The Emperor's Giraffe: And Other Stories Of Cultures In Contact

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AI1 rights resemcd. Prirztcd in the Unitecl States of America. No part of this publication

may be reg?roduced or transn~ittedin any forn~or by any means, efectronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any inforn~ationstorage and retrieval system, witht>utperarlissivn in writing from the publisher, Copyright O 1999 by Westview I?ess, A Mernber of the Ikrseus Books Group Publistzed in 1989 in the Uxzited States of Anterica by Mrcst\tiew Press, 5500 CcrztraX AVenue, 12oulder, C:oXorado 80301-2877, and in the tJnited Kingdon1 by Westview X'ress, f 2 Hid's Copse Eload, Cumnor XIill, C3xford C3X2 9JJ Library of Congress Catalogizlg-irz-PublicationData Wilson, Samuef M, The emperor's giraffe and czther stories czf cultures in contact / Sarnuel M. Wlfson, p* cat. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 11-8233-3585-X (tlc)----ISBN0-8133-3786-0 (pb) 1, Acculturation. 2. Culture diffusios7. 1. Title, GN366.W56 2999 303.4824~21

The paper used in this publication meets the requiren~entsof the Axnerican Matiunal Standard for J7ern1anenceof Paper for X'rinted Library Materials 239.48-1984,

For Cory, Nellie, and Marshall

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Acknowlettgrnents

Zatrt~duction

~hCO!NK~N:~ b

i ~ t9 ~ t ,

Colurnbus, My Enemy Qne Caribbean chief resisted the first Spanish invaders,

13

The Admiral and the Chief

23

Despite millennia of separation between Old World and New World societies, Columbus and the Indian ruler Guacanagari found .t-hentselveson common gmund, ColurnbusWornpetifion Qthers were as capable and apart from luck would have reached the New World first.

31

Columhtrs"s Comeuppance 'f'he Columbus of p o p l a r ntythotou died destitute and alone, emrlappreciated and unrewarded, In fact, he died a wealthy man, with his children at his bedside,

39

COH i ~ d a~Nd i CDI X C I ~ ~ Z C/X tkt g ~ ~ c n c4 q.9 m i t e Legends and Lost T ~ b e s

Initiallyt Montezuzna thought Cartes to be the earthly manifestation of the god Quetzaltoatl.

53

me Gardeners of Eden Gardem and gardening flowisbed delring the It-alian Renaissance, reflecting both the rebirth of interest in classical philosophy and aesthetics and the emergence of the natural sciences, LleaCh a ~ Td~ x e s

67

:In a large part of the New World, most notably in ~egions ruled by the Aztec and Xrlca empires, people probahly grumbled about taxes long before the arrival of the Europeans. Paad41ua" s i t e ""Agreeableas it [the New World] may be to the sight, seeming a delightful Paradise, to the feeling it is painhl in eqttal degree."

75

MuLter of Smallpox An effective preventative for smallpox existed long before the disease was understood,

83

" m a t U~marrned,Wild Cou~frey"

93

The English colonists came up with justifications for taking the Native Americans' lands, Garcitaso de Xa Vega, El Inca Qne of the first generation of mestizos, Garcilaso de la Vega was caught between two worlds.

101

Pilgdm "s~#rc~dox :Is the story "Quanta and the Pllgrirns" realIy about S ~ a n t arld o the Pilgrims?

E ~ ~ ~ ~ f i i cErvycew ng Y ii

J ~ ti'1T7~

The Emper(?u"sGirafe

121

Not every powerful country chooses world domination, Coree, Tea, or Opil-cm?

127

In 1838, a Chinese drug czar confronted the Age of Addiction. T ~ p i tka a v o u m e y to the West In less tangible effects, long-distance contact spread esoteric

knowledge with ideological and political significance.

135

'trikinp alzd Eskimos Did Rjarni Herjutfsson discover the Americas?

Disney Dissonance What happens when Americanized tales return to Europe?

~ b l n b h e d xC O H M C I - ~ ~ O N J :

149

153

Saint George and juncanoo Africa, Europe, and the New World come totgelher for Christmas in. the Caribbean,

159

Cal.llbbeavr Diaspouas

165

Many Jews were among the first European colonizers of the Caribbean. Cn'cket and Colonialism

173

The postcolonial world emerges on the cricket pitch as the empire strikes back.

Reburying HaiL-het$ Amid controversy uver reburpng Native American skeletal remains and artifacts, archaeologists and Native Americans discover same cornmm ground.

185

193

The participants' passion, and the focused hush of the crowd, made it plain that this was no show f o x tourists. Trickster T r e ~ t s

ln the tail mountains and forests of the Northwest, before the Whites came, and even before the advent af the Real People-the Nee Mee Poo, or Nez PaceCoyote lived there.

203

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Mast of the essays in this volume first appeared in N u l u r ~ lHistol;v magazine, published by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Some have been expanded from their earlier forms. They were published between 1990 and 1995 in a series titled "Worlds in Contact," The essays benefited from the excellent work done by the editors at the magazine, including Alan Ternes, editor in chief for most oftthe time these were written; EIlen Galdensob; and Kay Zachariasen, I am especially happy to have space to offer sincere thanks to Senior Editor Vittorio Maestro, who edited all of the essays for Nutztrrral Histov, His thoroughness, patience, and commitment to making things as good as they can be are evident in this collection, I thank everyone at Nn;tzlruE Histofury for their continued resolve to keep anthropo1oh.y as an important part of the magazine, Many of my colleagues in the Department of A n t h r o p o l o ~at the University of Texas read veraons of these essays. Emeritus professors 'f'homas N. Campbelt and E. Mott Davis are both so widely read and interested in so marry things that they were always excellent first readers, Ward Keeler went over nearly all of them in draft and gave them the kind of careful, detailed readings that, l know, is hard for professors to find the time to give. Polly Strong, Mel Tapper, James Broy Tarn Hester, Darrell Creel, Llorothy. Lippert, Stephanie May, and others helped greatly on one or more of the essays. Chad Oliver died before most of these were written, but early on he told me that writing about anthropology for a general audience is more importanl than writing for other anthropologifis. I value that advice. A great m a v specialists in some of the specialized fields in which l have sometimes trespassed were very kind in providing information

xii

A s k r z ~ ~ w ~ etsd g ~ ~ ~ e ~ ~

and adace. Without naming them allt I must acknowledge dcsbts to Roger and Robert Abrahams, Vincent Hubbard, Tom McCovern, David and jsan Robinson, and Ban. Rogers. Cory Wolf edited and talked over all of these ideas and essays and made it all worth doing. I thank her most of all,

Twenty years ago, working at an archaeological site in the Midwest, I had the jab of excavating a subterranean storage pit that had originally been dug and used more than 2,000 years ago. The pit was about two feet wide at the top, five feet deep, and four feet wide at the bottom. It had been dug by hand through the dark brown loam and dawn inta a Xayer of soft tan clay. The only way to excavate it was to get down inside the pit as f dug and carefully remove its contents, bit by bit, ft was a hot summer and the pit was airless, ft took days of careful digging to figure out that the pit had been used for storage, then for garbage, and that layers of clay had been put down one upon the other to keep the rotting contents from smelling up the camp. Finally it was filled in campletely. The top was eventually buried by the gradual accumdalion of deposits; over the years the deposits at the site had built up to about two feet above the top of the pit. Xnslde the pit, near the exad of this excavation, I began to clean the walls, right down to the yellow-tan clay. The brown organic contents of the pit flaked away from the soft clay revealing the finger marks of the person who had dug the pit a few hundred years ac, X put my right hand up to where the finger marks were and my fingers fit perfectly inta the grooves, I t is likely that only two people had ever been in the pit-the person who dug it and me, Across those millennia, I could feel a sense of kinstlip with a person with whom I shared at Xeast the experience of a hot summer in the Midwest and a time in this hot pit (but probahly mucl? more). In at way the experience of excavating that storage pit was like trying to understand the reactions of people who were taught up in the

great period of cullure contact that Followed the arrivail of Europeans and Africans in the Americas after 1492. Can we really experience the essential humanity of other people and the ways that they understood their times and their world across such a span of time and cultural difference? Some basic human bond of shared emotions and experiences is there, but at the same tirne c~xlturaldifferences are real; we see the world differently, in ways that are determined by otxr culture, This makes the task of finding some of the human connections i:n the complex and chaotic history that has produced owr world interesting and enjoyalnle, as well as important, One aim of this book is to search for these connections. It is not difficult to argue that the world we live in is very different from the world of even a century ago. Obvious technological differences stand otxt, but there is also a major difference in the population of the world and its po2i"rcal organization. Far greater is the difference between our world and the world before 1492, The past five centuries can be seen as the time when people all over the world becam much more aware of all of the others living in the world. In p m , this was a consequence of the conqnesl ofthe Americas, but it &so resulCs from the global expansion of colonialism and changes in transportation and communication technologies, The centuries since 1492 are marked by the processes of culture contact, perhaps mare than at any other tirne in history, Groups who knew little or nothing of what went on beyond their islands or river basins were thrown, very often brutally into a world of diverse cz1ltwres and agendas. These everlts resulted i:n a huge and rapid population loss in the Americas-and also the destruction of languages and experience, Olher processes of cultlire and cz1ltcrral knowl-e contact took place over many generations, so gradually that individuals might not notice the kinds of cultural change that were slowly taking place. All cultures change constantly; reconstituting themselves in each generation. But in the contact period, cultural change has sometimes been violent, the result of forced assimilation or practices of exclusion. The centuries since 1492 have also been a time of changing h u n dalions tor understandirzg the warid and, generally, ol.' increasing knowledge b u t the world. The Columbian voyages took place just at the tirne of the Renaissance in Europe-Michelangelo and Leonardo da Viraci were contemporaries of Colurnbus. Renaissance geographers like Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal and the ftal-

iarl Paolo dal Pozzo mscaneliii were interested in voyages Iike that of Coiurrtbus"~m a l l fleet. They were part of a process that has resulted, in the subsequent centuries, in the great dominance of scientific humanism as a paradigm for knowing what we know for believe) about how the world and the cosmos work, Other aspects of Renaissance thought-the belief in the value and ultimate compatibility of different systems of thought and the innate dignity of humankind-do not at first sound like they had much to do with the period of colonlalism and conqnest that followed. 'l'hey did play a key role in this period, however, which in the end vvas much more than a story of imperial conquest, The interactions in this continuing period of cullture contact have changed all the participants-Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Americans, In the essays in this collection, I try to focus on the way individuals understood their historical situation, but this is not easy in historical research. In archaeologrljr, an experience such as the one I had in the storage pit is rare; it is unusual to see indi\riduals SA;\ clearly. We deal, i:nstetad, with the homogenized artifa& made by many people and hope to get a kind of ""av@rageHview of what people were doing, We tend to look for longer-term trends-in population. size, for instance-that take centuries to be clearly visible, This is the nature of archaeolsgical data. It is also somewhat difficult to see individuals in written history. Perhaps the most famous and notable people will be remembered for a few centuries, but most of us will not be, Eric Wolf wrote a very influential anthropological history tilled Europe anif tI:ze 12eople Without Nis1"O~")/ (1982). He sought to pulr together the disjointed work of many academic disciplines in a :new view of European hbtory, one that avoided the problems of heroic '"reat man" "nres of history He noted, "Social historians and historical sociologists have shown that the common people were as much agents in the historical process as they were its victims and silent witnesses" wolf 1982:~). In many of the essays in this book, I have tried to follow WolPs advice and look for the role played by people who generally do not figure prominently in &aditional histories. The course of history is determined by choices and decisions people make, and not only those of the people whose names are recorded or rernmbered years later. The idea that the course of history is determined by the decisions of individuals, famous or otherwise, runs counter to another prevalent view of history. This view is based on the assumption that the

course of history is governed by powerful,, unyielding farces much larger than individuals-the idea that at every moment outcomes are made inevitable by the onrushing succession of events. It is easy to feel this process in our world, faced as we are with .frightening statistics about trends in populalion gr0wl.h rates, the depletion of yetroleum reserves, and global warming. Yet, as individuals we make otxr choices, informed by what information we have and in ways that make sense in terms of the cultural precepts we have learned since birth, and the result is . . . weil, ttistory Of course, the case might be made that the decisions made by some high-ranking people are more consequential than those made by anonymous persons in the crowd, This is often tme, but as this collection of essays shows, it is frequently the other way around, Qrdinary individuals find themselves, primarily due to chance, in situations of great moment. This elemmt af chance, so prevalent in these essays, provides a second challenge to the view of history as a great juggernaut. It is rather unsettling to realize that the historical sequence of events could have been radically differenl: at every stage. In his book Wof~ilerfl-kl I,IfP (1989), Stephen Jay Gould asks readers to imagine the history of life on this planet as a tape that could be played back again and again to see if the course of biological evolution would always turn out the same each time. He argues persuasively that it would not; that at every turn, based on the paleontologicat record beginning shortly after the dramatic increase of species in the early Cambrian, chance played an enormous role in which taxa survived m d which b e c a m eainct. Abrupt enviromentrai. changes, aseraid impacts, and olfter even"r.s brought aboemt massive extinctions, One might counter that this result does make sense according to Darwinian principles of natural selection, making the case that the groups that became extinct were somehow inferior, but Gould argues that the pattern of extinction was random: Perhaps the grirrr reaper of anatomical designs is orsly Lady Luck in disguise, Qr perhaps the actual reasons for survival do not support canventio~lalideas of cause as coxr~plexity,irrrpravement, or anything n~ovirrg at all irrurrra~lward.. . . Groups may prevail or die for reasorss that bear no relationship to the Darwinian basis of success in normal times, (p. 48)

Gould? argument is intended to apply to biological processes, but a comparable role of chance can be seen in human history. Play back the tape of the interactions between Europeans and indigenotls peo-

ple in the Anterkas and things mighl: have gone differently at each point, Suppose, for exantple, that instead of the native peoples of the Americas being vulnerable to diseases from Europe, Asia, and Africa, things had been the other way around. If Old W r l d populations had been decimated the way people in the Americas were, the world wotxld be a very different place. As emerges from several of the essays in this book, the role af epidemic disease in changing the course af events in the colonial conquest af the Americas has been enormous, affecting native peoples, Europeans, Africans, aod others, The point is not to explore large n u h e r s of what-8 scenarios or try to imagine all of the ways things might have gone differently; rather, it is important to see that chance events play an immense role in human affairs. Especially in the first section of this book, which deals with the early European voyages to the Americas, it is easy to think af the "contact period" as something very remote, something that happened back in a period when history blurs into myth, The historical images owolnntbus and jacyues Cartler and Sir Walter Ralegh are often placed in nasrative settings that are in some wars very different from the history of Europe in the s a m period. Some historical figures have been made symbols for large parts of the populatim and responses to canquest (for example La Malinche in Mexico), Other people and events are bound up with religious faith, as in the case of Juan. Diego and the Virgin af Guadeloupe, Other stories from this early periodPonce de Le6n and the fountain of youth, Coronado and the seven cities af gold, and even the Thanksgiving story of the Pilgrims-are more allegories than hisorical accounts. These are examples of a widespread belief in the Americas tbat the period of time encotnpassi:ng most of the evenb of the early period of the European conquest is so historically remote as to be disconnected from the present, Why do we put this distance between this contact period of history and ourselves? Perhaps it is simply that these events happened a long time ago and we are all a bit vague on the sequence of historical events. l think it is more likely that we distance ourselves because we know this history holds great sadness, Tragedies occurred that are almost unimaginable, together with crimes that are painful to contemglate and impossible to reverse. Yet in part at least, the world we live in is the product of these criclles and tragedies (as well as all of the positive things that happened), It is politically safer and emotionally less taxing, however, to blur history into myth and thereby confine it,

