De l’état social et des mœurs des peuples d’espèce cuivrée, placés entre les tropiques. — Parallèle

CHAP. 18: > Of the social state and morals of the peoples of the copper-colored species, placed between the tropics. — Parallel between these peoples and those of the same species placed under the cold climates of the north.

We have seen previously how the means by which the copper-colored peoples of the north of America provide for their subsistence influence their social relations and their private morals. We have been able to remark that, the less assured their means of existence are, the more energetic the malevolent or antisocial passions are. It is now a matter of expounding the state and morals of the peoples of the same species placed in the center of this continent, and of seeing what are the points of resemblance or dissemblance that have existed between them. In order to make the comparison easier, I will follow in this chapter the same order that I followed in the preceding chapters.

The copper-colored nations placed in the center of the American continent, between the tropics, drew from agriculture their principal means of existence, long before the Europeans had enslaved them. It was rare to encounter among them tribes living principally on the products of the hunt. Not only was the land cultivated, but each had the exclusive ownership of the soil he cultivated, and of the products he drew from it. Even in Paraguay, where the Spanish Jesuits introduced the community of goods, each individual had exclusive ownership of the land he had put into cultivation. Common cultivation, which caused them to regress to the point where some northern tribes were, was so contrary to their ideas that it has always been for them the most unbearable part of the administration of their conquerors [494].

But at the same time that we find peoples living by means of the products of their agriculture, we also find that these peoples are composed of two races of men, or that in each state the population is divided into two castes: one that cultivates the soil and lives in oppression; the other that lives on what the first produces or makes the land produce. We find here a social regime more or less similar to that which we will see in most of the islands of the great Ocean, in the center of Africa, and which has long existed in most of the States of Europe.

Among the Natchez, a once-powerful tribe that lived on the banks of the Mississippi, but which is today extinct, the population was divided into two classes. The first enjoyed hereditary prerogatives; the second was considered vile, and formed only for servitude. This distinction was marked by denominations that designated the high rank of the ones, and the profound degradation of the others: the former designated themselves by the name of Respectables, and they designated the latter by the name of Stinkards. The chief, whose power was of the same nature as that of the nobles, and consequently hereditary, was considered to have a divine origin: he was the brother of the sun whom these peoples adored; his orders had the same force as if they had been given by the divinity [495].

In Mexico, a more or less similar order existed; the population was divided first into two great fractions. The one that comprised the most considerable part, and that executed all the labors by means of which men exist, was vile and enslaved. The one that lived on the labors of the first called itself respectable; it was noble. The cultivators, designated by the name of mayeques, were in a state more or less similar to that in which the peasants of Europe found themselves, at the time when the feudal regime was in all its force. They were considered as instruments of cultivation, and could not leave the soil to which they were attached, without the permission of their master. They passed from one owner to another, with the soil, in cases where it was alienated. They were required to cultivate the land, and to execute other labors judged vile. Several were reduced to a state of domestic servitude; they were, like the slaves of the Romans, placed in the rank of things. Their masters could dispose of them in the most absolute manner, or even kill them, without incurring any penalty [496].

The class of strong men, to which we give the name of superior, was itself divided into diverse fractions. A small number of them possessed vast territories, divided into several classes, to each of which diverse titles of honor were attached; some transmitted these titles to their descendants in perpetuity, with the lands of which they were a part. Others held lands only because of the functions they fulfilled; these lands constituted their salary, and ceased to belong to them when the functions of which they were the reward were taken from them. Finally, several, without fulfilling any function and without being slaves, possessed lands of which they had exclusive ownership, and which they transmitted to their children. A certain expanse of land had been reserved in each district, which was cultivated in common by the low class of the people, and which served for its existence. There was, above the entire population, a single chief; this chief did not hold his power from his ancestors: he was elected by the principal members of the State. The number of the great men of the first class amounted to thirty; each of them had below him about three thousand nobles, who were subordinate to him; and the total number of individuals that each of the principal chiefs had in his territory was about one hundred thousand [497].

