Maria Tallchief (b. 1925), whose father was a chief of the Osage Nation of American Indians in Oklahoma and whose mother was Scots Irish, was perhaps the most famous ballet dancer in mid-20th Century America. She married her choreographer George Ballanchine in 1946. He developed some of his most famous works for her. She was the prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet from 1947-1960. Dancing the sugar plum fairy in the nation's leading annual mounting of The Nutcracker, she was the foremost idol of little girls who dreamed of becoming a ballerina.
One seldom-remarked trend has been the apparent physical decline of part-American Indians since the era when Jim Thorpe was widely considered to be the greatest American athlete. Major league ballplayers who were part American Indian, such as Hall of Famers Chief Bender and Zack Wheat, were common before 1947, but have dropped off by perhaps an order of magnitude since then.
On this diversity-before-diversity thread, let's not forget Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza, AKA Charo. "Cuchi-cuchi," giant hooters, and all that.
ReplyDeleteToo much alcohol and malnutrition is my guess. Also if they're isolated there is lots of inbreeding.
ReplyDeleteI know several folks who have children with their double cousins.
TWS
Native-Americans are pretty much forgotten today...
ReplyDeleteShe is in the documentary Ballets Russes, which was fun to watch.
ReplyDeleteBut is not for everyone.
I dont know Steve - she looks very much like a young Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge to me. Cherokee/ Scots Irish ? - sounds like somebody was in major denial about their black ancestors.
ReplyDeleteI am fairly familiar with traditional (Native) American diets and one thing I can say is that nowadays, the average person growing up "on the Rez" and in other traditional Native American areas has a very bad diet.
ReplyDeleteOne little piece of trivia that does not get talked about much is that Native Americans in the Southwest (and in some other parts as well) have a high suicide rate, though, that is tangential to the point you were making.
I do know that many young Native American boys in the Southwest have taken to Skateboarding. So much so that a documentary was made about it, "Ramp It Up". Although, I have no idea if any are making it at the most competitive level.
Where I live the Indians seemed to thrive in HS basketball for freshman-sophomore years, before they burn out on booze and drugs and child support obligations. Admin used to wring their hands over how to keep these kids engaged long enough to graduate.
ReplyDeleteBut matter of fact, it's been a few years since I've seen much about this in local papers, or read of a high-scoring rez team. Maybe it's a White Thing now.
"she looks very much like a young Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge to me"
ReplyDeleteWell, that was my theory about why the number of American Indian ballplayers falls off a cliff after 1946: Jackie Robinson. But I couldn't find much specific evidence that Indian ballplayers before then were actually black.
All these types of stories---I Love Lucy, Pancho Gonzalez, Rita Hayworth, Jim Thorpe---about the horrible old days of "Evil Racist White America" are just so hilarious. Somebody should put together a list of such famous names---it would probably be a mile long.
ReplyDeletePeople are just so gullible, they always believe absolutely anything they're taught in school, read in newspapers, or see on TeeVee...
I was just noticing the other day that Will Rogers had a similar background - part white, part Cherokee, from Oklahoma.
ReplyDeleteRogers's story is particularly interesting because his father was a prominent Cherokee cavalry officer for the Confederate States of America [yeah, that CSA].
"One seldom-remarked trend has been the apparent physical decline of part-American Indians since the era when Jim Thorpe was widely considered to be the greatest American athlete. Major league ballplayers who were part American Indian, such as Hall of Famers Chief Bender and Zack Wheat, were common before 1947, but have dropped off by perhaps an order of magnitude since then."
ReplyDelete- I thought Prohibition ended in 1933...
These people are basically America's mestizos. Their fall, due to malnutrition and dysgenics parallels in some ways the fall of Mexico's natives and mestizos. For example, one of the greatest Mexican presidents in the 19th century or in all of Mexican history was the full-blooded native Amerindian Benito Juarez. He did a lot to modernize the country and helped drive out the French. Mexico hasn't seen even a mestizo like him since, and has been ruled by men of mostly European extraction since the Juarez era.
