Early Visions and Representations of America: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios and William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation 9781472543523, 9781441103826

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To my parents and sister, with love

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Acknowledgements In the course of my research for this book, I received funding from several institutions and programmes; to begin with, thanks to the Vicerrectorado de Investigación e Innovación at the Universidad de Alcalá (2006–7) for granting me an ‘ayuda a la formación del personal investigador (FPI)’ as well as to the Spanish Ministerio de Educación for an ‘ayuda a la formación de profesorado universitario (FPU)’ (2007–10). I also benefited from a travel grant from the Universidad de Alcalá to spend two months at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), whose Special Collections & Archives is any researcher’s dream. My deepest gratitude to the Universidad de Alcalá for making this possible. I would also like to thank Prof José Antonio Gurpegui, Dr Julio Cañero, Prof Francisco Collado, Prof Fernando Galván, Dr Jesús Benito and Dr Aitor Ibarrola for their insightful remarks and careful reading of earlier versions of this book. All remaining mistakes are mine. I am heavily indebted to the Interlibrary Loan Service of the Universidad de Alcalá. They often came really close to performing miracles, tracking down amazing books. This book would have been greatly impoverished without their labour. I especially want to thank the librarian at the Trinitarios building library at the Universidad de Alcalá, María Antonia, who often went out of her way to help me. Although research might at times be a lonely task, I was lucky enough to have a vast number of friends who made these years of research and writing less lonely. Thanks to all of you (too numerous to mention here) for being there. Last but not least, I want to mention my extraordinary family. Special thanks to my parents and sister, who understand that writing a book is not easy, but neither is having someone in the family who is writing one.

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Preface America had the infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world. Woodrow Wilson From the European point of view, the discovery of America was a shock – the sudden and unexpected appearance of this so-called new world involved drastic changes in economy, thought, philosophy, natural sciences, geography, cartography and even history. It shook men’s trust in biblical authority as well as in classical writers, who had ignored the existence of this new continent. America was discovered not just from a physical point of view but also from a mental perspective, and the phrase ‘unknown to the classics’ became recurrent in reports about these lands. The very existence of the ‘Indians’, as they were called following Columbus’ misidentification of America as the Indies, caused a heated debate over whether they were human or not, for their ignorance of Catholicism went against the biblical assertion that the gospel had been announced to all human beings. All in all, the sudden appearance of this unexplored territory was almost blasphemous.1 When Europeans arrived in America, they brought with them a number of preconceptions, prejudices, ideas, expectations and hopes. Beginning with Columbus’ stubborn belief that he had reached Asia, all newcomers combined what they were seeing with their previous image of it. America could be a paradise, a mirage, a disappointment or even hell, depending on the traveller’s previous ideas and actual experiences. This book examines the different visions and representations of America conveyed in sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios (La relacion que dio Aluar nunez cabeça de vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias en la armada donde yua por gouernador Panphilo de Narbaez desde el año de veynte y siete hasta el año de treynta y seys que bolvio a Seuilla con tres de su compañía Zamora, 1542; second edition La relacion y comentarios del gouernador Aluar nunez cabeça de vaca, de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias Valladolid, 1555) and in seventeenth-century Pilgrim leader William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation (written 1630–46; first published 1856), analysing both works within their respective literary and historical contexts. My hypothesis upon tackling these two works is that, despite the perceived abysm between the Spanish and English colonization of the Americas, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford participated of a common repository of ideas, images and notions about America, notwithstanding the century that separated them. At first, one might be tempted to deny any similarity between such seemingly dissimilar figures as Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford. The one was a failed conquistador looking for lands to annex to the emergent Spanish empire; the other was an

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Englishman whose religious beliefs made his community the object of such an intense persecution in their native land that it led them to exile in the Netherlands first and in New England later. Cabeza de Vaca left behind a country plagued by the fever of going to the Americas, a semi-mythical destination where anything seemed possible – especially the prospects of getting rich and being honoured with royal favours. Bradford’s group of fellow Pilgrims left for America from a country that was not theirs. Cabeza de Vaca was to expand the borders of Spain, a country still marked and largely defined by the Reconquista and the expulsion of the Jews. Bradford’s group was well aware of their having arrived in America on shaky grounds, thanks to a patent granted to them only because their involvement had been carefully concealed. Cabeza de Vaca, for all the promising prospects of the expedition, found himself lost and at the mercy of the Native Americans, with no clue about their location and no possibility of being rescued soon. Once the Pilgrims landed in America, if their patent was feeble, their situation worsened, as their patent did not even cover that region. Therefore, given that they knew almost nothing about their surroundings, America presented its bleakest face to them. With these premises, what could they possibly have in common? As will be seen in the following chapters, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford found themselves in the middle of an unknown land whose reality they could hardly begin to grasp. They had to reshape many of their previous ideas to come to terms with this foreign environment, of which they left a written testimony in their respective accounts. These not only reflected the change in their views of America but also the problems of how to accurately record America in the absence of a genre that fulfilled their needs. In the New World, ‘you will see a different world, a different self, and in the process you will reevaluate the society of which you are a part’, as it happened to Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford. Both were pioneers in their experiences in America, their respective paths being soon followed by others. Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford created a space for themselves, not only a physical one, but also a textual and literary one. For Colacurcio, ‘once Columbus had first glimpsed the possibility of self-invention, other American travellers began to enact it. Most significantly William Bradford (in his theologically dislocated and formally experiential Second Book)’; Cabeza de Vaca as well enacted it by creating different identities for himself as slave, captive, go-between, shaman, failed conquistador. . .2 For long, history books and literary anthologies dealing with the United States have consistently ignored the Spaniards’ doings. Writings describing America penned by Spanish historians or conquistadors have been excluded on the grounds of a restrictive interpretation of American literature based on linguistic issues. Spanish-language accounts such as Cabeza de Vaca’s have been systematically left out, because such books and anthologies have construed American literature as something that is written only in English. A representative of this neglect of Spanish-language texts is the Literary History of the United States: History volume (1946; third revised edition 1963), which includes several chapters devoted to the influence of Tudor England and Protestantism, whereas it ignores, for the most part, the rich Spanish background which dates back several decades before the first English attempts in present-day United States. Although

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it mentions Cabeza de Vaca and Hernando de Soto as well as some French explorers, it limits their presence and exploration to a mere reference in passing. Similarly, Charles M. Andrews’ four-volume The Colonial Period of American History (first published 1934–8) exclusively deals with the English settlements. That Wayne Franklin in ‘ The Literature of Discovery and Exploration’ in the Columbia Literary History of the United States felt the need to point out that ‘the first classics of American literature were written for, if not always in, Europe. And most were written not in English but in Spanish and French’, testifies to the longstanding belief that North American literature begins only with seventeenth-century English-language writings. Until very recently, Americans have chosen Plymouth Plantation as the starting point of their national tradition, with 1492 remaining a topic for Hispanics, with very few and recent exceptions. Separating the English colonization from the Spanish colonization is not only an artificial barrier, but also an obstacle for research, blurring significant similarities and ignoring the fact that both the Spanish and the English conquest of America laid their roots in a common pool of thoughts, ideas, economical circumstances, etc. Spanish and English sources are to be used together since ‘we are better off if we simply consider the Puritan colonization of New England as a continuation of Iberian models rather than a radical new departure’. The artificial boundaries that have kept conquistadors on the one hand and Puritans on the other (while neglecting the former) have done more harm than good, keeping similar perceptions of America apart on the grounds of their authors’ nationalities. America’s obsession with its origins has resulted in American literary histories opening with New England or Virginia so as to illustrate what is distinctively American, different from other world literatures, denying any influence other colonial powers might have had in forming or shaping what would later become the ‘United States of America’.3 From the very beginning, national(istic) concerns played a decisive role in the recovery, preservation and study of Puritan writings, which were placed foremost in North American literature anthologies, leaving aside previous writings (with the exception of the occasional inclusion of seventeenth-century English exploration reports). New nations need their own literary traditions and this process began after the American Revolution, when former British subjects felt the acute necessity to find an American identity in political, literary, cultural, and other terms. New England became their source for a common identity and a sense of nationhood to be imbued in textbooks to the detriment of the first English colony in American soil, Virginia, maybe because of the vast number of books written in seventeenth-century New England or the popularity of the Puritans’ concept of America as a city upon a hill, enthusiastically embraced by later generations of Americans. Subsequent glorifications of New England have obscured the fact that early American colonization was multifaceted and its literature was correspondingly diverse. It was not until the revival of interest in early American writings in the twentieth century begun with Perry Miller that scholars tried to correct the narrowness of the Early American literary canon by expanding it with new voices. The early 1950s paid a great deal of attention to what Carl Bridenbaugh called the ‘neglected first half of American history’,

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followed in the 1960s and 1970s by an increasing interest in African slaves and Native American groups, respectively. Studies focusing on women’s role during the colonial period appeared later, but Spanish-language writers continued to be neglected for the most part despite the broadening of the Early American literary canon.4 During the 1920s and the 1930s, Herbert Eugene Bolton called for writing new histories, including what he called the Spanish Borderlands, and in 1933, he proposed an ‘Epic of Greater America’ regardless of national boundaries. However, although he received the support of a number of historians, his idea of a truly integral history of America did not materialize. In the 1970s, historian David Weber’s works contributed to awaken historical interest in the Spaniards’ deeds in the Southwest a century before Jamestown was founded, but Early American literature continued to cover only English-language authors. This trend has continued until our days and in New World, Known World: Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing (2005), David Read used the examples of John Smith, William Bradford, Thomas Morton and Roger Williams to illustrate the ways in which Europe came to terms with the epistemological problem that America represented (to use Wayne Franklin’s term), leaving out nonEnglish-language authors. What is more, Spanish scholars have worked either on English-language texts or on Spanish-language works, never combining both. This is the case of A New World for a New Nation: The Promotion of America in Early Modern England (2007), an otherwise very valuable book by Spanish scholar Francisco J. Borge, which limits its analysis to the English side of this historical moment. Only recently has Cabeza de Vaca made his way to North-American literature anthologies. The preface to the fourth edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (2002) informs that in the section ‘colonial period to 1700’ there are ‘changes . . . [which] reflect the growing interest among scholars of early American and New World studies in literature not originally in English and its impact upon the predominantly English literatures of North America’. The Norton Anthology soon followed lead and now includes writings by Columbus and Cabeza de Vaca, among others.5 The necessity to compare Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca comes from the lack of scholarship analysing early America as a whole, including not only the Anglo-American perspective but also the Spanish-American aspect of the colonization process. Andrew Wiget compared Of Plymouth Plantation to Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México and a Native American account with the intention of [setting] Bradford’s narrative side by side with other two migration narratives from America’s literatures . . . which describe how core communities antecedent to other contemporaneous American populations also mentally and materially appropriated the landscape. Both of these antedate Bradford’s account, and by reading each against the others, we can better understand the structures of difference that divide us today. . . . The treasuring and reiteration of these texts as legacy, or in the case of Bradford and the Hispanic narrative as patrimony, have effectively maintained a distinctive orientation – an Anglo-Protestant eironia, a tragic Hispanic-Catholic epikos, and a Native American mythos – for each of their ethnic communities.

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I believe that it makes more sense to compare Bradford to Cabeza de Vaca than to Villagrá because of a number of similarities between Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca. For instance, God’s providence is constantly present in the accounts of both, saving them from death and an endless number of penuries. If Bradford sees their journey as the culmination of their status as the chosen ones, Cabeza de Vaca recurrently alludes to God’s mercy in keeping him and his companions alive in the face of many dangers. Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca also shared a similar understanding of history, as Bradford wrote for the perusal of the community, to leave a register to be analysed and therefore discover God’s will in events. This is similar to Cabeza de Vaca’s stated intention to leave an account for the further information of those who might in the future dare to go to America, which, with his multiple allusions to God, makes of Naufragios ‘a record of God’s providences’.6 Nationality played a major role in the American colonial arena, and Pilgrims, Puritans, conquistadors and explorers were very much aware of the resonance their actions would have in the context of the ongoing battle for the control of the Americas. Despite the emphasis on their being Pilgrims having fled from England, Bradford continues to regard themselves as ‘the Englishmen’, of which there are many examples throughout Of Plymouth Plantation. With this, they marked themselves ‘as distinct from the Dutch or the native Americans. It was to England that they looked for their history, their cultural lifeline and for many of their future expectations. It seems to me more appropriate to consider seventeenth-century New England as an outlier of the old country, as a detached English province, than as the seed-bed of a new nation’.7 In Naufragios, the reverse process as in Of Plymouth Plantation occurs. While Bradford generally referred to himself and his group as Englishmen, marking their nationality but not their religious beliefs, Cabeza de Vaca speaks of himself and his fellow survivors as ‘los cristianos’ versus ‘los indios’. Koenigsberger notes that ‘the word español, a Spaniard (though not the geographical term Spain) was a thirteenth-century importation from Provence, a convenient appellation invented by foreigners who were also Christians, and only slowly adopted by the Spaniards themselves’. While it was convenient for English writers to accuse Spaniards of wrongdoings in the Americas, identifying them as Spaniards, Spaniards, because of the Reconquista fights between Christians and Muslims and the existence of a Jewish population in Spain, had kept the label ‘cristianos’ to identify themselves. Rather than a national sense of being Spaniards, the important social status marker was being a Christian. Consequently, ‘the word español, and the concept of the Spaniards as a nation distinct from other Christian nations, derived from non-Spanish Christians and from the relations of the Spaniards with them’, not from the Spaniards themselves.8 But whatever their original identity was, America would profoundly change both Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford. Bradford Smith, in his biography of his forebear, wrote that ‘in Bradford we watch the making of one of the first great Americans. Captain John Smith returned to England and remained English. Winthrop and the Boston leaders tried to re-establish place and privilege as they had known them in England’. The same process that Bradford underwent could well be applied to Cabeza de Vaca.

