Who are the vanishing peoples of the world?

It is not only animals and plants that are in a danger of disappearing from our planet in the face of the industrial ‘advanced’ nations. There are many races of people that have survived in a very simple, stable way of life for many centuries only to be threatened with destruction in the space of a few decades.

A good example of a vanishing people known to most of us is the case of the Indian of North America. Until Christopher Columbus landed his ship upon the shores of the Caribbean Islands in 1492, the New World and its peoples were virtually unknown, and now less than 500 years later most of the Red Indian tribes are no more, and those that are left have retained little of their culture. Even the surviving tribes have such small populations that many of them may soon disappear. And America is the most powerful industrial nation on Earth.

There are many reasons for the lost of these tribes. The white men came from Europe with the hope of building a new life for themselves in the New World and escaping the poverty of the Old. In most cases, they were welcomed by the Indians. Unfortunately, the white men brought diseases with them. The Indians were not immune and thousands of them dies. The coming of the railway opened up the West and supplies of food were required for the railway workers and the new settlers. As a result million of bison which had provided the Indian with many of his materials, were slaughtered. Slowly, the Indian were driven off their natural hunting grounds on the poorer and poorer lands, and when they tried to fight back, the white man with his army and superior weapons won again.

This is a sad tale, and although it does not happen quite like this today, there are other tribes that are dying out because they cannot adapt quickly enough to the changing conditions which are being forced upon them by industrial man in his search for new lands for building, farming, and natural resources. The Bushmen of South Africa, the Pygmies of central Africa, the Aborigines of Australia, and the Eskimos are just a few of the more well-known races that are dying out of interbreeding with the white men with the loss of their own ways of life. It is thought that there are still tribes of Indians left in the Amazon jungles of South America that have not yet set eyes upon a white face, but these areas are in danger of being opened up.

As is the case with wild life, the loss of these peoples could be thought of as the natural course of evolution, because they are unable to adapt to changing conditions. Generally, however, it is better to have variety of blood, ways of life, and cultures so that there is more chance of man surviving any disaster.