Chapter III: Primitive Negro Civilization

THE ANCIENT AND HIGH DEGREE OF NEGRO CIVILIZATION.--EGYPT,
GREECE, AND ROME BORROW FROM THE NEGRO THE CIVILIZATION THAT
MADE THEM GREAT.--CAUSE OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO
CIVILIZATION.--CONFOUNDING THE TERMS "NEGRO" AND "AFRICAN."

It is fair to presume that God gave all the races of mankind civilization to start with. We infer this from the known character of the Creator. Before Romulus founded Rome, before Homer sang, when Greece was in its infancy, and the world quite young, "hoary Meroe" was the chief city of the Negroes along the Nile. Its private and public buildings, its markets and public squares, its colossal walls and stupendous gates, its gorgeous chariots and alert footmen, its inventive genius and ripe scholarship, made it the cradle of civilization, and the mother of art. It was the queenly city of Ethiopia,--for it was founded by colonies of Negroes. Through its open gates long and ceaseless caravans, laden with gold, silver, ivory, frankincense, and palm-oil, poured the riches of Africa into the capacious lap of the city. The learning of this people, embalmed in the immortal hieroglyphic, flowed adown the Nile, and, like spray, spread over the delta of that time-honored stream, on by the beautiful and venerable city of Thebes,--the city of a hundred gates, another monument to Negro genius and civilization, and more ancient than the cities of the Delta,--until Greece and Rome stood transfixed before the ancient glory of Ethiopia! Homeric mythology borrowed its very essence from Negro hieroglyphics; Egypt borrowed her light from the venerable Negroes up the Nile. Greece went to school to the Egyptians, and Rome turned to Greece for law and the science of warfare. England dug down into Rome twenty centuries to learn to build and plant, to establish a government, and maintain it. Thus the flow of civilization has been from the East--the place of light--to the West; from the Oriental to the Occidental. (God fixed the mountains east and west in Europe.)

"Tradition universally represents the earliest men
descending, it is true, from the high table-lands of this
continent; but it is in the low and fertile plains lying at
their feet, with which we are already acquainted, that they
unite themselves for the first time in natural bodies, in
tribes, with fixed habitations, devoting themselves to
husbandry, building cities, cultivating the arts,--in a
word, forming well-regulated societies. The traditions of
the Chinese place the first progenitors of that people on
the high table-land, whence the great rivers flow: they mike
them advance, station by station as far as the shores of the
ocean. The people of the Brahmins come down from the regions
of the Hindo-Khu, and from Cashmere, into the plains of the
Indus and the Ganges; Assyria and Bactriana receive their
inhabitants from the table-lands of Armenia and Persia.

"These alluvial plains, watered by their twin rivers, were
better formed than all other countries of the globe to
render the first steps of man, an infant still, easy in the
career of civilized life. A rich soil, on which overflowing
rivers spread every year a fruitful loam, as in Egypt, and
one where the plough is almost useless, so movable and so
easily tilled is it, a warm climate, finally, secure to the
inhabitants of these fortunate regions plentiful harvests in
return for light labor. Nevertheless, the conflict with the
river itself and with the desert,--which, on the banks of
the Euphrates, as on those of the Nile and the Indus, is
ever threatening to invade the cultivated lands,--the
necessity of irrigation, the inconstancy of the seasons,
keep forethought alive, and give birth to the useful arts
and to the sciences of observation. The abundance of
resources, the absence of every obstacle, of all separation
between the different parts of these vast plains, allow the
aggregation of a great number of men upon one and the same
space, and facilitate the formation of those mighty
primitive states which amaze us by the grandeur of their
proportions.

"Each of them finds upon its own soil all that is necessary
for a brilliant exhibition of its resources. We see those
nations come rapidly forward, and reach in the remotest
antiquity a degree of culture of which the temples and the
monuments of Egypt and of India, and the recently discovered
palaces of Nineveh are living and glorious witnesses.

"Great nations, then, are separately formed in each of these
areas, circumscribed by nature within natural limits. Each
has its religion, its social principles, its civilization
severally. But nature, as we have seen, has separated them;
little intercourse is established between them; the social
principle on which they are founded is exhausted by the very
formation of the social state they enjoy, and is never
renewed. A common life is wanting to them: they do not
reciprocally share with each other their riches. With them
movement is stopped: every thing becomes stable and tends to
remain stationary.