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Cabeza de Vaca went back to Spain and spent the rest of his life there, but during his time in the Southwest, he became something other than a Spaniard, behaving much like a Native American, and I would even dare to say, becoming an American. Such was his transformation that, by the end of Naufragios, the Native Americans refuse to believe that he is one of the Spaniards. That he did not stay in America is a quirk of fate, but he is still the closest to a permanent Spanish settler in sixteenth-century North America we can find, with the exception of those companions of his who stayed in America, Juan Ortiz and Lope de Oviedo, and, who, unfortunately, left no written record of their experiences.9 To place Naufragios and Of Plymouth Plantation within the scope of colonial discourse, I have also covered several other Spanish- and English-language works. These include Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias (1526) and Historia general y natural de las Indias (written from 1526 to 1549; published 1851–5), Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca (1605), the Hidalgo de Elvas’s True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Gobernor Don Hernando De Soto and Some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida Now Just Given By a Fidalgo of Elvas Viewed by the Lord Inquisitor (1557), and John Smith’s A Description of New England (1616) and Advertisements for the Inexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere, or The Pathway To Experience to Erect a Plantation (1631), among others. To analyse Bradford’s and Cabeza de Vaca’s respective visions and representations of America, I have used the following structure: Chapter 1 provides the historical and literary background to Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s works. Spaniards and Englishmen thought of, planned and carried out the process of taking possession and colonization of the Americas in different ways, creating national enterprises at odds. When they went to America, Englishmen and Spaniards brought with them a definite, particular set of ideas with a strong nationalistic component. For the Spaniards, going to America was in a way a continuation of the Reconquista. As they had already expelled or converted all infidels living in the Iberian Peninsula, in America they would continue their duty of spreading the gospel by converting the ‘Indians’. Just like they had planted Ireland with Englishmen before, now Englishmen intended to plant America with more Englishmen, which would mean also transplanting their laws, customs, lifestyle, identity, etc. Furthermore, because of England’s leading role in providential history, the English were convinced that, now that England had fallen from divine grace because of its sinfulness, America was going to be the city upon the hill, the new England where the Reformation would be thoroughly carried out for the moral exemplum and enlightenment of the rest of the world. This chapter testifies to how Spain’s and England’s respective national histories decisively shaped their subsequent views of America and largely contributed to how their colonizing projects were carried out.10 Chapter 2 analyses the problems encountered by those partaking in the conquest and colonization of America (be them explorers, soldiers, colonists or travellers) to have their accounts given credibility to and to have them regarded as trustworthy sources of information. Participants in the exploration and conquest of the Americas

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felt frustrated that professional historians and writers were assigned the duty of writing reports, chronicles and official histories of the events they had experienced first-hand, while their own accounts were neglected or snubbed. Additionally, those eyewitnesses writing reports of their deeds met with the disapproval of professional historians, who launched harsh criticisms and fierce attacks to their credibility and veracity. Chapter 2 fulfils a double-fold goal – on the one hand, it analyses the reasons why eyewitnesses were discredited; on the other hand, it summarizes the strategies that eyewitnesses employed in their texts to have their credibility recognized. Chapter 3 examines the representations of America both before its actual discovery and after 1492. For decades, classical writers had heatedly debated about the existence of another continent, without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. Now, the Discovery came to confirm the views of those who had endorsed the idea of the existence of unknown lands beyond Europe. Given these precedents, America simultaneously became the canvas for Europeans to paint previous mental pictures on, as well as the site for modern developments the classics would have never dreamed of. Among these figured the idea of America as the land of freedom, such a subversive suggestion that could not be turned into a reality in Europe and had to be relegated to the New World. Because what the Spaniards and the English were looking for in America was different, what they took possession of was not the same. While the Spaniards sought for labour, ensured by means of the encomienda system, the English, besieged by scarcity of land at home, looked for free lands. The last section in Chapter 3 examines what the Spaniards and the English took possession of, as well as the mechanisms they employed to do so. Chapters 4 and 5 cover the representation of America in Naufragios and Of Plymouth Plantation, respectively. For Cabeza de Vaca, America represented the possibility of emulating his grandfather’s deeds – if his grandfather had been conquistador of the Canary Islands, Cabeza de Vaca could be the conquistador of Florida. However, rather than being a powerful conquistador, his experience turned out to be one of captivity and impotence. At odds with Cabeza de Vaca’s expectations about America, Bradford’s America was a religious shelter, a purpose English propagandists had not seen as a primary goal of the prospective English settlements in America. As they were the first to write about these regions, Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s representations of America would be reinterpreted by a number of contemporary writers who described the same regions, whose writings are contrasted with Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s. Chapter 6 examines the reception that Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s portrayal of America encountered. This chapter analyses the historical consideration of Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford, respectively, as well as the strategies that each of them used to have their credibility asserted. Also, it advances some reasons to explain the causes for this dissimilar historical interpretation of Naufragios and Of Plymouth Plantation. The last section offers some conclusions as well as some afterthoughts and ideas for further scholarship.

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Notes 1 Eviatar Zerubavel, Terra Cognita: The Mental Discovery of America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 35. 2 June Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 83. Michael J. Colacurcio, ‘Does American Literature Have a History?’ Early American Literature 13, 1 (1978): 113. 3 Wayne Franklin, ‘The Literature of Discovery and Exploration.’ In Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliott (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 18. Karl W. Butzer, ‘The Americas Before and After 1492: An Introduction to Current Geographical Research.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 346. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 118, 215–16. Annette Kolodny, ‘Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers.’ American Literature 64, 1 (1992): 12. 4 Peter Carafiol, ‘The New Orthodoxy: Ideology and the Institution of American Literary History.’ American Literature 59, 4 (1987): 630. Raymond F. Dolle, ‘The New Canaan, the Old Canon, and the New World in American Literature Anthologies.’ College Literature 17, 2–3 (1990): 196–208. http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/ data/lit/DOLLE-03.LIT (accessed 3 March 2009). Edmund S. Morgan, ‘The Historians of Early New England.’ In The Reinterpretation of Early American History, ed. Ray Allen Billington (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1966), 43. Annette Kolodny, ‘The Integrity of Memory: Creating a New Literary History of the United States.’ American Literature 57, 2 (1985): 307. Ed White, ‘Captaine Smith, Colonial Novelist.’ American Literature 75, 3 (2003): 508. 5 Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter. 4th edition (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), xxxvii. 6 Andrew Wiget, ‘Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History.’ American Literary History 3, 2 (1991): 211. M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, ‘The Conquistador Who Wrote a Captivity Narrative: Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios as a Captivity Narrative.’ Americana IV, 2 (2008), http://americanaejournal.hu/vol4no2/ gomez-galisteo (accessed 9 February 2009). 7 David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), viii. 8 Helmut Koenigsberger, ‘Spain.’ In National Consciousness, History, and Political Culture in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Orest Ranum (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 146, 170. Patricia Seed, American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 116–7. 9 Bradford Smith, Bradford of Plymouth (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lipincott, 1951), 11. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios. 1542. (N. p.: El Aleph, 2000), 103. 10 M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, ‘Flight from the Apocalypse: Protestants, Puritans and the Great Migration.’ In End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. Karolyn Kinane and Michael A. Ryan (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2009), 103–19.

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Introduction America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy. Samuel Eliot Morison On 12 October, 1492, when reportedly Rodrigo de Triana first saw land, the hidden half of the globe was brought to light, as sixteenth-century historian Peter Martyr of Anghiera put it. This date was highly significant because ancient prophecies predicted that the end of the world would take place in the year 7000 of the Byzantine calendar, that is, 1492, which the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 had seemed to confirm. America was, therefore, discovered the very year that the world was supposed to end. Conventionally called ‘the Discovery’, the term, despite its pervasiveness, is problematical. It denies claims of probable previous Scandinavian arrivals or earlier contact between Europeans and natives during fishing expeditions and assumes that the natives were lost and waiting to be ‘discovered’ and civilized. Making matters worse, Columbus himself had problems with the idea of discovery and stubbornly believed that he had landed in Asia. With his insistence in formulating increasingly complex theories to support the Asian hypothesis, he unintentionally misled his contemporaries while paving the way for Amerigo Vespucci to give name to these territories as he first realized that it was a different continent. Yet, ‘the word discovery is by now so inseparable from the events of 1492 that it is better to use the term, with an explanation, than to abandon it altogether’.1 In 1492, the world changed to include a New World, unseen before but already existing in the European imagination. Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómara declared the Discovery as ‘the greatest event since the creation of the world, excluding the incarnation and death of Him who created it’ and Columbus claimed, with biblical overtones, that ‘God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse by St. John, . . . and he showed me the spot where to find it’. He held the belief, later on shared by Pilgrims and Puritans, that God had kept the New World hidden until they were ready to find it for the rest of the world.

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Puritan minister and historian Cotton Mather connected the Discovery with the Reformation: three most memorable things which have born a very great Aspect upon Humane Affairs, did near the same time, namely at the Conclussion of the Fifteenth, and the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, arise unto the World: The First was the Resurrection of Literature; the Second was the opening of America; the Third was the Reformation of Religion.

Mather went on to suggest in Magnalia Christi Americana the end of geography as it had been known up to then – ‘the Church of God must no longer be wrapp’d up in Strabo’s Cloak: Geography must now find work for a Christiano-graphy in Regions far enough beyond the Bounds wherein the Church of God had thro’ all former Ages been circumscribed’.2 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo claimed that the Discovery was the greatest event since Hercules had broken through the Straits of Gibraltar and contemporary men regarded it as the eighth wonder of the world. David Hume, in 1575, defined it as ‘really the commencement of modern History’ and Adam Smith affirmed that ‘the discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind’. Such declarations might sound exaggerated, but this was a transformation so sudden or so drastic as never before had happened, so hard to accept that even Columbus, unable to put behind his medieval ideas, failed to grasp its full meaning. Now, Europe no longer was the centre of the world, with the Mediterranean Sea as its axis; rather, the Atlantic Ocean and later the Pacific Ocean imposed an oceanic orientation replacing the former thalassic one.3 Whether Europeans had set foot on America before Columbus is of scarce relevance, as 1492 marks the beginning of a new era characterized by a number of drastic changes in the economy, in linguistics, philosophy, geography and even history. . . America stirred the European imagination in a way Africa and Asia never did, becoming either a creation or an extension of Europe, promising a potential harvest of souls. Thus, ‘America gradually became the place to talk about if one were talking about places . . . it was becoming the locus par excellence of commercial activity, political expansionism, new scientific knowledge’. The characteristics of the land and the question of which nation would carry out the exploration and colonization of a given area, were decisive factors in determining the character, progress and outcome of the European colonization in the New World. First, because compared to the vast mineral wealth of the areas discovered by the Spaniards, it was obvious that the Englishmen’s Virginian lands bore no parallel, just as the barren, frozen lands of Cape Cod had nothing in common with the exuberant vegetation of the Spanish territories. Second, although all the colonizing nations shared some basic premises (basically, a desire to expand national borders and bring wealth to the home treasury), colonization was radically different depending on the country behind it. Spain, France, Britain, Holland, Sweden, etc. all imposed their own models in their colonies and, in turn, had different expectations and prejudices

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about such important issues as the native Americans’ rights, the possession of the land or the prospects for colonization.4 In Spain, the Discovery had a special resonance because not only was America discovered in 1492, but it was also the year that the Reconquista was fully accomplished, putting an end to seven centuries (711–1492) of Muslim occupation. As closely as the English colonization of America is intertwined with Puritanism, so is the Reconquista with the Spanish colonization. With the Reconquista ‘the symbols of exclusionary salvation, political unification, and imperial expansion condense into one’, symbols that would be brought by the conquistadors to America. Pagden points out that economically, politically and militarily the conquest of America had more in common with the Spanish wars in Italy than it had with the recovery of the peninsula. But ideologically the struggle against Islam offered a descriptive language which allowed the generally shabby ventures in America to be vested with a seemingly eschatological significance.5

The influence of the Reconquista is perceived in several aspects. To start with, the title Adelantado, granted to the leader of the expedition, was directly taken from the Reconquista, in which conquistadors such as Ponce de León had participated. Conquistadors were fond of comparing their deeds in America to battles and events of the Reconquista, and thus, Cortés called the Aztec temples ‘mosques’. One of his soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, claimed that St. James (Santiago) fought with the Spaniards against the Aztecs, a fairly common occurrence in America, for St. James and the Virgin Mary also appear in Garcilaso de la Vega’s Historia general del Perú. Dramatist Francisco de Quevedo explicitly compared Cortés’ deeds to those of the Reconquista hero el Cid: ‘it was God’s skill that won in the Cid and the same used Gama, Pacheco and Albuquerque as instruments in the East Indies to deprive the idols of peace’. The Discovery, in a way, came to shatter a concept of Spanish unity that had taken seven centuries to achieve. Muslim author Ibn Hauqal had stated in Kitah Surat al-Ard that Spain had a frontier with the infidels and another with the ocean; with the conquest of America, once more did Spain border with infidels – the Native Americans, in this case. Also inherited from the Reconquista was the Spanish sense of entitlement to the New World riches, which came from Muslim ideas that precious metals belonged to the dominant religion. Up to a large extent, the conquest of America can, therefore, be seen as a continuation of the Reconquista.6 Achieved the religious unity in the peninsula, America was, for the Spanish Church, the land of opportunities to convert a vast number of pagans, a goal very much present from the beginning in both the Spanish and the English colonization projects. As Díaz del Castillo bluntly put it, ‘we came here to serve God, and also to get rich’, two goals closely intertwined, as the Spaniards regarded the discovery of gold as their just reward for serving God. Columbus also saw a religious dimension in gold; for him, ‘gold constitutes treasure, and he who possessed it has all the needs in this world, as also the means of rescuing souls from Purgatory’. This is not to say that the discovery of gold was not welcomed from a financial point of view: as a result of the drain of the

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Reconquista on the treasury, Spain was undergoing a shortage of gold (a generalized situation in Europe at the time). Just as the Reconquista had provided riches to their forefathers, those who went to America pursued the same goal and everybody was invaded by the craze to go to the Indies by 1493.7 While the English expeditions to the New World were composed of a well-organized, fully equipped group of men under the leadership of one of them whose identity was not revealed till their arrival, Spanish expeditions could take one of two courses. From a territory already colonized, a relatively small number of soldiers could carry out an entrada – a quite unorganized incursion to conquest new lands and subjugate native peoples, in exchange for mercedes and encomiendas being granted later. The other option was launching the expedition from Spain, a much more organized and carefully planned process, involving several months. This second course was the process taken by the expedition in which Cabeza de Vaca participated. On 17 June 1527, the expedition commanded by Adelantado Pánfilo de Narváez sailed off Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz to colonize the land between Río de las Palmas (eastern Mexico) and Florida, with the wives of some of the soldiers and some friars travelling with them. This campaign was supposed to be the finishing touch to Narváez’s career in the New World. Narváez had participated in the conquest of Cuba (1511–14) and been second in command to Velázquez, governor of the island. When Cortés’ rebellion had threatened Velázquez’s control over New Spain, to stop Cortés’ advance, Velázquez sent Narváez in charge of an army that greatly outnumbered Cortés’ men. Nevertheless, Narváez’s troops were defeated at the battle of Cempoala and Narvaéz, who lost an eye in the battle, was arrested and kept in Cortés’ custody.8 Despite the humiliation of his defeat, Narváez was not out of royal favour. Once free and back in Spain, he became a bitter man who tried to discredit Cortés and even sought for his execution, as reported by Cortés’ official chronicler, López de Gómara, in Historia de la conquista de México. Notwithstanding his recent failure, Narváez succeeded in securing a ban on Cortés’ letters, which recounted his defeat, and the destruction of those copies already printed. At the same time, he asked the emperor for a petition for Florida. Originally just a trading petition, in his second petition, he was already requesting permission to ‘conquer, populate, and discover everything that there is to discover in those parts’, which resemble the three functions of Columbus’ second voyage – to conquer, colonize and convert. Narváez’s efforts would culminate in the capitulaciones signed on 17 November 1526.9 Financed with help from his Cuban plantations, left under his wife’s supervision during his prolonged absences, it was one of the biggest and best-equipped Spanish expeditions ever. It also represented Narvaéz’s last chance of recovering his fading fame. He had to prove to himself, to the king and to the court and, most importantly, to his own men that he was the glorious military commander of the olden days. This, coupled with his emotionalism and his tendency to act without much thought, might explain some of the desperate and risky decisions he took during the journey, decisions which were highly questioned by Cabeza de Vaca, treasurer and second in command.10 After two rather prolonged stops in Santo Domingo and Cuba because of storms and a series of misfortunes (including the shipwreck of two ships, which caused the

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death of 60 men and the desertion of almost a quarter of the crew), they eventually arrived in Florida on Maundy Thursday 1528, according to Cabeza de Vaca’s account. Having landed in an unknown place their pilot, Miruelo, was unable to identify, they were at a loss about their exact location. Thinking they were close to Pánuco or Río de las Palmas, Narváez took the decision of sending the ships ahead of the terrestrial party. However, although the pilots reckoned that Pánuco was 10–15 miles apart and that Río de las Palmas was more or less at the same distance, they were actually over 600 and 900 miles away, respectively. This, along with his decision to go inland to find the province of Apalache, reported to contain gold, led to the ultimate loss of the terrestrial expedition, separated from the ships.11 After conflicts with the Native Americans and the shipwreck of the barges they had built, and left behind by the ships, which returned to New Spain after unsuccessfully searching for them for a year, the survivors scattered. Having lost all their possessions along with their last hopes of escaping by their own means, the survivors’ situation was desperate. Almost starving and with so scarce a knowledge of the American reality that survival on their own was virtually impossible, they were forced to rely on Native American hospitality, despite their fears of human sacrifices. Impotent in Native Americans’ hands, they eventually became slaves. Cabeza de Vaca would not return to Spain till 1537, spending the years in between living with different Native American groups, among whom he performed different roles until he was found by Spanish troops. Back in Spanish territory, Cabeza de Vaca was tempted by Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to return to Florida with an expedition to find out the veracity of the rumours about golden cities. Cabeza de Vaca, seeking to be appointed Adelantado, not commander of a new expedition, turned down his offer and returned to Spain, where he would publish his account of the expedition, Naufragios.12 Meanwhile, it took some time for the news of Columbus’ discovery to reach England, ‘probably the last [country] in Western Europe to grasp its full meaning’. It was not until late March 1496 when the first mention to Columbus appeared in England and as far as 1503, 11 years after the Discovery, a Chronicle published in London failed to mention it. It was more than 15 years after 1492 that the first American reports reached Englishmen. With these slow beginnings, and given the Spanish and Portuguese quick enthusiasm for conquering America, the English colonial project was born with the intention of competing with other Catholic nations, especially Spain. Laurence Keymis in A Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (1596), wrote that ‘it were a dull conceite of strange weaknes in our selves, to distrust our own power so much, or at least, our owne hearts and courages; as valewing the Spanish nation to be omnipotent; or yielding that the poore Portugal hath that mastering spirit and conquering industrie, above us’.13 The English-American project also contributed to the development of a distinctive national identity. The insularity and corresponding isolation of England had been a matter of concern since the Roman presence in the British Isles, and thus, a character in Virgil’s Eclogues, exiled in Britain, reported that ‘penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos’ (the British were wholly divided from the rest of the world). Although the Reformation had contributed to the idea of Englishmen believing that they fulfilled a special, providential role in world history as God’s chosen nation over the rest of Europe, this

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was happening just as England was losing its continental possessions and its isolation was growing more marked. Because the English colonial project would decisively contribute to the creation of an English, Protestant identity, with propaganda being ‘based on a fantasy of transcended insularity and failure’, the colonization of America was at the same time a product of nationalism and a way of reinforcing it. The possibility of being able to compare themselves (favourably, according to propaganda) to not less than Spain, an empire with extensive territories throughout continental Europe and now also in the New World, helped create a strong, national identity of their own, empowered Englishmen and made them feel proud of themselves. So sure were they of being God’s chosen nation that they went as far as to claim that, as John Aylmer put it, ‘God is English’. The 1588 defeat of the Armada Invencible seemed to confirm England’s superiority, boosting their national confidence. Those who until then had been ‘a reluctant, insecure, and insular people’, now were put ‘from a marginal corner of Columbus’s New World into the cockpit of an expanding world system’.14 To promote public support for the colonial project, writers instilled a certain sense of entitlement to the New World. Colonial writing fulfilled two roles – the reporting of colonial events and the embodiment of national expectations, both of which are conveyed in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation (1600). It not only expressed the idea of a national identity but also gave coherence and meaning to the English colonial endeavour, which, up to then, had been little more than scarcely organized, individual incursions. Hakluyt’s A Discourse of Western Planting (1584) had also linked Protestantism with the expansion of an English empire to replace the Spanish one.15 Preventing the Spanish empire from expanding its territory helped define a uniquely Protestant English identity, in opposition to the Catholic Spaniards. Geopolitical, economic, religious and ideological goals met in the project of the English colonization of America. Success was fundamental, for failure would ‘bring – a shame upon your Nation’ as William Symonds preached in a sermon in 1609. To achieve these goals, established companies were given the right to colonize a certain area, without any direct involvement of the Crown. This colonization model had its detractors too, and Hakluyt and Sir Walter Raleigh, among others, called for more active governmental involvement, considering that it was too grand an affair to be organized privately. These new territories would follow the Roman model of conquest and incorporation but without representation, which would have a lasting significance on the development of the British colonies in the New World and the later rise of pro-independence feelings in the eighteenth century.16 In contrast, the Spanish Crown held a direct control over the colonies. Columbus’ disinterest for governing and letting the Catholic Monarchs assume the control over the territories discovered ultimately meant that by 1500 he retained no administrative capacity. Even though for a while Spain allowed the Welsers, a German family, to colonize Venezuela and conquistadors financed their expeditions with their own money, the Spanish colonies were always part of Spain and controlled by royal appointees. Thus, ‘once the full potential of the Americas, in both mineral and human terms, had been realized, they were fully incorporated into the Spanish monarchy, in

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ways which the British colonies never were. . . . In general, the British were right to assume that theirs were the only overseas settlements to have maintained the traditions of autonomy and private venture with which they had begun’.17 Given the fact that the English colonial venture did not get royal financial support (although it had enjoyed royal favour and encouragement since Henry VII’s times), in contrast to the Spanish colonizing schemes, promoting and publicizing such a venture was a vital goal for English authors, which Spanish authors, who perceived colonization as a royal enterprise, did not share. It was a most pressing matter to promote the colonial enterprise in a positive and effective way, given that some perceived it as a threat to England’s insularity, often deemed as the reason for the special virtue and strength of the English. If the promotional means of Spain and England were different, the very structure of the society they would bring to America would indeed be different: they would implant the very special English idea of a colony, different from the Spanish; of a plantation, a complete imposition in miniature of the Old World society, with large numbers of permanent settlers whose purpose was not simply to strike it rich and return home but to stay and make a life; of a commonwealth that would largely set its own rules according to its own conditions, rather than be the endpoint of a large transatlantic bureaucracy with controls stretching back to king and pope; of a community that had a mission not of conversion but of displacement and that would supplant or eliminate, rather than take over and manipulate, existing native societies.

Because for Englishmen a colony was just a place where finding gold, they called their American territories plantations instead as the term plantation denoted a permanent settlement. Especially when it came to the treatment of native populations, the model that the English would impose on the New World was to be completely different from the Spanish one. While the Spaniards sought to convert the Native Americans to make a Christian, multiracial (although with a complex system of social and racial hierarchies and categories) society, favouring intermarriage, the Englishmen, with their notion of being the chosen ones living in the city upon the hill, segregated the Native Americans, or declared war on them.18 But more importantly, America was a safety valve for the problems of England. Forefront in the minds of English writers was that the surplus of population be sent to America, thus alleviating the burden that overpopulation imposed on the land and the risk of riots. Although some have questioned if this problem was as serious as claimed by primary sources, it was a very real threat for Elizabethan and Stuart writers. Vicar Richard Eburne felt confident that America would provide ‘room for our overswarming multitudes of people’ and Puritan divine John Cotton warned that ‘so when the hive of the Common-wealth is so full, that Tradesmen cannot live one by another, but eate up one another, in this case it is lawfull to remove’. Other reasons convincing Englishmen about the desirability of going to America, were widespread illnesses in England at the time, including the black plague and a smallpox epidemic, the disappearance of forests and recurrent agricultural losses between the 1590s and the 1620s. Added to

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this were the friction between the Crown and Parliament, the Jacobean court scandals, the Gunpowder plot, social unrest and so on, and all these made many Englishmen believe that God was punishing them for ‘going astray’, with the only option of leaving for America.19 Despite the emphasis on its financial prospects, there was a religious motivation in the English vision of America. As Hakluyt wrote, by sending people to America many inconveniences and strifes amongst ourselves at home in matters of Ceremonies shalbe ended; For those of the Clergye which by reason of idlenes here at home are nowe always coyninge of newe opinions, havinge by this voyadge to sett themselves on worke in reducinge the Savages to the chefe principles of our faithe, will become less contentious, and to be contended with the truthe in Relligion already established by aucthoritie.

Creating a haven for religious dissenters was very far from the minds of those promoting the English colonization of the New World. What is more, at first, any use for the prospective English colonies other than as a commercial outpost was out of their minds, considering them trade posts and not suitable for families. If dissenters were sent to America, it was to make things smoother at home, not for dissenters to be more comfortable. Hakluyt was convinced that America was intended for the spread of Protestantism and was ‘whereunto the Princes of the refourmed Relligion are chefely bounde’. John White, too, in The Planters Plea, stated that England was ‘of all the States that enjoy the libertie of the Religion Reformed’ the best qualified to carry out the evangelization of America.20 With the Discovery, as Adam Smith put it, ‘England purchased for some of her subjects, who found themselves uneasy at home, a great estate in a distant country’ where they would ‘finde imploiment for those that are idle, because they know not what to doe’, in John Smith’s words. Massachusetts colonist Richard Saltonstall, in a letter dated February 1632, cautioned that if gentlemen of ability would transplant themselves, they might in time much advance their own estates and not only supply the want we labor under of men fitted by their estates to bear common burdens and the gifts of their minds to nurse up this infant plantation but also might improve their talents and times for the honor and benefit of old England (to which we owe the fruit of our best endeavors) and their own eternal glory in being worthy instruments of propagating the Gospel to these poor barbarous people, the truest object of Christians’ bowel-compassions that the world now affords.

Yet, if many in Spain feared that an extended territory might corrupt and taint Spain, the same fears were voiced by some Englishmen. Robert Gray in his sermon ‘A Good Speed to Virginia’ (1609) warned of the dangers involved in sending too many ‘idle and dissolute’ to America – if there were not a balance, they would run the risk that they marred the progress of the colony, outnumbering the good citizens. John White similarly cautioned ‘it seems to be a common and gross error that colonies ought to

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be emunctories or sinks of states, to drain away their filth’. However, there were a few disagreeing voices in the midst of the popular sentiment that saw the New World as a place for moral reform and ‘for the display of virtù’.21 A factor often ignored is that English society at the time was very mobile, used to moving to other cities or, given the necessity, to Ireland. America, though much further than Ireland, was the next logical step in this larger migratory pattern going on since the Middle Ages. Actually, the proximity to Ireland was a disincentive for seventeenthcentury English migration to America. Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh, Ralph Lane and Thomas White, all were involved in Irish plantations before going to America and, as Sir George M. Trevelyan remarked, ‘it has been said that the Elizabethan eagles flew to the Spanish Main while the vultures swooped down on Ireland; but they were in many cases one and the same bird’. Given these precedents, while it is of course true that religion shaped the leadership, organization, and ethos of the Puritan migration of the early seventeenth century, the human constituents were available in the East Anglian population accustomed for generations to move geographically in search of employment, opportunity, and stability. In the context of the mobility of the time, the famous Puritan exodus . . . as an organized migration was nothing remarkable.22

The English involvement in America began in 1497, when John Cabot (or Giovanni Caboto) arrived at Terranova, according to most scholars (others hint at New Scotland, the Labrador Peninsula or even as far as Maine). The previous year, Henry VII of England had granted him through a patent full and free authoritie, leave, and power, to sayle to all partes, countreys, a see as, of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensignes, with five ships . . . and as many mariners or men as they will have in saide ships, upon their own proper costes and charges, to seeke out, discover, and finde, whatsoever iles, countreyes, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidelles, whatsoever they bee, and in what part of the world soever they be, whiche before this time have beene unknowen to all Christians.

This patent would become the foundational basis for the English colonial power although colonization did not follow – while Cabot was paid ten pounds for his services.23 Circumstances prevented the development of the projected English colonial expansion in the New World until the reign of Elizabeth I. Henry VIII, one of whose main concerns was the establishment and consolidation of the Church of England, hardly devoted a thought to this enterprise, despite some of his subjects’ petitions for a greater English involvement in New World colonization. Robert Thorne, an English trader based in Spain, in a letter dated 1527, had unsuccessfully urged him to colonize America: ‘Experience proveth that naturally all Princes be desirous to extend and enlarge their dominions and kingdoms’. Poet Sir Philip Sidney expressed his surprise at

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English men not having a more active role in the colonization of America in Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America (1582): ‘I marvel not a little (right honorable) that since the discovery of America (which is now full fourscore and ten years), after so great conquests and plantings of the Spaniards and Portingales there, that we of England could never have the grace to set fast footing in such fertile and temperate places as are left as yet unpossessed of them’.24 Elizabeth I, deeply concerned about building an empire that could seriously threaten the powerful Spanish empire, started paying attention to reports of the wealth America could bring to the depleted arks of her state. One of the staunchest defenders of this project was John Dee, who encouraged her to pursue a ‘Brytish Empire’ in General and rare memorials pertaining to the Perfect Arte of navigation. These plans culminated in the first English colony in America in the Roanoke island. Promoted by Raleigh, it had a double-fold goal: to create an English colonial empire and to counteract the Spanish influence. Conceived as a privateering base, after two exploratory voyages (1585–86) a fort was erected in the island to mark an English presence in the area and prevent future foreign claims. Soon after, however, the soldiers at the fort started suffering shortages, which eventually drove them to abandon the fort and enrol in Sir Francis Drake’s passing ship in 1586.25 The following year a new attempt was made at Roanoke when several families settled there. Just a few days after their arrival, a baby girl named Virginia Dare, granddaughter of the governor, John White, was born. Although this birth was interpreted as a good omen, shortly afterwards they found serious difficulties to provide for themselves, forcing White to return to London for more funding and provisions for the colony. The international conflict between England and Spain, which resulted in the Armada blocking the passage of English ships, prevented White’s return to Roanoke for 2 years. When he eventually got back in 1590, he only found a deserted island with no trace of the colonists. Although the failure of Roanoke did not mean that interest had died out, plans for the colonization of America were postponed for some time. By 1604, English merchants and gentry were ready to resume the plans Hakluyt had designed so long ago. The second colonial venture took place in 1607 with the foundation of Jamestown, in Virginia. The colonists (soldiers and explorers) had to face a series of problems, including plagues, starvation, the strangeness of the land, conflicts with neighbouring Native American groups, etc., but they endured and the colony did not disappear, even despite the many losses – ‘neere eight thousand men’s lives’ had been lost in Virginia by 1625, according to John Smith. From the 1,900 settlers who arrived, in 1609, there were only 600 left, and 6 months later, the number had been further reduced to 60, up to the point that they decided to abandon the colony in June 1610 to return to England. It was only the timely arrival of Thomas West, Lord de La Warr, who came just as the colonists were leaving, that convinced them to stay.26 Lacking in gold, Jamestown was not the kind of colony its promoters had dreamed of. Soon after arriving, John Smith had tried to put an end to the vain searches for gold, realizing that Jamestown was no El Dorado. He soon assumed that the wealth of America for the English would not come from gold but from cultivating the land, which ‘might well by this have beene as profitable as the best Mine the King of Spaine