ReplyDeleteBack to the U.S - It is sometimes forgotten that Amerindians were an important labor source for building America's cities in the first half of the 20th century. Many of New York's skyscrapers were built by Native American laborers who would often return home to their reservations on weekends.
Unfortunately, this era came to an end, due to the welfare state, drugs/alcoholism, malnutrition, and identity politics. It is sad what these once proud people have been reduced to.
Their Mexican "hispanic" cousins aren't doing much better. Their alcoholism rate may not be as high, but their illegitimacy rate, fertility rate and lack of achievement are troubling.
It's funny how white "hispanics" will claim to be their "brothers" and will represent their supposed common "interests", when the native/mestizo "hispanics" are more culturally and genetically related to the poverty-stricken natives in the U.S living on reservations. Yet they are treated like they are very different groups, due to a mere language difference(a relatively small percentage of native Mexicans can't even speak Spanish).
Wikipedia's entry indicated that Will Rogers was merely named after William Penn Adair.
ReplyDeleteI dont know Steve - she looks very much like a young Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge to me. Cherokee/ Scots Irish ? - sounds like somebody was in major denial about their black ancestors.
ReplyDeleteShe's Osage/Scotch-Irish. The Osage are from the super-white Ozarks.
Unfortunately, this era came to an end, due to the welfare state, drugs/alcoholism, malnutrition, and identity politics. It is sad what these once proud people have been reduced to.
I wouldn't discount the possibility that the higher-quality half (three-quarters?) of the Amerindian gene pool was simply absorbed by YT, leaving the dregs on the reservations as the only representatives of "Amerindians" nowadays.
From the picture alone, my best guess was "Sephardic Jew". Seriously - Israel is packed with phenotypes like this. Turned out to be totally wrong. Shows how really similar we are and how difficult it is to tell mixed race folks from one another.
ReplyDeleteCorvinus: I wouldn't discount the possibility that the higher-quality half (three-quarters?) of the Amerindian gene pool was simply absorbed by YT, leaving the dregs on the reservations as the only representatives of "Amerindians" nowadays.
ReplyDeleteExactly! I'd never heard of that Tallchief woman, but apparently she had a daughter who ran the American Poetry Society and teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago. For all I know, the daughter might be blond and blue-eyed, or at least her children might be.
Basically, the more successful segment of all these different groups just intermarried into "Evil White Society" so many generations ago that if they became successful ballplayers today no one would know they were part Amerind. Wasn't Johnny Bench part Amerind or something? And don't forget that most of Virginia's old elite families supposedly trace their ancestry back to Pocahontas. Your average "American Indian" these days has an Anglo-Saxon name, looks like an Anglo-Saxon, and probably has a socio-economic profile that's pretty "average-white," maybe skewing redneck white.
So what happens when for 100+ years the most energetic and ambitious youth of each Indian Reservation go off to the Big City each generation to make their fortune? You end up with a pretty negative residue, which can easily become self-perpetuating in culture.
That's also exactly why the white statistics for West Virginia are so terrible. For 100-150 years, all the more ambitious West Virginians have moved away. And in just the same way, New Mexico is the Hispanic version of West Virginia.
One more of these ... the jazz/swing/country singer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Starr>Kay Starr</a>, at least half American Indian, born 1922 and still with us.
ReplyDeleteI've actually spent a lot of time around aboriginal Canadians, both on the job and in educational institutions. My personal $.02 worth on the situation is that the welfare state (which in Canada has only really been in place since the 1970s) has had an absolutely devastating effect on vulnerable populations.
"She married her choreographer George Ballanchine in 1946."
ReplyDeleteWasn't Ballachine a fruit?
"People are just so gullible, they always believe absolutely anything they're taught in school, read in newspapers, or see on TeeVee..."
ReplyDeleteThere was an anonymous commenter the other day here regurgitating the myth of how the Gutenberg press brought us out of our benighted existence.
(Anonymous, if you're there, google "university" and read about their origins for starters.)
I'm probably being too hard on him. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their... ignorance.
RKU and Corvinus: What you are suggesting appears to be true, that the better segment of the Amerindians have been absorbed into the white population. I also wonder if the disease pandemics the Europeans introduced to the New World had a "eugenic" effect on the Amerindian population.