In Peru, the population was also divided into several classes. The first was composed of those who filled all the employments, whether in time of peace, or in time of war: these were the nobles. The second was composed of men who filled no employment, but who were not subjected to any kind of servitude. The third was formed of individuals employed in the labors judged the most vile of society: they carried burdens, or gave themselves over to other occupations that are the lot of slaves in countries where servitude is established. The population was subject to a single chief whose person was sacred: he was a messenger of the gods, a child of the sun: to maintain the purity of this divine race, brothers married their sisters [498]. The lands were not possessed by the great men as in Mexico. One part was consecrated to the sun and destined for the cult; its product was employed in the construction and maintenance of the temples, in the celebration of the ceremonies of religion, and, in times of scarcity, in the subsistence of the people. A second part belonged to the Inca, and was employed to pay the expenses of the government. The third and most considerable was destined for the subsistence of the people. Cultivation, in each canton, was done in common, the products of which were then distributed to each according to his needs [499].

We cannot know in a positive manner how the diverse classes that the Spanish found in the center of America were formed; but, in considering the traditions that still existed in that country at the arrival of these conquerors, the manner in which the population was divided, and the ideas that reigned among it, it is not difficult to see that there too an agricultural, industrious, and peaceful people had been enslaved and partitioned by an army of barbarians. At the time when the Spanish conquered Mexico, the great men or nobles of that country were convinced that they were not native to it: they knew that toward the tenth century of our era, the first occupants had been enslaved by other tribes, and that toward the thirteenth, about two centuries before the discovery of America, Mexico had been conquered by a powerful tribe, come from the shores of the Gulf of California. It appears therefore that at a recent epoch, a confederation similar to that of the Iroquois nations seized the country; that the general retained the power that his position gave him; that the thirty great men were only the chiefs of the hordes that had elected their general; that the three thousand nobles were the soldiers of each horde, and finally that the cultivators were the enslaved population.

We cannot determine what the morals of these peoples were at the arrival of the Spanish, with the same precision that we have determined those of the tribes that inhabit the north. It had already been two centuries since they had been enslaved and largely destroyed by the Europeans, when philosophers began to occupy themselves with the observation of their morals. We can therefore know only a small number of facts concerning them; but the little that the first Spanish writers teach us is sufficient to make us judge the facts that they themselves did not know how to observe.

We have seen how extensive, on the morals of the natives of the north of America, is the influence of their means of existence; how much the state of a hunter hardens the character of the individuals who give themselves over to it, and renders miserable the fate of the women, children, elderly, and sick, who are obliged to follow the most robust men into the forests and amidst the snows, or to remain exposed to famine and to the attacks of their enemies. None of these evils nor the vices that follow from them could reach the peoples of central America, since they were all agriculturalists: the most advanced in agriculture were in general those who were closest to the equator; the Natchez drew almost nothing more from hunting, and the inhabitants of Bogota had completely renounced it [500].

In Peru, agriculture and the arts of first necessity were more advanced than in any other part of America. The quantity of land that was to be put into cultivation was proportioned to the needs of the inhabitants; the effects of a bad harvest had even been foreseen, as much as possible; the products set aside for the expenses of the cult or for the maintenance of the government were distributed to the people in times of scarcity. Not only had all the naturally fertile lands been put into cultivation; but, by means of aqueducts and artificial irrigations, unproductive lands had been fertilized: under the hands of these active and industrious peoples, sterile sands had been transformed into flourishing countrysides. The Spanish, at the time of the conquest, found the country so well provided with provisions of all kinds, that, in their accounts, one finds few of those sad scenes of distress occasioned by famine, so frequent in the history of the conquerors of Mexico [501].

