The Background
The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written by W.W. Goodrich, an architect who practiced in Atlanta between 1889 and 1895.
Here, Goodrich provides what absolutely no one asked for: his critique of an article called “Mutual Aid Among Savages” by Peter Kropotkin, a 19th-century Russian anarchist philosopher.
Per usual, Goodrich couldn’t even be bothered to spell the man’s name right, repeatedly referring to him as Kraptokine. And no, he wasn’t being clever here: crap didn’t appear in the American vernacular until after World War I.2
As Goodrich recounts in disbelief, Kropotkin had the audacity to suggest that “the savage races are equal if not superior to civilized peoples in innate goodness and common honesty.” Not that Goodrich knew anything of honesty.
His tutting, condescending lectures are too tedious to counter at this point, but I must call attention to one obvious hypocrisy: “Everybody does not live with his head in a moral fog like the average Russian nihilist”, Goodrich loftily proclaims.
So says the man arrested for check fraud and larceny in multiple states. Was his head not in a moral fog when he pretended to be insane in a Los Angeles jail?
No doubt to prove how cultured he was, Goodrich had to rattle off a list of every tribal group imaginable, using terms that are mostly outdated and offensive today, and nearly all misspelled — no surprise.
It’s also not surprising that Goodrich, who constantly mythologized Native Americans while calling for their genocide, again repeats his “Good Indian, dead Indian” sentiments here. Oh, and he also refers to women as “the weaker sex”.
There’s truly nothing redeemable about this man.
Innate Savage Goodness
Comparisons of Civilization and Barbarians.
A French Review’s Interesting Article.
The Customs and Habits of the Different Races.
In China Many of the Girl Children and Old and Infirm Men and Women Are Killed.
Written for The Journal.
Kraptokine has recently written an article for a French review with the object–not avowed, of course–of proving that the savage races are equal if not superior to civilized peoples in innate goodness and common honesty. His process of reasoning is to throw into relief the commendable qualities he finds even among the most debased tribes, like those of Australia, China and New Guinea, and efface or excuse their cruelty, their cannibalism and the inhuman practice so common in savage life of infanticide or the killing of relatives when they become too old and infirm to be longer useful. The Russian nihilist and philosopher is far from accepting the American theory so tersely expressed in the phrase, “Good Indian, dead Indian,” and if called upon to give his opinion would doubtless prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that the culture found in a Sioux or Apache community is far superior to that of which Boston is the presumed center. Though it cannot be fairly claimed that the opinions of a man who believes that the assassination of one or any number of individuals is justifiable as a political means are above suspicion, it may be interesting, from the standpoint of scholarship or ethnology to hear what he has to say on the subject.
He begins with the bushmen, whom Lubbock describes as “the filthiest of animals,” but who have been found by Burchell and Moffat to be faithful to their promises, tenacious in returning a service rendered, and so attached to their offspring that when one of the children of the tribe is carried off the mother follows it into a state of slavery, leaving, of course, her other babes to be brought up (this detail is not added) the best way they can by the father.
It is, perhaps, not perfectly logical to rely too strongly on the maternal instinct as a test of innate goodness, since man shares this quality with the lowest animals. It would not be difficult to find in works of natural history instances where a wild beast has in the same manner followed her young to bondage or certain death. Among the Hottentots and among the Fueggians, who live in the greatest degradation, it is the custom when any person is in the possession of a full meal to invite all persons to partake of it. Testimony is wanting to conclusively prove the universality of this custom, but even if it were as general as alleged it would simply show that this community of food is an absolute necessity, the supply of nourishment being intermittent, he who has enough for the day being able to be starving a few days later, and consequently dependent on those to whom he is at the moment seemingly generous.
The practice at its best is a form of mutual assurance, and indicates rather a prudent foresight than innate goodness. The integrity and chastity of the Hottentots are commended by Kolben, an English writer, who says of them that they are the best and most amiable people on the face of the globe. Kraptokine adds that similar compliments are paid to the Otsiaks, Samoyedes, Esquimaux, Dyaks, Aleuts, Pajuans, and other tribes among the lowest in the social scale, not exceeding the Sioux, and the natives of Northeast Siberia, who resemble the Esquimaux. The enumeration will suggest some curious ideas to an American–that is to an American of the southern states–though the philanthropists of Boston and Philadelphia may see nothing abnormal in model like these held up for their imitation.