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hath in his West Indies’. The Hakluyts and Sir Humphrey Gilbert praised the bright agricultural prospects of Virginia but for many the lack of gold was a disappointment. However, in time, that the English found no gold in America proved to be beneficial for the image they had of their motives for colonizing America. The lack of gold involved a re-evaluation of its value and ‘the English, who had once seriously demanded what purpose God could have had in giving such natural resources to Spain, soon came . . . to see the mineral wealth of the Indies as a poisoned chalice’. The same view was shared by Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who explicitly linked sin to gold when he remarked that Spaniards obtained gold and syphilis from America. If there was no gold to be found in Virginia, then the English could not be suspected of greed, the Spaniards’ favourite sin: ‘compared to Elizabeth’s motto Semper eadem (Always the same), for instance, the impresa of the Spanish king, Non sufficit orbis (The world does not suffice), seemed to the Elizabethans to express an insatiability’.27 The English colonial project took a different turn in 1620, when a group of Separatists decided to move to America following God’s command to Abraham ‘get thee out of thy Countrey’. This move from a more mercantilist-oriented goal to a religious one, was not welcomed by all, though. Despite the original trading purpose of the English enterprise in the New World, with their arrival the English territories in America were to become a place not only where population excesses were sent, but also where religious dissenters found a shelter. A Laudian officer, Clement Corbet, ‘ “seeing they [the Puritans] have found a New England,” . . . wished them all “safely transported and pitched there that they may triumph and practice their new discipline and fooleries . . . that our Church and state might be quiet”’, but this was far from being the general opinion.28 William Bradford, who would become the leader of the Pilgrim Fathers in Plymouth plantation, was born in Austerfield around 1590. Orphaned at a very early age, he soon got involved in the activities of the Separatist congregation of the nearby town of Scrooby. Despite his family’s strong opposition, the young Bradford became a member of the Separatist movement and with the rest of the congregation moved to Amsterdam (where he married Dorothy May, the 16-year-old daughter of an English Separatist couple) and later to Leyden. These Separatists thought that the Reformation had not been carried out thoroughly and that the Church of England was still too close to Roman Catholicism. Yet, their departure was a consequence of the harassment by their Anglican neighbours rather than by systematic persecution by the Anglican Church or the state. In contrast, the Netherlands’ tolerance made the country a well-known shelter for people with controversial ideas, such as Descartes, who lived in Leyden for a while, or for religious dissenters.29 Life in the Netherlands was hard on the Separatists, though. Dutch society was too permissive for them and, as foreigners, they were barred entrance to the guilds. Bradford detailed in Of Plymouth Plantation why they decided to move to America – the hard work, the premature ageing due to the wasting jobs they took, the corruption of their children by the more liberal Dutch youths and their desire to contribute to the spread of the gospel in America. After briefly considering Guiana, among other

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possible destinations, the Scrooby congregation began negotiations with a group of entrepreneurs (whom Bradford calls the Adventurers), which would eventually lead to the foundation of Plymouth plantation: ‘the place they had thoughts on was some of those vast and unpeopled countries of America, which are fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and brutish men which range up and down, little otherwise than the wild beasts of the same’.30 That these colonists came for religious reasons would have a decisive effect; actually, it is ‘the most important single fact about New England’. Henry David Thoreau’s words in his 1856 Journal expressing that ‘I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all of the world, and in the very nick of time, too’ are not too different from the Pilgrims’ enthusiasm. The Pilgrims’ goal in going to America, according to Robert Cushman’s sermon ‘The Sin and Danger of Self-Love’, was primarily religious – ‘first to settle religion here, before either profit or popularity’. In opposition to the fortune-seeking soldier like Cabeza de Vaca or John Smith, for the Pilgrims, the community was much more important than the individual, which resulted in the individuality and the collective sense in Naufragios and Of Plymouth Plantation, respectively: whereas Cabeza de Vaca reports incidents concerning himself, Bradford ‘records only those events which affect or clarify the progress of his colony’.31 The very name of Pilgrims is highly significant. Bradford records that ‘they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits’. They were pilgrims, for ‘in the parlance of modern Christendom, a “pilgrim” was seldom on his way to Jerusalem, but every person “sojourning in the flesh” was passing through this earth to a mysterious state of future bliss’. Coming from the Latin peregrinus (through – per – and land – ager), pilgrim ‘refers to someone who journeys in alien lands, and it can also have the connotation of a search for some high goal, such as truth’. A pilgrim’s journey is noted for its length and its non-utilitarian purpose, as its goal is not merely that of reaching a place, but that of something greater. The word ‘pilgrim’ appears recurrently when speaking of the New World; Samuel Purchas titled his book Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625) and Raleigh, despite his imperialistic agenda, called his journey a ‘painfull pilgrimage’, putting distance between himself and privateers. The pilgrimage motif is recurrent to describe secular journeys, and arriving in the New World was interpreted as the end of a spiritual and geographical quest.32 Their arrival in America was far from being the end of the Pilgrims’ journey. Theirs was more than a literal journey – it was also the culmination of the course of history, meaningful for the whole humanity, not just for them. If López de Gómara considered the Discovery the greatest historical event along with the birth of Jesus Christ, for the Pilgrims, the historical importance of the Discovery or, rather, of their arrival in America to found their community, was not less. The society they would create in America would be the compendium and the heyday of Creation: the New England colonists saw their errand into their wilderness as part of the final stage of history. In developing that view, they distorted traditional forms of exegesis, but they were careful to justify themselves to recourse to scripture.

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They always rooted their interpretations (however strained) in biblical texts, and they appealed to (even as they departed from) a common tradition of Reformed hermeneutics.

This interpretation was further advanced by their typological reading of the Bible, which enabled them to see themselves as Old Testament patriarchs, in search of a land where, far from the tyranny of their rulers, they would be free at last to pursue their religion in its purest form, in opposition to the decadence and corruption of organized religion.33

Literary context Immediately after the Discovery, a multitude of works dealing with it began pouring. Awed by the yet unnamed continent that offered so many opportunities, all those who had been to America as well as all those who had not enthusiastically embraced the task of writing about it. Not having gone to the Americas was not perceived by writers as a hindrance to their writing and the Hakluyts in England or Peter Martyr in Spain authored very popular historical chronicles, though none of them ever set foot on America. So vast came to be the body of writings dealing with America that ‘in 1492 America was, from the European standpoint, simply an event. But in 1493 it became a collection of words’ to meet the existing demand. What made this kind of writings so popular is that they fulfilled public interest in America, provided geostrategical information monarchs tried to use for their own expansionist agendas (while fearing that they might provide useful information to rival powers) and addressed the papal concern about the natives’ evangelization.34 The ones who first wrote about America found a lack of literary models to describe such a new reality ‘in that time so new and like to no other’, as friar Bartolomé de las Casas put it. Before them they had the problem of how to create a text where none had existed before. This led to the creation of new genres or, at least, to new versions of old genres. First-person narratives, such as that of Bernal Díaz de Castillo, declaring to be ‘True Histories’; overextended letters, part descriptive and part evaluative, such as Hernán Cortés’s Letters of Relation; even attempts, such as Oviedo’s Historia general, to impose a loose Plinian structure upon the natural and human history of America – all these belong to recognizable European genres – chronicle, natural history, legal deposition – but they are all also sufficiently unlike those genres for Carlos Fuentes to be able, without undue hyperbole, to claim them as the first ‘novels’ to be written about America.

The chronicles of discovery and conquest in America are heterogeneous and one can find natural histories, legal documents of all sorts (capitulations, arguments,

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depositions, grants, petitions, cédulas), narrative accounts, shipwreck reports, etc. This diversity makes that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Spanish American historiography during the colonial period is its creative capacity. Chronicles, autobiographies, testimonials, travel diaries, and other modes of traditional discourse frequently surpass the margins of history and enter into the world of fictional domain. . . . Historians such as Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Rodríguez Freile, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, and Alonso Carrió de la Vandera, among many others, create fictional islands within essentially historical currents.

The types of writings describing the exploration and colonization of America most widely used were the crónicas de Indias, the relación, diaries and journals, and cartas de relación. B. W. Ife divides the literature of Spanish discovery and conquest in the New World . . . into four broad categories: the eye-witness accounts by the men of action, men like Columbus, Cortés, and Bernal Díaz; the accounts of the first ethnographers, the friars who were sent to carry out the spiritual conquest and who found themselves recording whatever they could of indigenous culture before it was too late; then there are the dry-shod historians, to borrow Oviedo’s disparaging term, men who never got their feet wet, but sat at home trying to make sense of it all; and finally, drawing on all this work as well as the fruits of classical learning, there is the great literature which fuelled the debate about the moral, philosophical, religious, and ethnographical implications of the conquest.35

Beginning with Columbus, there was a trend in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historiography of writing relaciones (or reports) to give account and justification of their doings in America. They had a double-fold objective: reporting to the authorities that had financed the expeditions and promoting their own careers. Relaciones are ‘a mixture of humanistic historiographical and notarial forms’ but, as time went by, those relaciones written in Spanish America differed so much from the rigid patterns of the original format of the relación that ‘numerosos relatores cultos y de indiscutible relevancia histórica llegan a considerarla, por extensión, como equivalente de las narraciones históricas propiamente dichas. Para el Inca Garcilaso, Cieza de León y Bernal Díaz, “hacer relación” será, en muchos trances, tarea muy similar a la reconstrucción de un complejo proceso histórico’ [many cult relaciones writers of indisputable historical relevance came to regard it, by extension, as equivalent to the historical narratives themselves. For Inca Garcilaso, Cieza de León and Bernal Díaz, ‘to write a relación’ will be, very often, a very similar task to the reconstruction of a complex historical process].36 The chronicle, a traditional genre, after the Discovery, ‘continued to be written by the participants in this enterprise. Many of these men were neither learned scholars nor creators of beauty; yet their chronicles are filled with creative power as well as

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valuable information’. The crónicas de Indias (or chronicles of Indies) are part of both literature and history and a product of their age, evolving and changing in the same way that the events they recorded. Two other very productive genres are the diary and the cartas de relación. The former was begun by Columbus, whose fondness for writing is evidenced by the great deal of documents left behind by him. In contrast to previous sailors, he conceived his Diary not as a log to be read just by himself or his crew, but for a wider audience, setting a trend that would have many followers. Cartas de relación, the predominant type of discourse in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish writings of the Discovery and conquest of America, were a combination of ‘letter, official report (relation), and diary’. So close was this discourse type to these other forms of writings that Cortés in his five cartas de relación sometimes called them relaciones, though they did not exactly fit the prototype of the relación.37 If Spanish conquistadors were at a loss how to fit the almost ungraspable American reality into the rigid forms available to them, English colonizers did not fare much better. John Smith tried to overcome these limitations by using generic conventions that would serve as a framework for his activities. If Spanish reports were written to report and to advance one’s career, those accounts written in English had a completely different purpose – recording the works of Providence. This pursuit applies not merely to works that immediately come to mind as having been providentially inspired (such as Of Plymouth Plantation) but also to travel narratives and other types of discovery, exploration and colonization writings and even to history as a field of study. The reason for this is that ‘everyone, from Jesuits to Protestant radicals, from intellectuals to simple folk, expected acts of Providence’ to take place in America.38 Along with recording providential aspects, the most important motivation for writing was to promote colonization by appealing to potential adventurers. To achieve this, ‘conventions of early promotional genre include a utilitarian tone, an emphasis on labor, and a rhetorical structure characterized by figures of blockage or indirection when the text addresses Europe and figures of openness or expansive vision as it turns toward the New World’. It was the time for advancing colonization, despite the difficulties and problems, given the many blessings and the fruitfulness of the land. After the neglect of America during Henry VIII’s reign, some books about America were distributed during Elizabeth’s reign . . . [which] aroused the interests of a few English traders who were involved in the supply of slaves and purchase of goods in that region. But most readers only really showed an interest when the English became involved in exploration and settlement in that hemisphere. The stories of the earliest English explorations in North America were crafted as logs and diaries by the sailors on the voyages of great captains such as Drake, Frobisher and Gilbert. However, when these narratives were gathered together and published by Richard Hakluyt in printed form, knowledge of America began to spread much faster.

These promotional texts were heavily indebted to previous folktales and myths about America, but, in turn, they became the inspiration for subsequent travellers.

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Though originally intended for investors, the genre soon evolved to reach a broader audience such as families willing to move to America.39 The writings by the first Englishmen who went to America can be divided into those whose purpose was ‘to awaken immediate interest in a given colony, and stimulate immigration into it by accounts of what had been there’ and accounts by those who ‘believing themselves to have been concerned in memorable beginnings, wrote for the benefit of posterity permanent memorials’. In the sixteenth century, the books about America written in English were mostly those of explorers and adventurers like John Smith or Thomas Harriot. In A Briefe and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia, Harriot recorded the foundation of the first English settlement in the New World, Roanoke (the fort, not the colony). He analysed in precise terms the economic resources of the new continent as well as the manners and traditions of the Native Americans, but his main purpose was to point out the best possible ways by which the process of colonization could be carried out. Similarly, the foundation of the first English settlement, Jamestown, and the difficulties associated with it were recorded by John Smith, who wrote about Virginia: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), A Map of Virginia (1612) and The Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612) and later about New England: A Description of New England (1616), New Englands Trails (1620). In these and in the rest of his literary production, Smith promoted colonial expansion and, at the same time, self-fashioned himself as a hero. Thanks to his books, the vision of America as the land of opportunity gradually entered the English mind – it was a place full of hardships but it was well worth all these hardships, as Smith affirmed that working for 3 days a week was enough for leading a comfortable life. The Pilgrims, who used A Description of New England as their guide, took Smith’s words to heart when he claimed that ‘heer nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in England we want, or it costeth us dearely’.40 The Discovery involved a massive reconfiguration of everything that up to then had been taken for granted. Both Spain and England set their eyes on the New World, Spain rather quickly and England rather slowly. Not only would the American enterprise bring them riches, but also would it turn out to be decisive to help define their own national identities and their role in world history. To come to terms with America, a multitude of texts were written, adapting existing genres to meet writers’ needs.

Notes 1 Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 21. Hillel Schwartz, Century’s End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Siècle from the 990s through the 1990s (New York and others: Doubleday, 1990), 74. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. 1993 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 5–6. Marvin Lunenfeld, ed. 1492: Discovery, Invasion, Encounters. Sources and Interpretations (Lexington and Toronto: Heath, 1991), xv.

