Ben-Ishmael Tribe
The names "Ben Ishmael Tribe," and "Tribe of Ishmael", were applied to poor, Upland Southern residents of
The Ishmaels, known locally for abstaining from the
After mostly slipping out of national consciousness for much of the 20th century, the history of the Ishmael tribe was radically reinvented by Hugo Prosper Leaming in an essay called The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive “Nation" of the Old Northwest. Leaming argued that the family was not simply a poor white Christian family, but actually a Muslim tri-racial sect of indigenous peoples Europeans and enslaved Africans. Much of Leaming’s narrative was refuted by the extensively researched 2009 book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael by Nathaniel Deutsch, a professor of Literature and History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The “Discovery” of the Tribe of Ishmael
In 1877, Oscar McCulloch moved to Indianapolis from
In July 1888, McCulloch, the president of the Indianapolis Benevolent Society, went public with his finding on the Tribe of Ishmael in a speech entitled The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Buffalo, New York. In this speech, McCulloch compared the family to the Sacculina, a crustacean parasite with an “irresistible hereditary tendency...[which is] a type of degradation through parasitism, or pauperism."[4]” These human parasites, McCulloch stated, were draining the city of Indianapolis of its resources and exacerbating their own problems by receiving charity.[4] McCulloch put the number of families in the study at thirty, with the Ishmaels being the “central, the oldest and the most widely ramified family.”[4] It appears likely that McCulloch also chose to publicize the Ishmael family due to the name's association to the Orient, of which McCulloch had studied intensely.[5]
The family was described as “tow-headed” or white blond, aside from a “half-breed” (half Native American) mother.[4] The Ishmaels were explained to have “wandering blood,” causing them to “‘gypsy’, or travel in wagons east or west.”[4] In addition, the Ishmaels were known for “licentiousness which characterizes the men and women,” and their lifestyle was encouraged by “almost unlimited public and private aid.”[4] McCulloch claimed that the Ishamel clan had a criminal record of mostly prostitution, thieving, larceny, and even murder, while making up three-fourths of the hospital cases in Indianapolis.[4]
This grim picture was summed up by McCulloch’s claim that “they underrun society like devil grass. Pick up one, and the whole five thousand would be drawn up.” Due to the “force of heredity,” each generation would likely repeat this life of crime and immorality unless the state intervened.[4] McCulloch’s solution was three-fold. McCulloch recommended that the government of Indianapolis “close up official out-door relief… check private and indiscriminate benevolence, or charity, falsely so called... [and] get hold of the children.”[4] From this case study, McCulloch laid the groundwork for a national obsession with the Ishmael family. Nowhere was the impact of the Ishmael family felt more than in the field of eugenics.
Importance to the American eugenics movement
The story of the Tribe of Ishmael was one of a number of family history case studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other notable studies included
Eventually pedigree charts were made to determine whether character flaws such as laziness could be deemed hereditary. Between 1915 and 1922, Charles Estabrook, a noted eugenics researcher from the Eugenics Record Office resumed the study of the Ishmael family and was given access to the unpublished notes of McCulloch's assistant, James Frank Wright.[7] Estabrook, like McCulloch and Wright, focused his study, called The Tribe of Ishmael, on the supposed licentiousness and immoral behavior of the "Ishmaelite" family, as well as their annual '"gypsying." Estabrook concluded that:
“The individuals in this large group of feeble-minded folk are continuing to mate like to like, and are reproducing their own kind. Some few branches of the Tribe have mated into better stocks, but these are so few that they are hardly noticeable. The few placed in orphans’ homes and new environments have in some cases done better, but this has not changed the whole mass to any extent. The greater portion are still the
the Jukes.”[8]
Such family history studies of a supposedly degenerate family were one of several factors behind the passage of eugenic sterilization laws. In 1907, Indiana was the first state to pass a law regarding
Testifying before a House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Laughlin explained “degenerate families…so common there much be something wrong with them,” such as the Jukes and the Ishmaels.
Reinventing the Tribe of Ishmael
The Tribe of Ishmael was largely forgotten in American culture, until 1977, one hundred years since their initial "discovery," when a
To back up this assertion, Leaming chose sections of documents regarding the Tribe of Ishmael to make it appear the family regularly engaged in
Leaming’s reinvention of the Ishmael story as a diverse, crypto-Muslim tribe, bridging the gap of "African and American Islam," and comprising a "lost-found nation in the wilderness of North America,"[16] was discredited by Nathaniel Deutsch in the book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael.
Deutsch concluded that although much of the fascination with the Tribe of Ishmael has roots in American interest in Islam and the Orient, there is no reason to believe the Ishmael family was, in terms of economic standing and religion, anything but a poor Christian family targeted by eugenics researchers.[18] Nevertheless, in terms of race and ethnic origins, Deutsch also concluded that several of the Ishmaels were mixed-race African Americans and that some of the families identified as Ishmaelites may have been Travellers.[19]
Michael Muhammad Knight has talked about the Ben Ishmael Tribe extensively in books Blue-Eyed Devil and Journey to the End of Islam, where he travels to Indiana and Illinois to visit Mecca, Indiana, Morocco, Indiana, and Mahomet, Illinois in order to learn more about the Ben Ishmael Tribe. His former mentor, Peter Lamborn Wilson introduced him to the history of the Ben Ishmael Tribe and influenced his interest in the group.[20]
See also
Notes
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 174.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, pp. 63-64.
- ^ a b Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 21.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Libraries, University, University Librarian, Rose Arny, R.R. Company, and Nicole Rafter. White Trash. Northeastern University Press, 1988. Print, pp. 49-54.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 54.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 34.
- ^ Company, R.R., and Ruth Engs. The Eugenics Movement. Greenwood Pub Group, 2005. Print, p. 216.
- ^ Arthur H. Estabrook, "The Tribe of Ishmael," Eugenical News, VI (July-Aug. 1921), p. 7.
- Elof Carlson. The Unfit: A History of A Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Pr, 2001. Print, p. 211.
- Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, pp. 123-130.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 106.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, pp.130-131.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 132.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 155.
- ^ a b c Sakolsky, Ron, and James Koehnline. Gone to Croatan: Origins of the North American Dropout Culture. 1994-03, 1994. Print, pp. 19-22.
- ^ a b Sakolsky, Ron, and James Koehnline. Gone to Croatan: Origins of the North American Dropout Culture. 1994-03, 1994. Print, pp. 53.
- ^ Sakolsky, Ron, and James Koehnline. Gone to Croatan: Origins of the North American Dropout Culture. 1994-03, 1994. Print, pp. 48.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, pp. 201-204.
- ^ Deutsch, Nathaniel. Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press, 2009. Print, p. 99, p. 119.
- ^ Knight, Michael Muhammad. "Blue-Eyed Devil". 2006. Print, pp. 72-74