The relations of subordination that we have observed among the tribes of the north, between the chiefs and the other members of the tribe, are well marked only on occasions where the cooperation of all is required to obtain a result that interests them equally. In other circumstances, there exists no other superiority than that of force, and each individual is in some way under the sway of any man more powerful than himself [502]. Among the peoples placed under the tropics, we also find that a part of the population was subject to the empire of force; this empire was manifested by the qualifications given to the ones and the others, by the difference in their dwellings, their clothing, their occupations. But, as all were not subject to the same regime, it is necessary to consider them separately.If, as seems indubitable, the agricultural peoples of the tropics were enslaved by their less civilized neighbors of the north, there is no doubt that the latter preserved, after the conquest, the contempt that conquerors have for labor, and especially for that of the land; there is no doubt that they made industry the mark of servitude, and idleness the prerogative of the nobility; war, and the pillage of the vanquished, appeared to them the only occupations worthy of them: we have seen that such are still the ideas of the savages of the north. There exists, however, a remarkable difference between the peoples of the northernmost part of North America, and those who invaded Mexico and the countries nearest to it. When the former surprise an enemy horde, they massacre all its individuals; they have no interest in keeping them, for they would not know what to do with them. The latter did not exterminate the conquered people; they came to share with them in the products of their labors: the shares were doubtless very unequal; but that which remained to the vanquished was nevertheless more considerable and especially more assured than that which falls to the strongest men who live by hunting or fishing. The most miserable part of the population of the tropics, before the conquest of the Spanish, was condemned to less fatigue, fewer privations, and even less violence than the barbarous populations of the north. The serfs of the Natchez and the Mexicans, by whom the labors of agriculture were executed, were less degraded and less overwhelmed with work; they had less to suffer than the women, the elderly, and the children among the hunter peoples. As for the dominating class, it is evident that their fate was infinitely above that of the least miserable individuals found among hordes of hunters.

It is even remarkable that the closer one approaches the equator, the more the relations between the diverse classes of the population become gentler. Among the Natchez and the Mexicans, the labors of agriculture and those who engaged in them were still debased in the eyes of the conquerors. But it was no longer the same in Peru; here the governing class, far from considering the occupations of agriculture as debasing, sought on the contrary to make them honorable. The chiefs of the State, although they attributed to themselves a divine origin, themselves gave the example of labor: the children of the sun cultivated with their own hands a field near Cusco, and they called this their triumph over the earth [503]. Far from depriving the population of its means of existence, they distributed to it, on the contrary, in times of scarcity, a part of the products destined for the maintenance of worship and of the government. The authority of the chiefs was exercised in so gentle a manner that rebellions were unknown; and that in a succession of twelve princes, not one was counted who had been a tyrant, an example so rare in history that it is scarcely believable [504].

If the conquest of these countries by the Incas and the caciques had been only the triumph of force, this triumph at least had not been permanent, and had not become general. At the time of the conquest by the Spanish, territorial property was established among almost all the nations placed between the tropics. There were among the Mexicans magistrates charged with overseeing respect for property and the security of persons; and, if one can rely on the judgment of the Spanish writers, the laws were as wise and justice as well administered as among the most civilized peoples. With respect to justice and some other parts of government, the Mexicans and Peruvians were more advanced than the peoples who had made the most progress in Europe at that time [505].

Force therefore no longer decided among them, as among the other peoples of the same continent, the fate of property; the punishment of offenses was no longer abandoned to the discretion and force of the persons who believed themselves offended. From this resulted several moral consequences. The spirit of vengeance, which we found so energetic among the hunter peoples, had infinitely less force, no longer being necessary for the security of each person. Hatreds were necessarily less energetic, less general, less durable, as justice brought punishment upon the guilty party, and guaranteed his children or the members of his family from the attacks that could have been made on their security. With vengeance less to be feared, there must have been less falsehood or perfidy in the habitual relations of individuals; the ones not having to dissimulate in order to take revenge with more certainty and impunity, the others to prevent or disarm vengeance.

The security of property had no less influence on morals than the security of persons. In moments of abundance, the mass of the population did not consume beyond its needs, since it had the ability to conserve its resources for another time. Thus these peoples had made temperance such a great habit that they considered the voracity of the Spanish as a kind of prodigy; they would have manifested no astonishment in this regard if, like the hunters of the north, they had been accustomed to consuming in a single meal what would have been sufficient for six. Having less to fear of having the fruits of their labor taken from them, they were less inclined to idleness. When one considers, indeed, the works that these peoples had already executed in the fifteenth century, without the help of any iron instrument and any of our domestic animals; their roads, more beautiful than any of those that existed in Europe at that time; their aqueducts and their palaces whose debris time has not yet erased; their postal establishments, then unknown among us; their astronomical knowledge; their division of time, and the progress of several arts, it is not possible to believe that they had less activity than the peoples of cold climates, incapable of exerting themselves unless hunger presses them, or they are excited by vengeance.

