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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 1916)
10 THE CHEM AW A AM ERICAN THEIR ANCESTRAL HOME B Y C H A R L E S HALLOCK IN T H E P A T H F IN D E R m ASMUCH as the Anglo-African bishop, John William Hamilton, of San Francisco, has publicly declared, at the National capital, that the American citizen of the not very distant future is to be an amalgamation of all resident races of men, including the typical ne gro, it will be interesting to learn where the progeni tors of this black element sprang from. Especially gratifying will it be to us of the Caucasian race to know that they are not from the lowest stock on the Dark Continent. Indeed, we so-called Americans, past and present, and up-to-date, have all along known that our home negroes were more intelligent than those of the West Indies and English and Spanish colonies, and an explanation of this physiological fact follows: First, as those who are familiar with the history of the Dark Conti nent are aware, the people of Africa have been more responsible for the enslavement of their own race than any other nations, not-withstanding the traditions which are current among the world’s censors placing the blame upon mercenary Caucasians. From the very beginning the penal code of many of the tribes has been the underlying cause of such large numbers of blacks being sold into slavery. Under home laws the principal crimes were witchcraft, murder, and manslaughter—witchcraft taking the precedence. Convicted persons had always the choice between death or slavery and exile, and instinc tively they chose expatriation. In some sections whole families were arbitrarily sold by their own kinsfolk and townspeople for jealousy or reprisal for the least criminal act. They are so sold to this day to parties who will buy them, though the market is very much curtailed by the surpression of the slave trade years ago in English and Ameri can possessions, and more recently in Brazil and other progressive countries. We of America do not need to kick ourselves much for conscience’s sake in regard to this matter. Indeed, the moral and social status of those Africans who were introduced among us has been so vastly im proved by the association, or contact, as events have demonstrated, that no specialized missionary work wherever applied throughout the globe has been so thorough or constant. Negroes were not, as a rule, filched from their homes by white depredators, but were gathered into convict gangs by their own village chiefs and driven to the baracoons