ReplyDeleteEstimates vary, but the population of the Amerindians may have plunged somewhere between 60% to 90% soon after European settlement in North America due to diseases they weren't adapted to. The survivors may have been the better ones - healthier, stronger and possibly smarter. This may have even equalized the average Amerindian IQ with the average European settler IQ. The IQ of European settlers in colonial America was probably much higher than the IQ of Europeans back home since it required a lot of smarts to move so far away across a vast ocean and to eventually produce offspring.
The European settlers, especially in the earliest days of settlement in Jamestown and Plymouth had very high death rates due to disease, famine, and lack of familiarity with the local flora. This also had a "eugenic" effect.
So many WASPs I've known over the years claim some Amerindian ancestry, usually 1/4 or less. If you read a lot of biographies, many great white Americans had some Amerindian blood. Its possible many more had it but tried to hide it.
"I've actually spent a lot of time around aboriginal Canadians, both on the job and in educational institutions. My personal $.02 worth on the situation is that the welfare state (which in Canada has only really been in place since the 1970s) has had an absolutely devastating effect on vulnerable populations."
ReplyDeleteAmRen recently posted an academic study claiming that their idle decadence is brought on by Canadian racism. Of course, I am not favorably disposed toward these types of explanations, but I must admit, as someone who has spent a lot of time up North, the normally mild and tolerant Canucks are pretty open about the special contempt they have of their First Nations.
Ron Swanson's recommendation
ReplyDeleteInteresting comment:
"You should see the intersections in Sao Paulo when the traffic lights are not working. It's the complete opposite of this video. Total chaos, disorder, aggressive behavior and social order breakdown. People can only organize and look after themselves if they sufficiently educated and have the right collective motivation as opposed to the selfish behavior most people tend to exhibit in these situations. It's defiantly not a formula, social systems are different"
My brother had a friend in DC whose grandfather left the Res and became a prominent DC lawyer.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the sheer number of strong, young Indian warriors that were dispatched during the western push? Might it also be a simple fact that the strongest of the tribes were killed off, leaving only the weaker males to continue the population? I have no idea whether this is at all valid, but I'm throwing it out for you more learned folk
ReplyDelete"You should see the intersections in Sao Paulo when the traffic lights are not working. It's the complete opposite of this video. Total chaos, disorder, aggressive behavior and social order breakdown. People can only organize and look after themselves if they sufficiently educated and have the right collective motivation as opposed to the selfish behavior most people tend to exhibit in these situations. It's defiantly not a formula, social systems are different"
ReplyDeleteIndeed:
http://bcmoney-mobiletv.com/view/371/will-ferrell-wake-up-and-smile/
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/10/breakthrough-ynet-honestly-seeks-answer-to-question-how-did-american-jews-get-so-rich.html
ReplyDeleteRKU said:
ReplyDeleteAll these types of stories---I Love Lucy, Pancho Gonzalez, Rita Hayworth, Jim Thorpe---about the horrible old days of "Evil Racist White America" are just so hilarious. Somebody should put together a list of such famous names---it would probably be a mile long.
People are just so gullible, they always believe absolutely anything they're taught in school, read in newspapers, or see on TeeVee...
-
I don't see how all these stories of three-quarters white people making it pre-civil rights contradicts the narrative.
Entertain us. Sing, dance, hit a ball well, don't agitate, and white America was willing to overlook your mixed background. But may God himself strike it all down if your swarthy brood attempt to gain political or economic power. This is a white country!
What RKU and Corvinus said - Amerindians have mostly just been absorbed by the white population, especially over the last 80 years. It is striking if you look back at old newspapers, advertising, journals, etc. how much greater presence Amerindians had in New England 80 years ago. Where did they all go?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of mixed-race ballplayers, does anyone know what ethnicity Steve Swisher is? No doubt part white but he has a hard-to-place swarthy look that could be part Native American.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia's entry indicated that Will Rogers was merely named after William Penn Adair.
ReplyDeleteOops - sorry - my bad.
But you gotta admit that it's a great story - a swashbuckling Indian warrior riding in defense of the Cherokee Nation's vast holdings of negro slaves.
