Study
Guide for Week 3
Assigned Textual and Visual Documents (Two texts and two images)
1. ANONYMOUS.
We have masked the identity of this author and are not providing any context except to say it is from roughly the time our course begins (in 1500ish). Click here for the document.
2. LAS CASAS,
Bartolome de.
Excerpts from In Defense of the Indians (circa 1548-1660; translated in 1974).
Bartolome de Las Casas was born in 1484 in Seville. His father was a small businessman who, in 1493, sailed with Columbus on his second voyage. When his father returned to Seville in 1498, he brought a Taino Amerindian to Bartolomé to be his servant. In 1502, at the age of 18, Las Casas made his first voyage to the West Indies. In Hispaniola, Las Casas received an encomienda for helping to quell Indian uprisings and was ordained a priest. By the second decade of the 16th century, some nine-tenths of the Amerindian population of Hispaniola had already been destroyed, and in 1510, Dominican priests arrived and began a campaign against mistreatment of Indians. Las Casas rejected their arguments. In 1514, however, Las Casas experienced a conversion to the Dominican position, freed his own Indians, and preached a sermon denouncing the exploitation of the Amerindians. This began Las Casas's career as an advocate for Amerindians, during which Las Casas wrote numerous works, designed utopian schemes for peaceful colonization, evangelized numerous tribal groups, advocated the use of slaves from Africa to relieve the burden on the Amerindian population (a position he subsequently denounced), and worked vigorously on both sides of the Atlantic in defense of Amerindian welfare. In 1544, Las Casas was appointed Bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Popular resistance to his social teachings made his tenure as bishop stormy and ineffective. Driven from Chiapas, he left the Americas in 1547, never to return. He continued his advocacy in Iberia until his death in 1566.
Your reading is from Las Casas's last significant moment on the public stage. In 1550, the Church denied Gines de Sepulveda the right to publish a treatise justifying war against the Indians. Sepulveda appealed the Church's decision on his manuscript, and Las Casas argued against his appeal. Sepulveda's presentation relied heavily on Aristotle's conception that hierarchy was natural. For Sepulveda, just as animals should obey humans, the body should obey the soul, women should obey men, children should obey adults, and Indians should obey Spaniards. In addition, Sepulveda argued that war against the Indians was justified because of the “barbaric” character of Indian society. Your reading is from Las Casas's response to these arguments.
To access the Las Casas reading on e-reserve, click here for excerpt 1, click here for excerpt 2, and click here for excerpt 3. (Please note: for excerpt 1, you should begin reading with the last paragraph on that page, which starts, "Now if we shall have shown..." and then continue to read through page 45, up to but not including the paragraph that begins, "This is what you....")
3. Stone Carving of Quetzalcoatl (ca. 1350-1521) from The Aztec Empire (2004). See image below.
Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) was worshipped as a deity throughout pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica and was notable for his wisdom and penance. When the Mexica migrated to central Mexico, they adopted Quetzalcoatl as one of their important deities. Quetzalcoatl had often been the patron-deity of rulers. Among the Mexica, the family of the huei tlatoani (chief speaker) or ruler claimed to be descended from him. Quetzalcoatl is sometimes named the god of the winds or is associated with the planet Venus. Other images of Quetzalcoatl represent him with the face of a man; his fully-serpent form is thought to represent his divine aspects.
Serpents were one of the Mexica’s three most sacred animals; sculptures of rattlesnakes in particular formed a wall around the main plaza and decorated the Great Temple (Templo Mayor) of Tenochtitlan. A sculpture of a serpent without feathers might be of a xiuhcoatl (fire serpent), a weapon of the god Huitzilopochtli, or of another serpent-deity, the goddess Cihuacoatl (Woman Serpent). She was associated with fertility and the earth and was considered the "mother" of the Mexica. The leader responsible for Tenochtitlan, who was a close advisor to the huei tlatoani, was sometimes called the Cihuacoatl.
4. Baptismal font (with it being used as a baptismal font starting from after 1521) from The Aztec Empire (2004). See image below.
Baptismal font, reshaped after 1521 from a Mexica sculpture, like that in the figure given in 3 above. A baptismal font holds the holy water used to baptize infants and other people, in a ceremony marking their entrance into the Latin Christian church.
Questions about these four
documents:
1. Notice that the “anonymous” document gives you an English translation (produced roughly in our own time) above the original, or source, text below (from roughly 1500ish). This question asks you to compare translation and the source, albeit in a specific way. On page 107, the English translation reads: “I also succeeded in circumnavigating the island of Española, which is larger in circumference than all Spain...” And then on page 109, the English word “Spain” is again used in the translation: “Nor was it of any avail that no prince of Spain, as far as I have read, has hitherto gained possession of land out of Spain..." For each passage, look below at the source and find the word in the source that has been translated as “Spain.” What, in each case, is the source word? Are they the same or different? Now re-read the two passages in English translation and use the context of these passages to think about the meaning of the two source words (in English, both “Spain”). Based on reading the English translations of the passages, what difference or differences in meaning can you identify between the two source terms (and thus also, the two uses of “Spain” in translation)? Super Bonus Question: in which case would you say that the use of the English translation “Spain” is an anachronism? Explain.
2. Drawing on all three excerpts from Las Casas, who are barbarians, in his view? Explain.
3. Assume that in making the Baptismal font (Document 4 above), Christian missionaries had re-purposed the carving of Quetzalcoatl (“Document 3”). Provide one hypothesis of what such a re-purposing might have conveyed, as a message in a sense, from the Christians to the Indians. Explain.
For discussion only (no write-up required):
A. Drawing on the entire document by the anonymous author, what does s/he present as the reasons for undertaking this voyage? Prepare notes for yourself to discuss this, including identifying relevant passages of the document.
B. What knowledge of the earth’s shape has the author acquired by means of his voyage?