Editor's Note
This is the fourth post in a series that uses the study of nineteenth-century Dutch immigrant settlements in Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin to pose larger questions about how the international consciousness of rural communities in the nineteenth century challenge not only our understandings of the rural Midwest, but also of conceptions of American and European imperialism, settler colonialism, and worldwide missionary efforts.
This summer as I’ve been researching and writing about the international consciousness of rural communities in the Midwest, I have found an abundance of material. Some of the themes that have emerged were expected, such as the frenzied discussion of Chinese immigration in the 1880s. Others caught me by surprise, for instance, the presence of Japanese students at a rural college in Michigan during the 1870s. Another of my unexpected discoveries was the interest that these rural immigrant communities took in native people living in the Arctic. So, on a warm and sunny July 4, this series turns its attention to the far North and nineteenth-century conceptions of the men and women who lived there.
These men and women lived in the Arctic but were not bound by a nation.
Rural Midwestern immigrants clearly understood that a group of indigenous people lived in harsh northern climes, beyond the reaches of European settlement. They deemed these farthest reaches to be outside of “the civilized world.”[1] In their view, nations like Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Russia held jurisdiction over these places; however, they had little presence in them. They figured that these far North regions stayed beyond the reach of European settlement for a reason. “Desolation and dreariness surround one on all sides,” noted J.S. Rademaker, a student in Holland, Michigan. He continued, “One would come to the conclusion that in such lands a human being could not exist.”[2] These rural settlers thought these regions had little to offer prospective pioneers.
Rural Midwestern immigrants did not think of the native people who lived in such environments as citizens of any particular nation but understood them to be spread across the entire Arctic, with particular concentration in northern Canada and Greenland. They paid no attention to internal divisions between tribes or linguistic groups. Unlike their thinking about the Chinese or Japanese, which often remained within national boundaries, these rural settlers imagined the indigenous people of the Arctic as a unified “race” that extended across national boundaries.
The Arctic’s indigenous population did not fit into their nineteenth-century racial categories.
From their vantage point in the rural Midwest, settlers had a difficult time classifying the indigenous people living in the Arctic. They were certain that they were not white but could not quite make the link to the Native Americans that they were familiar with in the American West. “These are a very curious race,” noted J. Lamer.[3] This interested reporter thought that this indigenous group resembled the Native Americans, yet the difference in the skin color between the two groups gave him pause. He just wasn’t sure how to classify them.
The indigenous people living in the Arctic did not fit into the racial system to which these immigrants ascribed. Earlier discussions in the same paper articulated five distinct races: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans.[4] Because these men and women stretched across multiple continents, these rural settlers could not make a definitive pronouncement about their racial background. Of course, this did not lead them to rethink their racial classification system, but it did result in a complication that these writers never resolved.
The Arctic’s indigenous population had virtues but were still considered to be inferior.
This inability to definitively classify these northern populations did not squelch any impulses to make broad assessments of the entire population.
Some writers looked with awe at these indigenous tribes’ ability to survive in such harsh and desolate environments. Rademaker, for instance, described them as “as hardy a race… as anywhere on the globe.”[5] He praised their fortitude to make it through hardships, toil, and the precariousness of life in the far North. The fact that these communities thrived in such a harsh climate earned praise from rural Midwesterners.
Despite this appreciation, many nineteenth-century rural settlers still managed looked down their noses at these indigenous people. Rademaker himself described natives of the Arctic as “a stubby, dirty race.”[6] The perceived lack of agricultural development, a reliance on animal hides for clothing, and dwellings built from unprocessed raw materials—namely whale bones, ice, and logs—left these rural Midwestern settlers unimpressed. They lauded indigenous population’s fortitude and strength while continuing to think of them as inferior people.
The Arctic’s indigenous population needed to be evangelized.
In an essay written in 1884, W.F. Douma celebrated that the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions had enjoyed great success in building mission stations and erecting schools among 18,000 Alaska Natives.[7] Two years later, Herman Juistema was happy to report that the Danish Mission Society had won 7,000 converts among the indigenous population in Greenland.[8] These rural folks were neither Presbyterians nor Danes, but they still reveled in the success of Christian missionary efforts.
Religion continued to inform how rural Midwesterners conceived of and engaged with people living in the Arctic. These particular rural communities had not sent any missionaries to the region nor had they contributed financially to any of the mission work taking place there. Nevertheless, they remained deeply invested in the project of evangelization in the North.
The rural interest in indigenous populations living in the Arctic surprised me. They had no direct connection with these men and women, and aside from occasional rumors of expeditions to the North Pole, the region rarely made the news. These men and women also threw a wrench into some of the fundamental classification systems used by these rural settlers. They didn’t dwell in a discrete nation but stretched across the Northern reaches of many countries. They also didn’t fit in their racial categories. When nineteenth-century rural settlers envisioned the Arctic’s indigenous population they had to do so by altering many of their standard paradigms. Nevertheless, these rural settlers remained convinced of a few central things: these men and women lived in the North, were not “civilized,” and just like the rest of the world, needed to be evangelized.
[1]I. Van Kampen, “Historical Sketch of Norway and Sweden,” Excelsiora 16, No. 4 (November 1885), 245.
[2]J.S. Rademaker, “In the Ice Regions,” Excelsiora 10, No. 7 (February 1880), 271.
[3]J. Lamer, “The Countries of the North,” Excelsiora 11, No. 10 (March/April 1881), 386.
[4]Moto Ohgimi, “Races of Men,” Excelsiora 5, No. 9, (March 1875), 389.
[7]W.F. Douma, “Historical: Alaska,” Excelsiora 14, No. 5 (February 1884)
[8]Herman S. Juistema, “Religious Intelligence,” Excelsiora 16, No. 8 (March 1886), 466.
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