Spanish Chroniclers Research Articles

Expanding Ethnicity in Sixteenth-Century Anahuac: Ideologies of Ethnicity and Gender in the Nation-Building Process

It is common knowledge that ethnicity has played an important role in defining nations. This was certainly true during the sixteenth century when Spain and Portugal were expanding their empires and creating subclasses of people who were of non-European origin. Unfortunately, because the terms ethnicity and nation both evoke multiple meanings, it is difficult to understand the relationship between these two categories. Happily the twentieth century has fostered much research on the nation and the impact of ethnicity upon it. 1 Furthermore there has been much progress in the task of decolonizing what Adorno has called "historical literary scholarship" (Adorno, Guaman Poma 3). Others such as Pastor (3) have advanced techniques for "demythifying discourses." Since Gibson, a path has been created which has shown us how to treat native and mestizo 2 [End Page 419] sources with the same dignity and respect as was previously afforded to the Spanish chroniclers. 3 Recent theory on transculturation, heterogeneity, hybridization and multicultural awareness shed light on the process which occurs when men and women of different ethnicities come together. 4 This research can help us to understand more objectively the complex "shock" which occurred when Spain and Anahuac (the Aztecs) were violently thrown together to build a new society. In the pages that follow I will attempt a rereading of a number of sixteenth-century chronicles (plus one from the seventeenth). I will offer a step by step analysis of how the workings of mestizaje took place and how the roles of men and women differed in this process.

"EnCountering" Colonial Latin American Indian Chronicles: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's History of the "New" World

"EnCountering" Colonial Latin American Indian Chronicles:Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's History of the "New" World Ralph Bauer (bio) If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are waiting for me on that nearby beach, I'm screwed. Christopher Columbus, in Alejo Carpentier's El arpa y la sombra Encountering Guaman Poma: A Critical Perspective In 1908, the German anthropologist Richard Pietschmann discovered in an archive in Copenhagen an early-seventeenth-century manuscript consisting of nearly 1,200 pages of narrative written in Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara, as well as nearly 400 drawings. The author identified himself as Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (b. around 1535), son of Guaman Mallqui de Ayala, a person of prominence in the provincial Peruvian Yarovilca culture, and Curi Ocllo, the daughter of Tupac Inka Yupanqui, the tenth of the twelve rulers of the Inka dynasty. The text is entitled El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno [First new chronicle and good government] (see figure 1) and had apparently been written between 1587 and 1613. It is a history of pre-Columbian Peru, the Spanish conquest, and the subsequent colonial regime, presented in the Spanish tradition of the crónicas de indias (histories of America). Unlike most writers of Spanish chronicles about the conquest, however, the author indicts the abuses of the colonial regime and insists that America had a legitimate history before the conquest, only recorded, as it were, in another language. The author therefore announces that his sources were the quipos, the colored knotted chords with which the Inkas had recorded important events, as well as the contents of Andean oral traditions—the "memories and accounts of the old Indians" (I: viii).1 Pietschmann, aware of the significance of the manuscript, immediately began a modern edition of the text but unfortunately died before its completion. Nevertheless, Guaman Poma's "First New History" of Peru was subsequently published as a facsimile edition in Paris by the Institut d'Ethnologie in 1936 and has since been republished four times—in 1944 (La Paz), in two separate editions in 1980 (Caracas and Mexico), and in Lima (1993).2 [End Page 274] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Title page, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Unlike Anglo Americans, Spanish American literary historians have long counted texts written by Indians (or mestizos) among their national "classics," such as those of the Inka Garcilaso de la Vega, the mestizo son of a Spanish conqueror and an Inka princess, whose early-seventeenth-century works were [End Page 275] published during his lifetime in Spain and have since been regarded as pivotal texts in the emergence of a Latin American literary expression.3 Guaman Poma's chronicle, by contrast, which was not published during his lifetime despite the author's apparent wish to do so, was lost in the oblivion of the archive for nearly 300 years.4 Since its discovery in the twentieth century, however, this fascinating text has excited an enormous amount of attention from Spanish American literary historians, who have grown increasingly aware of Latin America's "postcolonial" and "subaltern" cultural heritage.5 In the United States, of course, students of Native American literature have hitherto altogether ignored Guaman Poma's counterhistory because of cultural, institutional, and ideological reasons. Thus, there had not been any English translations of Guaman Poma's chronicle until Christopher Dilke's drastically abbreviated edition published as Letter to a King: A Picture-History of the Inca Civilization in 1978, and it still awaits a complete scholarly translation to this day. Although Native Americanists have frequently been interested in texts that originated outside the national borders of the United States (mostly Canada) but were written in what today constitutes the anglophone world, we have generally not been very attentive to American Indian texts outside anglophone culture.6 This is partially due, of course, to the fact that most of us interested in Native American literature today have our institutional affiliations in English or American studies departments. Perhaps more importantly, however, there has been a lingering U.S. (proto)nationalist bias in our understanding of the idea of "America" when we are talking about "Native American literature."7 While...

