ABSTRACT
THE BASIC PROBLEM of this paper* may be posed in a single question: What is an Indian? This question presented no difficulty for Hernan Cortes or any sixteenth-century conqueror. Any of the people found in the New World at the time the white men landed and all of their pureblooded descendants were "Indians." Furthermore, Indians could be rather easily distinguished from whites or blacks by physical appearance and such cultural characteristics as food, dress, speech, and a separate political organization. But today, rather more than four centuries after the fall of the Aztec capital, the question cannot be handled so easily. Three races have lived side by side in Mexico for a period a century longer than the entire historical experience of European settlement on our Atlantic seaboard. One race, the black, has almost complete disappeared. If one may judge by terms in popular and learned usage, whites and Indians remain, but they have been busy in each other's affairs and a very large group of mixed bloods or mestizos has come into existence. How today can one distinguish Indians from other groups in the Mexican population? And, if one can separate them out, just what is it that makes them "Indians"?
