It is imperative that, while teaching about indigeneity in our classrooms, we dissect how the term came to be and how it is so often conflated with race. In my classroom, I like to bring two texts to my students' attention in thinking about the constructions of indigeneity as a racialized identity in the early modern period: Richard Hakluyt’s “Of the Permians, Samoites, and Lappes,” in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) and Sir Thomas Browne’s “Of the Blackness of Negroes,” Book VI, Chapter X, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646). Excerpts of these texts, when taught together, can show students the development of language around race and indigeneity in the early modern period.  

“Indigenae, or people bredde upon that very soil”

Richard Hakluyt: “Of the Permians, Samoites, and Lappes,” in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation

The Samoit hath his name (as the Russe saith) of eating himselfe: as if in times past, they lived as ye Cannibals, eating one another. Which they make more probable, because at this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoever it be, even the very carion that lieth in the ditch. But as the Samoits themselves will say, they were called Samoie, that is, of themselves, as though they were Indigenae, or people bred upon that very soyle, that never changed their seate from one place to another, as most nations have done. They are subject at this time to the Emperour of Russia.

On the North side of Russia next to Corelia, lieth the countrey of Lappia, which reacheth in length from the farthest point Northward … The whole countrey in a maner is either lakes, or mountaines, which towardes the Sea side are called Tondro, because they are all of harde and craggy rocke, but the inland partes are well furnished with woods that growe on the hilles sides, the lakes lying betweene. Their diet is very bare and simple. Bread they have none, but feede onely upon fish and foule. They are subject to the Emperor of Russia, and the two kings of Sweden and Denmarke … The opinion is that they were first termed Lappes of their briefe and short speech. The Russe divideth the whole nation of the Lappes into two sortes. The one they call Nowremanskoy Lapary, that is, the Norvegian Lappes because they be of the Danish religion. For the Danes and Norvegians they account for one people. The other that have no religion at all but live as bruite and heathenish people, without God in the worlde, they cal Dikoy Lapary, or the wilde Lappes. The whole nation is utterly unlearned, having not so much as the use of any Alphabet, or letter among them. For practise of witchcraft and sorcerie they passe all nations in the worlde.  

In Hakluyt’s description of the Arctic regions of Europe, those historically controlled by Russia and the Scandinavian nations, the reader is introduced to two groups of Indigenous peoples: the Samoyed and the Sámi, called the Samoit and Lappes respectively in Hakluyt’s text. In both cases he examines the origins of the names by which they are called, and in doing so provides us with valuable insights into his notion of race and indigeneity.  

Hakluyt claims the Russian believe the name Samoit indicates that these people were once cannibals because their name indicates they are ‘eaters of themselves.’ This seem probable to Hakluyt because the Samoit are were known for eating raw flesh, thus marking them as uncivilized. But he also includes the Samoit’s own corrective to this misunderstanding of their culture: they claim their name derives from ‘Samoie’ or ‘of themselves’, which Hakluyt’s interprets to mean they are indigenous to their homelands or ‘bred on that very soile.’ This contradicts an earlier notion in Hakluyt that speculated on the Samoit being descendants of the Tartars because of their physiognomy—an early formulation of race, but by including the Samoit sense of their own indigeneity he leaves it for the reader to decide.  

We do glean from this text two interesting cultural details about this Arctic society: their supposed preference for raw flesh and their own sense of their name as indicating their indigeneity. Some may be familiar with the now disused term Eskimo to indicate Inuit and other Arctic peoples of North America. It was long thought the word Eskimo derived from a Cree word for “eaters of the raw” or “he eats it raw.” This was taken to be derogatory, and the term Eskimo was in turn rejected in favor of a peoples’ endonym, such as Inuit or Yupik.  

One might recall the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss’ famous study The Raw and the Cooked, in which he uses his structuralist methodology to study these states for food as larger indicators of divisions between nature and culture. Because the Samoit are said to consume meats raw, one can extrapolate their savagery and even cannibal origins. Similarly, Hakluyt notes that the Lappes, or Sámi, do eat only fish and fowl and do not have bread—an indication of their primitive status. What Hakluyt would not have known is that in arctic regions consuming fish raw is the primary source of vitamin C, which is lost with cooking. Also, the dearth of easily obtained fuels in the region made cooking difficult, let alone the fuel required to bake bread.  

Writing of the Samoit, or Samoyed, Hakluyt does note that they insist their name derives from a term meaning “of themselves,” indicating that they were original to their lands. Whereas Hakluyt never uses or shows knowledge of the Sámi name for themselves, instead he chooses Lappes, the name used for them in English until only recently. Hakluyt presumes Lappes somehow indicates their “brief and short speech,” as if they did not possess a complex and fully developed language. He goes on to define the Sámi through lack; they have no religion, no learning, and no letters. Instead, they excel most in sorcery, a sign of their dangerous alterity.  

Had Hakluyt known more about them he might have learned that they call themselves Sámi and that word derives from “of the land”—yet another people insisting on their indigeneity. This is not unlike the names of other Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit, which translates “the People,” or Lenni Lenapi meaning “true people.” Other versions of ‘the original people’ can be found among the endonyms of many Indigenous peoples.  

In this way Hakluyt stumbles upon two elements of Indigenous culture frequently noted by anthropologists of the modern era: these cultures are highly adaptive to the environments in which they live based on climate, resources, and food sources, and they frequently call themselves by names that indicate they consider themselves indigenous to a certain region or at least its original inhabitants.  

The conflation with race

Sir Thomas Browne: “Of the Blackness of Negroes,” Book VI, Chapter X, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

But this defect is more remarkable in America; which although subjected unto both the Tropicks, yet are not the Inhabitants black between, or near, or under either: neither to the Southward in Brasilia, Chili, or Peru; nor yet to the Northward in Hispaniola, Castilia del Oro, or Nicaragua. And although in many parts thereof there be at present swarms of Negroes serving under the Spaniard, yet were they all transported from Africa, since the discovery of Columbus; and are not indigenous or proper natives of America.

In these lines taken from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a collection of essay-like considerations of popular errors of his time, he turns his attention to debates over the difference in skin color among peoples, particularly sub-Saharan Africans. There were, of course, a number of conflicting theories ranging from the Biblical curse incurred by Noah’s son Cham and passed down to his descendants or the effects of climate on skin color or diet or any number of combination of factors. Browne looks at what he sees as the defects of each argument on its own.  

When considering the notion that climate is the root of blackness in skin color, he takes a global perspective and finds that argument wanting. If it were a valid position, then the peoples inhabiting regions in the same latitudes should also have black skin, but when considering the inhabitants of Asia and the Americas, Browne says this is not true. He argues elsewhere that because people who relocate to tropical areas do not change skin color, no more than blacks who move north or south of the tropics do some other factors must be at work.  

What is of note to scholars of the English language is that Browne’s description of the original inhabitants of the Americas as “indigenous or proper natives” is one of the earliest uses of the term indigenous in this sense. For Hakluyt the word was still Latin but by Browne’s time he deploys it as though it were English. He likewise does not miss the opportunity to note the Spanish transport of thousands of African slaves into the Americas, even while making a comparison of another issue altogether.

In a mediation on putative causes of variations in skin color we encounter a passing reference to indigeneity even as we move towards an era that will increasingly make physiognomy the basis the specious pseudo-science of race.  

When bringing the discussion of indigeneity into the classroom, we must first foreground our students with the knowledge that is so often undertaught, if not outright ignored: the conflation of indigeneity and race began in the early modern period, at the height of European global imperialism. These writings allow us a glimpse into the evolution of the concepts of indigeneity and race we are still grappling with today.

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