A Native American Technology Transfer: The Diffusion of Potato

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) deserves merit as one of the most important foods of the world, as well as a notable example of dissemination to the rest of the world of a crop domesticated solely by native South Americans. It was unknown to Europeans until the onset of exchanges between the two hemispheres that commenced after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Even though samples of potato are thought to have arrived in Spain around 1570, and Spanish chroniclers were writing of its huge contribution to the sustenance of Andean civilizations even before it was introduced to Europe as a botanical curiosity, the potato remained a poorly understood plant for nearly a century. These writings were in many cases not available until modern times, long after potato became a staple on the continents to which it was introduced. An example of this is the large tome of Don Felipe Huaman Poma de Ayala, written in 1584–1614, entitled Nueva Cronica y Buen Gobierno. This was one of the most detailed narratives of life in Peru after the establishment of Spanish rule. The author, a Peruvian native raised and educated by Catholic clergy, sent his manuscript to the Spanish king as a 1400-page document complete with numerous sketches (Fig. 1). However, it was little noticed and probably never seen by the king, for it was taken by the Danish ambassador to Denmark where it was completely forgotten for three centuries, until it was discovered in the Royal Library of Denmark in 1908. Certainly, the strange journey of this most informative record prevented Europeans from being properly informed of the potential of the potato, which remained a plant enigma all too long. It described potato cultivation and the importance of it as a foodstuff in the context of the agriculture of the day. The author was born before the Spanish conquest and the existence and ingestion of potato was neither strange nor noteworthy to him; thus, he listed it along with other crops. Several sketches depicted the planting and harvesting of potato and removal of the harvest to storage buildings, and allusions were made to different cultivars and their particular place in the agricultural production system (Fig. 1). Jose de Acosta, who traveled in South America from 1571 to 1576, wrote:

Epilepsy and its treatment in the ancient cultures of America.

Epilepsy was a well-recognized disease in pre-Columbian America, as appears from the reports of the Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century. Both the Aztecs and the Incas strongly associated epilepsy with magic and religion, which is evident from their ideas about the pathogenesis and treatment of the disease. Apart from treatment of epilepsy by magic means, the Incas and especially the Aztecs used in addition a large number of botanic medicines; the use of these medicines probably had an empiric nature.

A History of Salmon and People in the Central Valley Region of California

ABSTRACT Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) formerly occurred in great abundance within the California Central Valley drainage and were a correspondingly important part of the subsistence economics and cultures of the indigenous peoples of that region. Salmon and other fishery resources on the Central Valley floor were part of a resource base that enabled resident Native American groups to attain some of the highest population densities to occur among the non-agricultural native societies of North America. Indirect estimates of aboriginal harvests prior to Euro-American settlement of the region indicate that the native fishers may have exploited the Central Valley salmon resource on a level comparable to that later attained by the immigrant Euro-American fishers of the late ninteenth century commercial fishery. The salmon resource also figured, to varying degrees, in native interactions— from trade item to causa belli. Among the last intact native groups in California reliant on a salmon-based subsistence economy were the McCloud River Wintu—a people who were instrumental in the successful operation of the U.S. Fish Commission egg-collecting station on the lower McCloud River that supplied salmon eggs for shipments to U.S. Eastern states and overseas countries. Prior to 1850, mention of salmon was made perodically by Spanish chroniclers and by European and (U.S.) American observers who traveled through the region. Sustained harvests of salmon by Euro-Americans did not begin until the California Gold Rush period, starting in 1848. The commercial salmon fishery of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and Delta region was one of the earliest major industries of California during the period of (U.S.) American settlement. The fishery frequently attained harvest levels of 4 to 10 million pounds (1.8 to 4.5 million kg) per year during the highly productive early decades of operation (1870s to 1900s), and it contributed substantially to the regional economy. Despite the general decline of Pacific salmon resources in California and the Pacific Northwest region since the early period of commercial exploitation, chinook salmon have continued to contribute significantly to the state and local economies in recent decades. Aside from its importance as a food commodity, other aspects of the value of the salmon resource (viz., biological, recreational, and aesthetic benefits) are being increasingly recognized. The chinook salmon resource of the California Central Valley — having provided material and amenity benefits to both native and immigrant peoples for so long in the past — may yet continue to fulfill the needs of humans in the future if we of the present make it so.