'f'he probiem with this strateg is that we are still in the contact period. If we see culture contact as the time in which different cultures interacted, exchanged, competed, and grew closer or farther apartthe time when they negotiated and engineered ways to live together-all of these things are still happening, The kinds of battles between nation-states, Creole landowners, and indigenous people that existed in the early sixteenth century are still being played out today. The conquest by force of indigenous people was going on less than a cenlury ago in North h e r l c a , and it is still happening in Annazonla. The poiiticail and social aftermath of the centrmries of slavery is felt every day throughout the Americas, These wounds will take many generations to heal, and everything that happens after is premised on these events, The intercultural processes that define the contact period also define the Americas. The societies of the Americas are typically far more heterogeneous than elsewhere in the world, and in fact this degree of cultural plurality was not common. in history, even in large conquest It- is not possible empires such as the Romar?, k t e c , and Ch'in (Qin), to emxadersmd this diversity and the dynamics of these highly plural societies without understanding the long history of culture contact in the Americas, a history that began before the voyages of Columbus and continues to the present, In the Americas, and particularly in the United States, there has been the belief that a fundamental process in culture contact is assimilation. Time and intercultural contact, in this view, work as a melti:ng got to erase cuitural difference and absorb groups into a slngle, dominant culture, Bllt Ihere are a great many cases of cuitural corllinuity span"ing cenluries that challenge this view. The AlabamaCoushatta people of east Texas, for example, came under serious threat from approaching Anglo settlers more than 200 years ago and survived by moving to Mexican territory. Their lands were incorporated into the Republic of Texas and then into the United States. Through much of this time they were under intense pressure to assimilate or leave-or die out. Today, as discussed in ""A Texas POWwow" they are still doing welt, living on. the Xands they have owned for gexlerations. They have fought on the side of the United States in numerous wars and in most material respects are :no differew from their African-American, Angls, and Latino neighbors in the Big Thicket of east Texas, But they are Alabama and Goushatta people. An essential part of their cultural identity remains unbroken through

the years, even as most outward parts of their lives have changed, Trying to sort out exactly what that cuitural colllinuit): consists of is not easy; but ties of cultural identity have great strength and longevity. These people are one example of many that defy the melting pot idea of cultural change. In the c-lxlturaf complexity of our postcontact world, c-lxlt-uraf identity itself is often very complex; for many people, checking a single box for "ethnicity" on a census form is impossible, as impassible as uxaaveling all of the cclntplex lines of one" aaracestry or sorting out all of the sometixnes conflicling emotions of belonging, Many people, more in every generation, have ancestries tying them to multiple regions-Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. How this is experienced can be seen in the chapter on Garcilaso de la Vega, who with an Inca mother and a Spanish father was one of the first generation of "mestizos" in the Americas. Twenty generations later, we are nearly all to some degree mestizos. As such, we are heirs to both aggressors and victims, with the additiorlal complexity that brings, But in contrast to the meIling pat vie- recognizing this plurality of identity is not at a)I to say that: we are vvlthout cullural identity. Can we really understand one another across gulfs of cultural distance and long periods of lime? Can we llrldersland Garcilaso's reactions as the son of a Spanish nobleman standing in the ruins of his mother" Inca empire? Sometimes it is a daunting task to understand even part of what our friends are thinking and feeling, let alone strangers across space and time, I believe we can bridge these divides, and in this book X have tried ta imagine things as they would have been tor the people involved, Carrying on this senrch fo comntnn groclxad is anolh,er essential part of living in the contact period.

Gould, Stephen Jay 2 989 Wonc;lCrfitILip: The B~rr'qessSjzale and e-he Nc~lllircof His toy. New York: W. W, Norton. Wolf, Eric R,

1982

Europe and the People Witl?olatHistoy. Berkeley: University of California Press,

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ven before the 500th anniversary af Colurnbus" landing in the Caribbean, most people were tired of hearing b u t him, If history were scripted for d r m a , Colu:mhus would never have been cast in. the lead, When histarians wanted to make Columbus a hero (as they did in 1892, for instance), they had to gloss over a lot of historical facts and even make up whole plotlines to make him look good, The real Colombo or Col6n (his surnames in his native Italian and adopted Spanish) was the sort af man who often cheated and bullied people. He tormented those from whom he wanted something and alienated nearly everyone eke, As much as anyone in the early years of the conquest of the Americas-Native American or European-he was in over his head much of the time, In a sense, he was so fallible and human that it is perhaps fortunate he ended up where he did in history, if only becawse he is such a difficuk person to romanticize. The following four chapters dealing with the Columbian voyages and their aftermath have a lot to do with Columbus, but the focus also falls a n some af the people around him. He found himself in competition with several Taino rulers in the Greater Antilles, but for even longw periods he was allied with sorne of these men. As irzdigenous leaders suf'erirlg the first wwe of European impact, they were dealing with awful predicaments, and they needed to figure out sorne way to read Columbus, It is hard to imagine that there was any real communication and cooperation across this huge historical, linguistic, and cultural divide, yet it was there, In looking at b l h sides of this exchange, however, it is tragic that so little af the Taino" awn views and ideas of the Europeans were preserved. One would like to know more of what they thought of Columbus. Another group of people who figure in these chapters were Colurnbus" cconlyetitors and others involved in the endeavor to Alld a western, transatianlic route to the Far East. This was a big enterprise in the mid-fifteenth century, involving England, France, the Iberian kingdoms, and the large Italian city-states. To undertake a trans-

attantic verlture a g o u p had to gain the senpport of geographers, cartographers, and other scholars for the project and then obtain government sponsorship, raise funds, and do all of the other logistical things the voyage required. High-ranking people across Europe paid attention to these projects, as the correspondence in "Colurnbus" Competition" "shows. The times discussed in these opening chapters set the stage for many af the other chapters, The Columbian voyages and the events that followed did not seem like m o n u m n t a l events ixl Ewope, at least raot to the extent that we might think with hindsight. Ewepeanis viewed the Atlantic venture as a part of an ongoing process of extending their sphere of trade and influence, They had Long dealt with other people who were not like them in Akica, Asia, and the Islamic worId, and they thotxght of the early encounters with the people af the Americas in the same way. These early interactions were to have great signif cance, however, and looking at Coturnbus and the people arowrld him gives ems a place to begin exploring the phenomenon. of culture contact.

n May 1497, the Taino ruler Guarionex was enmeshed in a potentially disasrous political situation, Fitre years had passed since the strange and dangerous Spaniards first appeared on the nortlleasl shore of Hispaniola, For five years Guarianex had attempted to mediate between the foreigners and his people and to maintain his power arld prestige among the other Taino caciques, or chiefs, who were sometimes his confederates, sometimes his competitors, in the complex political terrain of the Greater Antilles, Two years earlier, Guarionex had witnessed the utter devastation the Spaniards could wreak i:n hattte. Togelh,er with the other chiefs in La Vega Real-the largest, most fertile, and most densely gopulated valley on Hispaniola-he had set out to deslroy the small force of Spaniards. Tens of Ihousands of 'X"aino, perhaps as many as one hundred thousand, had gathered from the largest chiefdorns on the island. They fated only about 200 Spaniards. But in battle the fury of the strangers had been awesome: Twenty men with armored clothing had ridden through his people on enormous animals, inflicting horrible wounds with their lances and swords. Men on foot used terrifying weapons that exploded fife. The EuropeansVarge dogs ran befare them and with uncontrolled violence tare through the Taino warriors. 'f'he fpatllards' goal s e m e d to he not merely to itnpress or srrbdlte the 'hino or to embarrass the chiefs Into joining them as subordinates but to kill as many people as possible, Even after the

battle they tortemred t s death some of the most respected chiefs in La Vega Real. Soon. afterward, however, the foreigrrersYferocity strangely abated. They gave the remaining chiefs remarkable presents-glass beads, copper belts, brightly colored clothes, Fated with these powerful and unpredictable creatures, Guarionex had agreed that he and his peaple would be their subjects. From the Spaniardshsigns and the few Taino words they could speak, Guarionex understood that their leader, Columbus, demanded submission not to himself but to some even more powerful chief who lived on an island of which Cuarionex had never heard, Guarionex further agreed that his people would pay tribute in food, cotton, and gold, To placate the Spaniards, he offered to plant fields stretching for more than 100 miles, from the north coast of Hispaniota to the sotxth. The Spaniards, however, appeared ta want gold more than anything else: They demanded that every man of fourteen or more years give Ihm one of their little copper bells fllll of gold every three months.. Cold was relatively plenlit-'ul in sifrface deposits on Hisganiola, and although they valued it, ttlle Tafno did not mine it extensively, Still, the Spaniards required more than tribute, Because the Spanish ships came so infrequently and brought so little food, the colonists constantly roamed the countryside demanding the hospitalilty af the Taino villages. Sometimes hundreds of Spaniards and the Indians that followed them would descend a n a village for a few weeks. They called for food and seemed to eat much more than a Taino would, And they did. raot eat just the food that was ready l.o he harvested; they also ate the maniac that normally wollld have stayed in the ground for another six months, and so after they left, famine followed. By. 1497, after two years of epidemics and famine following the arrival af the Spaniards, the other chiefs were pushing Guarionex to put up some resistance. Guarionex was a coward, they armed; groups of Spaniards who hated Colurnbus and his kin were living in Taino villages and had promised to help the Tair~ain battle if they would rise up again. The Spaniard Fraracisco de Koid6n led a sma)I army of dissatidied Spaniards; he hnd told the chief Marque that he wodd help drive the Spaniards out of Concepcicin de la Vega, the fort that controlled the center of the island, Kold%n promised that if the T3Bino

I""urtrctit of-Christopher Colulrnbtrs by Sebtzsfiuno del I)iombo, "Christc~pFzcr CoE~nmbus,1514,'' The Metropnlz'l-unMuseum of Art, gip of]. IJz'eupnntLMorgavr, 1900.

won, the Spaniards would stop demanding tritlute. His offer was attractive to many of the chiefs in La Vega Real. Most of them were subordinate to Guariona in the Talno hierarchy of social and political status, but their opinions were extremely important, The Taino world stretched more than 1,000 miles from east to west, Beginning more than 2,0620 years before the arrival of the Spaniards, the ancestors of the Taino had moved into the Caribbean archipelago from the northeast coast of mainland South America. They spoke a language (called Taino) of the Arawakan family, one of the most widely dispersed languages in South Arnica. By AD 700, after occupying the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, they had pushed farther into the islands of the southern Bahamas and the western Greater Antilles-Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba, The ancestors of the Taino w r e people of the tropical forest, who made their living by growing manioc and other root crops and by hunting, fishing, and collecting wild animals and plants. In the centuries of living in their new home, however, the Tains war of Life had bt3come distitlctivdy Caribbean. M y s of growing and collecting food had been adapted to island environments; social and political institutions had emerged that allowed a dense population to endure successfully in an island context. The sea served to unite, rather than separate, the Taino, The elaborale oceangoing canoes of the chiefs could hold as many as 1062 people, and voyages between islands were routine. In addition to intermarriage between high-ranking lineages, the large chiefdoms of Mspaniola. and the other Greater Antilles interacted with one another through a bail game, As in Mesoanterica and parts of Sowth Amerka, the Taino played the game on large, flat courts lined with stones or earthen embankments. The game was played with a gum rubber ball, which could not be caught or struck by a player's hands or feet, For the Tairzo, the game was much more than sport: It was a focus for religiotxs festivals, feasting, trade, intermarriage, and the (relatively) peaceful resolution of conflicts. Since the ancestors of the Taino had moved onto the islands of the western Greater Antilles, the cbiefdrzm had been growing Inrger and more powerfd. h 3 492 Guar:ionex was one of the Five most powerful chiefs on E-tispaniola, r u h g tens of thousands oF people scattered over hundreds of square miles, All the villages of the cerltral Vega Real-some seventy or more-were under his control through strati-

fied tiers of less powerful chiefs, Most of his many wives had come from the highest-status families of these s w o u n d w villages; his marriages helped forge the social and political bonds that held the chiefdom together. Some of his wives were from even farther away, from powerful lineages that ruled the other large thiefdoms of Hispaniola, Among the Taino, a chief"s power was measured by his ability to convince others that his authority sprang from his birth into a maternal lineage of high stal-us, his spedal relationstlip with supernalural spirits, and his polilical acumcsn, But his position was vulnerabie; he could be deposed by his brothers or nephews or even by a member of another lineage, This Guarionex greatly feared. Despite misgivings that the rout of two years earlier would be repeated, he lent his support to the planned uprising. Even as Guarionex was being pushed into battle by his confederates, Don Bartolornii: Coldn, Colurnbus" brother, learned af the irnpending uprisi:ng i:n La Vega Real. He had heard of Koldsn"s plan to foin with the Trzina to take over the fort at Concepcicin de la Vega. XE Rold&nsucceeded, the pro-Columbus faction would be cut in halfpart would be in the coastal colany of lsabela and other forts in the north, part in newly founded Santo Dorningo and other settlements in the south. Moving quickly with the 300 Spaniards he had with him, Bartotom4 came into La &ga Real from the sauth, His men reinforced the fort, but they were still vastly outmatched by the surrounding Guarionex-RaldBn alliance, :In many ways Bartolorni, was the more capahle of the Colu:mhus brothers. He was described by BnrPolont6 de Las Casas, an importam chrorllcler of the early cornact period in the New WoPld, as "a man who was prudent and very brave, more calculating and astute than he appeared, and without the simplicity of Christopher. He had a L&in bearing, and was expert in all of the things of men, . . . He was taller than average in body, had a commanding and honorable appearance, although not as much so as the Admiral." As long as the Colurnbus family was the dominant Spanish faction of Hispaniola, Rartolom&was its de facto leader, He alienated members of rival factions to a lesser extent than his brother and interacted more effectively with the Taino elite. Xn the two years since the first uprising in La Vega Real, he had learned to speak some 'lBilro arld had developed relationships with m n y of the chiefs, in-

cluding Guarionex. He knew that the Indian leaders were becoming desperate. As Bartolomii rnomd into La Vega Real, Guarionex and his confederates were assembling and preparing for battle. The allied chiefs were scattered in several villages within the central valley. The situation was different from two years earlier, when the Spaniards had so overawed the Taino that no man could stand before them. Now the Taino understood the pawer of the swords and horses, and the firearms had lost some of their terror. Moreover, they truly felt that they had no other hope but to defeat the Spaxaiards. The force of kwer tharl 400 Spaniards at Concepci6n could not survive a determined attack by thousands of Taixlo, The fort's small blockhouse could not even hold them all, let alone allow them to withstand a siege. In the morning, the Taino would attack. Bartolom4 realized that the situation was growing more dangerous by the hour. He had been drawn into fighting the Indians in the area where their strength was greatest, and if Roldhn intervened, horses, armor, and firearms would offer little advantage, in a breach of "hino battle etiquette that was devastatingly effective for its novelty, Bartolome staged a midnight raid on. the srrrrollrldirlg villages. His plan was to capture many of the chieb before they could attack in the morning. Small groups of horses rode into the villages and carried off fourteen chiefs before any defense could be organized. Bartolom4 himself went into the large village of Guarionex and took the chief back to the fort, Las Gasas wrote, "They killed many of the captured leaders, from those who appeared to have been I h e instigators, not with any other punishment (1 have no doubt) except by blfrning them alive, far this is what was commonIy done.)' The raid threw the Taino into chaos. Without their chiefs they were doubly last, Their leaders not only directed warriors in battle but also mediated between the Taino and supernatural spirit-helpers, who could bring them success. In the morning, according to Las Casas's account, Five thousand men arrived, all without weapons, wailing and very upset, crying bitter tears, begging that they be given their king Guario~lex and their other leaders, fearirtg that the caciques would be killed or burned alive. Don Bartalorne, having compassion for them and seeing

Engmving showing the battle bemeen the SpasziallLa&suzzd the Taho I ' P ~La Vegcz Real (from A~lt[~rrio L3C? Herrercz! Historlla de Za Corrquista de la Isla EspaAola, 1762).

their piety for their natural leaders, and knowing the innate goodness of Guarionex, who was more inclined to put up with and suffer witll toierarice the aggravations and irijuries done by the Cliristians, rather than think af or take vengeance, gave them their king and other leaders.

