A Pedigree Study of Amerindian Crosses in Canada |
A Pedigree Study of Amerindian Crosses in Canada
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Volume 58, (July – December, 1928)
pages 511-532
R. Ruggles Gates
Department of Anthropology
Harvard University
This paper is an attempt to apply genetical methods to the study of inter-racial crossing. In the anthropological studies which have hitherto been made of racial crosses, masses of anthropometric measurements have frequently been taken, which are capable, when analysed, of furnishing valuable evidence on many points. Rut it is seldom possible to extract from them the kind of evidence the geneticist wishes to have concerning the inheritance of individual character-differences. Anthropological measurements are quantitative and require statistical treatment. The inheritance of sizes and especially of shapes is the most difficult field in genetics, and much has still to be learned from experiments with animals and plants before it can be clearly applied to man. Such features as the colour of skin, eyes, and hair, or shape of the hair in cross-section, while often presenting qualitative racial differences, also require measurements for a complete analysis of their inheritance, since intermediate grades usually occur in the hybrids. But they have the advantage that the extreme conditions at least are easily recognizable as qualitatively distinct, while this may not be evident with a mean difference in, for instance, stature or cephalic index.
The difficulties of applying the genetical pedigree method to haphazard human matings are very great. Nevertheless, it is so important that this method should be taken up by anthropologists, in addition to the traditional biometric methods of studying racial differences, that I venture to put forward these necessarily very incomplete results. In the biometrical method, the individual is measured as one of a population, but no sufficient account is taken of his relation to others. The purpose of the genetical method is to trace individual pedigrees, and so follow the inheritance of racial differences through successive generations. We shall never have an adequate knowledge of human racial inheritance until this has been done on a large scale with crosses between different races in various parts of the world.
This paper contains an account of observations on inter-racial crosses between whites and Indians in Canada. A single pedigree with various interlacing branches has been followed, and the evidence concerning the inheritance especially of skin colour and eye colour has been made as complete as the circumstances would permit…
Tags: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, R. Ruggles Gates, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland