indigenous peoples:
III.
About and by the indians of Mexico
The systematic study of foreign cultures by the ethnographers of the ancient world ceased to exist after the fall of the Roman empire. The European discovery of America brought about a renewed tradition of interest in foreign peoples, and many explorers carefully recorded what they saw in their encounters with the Indians. This body of information was limited by obvious handicaps such as the language problem and the lack of sufficient time to inquire in depth about customs and institutions. A major improvement was to take place after the arrival of twelve Franciscan friars in New Spain in the spring of 1524.
Cortés had asked the emperor to send these twelve apostles with the purpose of beginning a campaign to indoctrinate the Indians into the Christian faith, a spiritual conquest that would complement the military conquest. The twelve set out upon their task immediately and they eventually exerted a considerable influence on the authorities in defending the Indians against abuses by the white colonists. As a result of their educational efforts, the friars were also instrumental in the development of a new kind of historiography in Mexico. Several schools for the instruction of the Indians started functioning soon after the conquest. Some of the students reached a considerable level of education, especially those mestizos and Indians of the noble class who attended the prestigious Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco near Mexico City (founded in 1536), whose curriculum included the solid study of Latin. Among the disciplines of Western culture that the students acquired was historiography, the techniques of which they applied to the study of their own region or the pre-Hispanic nations.
III.1. Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Madrid, 1829-1830.
Sahagun (ca.1500-1590) went to Mexico in 1529 as a Franciscan missionary, never to return to Spain in his long life. He soon acquired a mastery of the Nahuatl language, and at the age of fifty-seven began to collect data on Aztec culture by sending a questionnaire to hundreds of Indians, an unheard of method which anticipated the practices of modern ethnologists. The result of his endeavors was the most complete ethnological study on Mexico produced in his time, all the more remarkable because in order to be as precise as possible Sahagün wrote it originally in Nahuatl and then translated it with numerous linguistic comments into Spanish.
Sahagün’s Historia remained in manuscript form until the early nineteenth century, when it was published by Carlos María Bustamante (Madrid, 1829-1830), and by Lord Kingsborough in his Antiquities of Mexico. Today’s scholars consider it indispensable for the study of Aztec culture.
III.2. Diego de Landa. Relation des choses de Yucatan. Paris, 1864.
Landa (1524-1579) was one of the first Franciscan missionaries in the Yucatan peninsula, where he became bishop of Mérida in 1573. Landa has been both indicted and praised for his actions toward the Mayas. On the one hand, he ordered many Indian manuscripts destroyed for fear they could be used in pagan rites; on the other, he was a devoted protector of the Indians and a diligent student of Mayan culture, the language of which he knew well. The Relation deals with the Spanish discovery and conquest of Yucatan seen from the Indian perspective. It is also a well-informed survey of Maya history, beliefs, and customs, for which he used Indian informants. Of special importance is his study of Maya hieroglyphics and the calendar, which is the basis for all scholarly studies produced since.
The only surviving manuscript from Landa is a 1616 partial copy that was found at the Academia de la Historia in Madrid by Abbé Charles-Etienne de Braseur de Bourbourg, who published it for the first time in his own French translation.
III.3. Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc. Crónica Mexicana. Mexico, 1878.
Alvarado Tezozomoc (ca.1519-ca.1599) was a mestizo of double high lineage, the son of Diego de Alvarado, a family of illustrious conquistadors, and Francisca de Motecuzoma, the daughter of emperor Montezuma II. His Crónica mexicana exalts the splendor of Aztec culture and deals with the history of that nation from the end of the fourteenth century until the arrival of Cortés in 1519. Alvarado Tezozomoc used a variety of written Nahuatl sources, which is reflected in the style of his prose. When he translates from poems and songs, his work has a poetic tone; when his information comes from old pictures, his style assumes a more descriptive mode.
The Crónica mexicana remained in manuscript form until the nineteenth century, when it was published in Spanish, English, Italian, and French editions.
III.4. Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar. Informe contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatan. Madrid, 1639.
Sánchez de Aguilar (1555-1648) belonged to two illustrious families of conquistadors–his grandfather was one of the twelve founders of Mérida. After getting a higher degree in theology at the University of Mexico, Sanchez served as priest in several parishes in Yucatan and as dean of the Mérida cathedral. He later went to Spain where he presented this Informe, written in both Latin and Spanish. Sánchez contends, as did Landa, that idolatry was still pervasive among the Maya and was not being sufficiently repressed by the civilian authorities. He was of the opinion that the Spanish generally underestimated the capacity of the Indians to properly understand the Christian religion, and hence were less vigorous than they should be to eradicate paganism.
III.5. Diego López de Cogolludo. Historia de Yucathán. Madrid, 1688.
López (ca.1612-1665) was a Franciscan missionary. He went to the New World in 1634 and spent the rest of his life in Yucatan, where he learned the Mayan language. The first three chapters of the Historia deal with the civil history of the Yucatan peninsula, whose people, the Maya, were conquered by the Spanish in three long campaigns between 1527 and 1545. Chapter four contains a thorough description of the land, the customs and the beliefs of the Mayan people, whom López thought were descended from the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. The remaining six chapters are dedicated to the history of the Franciscan Order’s progress in converting and instructing the Indians, and are written in the laudatory tone typical of religious history (see section seven).
indigenous peoples
IV.