"Meantime, in spite of the peculiar seal impressed on each
of these Oriental nations by the natural conditions in the
midst of which they live, they have, nevertheless some grand
characteristics common to all, some family traits that
betray the nature of the continent and the period of human
progress to which they belong, making them known on the one
side as Asiatic, and on the other side as primitive."[56]

Is it asked what caused the decline of all this glory of the primitive Negro? why this people lost their position in the world's history? Idolatry! Sin![57]

Centuries have flown apace, tribes have perished, cities have risen and fallen, and even empires, whose boast was their duration, have crumbled, while Thebes and Meroe stood. And it is a remarkable fact, that the people who built those cities are less mortal than their handiwork. Notwithstanding their degradation, their woes and wrongs, the perils of the forest and dangers of the desert, this remarkable people have not been blotted out. They still live, and are multiplying in the earth. Certainly they have been preserved for some wise purpose, in the future to be unfolded.

But, again, what was the cause of the Negro's fall from his high state of civilization? It was forgetfulness of God, idolatry! "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people."

The Negro tribes of Africa are as widely separated by mental, moral, physical, and social qualities as the Irish, Huns, Copts, and Druids are. Their location on the Dark Continent, their surroundings, and the amount of light that has come to them from the outside world, are the thermometer of their civilization. It is as manifestly improper to call all Africans Negroes as to call, Americans Indians.

"The Negro nations of Africa differ widely as to their
manner of life and their characters, both of mind and body,
in different parts of that continent, according as they have
existed under different moral and physical conditions.
Foreign culture, though not of a high degree, has been
introduced among the population of some regions; while from
others it has been shut out by almost impenetrable barriers,
beyond which the aboriginal people remain secluded amid
their mountains and forests, in a state of instinctive
existence,--a state from which, history informs us, that
human races have hardly emerged, until moved by some impulse
from without. Neither Phoenician nor Roman culture seems to
have penetrated into Africa beyond the Atlantic region and
the desert. The activity and enthusiasm of the propagators
of Islam have reached farther. In the fertile low countries
beyond the Sahara, watered by rivers which descend northward
from the central highlands, Africa has contained for
centuries several Negro empires, originally founded by
Mohammedans. The Negroes of this part of Africa are people
of a very different description from the black pagan
nations farther towards the South. They have adopted many of
the arts of civilized society, and have subjected themselves
to governments and political institutions. They practise
agriculture, and have learned the necessary, and even some
of the ornamental, arts of life, and dwell in towns of
considerable extent; many of which are said to contain ten
thousand, and even thirty thousand inhabitants,--a
circumstance which implies a considerable advancement in
industry and the resources of subsistence. All these
improvements were introduced into the interior of Africa
three or four centuries ago; and we have historical
testimony, that in the region where trade and agriculture
now prevail the population consisted, previous to the
introduction of Islam, of savages as wild and fierce as the
natives farther towards the south, whither the missionaries
of that religion have never penetrated. It hence appears
that human society has not been in all parts of Africa
stationary and unprogressive from age to age. The first
impulse to civilization was late in reaching the interior of
that continent, owing to local circumstances which are
easily understood; but, when it had once taken place, an
improvement has resulted which is, perhaps, proportional to
the early progress of human culture in other more favored
regions of the world."[58]

But in our examination of African tribes we shall not confine ourselves to that class of people known as Negroes, but call attention to other tribes as well. And while, in this country, all persons with a visible admixture of Negro blood in them are considered Negroes, it is technically incorrect. For the real Negro was not the sole subject sold into slavery: very many of the noblest types of mankind in Africa have, through the uncertainties of war, found their way to the horrors of the middle passage, and finally to the rice and cotton fields of the Carolinas and Virginias. So, in speaking of the race in this country, in subsequent chapters, I shall refer to them as _colored people_ or _Negroes_.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Earth and Man, pp. 300-302.

[57] It is a remarkable fact, that the absence of salt in the food of the Eastern nations, especially the dark nations or races, has been very deleterious. An African child will eat salt by the handful, and, once tasting it, will cry for it. The ocean is the womb of nature; and the Creator has wisely designed salt as the savor of life, the preservative element in human food.

[58] Physical History of Mankind, vol. ii. pp. 45, 46.