Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt00777)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "carlosaveline" <carlosaveline@...> 
wrote:
> Well, there are no `red indians' in Brazil, although the term is
> very common in old North American Far West bang-bang stories

This term was very common in 19th century to denote all aborigenals of 
America. (see below) "Red" is used just to distinguish then from 
"Indian Indians"
And the view that some races are retarded was common for both branches 
of theosophy:

"Savagery remains
because there are still Egos whose experience is so limited that
they are still savage; they will come up into higher races when
ready. Races die out because the Egos have had enough of the
experience that sort of race gives. So we find the red Indian,
the Hottentot, the Easter Islanders, and others as examples of
races deserted by high Egos and as they are dying away other
souls who have had no higher life in the past enter into the
bodies of the race to go on using them for the purpose of
gaining such experience as the race body will give. A race could
not possibly arise and then suddenly go out. We see that such is
not the case, but science has no explanation; it simply says
that this is the fact, that nations decay. But in this
explanation no account is taken of the inner man nor of the
recondite subtle and occult laws that unite to make a race.
Theosophy shows that the energy drawn together has to expend
itself gradually, and therefore the reproduction of bodies of
the character of that race will go on, though the Egos are not
compelled to inhabit bodies of that sort any longer than while
they are of the same development as the race. Hence a time comes
when the whole mass of Egos which built up the race leaves it
for another physical environment more like themselves. The
economy of Nature will not permit the physical race to suddenly
fade away, and so in the real order of evolution other and less
progressed Egos come in and use the forms provided, keeping up
the production of new bodies but less and less in number each
century. These lower Egos are not able to keep up to the limit
of the capacity of the congeries of energies left by the other
Egos, and so while the new set gains as much experience as is
possible the race in time dies out after passing through its
decay. This is the explanation of what we may call descending
savagery, and no other theory will meet the facts."
(W.Q. Judge, "Ocean of theosophy")