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2 Ellman Crasnow and Philip Haffenden, ‘New Founde Land.’ Introduction to American Studies, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and Howard Temperley. 3rd edition (Harlow, England, etc.: Pearson, 1998), 24. Quoted in Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 3. Quoted in Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983), 242. Jacques Lafaye, Los conquistadores. [Trans. by Elsa Cecilia Frost]. 3rd edition (Mexico D.F and others: Siglo XXI, 1978), 36. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: OR, THE Ecclesiastical History of NEW-ENGLAND FROM Its First Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of our LORD, 1698 (London: 1702), 2. 3 G. R. Crone, The Discovery of America (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969), 176. Quoted in Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 508. http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/adam-smith/Wealth-Nations.pdf (accessed 18 November 2011). Boorstin, The Discoverers, 256. Francisco Javier CevallosCandau, ‘Introduction.’ In Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, ed. Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau and others (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 2. James Axtell, ‘Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy.’ The History Teacher 25, 4 (1992): 418. Sydney W. Mintz, ‘Pleasure, Profit, and Satiation.’ In Seeds of Change: Five Hundreds Since Columbus, ed. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 112. 4 Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 224. 5 Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 72–3. Honour, New Golden Land, 3. Louis B. Wright, Religion and Empire: The Alliance between Piety and Commerce in English Expansion, 1558–1625 (New York: Octagon, 1965), 57. Henry Cabot Lodge, ‘Colonialism in the United States.’ In The Oxford Book of American Essays, ed. Brander Matthews (New York: Oxford University Press, 1914), Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/109/26 (accessed 13 January 2006). Steve J. Stern, ‘Paradigms of Conquest: History, Historiography, and Politics.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 24, Quintecentenary Supplement (1992): 2. Pagden, Lords of All World, 74. 6 Barry W. Ife and Robert T. C. Goodwin, ‘“Many Expert Narrators”: History and Fiction in the Spanish Chronicles of the New World.’ http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/ content/pub/b009.html (accessed 17 February 2009). José B. Fernández, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: The Forgotten Chronicler (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1975), 11. Pagden, Lords of All World, 74. René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, ‘Introduction: Allegorizing the New World.’ In 1492/1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing, ed. René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini (Minneapolis, MN: Prisma Institute, 1989), 29. Quoted in Helmut Koenigsberger, ‘Spain.’ In National Consciousness, History, and Political Culture in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Orest Ranum (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 146. Charles W. Polzer, ‘The Problem of Conquest.’ http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/further_study/problem_ conquest.pdf (accessed 4 March 2008). Quoted in Jacques Lafaye, Mesías, cruzadas, utopías: El judeo-cristianismo en las sociedades ibéricas. [Trans. by Juan José Utrilla]

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Early Visions and Representations of America (México D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), 47. Patricia Seed, American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 57–62. Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, ‘New Light Wanted on the Old Colony.’ William and Mary Quarterly 15, 3 (1958): xvi. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 23. Quoted in Ramón Sánchez, ‘The First Captivity Narrative: Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación’. Proceedings of the II Conference of SEDERI (1992): 264–5. Lunenfeld, 1492, 45. Judith Mara Gutman, The Colonial Venture: An Autobiography of the American Colonies from their Beginnings to 1763 (New York, London: Basic Books, 1966), 12. Ilan Stavans, Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage (N.p.: Palgrave, 1993), 6. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, Historia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. 1950. [The Growth of the American Republic. Trans. by Odón Durán d’Ocón y Faustino Ballvé]. I (México D.F., Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951), 27. Paul Horgan, Conquistadors in North American History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1963), 131. Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 11. Frank Goodwyn, ‘Pánfilo de Narváez, A Character Study of the First Spanish Leader to Land an Expedition to Texas.’ The Hispanic American Historical Review 29, 1 (1949): 152, 155. Consuelo Varela, ed. Los cuatro viajes. Testamento. By Cristóbal Colón. 1986 (Madrid: Alianza, 2005), 18. Goodwyn, ‘Narváez,’ 153. Cyclone Covey, ed. Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (Crowell-Collier, 1961) http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/Cabeza de Vaca/rel.htm (accessed 20 June 2006). Alex D. Krieger, We Came Naked and Barefoot. The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America, ed. Margery H. Krieger (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), 25. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios. 1542 (N. p.: El Aleph, 2000), 37–8. John Francis Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821. 1970. 4th edition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 14–5. Boorstin, The Discoverers, 236. Hugh Honour, The European Vision of America (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975), 84. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 252, 525. Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s Great Voyages. [La sauvage aux seins pendants, 1977. Trans. by Basia Miller Gulati] (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4. Quoted in Louis Montrose, ‘The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery.’ Representations 33 (1991): 17. Thomas Scanlan, Colonial Writing and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3. Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 1, 36. Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 4, 64. Francisco J. Borge, ‘Richard Hakluyt, Promoter of the New World: The Navigational Origins of the English Nation.’ SEDERI 13 (2003): 2. Berkhofer, Jr. quoted in Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 34. Quoted in Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. 1966 (New York: Vintage,

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1968), 9. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 256. Carville Earle, ‘Pioneers of Providence: The Anglo-American Experience, 1492–1792.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 478. Borge, ‘Hakluyt,’ 1–2. Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 3. Jonathan P. A. Sell, ‘Early Modern Voyages of Discovery and Travel Writing.’ Literary Encyclopedia. 1 July 2008. http:// www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec⫽true&UID⫽5530 (accessed 24 February 2009). Andrew Hadfield, ‘Late Elizabethan Protestantism: Colonialism and the Fear of the Apocalypse.’ Reformation 3 (1998): 311–2. Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 22. Quoted in Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 106. Earle, ‘Pioneers of Providence,’ 495. G. V. Scammell, ‘The New Worlds and Europe in the 16th century.’ Historical Journal 12, 3 (1969): 407. John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England or the Puritan Theocracy in Its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty (London: Macmillan, 1889), 12. Peter Bakewell, ‘Conquest After the Conquest: The Rise of Spanish Domination in America.’ In Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World, ed. Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 298. Pagden, Lords of All World, 127–8. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation in the Early Years of Colonization.’ William and Mary Quarterly 54, 1 (1997): 194. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 248. Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 124. Stern, ‘Paradigms of Conquest,’ 5. Quoted in Catherine Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning of America: Printed Representations Before 1630.’ In America in the British Imagination, ed. Catherine Armstrong, Roger Fogge, and Tim Lockley (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 16. Howard Mumford Jones, ‘The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the “Promotion” Literature of Colonization.’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 90, 2 (1946): 146. J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 25. Quoted in David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm in the New World. Heresy to Revolution (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1985), 13. M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, ‘Flight from the Apocalypse: Protestants, Puritans and the Great Migration.’ In End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. Karolyn Kinane and Michael A. Ryan (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2009), 106. Bruce Catton and William B. Catton, The Bold and Magnificent Dream: America’s Founding Years, 1492–1815 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 65. Quoted in Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 31. Quoted in Charles L. Sanford, ‘An American Pilgrim’s Progress.’ American Quarterly 6, 4 (1954): 299. Quoted in Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York, Vintage: 1958), 1. John Smith quoted in Edwin C. Rozwenc, ‘Captain John Smith’s Image of America.’ William and Mary Quarterly 16, 1 (1959): 33. Anthony Pagden, ‘Heeding Heraclides: Empire and Its Discontents, 1619–1812.’ In Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World, ed. Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 322, 320. Quoted in Everett Emerson, ed. Letters from New England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–38 (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 92. Scanlan,

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Early Visions and Representations of America Colonial Writing, 101–5. Quoted in David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 45. Jones, ‘Colonial Impulse,’ 147, 152. Elliott, Empires of Atlantic World, 17, 23, 24, 53. Quoted in Catton and Catton, Bold and Magnificent Dream, 71. Catton and Catton, Bold and Magnificent Dream, 68. Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. 1986 (New York: Vintage, 1988), 25. ‘Patent Granted by King Henry VII to John Cabot and his Sons, March 1496.’ In The Precursors of Jacques Cartier 1497–1534: A Collection of Documents relating to the Early History of the Dominion of Canada, ed. H.P. Biggar (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1911), 7–10. Duro quoted in Juan Francisco Maura, El gran burlador de América: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Valencia: Parnaseo, 2008), 100. Knapp, Empire Nowhere, 29. Quoted in Knapp, Empire Nowhere, 19. Kim Sloan, A New World: England’s First View of America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 16. Earle, ‘Pioneers of Providence’, 480–1. Benjamin W. Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts: A History (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979), 20. Gutman, Colonial Venture, 62. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 275–6. John Smith, Advertisements For the Unexperienced Planters of New England (London: John Haviland, 1631). Rozwenc, ‘Smith’s Image of America’, 33–4. Pagden, Lords of All World, 68. Knapp, Empire Nowhere, 13. Antonello Gerbi, La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas de Cristóbal Colón a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. [La natura delle Indie nove (Da Cristoforo Colombo a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo), Trans. by Antonio Alatorre] 1975 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978), 443. Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge and others: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 62. Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 2. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm, 44. Thomas W. Perry, ‘New Plymouth and Old England: A Suggestion.’ William and Mary Quarterly 18, 2 (1961): 251. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards 1976. Revised edition (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1995), 31. Bremer, Puritan Experiment, 31. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 23–6. Christine Bolt and A. Robert Lee, ‘New England in the Nation.’ In Introduction to American Studies, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and Howard Temperley. 1981. 3rd edition (Harlow and others: Pearson, 1998), 67. James P. Walsh, ‘Holy Time and Sacred Space in Puritan New England.’ American Quarterly 32, 1 (1980): 92. Quoted in Joseph S. Wood, ‘ “Build, Therefore, Your Own World”: The New England Village as Settlement Ideal.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81, 1 (1991): 41. Robert Daly, ‘William Bradford’s Vision of History.’ American Literature 44, 4 (1973): 562. Robert Cushman, ‘The Sin and Danger of Self-Love.’ 1621. http://members.aol. com/calebj/sermon.html (accessed 15 January 2006). Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 47. Boorstin, The Discoverers, 123. María Francisca Llantada Díaz, ‘Dorothy Richardson’s “Pilgrimage” as a Journey Down to the Center of Being.’ Issues in Travel Writing: Empire, Spectacle, and Displacement, ed. Kristi Siegel (New York and others: Peter Lang, 2002), 213. William H. Sherman,

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38 39

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‘Stirrings and Searchings (1500–1720).’ The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24. Gesa Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492–1637 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 172. Gutman, Colonial Venture, 80. Sacvan Bercovitch, ‘The Typology of America’s Mission.’ American Quarterly 30, 2 (1978): 136. Marilyn J. Westerkamp, ‘Puritan Patriarchy and the Problem of Revelation.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, 3 (1993): 573. Wayne Franklin, Discoverers, Explorers, and Early Settlers: The Diligent Writers of Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), xi. Crone, Discovery of America, 176. ‘Colonial Period to 1700.’ In Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter. 4th edition (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 6. María de la Luz Ayala, ‘La historia natural en el siglo XVI: Oviedo, Acosta y Hernández.’ Estudios del hombre 20 (2005): 34. Quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. 1982. [Trans. by Richard Howard] (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 5. Anthony Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum: Text and Experience in the Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas.’ Representations 33 (1991): 150. David Bost, ‘The Naufragios of Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca: A Case of Historical Romance.’ South Eastern Latin Americanist 27, 3 (1983): 3. B. W. Ife, ‘The Literary Impact of the New World: Columbus to Carrizales.’ Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 3 (1994–5): 69. All translations in square brackets are mine. James C. Murray, Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century (New York: Twayne, 1994), 29. Lewis Hanke, ‘Bartolomé de las Casas, historiador.’ Historia de las Indias, por fray Bartolomé de las Casas, ed. Agustín Millares Calvo. 2nd edition (1965), 1 (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 10. Martín A. Favata and José B. Fernández, ed. The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1993), 11. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, ix, 1, x. Ángeles Masia, ed. Historiadores de Indias: Antillas y Tierra Firme (Barcelona and others: Bruguera, 1971), 20. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 19. Pagden in Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 64. Ed White, ‘Captaine Smith, Colonial Novelist.’ American Literature 75, 3 (2003): 492. Moore, Pilgrims, 2. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ‘Captain John Smith’s Map of Virginia, 1612.’ Geographical Review 14, 3 (1924): 439–40. Cressy, Coming Over, 37. Timothy Sweet, ‘Economy, Ecology, and Utopia in Early Colonial Promotional Literature.’ American Literature 71, 3 (1999): 421, 412. Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning,’ 9. Larzer Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery in Early Writings from America.’ American Literature 68, 3 (1996): 519. J. F. Jameson, ‘The History of Historical Writing in America: The Seventeenth Century.’ The New England Magazine 9, 5 (1891): 645. John Smith, Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 245.

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Competing Visions of America Lest men suspect your tale untrue Keep probability in view. John Gay: Fables Even if the narrative is ornate, elegant, and copious of words Even if persons, places, and times are conveniently displayed Even if the shape of towns and the site and order of battles are fully described Even if the mind of the reader is artfully attracted to the material If the truth is missing it can never be called history. Ubetio Foglietta: De Ratio Scribendae Historiae (1574) When newcomers to America turned to writing to record their experiences in the New World, they knew that their first-hand knowledge came second to historians’ compilations on the grounds that during the Renaissance, more credibility was given to men of letters with a formal background (i.e. historians) than to less educated eyewitnesses. Only statements coming from an authority (de dicto) were straightforwardly accepted; those coming from a first-hand testimony (de re) were considered suspicious and untrustworthy on the grounds of a bias non-participants in the described event supposedly lacked. Additionally, the language and terminology available to historians and to which eyewitnesses had no access gave the former’s writings the appearance of veracity and reliability. The most common accusation against eyewitnesses was that ‘they may lie by authority, because none can controule them’, as William Wood, eyewitness and author of New England’s Prospect (1634), recounted. It fell to historians to control eyewitnesses, their task being analysing eyewitnesses’ reports to discern the truth from exaggerations or personal opinions. Complicating matters further, the concepts of fact and truth were not clear-cut, and faith, belief or a received opinion might be given the same value as those of established facts, a trend inherited from the late medieval ideology.1 Because the newness and incommensurability of the Discovery made it impossible for America to conform to reality as it was known, expectations were more often than not crushed. In his proem, Cabeza de Vaca warned readers that some things, on the grounds of their novelty, would be hard to believe, a strategy also employed by Herodotus, Seneca and Dante. Not only were things in America almost unbelievable but also was direct testimony considered biased by the writer’s personal motivations

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and goals, overlooking the fact that all ‘chronicles were written for pragmatic as well as academic purposes, and even those that served theoretical ends had at stake practical goals of influencing policy or opinion’. Just as the colonial endeavour had a goal, so did the narratives about the New World, and historians wrote their works with a particular agenda in mind. For instance, Purchas and poet John Donne, author of numerous poems praising America, were shareholders of the Virginia Company. Because historians’ motives transpired in their writings, despite their claims to transparency, finding an account written with no underlying purpose is almost impossible in either eyewitnesses’ or historians’ works.2 Yet, eyewitnesses’ works were rejected in favour of a supposedly more objective (though indirect and maybe incomplete) point of view. Like the Athenian exegetai appointed to keep historical records or the Roman pontifex, the historian’s trained eye was the only one able and sanctioned to detect what might be exaggeration or amazement to render the naked truth in an objective manner, with eyewitnesses lacking in these skills. While an eyewitness was just ‘alma inculta a quien grandes hechos dictaron grandes palabras’ [uncultivated soul great events dictated great words to], as Menéndez y Pelayo called Columbus, a historian, in contrast, was the best one to record those events. Because only historians were entitled to assume the task of history writing, an eyewitness’s work was a mere report for a historian to criticize, use freely and rewrite as he found convenient so as to turn this report into ‘historical substance’. History writing went as follows: the traveller wrote up his experience. The istoriador read them all and produced a comprehensive Historia general de las Indias in his study. The cosmographer read them all and produced A Brief Description of the Whole Worlde in his study. The cartographer gathered charts and sketches from pilots and gentlemen-sailors and produced the Orbis theatrum. The humanist statesman and the excited poet produced the Utopia and ‘De Guiana, Carmen epicum,’ the New Atlantis, and De navigatione. The great collector gathered most of this into huge volumes, limiting his efforts to editing and translation and resisting the urge, as Pliny, Roger Bacon, and Mandeville had not, to transpose all this into his own single tone. What he left out of the collection brings us back to the most important split in the handling of the old materia: to the extent of the editor’s ability to distinguish (an admittedly problematic limit), there is no imaginative or marvelous literature in Hakluyt, de Bry, or Purchas.3

Eyewitnesses who wrote chronicles were aware of this distinction, which may have borne heavily on their minds, for most travel accounts never made it into print. In the prologue to Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Bernal Díaz del Castillo distinguished between eyewitnesses and chroniclers: digo que sobre esta mi relación pueden los coronistas sublimar y dar loa al valeroso y esforzado capitán Cortés, y a los fuertes conquistadores, pues tan grande empresa salió de nuestras manos, y lo que sobre ello escribieron diremos los que en aquellos

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tiempos nos hallamos como testigos de vista ser verdad, como ahora decimos las contrariedades de él; que, ¿cómo tienen tanto atrevimiento y osadía de escribir tan vicioso y sin verdad, pues que sabemos que la verdad es cosa bendita y sagrada, y que todo lo que contra ello dijeron va maldito? [“I say that upon my relation can chroniclers extol and praise brave and hard-working captain Cortés, and the strong conquistadors, for such a great enterprise came out of our hands, and regarding what was written about it those who were then eyewitnesses will say it is true, just as now we denounce its mistakes; because, how do they dare to write so viciously and lacking truth, when we know the truth is something blessed and sacred, and that all they said against it is cursed?”].

