An immigration, which is largely of one sex, can be expected to have less influence on the permanent race stock of a country than one in which the sexes are distributed nearly equally. This follows from the fact that marriage most commonly occurs within peoples rather than between peoples, above all when language is a barrier. The following table gives the number of males and females in each element of the population in 1920:

American foreign born in the United States, 1920, by country or birth and sex [From Fourteenth Census, Vol. II, p. 693]

This table shows that while the number of immigrants from the southerly countries contains a smaller proportion of females than those of the northerly countries-countries from which immigrants have been coming for a longer time they none the less include in each instance a very substantial proportion of females. In the past it has usually, but not quite invariably, been true that as an immigration has continued and has increased in volume the proportion of females has increased until the two sexes have been approximately equal in representation.

Of what races are these American immigrants? The census has provided a table which practically supplies an answer to this question.

American foreign born in the United States, 1920, by country of birth and

So far as the numbers in the nonwhite divisions are concerned, if fairly pure strains are in question they may be regarded as approximately correct. What follows in this report will make it clear, however, that the designation of "white," at least, where natives of the southerly countries are in question, is made to apply to many mixed stocks in which one of the two elements present is not white.

II. RACIAL COMPOSITION OF COUNTRIES SOUTH OF THE UNITED STATES

1. MEXICO

(a) Population principally Indian of pure blood or mixed.-Mexico is, next to Brazil, the most populous country south of the United States. The third and latest census of the republic, taken in 1910, established a total population

of 15,160,369. Comparison with the two previous censuses shows that a substantial increase had long been under way. When all allowance has been made for such inaccuracies, as are frequent in the censuses of Latin American countries, both the increases shown and the final total itself doubtless reflect the actual situation fairly well.

More densely inhabited, considering its area, than any country of Central or South America, Mexico yet contains extensive districts having a very sparse population; the broad northern portion of the country is lightly populated. Fully three-quarters of all the people live on the high plateau which rises in the south central portion of the country, whose altitudes of 5,000 to 8,000 feet greatly temper the climate. Most of the remainder of the people live in the low hills and the rest in the hot low lands, the tierra caliente. While the Mexican censuses have never attempted to divide the population according to race, they do provide particulars regarding languages spoken. Some two million people were recorded in 1910 as speaking Indian tongues. The detailed figures are interesting, chiefly because they reflect how slight has been the dispersion of the Indian-speaking peoples from their principal habitats in recent times at least. For example, the largest group of all, the Mexicano or Nahuatl Indians, registered at 516,410, are chiefly in Puebla, Vera Cruz, Hidalgo, Guerrero, San Luis Potosi, and Tlaxcola; the Maya speaking are chiefly in Yucatan and Campeche; the Huastoco are in Vera Cruz and San Luis Potosi ; the Chinanteco, the Chatino, the Huave are in Oaxaca only.

To suppose that those who speak Indian idioms are the only Indians in the republic, and that the thirteen millions and more recorded as speaking Spanish are an essentially Spanish stock, would be to commit a fundamental error. It is doubtful whether the people of exclusively white origin are more than 10 per cent of all the people. What has happened is that the use of the Spanish language has become pretty general in a population which is principally Indian or mixed and where the full-blooded Indians and those of mixed stocks quite as much Indian as they are white-together amount to approximately nine-tenths of the entire nation.

It is a situation which can not be understood without a glance back over the history of past centuries.

(b) History of the formation of the population.-Between the building up of the population of Mexico and that of the United States there is the sharpest possible contrast. The native Indian population that lived in the present area of the United States was generally sparse or was concentrated in special districts. The Europeans who came to this area were settlers who introduced their own civilization and who very rarely interbred with the Indian. Further immigration of Europeans continuing in substantial volume, it required but a short time for the population of European stock to equal and presently to outnumber the Indian stock. The natural increase of the European stock and the increase by immigration from Europe have resulted in a population tremendously outnumbering to-day both the pure Indian stock and the white stock having Indian intermixture, which never became a large stock.