Compassion if: may have been, but Barlolomk and his men were still In the m.iddte of thousands of desperate ptsople, and Roldirl was still waiting in the wings. BartoXoYne knew that without the political organization the chiefs provided, the tribute system would quickly

collapse. Fate had cast Bartolome and Guarionex as strange allies, each dependent on the other for his authority and survival. This partnership, however, was frztgile. Famine and disease were unaba'crd in the villages, and among the Taino the feeling of despair continued to grow. Guarionex was unable to protect his people from either the tribute demands of Colurnbus and the Crown or the unofficial demands for food and gold made by the anti-Colurnbus faction of Spaniards. Increasingly; Guarionex was viewed as a tool of the Cofumbus fantilyt m d ttis support from the other chiefs, from the pro-Roldh faction, and from his own people began to evaporate. f-fe was able to maintain his position as a powerful chief for a little more than a year after the fourteen chiefs had been captured but then had to flee La Vega Real with his family Even then Guarionex could not find safety, because BartoZomtit, fearing that Guarionex would return with an army, hunted him down in the mountains of northern Hispaniola, where he had sought refuge, Gua~ionexand his people had been hidden by Mayobanex, the most powerfwl chief in the northern mowntains and perhaps a distant kinsman of Guariorzex's. Bartalorne" capture of Guarionex brought: about the destruction of this chiefdom as welt, by the same strategy used elsewhere-capture the chiefs as hostages to ensure their peoples-ribute payments, Guarionex. was held in chains at Concepcibn until 1502, when he was sent to Spain. His ship sank in a storm, and he died along with all the ship3 crew. The same forces that combined to bring Guarionex" rule to an end i:n La Vega Real wpre acting on all the o.lher chiefdoms on E-fispaniola and, uict:irnately, on others throughout the Greater nnliiles, By t 500, most of the large political structures that existed on Elispan:io)a in 11492 had collapsed, For the 'hino, political disintegration and the decimation of the population occurred simultaneously The impact of the Europeansbrrival was felt differently on other islands of the Caribbean, just as it was in different parts of the New World. Ponce de Lebn" conquest of Puerto Rico began in the early 1500s and quickly brought about the destruction of the Taino way of Me there. On Cuha the first Spanish attempt at colonization was less i:ntense, in part because rao goid was found and i:n part because the discovery and conquest of Mexico divated the attention of Sparlish fortune seekers, Indian p~pulationsthere were not completely destroyed. In the eastern Caribbean, the Carib Indians were largely by-

passed by early colonizers, 'l'heir descendants survive today as the Gaxifuna o x e n t r a l America, although their preconquest island culture has been transformed greatly through five centuries of interaction with Africans and Europeans. The indigenous societies of North, Central, arld Solllh America survived the arrival of Europeans with different degrees of success in what we have come to view as the remote contact period. Five hundred years, however, is a short fragment of human history. We are still negotiatng the coexistence arld synthesis of peopies with African, European, Asian, and Native American ancestries and heritage~,Guarionex's struggle to retain his political status, to navigate the treacherous early years of the Spanish conquest, and ultimately to save his own life is just one story in. this continuing process,

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Dunn, Oliver, and James E. Melty, Jr.. 1988 Lliario of C b 2 r i . e CoIurnbzrs3 First Voyage to Americcr, 1442-93, Norman: University of CakXahozxa Press, Las Gasas, Bartolame de 2951 Historiu de Eus luzdiczs. Maico: Fondo de Cultural Econdmica. Rouse, lrving 1992 The Tainos, New haver^: Yale Universfy Press. Wilford, John Noble. 19531 The ,nigysteriou?;Hr'st[~ry of Columbzis: An Exploratl'or~of the Man, the Myth, the LeCg~zcy, New York: b o g f , Wlson, Saniuel M. 1990 Hisparrioltr: ChriPIE?easzChiefdc~msiuz the Age I1JC:slzrmbzrs.Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press*

Wifsan, Samuel M, fed,) 2 99 7 The Indiled, however, because Diego had what Columbus wanted most-"re ear of the king. Diego had been in the queen" guard at court, and after her death in 1504, he had become part of the king" inner circle, So these letters between Colurnbus and Diego are tarn by the admiral" love far his son and his urgew vvlsh that Diego press his compulsive and unrealistic demands on the king. Colurnbus" letter of December 1, 1504, following another written three days earlier, begins: ' M y very dear Son: After X received your letter of November ISth, nollling more has been heard from you. I wish you would send me some small message. Every hour I hope ta receive a letter from you." He rambles on about financial problems, asking for information about the king's state of mind on this and that matter, mentioning again ""the thlrd and the tenlh,'And complaining that he had "'not received the tenth, except the temh of what Their Highnesses receive," At the end he reminds his son to write, adding, as subtly as an unsubtle man was able, a hint suggesting that Diego could send word if he wanted to: "Every day messengexs from where you are arrive here," The letter closes: ""Our Lord help you in your sacred duty. Done in Seville on the 1st of December. f"our father who loves you more than himself. " Columbus signed, as always with his formal signature, a cryptic stack of letters that he asked his heirs t a use as their own but never really explained, Nthough his meaning far the first three lines probably will never be precisely known, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison believes the simplest answer is that they correspond to the Latin formula. S e w s Sutn Alfr'ssimz' Salvubra's-"krvant f am of the Highest Saviourn-with

the thlrd Iine represenIing Christ, Mary, and Jesus, or perhaps Jasctph. But the signature may be read up and down as well as across, and according to some scholars, it contains complex references to the North Star, Santiago, the Christian cross, and a ship's mast, The last Iine in the signature =presses the view Columbus promoted af himself in his last letter: X p o is a Greeklike rendition aE Crist6bal and also Christ, and PERENS means "carrier," xferring to the Christ bearer. Columbus thought he was destined to expand Christendom, chosen specificalty by God to do what he had done. In his last m n t h s he someCIntes slipped and spoke of the New Warld as he conceived of it-'"he Indies, which God has given to me." As Colurnbus neared death, he tried to stop his pathetic and ineffectual struggling. He wrote to Diego de Garza, a sometimes-sympathetic friend and eventually the archbishop of Seville, saying, Since it appears that His Highness does not intend to coalply with the prorrlise he made rrle by his spoken ward and in writing, together with the Queen who now i s in heaven, I think that my carrying on this fight, being only a sizngle laborer, would be like sailing into the wind; it would be well for rrre to leave this to God our Lord. He has always helped rrre and looked after my needs.

Death, his destiny; and the deeds of his enemies preoccupied Columbus. In his notes, he wrote down biblical prophecies and connections of his experiences with lists af biblical passages, and in the margin wrote a long and complex poem. The poem was in Spanish but at the beginning of each verse was a Latin phrase; when the Latin phases from the six verses are contb:ined they spel out a message: "Be mindhl of thy mast recent actions and thou shalt avoid sin in eternity." The last verse of Colurnbus%poem, in the artful transla"eon of Felipe Ferrzhndez-Arrneslo, reads:

SifiI1e.s~bfu, atid cotztev~zplnte The agt~nie.~ of tl~osewho die, How g i e f Unit tefmr are tlje fate OJ-silzners3n ti~eirwretchet! stcrte, Tlrz'lzk wef!, as fizr as 312 ti~eeTilr, Upon tjze just, releasell a t last Fmm tratruils strfered in the past 11210 the light eter~?ally,

Qn March 20, 1506, at the age of fifty-five, Colurnbus died, Around him were his sons, Diego and Ferrzanda; his brolhers, iiiarloloxne and Diego; and a few servants and supporters. His last words are said to have been "h manus tuas, Domine, comrnenda spiriturn rneum" (Into yotxr hands, Lord, I camrnend my spirit)-but deathbed scenes are never quite so sanitary and romantic as those writing later make them out to be. What gold Colurnbus had accumulated disspated in two generations, (ALthough Colurnbus's eldest son Diego married earerr-rely well and linked the Colurnbus name with an established and powerful aristocratic lineage that endured, his son Luis traded any claim to the profits I"rorn the New World far a much smaIler title arld fiefdom than those GoZumbus was offered, and then he squandered them.) The grandiose promises that the king and queen of Spain drew up before his firs"c.vyyage with such an unlikely prospect as the Italian Cristoforo Colombo were one by axle bought off or nullified in the interest of national securiv. The Crown wrote this awkward assaciation off to experience and raever made the same mistake again. Today, Cristcibal Coldn, the linear descendant of the sailor who ran into the W s t fndies on the way to the East fnrdies and never knew the difference, is a lieutenant commander in the Spanish Navy Air

Corps. With commendable patience and grace, he has weathered the misplaced adulation and indigni.ti.esof being a tangitJIe symbol of so many complicated things, for he has about as much in common. with his ancestor as any of us has, Yet on. his business card, in small letters, beneath his name, above his telephone, telex, and Sax. numbers, is the title Columbus fought the hardest to keep in his family forever: Almirante del Mar Oceano, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading FerrzBr~dez-Armesto,Felipe 19531 Columbzis, New York: Oxford University Press. Las Gasas, Bartolame de 295 1 Historiu de Eus luzdiczs. Maico: Fondo de Cultural Econdmica. Morison, Saniuel Eitiot 1991 119422 Aclnriral of l-he 0ceaz.r Sea: A Life ofC1zrisl-cpl.zerC?ctlumhzis. Little, Brown (reprint edition). T ~ d o r o vTzvetan ~ 2984 The C ~ n q ~ l eofAnterica: st The Qzlcslion ofthe Otkeu, New York: Harper & Row, Wilford, John Noble. 19531 The ,nigysteriou?;Hist[~ryof Columbzis: An Exploratl'or~of the Man, the Myth, the LeCg~zcy, New York: b o g f ,

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he first chapters in this section explore some of the remarkable similarities between societies of the Americas and the Old World. These two great branches of h u m ity, separated for so long, procectded alorlg rentarkably similar paths, Each developed agriculture, urbanism, and ail the complex accouterments of high civilization, CortCls and his small army went into an Aztec capital that was laid out very much like European cities of the day, and the lives of rxrban dwellers in both places were similar, right dawn to the tax burden they carried. :In "White Legexads and Lost Tribes," X look at a furltller similarity: :In their first encounters, both Naive Amaicans and Europeitns sought to understand the other by reference to their own history and mytholog)l., Europeans looked for the origins of the American people in the Lost Qibes of Israel or Atlantis or other loose ends in history. The people of the Americas did the same, searching for clues as to how these others might be expected to behave. From our perspective, these identifications can be seen as illusory-stories told about the past that make sense in a particular cultural context, This is past of the nature of hislory, however. :It is perhaps impossible to isolate the objective truth aboemt past events (although some versions are clearly closer than others), Xn two of the chapkrs in this section, "That Unmanned, Wild Countrey"hnd ""l"ilgrim%Paradox," kxplare the ways that narratives about the past can rewrite history in ways favorabie to the tellers, The chapters in this section also explore some specific cases in which chance played a crucial role in the course of events, In " h n dora" Bite," Hook at the impact of epidemic disease on both the native peoples of the Antericas and the Ewopeans, In "The Mal.trer of Smalllpax," X try to captttre some of the horror of such an awful and poweriul disease over the last 51)0 years. The events of the past centuries have brought people from all over the world together in the

same piace, in the Americas and elsewhere. But all af the diseases that evolved in relative isolation have also been brought tugether. Largescale epidemics have always accompanied episodes of increased contact, and the results of the present contact period are very likely not over,

xz the last years of his reign, the Aztec emperor Montezwa xeceived this amen: Certain Fishernien near the Lake of Mexico took a monstrous Fowl, of extraordinary Make and Bigness; and accountirtg it valuable for its Novelty, presented the sarne to the King, Its Def-orlxity was horrible; and on the Head of it was a shini~lgPlate like a Loofirlg-Glass, from which the Sun reflected a sort of dirn and rrrelanchoiy Light, Montezurrra observed it, and drawing nearer to take a better View saw within it a Representation of the Night, aniidst whose Obscurity were seen some Parts of the Heaven covered with Stars, arid so distirtctly represented, that he ttlrried his Eyes to the sun, as one doubtful of the Day: And upon fixing his Eyes the second Time on that seeming Glass, he spy", instead of Night, what gave him @eater Asto~lishrrrent;for there appeared to his Sight an Arrxy of Men, that came from the East, xnaking a terrible Slaughter of his Subjects. He asserr~bledthe Magicians and Priests to consult about this Prodigyb arid the Bird stood irrrrrroveable, till rrrany of them had tried the sazxe E x p e r i then ~ it got away, and vanish" in their Preserlce, Zeavirlg them another Presage in its astonishing Flight. (Solis y Riva~ideneyra1973)

Wlen Cartes and his small army of Spaniards set about conquering Mexico, the relevance of this powerful omen suddenly appeared sbvious, Initially, however, Montezuma thought Cartes to be the earthly

ntanifesta.llon of the god Qwetzalcoal.l, reluming to Mexico. According to legend, metzalcoatl had gone by sea to join the fun god, leaving word he would return; all Montezuma" predecessors had expected him. It seemed impossible that Cartes could be anyone else. Montezuma sent emissaries from Tenochtitl%n,the Slztec capital, to meet Cortks, bearing the clothes and adornments Quetzalcoatl would need: ""Ourgod and our lord, be very welcomed, for we, your servants and vassals, have been waiting for you a very long time, ti"our vassal and iieutenatlt of YOU kingdom, Montezma, has sent us to greet and receiw you. He s;l)rs that orlr lord and god should be very wdcome, and here we bring all the precious adornments that you used among us as our king and god." Forewarned, Cartes played along in order to gain an advantage over the Aztecs. Their confidence in his identity steadily eroded, however. As Gortks drew cbser to Tenochtitlhn, attracting allies from the Indian groups opposed to AzWc rule, Montezuma's advisers warned against letlixlg such a dangerous person into the capita). When Cort6s arrived at Ihe t m p l e of Quetzalcctatl, for what some still believed would be the resenmytion of the god's role, he showed himself to be an enemy of the ancient god, In a sense, Montezuma had known the conquering strangers all his life, They bore a remarkable resemblance to some of the extraordinary creatures that inhabited the Aztecsf elaborate legends and myths. The critical narratives, and their correct interpretations, became apparent as events unfolded. Sixnillar premoni.lions of the coming of vvbite strangers are noted in nearly all chronicks of exlcownters between people of the New World and the Old. 'f'hey coneitute a speGial class of folklore, because those who recorded them also starred in them, They are premonitions recorded after the fact, which makes accurate prediction seem easy. But the stories cannot be discounted as postcontact inventions; they are deeply woven into the fabric of Native American folk traditions, with modified versions of the same stories found in groups thousands of miles apart, Stories of bearded men in clothes or oomaple who :ntight, in a postconqelest light, fit the description of Europeans were tald in the eastern woodlands and on the plains of North Arnica. In the SoLLthwest, the Hopi ritual calendar counted off the years before the predicted return of Panhha, the lost white bother, Among the Taino of

Wf~X'te Legends and Lost Tribes

55

Hispanlola, the Wrst New Miortd inhahi:ants exlcountered by Colurnbus, sacred songs recounted their history and the explaits of their ancestors, They included love tales, heroic epics, stories of the origins of the Taino, and predictions of their demise, One Taino song, which was set down by Pietro Mart-ire dxnghera, stated, "Magnacochios [clothed men] shall disembark in the island, armed with swords and with one stroke cut a man in two, and our descendants shall bend beneath their yoke." kancisco Lcipez d e (36mara recorded another version of the same sow: "ReFore many years passed some men would come with long beards and clottling a)I over their bodies; they would trample the ancient gods of the land and forbid the traditional rites, and they would spill the blood of the Tairzo's offspring and make them slaves," The rulers of the lnca empire had also experienced visions of the arrival of clothed and bearded men, One lnca ruler of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries called himself Viracocha, after the gc7d he saw in his revelation. He had a kmple built to commemorate his dream and, dressing hirnself as a modet of the person in his vision, had a s.tatrme carved to represenl it, According to Garcilaso de la k g a , Tlie irr~agewas of a man of goad height with a beard more than a span in length: he wore a long loose garment like a ttlrric or cassock, reaching to his feet. Me held a strange animal of unknown shape with claws Iike a lion's and with a chain round its neck and the end of it in the statue's hand,

As with Cortes and Moxltezurzza, the identification of the Spaniards with Viracocha" vision played to the Europeans>advantage: As the prince said that it had a beard, urrlike the Indians who are usually without hair on the face, and that it was dressed from head to foot while the Indians are clad differe~ltlyand their dress does not go below the knees, the word Viracocha was duly applied to the first Spaniards who entered Peru, who were seen to be bearded and dressed from head to foot. Because they regarded the Sga~liardsas the children of their god, they respected t h a n so much that they worshiped t h a n and scarcely defended themselves against them.

