A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States |
A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Volume 43, Number 2 (June 1953)
pages 138-155
Edward T. Price
Los Angeles State College
A Strange product of the mingling of races which followed the British entry into North America survives in the presence of a number of localized strains of peoples of mixed ancestry. Presumed to be part white with varying proportions of Indian and Negro blood,** they are recognized as of intermediate social status, sharing lot with neither white nor colored, and enjoying neither the governmental protection nor the tribal tie of the typical Indian descendants. A high degree of endogamy results from this special status, and their recognition is crystallized in the unusual group names applied to them by the country people.
The chief populations of this type are located and identified in Figure 1, which expresses their recurrence as a pattern of distribution. Yet each is essentially a local phenomenon, a unique demographic body, defined only in its own terms and only by its own neighbors. A name applied to one group in one area would have no meaning relative to similar people elsewhere. This association of mixed-blood and particular place piques the geographic curiosity about a subject which, were it ubiquitous, might well be abandoned to the sociologist and social historian. What accounts for these cases of social endemism in the racially mixed population?
The total number of these mixed-bloods is probably between 50,000 and 100,000 persons. Individually recognized groups may run from fewer than 100 to as many as 18,000 persons in the case of the Croatans of North Carolina. The available records, the most useful being old census schedules,’ indicate that the present numbers of mixed-bloods have sprung from the great reproductive increase of small initial populations; the prevalence in each group of a small number of oft-repeated surnames is in accord with such a conclusion. The ancestors of the mixed-bloods…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Edward Price, Edward T. Price