The Spanish tell us little about the family relations that existed among these peoples at the time of the conquest; we cannot doubt, however, that the state of women, children, and the elderly was far superior to what it was among the tribes of the north. Since the population subsisted principally on the labors of agriculture, the men engaged in these labors like the women, each according to his strength. The kind of occupation in which the women engaged, far from being for them a cause of contempt, must have been on the contrary a cause of esteem, since it raised them to the level of men, and in a way to the level of the prince who took honor in his triumph over the earth. They were not obliged to follow the men through the forests and amidst the snows, overwhelmed with burdens that exceeded their strength, ceaselessly exposed to being abused by their husbands, to being carried off by enemy hordes, or to perishing from misery. Nothing establishes and cannot even lead one to presume that they were exposed, as among the peoples of the north, to being the prey of the strongest combatants, to being sold, exchanged, or gambled away like merchandise. The state of civilization that these peoples had reached excludes such an order of things.

Neither the children nor the elderly were exposed to the same dangers: it was easier to provide for their needs; they did not have to follow hunters in pursuit of game, or to escape by a rapid flight from the furies of an implacable enemy.

But it is especially in the relations from nation to nation that the difference in morals manifests itself. Among the hunter peoples of cold climates, for whom life is often a burden and death a happy event, war between the hordes is a habitual state. The goal of each of them is to destroy all those that surround it, and they do not believe they have avenged themselves on an enemy taken prisoner if, before killing him, they have not made him suffer the most horrible torments. Among the peoples closer to the tropics, prisoners were sacrificed; but they were treated in a less cruel manner than among the peoples higher in the north, and the children and women were kept as slaves [506]. The Mexicans also devoted their prisoners to death; they offered them to their gods in sacrifice; but they did not torment them. Finally, the Peruvians inflicted on their vanquished enemies neither death nor any kind of torture.

“The Peruvians, even in their wars,” says Robertson, “showed a spirit different from that of the other Americans. They did not fight like savages, to destroy and exterminate, or like the Mexicans, to offer human sacrifices to divinities thirsty for blood. They made conquests to civilize the vanquished and unite them, to share with them their knowledge, their arts, and their institutions. The prisoners were exposed neither to the tortures, nor to the insults that were their lot in the other parts of the New World. The Incas took under their protection the peoples they had vanquished, and admitted them to enjoy all the advantages that were assured to their other subjects [507].”

At the time when America was conquered by the Europeans, a great number of the northern peoples were in the habit of eating their prisoners. This custom, common to almost all the hordes that live on the northwest coasts, had not yet ceased among them at the end of the last century [508]. The grandees of Mexico, who, at the arrival of the Spanish, boasted of being conquerors recently come from the northwest, had not renounced the customs of their ancestors either: like them, they sacrificed their prisoners, and then ate them. But the Peruvians, placed under the equator, and much more ancient in the country [509], were strangers to these horrible sacrifices: they offered to their divinity only animals, the fruits of their fields, and some products of their arts [510].

One cannot judge by the current morals of the natives of America who live between the tropics, the morals that existed among them at the arrival of the Europeans. The destruction of their governments and their religions; the extermination of the most enlightened part of their population; the enslavement of the other parts to a race of foreigners who differed from them in their language, their morals, their religious opinions, and even in several of their physical traits, have been sufficient to render them unrecognizable. However, although several of these peoples have evidently retrogressed, most are still far superior to the peoples of the north, with respect to moral habits.