While the Native Americans interpreted the arrival of the Ezrropeatnis as confirmation of their legends and omens, the Europeans

Illustreztr'on of ~nrzencomendero a ~ A~~dl d e apeoplrr, ~~ by Guurnan Ibma de Ayctlu, flom Elistor-ia Gr8fica del Per& 1613

saw these same traditions as containing a true reflection of events. The ubiquitous legends of white men and womm were taken as evidence of earlier contacts with the Ofci World or of Ofd World

prophets visiting the New World. Rarely, if ever, were they seen for wh& they were: People's attempts to make sense ol.' inexplicable events by looking to and ~einterpretingsome aspects of their historical or mythic past. just as the Native Americans sought to comprehend the foreign intruders, the Europeans searched their own histories and legends for

Wf~X'te Legends and Lost Tribes

57

accounts of groups fit-ting the description of the Mew World people, so that they could better understand them, Columbus, who clung until his death to the belief that he had found at shorter route to the East lndies that Marco Polo and others had described, simply called the Native Americans "Indians," a a i s nomer that persists to this day. In the early 1 5 0 0 ~most ~ Europeans had little acquaintance with the Far East and sought explanations closer to home, Classical scholags yovided some intriguixlg possibilities. A story of a Carthaginian voyage to a large and fertile island acrross the Atlantic, attributed to a work by Aristotle (Mirabilibus aut Seculntiolll'bzas), seemed to many to account for the peopling of the New MrQrld, Others, such as Pietro Martire dPAnghera,took their cue from the Bible, suggesting that at fleet sent westward by Solomon had probably visited Hispaniola. Gonzalo Fern&ndezde Oviedo y Valdez introduced an opportune legalistic twist (in an arena of competing European claims over rights to explait the Mew World) when he wrote that the people of the New World might be of Spanish descent, He cited the highly questionable chrorllcler Berosus, who said that E-f kspero, the twel.fth King of Spain (whose rule was said to have begun about 1658 BC), had sent at fleet westward. According to Oviedo, they planted at Spanish flag, preceding any other European claim by three millennia. For Europeans of the time, Allantis-the vast mid-Atlantic continent whose advanced civilization and catastrophic destruction were described by I7la"E-was a semimythical, semihistorical place. Many writers speculated that some of AtlantWs population had escaped to the west as the island sank beneath the waves. Perbaps the first to suggest this was Francisco L6pez de Gtirnara, secretary to, and champion of, Cartes, who despised alld vilified New CZiorid Indians and in his writings kept their origins as far offshore as possible, Others, probably independently came to the same conclusion, In general, the prime candidates in the sixteenth-century search for the origins of the New World peoples were the historical or mythical loose ends in the Western tradition: Explorers who had not returned, protagonists of classical works who had dropped from sight, and so on were all suspects. The ten lost tribes of Israel allso fir into this category, although explanations ixlvoking them as the source of New World popula"eons did not really gain populariv until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Columbus thought Hispaniola may have

been the island of Ophir menlicrned in I Kings, whereas Diego de Landa, in his Accaufzt: of tile Arrz'r,r of Rdc(ztr;lj"l,noted that some of the old people of Uucatan claim to have heard from their ancestors that this land was settled by people from the east whom god had liberated by cultirrg twelve paths for rheat through the sea, If this were true, it must be that all the inhabi"rnts of the Indies are descended from the Jews. Nevertheless, despite this tendency to search for ready-made explanations, some early writers came fairly close ta the view that modern scholars hold, that New World peoples came front northeas Asia. Amerigo Ipespucci, in a 1506 letter, compared the Indians to people from eastern Asia: "They have broad faces, so that their appearance may be that of the Tartar." A Portuguese txader named Antonio Galv2o had spent time in the Orient on the Portuguese island of Ternate in the Moluccas and there heard a claim that Chinese sailors had discovered the New World. He observed that both the Chinese and Native Americans had similar ""fashions and customs" and that they both had "mall eies [and] flat noses.'' Another Portuguese, Pero de Magalhaes, also saw similarities in. facial structure between the Indians of Brazil and the Chinese, The complex realities of the similarities and differences between human groups in the New and Old Worlds, so long separated, defied simple interpretation. Bartolam4 de Las Casas, who had extensive firsthand experience with Native American cultures in several regions, cautioned against making claims about the origins of New World peoples on the basis of a few coirrcidences. For example, he mp e n against regarding the isolated practice of circumcision among Yucatecan Indians as evidence of a Jewish origin. Las Gasask detailed descriptions and analyses of Native American cultures spoke against such facile assertions, And as a result of what must have been the first New World archeological excavation, carried out in the early 1500s, Las Gasas recognized the great antiquity of the New World people: X have seen in these mines of Cibao [on Hispaniola], one or two yards deep in the virgin earth, in the plains at the foot of sorne hills, burned wood and ashes as i f a few days past a fire had bee11 n~adethere. And for the sarrle reasori we have to conclude that in other tirrres the river carrre near there, and in such a place they xnade a fire, and afterwards the river n~ovedfarther away. Soil accumulated there, as the rains brought it dow11 fr~rrrthe hills, and covered the site. And because this could not

Wf~X'te Legends and Lost Tribes

59

happen except by the passage of nlany years and n ~ o s ta~lcienttin~e, there is therefore a strong argument that the people of these islarids and the xnainland are very ancient.

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Landa, Diego de 1975 The *nigczy~z: Diego de Lands S' Accoun t of the Arairs c$ Vucutan. Edited and translated by A. R. Pagden. Chicago: J, X? O%ara. Las Casas, Bartolomk de 1951 Hi.stori;n de /as It~dias.Mexico: Fando de Culmrai EconCirnica. Martire de Anghiera, Pietro De Orbe W o ~ the q Eight Decades of fiter iWarvr d'A vzgI2er~z. 1970 [l 9 1 2f Translated from the Latin with notes and introd-t~ction by Francis Augustus MacNutt. New York: Burl Franklin, Solis y Rivander~eya,Antonio de The Histoy of the C:onguest r ~Mexico f by the Spa~zr'ards,New 1973 [l "7531 York: AMS Press. Vega, Garcilaso de la

1966

Royal Chr~mentarirof the I~ccr.~, and Cl'enerczl Histoy I1Jl3euzn. 7a1islated with an introduction by Marald V. Livermore. Fareward by Ar~loldJ. Toynbee. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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ardens and gardening flourished during the Italian Renaissance, reflecting both the rebirlh of interest in classical philosophy and aesthetics and the emergence of the natural sciences. The remarkable Natgrc~lHislar;tt written by Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) was resurrected as holy writ by Renaissance gardeners. Pliny's principles are still adhered to in modern gardens, especially his emphasis a n integrating the rooms af the villa with the '"rooms" of the garden and the importance of maintaining harmony between the villa garden and the sunounding landscape. The villa at Careggi was .just one of the country estates that the Medici, family of Florence owned in the late I400s, but its Renaissance garden was Lorenzo deWedici3 ffavorite, He spared n s expense in researching and obtaining the most exotic plants for it: A fifteenth-century poem by Alexander Bracci lists more than 100 species that Larenzo planted. Leonardo da Vinci, who lived from 1452 to 1519, spent considerable time at Gareggi, creating sculpture and perhaps even designing parts of his patron" cherished garden, As the botanist Witlinnt Entboden has s h o w , Leonxdo was as passionate a studem of botany as he was of nearly everything else in his world. His voluminous noteboaks contain thousands of detailed sketches of plants, with notes on their characteristics (set down in his mirrorimage handwriting), as welt as sketches of gardens.

More than four cenlurles later, in another cowntry, I too keep a garden, Mine is certainly not impressive by any measure, even campared with the gardens on our street, But my international hodgepodge of plants would have thrilled Lorenzo dewedici, Leonardo dac Vinci, and Plirty the Elder. The plants are unremarkable and cornmanplace in many gardens, but in addition to many local natives such as coneflowers and coreopsis, there are plants that were damesticated in Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Europe. Leonardo never saw the explosion of New Mior(d plants into the gardens of Europe and the rest of the world, He mentions only one or two Native American plants in his notebooks-corn (maize) and possibly a New World bean, He died just as Cartes's expedition was rnaking its way toward the Aztec capital and some of the world" most remarkable gardens. So Leonardo never tasted chocolate, one of the things Cortks brought to Europe, Describing the extraordinary things Cortks and his army saw in Montezuma's palaces, Bernal Diaz del, Castillo wrote, in Pze 1)Ismvev ar-zifConql-leesl: of' MGXICO: W n~ustnot forget the gardens of flowers and sweet-scented trees, and

the rrlariy ki~lcrtsthat there were of them, and the arrangernerlt of them and the walks, and the ponds; and tanks of fresh water where the water entered at one end and flowed out of the other; and the baths which he had there, and the variety of srrzall birds that nested irt the branches, and the xnedicinal and useful herbs that were in the gardens, I t was a wo~lderto see, and to take care of it there were nIaIly gardeners.

The sixteenth-century chronicler Fernando de Ailva fxtilxochitl was born to a noble AzWc family but educated in Spanish mission he described the precinct af the schools. In his Histoda C,"l?icfzirn(i"ca Aztec aristocracy as a huge walled park, containing palaces, temples, aod the buildings of the state bureaucracy. The rest of the precinct was given over to gardens, with many fou~ltains,ponds and canals, many fish and birds, and the whole planted with more ttran two thousand pirtes . , . and there were several mazes, according to where the king bathed; and once a xnan was in he could not find the way out . . . and farther on, beside the temples, there was the bird-house, where the king kept all the kinds and varieties of birds, anixnrsls, reptiles and serpents that they brought him from every part of New Spain; and those which were not to be had were rep-

resented in gold and precious stones-which was also the case with the fish, both those of the sea and those that lived in rivers and Inkes. So no bird, fish or animal of the wf~olecountry was wanting here: they were there either alive or figured in gold and gems.

In the 1570s) Francisco Hernhndez and a group of Aztec artists made a large compendium of Aztec plants. Unfortunately, the original drawings, containing additional notations and details in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, were destroyed in 1671 with a large part of the famous library at El Escorial, a Spanish palace and monastery. But copies of them appear in Histon'a Nahtrcre Muxime PereMnue (16351, by the Jesuit Juan Eusebio Niremberg. Another source describing the Aztec flora is the 1552 Badianus Manuscript. This extraordinary catalog of medicinal plants, with stillvivid, natural-dye illustrations, was made by two Aztec scholars edu-

cated at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. Martinus de la Cruz composed the text, and Juannes Badianus translated it into Latin, The book sat in the Vatican library for nearly four centuries before its facsimile was published in 1940, Many of the New Wrld's most spectacular contributions to modern gardens were slow to appear in Europe. The conquerors paid mare attention to crops that could be profi"cbIy sold. Two of the most addictive, and thus most profitable, were cacao (the source of chocolate) and tobacco. 'fbmatoes wpre slower to catch on in Europe, only becoming widely grown in the late raineteenth century Potatoes, squashes, pumpkins, arrowroot, maniac, and other food plants were not addicting but became popular and important in many parts of the world. Some Native American crops, like the peanut, have come into their own only in the last century or so. And some, like the wonderful Jerusalem artichoke, a member of the sunflower family, have not yet become popular but shotxld (its intriguing name is a corruption of the Italian ,firusnlef meaning "turn to the sifra"). 'f'he chilli pepper (I:rrpsinlm ulTnutrm and others) welt ilfuslrates the massive difhsion of plants that has taken place since 1492, In his journal of the first voyage, Columbus noted, ""There is also much chili, which is their pepper, of a kind more valuable than plack] pepper, m d none of the people eat without it, for they find it very healthful. Fifty caravels can be loaded with it each year in Hispaniola." This remarkable plant-domesticated, bred into dozens of varieties, and c~xltivatedin the New World for thousands of years-made its way around the globe in just a few decades, 'f'he spicy cuisines of South Asia, mailand, Vietnam, and Sichuan in China are unimaglnable without chili, Scholars have often noted the dramatic effect of the exchange of New and Old Mrorld food plants-including corn, potatoes, and tomatoes going one way and wheat, rice, and bananas going the other. In sheer numbers of species, however, the relocation of ornamental plants has been vastly greater than the movements of economically important species. Ironically, many domesticated and well-bred New World ornantental plmts, left to fend h r aernselves when their gardcsners died or left their gardens, were rediscovered by Europeans as 'Wild" flowers. The twelve species of dahlias grown by the Aztecs were warmly received in Europe, but they did not reach England until 1790. The zinnias and marigolds were probably grown earlier in Spain and other

Mediterrmean countries but were first recorded in England in 7753, 'f'he glorious lilies of the Andean lxrcan gardeners, such as the hardy amaryllis, the Peruvian lily; and rain lilies, are widely cultivated today Bath Zncan and Aztec gardeners grew many varieties of bromeliads (relatives of the pineapple, another New VVorld domesticate), whose vast family spreads aver all the tropical Americas. Others among the countless New World flowers in global culthation are phlox, morning glor)i, fuchsias, Michaelmas daisies, and yuccas. Anyorle w l o gardens is probably g r o w m New World domesticates, including those who dedicate all their effarts to t r y m to grow the e h sive 1,000-pound pumpkin. Thousands of wildflowers are also finding increasing popularity among gardeners, Just a few of the sophisacated native plants l have growing in my garden are the primrose, Mexican mint marigold, butterfly weed, black-qed Susan, and hairy zexmenia, Such wild plants are the raw material for gardeners, With food crops, cultivators can select for edible wild plants that yield more food per plant, are better suited to particular cctxaditions, are more hardy, and so forth. Gardeners select blooms and foliage for size, form, texlure, and color. Flue l~undredyears ago, Ihe New World, Asia, and Africa were full of raw material for plant domestication, whereas Europe had relatively little. In The I>rt:nciplesof Gar~teniag, Hugh Johnsan argues that the flora of Europe suffered much greater damage during the last glaciation than did that of Asia and the Americas. In Narth America and China, plant communities survived by migrating southward as the glaciers crept forward, and they recolonlzed as the glaciers retreated, Emapean plants were cut off by the Mediterrmean Sea, and only the most hasdy survived. eel rope"^ colonial expansion cttanged that situation, and European gardens began to fill with the exotic flowers of Africa; Asia; and, eventually; the Americas. The rose represents a delightful tombination of the musk rose of the Mediterranean and Near East and the Chinese rose, neither af which in its wild farm is as gloriotxs as the hybrid offspring. The Renaissance painter Botticelli sprinkled some af the early hybrid roses around in the background af The Birttz of Vet.lus. We have seen only a few centuries of the combination and recombination of the lesxr-finown species i17 the world's flora, and other startling h w i d s have yet to appear* Europe" expansion was driven by a growing population and an even faster growing aristocracy, which generated a demand for gold, spices, and other rare and exotic goods, Colurnbus sailed west to find

a quicker route to these kxuries, a g m d shipload of wftiCh-safely detivered-could allow a captain ts retire far life. Atthough they might seem secondary in importance to econarnic crops, exotic or ornamental plants, destined to grace the celebrated gardens of the Renaissance aristocracy; were valued far their aesthetic properties, Just as I can imagine an Aztec king conquering whole provinces ta obtain the twelfth dahlia, l arn confident Lorenzo d e w e d i c i would have been willing to pay more than the total cost of Colurnbus's first voyage to get a few more sptschens far his garden at Careggi.