The Cultural Image of the Prehistoric and Early Historic Island Caribs: The Controversy Revisited

The image of the Island Caribs as a populous and fierce cannibalistic people, ethnically distinct from the Tainos farther north, was promulgated by Columbus and the first Spaniards to encounter them in the islands of the New World. This view was enhanced and supported by later sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers and historians whose information, though second and third hand and frequently exaggerated, nevertheless added weight at the time to the initial first-hand reports of the Spanish explorers. As more European nations entered the scene (primarily English, French, and Dutch) in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the simplistic Spanish image of the Caribs gave way to a more complex and varied picture. The writers of this period, drawing largely from observations of the subdued and culturally altered remnants of the Island Caribs, put forward an image that ran the gamut from a gentle misunderstood noble savage to the fierce cannibal depicted by the Spanish. During the nineteenth and particularly in recent years of this century there have been concerted efforts in ethnological, archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic studies of the Island Caribs and their culture. The thrust of these studies has been to determine the origin (and name), population size, dates of movement or appearance in the islands, geographical confines, and the true nature of the people and their culture. Here again the information from these additional disciplines to the image supplied by the earlier historical documents seems to raise more questions than provide substantial answers. But answers have been forthcoming from these recent scholars that are in sharp contrast to the image of the Island Caribs voiced by the early Spaniards who encountered them. In scholarly and comprehensive studies, Fewkes,l Loven,2 Taylor,3 Arens,4 Hulme,5 Sale,6 Boucher,? Hulme and

The Spanish and English Chronicles in King James's and Sir George Buc's Dossiers on the Anglo-Spanish Peace Negotiations

T he Anglo-Spanish peace settlement of 1604/5 put an end to the hostilities that had been straining the financial resources of both England and Spain in the last two decades of the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Philip II. The political and religious implications of this historic rapprochement have been amply addressed by historians, but the cultural aspect of the reconciliation between the two hostile nations, which had been demonizing each other in vitriolic pamphlets, has not been given due attention. The present article seeks to throw some light on the cultural dimension of the rapprochement by tracing the response to the publications recording the celebrations of the peace in both countries, particularly the interest reflected in dossiers kept by King James and Sir George Buc, the Deputy Master of the Revels.1 In both countries, the negotiations with the former enemy fostered official documents chronicling the sumptuous celebrations imposed by the etiquettes of the two courts. Whereas the English publications were rather slow to appear, the Spanish court embarked in 1603 on a public campaign redolent of cultural selfrepresentation and self-assertion. The first such item published in Spain, the Relacidn muy verdadera del recibimientoyfiestas que se hizieron en Inglaterra a Don Juan de Tassis, Conde de Villamedianaz,2 records the resumption of the diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1603 and the subsequent court festivities. It was followed by La segundaparte de la embaxada de Don Juan de Tassis3 and the

:Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century

:<i>Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century</i>

Aztec Knotted and Netted Capes

AbstractThe past two decades of research and debate in anthropology have shown how ethnocentric perspectives in methodology and interpretation have led to misinterpretations in ethnography and archaeology. This article contrasts Western and indigenous perceptions of ritual attire that marked the role and status of Aztec rulers and deities. Stimulated by inconsistent Spanish colonial descriptions of the emperors' xiuhtlalpilli “blue-knotted” cloaks, the study compares all of the relevant Nahuatl terms, contexts, and native-drawn images and analyzes these in the light of linguistic, technological, social, archaeological, pictorial, iconographic, textual, and ethnographic evidence. This contextual analysis of the primary data reveals the nature of Spanish misperceptions and the true structure of the indigenous clothing-symbol system. While Spanish chronicles are easily accessible and thus more heavily utilized, this study makes the point that only systematic assessment of Nahuatl terms, indigenous images, and contexts are fully dependable. Reliance on the native perspective and evidence allows new insights into pre-Hispanic categories and worldviews.

Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century

Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century

Poema de Fernan Gonzalez

This 13th-century narrative poem is an example of the epic in the style of the "mester de clericia". It is based on the deeds of Fernan Gonzales, the first Count of Castile, and is believed to have been composed by a cleric of the monastery of Arlanza. The poem was left incomplete, but the lacunae of the manuscript have been filled in by material from Spanish chronicles.

Spanish chronicles of the Indies: sixteenth century

Spanish chronicles of the Indies: sixteenth century

Poema de Fernan Gonzalez

This 13th-century narrative poem is an example of the epic in the style of the mester de clericia. It is based on the deeds of Fernan Gonzales, the first Count of Castile, and is believed to have been composed by a cleric of the monastery of Arlanza. The poem was left incomplete, but the lacunae of the manuscript have been filled in by material from Spanish chronicles.

Cultural identity and the ideologies of translation in sixteenth-century Europe: Italian prologues to Spanish chronicles of the new world

This [effect of the discovery of the New World on Renaissance Europe] is among the most difficult problems which face us, and it is one to which I can see no clear answer. Some work has been done, and much more could be done, on the printing and translation of books relating to America in comparison with those on other parts of the globe. But unless we can find more about their readership, the printing statistics, however valuable in themselves, afford only a certain indicator of a highly complex phenomenon.

The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas

Acknowledgments 1. The Mythic Dimensions of Inka History 2. The Pacariqtambo Origin Myth in the Spanish Chronicles 3. The Role of the Urban and Provincial Elite in Historicizing Inka Mythohistory 4. Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Dimensions for a Local Interpretation of the Inka Origin Myth 5. The Rituals and Ritual History of Divine Births and Boundaries 6. Conclusions Appendix: The Callapina Document Notes Bibliography Index

Pacariqtambo and the Mythical Origins of the Inca

In this study the Pacariqtambo origin myth of the Inca, as described in a number of different Spanish chronicles, is analyzed through examining archaeological data from the Province of Paruro (Department of Cuzco, Peru). The findings suggest that the rock outcrop of Puma Orco, located in the District of Pacariqtambo, may represent the Tambotoco of the Pacariqtambo origin myth, and that the nearby Inca ruins of Maukallaqta may have contained an oracle of the first mythical Inca, Manco Capac. It is suggested that these ruins were built by the ruling elite of Cuzco to commemorate their mythical progenitor and to legitimate their sacred status within Inca society.

History, Truth and Dialogue: Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (Bk XXXIII, Ch LIV)

Fernandez de Oviedo's concept of the making of history figures is one of the distinguishing characteristics of his Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, 1547, 1557). Living in the geographical and chronological center of the Spanish Conquest of the New World, Oviedo, as Charles V's official Court Chronicler, recorded the momentous events of the Spanish encounter with the New World as they occurred.1 History was being made by the Spaniards, and Oviedo was responsible for gathering information and compiling reports for a history of the New World, which would preserve authentic evidence of the Conquest. Because he lived in the midst of the history about which he wrote, Oviedo's accounts often lack the breadth of information and the perspective time can lend to the writing of history. Writing over a period of thirty years, however, enabled the Court Chronicler to gather new information about incidents he had already recorded and this led him to engage in a process of continual correction, expansion, and revision of the history. Yet more significant to the understanding of Oviedo's concept of history than his own geographical and chronological situation is his preoccupation with writing a truthful representation of historical events. His dedication to the idea of a history that would mirror, as closely as possible, men's actions as they actually occurred, as the omnipresent God would have witnessed them, helps to explain his use of multiple reports of a single incident.2 In keeping with the biblical model of using multiple representations to indicate the author's desire for accuracy, if new information contradicted a previous report, Oviedo often revised the account or wrote another version of it in order to see again the events he had recorded; this methodology, he hoped, would reveal the true nature of the moral and natural history of the Indies.3 The Spanish historian's concept of a truthful history becomes clearer when viewed in light of the intellectual currents and political ideology that influenced him. For example, Oviedo's early exposure to Italian humanism and the classical historian's moralizing tendency;4 the author's belief in Spain's destiny to establish a universal Catholic empire and, therefore, his belief in the need to testify to the validity of the Spanish Conquest; and the author's recent conversion to Erasmian illuminism (about 1525) and its alternative to the novels of chivalry, el libro de verdad (Bataillon 247),5 are all influences that inform Oviedo's historical criteria, which he often elaborates in prologues and passages that correct his own earlier accounts of the same event. One of the most famous sections of the Historia general devoted to revising previous accounts about the Conquest of Mexico is the dialogue between Oviedo and Juan Cano. Included in the narration on the Conquest of Mexico (Bk XXXIII of the Second Part), the dialogue is one of the concluding chapters of the Book (Ch LIV).6 Situated among an assortment of information from various sources, which includes Cortes's Relaciones and Antonio de Mendoza's letters, the colloquy reflects Oviedo's data-collecting methods and his inclusion of multiple reports about the same event in his history.7 Given the frequency with which the Spanish chronicler employs multiple accounts, one is not surprised at his return in Chapter LIV to material treated earlier in Chapters XIV-XV. Rather, what does catch our attention is the historian's use of a new