At every point the Mexican development is in contrast. The native stocks, when the white man arrived, were highly populous and inhabited the best lands of the country. The Spanish invaders sought gold, not homes. During three centuries women were few among those who crossed the seas. Of the men who enter Mexico many returned to Spain after a time. Immigrants from other countries than Spain were long given no place at all. In the century since the Mexican population achieved independence from Spain, few immigrants came from Europe. To-day the population of pure Indian blood or of mixed Indian blood very greatly outnumbers the pure European stock.

It was in 1519 that Cortez set foot in Mexico and invaded the country, establishing the first European contact with its peoples. Occupying the highlands were the Aztec Indians, populous and highly organized. For a considerable time they had been subduing other tribes. They had not, however, imposed their civilization on the tribes in the north of the country and in the extreme south. They were rather the heirs of a higher civilization which had gone before than originators or disseminators of a new civilization. Either extirpation or dispersion and expulsion of these numerous Indian peoples by the Spanish was never in question; the conquest of them was undertaken in order to add riches to the Spanish Crown. During nearly three centuries of Spanish rule the Provinces were administered for the sake of the profit that might accrue from them.

Of the sixty-odd viceroys who ruled the country before Spanish dominion collapsed, only four had been born in Mexico. No foreigners might enter the country and none but Spaniards came to administer its riches; they brought a soldiery with them to protect themselves.

The few Spanish women in Mexico became the mothers of the pure creole stock. While the precise numbers of this stock can not be established for any date, it was unquestionably never a large stock. Beyond doubt the most frequent unions of the Spanish men were with Indian women. In the earlier days it was common to confer captured Indian women as spoils upon the soldiers. Some of these women were received in marriage by the men, some were taken as concubines, some became partners in irregular or occasional unions. Whatever the method of mating, the result was presently the beginning of a new race of mixed Indian and white blood, called by the Spanish name of mestizo.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century its numbers must have formed a very large, though not to be determined, fraction of the entire Mexican population. Since Spaniards from all parts of Spain mingled with Indian women of many tribes having distinctive ethnological traits, some difference of type resulted. By further intermarriage of Spaniard with Indian during the past century, or of mestizo with Indian, the mixed-breed population has still further increased, and throughout the centuries there has been much intermarriage of mestizo with mestizo. The wars waged under the Diaz presidency against various Indian tribes can be regarded as only a continuation of the process of subjugation begun by Cortez. Subjugation has constantly brought more Indians within the scope of intermarriage with whites and mestizos. As the pure-blooded Indians constitute even to-day, it is generally agreed, a full third of the entire population of Mexico, the Indian influence upon the mestizo stock still has an opportunity to go far.

After 1810 there was a resumption of Spanish immigration into Mexico which has continued to the present. While its proportions are indefinite there is good reason to suppose that it has not added a large increment to the white stock.

Still other than Spanish or Indian elements have been present in Mexico. During a period of about two centuries prior to 1817 there was some importation of negroes to be used as slaves. They were largely males, a part of whom subsequently united with Indian women. So far as the negro stock persists to-day it is in the so-called zambos, the offspring of crosses between Indian and black, and it tends to be unrecognizably absorbed into the race stock of the country. Negro slavery as an institution ceased as far back as 1821.