Trail of Tears, my ass.
Harry, Charo's monstrous frontage and daffy persona were the draw, but as soon as she started playing her guitar all the other stuff disappeared.
ReplyDeleteHey Steve, two words: Jacoby Ellsbury.
ReplyDeleteRams QB and former Oklahoma Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford claims his great-grandmother was Cherokee. But he appears to be at least half Native-American. In fact, he strongly resembles actor Wes Studi (who played the bad guy in Last of the Mohicans).
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've noticed among the White Nationalist types is that when it comes to race-mixing, having part-Native American blood seems to be the least of all evils. And it has to be North American Indian, not those Mesoamericans that contribute to such a large part of Hispanic DNA. Part Native American is even preferable to part Asian in their eyes, which is odd when you compare crime, education, and alcoholism statistics between the two groups.
ReplyDeleteRKU said:
ReplyDelete"So what happens when for 100+ years the most energetic and ambitious youth of each Indian Reservation go off to the Big City each generation to make their fortune? You end up with a pretty negative residue, which can easily become self-perpetuating in culture.
That's also exactly why the white statistics for West Virginia are so terrible. For 100-150 years, all the more ambitious West Virginians have moved away. And in just the same way, New Mexico is the Hispanic version of West Virginia."
I've noticed this as well. I live in the rural American South, not West Virginia. I think you can see the same effect. Acually now with this section 8 thing, I think you are seeing a mini-push to moving undesirables out of the cities.
I can't speak for all the south, but my area is fairly typical for the region.
I might also add this effect pretty obviously could be extended to black people as well.
Anonymous said:
"Estimates vary, but the population of the Amerindians may have plunged somewhere between 60% to 90% soon after European settlement in North America due to diseases they weren't adapted to. The survivors may have been the better ones - healthier, stronger and possibly smarter. This may have even equalized the average Amerindian IQ with the average European settler IQ. The IQ of European settlers in colonial America was probably much higher than the IQ of Europeans back home since it required a lot of smarts to move so far away across a vast ocean and to eventually produce offspring."
Wouldn't that select specifically for disease resistance though?
There is a lot of evidence to support this contention from what I gather. I think 90% is a pretty accurate number from what I've read.
Anonymous:"I don't see how all these stories of three-quarters white people making it pre-civil rights contradicts the narrative.
ReplyDeleteEntertain us. Sing, dance, hit a ball well, don't agitate, and white America was willing to overlook your mixed background. But may God himself strike it all down if your swarthy brood attempt to gain political or economic power. This is a white country!"
Yes, God knows that Charles Curtis had no political power whatsoever...
"Speaking of mixed-race ballplayers, does anyone know what ethnicity Steve Swisher is?"
ReplyDeleteFrom wikipedia:
Nick Swisher is the son of Steve Swisher, a former major leaguer of German descent, and Rebecca, an Italian mother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Swisher
"Harry, Charo's monstrous frontage and daffy persona were the draw, but as soon as she started playing her guitar all the other stuff disappeared."
ReplyDeleteYes. An excellent guitarist and much brighter than many realize.
"She married her choreographer George Ballanchine in 1946."
ReplyDeleteWasn't Ballachine a fruit?
He had six wives, so possibly he was faking it all the way, or was bisexual, but really,
six wives is above & beyond the call of duty for staying in the closet!
I dont know Steve - she looks very much like a young Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge to me. Cherokee/ Scots Irish ? - sounds like somebody was in major denial about their black ancestors.
Unlikely. I think you're being fooled by the b/w photo. Other photos of her - especially as she's aged - indicate that a mixture of white and American Indian is entirely correct.
The documentary "Six Ballerinas" is about Balanchine and his wives/muses. I have no idea what side dalliances he had, but as a serial monogamist, he was a champion. However much of a user and s.o.b. he may have been in his personal life, it cannot be denied he was a brilliant choreographer.
"jacob ellsbury"
ReplyDeleteRight, when the Red Sox centerfielder, who is Navajo on his mother's side, is healthy, he's an exciting ballplayer. He was runner-up last year in AL mvp voting.