Psychology in Pre-Columbian Mexico

Aztec psychological thought is described in this paper. The Pre-Columbian world of the Aztecs was characterized by Spanish chroniclers as being as sophisticated in the sciences and medicine as anything found in Europe at the time of the conquest of Mexico. This knowledge included a belief structure about the development of personality and the way in which Aztec society socialized the person. Concepts of psychological equilibrium and well-being are also found within Aztec medicine. Psychological dysfunctions were identified by Aztec healers and "talking" therapies not unlike today's psychotherapeutic techniques could be found.

The Inka State in the Southern Highlands: State Administrative and Production Enclaves

The Inka State in the Southern Highlands: State Administrative and Production Enclaves

Hierarchy and Space in Incaic Social Organization

This paper was originally written for a symposium on Social Stratification in the Andes of the XLIst International Congress of Americanists, held in Mexico D.F. in 1974. A similar symposium at that Congress dealt with Social Stratification in PreSpanish Mesoamerica (Carrasco, Broda el al, 1976). A comparison of the Inca case to that of Mexico, especially that of Tenochtitlan, offers some striking differences. Whereas for Mexico there is a wealth of data on titles, ranks and offices and their associations to calendar, ritual and calpolli-organization - allowing, for the study of how a person could pass from one office and calpolli to another office and calpolli - the Andean data seem to be very meager on all these aspects. As it is hardly believable that an empire like that of the Incas did not have a well developed bureauracy together with its ritual expression, one reason for the failure to study this aspect of Andean culture might be a misunderstanding of the data. One aspect in which Andean culture differed strongly from the Mesoamerican one was its use of ancestral mummies and their cult. Spanish chroniclers and modern anthropologists understood the cult given by the Inca nobility more in terms of a spurious but believed Inca dynastic history, than in terms of a hierarchical system of mummies representing positions within a political and bureaucratic organization; this, notwithstanding the fact that our earliest chroniclers, who still could observe the mummy cult, did insist on the latter aspect. Mummies were less important for proving a genealogical relationship, than in dressing them up as part of a policy for establishing and reevaluating their political and hierarchical relationship. People could change their adherence from one mummy and its panaca or group of descendants to another, according to their interests and ambitions or possibilities. In short, Inca history is mostly a political myth and the hierarchical organization of the ancestral mummies gives us better data on Inca bureaucracy than on anything else. In this article the importance of two types of data concerning social stratification are presented that seem to offer the most promise for expansion in future research. The first type encompasses the ancestral cult system of the Inca royal dynasty; the second type is data on the classifications of local groups called Incas by privilege around Cuzco, or mitimaes around other cities, by way of occupational ranking. Both types of organization were interrelated by the Incas in a system of terms also used in kinship and in making local distinctions. The best way of checking this data in Cuzco is by way of the ceque system. The ancestral cult, as recorded for Cuzco, is only briefly indicated in documents for other parts of Peru. These documents will not be explored at this moment (See Zuidema 1973). Because this cult did not survive the Spanish conquest, how it worked can only be indicated by way of two personal life histories. The first is that of Atahuallpa, the last Inca