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European View of the American Indigenous People

Clara Bosworth

HIEU 2071

Erin Lambert

12/2/19

European View of the American Indigenous People

For much of the 16th century, European nations were focused on the exploration of the newly discovered Americas. Immediately after the discovery, Europeans were fascinated by the New World, in awe of its marvels, and wanted to gather as much information on this new land as they could. However, this fascination quickly shifted to greed as the Europeans in the New World believed themselves to be superior to the Native Americans. This mindset gave way to Europeans taking what didn’t belong to them and mistreating the Native Americans simply because they thought they could. Back in Europe, the spread of information about the New World and its people was facilitated by Theodore De Bry’s use of the Gutenberg Printing Press. The widespread of mass-produced images allowed even the illiterate to join in on the conversation about the New World. While the spread of such information was arguably a good thing, many of De Bry’s images were biased or not completely accurate, considering De Bry never visited the Americas himself. Specifically, De Bry’s depiction of the American indigenous people was often derogatory and exaggerated, portraying the Native Americans as far less civilized and more barbaric than Europeans. During the exploration of the New World in the 16th century, De Bry’s depiction of Native Americans and their cannibalistic behavior advanced the idea of European superiority over the indigenous people, which carried into European treatment and enslavement of the Native American people for years to come.

Theodore De Bry was greatly successful and greatly influential. He was undoubtedly talented at etching, and his works are hugely important in understanding the history of European exploration of the New World. However, as Theodore De Bry never visited the Americas himself, his images must be approached with the knowledge that there is likely inaccuracy due to De Bry’s incomplete comprehension of the New World. As viewers, we must also consider the time in which De Bry was creating his etchings and the audience for whom he was creating for. De Bry’s artwork of the Native Americans heightened the ideas of European superiority that were already in place. Ancient philosophical views such as Aristotle’s Zonal Geography and Hippocrates’s Four Humours were fundamental beliefs in Europe at the time, and De Bry’s works reinforced them. Aristotle believed that the world was split into “Zones” and that much of the New World was in the so called “Torrid Zone” where human beings shouldn’t have been able to live. Therefore, Europeans believed that the indigenous people must not be fully human. Additionally, Europeans believed that the body was made up of four humors – blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm – and that the Native Americans were made up of different humors because they were biologically inferior. Thus, De Bry was producing his artwork in a time where no one thought to question the authority of ancient Greek philosophers, so his illustrations were widely accepted and supported.

De Bry’s vivid depictions of Native American cannibalism came from the accounts of Hans Staden, a German soldier and explorer who was captured by the Tupinambá people of Brazil on his second voyage to the Americas. Staden managed to avoid being killed by the Tupi people and eventually escape captivity and return to Europe, where he wrote about his encounter with the indigenous people of Brazil and gave vivid depictions of their cannibalism and barbarianism.

Staden described in great detail the rituals that take place when an enemy is killed and eaten, explaining that “the women seize the body at once and carry it to the fire where they scrape off the skin, making the flesh quite white, and stopping up the fundament with a piece of wood so that nothing may be lost. Then a man cuts up the body, removing the legs above the knee and the arms at the trunk, whereupon the four women seize the four limbs and run with them round the huts, making a joyful cry. After this they divide the trunk among themselves, and devour everything that can be eaten” (Staden). Staden also explains that the Tupinambá people did not participate in cannibalism out of hunger, but out of “great hate and jealousy” for their enemies (Staden). According to Staden, not only do the Tupi eat their prisoners, but they “give him a woman who attends to him and has intercourse with him”, and “if the woman conceives, the child is maintained until it is fully grown. Then, when the mood seizes them, they kill and eat it” (Staden). These accounts highlight the barbarity and savagery of the indigenous people in the New World, which fed directly back into the idea of European superiority. De Bry used Hans Staden’s writings to inspire his etchings, which spread to people all over Europe.

While some historians believe that the accounts of cannibalism were invented or exaggerated, others believe that Staden’s accounts of his captivity are important resources for studying South American indigenous people. Whether or not Staden’s tale is factual, his account and De Bry’s visualization of it nonetheless supported the idea in place that the Native American people were far less civilized than Europeans and were simply lacking in humanity. This conception of Native Americans as “less human” than Europeans was used as justification for the enslavement of American indigenous people for years to come.

