Destruction of cultures

"On Savage Shores

By Caroline Dodds Pennock

(Knopf, 302 pages, $32.50)

When Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies in October 1492, he laid claim to the islands in the name of his patrons, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, even though he was aware that the islands were already occupied. The next month, his men captured some 25 of these native islanders. Columbus planned to bring them to Spain, where they could be converted to Christianity and learn Spanish, becoming bilingual interpreters to help advance Spain's imperial agenda. Only six or seven of the captives survived the journey, yet Columbus nevertheless boasted of his actions. In his mind, he hauled the indigenous away from a savage culture and into civilization.

As Caroline Dodds Pennock maintains in her imaginative and passionately argued book, savagery existed in the eye of the beholder. Columbus thought that the Western Hemisphere would be an excellent source of raw materials and enslaved bodies. Indigenous people, he believed, would benefit from receiving the Gospel, a necessary step on the path to civilization. But the West Indies' native inhabitants, known as the Tainos, did not share his views. One after another of those who went to Europe believed they had left civilization and landed, as Ms. Pennock puts it in her title, "on savage shores."

Ms. Pennock, who teaches history at the University of Sheffield, is a renowned authority on the history of the Aztecs. Here she expands her geographical focus, moving north and south from Mesoamerica to look at Native Americans as diverse as Inuit from Nunavut and Incans from the Andes, many of whom shared the unfortunate fate of being kidnapped by Europeans and taken eastward across the Atlantic. Some sailed as diplomats eager to establish relations in European courts and castles. But most, like those nabbed by Columbus, did not choose their fate.

Histories of what is commonly still called the "age of discovery" often convey the story of intercultural contact from the perspective of Europeans. That is not surprising, since the vast majority of evidence that scholars use was produced by European observers. As many historians have noted, such evidence privileges the view of these visitors. To make matters worse, many extant reports published in the 15th and 16th centuries conformed to existing literary conventions. Artists altered the look of some indigenous subjects to make them fit European ideals of human beauty or notions about "primitive" peoples. Writers dwelled on the unsavory aspects of the cultures of the Western Hemisphere to justify efforts to claim territory. Native Americans needed Europeans -- so the explorers and their supporters argued -- if they were to become civilized.

Ms. Pennock, drawing on sources in multiple languages, reveals that such evidence often distorts what happened. The indigenous who were captured and enslaved saw through the invaders' lies. Even those treated more fairly objected to their circumstances. Take, for example, Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui, the daughter of the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro and the Inca princess Quispe Sisa. Even though Francisca came from powerful and wealthy parents, imperial authorities in Peru dispatched her to the town of Trujillo in Spain to reduce political rivalry in the Andes. She traveled to her new home with a Spanish governess tending to her needs. When she arrived, she came to the attention of an imprisoned uncle, who soon married her. She spent the next decade confined to a fortress. She had five children there, three of whom survived to adulthood. Eventually, after her husband's death, she remarried and moved to Madrid. There she pursued a legal claim, eager to gain the wealth owed to her as the daughter of one of Spain's most illustrious -- and, one could add, brutal -- conquistadors.

Francisca's story makes a crucial point: Indigenous Americans in Europe, at least those who were not enslaved, often studied how their new communities operated. Some embraced their marginal status, mastering nepantla, the Nahuatl word for the "in-between space," to become powerful intercultural brokers. Others had less-privileged vantage points, including individuals paraded as spectacles around London, Paris and Madrid, a phenomenon so common that Shakespeare referred to it in "The Tempest." But even those who were forced to perform for audiences became shrewd observers of the Europeans in front of them. 

They bore witness to gross economic inequities and the cruel treatment of the powerless. Many, like the three Tupinambas that the philosopher Michel de Montaigne met in France, concluded that the real savages were those who clothed themselves in claims of moral superiority while tolerating daily abuse of the less fortunate.

Ms. Pennock's book operates on two levels: historical and ethical. Deep familiarity with the archival record allows her to tell the stories of individuals who may seem familiar to some specialists, such as Manteo and Wanchese -- Algonquians who, as the author notes, were "probably convinced rather than coerced" to sail to London from Carolina's Outer Banks in 1584 and returned the following year as crucial participants in the effort to establish a colony. But many more will be unknown even though they have been hiding in plain sight in the chronicles of famous explorers like Jacques Cartier and Martin Frobisher.

There is more here than recounting tales now four to five centuries old. Throughout the book, we are told that names and words matter. 

We do not know the identities of countless thousands of Native Americans "who have been historically oppressed, marginalised and insulted," the author writes, because of "colonial attempts to erase Indigenous identities, and to obliterate their languages and beliefs, through deliberate cultural genocide." 

Through Ms. Pennock's efforts we now know more about exiles like Arnaq and Kalicho, Inuit whose bodies lay in the burial ground of St. Stephen's Church in Bristol, England, and Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui, whose sculpted face stares out at those who visit the Palace of the Conquest in Trujillo. They perished far from home, on shores they found savage.

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Mr. Mancall is a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California." [1]

1. Braving the Old World
Mancall, Peter C.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 01 Mar 2023: A.15.