The accounts of voyages made in the equinoctial regions often give us proofs of the debasement into which servitude has plunged or kept the natives; but one does not find in them those acts of vengeance and cruelty so frequent among the peoples of the north. Travelers tell us, on the contrary, that the agricultural nations are all gentle, peaceful, and do at most no more than defend themselves, even when their height and strength are very superior to those of others. If some of these peoples take prisoners, they let them enjoy their liberty, and treat them as compatriots. The savages of Guyana, placed almost under the equator, are as courageous as the most intrepid savages of Canada; they are faster runners; but, says a traveler whom they had made a slave, they are less inhuman: they do not eat their prisoners [511]. Among the same nations, women, although obliged to engage in painful labors, are less debased and less miserable than among the peoples of the north; the two sexes engage in the same kind of occupations [512].

A man can marry several women; but, as divorce is free to both sexes among several nations, any woman can abandon a polygamous husband, if she deems it suitable [513]. Women are not the property of the strongest: among some peoples, they consent to marry only when they have made their agreements either with their future husband or with his parents [514]. The wandering peoples of the north never pass through a place without destroying everything they encounter on their path; the peoples of the south, whom agriculture has not yet entirely settled, sow something everywhere they pass, in the hope that one day they will gather the fruits of it [515]. The most debased peoples of the tropics lack cleanliness; but, as they are often in the water, their filth does not approach that of the peoples who live under cold climates [516].

The Spanish historians assure that the Incas and the caciques enjoyed a boundless power; but, besides the fact that this assertion accords little with the praise they give to their laws and to the manner in which they say justice was administered, it is contradicted by the customs that these peoples have preserved, and which it has not been in the power of the Spanish conquerors to destroy. The natives of Peru are in the habit of meeting at certain times to deliberate on their common interests; and all that the Spanish government has ever been able to obtain from them in this regard is that their assemblies would be presided over by an officer of its choice.

“It is impossible,” says Ulloa on this subject, “to make these peoples renounce their ancient customs; one would attempt it only by running the greatest risks. If one were to absolutely forbid them any known assembly, they would go and hold them by night in distant places, and it would be very difficult to be informed of their deliberations [517].”

At the same time that the peoples of Peru have held with an invincible constancy to the custom of assembling to deliberate on their common interests, those of Mexico have preserved for their caciques all the respect that their ancestors bore for the men of this class. By the conquest of the Spanish, all the natives were reduced to the same level; it is difficult to distinguish, by their exterior, those who descend from the ancient grandees from those who descend from the lowest classes of the people.

“The noble,” says M. de Humboldt, “by the simplicity of his clothing and his food, by the aspect of misery he likes to present, is easily confused with the tributary Indian. The latter shows the former a respect that indicates the distance prescribed by the ancient constitutions of the Aztec hierarchy [518].”

This respect, transmitted by the lowest classes of the people to their descendants, in favor of the descendants of the fallen masters, would it not be a proof that the domination of one class over the others was not as harsh as is supposed?

Thus, we can find among the natives of America who inhabit the climates of the north no moral superiority over the peoples placed between the tropics. They are, on the contrary, generally inferior to them in a great number of respects: they have more rapacity, cruelty, perfidy, intemperance, laziness, filth, improvidence, and pride. It seems that they should be superior to them in constancy in enduring adversity; but, even in this respect, they are far below the others.

“These peoples,” says Hearne, “are never happy by halves, for the misfortune of others is nothing to them. But if the slightest prosperity intoxicates them, the slightest personal or domestic setback overwhelms them. Like other uncivilized peoples, they bear physical pains with much resignation, although I regard the southern Indians as superior to them in this respect [519].”

The writers who have claimed that one could find virtues only among savages or barbarians have attributed the vices of the North Americans to the communications that these peoples have had with the Europeans. To give this assertion an appearance of verisimilitude, it would have been necessary to prove that the peoples placed in the same position, but having never communicated with the nations of Europe, had less vicious morals. But it is precisely the contrary that is established: it is the hordes that have always been the most isolated, such as those of Van Diemen's Land, New Holland, the Aleutian Islands, and the northwest coast of America, among which have been found the most numerous and most energetic vices. It is in speaking of the latter that La Pérouse, after having drawn the picture of their atrocious morals, wrote:

“I will admit, if you wish, that it is impossible for a society to exist without some virtues; but I am obliged to agree that I have not had the sagacity to perceive them [520]”.