"I think you're being fooled by the b/w photo. "
ReplyDeleteEverybody kind of looks alike in old glamor photos -- there was a style of the time and women were made up and lit to reflect it.
As the commenter says, recent pictures of Tallchief as an octogenarian show her looking part white, part Indian.
RE: Charo,
ReplyDeleteShe doesn't count as "diverse" (i.e., non-White).She was Spanish, born in Murcia. So, she was White, no Amerind blood.
Syon
Ballet is a lousy art form. Opera is a great art form. There never has been a great American Indian opera singer.
ReplyDeleteAssociating Indians with ballet doesn't make me impressed with Indians.
Opera is great obviously because of the music. The best composers were drawn to opera. Mozart was the best composer of Italian opera until the nineteenth century. Mozart was a natural. He had written operas since he was nine. Beethoven wasn't. He couldn't get Fidelio quite right but he kept trying over and over... Add in Wagner , Puccini, and Verdi and you have a list of the indisputably best musicians of all time on this planet. Japan is nuts over opera. China will be soon.
But ballet is filled with schlock music. Adam and Delibes, the best of the ballet composers, were at best only second rate opera composers. The only really good ballet music is from Tchaikovsky.
Consider the ballet sequences in the the Triumphal Scene in Aida or the "Dance of the Hours" in Gioconda. The lesson is that opera composers can write ballet but ballet composers can't write opera.
I used to go to ballets because girls liked it. At nineteen I got Terry A*** - the best looking girl at George Mason - to go out with me to see the Leningrad Kirov. That night Rudolph Nureyev fell right on his ass. That was a great moment in ballet. He defected the next day.
I also saw Fernando Bujones dance. I can't remember which girl I was trying to impress that time. The point is few normal men actually would attend a ballet if he weren't trying to please a woman.
In contrast over the years I have many times sneaked into operas without a ticket. I have climbed over chain link fences and hidden from the ushers in the bath room. Such behavior is quite common among opera fans.
Opera versus ballet? Hyperion to a satyr.
Albertosaurus
"The IQ of European settlers in colonial America was probably much higher than the IQ of Europeans back home": no, probably lower. People who couldn't hack it in a highly competitive society where every niche had to be competed for would naturally move away to where there was less competition.
ReplyDelete"The IQ of European settlers in colonial America was probably much higher than the IQ of Europeans back home": probably wrong. On second thoughts, they were probably more mediocre than the folks left at home. The clever would stay at home because they'd flourish even in the very competitive society. The dim wouldn't budge. So it would be the intellectually mediocre who'd move, hoping to find opportunities that they weren't able enough to compete successfully for at home.
ReplyDeleteThat was for free immigrants: the prisoners who were transported to the North American colonies would probably include a disproportionately high fraction of the dim.
dearieme:"no, probably lower. People who couldn't hack it in a highly competitive society where every niche had to be competed for would naturally move away to where there was less competition."
ReplyDeleteMMM...Possibly true in, say, the Chesapeake, where a high proportion of colonists were from the lower levels of English society, but most definitely not true in New England, whose settlers were largely of the middling ranks and was the most literate society on Earth in the 17th century. I would bet good money that that the people who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony had average IQs that were above the the English mean (cf David Hackett Fischer's ALBION'S SEED, which has a highly detailed account of the social origins and educational levels of the people who settled the colonial USA).
Syon
' "The IQ of European settlers in colonial America was probably much higher than the IQ of Europeans back home": no, probably lower. People who couldn't hack it in a highly competitive society where every niche had to be competed for would naturally move away to where there was less competition.'
ReplyDelete- Dearime, there's a reason why we get the PhDs of Kazakhstan here in the US and not the goat herders. Then, like now, those with the talent, means and tenacity to eke out a better life elsewhere are the ones who do so. Perhaps even more then than now, as the barriers to doing so, such as expense of travel, maintaining ties to family, etc. are much smaller now.
That being said, if the distance is small and foot travel is possible, there can be some truth to what you say, but that wouldn't apply for colonial travelers arriving by boat.
Johnny Damon looks like he is part Indian, plus he's from western Missouri...he's a pretty good athlete, or was before he got old.
