Problem and Promise: Scientific Experts and the Mixed-Blood in the Modern U.S., 1870-1970
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PROBLEM AND PROMISE: SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS AND THE MIXED-BLOOD IN THE MODERN U.S., 1870-1970 By Michell Chresfield Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August, 2016 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Sarah Igo, Ph.D. Daniel Sharfstein, J.D. Arleen Tuchman, Ph.D. Daniel Usner, Ph.D. Copyright © 2016 by Michell Chresfield All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the result of many years of hard work and sacrifice, only some of which was my own. First and foremost I’d like to thank my parents, including my “bonus mom,” for encouraging my love of learning and for providing me with every opportunity to pursue my education. Although school has taken me far away from you, I am forever grateful for your patience, understanding, and love. My most heartfelt thanks also go to my advisor, Sarah Igo. I could not have asked for a more patient, encouraging, and thoughtful advisor. Her incisive comments, generous feedback, and gentle spirit have served as my guideposts through one of the most challenging endeavors of my life. I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to grow as a scholar under her tutelage. I’d also like to thank my dissertation committee members: Arleen Tuchman, Daniel Sharfstein, and Daniel Usner for their thoughtful comments and support throughout the writing process. I’d especially like to thank Arleen Tuchman for her many pep talks, interventions, and earnest feedback; they made all the difference. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank my mentors from Notre Dame who first pushed me towards a life of the mind. To Richard Pierce, Alvin Tillery, and Heidi Ardizzone, thank you for seeing potential in me and for pushing me to be a better scholar. I hope to do you all proud. This project could not have been possible without the financial support of the Department of History and the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University. I’d also like to thank the American Philosophical Society for their generous support. The final year of the dissertation was funded through a generous completion fellowship provided by the Robert Penn Warren Center of the Humanities. Special thanks to Mona Frederick, Edward Friedman, Joy Ramirez, and Terry Tripp iii for cultivating this wonderful space where scholars can come and share ideas. My research is better for it. I’d also like to express my sincerest gratitude to my wonderful friends, family and colleagues that have journeyed alongside me on the road to the Ph.D. To Franchella Janette, Shawn Sanford, and Richelle Thomas, thank you for lifting me up and supporting me since our days at Notre Dame. I am thankful to call you ladies my friends. To Jason Bates, Tizoc Chavez, Lance Ingwersen, Alexander Jacobs, Ashish Koul, and Sonja Ostrow, thank you for asking such great questions and for your generous feedback. Although we started as colleagues I am so happy to count you all amongst my closest friends. To Jessica Burch, my sister-friend, thank you for reading so many drafts, for making sense of what I thought but never quite articulated, and for your friendship. To Mary Bridges, I’Nasah Crockett, Melanie Duncan, Lauren Ingwersen, Juliet Larkin-Gilmore, Trey Mack, Adrianne Jacobs, Carly Rush, and Herrica Telus, my sincerest gratitude for all the ways in which you lifted me up and shared your light with me. Each of you in your own way has been my rainbow in the clouds. I’d also like to express my gratitude to my nieces and nephews: Kaelyn Chresfield, Kiersten Chresfield, Elias Chresfield, and Demitre Greene, for enduring my absences but still loving me as their aunt. I’d especially like to thank my niece Kiersten who started alongside me at Vanderbilt but graduated long before auntie got it together. Even still, I am so very thankful to have gotten to know you and I thank you for being one of my biggest sources of encouragement. Last but certainly not least, I’d like to express my gratitude to my church family, the members of St. Vincent DePaul Church, but especially to Karen and Charlie Mtshali, the Finney- Shelton Family, the Robinson Family, Yvonne Bertrand (we did it!), Stephanie Colter, Grace Mason, Mimi Hernandez, Deborah Jackson, Carl Tate, Thyneice Taylor-Bowden, Matthew iv Walden, and Pauline Wilson. You all have been my village of support through some of the most trying times. The abundance of love that I’ve come to know through you is just one of the many ways in which I have experienced Christ’s love in this world. I am forever grateful to you all. v A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY The racial labels used in this study are archaic and often pejorative terms, and constitute the erasure of the people on which they were bestowed. And yet, these were the only terms by which these communities were known before they reconstituted as tribal groups in the 1970s. The one exception being the Piscataway who christened themselves the “Wesorts.” To avoid recommitting the documentary erasure of their identity I have chosen to place quotations around their group appellations --thus, the Ramapough Indians are the “Jackson Whites,” the Monacan Indians are the “Issues,” and the Piscataway are the “Wesorts.” The use of these terms is not meant to privilege them, but to explore their meaning through an analysis of the scientific writing that deplored them. To avoid repetitiveness, I will also designate each group by their geographic location. Thus the Ramapough are referred to as the “Ramapo” because they reside in the Ramapo Mountains. Similarly, I refer to the Monacan Indians as the “Amherst Indians” because that was the county of their residence. This study takes seriously the avowed identity of these groups as Native Americans and thus, the use of quotations is meant to signify the constructed nature of these categories. However, that is not to suggest that the other racial terms used are not constructed. While I do not place the terms: “white,” “Indian,” “Negro” or their derivatives in quotations, I realize that they too, like all racial categories, are constructed. Generally, I use the term “mixed-blood” as my subjects used it, which was to refer to those mixtures with Native American ancestry regardless of its proportions. The term “mulatto” is a particularly fraught because its usage has changed over time. In popular parlance a “mulatto” was generally considered a person with any measure of white or African ancestry. However, many writing in the first half of the twentieth century defined a “mulatto” as a person with one “pure blood” white parent and one “pure blood” black parent, although they too often followed popular vi convention and used the term for all mixtures. Complicating the usage of the term “mulatto” in the fact that during the antebellum era states like Louisiana, Virginia, and South Carolina also listed the offspring of Indian and White unions as “mulatto.” This study refers to as Native American all those persons identified as indigenous to North America. To that end I use the terms American Indian, and “native,” as well, and use them interchangeably.1 1 For a discussion of the historical usage of the term see, Jack D. Forbes Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 145. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iii A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY ................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1. BIOLOGICAL DISHARMONIES, LEGAL IMPOSSIBILITIES AND ANOMALOUS RACES: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MIXED-BLOOD PROBLEM, 1870-1930 ..... 16 RACIAL DESTINY AND THE VANISHING INDIAN ................................................................................................................ 21 THE BEGINNINGS OF SALVAGE ANTHROPOLOGY ............................................................................................................. 24 RACE MIXTURE AND THE MULATTO THREAT ................................................................................................................... 29 BIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF RACE MIXTURE ......................................................................................................... 33 THE NEGRO AS TRIRACIAL ................................................................................................................................................... 36 THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE MIXED-BLOOD ......................................................................... 39 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................................ 46 2. 'MESTIZOS OF THE MOUNTAINS': SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE RETHINKING OF APALACHIAN WHITENESS, 1870-1940 ........................................................................ 48 APPALACHIA IN THE MAKING .............................................................................................................................................. 53 LOCATING TRIRACIAL APPALACHIA ................................................................................................................................... 57 EUGENIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF (NON)WHITENESS