Conquistador of Peru Francisco Pizarro claimed that he felt obliged to write down his experiences because his deeds had been neglected by professional writers – ‘como los escritores no escriben lo que vieron sino que oyeron, no pueden dar clara ni verdadera noticia de lo que escriben . . . acordé sacar la luz . . . como persona que se ha hallado en estas provincias desde el principio de la conquista hasta el fin’ [because writers do not write what they saw but what they heard, they cannot give clear or true news of what they write . . . I decided to bring it to light . . . as a person who has been in these regions since the beginning of the conquest to the end].4 Even though historians were conscious of the fact that they might make mistakes because of their second-hand knowledge, they were still regarded as superior to eyewitnesses. Some of the reasons put forward for this included the primacy of de dicto over de re or that the historian’s flaws would be less serious than those of the eyewitness. Listing the requirements for writing good histories in 1651, friar Jerónimo de San José thought that ‘we can take as truthful all historians who write what they understood to be the truth, even though they were mistaken about the facts’. He also declared that ‘it is more seemly that the historian not be present . . . because then, unencumbered by his own opinions and knowledge, . . . his mind might be free and dispassionate to judge and learn the truth by examining the relations of other people, without the love and affect of his own relations to them’. Veracity was far from meaning the exact rendering of events and, moreover, the absence of direct testimony to build their works upon was no hindrance to historians for describing America, and the sixteenth century saw the publication of numberless accounts about America despite the scarce firsthand information available. Ancient tales and folk legends often supplied the missing information to complete their accounts.5 Historians, for all their discredit to the value of eyewitness testimony, still had to rely on eyewitness reports. Thus, True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Gobernor Don Hernando De Soto and Some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida Now Just Given By a Fidalgo of Elvas Viewed by the Lord Inquisitor (1557), the testimony of an eyewitness, the Hidalgo de Elvas, had to be largely used as the basis for describing the De Soto expedition (1539–42), and, to a lesser extent, also soldiers Biedma’s and Rangel’s. For his chronicle of the same expedition, La Florida del Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega ‘el Inca’ took as his starting point the written testimonies of two eyewitness soldiers, Alonso de Carmona and Juan Coles, and the oral testimony

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of an unnamed Spanish nobleman who had volunteered in the expedition and whose very existence has often been questioned because of Garcilaso’s failure to identify him. For Historia general y natural de las Indias, Fernández de Oviedo, an eyewitness, used the testimony of a number of participants in the colonial enterprise, such as Ponce de León, Narváez and Cabeza de Vaca, among others. He had previously justified his use of eyewitnesses in Sumario in the following manner: ‘lo cual digo y escribo por tanta verdad como ello es, como lo podrán decir muchos testigos fidedignos que en aquellas partes han estado, que viven en estos reinos, y otros que al presente en esta corte de vuestra majestad hoy están y aquí andan, que en aquellas partes viven’ [which I say and write as truthfully as it is, as can be said by many faithful eyewitnesses who were in those parts, who live in these kingdoms and others who today are in your Majesty’s court and walk here but who live there].6 That they sometimes were forced to rely on eyewitnesses’ accounts did not mean that historians would take these documents thoroughly and would not alter the testimonies upon which they were basing their works; on the contrary, Hakluyt’s respect for eyewitness testimony is an exception rather than the rule. As part of this tradition of historians being the preferred (and the only acceptable) providers of historical reports, they felt entitled to heavily comment on eyewitnesses’ reports, up to the point of completely changing them. For instance, Fernández de Oviedo in his Historia rewrote Cabeza de Vaca and his companions’ Joint Report so much that his interpolations now cannot be told apart since the original manuscript is lost. This alteration of eyewitness testimony was deep-rooted and Marco Polo’s travels in Asia underwent the same fate: because he dictated his experiences to Rusticiano (or Rustichello) of Pisa, a famous novelist, it is hard to ascertain his actual words from the work of Rusticiano in The Travels of Marco Polo. Often these additions and comments were made in the document itself; Thomas Prince, who had the original manuscript of Of Plymouth Plantation in his possession for a while, added his own comments in the margins, making it at times very difficult (if not altogether impossible) to distinguish his from Bradford’s, and, actually, some of Prince’s comments were misidentified as Bradford’s in some editions of Of Plymouth Plantation.7 This practice of correcting and altering documents can be traced back to the medieval habit of monks freely adding or deleting elements without giving notice in the manuscripts they were copying down, transforming the final product into a very different one from the original. Alterations were so common and widespread that armchair travellers (writers who had not been to America) even corrected and denied the truthfulness of eyewitnesses’ accounts. For example, Purchas, who never went to America, denied the veracity of eyewitness James Rosier’s account concerning Native American women’s nakedness. Because John Smith’s writings were heavily edited prior to publication without his consent, his defenders, to clear him from charges of having invented substantial parts of his later works that he never included in the former versions (especially the Pocahontas story), claimed that the earlier histories were written and edited by a London editor using Smith’s notes but not by Smith himself. The same happened to La Salle’s lieutenant, Tonty, whose account was so extensively rewritten that it was almost unrecognizable after the multiple fabrications added, much to Tonty’s

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chagrin. Thomas Hooker complained that ‘there is great ods betwixt the knowledg of a Traveller, that in his own person hath taken a view of many Coasts . . . and another that sits by his fire side, and happily . . . views the proportion of these in a Map’. For all the historian’s training, the novelty of America made out that personal experience was the only way of obtaining information about newly discovered lands. As Fernández de Oviedo repeatedly remarked, ‘esto que he dicho no se puede aprender en Salamanca, ni en Boloña, ni en París’ [this that I have said cannot be learned in Salamanca, or in Bologna, or in Paris]. And yet, historians placed so little importance on eyewitness testimony that, given the opportunity, they turned down the offer of going to America. Despite being one of the most insistent promoters of English colonization in America, Hakluyt twice rejected the offer of travelling to America, to Newfoundland first and later to Jamestown.8 Communicating the knowledge of the New World to European addressees involved the skilful use of linguistic resources eyewitnesses did not feel comfortable with. To this was added the problem of being trusted by historians, fond-of-chivalric-romances audiences and even other eyewitnesses, the latter often becoming the fiercest critics of their fellow companions: Las Casas, an eyewitness (which he repeatedly mentioned), doubted the accuracy of Columbus’ writings. Given the fact that histories and other historical documents in the Renaissance were compendiums of historians’ opinions about a place they had never been to and that eyewitnesses’ accounts were dismissed, ridiculed and scorned, ‘the Renaissance opposition between the commoner and the scholar’, became a controversial issue. Both historians and eyewitnesses knew this and prologues generally addressed these questions, defending the author’s right (especially if he was an eyewitness) to write the following work. As the controversy became more heated, not only were prologues devoted to these, but also often, were entire works. Thus, the historical accounts written in the period were shaped by both the growing tendency of eyewitnesses to write their own accounts (despite the lack of prestige and the criticisms) and the trend of historians to correct eyewitnesses’ testimonies up to the point of making them unrecognizable.9 Eyewitnesses’ accounts, written or oral, were viewed with suspicion up to a point where historians felt the need to rewrite and correct them with the help of their vast, deep-rooted knowledge of the classics, thus making up for eyewitnesses’ poor education. Numerous reasons explaining this need were put forward, the most profitable and effective ones being the following: the personal interest and motives eyewitnesses had in recording their experiences, their lack of formal education, the primacy of the trained eye of the historian and the impositions and restraints that literary history imposed upon writing. It should also be noted here that the (historical, military or otherwise) reputation of the writer was a decisive point in the consideration of the credibility of his writings. Raleigh, a fallen man after his trial during James I’s reign, had his writings heavily criticized then, which his status as one of Elizabeth I’s favourite courtiers had prevented before.10 While the historian was supposed to lack any personal interest or motive in recording a given event (his goal being reporting the truth as accurately as possible, notwithstanding his own shortcomings), it was taken for granted that the eyewitness,

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in telling his own story instead of allowing a more qualified voice to express it (i.e. the historian), did have a personal interest. Eyewitnesses’ goals included the promotion of one’s career (John Smith, Díaz del Castillo, Cabeza de Vaca. . .) or of one’s favourite cause (Las Casas’ defence of Native Americans). There were also those who became historians to have their name remembered by future generations, an ambition shared with professional historians such as Peter Martyr. Actually, along with riches, fame was the major pursuit of those writing their experiences in America. Raleigh, one of the authors most widely read when John Smith wrote his books, declared in History of the World that ‘it is not the least debt we owe to History, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors and out of the depth and darkness of the earth, delivered us of their memory and fame’. Smith, who might have read Raleigh’s works, similarly wrote that ‘seeing honour is our lives ambition, and our ambition after death, to have an honourable memory of our life: and seeing by no meanes wee would be abated of the dignitie and glorie of or predecessors, or at least not hinder, if not further them that would and doe their utmost and best endeavour’.11 In order to achieve fame and promote their careers, eyewitnesses tended to ‘adorn’ the truth. This is far from meaning that they consciously intended to lie or deceive, and it is hard to determine what (malice, ignorance, boastfulness, purposeful deceit, etc.) is behind a lie or a falsehood. E. K. Chatterton in Captain John Smith (1927) asserted that it may be taken for granted . . . that Smith experienced all he said he did, the only question being whether he experienced it in exactly the same manner as he later set down. People of his type and training . . . do not generally recite adventures for the mere sake of telling them; at most they modify or suppress some part of what has been a true experience.

Morse went further in considering that ‘it is regrettable that the value of a historical work be assumed to depend, as in Smith’s case, on such an irrelevant factor as egotism, for a vain author may be capable of recording facts with considerable accuracy’.12 Because fame was not considered honourable, especially for those aspiring to write authoritative historical accounts, nobler interests were usually claimed as their motives for writing – mostly, the religious conversion of the Native Americans. Not all these attempts at disguise were successful, though, and in his letters, Amerigo Vespucci can hardly conceal the underlying pursuit of fame. Much nobler than fame and riches were Las Casas’ motives, since his stated intention was ‘to bear witness to great and noteworthy deed for the benefit of man’. In Apologética historia sumaria, he listed a total of eight reasons which can be summarized for giving a reliable account of the wrongdoings of the Spaniards in America, given the incorrectness and shallowness of all previous accounts. Yet, some claimed that their only intention in writing their accounts was just to entertain (especially the monarch to whom the work was addressed) with the knowledge of the New World. Fernández de Oviedo claimed such a goal for his Sumario – although not for his Historia, which he seemingly regarded more seriously. Other writers claimed no interest in having

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their works published, but, rather, intended them for a reduced audience, privately circulated. Michael Sparke, printer of Francis Higginson’s True Description (1629), asserted in the preface the veracity of the following account: ‘here read the truth, and that thou shalt find without any frothy bumbasted words, or any quaint new-devised additions, only as it was written (not intended for the Press) by a reverend Divine now there living, who only sent it to some friends here, which were desirous of his Relations’.13 Despite their aspirations to rewards, eyewitnesses did not perceive the vindication of their personal claims as the only or the most important motivation for their writings. Cabeza de Vaca saw a divine mission in his American exploits and Díaz del Castillo considered his history not as a complement to López de Gómara’s (offering the soldiers’ point of view, missing in López de Gómara’s) but as a replacement. John Smith defended his right to record his experiences because, otherwise, the ‘better sort’ would have omitted his deeds in Virginia and Díaz del Castillo justified his having dared to write his Historia verdadera because of the need to tell the truth López de Gómara had failed to record. He was especially concerned about the soldiers’ decisive role in the conquest, whose neglect he equated with death, and even murder at the hands of López de Gómara – ‘en todas las batallas o reencuentros éramos los que sosteníamos al Cortés, y ahora nos aniquila este coronista’ [in all the battles and reunions we were the ones who supported Cortés, and now this chronicler kills us]. To have his version known, Díaz del Castillo denounced historians’ neglect by titling his work Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España [True History of the Conquest of New Spain]. However, despite his intention of restoring the truth with his account, his choice of a title had the opposite effect, since many romance writers also titled their works ‘true histories’. Moreover, every romance began with precisely the same kind of explanatory text as did most histories. . . . by insisting on their status as ‘true histories’, most attempted to locate themselves within an authoritative tradition of ancient historical writing, which was precisely the tradition with which every ‘true’ historian also wished to associate his work. The prologue to the most famous of them, Amadís de Gaula, for instance, draws implicit comparison between its author, or authors, and the names of both Sallust and Livy.

Díaz del Castillo was well aware of the fact that he was not using the conventions that readers expected and to minimize this lapse, he sent his manuscript to two licenciados (university graduates) so that they would correct and polish his style. Pedro Mariño de Lobera, chronicler of Chile, did the same and Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá succeeded in securing for Historia de la Nueva México the endorsement of several scholars.14 Eyewitnesses’ inability to use flowery prose was a flaw which their critics mentioned whenever possible, and Pedro de Castañeda, soldier and chronicler of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s 1540–42 expedition, was attacked, more than for anything else, for his poor writing abilities. This was far from being an exceptional case, for the majority of conquistadors attempting to write history were very young men from the

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lower classes or, at most, from the impoverished gentry. Despite the multiplicity of first-hand reports they penned, most had a scarce formal instruction, which showed in the quality of their writings. Their education was almost reduced to being literate and, in general, ‘whatever scraps of education these men had, they were certainly not among the letrados, the new meritocracy who were flocking to the universities and who would eventually staff the burgeoning government service. The conquistadores were, for the most part, those whom the education system left behind’. As Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun put it, ‘the sword and the pen were the two instruments needed to found dynasties and keep them in power’ and ‘ora la pluma, ora la espada’ [now the pen, now the sword] was a motto that many conquistadors made their own. Cabeza de Vaca or Díaz del Castillo and John Smith as well as many other eyewitnesses who had turned into writers were convinced of advancing their country’s colonization of America and promoting it with their writings as much as they formerly did with the sword. Spain became the country with the highest number of soldiers turned into historians, which is not surprising given that, ‘from now on, neither kings nor noblemen, but any leader or soldier in any expedition of conquest, carries out the heroic deeds. Consequently there is a change in the social level of topics and authors of chronicles’. The same lack of erudite education characterized English explorers to the New World, and John Smith, while trying to present himself as a cultivated man, showed his scorn for bookish knowledge in Advertisements for the unexperienced planters of New England, or any where (1631), when he accused calumniators of having received a formal education without any military instruction: ‘some infirmed bodies, or tender educars, complaine of the piercing cold, especially in January and February’. Villagrá similarly attacked those who sought honour on the strength of nobility titles rather than with their actions.15 López de Gómara’s own history is representative of the limitations imposed on eyewitnesses due to their lack of formal knowledge, since he compiled Cortés’ eyewitness testimony. Had Cortés been certain that a history written by him would have had the same credibility and reception as if written by a professional historian (as López de Gómara was), he may have written one on his own. Cortés was better educated than most conquistadors – Díaz del Castillo called him ‘buen latino’ [wellversed in Latin] several times and Las Casas, a sworn enemy of Cortés’, commented that he was ‘latino porque había estudiado leyes en Salamanca y era en ellas bachiller’ [versed in Latin because he had read law in Salamanca and graduated] (actually, he did not complete his studies). That Cortés had certain literary and historiographical skills of his own is evident in the five cartas de relación he wrote reporting about his military campaigns and which have been favourably compared to Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. However, he did not consider these skills sufficient when it came to writing historical works, although they had served him well enough for his reports. Not being a man of letters, he wrote to fulfil his obligation of reporting, as he told Queen Juana in his first letter of July 1519: ‘trataremos aquí desde el principio que fue descubierta esta tierra hasta el estado en que al presente está, porque vuestras majestades sepan la tierra que es, la gente que la posee y la manera de su vivir’ [here we will cover from the moment this land was discovered to its current state, so that your Majesties know what kind of

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land it is, the people who own it and how they live]. He expressed the same sense of duty while acknowledging his limited writing skills in his second letter to Charles V in 1520: in order to give an account to Your Royal Excellency of the magnificence, the strange and marvelous things of this great city of Temixtitan and of the dominion and wealth of this Mutezuma . . . and of the rites and customs . . . and of the order there is in the government . . . I would need much time and many expert narrators. I cannot describe one hundredth part of all the things which could be mentioned, but, as best I can, I will describe some of those I have seen which, although badly described, will, I well know, be so remarkable as not to be believed, for we who saw them with our own eyes could not grasp them with our understanding.