ReplyDelete@ Albertosaurus 9:30 a.m.:
ReplyDeleteYou were 19 in 1961? I would not have guessed that.
I don't entirely disagree with your point about the relative merits of ballet & opera, but let us not forget *The Firebird*, *Petrushka*, *The Rite of Spring*, *Romeo & Juliet* and *Cinderella*.
One could argue that ballet was only beginning to come into its own at the very time when opera was dying.
"She married her choreographer George Ballanchine in 1946."
ReplyDeleteWasn't Ballachine a fruit?
He had six wives, so possibly he was faking it all the way, or was bisexual, but really,
six wives is above & beyond the call of duty for staying in the closet!
Russians as a whole seem to be more feminine in certain ways. Not in fighting or brute strength, obviously, but you do have straight Russian men in things like ballet and figure skating. Also, they seem more conformist to authority, unlike, say, the gov't can go to hell Scotch-Irish. They're sort of like white versions of East Asians.
Hapalong Cassidy: One thing I've noticed among the White Nationalist types is that when it comes to race-mixing, having part-Native American blood seems to be the least of all evils. And it has to be North American Indian, not those Mesoamericans that contribute to such a large part of Hispanic DNA.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've noticed the same thing, which is a little strange. For example, Jared Taylor's publication is always denouncing Mestizo immigrants, but back a few years ago had a long and seemingly sincere cover-story about American Indians, which was extremely favorable, though it did mention their problems with alcoholism. From a racialist perspective, the whole thing is as odd as claiming that Chinese people are horribly disgusting while praising the Han Race as one of the best in the world.
Also, when we consider that the Southern Amerinds had huge, complex civilizations while the Northern Amerinds were mostly ignorant wild tribes, without a written language and living as hunter-gatherers, it's pretty clear in which direction any ability-difference might point.
The point is few normal men actually would attend a ballet if he weren't trying to please a woman.
ReplyDeleteyou have actually never taken a good look at the legs of ballernias, have you sweetheart?
The point is few normal men actually would attend a ballet if he weren't trying to please a woman.
ReplyDeletewatch the red shoes - (worth it alone for the ass shot of Moiri Shearer) - dancers were HOT back then, not anorexic bois - ballenchine helped create as a standard.
in fact in the 19th century the main patrons of the paris opera ballet were men who would often take the young girls as lovers.
North Americans Indians are a lot better looking than Central American Indians.
ReplyDeletedearieme:"On second thoughts, they were probably more mediocre than the folks left at home. The clever would stay at home because they'd flourish even in the very competitive society. The dim wouldn't budge. So it would be the intellectually mediocre who'd move, hoping to find opportunities that they weren't able enough to compete successfully for at home."
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point. following this logic, colonial society in English North America would have been both smarter (on a per capita basis) than England itself, but also less brilliant (as the top minds would, for the most part, have stayed home).This seems rather akin to de Tocquville's observation that American society was both better than Europe (the average American being better than the average European)and more mediocre (the American elite being less accomplished than the European).
Syon
Hapalong Cassidy: One thing I've noticed among the White Nationalist types is that when it comes to race-mixing, having part-Native American blood seems to be the least of all evils. And it has to be North American Indian, not those Mesoamericans that contribute to such a large part of Hispanic DNA.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is simple numbers. North American Indians don't pose a threat to European dominance of the United States in the same way Latin American mestizos, or even blacks, do. Mexico alone pumps out more babies every year than all of white American (2.6 million vs. 2.1 million). And the black population, even if it won't catch up with us in numbers anytime soon (barring massive immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa), is large enough to turn us into a bunch of mediocre mulattos if large-scale mixing occurred, like the Brazilians and North Africans of today.
This seems rather akin to de Tocquville's observation that American society was both better than Europe (the average American being better than the average European)and more mediocre (the American elite being less accomplished than the European).
So... 19th-century Americans were the East Asians of their time. Makes sense.
Jared Taylor's publication is always denouncing Mestizo immigrants, but back a few years ago had a long and seemingly sincere cover-story about American Indians, which was extremely favorable.....when we consider that the Southern Amerinds had huge, complex civilizations while the Northern Amerinds were mostly ignorant wild tribes, without a written language and living as hunter-gatherers, it's pretty clear in which direction any ability-difference might point.
