The following is my translation of an article called: Das Aussterbung der Naturvölker von Hans von Boettischer. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1921, Heft 7, Seiten 186-187. I've left names as they would've been used at the time the article was written. 'Native Americans' may be the current preference among some, but not all, Indians. The Ona of Patagonia tend to be termed Selknam. Bushmen are now frequently called San and Khoikhoi enjoys priority over Hottentot. The Vedda are now Wanniyala-Aetto. I was unable to track down information on some of the names used, and have left those in the original German. The Ostyaks are the Khanty. As preferred terms often vary among the broader groups of people referred to, I thought it fairest to offend just about everybody.
The good news is, and despite Herr Boettischer's understandable pessimism, many of these nations still have members around who are able to take offence. In other cases, however, they were wiped from the face of the Earth, and often deliberately.
A people called Hamites also receive mention. They seem to have been a mythologica-theoretical people who never actually existed; descendants of Ham, the fast-breeding son of Noah. The concept has sometimes been connected with racist overtones, but I don't think that accusation would be justified with this article.
For a more up-to-date source and an interesting read, people might enjoy referring to Jared Diamond's 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies.
I'm not aware of any previous translations.
Trevor Dykes.

The extinction of the native peoples by Hans von Boettischer
With the expansion of culture, especially that of the Europeans, there comes an unceasing retreat of the original natural state as a direct consequence. Not only is the landscape form altered by dam constructions, power stations and other industrial sites, but there is also the direct or indirect extinction of plant and animal species, unable to adapt to the new conditions, as consequences of increasing culture. -Indeed, how human tribes, which were formerly able to enjoy a blossoming existence, began to obviously decline after contact with encroaching cultured peoplesm, and have sometimes completely died out in a remarkably short time. However, this resulted from unrestrained expansion and the will to conquer in combination with brutal persecution, indeed, the completely inhumane lust to exterminate held by the new immigrants earns part the blame.

Most widely known are the sad consequences that European colonisation had for the American Indians, particularly for the inhabitants of the Antilles. The system of Repartimientos meant merciless plundering with fire and sword, and the population died out; during the middle of the 16th century, 50 years after the discovery of America, there was no longer any indigenous population left on the Greater Antilles. The Indians of the Lesser Antilles were able to survive into the 17th century. In Central and South America, the Indians all along the coasts and in areas with healthy climates had to make way for incoming Europeans and, later, Negroes. Nevertheless, pure-blood Indian tribes have been able to survive until the present day in remote, feverishly hot jungles of Brazil. On other parts, the remains of the original population more or less quickly dissolved into a new mixed population.

In the 19th century, sheep farmers and gold diggers fought a merciless war of slaughter against the Ona of Patagonia and, with deliberate hunting, they were almost completely wiped out. In North America, the representatives of European culture and civilization waged a concerted war of slaughter against the once so numerous native peoples, and this led to the extinction of the Indians in the largest part of North America. By the time a more humane opinion prevailed only a few thousand people could be rescued in so called reservations. Physically and morally weakened, these are also surely going to their doom.

We also find dying races in Africa. The Bushmen, small, lightly coloured original natives of Africa, had been restricted to the margins of the hostile Kalahari Desert by their powerful black neighbours long before the land was claimed by whites, and had to lead an impoverished existence as hunters and gatherers of roots and wild melons. And then the whites arrived, at first predominantly Boers, with their firearms, and they transformed the former natural paradise into an animal-poor monoculture, and this robbed the native hunters of their once so important source of sustenance. But that was not all! One of the favourite sports of the Boers was to go out on moonlit nights, when the Bushmen held their ecstatic dances, to surround them and shoot them, men, women and children, as if they were clay pigeons. It is only a matter of time before this highly interesting folk disappears. The remnants are entirely impoverished. v. Luschan saw 41 Bushmen in British South Africa in 1905, and asked them about the number of their children. They were all childless!

The Hottentots too, who also seem, like the Bushmen, to be related to the North African Hamites, are going into extinction as their remnants are increasingly mixing with whites and blacks, and their race is disappearing.

The Tasmanians were also wiped out before our eyes. At the start of the 19th century, it was estimated that there were 5,000 natives. In 1854 there were only 16. The last male representative died in 1865, and the last female member of the folk died in 1876. The natives of Australia were persecuted by English settlers as well and, when found, were slaughtered; indeed, there were even driven hunts similar to those held with the Bushmen and Ona. And, for those who were not shot down, their remnants are brought down by their contact with the culture. Alcohol, all kinds of infectious diseases, opium and other 'gifts of culture' attack the physical and moral health and the resistance capacities of natural peoples, and result in their burial. Even European cloths are in no way appropriate for the physical and climatic conditions, and the natives are pressured into adopting them by Christian missionaries, and this carries part of the guilt for the decline of these people and, as has often been observed, the native children of the culture are not uplifted by these customs, but are rather buried by them.

The main reasons for the sometimes rapid, sometimes slower extinction of the highly intersting, and sometimes very friendly nations of the South Seas, are entirely similar. The Maoris of New Zealand, the Hawaiians, Samoans and many more are inevitably heading to their extinctions.

Various native peoples in South Asia had already been forced back into an impoverished existence in the remote mountains before the advance of the Europeans; by other nations with high cultures such as the Indians, Malayans and Chinese, and peoples have entirely disappeared apart from when absorbed into the new races. Such remnants of once much more widespread folks are, for example, the Vedda of Ceylon, of whom there were still 8,000 in 1850 but only 1,229 by 1891, and the Toda and other tribes of India collectively termed Muna-Kolki, and also in Indo-China and the Southeast Adian island world the small Negritos and the Andamanese, Semang-Sakai of the Malaysian peninsula, and the Aeta of the Philippines, and the so called Austronesians or Indoaustralians including the Dyak, Battak and others from the Sunda Islands. The Ainu as well, the original inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, have been displaced by the present rulers of the islands, the Japaneses, and now only populate the northerly islands, jesso and Sachalin, where they are heading to their final extinction. The same thinning of numbers has occurred with most native peoples of Siberia and, as they never were very numerous, this has taken place rather quickly. In 1897 the Yenissei still numbered 994 but there were only some 700 in 1909; the Yukaghir and Tschuwanen were estimated together as 2,000 in 1850, but they tallied only 506 in 1897, The Ostyaks are in constant decline, but this cannot be said of the Chuckchi, Yakuts and Tungusic, In contrast to them the Aleut, the residents of the small islands linking Siberia with North America, are in constant decline, and the Itelmen of Kamchatka are suffering the same fate.

Everywhere on Earth we can observe how tribes of people, who find themselves at a lower cultural level, are declining with the expansion of higher cultures. Only rarely are they able to adapt to a strange, higher culture, and only then if the difference is not very great, and the higher culture suddenly encounters the native folk. Only two large racial groups, and at least partly due to the relative height of their own cultures, appear to be more resistant, the Mongols and the Negroes. Their cultures, however, will most probably be increasingly influenced by the Europeans, and contrasts will even out. This will also lead to an increasing mixture of just three main groups of humans in all parts of the Earth, the blacks, yellows and whites as can be concluded from the so called Hamites of North Africa, the Turkic people of East Europe and West Asia, the Malaysians and other mixed nations. And so one cannot deny that, perhaps over the course of thousands of years or, better, over millions of years, one human race will populate the entire world. Perhaps! But who can see into the future?

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.