López de Gómara would later turn Cortés’ first-hand account into a historical work to provide historical legitimacy and prevent criticisms. Actually, the only ones who dared disqualify López de Gómara were ‘unqualified’ (from the historical point of view at the time) voices such as Fernando Columbus, Díaz del Castillo and Las Casas, who repeatedly stressed that López de Gómara was not an eyewitness – the latter two, in turn, being heavily questioned themselves.16 Sent to Panama at 35 years of age as royal inspector, Fernández de Oviedo spent the following two decades in America, being later appointed governor of Santa María, regidor perpetuo of Santo Domingo and governor of the fortress of Santo Domingo. Not every conquistador could be like him, an eyewitness with a vast formal education and knowledge and whose writings earned him the post of official cronista de Indias for 25 years. The ideal historian-eyewitness, somebody like him or Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, author of La crónica de la Nueva España (1557), a scholar writing from New Spain, was almost impossible to find. However, despite this lack of formal knowledge, eyewitnesses’ writings were not devoid of value: though we tend to think of such figures as pre-eminent ‘men of action’ for whom writing was a necessary rather than a chosen task, their view of what they wrote in fact was quite sophisticated. And they often turned to writing with an urgency which suggests that it was a means of self-understanding, an essential way of shaping their lives after the fact.

Moreover, eyewitnesses’ stylistic problems were grounded not only on their lack of formal knowledge, but also on their uncertainty about the places they were describing. Writing a historical work was an arduous enterprise because of the very difficulties posed by that kind of writing, and, moreover, because of the need to be acknowledged as trustful so as to appeal to auctoritates.17 Despite their boldness in writing historical accounts, this lack of formal education, in contrast to professional historians, was the reason behind the lack of self-confidence many eyewitnesses felt when writing their accounts. Díaz del Castillo, who had already written 16 chapters of Historia verdadera, recounts that he stopped writing and

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seriously considered giving up after reading López de Gómara’s, Gonzalo de Illescas’ and Paulo Jovio’s chronicles. In the prologue to his chronicle, he acknowledged that y yo como no soy latino, no me atrevo a hacer preámbulo ni prólogo de ello, porque ha menester para sublimar los heroicos hechos y hazañas que hicimos cuando ganamos la Nueva España y sus provincias en compañía del valeroso y esforzado capitán Don Hernando Cortés, que después, el tiempo andando, por sus heroicos hechos fue Marqués del Valle, y para podello escrebir tan sublimemente como es digno, fuera menester otra elocuencia y retórica mejor que la mía; mas lo que yo oí y me hallé en ello peleando, como buen testigo de vista, yo lo escribiré, con el ayuda de Dios, muy llanamente . . . y porque soy viejo de más de ochenta y cuatro años. [“and as I am not versed in Latin, I do not dare to write a preamble or a prologue, because it is necessary to praise the heroic deeds and acts we did when we conquered New Spain and its provinces in the company of the brave and hard-working captain Don Hernando Cortés, who, later on, for his heroic deeds was granted the title of Marqués del Valle, and to be able to write this as sublimely as it deserves, it would be necessary an eloquence and rhetoric better than mine; but what I heard and was in the middle of fighting, as a good eyewitness, I will write down, with God’s help, very simply . . . and because I am older than eighty-four”].

Even men with a better education than the conquistadors felt this acute need to prove that they were worthy of the name historian. Raleigh, who had distinguished himself as a poet in the Elizabethan court, wrote in the preface to his history that ‘I do humble pray that your honors wil excuse such errors, as without the defence of art, overrun in every part, the following discourse, in which I have neither studied phrase, forme, nor fashion’. A century later, Cotton Mather’s historical work Magnalia Christi Americana included allusions to his capacity for writing history: ‘I do most solemnly profess, that I have most conscientiously endeavored the utmost sincerity and veracity of a Christian, as well as an historian’. If a learned man with an impressive knowledge such as Mather, author of over 400 books, felt inclined to include such a statement, it is no wonder that Díaz del Castillo almost gave up writing his history after reading López de Gómara’s, as the use of captatio benevolantiae was more than rhetorical modesty in the case of eyewitnesses.18 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was common that the methods, ideas, practices, etc. of a discipline were applied to other fields. When it came to history writing, this meant that literary devices were regularly found in historical works. German historian Johann Gustav Droysen’s complaint that ‘History is the only science enjoying the ambiguous fortune of being required to be at the same time an art’ was particularly true during the Renaissance, when history and literature were so closely associated that history, to qualify as such, had to meet certain literary standards. Richard Braithwaite in 1631 complained that ‘travellers, poets and liars are three words of one significance’ and Hobbes wrote in the preface to the Odyssey that ‘for both the Poet and the Historian writeth only (or should do) matter of Fact’.19

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History had to be written beautifully, as it was considered to be a part of literature, and it also had to be true, which made it the most difficult of belles lettres, according to Mattingly. Aristotle’s clear-cut division between history and poetry was ignored in favour of Cicero’s claims that historia was one of the three sub-branches of narratio (the other two being fabula and argumentum), thus placing history under the same label as fiction. The close relationship between history and heroic literature was a given in the Renaissance, as exemplified by the figure of Clio, the Greek muse of both disciplines. Because almost any writing (fictional or not) could be included under the label ‘history’, the crónicas de Indias combined literature in as much as history, and in England the term ‘history’ was applied to chapbook romances in broadsheet ballads as well.20 Eyewitnesses were aware that their writings would, at best, be suspected, on the grounds of their coming not from professional historians but from soldiers turned into writers who were narrating almost unbelievable events. At worst, their accounts would be taken as fictional works, with no resemblance to the truth whatsoever. This fear was expressed by most of them, including Díaz del Castillo, John Smith, Pedro de Castañeda and Cabeza de Vaca. Columbus shared this concern and begged the Catholic monarchs not to think that he was exaggerating. Diego Álvarez Chanca, physician in Columbus’ second voyage, wrote: ‘I believe that those who do not know me and who hear these things may find me prolix and a man who has exaggerated somewhat. But God is witness that I have not gone one iota beyond the bounds of truth’. William Wood similarly counteracted possible criticisms by providing classical examples: I would be loath to broach any thing which may puzzle thy belief, and so justly draw upon myself that unjust aspersion commonly laid on travellers; of whom many say, ‘They may lie by authority, because none can control them;’ which proverb had surely his original from the sleepy belief of many a home-bred dormouse, who comprehends not either the rarity or possibility of those things he sees not; to whom the most classic relations seem riddles and paradoxes; of whom it may be said, as once of Diogenes, that because he circled himself in the circumstance of a tub, he therefore contemned the port and palace of Alexander, which he knew not. So there is many a tub-brained cynic, who because anything stranger than ordinary is too large for the strait hoops of his apprehension, he peremptorily concludes that it is a lie. But I decline this sort of thick-witted readers, and dedicate the mite of my endeavors to my more credulous, ingenious, and less censorious countrymen, for whose sake I undertook this work. . . . Thus, thou mayest, in two or three hours’ travel over a few leaves, see and know that which cost him that writ it, years, and travel over sea and land, before he knew it.

These claims were not too different from Marco Polo’s in his deathbed, who, pressed by a priest to confess that he had invented his stories, argued that, if anything, he had told only half of what he had seen. Actually, it was the very implausibility of his travels that made people suspect him, as one of the requirements for history in the Middle Ages was plausibility.21

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The participants in the European exploration and conquest parties of America, not being leaders but common soldiers, could not risk themselves to have skeptical historians record their deeds. They could count only on themselves and their own writings to be rescued from that ‘infernall pit of perpetuall silence’, as Las Casas phrased it. Forced to write to assert their credibility and authoritativeness when it came to America and the events they had been both eyewitnesses and participants of, they made use of several strategies and, if necessary, recurred to God’s help. With their writings, ‘a series of topoi is constituted (“what I say here is not taught in the schools”; “this is what I witness”); privileged techniques begin to emerge (hyperbole, exclamation, enumeration, and others); little by little, methods of decoupage are delineated: the departure, the duration of the journey, the unknown country, the welcome or rejection’.22 When eyewitnesses turned to writing historical works to find a way to provide authority to their accounts, the answer was an appeal not to other texts (for there were none), nor to internal coherence, the logic of argument, the structure of analogy, and so on, but to the authorial voice. It is the ‘I’ who has seen what no other being has seen who alone is capable of giving credibility to the text. If the reader chooses to believe what he or she reads, it is because he or she is willing to privilege that writer’s claims to authority over all others and not, in this case, because it might seem to the reader to be inherently plausible or internally consistent. Indeed, as the Jesuit historian José de Acosta pointed out, it was only the authorial voice, the inherent credibility of the ‘I’ who has ‘been there,’ that distinguished between reading about America and reading the romances of chivalry.

As Pedro Cieza de León, soldier and chronicler of Pizarro’s conquest of Peru, stressed, ‘yo digo lo que vi’ [I say what I saw]. Pedro de Castañeda similarly asserted that ‘I write that which happened – that which I heard, experienced, saw and did’, and in Naufragios ‘el “yo” narrativo de Cabeza de Vaca transforma su testimonio en un relato . . . que reivindica la singularidad de su “yo” y afirma su propio valor’ [Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative ‘I’ turns his testimony into an account . . . which vindicates the singularity of his ‘I’ and asserts its own value]. Those eyewitnesses who were friars, priests or ministers, found that, as such, they counted with an asset for their claims to authenticity and reliability and they often mentioned in their accounts their condition of men of God. For instance, Francis Higginson reminded readers of his being a minister – ‘it becometh not a preacher of truth to be a writer of falsehood in any degree’.23 If authority came from the credibility of the ‘I’, aspects such as style or the use of previous works on which historians grounded their own authority were in turn disregarded by eyewitnesses. Both Fernández de Oviedo and Díaz del Castillo complained that historians regarded style as more important than the truth. Not only that, Díaz del Castillo considered the historian’s elevated style a deformation of the truth and he attacked López de Gómara, Illescas and Jovio severely for their use of rhetorical devices instead of the truth. For him, lying about what one had witnessed (as he claims Cortés had done) was as bad as writing about what one had

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not witnessed – as López de Gómara did. In his view, any history based on others’ testimony, no matter how truthful it aimed to be, was a lie, regardless of the accuracy of its contents. He further asserted that historians ‘les parece que placen mucho a los oyentes que leen sus historias y no lo vieron ni entendieron cuando lo escribían; los verdaderos conquistadores y curiosos lectores que saben lo que pasó claramente les dirán que si todo lo que escriben de otras historias va como lo de la Nueva España, irá todo errado’ [they think they greatly please the hearers who read their histories and they did not see or understand it when they were writing; the true conquistadors and the curious readers who know what really happened will tell them that if all their other histories are to be judged by those they write about New Spain, everything will be erroneous]. Thomas Harriot shares the same opinion, as he takes pride in his role as a participant in the expedition he describes: ‘thus much vpon my credite I am to affirme, that things vniuersally are so truely set downe in this treatise by the author thereof, an Actor in the Colonie & a man no less for his honesty then learning commendable: as that I dare boldely auouch it may very well passé with the credit of truth euen amongst the most true relations of this age’.24 Fernández de Oviedo, who shared Díaz del Castillo’s criticisms, was one of the fiercest critics of historians who were not eyewitnesses. Emulating Pliny the Elder, he counteracted his own limitations (his inadequate style and his young age) with the argument that he had been an eyewitness and attacked Peter Martyr for writing Decadas de Orbe Novo (1516) without ever going to the New World. Notwithstanding his attacks against Martyr, Fernández de Oviedo was more generous than other eyewitnesses when it came to criticizing historians, for he conceded that Martyr ‘deseaba escribir lo cierto si fielmente fuera informado; mas como habló en lo que no vido . . ., sus Décadas padecen muchos defectos’ [wanted to write accurately if he were faithfully informed; but as he spoke of what he did not see . . . his Décadas show many shortcomings]. In contrast to Martyr’s books, Fernández de Oviedo repeatedly remarked that I have not taken the material of these books from two thousand thousands of books I have read, as Plinius writes in the passage alluded to . . ., but I accumulated everything that I write here from two thousand millions of hardships and privations and dangers in the twenty-two years and over that I have been seeing and experiencing these things personally.25

Herodotus’ Histories ‘insisted upon the crucial importance of travel for an understanding of the world. Travel enables one to collect information, to verify rumors, to witness marvels, to distinguish between fables and truth. . . . Travel in Herodotus is linked with the insistent claim to personal experience, the authority of the eyewitness’. Similarly, Fernández de Oviedo constantly reminded his readers that style was useless if it was not accompanied by the author’s first-hand experience. It is only the truth (which can only be obtained if the writer is an eyewitness) which is of any importance to a historical work, not the style in which it is composed: ‘las historias no son de presciar ni tener en muncho, sin con la verdad no son acompañadas’ [histories must not be valued or regarded as much if they are not accompanied by the truth]. For him,

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the truth was his guiding principle, and he grounded his assertions on the testimony of other eyewitnesses who would corroborate his words: ‘no mire vuestra majestad en esto, sino en la novedad de lo que quiero decir, que es el fin con que a esto me muevo; lo cual digo y escribo por tanta verdad como ello es, como lo podrán decir muchos testigos fidedignos que en aquellas partes han estado’ [do not pay your Majesty any attention to this, but to the novelty of what I mean, which is the aim that moves me; which I say and write as truthfully as it is, as could be said by many faithful eyewitnesses who have been there]. For these reasons, Las Casas, Díaz del Castillo and Fernández de Oviedo, in a bid to legitimize their works, all insisted on the eye being more reliable than books, which led to the logical consequence that their own books were more authoritative and truthful than anybody else’s.26 English travellers to America saw the same superiority of their works over noneyewitnesses’. Although more learned than many of his fellow eyewitnesses (his first book, New-England’s Rarities Discovered was praised and well-received by the British Royal Society), seventeenth-century traveller to New England, John Josselyn, attacked those who would receive his works with skepticism: ‘a sort of stagnant, stinking spirits, . . . Who, like flyes, lye sucking all the botches of carnal pleasures, and never travelled so much Sea, as in between Heth-Ferry and Lyon-Key; yet notwithstanding (sitting in the chair of the Scornful over their whifts and draughts of Intoxication) will desperately censure the relations of the greatest of Travellers’. Smith argued that only eyewitnesses could assert the credibility of other eyewitnesses’ accounts at the same time that he defended his editing others’ accounts about America on the grounds that ‘had I not discovered and lived in most of these parts, I could not possibly have collected the substantial truth from such an infinite number of variable Relations’. In A Map of Virginia (1612), he attacked his opponents by indicating how accounts that differed from his should be evaluated because having been to Virginia did not entail any understanding of what Virginia really was like – ‘by this you may perceive how much they erre, that think every one which hath bin at Virginia understandeth or knows what Virginia is’. Smith, like Díaz del Castillo or Cabeza de Vaca, was conscious that writing about his own deeds would arouse criticisms, and asserted his legitimacy and his better knowledge of the American reality: ‘I know, I shall be taxed for writing so much of my selfe; but I care not much, because the judiciall know there are few such Souldiers as . . . [those who] have writ their owne actions, nor know I who will or can tell my intents better than my selfe’. With this, he was also imposing restrictions on those eyewitnesses whose experiences or knowledge differed from his.27 Because they were discrediting professional historians, eyewitnesses had to redefine the concept of the historian to create a new definition encompassing their situation. Smith, as he was giving up his role as a soldier to become a writer, constantly writing and rewriting his works, felt compelled to consider both aspects (soldier and historian) not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary to each other. But in demanding credibility and authority for themselves, not only had eyewitnesses to counteract historians, but they also had to face the ‘many scandalous and false reports upon the Country, even from the sulphurious breath of every base ballad-monger’, as William Wood bitterly complained. That is, they had to work against historians’ accounts