The Land of the Inca: The Conquest of Peru
The long and arduous process of discovery and eventual Spanish domination of the large territory of the Inca Empire, was due largely to the determination of Francisco Pizarro, who in the course of seven years led three expeditions to that area. The third one, which began in 1531, finally reached the heart of the empire, which at the time was torn by political dissension. Using the strategy Cortés had followed, Pizarro audaciously seized the Inca Atahualpa in Cajamarca, thus depriving the state of its head. The military campaign ended a few months after the capture, when Spanish troops entered Cuzco in November 1533. Pizarro was able to send a rich treasure to Emperor Charles V, and Europeans quickly came to look upon Perú as a paradise with unlimited quantities of precious metals. However, Perú was soon to be the tragic setting for both Indian revolts and internal warfare among the conquistadors for some twenty years. In time, the name Perú acquired a dual association, a land of both splendor and tragedy.
Historical writing about Perú began with soldier chroniclers whose main concern was to narrate the events of the conquest. Once the conquest had been accomplished, interest in the immediate events merged with increased attention to the study of ancient Perú itself. As in the case of Mexico, a third kind of historical writing quickly followed, in which the authors were partly or completely Indian, and thus managed to offer a view of both Inca and contemporary Perú from a perspective other than the Spanish.
IV.1. Libro ultimo del summario delle Indie Occidentali. Venice, 1534.
This account is the first published report on the conquest of Perú. It has been attributed to Cristóbal de Mena, a captain in Pizarro’s army who arrived in Spain in December 1533 with news of the conquest. It is written from a soldier’s point of view in a personal tone similar to that of a modern journalist’s eyewitness report and manages to capture the tense atmosphere of the conquest.
The account was first published in Seville in 1534, and in the same year an Italian translation appeared in Venice. A French translation with a map of Perú was published in 1545, but it was not until 1625 that an English abstract was included in Purchas’s Pilgrimes.
IV.2. Nicolao de Albenino. Verdadera relación de lo sussedido en los reynos y provincias del Perú. Seville, 1549.
Very little is known about Albenino (b. 1514?), other than that he was an Italian exile from Florence, where he had been associated with the Medici family. In June of 1548 he wrote a private letter about the most recent developments during the Perúvian civil war–the arrival in Perú of Viceroy Nuñez Vela to pacify the country and his defeat and death at the hands of the rebel Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco’s brother; the war between Pizarro and captain Diego Centeno; and finally, the successful campaign by the new governor, Pedro de la Gasca, who put an end to Gonzalo Pizarro’s rebellion. The letter was privately addressed to Fernán Xuárez, a churchman living in Seville, who upon realizing the importance of the news it contained, gave it immediately to the press.
Albenino made no pretense that he was writing history, and in fact his letter was quickly forgotten. And yet, because of the timing of its publication it circulated widely, very much like a modern magazine.
IV.3. Pedro de Cieza de León. Parte primera de la chrónica del Perú. Seville, 1553.
Undoubtedly, the foremost soldier-chronicler of Perú was Cieza de León (1518-1554). As a soldier he accompanied La Gasca in his campaign against Gonzalo Pizarro and took careful notes on all the events he witnessed. After the end of the civil war, he traveled extensively in order to collect information on both the conquest and the Inca world, with the clear intent of writing the first major history of Perú. He managed to publish only the first part of his work in Seville, which is a thorough description of the land and its peoples, and includes the first documented descriptions of Inca cities and their customs.
Cieza de León’s work was a major success and made him instantly famous. It was reprinted in three separate editions, and an Italian translation. The first English edition, entitled The seventeen years travels of Peter de Cieza, appeared in 1709. Parts II, III, and IV of the Chronica survived in manuscript form and were known to early historians, but they have been published only in the last two centuries.
IV.4. Agustín de Zárate. Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú. Antwerp, 1555.
In 1543 Charles V sent Agustín de Zárate (b. 1514) to Perú along with Blasco Nüñez Vela, the first viceroy, to oversee finances. In 1545 Zárate returned to Spain with a collection of personal notes and other documents about the civil war. His history, divided into seven chapters, begins with the Spanish discovery of Perú and ends with the death of Gonzalo Pizarro and the restoration of royal authority by Governor Pedro de la Gasca. Aware of the dangers involved in writing about such recent and controversial matters, Zárate expressed a reluctance to publish his history during his lifetime, but a manuscript copy of it was read by Prince Phillip, the future King Philip II of Spain, who liked it so much that he ordered its publication.
Zárate’s Historia was well received, and in 1577 it was reprinted in Seville. An Italian translation published in 1563 and an English translation published in 1581 are proof of its quick popularity outside of Spain.
IV.5. Garcilaso de la Vega. Commentarios reales . . . de los Yncas. Lisbon, 1609.
A mestizo of double nobility, Garcilaso (1539-1616), also known as “the Inca,” was the son of a Spanish captain who belonged to a distinguished family and an Inca princess. He grew up in Cuzco, where he acquired a Renaissance education in Latin and Spanish as well as direct exposure to Quechua language and culture. In 1560 he left Perú never to return. For many years he served as a captain in Phillip II’s army in Italy, but later he settled in Córdoba, where he dedicated his life to study and writing and became a renowned Humanist. The Commentarios was the first major history of pre-Columbian Perú that was actually published. Garcilaso’s cultural syncretism emerges in his vision of Inca culture as a sustained heroic expansion similar to that of the Roman Empire–the goal was to civilize the territory around it, a process that culminated in the providential arrival of Europeans and Christianity.
The success of the Commentarios quickly established its author as a major historian in Europe. French editions were published in 1633 and 1658, and the first English edition appeared in 1688. A second volume dealing with the Spanish conquest and the civil wars, was published posthumously in 1617.
Exhibition Exhibition text written by Angel Delgado-Gomez;
installed by Susan Danforth.
in the reading room from MAY 2, 2010, to July 31, 2010.