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Cruz, Martin de Xa 2940 f25S2J The Budiauus M~znmscript:An Aztec Herbal of1552, Balti more: Johns Hopkicins University Press, Diaz del Castillo, Berrzai 1963 The Dbct~veva~zdCovzyucl,ft($Mexico. New York: Viking Press, Embaden, WiXliam 2987 Leontlrdo da Vir~cI'on I)la121s and Gardens. Portla~ld,OR: Dioscorides Press. lxrilxochitl, Fernando de Aiva Histt~rz'aCkichr'r~eca,Mexico: Vargas Rea. Johnson, Hugh 2 99 7 The I)rinciples of G u r d e r : The I)rczctice of l-he Gardener3 Art. New Uork: Sirrron 81Scchustrtr, Nirerrrberg, Juan Eusebio 1635 Histtjrz'a Nahartre ;Waxl'me Peregrinae, Antwerp: Plantiniana B. Moreti, Pliny the Elder 2991 Mc~lllirulNislForyr A SeEec1ioi.l by the El&r I""firfy,Excerpted and translate$ by John F. Heaiey. New York: Pe~lguinUSA, Sousrelle, Jacques 1961 Daily Life of the Aztecs. Stanfard: Stanford University Press. Thacker, Ghri stopher 2985 The Histov of Gardens, Berkeley: University of Califor~liaPress. Viola, Herxxlan J., and Carollyn Margolis feds.) 1991 Seeds of Chuszge: A Quincentenszial C~o~nrneu~oratiorz. WashirigI:or~,DC: Smithsonian 1ns"rturionPress,

axation is made more shameful and burdensome," wrote Salvian the Presbyter in the fifth century m, '"because all do not bear the burden of all. They extort tribute from the poor man for the taxes of the rich, and the weaker carry the load for the stronger." blvian was complaining af the tax burden imposed a n conquered territory by the Roman Empire, but the same sentiments might have been expressed by New World peoples as they were incorporHed into the expanding Spanish empire. :In a large part of the New World, most notably in regions Pwled by the Aztec and lnca empires, people probably grumbled about taxes long before the arrival of the Europeans, From the smallest agrarian. chielclom to empires spanning continents, governments throughout history have lived off the surplus produced by the populace, and they have engineered economies ta insure that such a surplus was produced. When they conquered the most complex societies af the New World, the Spaniards substituted Ihei:s own system of taxation Ear those already :in place. How,, we may wonder, did the coxaqwistadors come to the conclusion that New Wozld people owed them, anything? Montezurna might have pondered this as he sat under house arrest in the Spaniards' quarters in Tenachlltl5n. For most early Spanish conquerors, however, it was a given, Colurnbus taok it for granted and had a tribute system in place on Hispaniola by 1494, as Pietra Martire dxnghera recorded: Ail1 the natives between the ages of fourteen and seventy years bound therr~selvesto pay him tribute in the prod-tlctsof the cou~ltryat so n ~ u &

per head, proanising to fulfil1 their engageznent. Same of the conditions of this agreerrient were as follows: the mou~ltaineersof Cibao were to bririg to the towri every three rrlo~lthsa specified rrreasure filled with gald. They reckon by the moon and call the months xnoons, The islanders who mltivated the la~ldswhich spontaaleously produced spices arid cotton, were pledged to pay a fixed sum per head,

Perhaps for sixteenth-century Europeans (as in twentieth-century conventional wisdom), taxes were one of the two inescapable things. Qr perhaps Spain, in demanding tribute from conquered peoples, took Rome as its model. Gaul and Britain and Spain itself-or the peoples and lands that then constituted Spain-had paid tribute to Rome a thousand years before Colurnbus sailed. Within the Roman system, as in alnzost all tax syslerns, the stale's owective was to ex.trac.t a sulificiew quantity of money, goods, and services for the least cost. During the period af the Roman republic, the imposition of tribute on. conquered territories was an important motivation .for the conquests in the first place, Nevertheless, to subjugate the provinces completely and hold them to the letter of tribute demands was probably impossible and certainly not expedient. Conquered territories attempted to minimize their tribute burden withatxt attracting the attention of the imperial army, The Romans, too, were eager to preserve the peace. As Edward Luttwak noted in The Grar-r~IStrateg of the Rnmafz Elnpirzr, "By virt-ttatly eliminating the burden af maintaining continuvus frontier defenses, the net "ispasable"i1itary power generated by the imperial forces was maximized. Hence, the total military power that others could perceive as being available to Rome for offensive use-and that could therefore be put ta political advantage by diplomatic means-was also maximized." For example, Julius Caesar's strategy for extracting tribute from the province of Gaul depended on convincing local leaders that producing tax revenues was in their interest. In Caesar" words (written in the third person): During the wirtter which he spent irt Belgic Gaul Caesar rrracfe it his single aim to keep the tribes loyal, and to see that none bad any pretext for revolt or any hope of profiting by it, The last thing he wanted was to have to fight a carrlpaigri imrrrediately befare his departure; for it would xnean Ieaving Gaul in a state of rebellion when the time calne to withdraw his arniy, and all the tribes would be only too willillg to take up

E~zgravir13of tf3e ~znt-iwpeople of Horida brirl,~i~zg prese~zI*sf73 12 ~lnunzd~lnerrl eueckegf by t.kre Fre~zchPI ttze sbter~ztfzcenhipy, by Therjitc~rtie Bvy (froin Iacobo le iWoyne, EZrevis Narratio Eorurn Quae in Florida Americae Provincia . . . , 1591. C u u r w ufthe Bensort La1S-rt Americczn (lollectiun)

arms when they could do so without immediate risk. So be xnade their co~ldiiionof subjectio~lmore tolerable by addressing the tribal governments in cornpiirnentary terms, refrairting fr-rorn the imposition of any fresh [tax1 burdens, and bestowing rich presents upon the principal citizens, By these niealls it was easy to induce a people exhausted by so many defeats to live at peace,

Spanish tacticians also knew that much was to be gained by coopting the local rulers, They coerced and courted them into becoming agents of the empire who would collect tribute and keep the peace. Spain's treatment of its New World territories was similar in other respects to Rome's relationship to its provinces*To generate income, Spairl placed the greatest effort in areas of greatest reIurn (such as the gold- and silver-mining regions), just as Rome exploited Britain's mineral wealth. Spain pensioned off its soldiers with @ants of New Mrarld lands and the labor of conquered people, just as Rome granted parcels of conquered land to retiring soldiers to repay them cheaply and to Eurther subdue the provinces, And like Rome, Spain kept the cost of having an army within bounds by using the threat of force more often than force itself. As did Rome and Spajrl, the h c a empire in the Andes wrldertook its conqllests with the smallest standing army possible, In fact one of the most remarkable things about the Inca is how successful they were, given that their army and their original population were so small, But their might was still adequate to subjugate unwilling population~whose traditional leadership had nothing to gain and everything to lose by imperial conquest. And like the Romans, the lnca relied on the cooperation of local elites to fill the imperial coffers. The lnca policy of gentle persuasion involved taking provincial to live in great style. These p e s t s hostages to the Inca capital, CUZGO, were steeped in the city's language arld culture, Undoubtedlyf i.twould have been impressed on Ehem that the treament they received depended entirely upon. their participation in extracting tribute from their homelands. Garcilaso de la Vega, whose mother was a member of the lnca elite and whose father was a Spanish nobleman, described the strateu of the Inca emperor: They also carried off the leading chief and all his childre11 to Cuzco, where they were treated vvith kindness and bvor so that by frequenting the court they would learn not only its laws, custonis, and correct speech,

Ileut!~and Taxa

'71

but also the rites, caemo~lies,and superstitia~lsof the Ixlcas, This done, the [chiefl was restored to his former crfigniv arid authoriv, and the Inca, as king, ordered the vassals to serve and obey hinz as their natural lard, Tlre Inca bestowed . . . gifts on newly conquered Indians, so that however brutish and barbarous they had been they were subdued by affection and attached to his service by a band so strong that no province ever dreamed of rebelting, And in order to remove all occasion for cornplairtt and to prevent crfissatisf'aciion frorrl leading to rebellion, he confirsned and promulgated anew all the forrner laws, liberties, and statutes so that they might be more esteenied and respected, and he never changed a word of them urrless they were corltrary to the idolatry and laws of his ernp-ire.

The Aztec empire, centered in the capital city Tenochtitlhn, also resembled repubtican Rome in Its treatnterlt of peripheral territories. h his book Tralk Tribute, anil Transpnrtilticm, the historical anlhropolngist Ross Hassig mphasized three corresponderlces in his analysis of the Aztec empire before and during the Spanish conquest: While the si~~~ilarities between the Ronia~lsand the Aztecs can be overstated, they did share certain characteristics: (l)expansion of political dorrrinance without direct territorial control, (2) a focus on the interrlal security of the ernp-ireby exercising influence on a limited range of activities within the client states, and (3) the aclhievenient of such influence by generally retairtirig rather than replacirtg local officials,

When the lnca and Aztec empires fell to Spain, the conquerors seemed in a good posrion to replace the top strata of New Warld hureaucratic structures, leaving lower stral.a intact to funnel tribute upward, But substituting tritotlte to Spain for tribute to Cuaccs or Tenochtitldn. was a disaster: for several reasons. Foremost, the conquest brought massive loss of life through the introduction of Old World diseases. The indigenous economies were completely disrupted by epidemics that in many areas killed 70 to 90 percent of the population in less than a century, providing a grimly literal example of a shrinking tax base. In the New World, death and taxes were more ~ I o x l ylinked Ihan in the proverbial sense. Second, the expanding European empire did not m r e l y replace the tap tier of the indigenous tribute system; it short-circuited the entire structure, Under the Aztec system, for example, tribute flawed through a pyramidal series of institutions, from local governments to

regional centers l.o provirlcistl capi(als to Tenochtit18n- W t h the irnposition of Spanish control, Ihese intermediate stops were bypassed; tribute went from local regions directly to Mexico City and Oom there to Spain, Regional centers and administrative systems withered and disappeared, undercutting the native political order, Finally, Erxropean governmats and entrepreneurs were interested in farms of wealth that were tangible and transportable. Taxes in the form of labor-such as the Inca rrzit~zsystem, which supplied a workforce for state projects-were less appea)ing. Thus, local groups that had prev-iously m t their ohligations by warking for the stak from time to time were forced to pay tribute in goods. As bad as this was, the situation was still worse for those New World people who were unaccustomed to life within the sphere of tribute-demanding empires. For them, being forced to pay taxes in the form of money or goods or labor was an impossible order: Little or no surplus was generated by their subsistence economies, and no trihute-colleaing mechanisms were ixl place. As a result, most of these peoples were pushed from their lands or trmpled in the course of European expansion. Today, of course, we enjoy the advantage of governing ourselves, instead of paying tribute to some foreign imperial power, And yet, as Thornas P3aine observed in Ccrmf~ollSeas&,"Government even in the best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed ta the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting Ihat we fwrnish the means by which we suffer."

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Caesar, Julius 1983 TheC:ouzyuestof(;alil,NewVc>rk:VikingPress.

Hassig, Ross 2975 Tr~zde,Tribute, and Tr~znspork;?fion. Norman: University of Oklahon~a Press. L11 ttwak,

1976

Edward The Grczr:mdStruten of the Rornun Et~zpiire.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ifeutlf and Taxa Martire de Anghiera, Pietro Llc. Orbe Novel, the Eight Ilccudes of lJeteuLMl~rpr Ld'Ar~gfiem, 1970 1 19123 Translated from the Latin with notes and introduction by Francis Augustus MacNutt. New York: Burt Frarlkfin. Piline, Thornas 1987 Com~vzonSense. New York: Vikirig Press (Penguin Classics Reissue Edition), Salviain the Presbyter The Writirzgs ofSalrjian the I)resbyttzr. New York: Cirna. 2947 Vega, Garcilaso de la

1966

Royal Chr~mentarirof the I~ccr.~, and Cl'ener~z1Histoy 11J13erzn.Tra~islared with an introduction by Marold V. Livermare. Foreword by Arnald J, lioynbee. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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he Spanish writer Antonio VBsquez de Espinosa, while travel~ of ing in the New World tropics in the early 1 6 0 0 ~observed the environmmt, Agreeable as it may be to the sight, seeming a delightful Paradise, to the feeling it is yainlful in equal degree, Besides the great heat of an excessive intensity! for it is only about 1 degree from the Equator, arid the fact that the low-Xyjng country covered with groves and woods, keeps any wind from circulating#there is an infiniv of rriosquitoes of nunierous varieties, which norrrzaily keep travelers in torture; crfuri~igthe day there are griats and midges which are very painffitail and stick fast to one's skin, and Ieave bites that intlanie; there are others much tinier which can hardly be made out, but their bites fester; there are others of a sort of blue iri colar which force travelers by boat during the daytime to stay under canvas, unable to enjoy the lovely scenery of the banks and forests along the great rivert whose crystal clear and srrzoothly ru~inirtgwaters make a pleasant and harmonious sound, Then when these pests are sleeping at night, others rise and set sail; these are the night mosquitoes which make an. annoying and distressing rioise and keep trying to firtd sorrre part of the cariopy through which they can bite the person inside.

While singing around their victimsQears and drawing blaod from itching wounds, mosquitoes also spread disease. During "re five centuries since Europeans launched the age of exploration, mosquitoborne plagues have laid low both conqueror and conquered, altering the shape of hismry Among the first to offer North American mosquitoes at sample of European blood was Hernando de Soto, Enriched by the part he

played in looting the Inca empire of the Andes, he neverthdess was dissatisfied that his name did not command the s a w respect as that of Pizarro or Cartes, the conqllerors of the lrlca and the Aztec, De Soto thus set his sights on territory that Europeans had not yet visited, the southeast of what is today the United Stakes. In 1539, he landed an army of more than 680 men near Tampa Bay, Florida, and set off on an armed reconnaissance known as the en&lzlta, The Spaniards first marched by the most direct path from Tampa Bay into the heart of a great swantp, something de Soto s e m s to have been better at finding during his travels than the gold he so desperately desired, For sixteenth-century Spaniards, as for most Europearls of the era, standing water was equated with dangerous vapors and mosquitoes, both of which were associated with disease. (Like Aristotle in the fourth century BC, Spaniards believed that mosquitoes were spontaneously generated in putrefying waters.) That people lived in such damp and therefore deadly environments in the New World-in Florida, the Caribbean Islands, Central America, and even the Aztec" lake-city of Tenochtltl%n-profoundly disturbed the Spaniards. In three years, de Soto" expedition traveled more than 3,000 miles through territories that now make up eleven states, crossing the Mississippi and going as far west as Texas. It was an. imposing company that moved slowly, encamping for many months each winter, When the Spaniards reached the Mississippi, they had to halt for days while they built barges large enough to ferry their horses, armor, weapons, aod supplies, Throughout their travels, the Spaniards depended to a great extent on the Indistns for faad, h this extraordinary venture, de Solo and his cclntparllons saw xaative North American societies that would never again be witnessed by Europeans. Twenty years later, when 'i'fistan de Lurla retraced some of his predecessors"teps, the indigenous people had already been decimated by epidemics of Old World diseases that followed in de Soto's wake. A century later the accounts of de Soto's s~l&i;l~la were considered unbelievable: By that time Europeans could not imagine that societies as large and complex as t b s e seen by de Soto had ever existed i:n North America. This was true :in many places in the Acnericas. The first European explorers unknowingly brought their frightful European diseases with them and large populations were wiped out or drastically reduced in size, Sometimes this effect preceded the Euro-

peans: The story of their arrival would spread before them, and disease wouid be spread by the ones who broefgtll the news. As a result of disease, the Indian population in many areas had been reduced to a tenth of its preconquest size, In its turn, de Soto" group succumbed to New W r l d diseases; only about half of those who landed at Tampa Bay lived to te2l of their adventures, They died from starvation and Indian arrows and diseasesboth those they brought with them and new ones they encountered. 'f'here was :no gold irz the Southeast, hut de Sots hnd become a man possessed, heading xaorth and douhing back to the south, then west and back to the east. As the months stretched into years, his men gave up hope of anything but survival. Then, in May or June of 1542 (accounts vary as to the exact date), while camped on the banks of the Mississippi, de Sato felt a fever coming on. As it worsened over the next few days, he realized he was dying. No one knows what disease it was, but it was probably a New World malady, since he had survived the ones from the Old World for so long. De Soto wrote his will, "alznost in cipher," on a small scrap of paper (since the Spaniards had a h o s l none), He chose his successor, confessed his sins, and died beside the Mississippi, probably in what is now eastern Louisiana, Without its leader, the expedition tried to head across Texas but turned back when the men found fewer Indians from wham they could commandeer faad. Their objective by this time was simply to escape. They buil"r.even small ships and fled down the Mississippi, attacked cons.tantty by well-orgmized Indian groups, By then, mosquitoes had fed on de Soto"s men so urlrelenlingly that the insects were rarely mentioned in the erztr~~lllu's chronicles. But the 'Gentleman. of Elvas" who traveled with the company recorded the mosquitoes"parting shots: The flesh is directly inflarrred from their sting, as though it had received venom. Towards xnaming the wind lulled, and the sea went down; but the insects co~ltinurdflone the less, The sails, which were white, agpeared black with them at cctayligl~t;while the rrreri could riot pull at the oars without assistance to drive away the insects. Fear having passed off with the danger of the storrxl, the people observing the swolle~lconditiori of each other" faces, arid the rrrarks of the blows they had giver1 and received to rid them of the mosquitos, they could but laugh, (see also Mila~lich1991)

A uzc;tyheles rmvsqzritu (pc~~rt l? Wytsmtzrr, Genera Insectorum. Bakxdles: Louis L?esmeZ.Veflenel-til,1931-1 933. Cou21:esyof"the Lip Sciences Libr~~r;t, U~~iversip of

Texas).

