally unfamiliar both to Americans and Moroccans.”

“The country’s complicated history stretches geographically from France into mid‐Africa. Also, through Spain, original colonizing and missionary influence in the Americas, Morocco’s cultural impact on our continent is perceptible if indirect. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today.”

“The traditional teaching of history in the United States does not omit mention of ties between our early Republic and contemporary Morocco.“

“But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims. In discussing this I am indebted to Prof. Morroe Berger of Princeton, who explores the question in “Horizon.”

“The Black Muslims and antecedent organizations like Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association stressed the Moroccan, or Moorish, ties of U.S. Negroes. Morocco, while African, is not a Negro state, although some of its famous leaders were Negroid. Morocco was also a channel in the terrible slave trade that fathered our Negro community.”

“In evolving U.S. Negro tradition, this fact is mixed with Morocco’s grandiose Islamic past which produced so great an impact on Europe. In a deliberate reaction. against the inferior status imposed on them by slavery, certain American Negroes seek to connect Islam with the little‐known tales of West African civilizations that, in times past, occasionally met in Morocco.”

“Garvey, a predecessor of the contemporary Black Muslims, attacked Christianity for failing to protect Negroes against the depredations of slavery and stressed their African heritage with particular reference to the Moors. Subsequent U.S. Negro leaders created a Moorish Science Temple of America whose practices were substantially adopted by, the Black Muslims.”

“As the white American has consciously sought proud antecedents in Europe, ranging from Irish kings to Polish patriots and English religious rebels, the Negro American now seeks to fill in his missing African past, a past deliberately withheld from him by slavery’s anonymity. One acute Negro leader protested; “Africa was no integral part of the world, because the world which raped it had to pretend that it had not harmed a man but a thing.”

“Some American Negro movements paradoxically take pride in vague Islamic connections while denigrating Christianity for slaving. Yet Moslem slave traders supplied Christian shippers in the ghastly trans‐Atlantic human commerce. Moslem traders were more brutally honest; unlike some Christians, they never pretended God had ordained slavery for black men. They simply preferred Mammon to God and also profited from the sale of white slaves in Levantine markets.”

“Mohammedan slaves in the Americas seemed to have had a special community consciousness. Some African tribes found it possible to elude Arab traders by embracing Islam. Moslem slaves, especially in Brazil, mounted serious insurrections against their white owners, and this is a source of pride to propagandists of the Black Muslim movement, which, despite aberrational deviations, claims kinship with Islam’s main stream.”

“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community.”

“When one ponders this subject in Fez, lovely, perplexing and fanatical, famed for an Occidental headgear we consider Oriental, one wonders how much more we will learn about ourselves by uncovering that portion of our national past originating here.”

Source: New York Times Foreign Affairs; Our Strongest African Link? April 25, 1964

The American Nations of North and South America, Vol. 1

“In proceeding from the known to the unknown: we ascertain that a multitude of nations has come to America since 1492, as colonist or visitors. The principal was 1. Spanish: who have colonized or conquered from New Mexico to Chilli, and from Florida to Buenos Ayres. But they came not alone, and have brought along with them as auxiliaries. 1. Italians, 2. Flemish, 3. Biscayans, 4. Canarians, &,c., while as slaves 5. Moors of Mauritania, and G. Many African–negro nations. 2. Portuguese: who have colonized the whole of Brazil, and brought there besides many Negro nations, some Moors, Gypsies, Chinese, &c.”

 

 

“Thus it is a positive fact that many ancient nations of the east, such as the Lybians, Moors, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Hindus, *c. had heard of America, or knew nearly as much of it as we did of Australia and Polynesia 100 years ago.” “Nearly all the ancient sciences and useful primitive arts were known in America, as well as commerce and navigation, symbolic and alphabetic writing, nearly all the Asiatic religions, &c. The most civilized nations had even colleges and universities, canals and paved roads, splendid temples, and monuments, *c.”

 

 

“American anthropology will teach that there were men of all sizes, feature, and complexions, in this hemisphere before 1492?: notwithstanding the false assertions of many writers, who take one nation for the whole American group.” “The Uskihs, the Purunays, the Parias, the Chons, &c. were as white as the Spaniards, 50 such tribes were found in South America; while many tribes of Choco, the Manabis, the Yaruras, &c., were as black as negroes.”

“All the other shades of brown, tawny and coppery, were scattered everywhere. There was not a single red man in America unless painted such. Some tribes had scanty beards as the Tartars, Chinese, Berbers, &c., others bushy beards. The Tinguis or Patagons were 7 or 8 feet high and the Guaymas only 4 or 5 feet.”

Source: The American Nations: or Outlines of a National History of the Ancient and Modern Nations of North and South America