Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/101

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THE NEGRO
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currence for both men and officers to keep Indian squaws, and in not a few instances they married them. Of such progeny I have seen not a little, and it has always struck me that they made neither desirable men nor women, the poor qualities of the two races being intensified, and the good ones subordinated. So far as my observation has carried me, the white woman will submit to intercourse with a full-blooded Indian with far better grace than she will to coitus with a typical negro, — there is something intensely repugnant in the very idea of the latter act, while it would appear that a species of romance enters into the first-named coupling. Indians possess, as a rule, strong sexual instincts, and I have seen many a young Sioux squaw that was by no means unattractive.

In this country but a small per cent, of the half-breeds, the outcome of the crossing of whites and negroes, whites and Indians, and whites and Chinese, is through the institution of marriage. The great mass of them, especially in the case of the whites and the negroes, are the outcome of chance crossings, and the children are legally considered illegitimate. On the other hand, it is through intermarriage that we have a growing offspring in the United States from the intermarriage of the representatives of the various European nations that have made America their home. Many checks, however, occur here, as for example, the Jews usually marry only within their own race, so, too, the Scandinavians, and some of the others. Religion may have something to do with it, as Catholics are more or less clannish in this respect, and everything else being equal, Catholics select Catholics as mates in marrying. Still, it seems to me that, taking