'f'he Mississippi River was the dividllag line for the continent, and the title for its drainage passed several times among European powers. Rench missionares and traders explored its length and established lradirlg posts arnong the Indians of the valley and the Great Plains to the west, In part because of de Soto" expedition, Spain maintained a claim to ""Louisiarra"-roughly the lands between the Mississippi River and the Rackies. By the end of the eighteenth century, however; Spain" grip had grown weak, and in 1800 Louisiana was ceded to France. By that time there were new contenders for the terr:itory, for the European colonies on the easlern seaboard of Norlh Amrica had become prosperous and politicailly independent. They had plans "ior the lallds west of the Mississippi. Seen from a twentielh-century perspective, the Louisiana Purchase is one of Thornas Jefferson.3 greatest triumphs. Certainly in retrospect it seems like a good buy, as it probably did then-nearly a million square miles, parts of 15 modern states, all for a li"r1e more than $11 million, Althotxgh this amount of money wotxld have bought much more in 1863 dollars, it still was a bargain at about 2 cents an acre. How clever af JeEerson, and how foolish af N a p o l e s n , to trade what is now s o m of the world's most valuable real estate for such a sum. The deal with jefferson. was not, however, exactly what Napoleon had in mind, In 1802, Napoleon sent his brother-in-law Charles

Leclerc with an a m y of 33,000 men to reinforce France's claim to New Orleans, the port that contrailled the territory, and to put down a slave insurrection in Haiti on the way. But 29,000 of the 33,000 men in Leclerc" expedition died of mosquito-borne yellow fever before they could accomplish either objective. Haiti remained free as an African American republic, and the Louisiana Purchase by the United States was arranged in 1803 as a way to salvage something from the failed holding action, Leclerc" expedition was not the first European coloxaid power play to he thwarted by disease. h 7585, Sir Francis Drake left Plymoulh harbor with 29 ships, 1,500 seamen, and 800 soldiers; his assignment, to disrupt the flow of wealth from the New W r l d to Spain by capturing treasure fleets, destroying ports, and wrecMng commercial shipping in the Caribbean. Formerly; Drake had harassed the Spaniards but had never been a real threat. The 1585 mpedition was meant to change that, but Drake and his men took on more than food and water when they stopped in the Cape Verde Islands, west of Mica. "Wee were :not many dayes at sea," DOrake said, '"but there beg a m e antoung our people such morlaItie, as in a fewe days Ihere were dead above two and three hundred men." Alfred Crosbyp in his 1972 book The Colombian Excfiurrg~~ suggested that the disease may have been typhus, but another prime suspect is mosquito-borne yellow fever. Its ten-day gestation period would have aflawed Drake to get well out to sea before the epidemic set in. Drake records that ""until some seven or eight dares after our coming from St. lago, there had not died one man of sicknesse in all the flect.le: the sicknesse shewed not her infection wherewith so many were stroked until1 we were departed thence, and then seazed owr people with extreme hot burning and continual agues." "Before they even saw a Spanish ship, Drake" company was already greatly weakened, Similarly, in 1741 English rulers and strategists attempted to change the political structure of the Americas with one bold stroke. Sensing Spain" weakening hold on her colonies, they sent Admiral Edward Vernon from Southampton with 27,000 men to topple Spai:nts New World empire. But -on engaged mosquitoes and yellow fever :instead-possihly in the Canasy Islands-and lost 20,000 of his men to the wick killer the Spanish called the black vomit, How is it that Europeans were ambushed in midocean by Old World diseases? Part of the answer is that Europe's expansion in-

vcllved not only movement to and from the New World but also contact with Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and China. As travel and trade increased, diseases that had evolved among relatively isolated human groups were carried throughout most of the world, killing Etlrctpeaxls, soldiers on warships crossing the Atlantic, Native Americans, and Africans brought to the New World. The result was what the French historian Emmanuel Le Roi Ladurie has called the "unification of the globe by disease." Europe"$ expansion had opened a Pandora" box of diseasesAmong these were malaPia and yellow fever, neither of which was present in the New W r f d in pre-Columbian times. Even Africans taken by force to the New VVarld, who broue;ht some immunity to tropical fevers with them, suffered great mortality from the unprecedented collection of diseases. In l647 and 1648, when a plantation system using African slave labor was just being established in the Lesser Antilles, 6,000 people in Barbadas-both Africans and Europeans-died of yellow fever*Saint KiCts was also hit, and Guadeloupe had a sirnilar epidemic in 1649, 'f'he exploration of new lands, tor afl,the we&h it was thought to bring, did not enhance the Europeansyife expectancy. Staying far away from the enterprise might have been the most prudent course. Qf those on. de Soto" expedition, the most fortunate conquistador may have been Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, who had the wisdom to withdraw early on. An older man who had already accumulated a modest fortune in the conquest of the New World, Porcallo showed no lack of determination during the early days of the entradn. At one point, against the betler jtldgntent of de Soto, Porcallo set out to attack and caplure the Indian chief Hirrihigua, who had proved uncooperative, When his small company rani into problems crossing a swamp, Porcailto took matters into his own hands: As an experierzced soldier, he was aware that the rnost satisfactory xneans for a captain to command obedience in difficult situations is to lead the way hin~self,even though he display rashrless in doing so. Tlrus he gave the spurs to his rrrount, and rushing into the marsh was followed by a nuxnber of his coznpanions, Me bad proceeded only a few steps, however, when his horse felt with hi111 at a spot where both stood a charice of:being drowned, . . . Indeed all risked the sarrre dangert but that of Vasco Porcallo was much greater since be was loaded with arrns

and enveloped in mud and in addition had caught one leg beneath his horse in such a way that the a~lixnalwas drowning him without afford(Vega 1988) irig him an opgorttlnfy to save I~irr~self,

Porcallo survived, however. Covered in mud and disgusted with himself, his horse, La Florida in its as yet unknown entireltr, and the Indian chief who had lured him into such a quagmire, he ordered his men to retreat to their former camp without him, He made the slow, wet walk back done, weighjtzg his options, feeting his age, and perhaps foreswing the difficulties that ultimately wodd defeat de Soto and his army Porcallo remembered his great property and the ease and comfort he would enjoy at home. All the future labors of the conquest, instead, would be like those he had just experienced or even worse. Perhaps slapping at a bloodthirsty mosquito, he resolved to return to Spain and leave the mpedition to younger men,

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Cook, Noble David 19538 ZJonz to Die: Disease and New World Clr,~zguest,2492-1650. Cambridge, UK: Can~bridgeUniversiv Press, Grosby, Alf'red The C;olombian Exchange, Westport, CT Greer~vvood, 1972 Drake, Sir Francis Ilrezke/s West lndl'carl Vo!ytge, 1585-1586, Edited by Mary 1981 Sir I;r(;it~cis Frear Keeler. Londo~l:Elakluyt Society. Elvas, The Gentleman of 1965 f 19671 Spauzi.sh Explowrs in the SoutF.1c.m UnitecJ Statt3s, 1528~1543. New York: Barnes & Noble (reprint edition), Milanich, jerald T. (ed,) The Ncrrrando de Solo Expedition. Edited with an introductio~lby Jer2991 ald "T, Milanich. New York: Garland, 'VAsquez de Espinosa, Anto~lio 1942 Cou~zpeuzdl'umand Description of the West Indies, Translated b y Charles Ups011 Glark. Washington, DC: Srr~itbsonianInstitution. Vega, Garcilaso de la Izzctz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988 The Florr'dcz oftF.1~

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n April 1806, a package containing dried scabs m d a vial of pus, taken from the open sores oF a child in Mexico City, was sent by messenger to Manemet h t o n i o Cordero y Bustammte, governor of the Spanish provinces surrounding the missions of San Antonio, in what is now Texas. Governor Cordero? physicians lanced the skins of several hundred European Americans and Indians living in the area and smeared the diluted pus and dissolved scabs into the wounds. As a consequence, these residents contracted cowpox, a disease closely related to smallpox. The antibodies they developed from the infection were l.o protect them from srnaiilpox far the rest of their lives. Distribution of the vaccine to this outpost of the Spanish ernpire was due lnrgely to the efforts of Rancisco Xavier BaImis, a physician who sailed around the globe between 1803 and 1807 visiting settlements of the Spanish empire, He was among the most courageous of souls not only because of the magnitude of his tlnder2aking-more than 100,OQO people in Latin America were vaccinated directly or indirectly through his efforts-but also because he struggled, along with many others, against the popularly held, intuitive sentiment that one did not preserve people's health by making them sick. In a 1941-1942 article in Tfre Rultelrilz of f;l.reHisf;ory ~f~"d/Ie~Iicir?e, S, E Cook ~eiatedhow the Spanish king Cat-fos IV, terrified when his daughter contracted smallpox, had the rest of his family vaccinated after she recovered, Then, at his government" expense, he mounted

S~nczllpczx(Fern e-he Liellzo de Tfaxcafa, Courtesy ofthe Benson Liltin American C;ollectioul, UnivvrsiQ of Texu,~).

the "philanthropic expedition of vaccination," "putting Balmis in charge af getting the vaccine across the Atlantic to Narth and South Annerica, and if possibie, on to the Spanish Philippines. At the time, it was by far the Iargest vaccination program ever attexnpred. On the first leg of his journey, Ba.lmis sailed from Spain to the Canary Islands and then to Puerto Ftica. Carrying the vaccine across the Atlantic was not easy. To vaccinate others, Balmis needed the 'katter" of cowpox from the open. sores of infected people-what we now know to be the active virus. That meant that he needed the pus and lymphatic fluid from people who were at just the right stage of the disease. Once infected, a victim showed no symptoms far more than a we&, Aches, fever, and delirium set in about the ninth day, and at the beginning of the third week after exposure, blbters atld pustules erupted, So from the orphanages of Coruna, Spain, and sunounding areas, Balmis recruited twenty-two young boys who had never had either

The Muffer of Smaf lpctx

85

cowpox or smallpox. He Ihen s w to it that Ihey were infected with cowpox one by one as they crossed the ocean and traveled though Latin America, ensuring that there would always be one person whose infection was at the right sQgr to pass on the disease, These twenty-two children were rewarded with the Crown" commitment to care for them until they were grown and to pay the costs of their schooling in the New World. Although little is known about how these children fared in the Americas or whether any of them ever returned to Spain, none of them died from their exposure to the disease, and they saved thousands, Balmis" expedition was inspired by the work of the English physician Edward jenner, who demonstrated that a patient could gain irnmunity against smallpox relatively safely by being infected with cowpox, a less dangerous disease that rarely proved fatal. In 1796, Jenner inoculated a child with pus taken from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid, who had caught it from an open sore on the udder of a cow, As Jenner records in a letter to a friend, "But now listen to the most delghllwl part of my story The boy has since been irloculated for the Smalllpax which as l ventured to predict produced no effect, I shall now pursue my Experiments with redoubled ardor." jenner was not the first to notice that contracting cowpox could save a person from getting a fatal version of smallpox later. lt was part of local knowledge in rural Britain. Milkmaids routinely caught cowpox; afterward, they almost never contracted smallpox. But Jenner" experiments convinced the medical community that immurllzation was the best way of fighting snrdpox and made cowpox the method of choice. For centcmries people had known that if you survived a bout with smallpox itself, you could almost never catch it again. They believed, often mistakenly, that a person who contracted smallpox through the skin, in the same way that milkmaids caught cowpox through the cuts or calluses on their hands, had a good chance of survival. They also thought that those who caught the disease from close contact with an infected person (evidently by inhaling the virus) were more likely l.o die or to have their bodies pitted and scarred by the pox. Inoculation with smallpox itself, also called variolatioxa, appears to have been common .for centuries among rural populations throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Correspondence in the archives of the

shows that ~ h ~ l i stravelers h had observed the practice in China before 1700, Several generations before J ennerts mperirnents, a furious debate L had raged among physicians and town councils in Europe and America over whether inoculation with the "matter" of smallpox should be allowed. In the 1720s, in Boston and other New England towns, a war of pamphlets and posters was waged for and against the practice. Inoculation was a chancy procedure. About 1.5 percent of those inoculated contracted severe cases and died of the disease, and sometimes reL?oom~?yto the chap cently inoculated people, Ins&,San Antonio, Texcrs. who had not been kept in quarantine while they were contagious, spread the disease to others. But smallpox was such a ghastly disease that to avoid it people were wililng to risk death for themselves and their children. In 1634, Miilliam Bradford provided an appaltirlg description of what smallpox did to the Corlnecticlmt Indians: They fell sick of ye small poxe, and dyed rrrost miserably; for a sarer disease cannot befall them; tliey fear it rrlore thari ye plague; for usualy they that have this disease have them in abundance, and for wante of bedding and lining and other helps, they fall into a laxr~entablecondition, as they lye on their hard matte ye poxe breakirtg and rnatteririg, and runing one into another, their skin cleaving (by reason thereof) to the matts they lye on; when they trn them, a whole side wilt flea of at once, (as it were) and they will be all of a gore blood, most feaxhl to behold; and then being very sore, what with could and other disteznpers, they dye like rotten sheep.

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Later, Bradford notes that seeing the Indians' '"woeful'i and sadd condition, and hearing their pitifuIl cries and lamantations, [the settlers) had cornpastion of them, and dayly fetched them wood and water, and made them fires, gott them victualls whilst they lived, and buried them when they dyed." The Puritan minister and prolific writer Cotton Mather (16631728) learned of smallpox inoculation from a man named Onisernus, who had been brought as a slave from Africa. Mather asked other people from M i c a about the psactice and Found that it was commonly done there. Given the l.remendous threat of mallpox epidemics in the new American. colonies, he became a strong proponent of inoculation with smdlpox, In his srlzail book titled A n Accr7ur.rl' oJIhc MelLro~ft r ~ ~Success rl ~fll?onrl~jfirrg the Small-l>nx,printed in Londorl in 1722, he gave a step-by-step description of the procedure: They make a Choice of as healthy a young Person as they can find, that has the SrnallPox of the best Sort up011 him; on the Twelfth or Thirteenth Day of his Decurnbitttre, with a Needle they prick sorne of the larger hstules, and press out the Matter coming frorrl them into some convenient TJessel, which is to be stopt close, arid kept warrrr, in the Bosorn of the Person that carries it to the intended Patient. This Person ought rather to be some other, than he who visited the sick Chanlber for it; lest he should carry the lnfectiorl in the comrrron way; which rnight prove dangersus. The Patient is to have several Small Wounds xnade with a Needle, or X,a~lcet, in two or nlore places of the Skin, (the best Places are the Muscles of the Arm) and irr~rnedjiatelylet there be dropt out of a Drop of the Matter in the Glass on each of the Places, and rnix'd with the Blood that is issuing out. The Wound should be cover'd with some little Concave Vessel, arid bourrd over, that the Matter rnay not be rubb" off by the garments for a few Hours.