After the Spanish yoke had been thrown off, the country was opened to immigration from other countries. This immigration has never been extensive, though its precise dimensions are not clear. The statistics for naturalization indicate but little eagerness on the part of foreigners to identify their interests with those of the Mexican people. Although efforts have been made to attract immigrants, the census of 1900 discovered only 30,229 persons speaking other languages than Spanish or Indian and the census of 1910 discovered only 56,691. The census of 1900 found only 57,507 foreigners living in Mexico and of these only 16,258 had come from Spain. The census of 1910 found only 116,527 foreigners resident of whom only 29,541 were from Spain and her colonies. The fact that less than a third of all foreigners were women (of the Spanish proportion considerably smaller still) and that nations with business interests in Mexico accounted for an important part of the foreigners (in 1920 there were 20,639 immigrants from the United States, actually twothirds as many as immigrants from Spain) suggests an unusual degree of impermanence in these settlements. Some peoples of a race stock similar to the Mexican; that is, largely Indian, were heavily represented; Guatemalans, for instance, by 21,334, chiefly living in the State of Chispas. Finally, oriental immigrants were present in substantial numbers, Chinese alone running to 13,203, largely workers in the mines of Senora and Chihuahua. It appears then from these various considerations that during an epoch in which unprecedented tides of white immigration were entering the United States only a trinkling stream was making its way into Mexico, there to contribute but little to the permanent white element.1

1 Of the 116,527 foreigners resident in 1910, more than one-third were not white. The immigrants from Arabia, China, Japan, Korea, Guatemala, and Cuba alone numbered 42,025; if some of these were white their numbers were unquestionably counterbalanced by colored elements from other countries.

(c) Extent of the white element.-From the survey which has been given of the population of Mexico it must be plain that the pure Spanish element is small, that the century which brought many millions of white immigrants to the United States brought very few immigrants even of Spanish origin to Mexico, and that the basic race of the country is Indian, either pure-blooded or mixed with white stock: Common estimates of the pure Indian stock place it at five or six millions; of the white stock at one and one-half to less than three millions (for the higher figure there is very little warrant); of the mestizo stock about seven or eight millions. If the smaller estimate for the Indian stock is preferred, the larger must be taken for the mestizo. Of the mestizo stock a part is half Indian and half white, another part is more than half white and less than half Indian, and still another part is more than half Indian and less than half white. Since the pure Indian stock greatly outnumbers the pure white it is safe to infer that that part of the mestizo which is more than half Indian greatly exceeds that part which is more than half white.

The stock of the Mexican people is then principally of mixed Indian blood. Since the process of fusion is still going on the stock is likely to become even more characteristically one of mixed blood than it has been. It is entirely fitting, since no confusion will result, to call this stock Mexican, but if a color designation is used it is plainly a mistake to continue the common praetice of speaking of the stock as white, for its basis is more copper than white. Probably the tendency to call the stock white is explained in part by the fact that the mestizo people, and even largely the pure Indians, not only speak Spanish but have Spanish names-considerable numbers of Indians, for instance, have settled in the towns of Mexico.2

It is also explained by the fact that in Mexico, as in Central America and South America generally, the man of mixed breed commonly identifies himself with the supposedly superior of the two strains present in him; he claims to be white rather than mixed or Indian. Not expressly on grounds of race, for race prejudice as it is known in the United States and in other countries seems scarcely to exist in Mexico, but on economic grounds, such as position, wealth, or occupation, the mixed race is held in higher esteem than the Indian; the creole and the European white are held in higher esteem than the mixed. There is an economic but not a race aristocracy; yet economic and racial lines largely coincide.

(d) Indian capacity for civilization.-As Spanish arms prevailed over native arms, as the conquerors established their institutions and flourished in them. so the principal features of modern civilization have been planted in Mexico, such as political systems, methods of transportation, domestic architecture, organization of trade, and others. A race fundamentally Indian has adopted a white man's civilization. What success is likely to come from this adoption? Several kinds of evidence bearing on the question must be considered. One consists of the past accomplishments of the Indian races. Beyond a doubt there was much that was noteworthy in these accomplishments. Among the native races that lived in the present area of the United States nothing ever developed, it would seem, that could stand comparison with the work of the Mexican races. The Aztec Indians, unaided by European example, had attained an advanced civilization both in politics and the arts. In a short time before Cortes came, they had extended their sway over tribes and imposed their culture. Of their culture itself no small part, it is true, was taken from tribes previously strong; yet the Aztec addition was substantial. If no more were known of ancient Indian civilization than the Aztec development, it could not but be regarded as impressive. Along with much, however, that was plainly admirable in this civilization, there were crude and cruel features also; human sacrifices, for example, were made upon an altogether prodigious scale.

