Two Patterns of Indian Acculturation

Author(s): Ruth Benedict and George C. Vaillant

Source: American Anthropologist , Apr. - Jun., 1943, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 2,
Centenary of the American Ethnological Society (Apr. - Jun., 1943), pp. 207-212
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/663270

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TWO PATTERNS OF INDIAN ACCULTURATION
By RUTH BENEDICT

T WO great patterns of Indian accommodation to the dominant white

civilization of post-Conquest times divide the New World. On the one
hand in the so-called regions of high culture Indians are still today the bulk of
the population and form the main reservoir of labor supply. In all the rest o
the New World they hardly exist or exist without serving the national eco-
nomies. Peru is still 90% Indian. On the contrary the Argentine, Uruguay, an
Costa Rica are nearly pure white; their aboriginal population has been exter-
minated. Even in Brazil, where the vast jungles of the Amazon have provided
the Indians a haven, Nimuendaj i has recently estimated that today they
number only 200,000. Since the Brazilian census gives the total population as
45,000,000, Indian population is on this estimate one half of one percent. Eve
this tiny remnant has never been integrated into Brazilian economy; nor has
the Indian in the United States, even though the white population has pressed
so much more closely upon him than upon the Brazilian Indian.
The assumption implicit in 'most references to this contrast seems to be
that Indians of the high cultures could "make the grade" because they had
reached a sufficiently high level of invention and technology. This means that
the Indians of the high cultures survived by virtue of their technique of stone
or adobe architecture, settled agriculture, irrigation, calendaric calculations,
and other technological knowledge which distinguished them as high cultures
A survey of the Americas from this point of view, however, makes one ex-
tremely skeptical of this explanation. Certainly as a survey of Mexico well
attests, the distribution of irrigation or great public works does not coincide
with those areas where Indians survived and took an integral though servient
part in the economy. In Colombia Dr. Bennett's archaeological survey attests
the lack of great architectural works, yet sixty percent or more of present-day
Colombians have Indian blood as compared with the negligible numbers of
Indians and mixed bloods in eastern South America.
These grounds for skepticism about this explanation of the survival of
Indians of the high cultures are reinforced by study of the fate of Indian tech-
nology at the hands of the Spanish. Archaeological emphasis on these tech-
nological achievements has obscured the fact that in the new dispensation th
whites had no use for these achievements. Elaborate calendric calculations,
techniques of metallurgy, engineering which used single blocks of several ton
weight in public buildings, artistry in gold-all these meant nothing to the
Spanish conquerors. They did not incorporate these-and therefore have need
of natives who commanded these techniques-in their new civilization. The
situation was even worse than this. The Spanish of the early Conquest period
207

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208 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. S., 45, 1943

saw their opportunities for wealth in a mining and p

even the great irrigation systems of Peru fall into ruin.
native agricultural economy collapse while they draf
and haciendas. They so far ignored even the highly
gardens of Mexico City that some writers have doub
Conquistadors were the products of a culture which
wealth in agriculture, and they stultified or destroye
this field.

The technological explanation of contrasting Indian

tion sometimes takes a more cultural form. The tech
argument runs, made possible higher concentration
this density of population which ensured mass survi
incorporation into modern economy; with very dense po
the question to exterminate or isolate the Indian an
readily reduced them to serfdom. Now estimates of
time of Conquest are notoriously unreliable, but nev
for being skeptical of this argument. The contemporary
population of one million on Haiti may be exaggerate
the early Spanish regarded Indian population on thi
vannahs as equalling or surpassing any other density
the Indians of Haiti were exterminated within two gener
Haiti became Negro-white, not Indian-white. Densit
did not mean that the conquerors could not exterminate
Another cultural form taken by the technological e
vival occurred where agriculture techniques made p
vated fields and finally permanent villages which wer
as opposed to slash and burn agriculture. According t
of permanent villages with settled fields and villages
strong sentimental bonds and stuck by them, submi
which might be presented to them; they did not esc
jungles as did Indians with other techniques of livelih
slash and burn argiculture and rural, rather than v
dians capitulated to Spanish overlordship and Colomb
great mestizo populations of South America. Fundam
one based on reasons why the Indian did not escape,
the case of Haiti, even when the surrounding sea-no
imposed physical reasons against mass escape, the H
submit to the new social order. As the early Spanish said
minated. The Spanish then brought from Africa the
economy they sought to establish.
The historical facts of conquest do not uphold thes
marily on technlogy. Throughout the colonial perio
situation was more precisely a political contrast betw