The dedication to Mather" book, written by j. Dummer; affirmed that the idea that inocuiation with smallpox could prevent the disease was not at all new: This Practice of ingrafting the Sxnall-Pox has been used from Time ixnxnemarial.aznong the Circassians, and h r xnany Years past in the Levant, yet it is a new Thj~lgin these Parts of Europe, and still nlore so in Aalerica: And as all new Discoveries, however rational in therrrseives, and beneficial to Mankind, are receiv'd at first with Opposition, none has met with greater than this in New-Engla~ld,

In the a t e WOs, the practice of irloculalion with smallpox had been described in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean, and seems to have been widely used throughout Europe, Peasants called the rather dangerous practice "buying the smallpox," and most contemporary accounts noted (with either praise or cantempq that old women were the ones who knew how to inoculate people, A highly respected London physician of the early eighteenth century, for example, wrote derisively that Nposteritywill scarcely be brought to believe that a method practiced only by a few Ignorant Women, amongst an illjterate m d unthinking People should . . . be received into the Royal Palace" "uoted in Sterns 1950). Even though these practices existed, no one at the time understood why the disease spread or why inoculation seemed to work sometimes. Classical Greek physicians like Hippocrates based their treatm a t s a n the premise that diseases arose Eram imbalances in the four basic humors, a theory still current in the seventeenth century. The humors were blood, yellow blle, black bile, and mucus (the sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegrrtalic humors, respectively). Disequifibritlm among these hurnors was tbought to cause the skin to erupt with the sores of smallpox, but just what caused the disequilibrium was unclear, The celebrated Muslim physician Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (better known as Rhazes), who lived Eram about An 865 to 925, built upon the humoral theory aE disease by suggesting that within each af us there is a case of smallpox (and many other maladies) waiting to boil out of our blood and erupt into open sores on the skin. His ""inate seed theory" also involved the belief that changes in alntospheric condimas could trigger epidemics. Even into the nineteenth century this theory was probably the most widely accepted explanation for why pm"e 802 sick (litlle wonder that Spanish conquistadors were so obsessed with the risks of staying in the "rrnhealthhl airs" of the American tropics). Although these humoral and innate seed explanations were widely accepted, a remarkably modern theory was proposed as early as 1546 by an Italian from Verona, Girolamo Fracastoro (lik;78-1553). In his De Con11:r~pic;me et Con t~r~gic~~sz's LWousiCzutttzlizdians, College Station: Texas A & M UnZversity Press, 1""UwwoW Higkwuy 1989 A fifrrr by Haridrrlade Filrns. Executive producers, George Harrisori

and Denis Q'Brien, Based on the novel by David Seals, Published by Canno11 Video, 91 min. Southern Native An~ericanPow Wows (web site) fnlorn~atiorion schedules, resources, etc. http:/ltqd.adva11ced.org/3081/

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n the t a l l mountains and forests of the Northwest, before t h e Whites came, and even before the advent of the Real People-the Nee Mete Poo, or Nez Perce-Coyote lived there, The Nez Perce of Idaho and the norlhern Kockies tell how their very existence is owed to the cleverstess of Coyote, the legendary trckster of Name Annerican h l k tradition: Long before there were any people on the earth, a huge monster came down from the North, eating every animal he could find. He ate alt the animals, from the smallest to the largest, from mice to mountain lions, all except Coyote, the trickster. Coyote could not find any of his friends, and this made hirn mad. So he crossed the Snake River and climbed the highest mountain. He tied himself to its peak with a stout rope and challenged the monster to try to eat hirn, The monster tried to suck Coyote From his perch, but the rope was too strong, Suspecting that Coyote was more clever than he, the monster befriended Coyote and asked hirn to tome stay with hirn, 8ne day Coyote asked the monster if he could go into his stomach and visit all the animals the monster had eaten, and the monster agreed. Once inside, Coyote told his friends to get ready to escape. He took out his fire starter and built a huge Fire in the belly of the monster. Then he took his knife and cut out the monster" head, All the animals escaped. In honor of the defeat of the monster, Coyote said that he would create a new animal, He cut the monster into pieces and flung them in all directions; where each piece landed-an the plains, along the rivers, and an the mountains of PdorZh America-a tribe af Indians sprang up, When he had finished, Coyote's friend Fox observed that na tribe was born on the spot where Coy-

ote had killed the monster, Coyote was sad because af this amission, but he had no more monster pam, Then he had an idea, He washed the monster's blood from his hands and let the drops fait on the ground. Coyote said, "Here on this ground l make the Nez Perce, They will be few in number, but they will be strong and pure." And this is how the human beings came to be, (retold From "Capte Makes Human Beings," b p e z 1977)

Trickster tales are the mast widespread form of Native American hlktale, The trickster most often is the coyote ar rabbit, but sametimes he is a spider, as antong the Ogilda Dakata. Whatever he is called, his name hats only a little to do with his character, which is an amalgam of the characteristics of his animal namesake, humans, and supernatural beings, The trickster tale is not just a Native American phenomenon: It is found in folklore or mythology throughout the world. In Greek mytholoky, Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus possess both the trickster" cunning and his hoilishness, as does Etermes. Xn Polynesia, Maui the l.rickster makes rape of his sisler" hair to lasso and slow down Ra, the sun, The spider Axzanse is the trickster among the Ashanti of Akica: An enormous class of their trickster tales is simply called lilllansesem, 01: ""spider stories," "regardless of whether Ananse appears in them, Among the Azande people of central Africa the trickster is a spider as well: Ture is an animal so clever he can make a web out af himself, But the anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, in his classic Z n t ~ ~Trickste7; ie speaks af the complexities and contradictions in the trickster" character, calling Ture a monster of depravity: liar, &eat, lecher, n~urderer;vain greedy, treacherous, ur~grateful,a poltroo~l,a braggart, This utterly selfish persun is everything against which Azande warn their children xnast strongly*Yet he is the hero of their stories, and it is to their children that his exploits are related and he is preser~ted,with very little moralizing-if as a rogue, as an engaging one, Far there is another side ta his character, which eve11 to us is appealing: his whiznsical fooling, recklessness, impetuosity, puckish irresponsibility; his childish desire to show how clever he is . . . and his fiouting af every convention. In spite of his nefarious conduct he is never really n~alicious.Indeed he has an endearing innocence.

Like most myths and folfktales, the trickster tales encode varying values and ideas, and some of these are specific to particular culltures,

Trickster Treats

Krer Rabbit visits Brer Fox (pom Joel [:handler Harri,~,His Sarsgs and His Sayings. Courtef)l of the Perry Castei'ieda Librtzry).

Yet the same themes are played out in strikingly similar ways throughout the world, because the trickster tales deal. with issues of emnlversal hwman experience-family interactions, compet-tion, struggles agaIrzst authority, love, and death* The many sides to the trickster" personality make him especially useful to the storyteller: Some tales emphasize the trickster" spiritual side and others his material side; some his role as creator and some as mean-spirited destrayer. The psychologist Garl Jung saw in the trickster a primordial figure who transcends humankind" conceptual botxndaries between gods and mortals, who moves freely between the worlds of gods and humans and plays tricks on both* Many stories capIure the trickster as the prim1 comedian, able to step outside of a situation (or a culture) and point out its ridicuiousness. The trickster is incarnated in Shakespeare" Puck of A Mickummur NighlWrearn and in cartoons ("Twicky wabbit" k what Elmer

Fudd calls Bugs Bmny, a classic trickfier if ever there was one). B a t Simpson" cconstant chalenge to authority qualifies hirn Ear the trickster role, Trickster: tales often serve to entertain and instruct children, teaching them how to behave and how the world works. fn Native American stories, as elsewhere, the trickster is often the underdog, never the most powerhl or beautiful animal. The trickster is the one who through cleverness defeats more powerful forces, using their very superiority, arrogarace, or vaniv as a weapon against them. The story of Possum's tail. warns against such hubris, as in this version, which combines elements of similar stories told throughout eastern North America: Possum was proud of his long, bushy tail; he took great pleasure in cornbing it out every day, and especiaily in waving it in front of Coyote (whose own tail was scraggly and Flea-bitten). When the Animal Peopte came together for council and a big dance, Possum demanded a special seat so that everyone could see his beautiful tail. Coyote agreed to this, and told Possum that he would even send Cricket aver to comb aut his tail before the dance, Before sending him to help Possum primp, Coyate had a talk with Cricket (who was the best barber among the Animal People). Cricket went and spent hours brushing out Possum's fait, and when he was done he carefully wrapped the tail in a red thread and said, "Possum, this string wit1 keep all the hairs in place until the dance. When you get to the cauncit and it's time to dance then you can take the string off." Possum went to the lodge where the dance was held and took his place of hanor in the middfe of the Animal People, When the drummers began, Possum removed the thread and began to dance in the middle at the lodge. "See my beautiful tail," he said, as everyone began to snicker. He said, "See how fine the fur is," white Coyote nearly wept trying to contain himself. ""Se how it sweeps the ground," he said, as all the Animal People roared in laughter, Finally Possum looked around at his naked, scaly tail, He rotted onto his back and grinned, as he does to this day when he3 caught by surprise. (retold from Radin 1956)

Nthough Irickster tales may warn against vanity, greetd, and excessive cleverness, they are also highly entertaining, which helps to account for their wide distribution and longevity, The similarities in

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207

trickster stories drawn from African American and Native American folktales are apparenl: in the Following examples. The first fealures one of the most famous tricksters known to contemporary Americans-Brer Rabbit, whose roots Iie in W s t African. folktale traditions. In 'Wow Brother Fox Was Too Smart," as in many trickster tales, Brer Rabbit uses Fox" sconceit ta bring him down: Walking with Fox one day, Brer Rabbit saw a track that Brer Fox did not recognize. When Fox asked what it was, Rabbit said, "IF ll"m not mistaken, the poor creature who made that track is Cousin Wldtat, no more and no less," "How big is he, ffrer Rabbit," Fox asked. "He3 about your size." Then Brer RabbiMcted like he was talking to himself, "Tut, tut, tut! It's funny that I should come across Cousin Wildcat in this part of the world, Many's the time I saw my Crandaddy kick and cuff Cousin Wtdcat, so much so that I felt sorry For him. If you want any fun, Brer Fox, now's the time to get it,@' Brer FOX, who fancied himself a Fighter, was interested; he asked Brer Rabbit haw he was going to have fun with the Mlildcat. "It's easy enough. just go tackle ale Cousin Wildcat and slam him around. . , . just hit him a good one, and if he tries to run away, l'H catch him For you."

The climax; of the story is predictable enough, with Rabbit coaxing Fox into an unwise battle: In short order, FOX was lying on the ground in pieces crying, "I'm ruined, Brer Rabbit! I'm ruined! Run get the doctor, I'm ttotally ruined!" Brer Rabbit headed home and when he got out af sight, he bent aver and shook his hands like a cat does when she gets water an her feet, and he laughed and laughed until he was nearly sick from laughing. [retold from Harris 1881)

In a similar confrontation, the two great tricksters of North America-Coyote and Rabbit-attempt to outsmart each other: One day Coyote came upon Rabbit, who was making a strong leather sack. He asked, "What is that sack for, Rabbit?" Rabbit replied, "A hailstorm is coming, and I" making this sack to protect myself," ""Rabbit," said Coyote, ""give me this sack and make yourself another one, so that we can both be safe," Coyote climbed into the sack and Rabbit hung him in a tree, Making sounds like a violent storm, Rabbit pelted the sack with rocks, When Coyote stuck his head out and saw that the haitstorm was only Rabbit

throwing rocks, he was very angry, He chased Rabbit who had gone to a field where crops were growing. Rabbit" curiosity was aroused by a stick figure in the field covered with sticky gum. When Rabbit touched it, his finger became stuck, and the more he tried to work himself free, the more stuck he became. Finalty Coyote arrived, still angry, "Rabbit, before I kill you, tell me what you are doing stuck to that pole," Thinking fast, Rabbit replied, "The person whase crops these are wants me to share a feast with him, but I don%want to do it. He says that after I've been stuck to this pole tor a while, I'll be hungry enough ta share his great meal." $0 Coyote pulled Rabbit loose and stuck himself to the pole. When the angry farmer returned, Coyote paid the price. Now Coyote was so angry he was biting his tongue and walking into rocks, When he found Rabbit again he said, ""Now I am going to kill you before you can say another word," Rabbit was sitting in front of a beehive, and he gestured far Coyote to be quiet. "Be quiet, Coyote, I am teaching these small children, and aftewards they will repay me with a meal," Coyote couldn" see into the hive, and did not recognize it tor what it was. But he thought that he could finally outsmart Rabbit, "Let me teach the children far a while, Rabbit, while you rest, By the way, how will they know when it is time to serve up your meal'i"'"abbit replied, "When it is dinner time you must hit the hive with this club until they come out. You must hit it very hard, because they do not hear very well," Coyote lectured to the humming hive for a long while. He told af what a great warrior he was and af' the great batties he had fought, Finally he began to get hungry, He looked around to make sure that Rabbit was out of sight, and then took the club and hit the hive so hard that it broke in two, (retold from Radin 1956)

In these two tales both Rabbit and Coyote (or Fox) are tricksters, and in turn they show their mixture of artful finesse and bumbling stupidity. They beat their heads together and produce entertaining stories that have been successful for ages, But in doing so they transmit basic truths abotxt the human condition. In the Winnebago stories of the trickster called Hare, the ambiguous hero decides to help out the human beings and makes all the animals defenseless against them, Rut when he returns t a the lodge of his grandmother w h o in this cycle of stories represents the earth herself), he finds that although he has cleverly achieved what he wanted, outsmarting each of the animals in turn, the result does more harm than good:

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209

Hare thought to himself, "Now the people will live peacefully and forever." But the old woman, his grandmother, said, "Grandson, yaur talk makes me sad. How can the people live forever, as you do? Earthmaker did not make them thus. All things have to have an end. You yourself in yaur travels around the country must have seen trees fallen to the ground, That is their end-that is their death, Everything will have an end, I also will have an end as I am created that way." Then Hare looked in her direction and some of her back caved in just as the earth does sometimes. That was what he saw And he saw people cave in with the earth. "Grandson, thus it is," said the old woman, "l have been treated small and if all the people live forever they would soon fit! up the earth. There would then be more suffering than there is now .far some people would always be in want of food if they multiplied greatly, That is why everflhing has an end." Then Hare thought Car a long time. "A good thing I had obtained for the people, but my grandmother has spoiled it," So he Felt sad, took his blanket, covered himself with it, lay down in the corner and wept. (retold from Radin 1956)

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading Erdues, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz (eds,) 19538 Arisaerz'ca~~ Ztzdica~zTrickster Tales, Mew York: Viking. Evans-Pritchard, E, E. 2967 Zlznde Trickster. Oxford, UK: Glarendon Press, Gidtey, M, 1981 m e t : A Dourmevrtacrry Narrative of C:hic-"fJc~sepIz!fLast Years. Seattlie: University of Washington Press,

Harris, Joel, Chandler 288 1 Mifits with UtzcIe Kernus, Londo~l:(I;, Routledge. Lopez, Barry Holstu~l C ~ ~ V ~ PBirtlz I J : to Tlzunde~; Sleqing witl? His Ilau2l.ztep: Karrsas City: 197 7 Sheed Andrews & McMeel.

Radin, Paul 2956 The Trickstclr. Xm~ldon:Routledge Sr. Kegan Paul.