Kraptokine lingers lovingly on the gentle qualities displayed by the native of Australia, China and New Guinea, in whom few travelers have hitherto found much to commend.
He says of the Australians: “They are very indifferent regarding their food. They devour bodies horribly putrified and have recourse to cannibalism in time of famine. The sentiment of friendship is very strong among them. The weak are generally protected and the sick are cared for. They take care of the weak and sick, not abandoning them and never killing them. They are cannibals, but rarely eat members of their own tribe, unless it be the bodies of those that have been sacrificed. They prefer the flesh of foreigners.” There are here some delicate distinctions, the writer seeming to convey the idea that this abstinence from the flesh of friends and relatives is a noble trait. It is further to be noted that the weak are not always protected, while it is left to inference that the old are sometimes let to the tender mercies of wild beasts.
Our philosopher reposes his faith in the savages of New Guinea on the testimony of one Bink, who says “that the Papuaus are gay and sociable and laugh a great deal.” Mr. Bink might have completed his phrase by adding “as do generally the inhabitants of the tropics.” He, however, goes on to say that they take care of the sick and old, never abandoning them and in no case killing them, unless it is sometimes a slave that has been sick a long time. Prisoners of war are sometimes devoured.
Children are kindly treated and much loved. Old and feeble captives are put to death, the others are sold into slavery.
They have no religion, no divinity, nor any supreme authority. They eagerly seek vengeance and pursue their enemies to the death.” But, who would have thought it “when they are well treated, they are very good,” which justifies their being held up to as models.
After having visited the tropics Kraptokine turns his attention towards the poles, where he finds the Esquimaux a most gentle and lovable people, and the Aleuts, who are in many respects altogether remarkable. As the first, their characteristics are too well known to Americans to require discussion in this place. Though the Aleuts are nearer, we have not, it appears, perfectly learned to appreciate them. Our author who has drawn this information from the works of Russian missionaries describes them as of rare endurance of hardship, privations and severity of climate.
Their code of morals is varied and severe. The perfect Aleut considers it shameful to fear inevitable death, to implore pardon of a rival, to die without having killed an enemy. He never caresses his wife no dances in the presence of other persons. He is a pattern of neatness, bathing himself every morning in the icy sea, and afterwards incoestly exposing himself on the verge in the costume of our first parents. In time of famine he gives his last decayed fish to his offspring, and feeds himself with its lingering order.
The men do not communicate state secrets to their wives, the weaker sex seeming to share the garrulous foibles of a higher civilization. The children partake of the virtues of their elders, never fighting with one another with their fists but insulting one another’s mothers by saying that the boy’s mother doesn’t know how to sew, the Aleut woman being a very trivial being if she lacks this accomplishment.
The circuitous way in which these facts are divulged to the people of the Atlantic coast through the medium of a Russian mission, a Russian nihilist and French review will not, it is hoped, detract from their interest or diminish their general utility. Also the Dyacks [sic] of Borneo, recognized by all who have known them as one of the most savage of peoples, though the young man cannot marry until he has brought in the head of an enemy, have most estimable qualities.
It is not surprising after all this special pleading that Krapotkine should find excuses for infanticide, cannibalism and the killing of the old and useless in the hereditary customs and religious superstitions of savage tribes. But of what use is such a recapitulation? A resume of the noble instincts and the maternal tenderness of domestic animals or of wild beasts would be quite as valuable and prove quite as much. From savages we expect nothing, therefore every virtue they have astonishes. From civilization we expect every thing, and we estimate it by the distance it falls below absolute perfection. The logic in either case is faulty. The possession of the good quality, either in savage or in civilized beings, does not atone for the luck of all the rest. There was never a criminal so hardened or debased that he did not retain a lingering tenderness for his mother.
The wild Bedouin of the desert receives and entertains with ostentatious hospitality for the night the chance traveler, or even his worst enemy, then waylays and slaughters him in the morning a mile from his tent. The reasoning of Krapotkine would make of this bandit and assassin a noble being, but fortunately, the common sense of humanity estimates differently and by higher standards. Everybody does not live with his head in a moral fog like the average Russian nihilist.
W.W. GOODRICH3
References
- Agostino iacurci ↩︎
- Thomas Crapper and the Word “Crap” – Tired Road Warrior ↩︎
- Goodrich, W.W. “Innate Savage Goodness”. The Atlanta Journal, May 6, 1893, p. 4. ↩︎