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BENEDICT] TWO PATTERNS OF INDIAN ACCULTURATION 209

than a contrast in the forms of production. The whites in the

themselves in an entirely different situation when they w
aboriginal tribes with or without certain political inventio
arrangements, such as collection of tribute and the imposit
for public works, were well established in the pre-Colomb
However different the forms of agriculture in the different ar
they all had either tribute or corv e, or both. Servient Me
those of the Totonacs or Chalco "groaned" under Aztec ext
on the other hand, succeeded in guaranteeing to their ser
vantages which the incorporated tribes regarded as importa
of more or less satisfactory imperialistic techniques. The
there is no indication of mass corv6e labor in their public wor
lected tribute and this pattern had antedated the Inca conq
It is characteristic of any polity of imperialistic exploitation
tribute as in Colombia or the more complex modern forms,
population into a small group who know the advanced techn
with pageantry and pomp; and another 'group who furni
whose work enriches the state officials. The political syste
high cultures had greatly antedated the famous Inca and
and it is my argument that it had produced an internal di
and responsibility which left such states easy prey to conq
mon people submissive to white peonage. The free tribes o
had no experience of such opposed internal interests and of
bilities for any goal they sought to achieve. They fought to th
tribe, either to a quick extermination, as in Haiti, or for centu
able regions of free cultures in northern and western Mexico.
Montezuma and the Sapa Incas would have been disillusio
their contribution to the new civilization lay in their havi
bodies and minds of their servient peoples the habit of wo
might reap. Their contribution did not lie in the technologi
delight the archaeologist. They would have been shocked
riginal achievements which were continued on into the new
those of the common people: the maize and tobacco brough
before the rise of tribute and corvee; and weaving which w
art of the populace.
Montezuma and the Sapa Incas would have been disillusi
could have foreknown their military ineffectiveness agains
Aztec and the Chibchas and the Incas boasted military arm
ment which, though they were organized and recruited dif
countries, were the pride of the State. Yet Cortes conquere
600 men and Pizarro conquered Peru with "180 men and 27 h
nation given for this capitulation in Mexico-that the A
trained not to wound but to capture unharmed men for r

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210 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 45, 1943

both at odds with Aztec resistance in the City of M

the essential point. The great empires of the New
structures where the rulers on top were engaged in ri
querors had only to take advantage of these rivalrie
in Mexico, between two half-brothers in Peru-and
the apex of the social pyramid already built for th
military, ceased to fight the Spanish as soon as the
lated. State officialdom had not fostered a general
tinue the fight against the Spaniards.
The Spanish conquerors in the regions of aborig
creased the levies that had been imposed by nativ
Mendoza, drawn up as a tribute list by the first Sp
substantially a list of the tributes Montezuma h
made. And the continuation of this form of tribute se
the demands of the Spanish crown; it was easier to
home country by dealing with a few ricos who had
than to collect scattered levies. Colonial policy ther
changed aboriginal polity as little as possible. The C
the Empire regions underwrote for their purposes,
secular-religious local administrative forms.
The Church also capitalized upon pre-Colombia
corv6e in the areas of Inca, Chibcha, Maya and Az
The cathedrals and massive churches of Cuzco,
Mexico City were built by Indian labor and filled w
tribute. In the country of the Araucanians, the Gu
in Honduras and Nicaragua, Indian labor reared no
The great Jesuit missions in Paraguay and interior
entirely different character, with craft shops and
cathedrals.
For the Spaniards the situation in the high cultures was ready-made in
another sense. The Spanish conquerors had brought to the New World a pat
tern of living which demanded peons. The sixteenth century Spanish ideal w
to live the life of a grandeewithout manual labor. The Crown's great enco
mienda grants to the faithful were stated as running "from Peak to Peak," and
these, though formally temporary, became entailed down the generations an
rapidly conformed to feudal patterns. With these great tracts of land ther
went, ideally, a few thousand Indians to work "from sun to sun," as the old
documents have it.
This Spanish demand for large numbers of peons was as strong in Chile a
in Peru, as strong in Brazil as in Mexico. But outside the areas of the aborig
inal high cultures with their political inventions, the whites had to recko
without the Indians. In the whole New World outside this area they were faced
by a people with no experience of overlords, tribute and state corv6e. Thes