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 151 '"Aboriginal Conservators'" (Speck), 97 Abrahams, Robert, 165 Abudiente, Bathsheba, 166, 167, 170 Abudiente, Moses, 170 Abudiente, Rohiel (Rowland Gideon), 166, 170-1 71 Abu-Lughod, janet: Before Eur~peunHegemony, 123 Academy of Ssciai Sciences (China), 133 Account of tI."~e A ~irswof' fidclztr;ln (de Landa), 58 Accorlrzt of the Metlzod an~tStrcce'ss of lnacula tirzg tlze Small-Pox (Mather), 87 Adarns, John, 111 Addictive products, 129-1 30 Africa, 34, 121, 123, 124-125 epidemic diseases and, 80, 87 trickster tales, 162, 204 African slave trade, 160, 16l, 163 Age af Addiction, 129 Nabama-Coushatza people, 6-7, 183-184, 193-200 dances, 196-200

See also Native Americans; Nabam langnage, 193-7 94 Alberta, 96 Algankian Indians, 98 Almagro, Diego de, 102, 103 Alva Ixtilxochitl, Fernando de: Histous;cu I:hl"c!~imeca, 62-63 Alvarado, Pedro de, 101, 102-103 Amazonia, 6 American Jewish Historical Society; 169 Americas, diversity of, 6, 51 Americas, heterogeneity of, 6 A Micfszrmt~erNi@t"sf)reum (Shakespeare), 205 Amprrsro, Nartfn de, 104 Amsterdam, 170 AnancyfAnanse, 162,204 Anwr-zsesem, 162, 204 Angelina, DoAa, 104 Anirnacules, 89, 90 Animals, extinctions, 4, 96-97 Antilia, 35 Arana, Diego de, 26 Arawakan languages, 16 Archaeolagists, 136, 186-1 9 1 Aristotle, 57, 76

Artifacts, 187-1 91 Assimilation, 6-7 Atahualpa, 102, 104 Athabaskan Indians, 98 Agnntic hlun127s, Tlze (Duncan), 34 Atlantic Ocean, 33-34 Atlantis, 57 Augustine, Saint, 138 Austin, Jane G.: Stalldish of st6~P2ffi~h~ 113 Australia, cricket and, 176 Azores, 34-35 Aztecs, 53, 54 gardens, 62-64 land use, 96 tribute and, 71-72

Botticelli, 65 Bracci, Alexander, 61 Bradford, Wlliarn, 86-87, 109, 110, 112, 114 Brattalid, 147 Braudet, Fernand, 130 Brer Rabbit tales, 205, 207 Britain Christianity and, 138 colonialism and, 173, 176, 178-1 79 Commonwealth, 178 cricket and, 173-1 80 Jews and, 168, 170-171 opium trade and, 127-133 reduction of empire, 173, 178 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 3 1, 36 Buddha, 135, 138, 139 Buddhism, 135-141 Bugs Bunny, 205-206 BuZletiitl of the H i s t ~ :of, ~iMtv~-Iz"cl'ne, The, 83 Bull play, 160

Badianus, Juannes, 64 Badianus Manuscript (1552), 63-64 Bahamas, 23 Balm is, Francisco Xavier, 83-84, 90 Barbados, 80, 168 Bartering, 24-25 Cabral, Gongalo Velho, 35 Batisee, McConieo, 196 Caddo Conference, 185-487 Brjfiilrr Eurulpeat~H ~ ~ ~ Y F (Abu~ I I F E Y Caddo Culture Center, 188 Lughod), 123 Caddo Indians, 185-191 Behaim, Martin, 35-36 archaeolsgists and, 187-19 1 Bei/l'rzcqRr-lviw, 133 ""CaddoThoughts on Bengal, 123 Repatriation" (Carter), 188 Bering Strait, 119, 146 CafnbP-E'dge,127 Berosus, 57 Canary Islands, 33, 34, 79, 84 Bet Etayim cemetery, 170, 17 1 Canny, Nichdas, 94 Bevis Marks synagogue, 170 Canoe, John. See John Canoe Bible, 57-58, 93, 94, 111 celebrations Rickell, R., 163 Canton, 128, 129, 131, 132 jrjli~~l Lore, 97 Cape Cod (Thareau), 112 Birth of V ~ M ~The C S ,(Botticelli), 65 Cape of Good Hope, 124, 125 Cape Verde Islands, 34, 79 Black vomit, 79 jrjlletlhel'm, 127 Capr'&lna,43 BobadilZa, Francisco de, 41, 43 C,"apitz~fcrcidliles;e. of Sul~t~z F&, 39-40

Caravels, 34 Careggi, villa at, 6 1 Caribbean, 21-22, 96-97, 157-158, 169 See also z'rzcl7ivicZuul islaltck Carib Indians, 2 1-22 Carlvs Il( 83-84 Carter, Mary Cecile, 187, 188, 190 Cartier, Jacques, 5 Cassidy, Frederic: [amaicm Talk, 161 Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, 31 Ceci, Lynn: 'Squanto and the Pilgrims," "3, 114 Centers for Disease Contrail, 90 Ceylon, 124 Chance, 4-5, 51 Chapman, Jefl'erson, 95 Charlestown (Nevis), 165 Chateau dwsse, 154 Cherakees, 195 Chesapeake Bay colonies, 169 Chieftains, 14-.-l7, 2 1, 28 Chili pepper, 64 Chimpu Ocllo, nusta, 101-102, 104 China, 58, 119 diversity of, 137 mploratians, 121-1 23 Han dynasty, 124 Ming dynasty; 121, 123-125 opium and, 127-1 33 Qn dynasty, 137 Sui dynasty; 137 T2ng dynastx 135, 137 Yuan dynasty 123 Choctaw language, 194 Cholet, 149 Christmas celebrations, 159-163 ChPr"st.snasSports z'rz S1; KiEs-Nevis (Mills), 162-1 63

Cibao, 25, 58, 68 Cipangu (Japan), 25, 26 Cfovis hunters, 189 Cochapamga, 184 CoRee, 129-130 Colegio de Santa Gruz d e Tlateloco, 64 Colbrr, Bartolomk, See Colurnbus, Bartolam4 Colbn, Cristbbal, 47-48 Coloma, Juan de, 39 C,"olombiunExchur?gc, The (Crasby), 79 Colonialism, 2, 173, 176, 178-1 79 Colurnbus, Bartsilomrit, 17-21, 47 Colurnbus, Christopher, 2-3, S, 65-66, 123 arrest of, 41 o n ckrili pepper, 64 competition, 11-12, 31-37 Cuacanagari and, 25-26, 28 illness and death, 44-47 information on world, 32-33 Xegal agreements, 39-40 origins of New World and, S 7-5 8 personality, 11, 39, 4 1, 44 portraits, 5, 42 profits and, 25, 39, 40, 44, 47 religiousness of, 41, 43, 46 route taken, 32-34, 36 ships and, 24-27, 34 shipwrecEr of, 43-44 signature, 45-46, 47 titles, 39, 41, 44, 48 Toscanelli and, 32 tribute system and, 67-68 Columbus, Diego, 34, 45, 47 Colurnbus, Diego, 47 Colurnbus, Fernando, 34, 45, 47 Colurnbus, Luis, 47

CaX~ltnbzis(FernBndez-Armesto), 41,46 Common people, 3 Carnmon Se~zse(Paine), 72 Commonwealth, 178 Communist Party (China), 133 Concepcibn de la Vega, 14,17, 21 Conny, John, 161 Constitution, U.S., 112 Colzt~zgiorwet. Canti~~qiosis Morbl's et Eonkun Curut.ione, De (Fracastoro), 88-89 Continuity, 6-7 Cook, S.E, 83 Cordero y Bustamante, Manuel Antonio, 83 Coronado, Frandsco VBsquez de, 5 Cortes, HernBn, 51, 53-54, 56, 57,62, 102 CaflrlliI~ipof MiIes S&ntIIsIZ, The f Longfellow), 113 Coushatta language, 194 COWPOX, 83,812-85 ""Cows, Harp Seals, and Church Bels: Adaptation and Extinction in Norse Greenland" WcGaverrr), 147-148 Coyote tales, 203-204, 206 Creel, Barrell, 190 C,"rickefer, The, 177 Cricket matches, 173-1 80 Crops, 62-64, 65, 94 Crosby, Alfred: The C,"olc~mbian ExcEza13ge, 79 Crusades, 36 Cuba, 21, 23 Culturama, 165 Culture contact, 2, 5-6, 22 anthropological approach, 136

diversity and, 157 Royal Cornmenti~n'esand, 107-108 similarities, 29, 5 1 Curagao, 168 Cuzccz, 70, 102, 103

Daily Gleaner, 163 Dart, John, 197 Davies, Kenneth: The North AtEnttt.E"cW ~ d z'drz 14he Scve~~tre~th Celitzkvy, 112 Deetz, James, 114 De la Cosa, Juan, 26 De ia Gruz, Martinus, 64 Delcourt, Hazel, 95 Delcourt, Paul, 95 De Luna, Tristan, 76 Dermer, Thornas, l 14 De Soto, Hernando, 75-77, 80, 102, 194 De Triana, Rudrigs, 41 De Vattel, Emer: Le Droit des (;ells, 127, 128 De Z%rate,Agustin, 102 Dias, Bartolomeu, 125 Diaz del Castillo, Bernaf: The Discovery and Csnytrcst.of Mexico, 62 Diego, Juan, S Diseases. See Epidemic diseases Distancing, 5-6 Dorset tradition, 146 Drake, Francis, 79 Dulmo, Fernao, 35, 36 Durnmer, J., 87 Dumond, Don: The Eskimos arrd Aleuts, 147 Duncart, 'f: Benltey: 7 3nl-ltz~ztil: ~ lsll.l1-rcrs,34 D ~ h o ko-tilu, t~ 161-1 62

East Asia: The (;reat: Traditio~z f Reischauer and Fairbank), 125 East India Company, 127, 129 Ecuador, 102 Emboden, William, 61 En Bas Saline, 27 ErrfiPl~tla,76, 80 Epidemic diseases, 5 1-52, 71, 75-77 Africans and, 80, 87 black vomit, 79 cowpox and, 83,84-85 malaria, 80 mosquitoes and, 75-81 typhus, 79 viruses, 90 yellow fever, 79, 80 See also Smallpox Eriksson, Leif, 143, 144-145 Erik the Red, 143, 145 Exmell, jane, 171 Escorial, El, 63 Eskimos, 119, 144, 146 Thule, 146-1 47 See also Skraelings Eskimohsand Alezkts, The (Dumond), 147 Estreito, Jogo, 35 Eurodisney, 149-1 54 geolow OF, 150-15 1 historical past and, 151-1 52 Europe alld the Pet~pleWithout History (Wolf), 3 Evans-Pritchard, EX,: ZarrcZc? Tdck.ster, 204 Ewe language, 161 Extinctions, 4, 96-97

Fairbank, jshn: East Asia: Tfre Great Traditiotl, 125 Farb, Peter, 97-98

Fast ar-rd Thar-zk~~qivl'izg Days of New Erzglarrd, The (Love), 110-1 11 Fayal, 35 Ferdinand 11, 39, 44-45 Fernhndez-Armem Felipe: (:olzrtnbzls, 4 1, 46 Feudal system, 36 Florence, 31 Ffarida, 69, 76, 80-81 Flo~ctaofthe bzccr, The (de la Vega), 105-106 Folk tales, 56-59 See also Trickster tales Forefa"clrersWay, 112 Fracastoro, Girolama: De Coilt~~~yz'otle et Calcattz@osis il,iorbi~et Ec~mmC U T ~ ~ C I F E ~ , 88-89 France, 78-79 Francisca, Dafia, 104 Frybread, 199 Fuller, Thornas: i"hari~zucoyoeI'~z Ex ternpor~zi?lea, 90

Galvgo, Antonio, 58 Garcilaso De la Vega, 7, 56, 70-72, 101-108 writings, 104-106 Garcilaso de la Vega, SebastiBn, 101-102, 103, 107 Gardenslgardening, 61-66 crops, 62-64, 65 ornamental plants, 64-65 Garifurta people, 22 Garza, Diego de, 46 GauX, 68-70 Gazegeer ofForeig11ers(Zhao Rugua), 123 Genghis Khan, 123 Gens inconl-ilus, 161 Gentleman of EIvas, 77

Geographers, 2-3, 31,35 George Vt, 173 Gideon, Rawland (Rohiel Abudlente), 166, 170-1 72 Gideon, Sampson, 170-1 71 Gila River, 96 Gingerland, 159-360, 162-163 Giraffe, 122, 123-124 Gold, 21, 24, 25, 28, 68, 102 Gould, Stephen Jay: Wotz~Ierfuf Lip, 4 Gotxrd dances, 196

Grur-rdStrute'y of'the Rn~naf-r Empire, T f ~(tuttwak), e 68 Greater Antilles, 11, 16, 18, 157 See also tI:ispanial a "Great man" "genres, 3 Cr"ret:zt T k l Record ~ of' tlje Wstern TeTX"jtories,The (I-Isaantsang), 141 Greenland, 119, 143, 145-148 Gregory I, 138 Grenada, siege of,39 Cr"roe,nleni-litzS~zga,143 Guacanagari, 23, %2 Calumbus and, 25-26, 28 Sulltcr i W u ~ uand, 26-27 Spaniards and, 28-29 Guadeloupe, 80 Guadeloupe, Virgin of, 5 Guarionex, 13, 14, 18-22, 43 Bartolame Colurnbus and, 17-21 chieftains and, 14-1 7, 21 tribute and, 14-1 6 Gutierrez, Pero, 26 Haiti, 27, 79, 161 Hale, Sara Joseph, 111 Hamifton, Alexander, 167-1 68 Hamilton, James, 168 Hamilton Museum, 168

Han dynasty 124 Hantzkkah, 160 Hassig, Ross: Triz~l"e,Tribr-rte, alld Transportation, 72 Hays, Wilma f3itchford:""lqying for Indian Corn," 113 Hespero, 57 Helms, Mary: UXysses3ail, 136 Henry the Navigator, 2, 34-35 Hesjailfssan, Bjarni, 143-144 HernBndez, Francisco, 63 Hinduism, 138, 139 Hippaaates, 88 Hirrihigua, 80 Hispaniola, 13, 23-25, 27, 42-43 chieftains, 16-1 7, 21 tribute system, 15-1 6, 19-20, 67-68 See ulso Greater Antilles Ht's;C.or-r"a Na ;CulraeMaxime Peregyx'tze (Niremberg), 62 Hisfirria N~rve~giue, 145 Ht's;Eon"cuClzichitnec~! (Ixtilxochitl), 62-63 History, i:ndi,vidualsand, 3-5 Hohokam Indians, 96 Hong Kong, 132 Hapi calendar, 54-55 Hsi-ya cchi (Wu Chekng-en), 137 Hsaan-"rang (Xuanzang), 135 literary accounts af, 136-1 139-140 translations by, 140-1 4 1 travels in India, 137-1 40 L-fuiyna C bpac, 104 Hurnana, John, Sr., 193-194 Humorai thesry 88 Hu Sheng, 133 Iceland, 143 lncas, 7, 56 conquests, 70-7 1

gardens, 65 gold and, 102 land use, 94 social status and, 28, 101, 104, 10 s India, 135, 138, 179 " "Indian Fires of S p r i ~ ~ g(Lewis), 95-96 Indian Ckean, 121, 125 lnrlirrns, Anirntlls, and tj1-1~ Fur Trudc: A Cr-iSiqutP~ofk'erpersof" tlie Iia~rlc(ed. Krech), 98 Indians, as term, 57 Indies. See I-lispaniola individuals, 3-21

In& HuailIas guestsa, 104 Irtnate seed theory, 88 lnrl of the Twelve Clans, 193 international Cricket Coux~cil, 179 I~iuitpeople, 119, 146 Ireland, 94 Isabela 1, 39, 41, 42, 44 Islam, 138 Islf711tj Ch+ickefers (FValcott), 175, 176, 177, 178, 179 Islarld of the Severr Cities, 35 isthrnus of Panama, 102 Jack B., l?:%, 1'34 Tainis~n,138, 139, l 4 0 jarnaica, 43-44, 3 58, 3 61, I G8 Irzrntrir cl Ttrlk (Cassidy), 161 Japan, 25, 26, 32, 138-1 39 jefferson, TIlomas, 78, 90, 113 Jcnner, Edwarcl, 85, 90 Jennings, Francis, 94 fessuram, Iteuel, 170 jcc~uram,Sarah, 170 Jewish Historical Society of England, 169 Jews, 165-171

Caribbean econorrly and, 169 Sephardic Jews, 166, 171 slave ownership and, 169-1 70 Jet%-S' Naturalization Act, 171 Jews' Scl-rool, 167-1 68 JcnsWdlk, l67 Joao I1 (Darn), 35, 36 Tohn Canoe celebrations, 159-163 Johnson, l ilugh: Tlze I-'r-incij)Ipsof I;~rt$~fli~(q, 65 Jones, Prior, 175 Jortes, Williarn, 98 ]ozmzcry to llzr kYerst(Yu), 137, 139-140 Julius Caesar, 68-70 Tung, Carl, 205 Kaal Kadosh Nidhe Israel, 168 Ke~epersof fl7r Game 98 Kosmas: Uflivr~~ul CI1rislibirr 'Pt)f~qqruj)hy,124 Labrador, 144 I.,adino language, 164 Ldrtda, Diego de: A~roitrtlofllzc Afl~~irs t ~ Ii~~iif~lri, f S8 Land use Bible as justitication, 9S, 94 conservation, 97-98 crops, 94 fire and, 95-96 Languages Alabarnd language, 195-1 94 Arawakan languages, 16 Choctaw language, 194 Coushatta language, 194 Ewe language, 161 Ladino language, 166 Muskogean languages, 194 Nahitall language, 63 Quechua language, 104

L'Anse aux Meadows, 145 Las Casas, Bartoisme de, 17, 18-19,23-24,41, 58-59 Lavlen, Rachael Faucitt, 168 Leclferc, Charles, 78-79 Le Druit dess