An eminent American anthropologist’s impressions of Calicut in 1909

By the time 32-year-old George Amos Dorsey, a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, came to southern India, he had already established a reputation as an ethnographer of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. On a world tour that covered more than 75,000 kilometres, Dorsey ended up in Calicut in September 1909.

The American documented his travels in a series called “Diary of a 47,000 Mile Journey,” which was published in instalments by the Chicago Tribune. In the 20th instalment of the series, Dorsey penned his thoughts and impressions of Calicut and other parts of Kerala that he passed by on his way to Trichy.

“At 9 o’clock I am in Calicut: it has taken just fourteen hours to traverse 186 miles,” Dorsey wrote. “No, no wreck, no holdup, the cylinder did not blow out, and there was no shortage of fuel or water. This is just a sample of the speed of an ordinary South Indian passenger train.”

The American ethnographer had probably seen worse during his travels but the sarcasm arising out of what seemed like sheer frustration was visible throughout his writing about Malabar. He described the ‘tropical’ eggs he had for breakfast as being the “size of marbles.”
Dorsey spent just three hours in Calicut, travelling around the town in a horse cart.

“The Malabar Coast, of which Calicut (our word calico comes from the stuff they used to make here) is the capital, is occupied by the Malayalam branch of the Dravidians, as distinguished from the Tamil and Telugu,” he wrote. “A great difference is seen in their costumes the moment one enters their territory. The women are naked above the waist and their long skirt is white, and in their ears are great plugs or rings like the ancient Ohio mound copper rings.” Here Dorsey referred to rings that were excavated along with other artefacts in the 19th century in the US Midwestern state.

The American said the men in Calicut wore their hair short all around the head, except on top of the head. “There it grows long and is made into a big coil which lolls down over in front of one ear,” he added.

At the time Dorsey visited Calicut, the city and its surrounding areas were suffering from an outbreak of cholera. He said the city seemed “sleepy and half dead,” with many of the shops shut.

Calicut’s days as a major port with large foreign trading communities were long gone by then. “It is pretty along the sea front,” the anthropologist noted. “No sign of a harbour but a single steamer lying at anchor in an open roadstead a mile out. Nearer shore were two or three sailing ships, and closer many curious native craft, and on the beach many big dugouts, some built up by planks sewn on as in a Samoan canoe.”

Dorsey’s diary suggests that he also made it to Beypore, where he saw a “great native craft” being built, which he compared to the Santa Maria, one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492.

The anthropologist claimed the bazaars of Calicut were full of the “cheapest and trashiest” German products. Dorsey said the Germans had captured the local market, claiming that an English egg cup was so large that one could put an Indian egg in it and not find it, while the Germans made cups that were the right size for local eggs. How German products managed to penetrate the local market in northern Kerala is something that needs to be researched in detail.

Dorsey did manage to stumble upon things that reminded him of home, writing,“But even here you meet three United States products you cannot get away from in the cities of India- The American dentist, the sewing machine and Standard Oil cans.”

Beyond Calicut
As he headed south from the city en route to Trichy, the American took note of the countryside and the “primitive methods in use” for agriculture. “I saw them ploughing with a crooked stick, ‘harrowing’ with a club, making holes with a stick, dropping seed by hand and cutting rice with a tiny sickle,” Dorsey wrote. “People everywhere, but no villages; the houses are scattered here and there through the palm groves.”

Dorsey was impressed with the size of jackfruit that he saw and described markets full of coconuts and mangoes. He said the average person was too poor to afford rice, even though he grew it, but added that he saw lots of “fat Brahmans” but few beggars!

Among the people Dorsey interacted with was a 50-year old English bachelor who hated living in India and despised the locals, but was apparently “too tied up” to leave the country! What a better way to personify the “White Man’s Burden,” a decade after the poem was penned by Rudyard Kipling!

This frustrated English officer told Dorsey that if he had owned India, he would have boiled the country in oil and set fire to it! The 50-year old also spoke to the anthropologist about the so-called “professional criminal castes,” saying they were also “perjurers” and “forgers.”

Dorsey appreciated the Gulmohur trees of Tirur. “What a stunning sight,” he wrote. “It flowers just before it leafs, gorgeous scarlet and crimson and orange and gold, a solid flame of colour.”

The American anthropologist left Kerala via the Palakkad Gap. “We passed through the Pal Ghat at four o’clock this afternoon, a twenty mile wide defile between the Nilgiri and Annamalei hills,” he added. “It is extremely picturesque and wild and jungly. Then we emerge on the semi-arid plains, with jungle, cactus, rice fields and red soil and red garmented women.”

Keeping aside the (annoying) racial bias that was considered perfectly acceptable in Western society at that time, such travelogues about Kerala give us a glimpse into little-remembered periods in history.