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BENEDICT] TWO PATTERNS OF INDIAN ACCULTURATION 211

tribes were free peoples. And in these regions the existence of

background turned the course of history in a different dir
taken in the areas of high cultures.
In these regions the contrast with the submissive high cu
ent from the moment of conquest. In 1540, a few years after P
conquest of the Inca Empire, Valdivia went to Chile to rep
there. He succeeded in founding Santiago, which had every
it was a natural fortress. His war, however, was against free
nians. After four years of fighting he was himself killed and h
The Spanish tried again. They conquered certain territory
comiendas but the Araucanians vanished to the mountains
to import serfs from Peru but this was insufficient. They reso
great alternatives which was forced on Latin conquerors in t
the free tribes: breeding a race of mixed bloods who, on th
white fathers, could be brought up from birth to fill their req
early Brazil in a similar situation, so in Chile too the Latins kil
the hinterland the native males and bred with the females. In Chile this mixed
race became the Chilians. Today a few of this mixed race are the ricos and the
vast majority are the serfs. But class divisions in Chile do not coincide with
racial divisions, as they do next door in Peru. Race mixture in Chile was not
merely the inevitable accompaniment of conquest, but the way in which
labor-hungry grandees got their labor. The fighting Araucanians were never
conquered either in the colonial period or under the republic. An honorable
peace was finally concluded with them, which leaves them today their own
masters in their own territory.
The course of history in the regions of the New World free tribes has none
of the uniformity it has in the high cultures. Argentina had to deal, like Chile,
with proud and violent native peoples who had no idea of submitting to the
serfdom they were offered. But the Spanish established themselves quite
locally on the mud banks of the La Plata, and white settlements did not reach
out far onto the pampas for 300 years. The native tribes became horse peoples
and experienced a renaissance similar to but of longer duration than that of
the Plains Indians of North America. When, after 1850, European immigration
began to flow into the Argentine in great waves, no Spaniard considered using
these horse tribes as peons on plantations; it was obviously impossible. The
Argentinian armies cleared the pampas of Indians and released 70 million
acres for settlement. They exterminated the Indians, both male and female.
Argentine is today, along with Canada, Uruguay and Costa Rica, a Caucasian
country. It was the way in which the Argentine met the problem of a native
population unavailable for serf labor.
In Paraguay too, after the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Guaycuru and the
Mbaya are usually reckoned as having been eliminated. Nevertheless Para-
guay's mestizos, the so-called Guarani, have remained fierce fighting men and

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212 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 45, 1943

have been armed to the teeth by successive Paragu

South American country has come to terms with desce
aborigines quite as Paraguay has, but after all Parag
rewards to white settlers either during the colonial
tors who assumed power after independence.
Brazil at first met her problem of non-submissiv
method. The Tupinambas whom the Portuguese en
signs of being an available labor supply. They soon
kill the whites on sight. The Portuguese were able
them off into the jungles and they bred with the f
advent of the Portuguese, Brazil had recourse also t
slaves. If Brazil had provided a native people habit
to serve a master, as Mexico did, or Peru, the course o
certainly have been different. In Brazil it is said th
imported before slavery was abolished in 1888, in s
where Negro importation was minor and practically
century. Racial mixture in Brazil became Negro-w
white, and Indian population is infinitesimal today

The two great patterns of Indian acculturation in

correlate with technological bases of economy. They
situations in the native cultures. In those states h
such as tribute and corv6e labor, the common peop
wars ultimately depends-did not join in native
conquerors. They left the battle to the military, a
defeated or rendered innocuous by internal division
white chroniclers always wrote and who engineered
of high culture, were easily supplanted, but the inbre
population determined the course of history. The h
developed in quite different directions where the whit
or in an area of free tribes. Nevertheless, as histor
dramatically in Mexico in early insurrections and i
her Indian leader Juarez, the will to achieve a mo
opportunity cannot be discounted even after centu
mon people were content for centuries with non-
favorable opportunities they used more direct met
missiveness was not an irreversible part of their ch
by-product of a political situation in aboriginal cul
quest.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK, N. Y.
DISCUSSION BY GEORGE C. VAILLANT

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