History often portrays the colonizing of America as hardworking European men building new lives for themselves across the Atlantic. What history glosses over, however, is how heavily the colonists depended on enslaved Native American labor. The Native American Slave Trade, like Atlantic Slave Trade, was widespread and horrific. Between 1492 and 1880, millions of Natives Americans were forced into slavery by colonial Europeans. In Southern New England, about 40 percent of the Indian population was enslaved. The Native American Slave trade was started by Columbus, who, needing money to pay for his voyages, shipped Native Americans back to Spain to be sold into the already existing slave markets. From there, the Spanish continued to force the Native American people into slavery, and the English colonists followed suit. Native Americans were often shipped to the Caribbean where they would face extremely harsh labor and treatment on plantations, and many others worked inside households. Many still remained in North and South America and were forced into physical labor for the profit of their European owners. The Native American Slave Trade led to the rapid dwindling of the Native American population as many were killed because of being overworked and disease, but nonetheless, the colonization of the New World was largely due to the labor of enslaved Native Americans, although we hardly hear that side of the story in our history.

There are two images depicting the enslavement of Native Americans in the early years of the New World that can be used to further the understanding of American indigenous enslavement. The first image, by Theodore De Bry, shows many Native Americans working on a sugar plantation. There are over a dozen slaves harvesting, carrying, and processing the sugar cane, wearing nothing but rags around their waists. The work done on a sugar plantation was not easy: it was tedious, hard work, that required the enslaved people to be working outside for countless hours in a day. The second image, also by De Bry, shows Native American slaves presenting mined ore to their European masters. The Europeans sit on high chairs, well dressed, in the shade, while the Native Americans are hunched over in front of them, again hardly clothed, working out in the heat. We can see slaves in the background piled into the mine shafts, mining materials for the benefit of Europeans. Both of these images illustrate the brutal labor that the Native Americans were forced into during the colonization of the New World, which came about because of the thought that Native Americans were less human than Europeans, and therefore it was okay for them to be treated as such.

The horrible mistreatment of Native Americans was called into question by Bartolome de Las Casas in 1542, who left his encomienda to become a monk. As the owner of an encomienda with enslaved Native American labor of his own, Las Casas saw a lot of flaws in the slave trade, including the belief that Europeans shouldn’t be enslaving other Christians. Most Native Americans were “Christian” because of the mass baptisms that the European people forced on the American Indigenous people, and Las Casas saw a great flaw in enslaving fellow people of God. Las Casas wrote about his beliefs, pleading to Prince Felipe of Spain for the freedom of the “peaceable, humble, and meek Indian peoples, who offend no person” and are “innocently simple” (De Las Casas). Las Casas uses an analogy to describe the Spanish taking advantage of the Native Americans, saying that the Natives are like sheep, and Spaniards like “fierce wolves and tigers and lions” who “see fit to dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the Indians by all manner of cruelty”. He argues that they are “a most tender and effeminate people” who are patient, submissive, and quiet towards the Spaniards. Las Casas describes the treatment of the Native Americans by the Europeans as “the hardest, harshest, and most heinous bondage to which men or beasts might ever be bound into.” Las Casas pleads that the Prince can see the horrible and treacherous things that the Spanish are doing to the Native Americans which is against the will of God. This is very important because up until this point, no one questioned the fundamental belief that Europeans held that the Native Americans were anything other than lowly savages, and that there was nothing wrong with enslaving them and forcing them into labor.

Theodore De Bry was undoubtedly influential in Europe when everyone was hungry for knowledge regarding the New World. De Bry’s specific depictions of the Native American’s cannibalism was especially influential in the way that Europeans saw themselves in comparison to the American indigenous people, and in the way that Europeans treated the American indigenous people for centuries. De Bry’s pieces of interest were inspired by Hans Staden’s account of his captivity, which described in detail the rituals of cannibalism that Staden witnessed in his time as a captive of the Tupinambá people of Brazil. De Bry’s illustrations of Staden’s narrative helped solidify the idea that the Native American people were uncivilized savages who weren’t as human as the Europeans. This idea justified the terrible treatment and enslavement of the indigenous people in the Americas until the Native American population dwindled, and the Europeans had to look elsewhere for labor. The Native American Slave Trade was finally seen for what it was by Bartolome Las Casas, who was the first European to advocate for Native American rights. Las Casas was the first to argue against Theodore De Bry, Hans Staden, and every other European who believed that the Native Americans were less than the Europeans.

DMU Timestamp: November 21, 2019 20:25





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