A few centuries before the Aztec development a high stage of culture was reached by the Toltec Tribe, which apparently belonged to the same race stock as the Aztec. It may be that the principal part of this culture was the fruit of contact with the later development of still another and earlier civilization, the Maya.

The names borne by the Indians represent only an adaptation to Spanish ways just as the negroes of the United States have lost their African names and taken on such names as are usual among the Anglo-Saxon whites.

On the whole, the Maya civilization was the most astonishing which Mexican native history presents. When at its height, in the period of 400 to 600 A. D., 10 centuries before Cortes, it had attained a high plane of development in science and the arts and had spread its confines much beyond the initial area of its development in Yucatan.

When the Spanish came the Toltec civilization had declined before the Aztec, and the Maya Indians were in 18 or more tribal groups, their great cities a thing of the past.

What the Indian tribes might have accomplished had they continued to be left to themselves, not interfered with by invaders from Europe, it is idle to speculate. Isolated from all the rest of the world, unassisted by precept or example, they had risen above many of the world's peoples having greater advantages of situation and example. The Spanish invasion with its equipment of horses and firearms brought a great shock, but it would be a mistake to explain the decline of the Indian peoples wholly by this shock and by the destruction wrought, or to assume that had the Spanish not come the Indian development would have gone greatly further. For it must be remembered that apparently the most original of all these Indian civilizations the Maya had come to an end long before the arrival of the white men, and that the Toltec likewise had declined, while only the Aztec, which was probably the least original of them, was still undiminished when it encountered the shock of Spanish invasion.

(e) The situation to-day.-With the passing years the vitality of Indian civilization has declined. Of a national Indian existence none remains. Some authority still attaches to certain members of tribes, but it is local and weak. Of the Indian languages and dialects some have wholly disappeared; the vocabulary of others has been much diminished, and nothing remains which deserves the name of a contemporaneous literature. More and more even the most characteristic Indian towns are undergoing a Spanish metamorphosis. Many pure Indians have quit their villages and established themselves in the cities. Some have fully identified themselves with the white man's civilization and institutions. Here and there they have shown proficiency in that civilization and have outdistanced their white fellow citizens. One pureblooded Indian, Benito Juarez, rose to be president of the republic, while the president longest in office, Porfirio Diaz, had in him a strain of Indian blood; it is particularly the Mixtec Tribe which has produced outstanding figures of this sort.

In general, however, of the more active, aggressive character shown by the Indians in the time of Cortez, of their inventive and constructive capacities revealed from time to time since the Maya epoch began, little is evident to-day. Indeed, as one student has pointed out, "the present state of native culture in the Central American States is quite the reverse of what the archaeology would lead us to expect. This is particularly true of the Maya area in which quite primitive and loosely organized groups of peoples are found still speaking Maya languages."

Where the Indians have quit their village life and sought a place in the economic and social life of the Mexican nation they are often not easily distinguishable from the mixed breeds.

In industry the Indians occupy the lowest places. They are farm hands, unskilled laborers, mule drivers, factory hands, workers in the mines, sometimes servants. They seem to be men of few wants, apathetic, without ambition, not concerned with the future. Rarely do they own land. They are improvident and prefer to work intermittently, getting into debt with their employers, who thereby are enabled to hold them to their estates. Sometimes a bonus is offered them for a month's continuous employment. In many cases only if there is a surplus of laborers on hand can industrial operations be maintained continuously. They are much given to drinking pulque, an intoxicating liquor.

The mestizos resemble the pure Indian in many respects. Most are of the peon or labor class, but, like the white class above them, they often scorn manual labor. Many are traders, lesser officials, servants, miners, overseers of plantations. They, too, are given to drinking pulque. Their lives are much determined by custom. They are affectionate and clannish and, as might be

3 C. Wissler, The American Indian, New York, 1917, p. 228.