ReplyDeleteProves that they are not coming from an intellectually honest place.....
:Estimates vary, but the population of the Amerindians may have plunged somewhere between 60% to 90% soon after European settlement in North America due to diseases they weren't adapted to. The survivors may have been the better ones - healthier, stronger and possibly smarter. This may have even equalized the average Amerindian IQ with the average European settler IQ."
ReplyDelete- Where is the evidence for the last sentence? The average native American descendant today has a significantly lower IQ than the average European descendant. One could quibble about some points about whether descent reflects the forefathers (though it does provide us some evidence), but even more damning is that there has never been any evidence of native Americans keeping up with Europeans in advancements per capita, etc, nor have they been able to maintain civilizations equal or superior to European civilizations.
"Native-Americans are pretty much forgotten today..."
ReplyDelete- Except by our benevolent government who never forgets (or better yet, never remembers the actual facts) and bestows bountiful benefits upon those with a mere fraction (even a fictional fraction) of native American blood.
"you have actually never taken a good look at the legs of ballernias, have you sweetheart?"
ReplyDelete- Too busy with the other bits...
RKU, not sure I agree that the Southern Amerinds were necessarily mire intelligent than their northern cousins. It may be that they were able to develop civilization first because they lived in a climate more conducive to agriculture. The same reason applies as to why Middle-Easterners were able to develop civilization much sooner than the higher-IQ Europeans.
ReplyDeleteHapalong Cassidy said... One thing I've noticed among the White Nationalist types is that when it comes to race-mixing, having part-Native American blood seems to be the least of all evils.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting example of this was WN Asa Earl Carter (1925-1979). He founded a chapter of the KKK, published a pro-segregation monthly, "The Southerner," and wrote speeches for George Wallace. He is responsible for Wallace's line, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
Disillusioned with Wallace as he became increasingly moderate, Carter dropped out of sight. He lost some weight, got a tan, grew a mustache and emerged a few years later as Forrest Carter, author of an autobiographical book, "The Education of Little Tree," about his upbringing by his Cherokee grandfather. Carter actually was part Cherokee, though the book was a literary hoax. It was a bestseller and remains part of the multicultural curriculum, despite Carter's background. (Guess there's a shortage of acceptable autobiographies by actual Indians.)
A friend of Carter explained the seeming contradiction of his being pro-White and pro-Indian by pointing out that Southerners felt they got screwed by the federal government just like the Indians.
Carter also wrote the bestseller "The Outlaw Josey Wales," which was made into one to the better Clint Eastwood movies. It is distinctly anti-Federal.
NPR recently covered his story.
Ely Parker, civil engineer, first Native American to reach the rank of Brigadier General, and Grant's personal aide-de-camp during the Civil War. Wrote the terms of surrender document signed by Robert E. Lee at Appomatox Courthouse.
ReplyDeleteI'm strictly a rock player myself, but my grandfather and father both studied under (inventor of classical guitar, and a father again at 80) Segovia, and my father under Narciso Yepes as well, so both knew a great deal about classical and flamenco guitar. Neither considered Charo more than a moderately talented amateur who happened to have married Xavier Cugat and to have big breasts.
ReplyDeleteMy father actually sold Charo a guitar and did work on it to fit it for her style of play, and spent several hours with her. Said she was nice, and intelligent, but simply not a great player.
Both he and Grandpa were firmly of the belief that it was easier to teach women than men to play guitar, or any other instrument, to talented amateur status but that no woman ever truly attained the highest ranks of virtuosi, and few could be really good working classical musicians. My father was also a symphony grade violist and cellist, good enough to have turned down a viola spot with the Cleveland Orchestra under Szell, so I took this opinion seriously.
I was a Civil Air Patrol leader and taught Morse code as part of Amateur radio classes we offered. We saw this same phenomenon. Female students always outperformed the males at up to 20 words per minute but those who got really fast were the males. Few of the girls could copy better than 25 wpm and even with the Vibroplex bug could not send that fast. I had several boys who could copy 35-40 wpm and send 30+.