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and against those whose ignorance did not prevent them from spreading their own ideas about America. Thus, one of Smith’s major concerns in Advertisements is to assert the veracity of his previous writings, especially The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, to which he refers his readers for clarification or elaboration due to the brevity (40 pages in the 1631 edition printed by John Haviland) of the Advertisements.28 However, eyewitnesses, when writing their histories, were often forced to do exactly the same they attacked historians for – to use other eyewitnesses’ testimony (be it written or oral), to complement their own. Las Casas collected thousands of documents for Historia de las Indias, as did Fernández de Oviedo. Even Díaz del Castillo, who wanted to provide solely his point of view, could not witness all the events he claimed – some of them occurring simultaneously. Badly hurt in 1519 and off the battlefield for a few months, Díaz del Castillo, when he began his history, resorted to writing to three former companions who did witness the events, questioned other eyewitnesses or consulted official documents. Díaz del Castillo anticipated potential criticism because of this and argued that quiero decir, por lo que me han preguntado ciertos caballeros muy curiosos, . . . que cómo puedo yo escribir en esta relación lo que no vi, pues estaba en aquella sazón en las conquistas de la Nueva España. . . . nos escribían a los verdaderos conquistadores lo que pasaba, . . . letra por letra, en capítulos, de qué manera pasaba. Y Cortés nos enviaba otras cartas que recibía. [“I want to say, because I have been asked by certain very curious gentlemen . . . how I could write in this relación what I did not see, as I was by then in the New Spain conquests. . . . they wrote to us, the true conquistadors, what was happening . . . letter by letter, in chapters, in the way it happened. And Cortés forwarded us other letters he received”].29

Eyewitnesses’ use of second-hand information was also attacked. Las Casas’ use of others’ testimony was condemned by Ruy González in his letter to Charles V (1553) and also by Díaz del Castillo; for relying on other documents, Jesuit José de Acosta was accused by Antonio de León of plagiarism. Smith too, in The General History, not only compiled his previous writings but also added information that circulated around London at the time. Compiling became for him ‘a compensatory substitute for work on the ground, a ground to which he was not permitted to return’.30 To excuse themselves for their use of second-hand information, eyewitnesses stated that what they had not witnessed themselves, had been witnessed by reliable eyewitnesses: ‘y lo que no hubiere visto, direlo por relación de personas fidedignas, no dando en cosa alguna crédito a un solo testigo, sino a muchos en aquellas cosas que mi persona no hubiere experimentado’ [and what I did not see, I will tell as reported by truthful people, without giving credit to one single eyewitness, but to many in regards to those things I had not personally experienced], Fernández de Oviedo argued. They also pointed out that it was impossible for anyone to be an eyewitness of all events, as Díaz del Castillo did. So trustworthy were his sources that Higginson made no

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distinction in terms of reliability when it came to his eyes or the use of his sources: ‘I have been careful to report nothing of New England but what I have partly seen with mine own eyes, and partly heard and inquired from the mouths of very honest and religious persons, who by living in the country a good space of time have had experience and knowledge of the state thereof, and whose testimonies I do believe as myself ’. Still, eyewitnesses failed to acknowledge that these circumstances applied to historians too.31 Eyewitnesses, lacking in formal knowledge in most cases, resorted to extensively quoting from more authoritative sources in their search for authority and legitimacy. In some instances, the quotations were appropriate, but more often than not, they were excessive, especially in the writings of priests and friars, and most notably in Las Casas. Other than quoting from authorities, eyewitnesses were fond of comparing themselves to authorities too, a sign of the revived interest for the classical age during the Renaissance. That eyewitnesses chose to compare themselves to historical figures was part of a trend of taking ancient heroes as role models. Apart from mythological heroes, the most useful and profitable models were Julius Caesar and the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus and Tacitus were also mentioned to illustrate the case of participants in events they later recorded. The recurrent argument among eyewitnesses was that their strategies were not too different from Julius Caesar’s, heralded as their main model. Díaz del Castillo reminded his readers that Julius Caesar recorded his military success and presented himself as a hero, without having to face criticisms – just the opposite, as his works were praised. Moreover, Díaz del Castillo, who compared Cortés to Julius Caesar as well as to Hannibal and Alexander the Great, felt that he himself was more entitled than Julius Caesar to record his glory, since he had participated in more battles than the Roman emperor. Smith also looked up to Julius Caesar as a role model and asked ‘where shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar, whose achievements shine as cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did in the field?’ His question was far from being a rhetorical one, though, for ‘a commendatory poem a few pages later declares, unsurprisingly, that one need look no further than Smith; and the identification becomes, in Smith’s works anyway, a commonplace – he could not, after all, be a complete Caesar without his book’.32 Fernández de Oviedo instead turned to Pliny for a model, of which there were several precedents in the Middle Ages, like Gerald of Wales. Fernández de Oviedo shared Pliny’s vision of History: ‘the historian must cite who he heard something from, what sources he read, and what he saw as an eyewitness’. In his Sumario, he commented on the necessity of history writing thus: la cosa que más conserva y sostiene las obras de natura en la memoria de los mortales, son las historias y libros en que se hallan escritas; y aquellas por más verdaderas y auténticas se estiman; . . . [son obra] del hombre que por el mundo ha andado se ocupó en escribirlos, y dijo lo que pudo ver y entendió de semejantes materias. Ésta fue la opinión de Plinio, el cual, . . . escribió . . . lo que oyó, dijo a quién, y lo que leyó, atribuye a los autores que antes que él lo notaron; y lo que él

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vio, como testigo de vista. . . . Imitando al mismo, quiero yo, en esta breve suma, traer a la real memoria de vuestra majestad lo que he visto en vuestro imperio occidental de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Océano [“the thing that keeps and sustains nature’s works for longer in the mortals’ memory, are the histories and books in which they are written; and those regarded as most truthful and authentic . . . [are] those written by the man who walked around the world and busied himself in writing them, and said what he could see and understand of such matters. This was Pliny’s opinion, who . . . wrote . . . what he heard, said to whom, and what he read, he attributed to the authors who noted it before he did; and what he saw, as eyewitness. . . . Following him, I want to, in this brief summary, bring to your Majesty’s royal memory what I have seen in your west empire of the Indies, islands and terra firma of the Ocean Sea”].33

At the same time that he tried to impose a loose Plinian model on his Historia, he vindicated his own role. He claimed that he could be considered even greater than Pliny on the grounds of his knowledge about the sea perils involved in his voyages to America, which allowed him to accurately describe the shipwrecks featured in the twentieth chapter of his chronicle. Where Pliny used numerous books (2,000 volumes, the Roman stated), Fernández de Oviedo used ‘dos mil millones de trabajos, y necesidades, y peligro’ [two thousand million works, and needs, and danger]. Even in failure, eyewitnesses compared themselves to Greek and Roman models; should he fail to accomplish his task, at least he could resort, once more, to Pliny, who declared that ‘it is sufficiently honourable and glorious to have been willing even to make the attempt [of writing a history], although it should prove unsuccessful’.34 This need for the use of classical models partly owed to the fact that historians failed to understand both the sufferings and achievements of the conquistadors, which had not been properly recorded or rewarded. Díaz del Castillo complained that ‘pues a tan excesivos riesgos de muerte y heridas, y mil cuentos de miserias, pusimos y aventuramos nuestras vidas’ [because to such excessive risks of death and wounds, and a thousand stories of miseries, we put our lives at risk]. Villagrá similarly complained about the scarce rewards for their toils, and thus, he titled the twentieth canto of his Historia ‘De los excesibos trabajos que padezen los soldados, de nuevos descubrimientos, y de la mala correspondencia que sus seruicios tienen’ [On the excessive work soldiers suffer, of new discoveries, and of the bad compensation for their services]. But, even more neglected were the English participants in the American colonial venture – not only did they feel that they were not being sufficiently rewarded from a financial point of view, but also that their claims to fame were not being recognized. Smith argued that the deeds of Englishmen in Virginia deserved the same kind of treatment that the Spaniards in Peru or New Spain were receiving. Given that historians would not praise them, eyewitnesses decided to do it themselves, writing their own histories and enduring criticisms in the process.35 Apart from classical models, eyewitnesses found inspiration in medieval concepts of chivalry and knights; actually, ‘the chivalric quest was [along with the pilgrimage motif] the other major paradigm inherited from medieval travel writers, and it sometimes

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overlapped with the spiritual quest of the pilgrims’. While in England the influence of the Elizabethan popular romances is visible in Smith’s works, especially in The General History, Spanish writers used this motif more often than their English counterparts, for by the time romances of chivalry were out of fashion in most of Europe, they continued to be a favourite reading in Spain. With their stories recounting how a man of no fortune underwent brave experiences in exotic, faraway lands only to return home a wealthy man, covered in glory, it is obvious why conquistadors found them so appealing. Díaz del Castillo’s work is clearly indebted to knightly romances and he compares their deeds to one of the most popular chivalric romances, Amadis of Gaul: ‘we were astonished and told ourselves that this seemed like a thing of enchantment, such as they related in the book of Amadis’. Similarly, his wish for a fair and impartial rule of the Twelve Peers is a direct allusion to the Historia de Carlomagno y de los Doce Pares, a chivalric romance first published in Spain in 1525. Fernández de Oviedo himself was the author of a chivalric romance, Libro del muy esforzado e invincible caballero de fortuna propiamente llamado Claribalte, which he was careful not to mention in his historical writings so as not to cause confusion between the one and the others. Although in his Historia General he spoke pejoratively of chivalric romances, and despite his attempts to depart from such romances and literary conventions, his historical writings sometimes show the motifs and images of chivalric romances. Fernández de Oviedo was not the only historian writer of a chivalric romance, for Portuguese chronicler Joao de Barros wrote one too. Such was the popularity of these books that the Real Cédula of 1541 forbade them in the Indies, although it was never enforced.36 When Smith in A Map of Virginia indicated how to evaluate books that differed from his, he was proposing that his own writings were, from then onwards, held as the standard for all subsequent works on Virginia. At the same time, he was also demanding that eyewitnesses’ accounts (especially by those who had stayed in America for long) be taken as the standard to compare more doubtful accounts to. Franciscan friar in America Bernardino de Sahagún realized that former standards no longer applied to his writings and complained that ‘none of these foundations would serve to authorize the twelve books that I have written’. He was consequently forced to devise his own criteria – ‘I have not found any other foundation for authorizing [my twelve books] than to set out here the diligence with which I have attempted to discover the truth of all that is written in these books’.37 Given that historical authority was grounded on flowery prose, a vast formal knowledge of the classics and other standards unavailable to eyewitnesses, conquistadors and explorers had to find a new type of authority that would legitimize their works. The legitimacy Díaz del Castillo and Cabeza de Vaca could claim was the kind of historical authority that supplied sworn testimony in an official investigation and rested on the claim of having been an eyewitness. . . . Thanks to the juridical means to assess, reward, or punish the protagonists of conquest and colonization, the historical actor gained an authority as witness that in turn enhanced the possibility of his becoming the historian of his own deeds.

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Just as Díaz del Castillo found inspiration for his historical narrative in his previous letters to Charles V and his court testimony defending his position as encomendero, Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative also had its origin in his previous report (the Joint Report) resulting from his testimony at the Audiencia de Santo Domingo.38 But, although eyewitnesses defended a common interest, there were numerous feuds and rivalries among them. Díaz del Castillo, an encomendero, could be nothing but an enemy of Las Casas, one of the strongest critics of this colonial institution to reward conquistadors. Las Casas, too, had his enemies: he attacked Fernández de Oviedo ferociously, claiming that Fernández de Oviedo ‘se cegó también . . . a que diese crédito a los que referían mentiras, y él también de suyo las dijo’ [was blinded too . . . to give credit to those who told lies, and he told some of his own too]. Las Casas’s enmity lay mainly on the fact that where Fernández de Oviedo was objective in describing the Native Americans, Las Casas’s partiality towards them and his belief that everything previously written was erroneous, blinded him in his overpraise of the Native Americans. Thence the disagreement and the attacks against Fernández de Oviedo, who had welcomed the news of Las Casas’ writing a history of his own. Akin to Pliny’s statement ‘I, indeed, freely admit, that much may be added to my works’ Fernández de Oviedo showed his willingness that, with regard to his own work, ‘los que son testigos de vista lo aprobassen ó respondiessen por sí’ [those who are eyewitnesses approve of it or reply]. However, the fact that Las Casas’ Brevísima relación has undergone more editions than Fernández de Oviedo’s works, has provoked that, the more credit we give to Las Casas, the less we think of his enemies, especially, Fernández de Oviedo.39 Who was entitled to write historical works was, as mentioned above, a matter of great controversy in Spain. In contrast, England, because of its insularity, took a longer time to come to terms with the Renaissance and the ‘new airs’ it brought. History was not different and, consequently, Renaissance calls for a more critical writing of history took longer to reach England. That William Bradford was taken as a historian and his words were accepted unquestioningly was not an isolated fact. In contrast, the writings and chronicles of Díaz del Castillo, Las Casas, Cabeza de Vaca and many others were suspected and questioned due to a tradition in Spanish historiography of undervaluing eyewitnesses’ accounts in favour of professional historians. What American historian J. F. Jameson wrote, ‘the sixteenth and the early seventeenth had been an age of great historians who were also great men. Prominent statesmen and soldiers wrote brilliant accounts of events in which they had borne an active part’, would never have been said by any Spanish historian, back then or even much later.40 While Spanish conquistadors were snubbed due to a tradition of discrediting eyewitnesses and their accounts, Bradford being taken as a historian lies on a tradition in English historiography of previous chroniclers being followed verbatim without any question being raised about their accuracy. This tradition even allowed for the inclusion of biblical stories and mythical or fictional elements in historical works and going unnoticed. Contrary to Fernández de Oviedo’s accusations of historians having obtained their knowledge from many books whereas his came from personal experience, in England, the very conception of truth (and rendering it) was completely different, and a chronicler was not held responsible for checking the veracity of the

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events he described, but only for what he was citing from other books. So much was this the case that, aware of the demand for books that faithfully represented American reality, the Royal Society encouraged seamen, when writing accounts, ‘to study Nature rather than Books’.41 An example of this situation is Geoffrey of Monmouth, the reputed twelfth-century English historian, who claimed that the source for his Historia Regum Britanniae was an ancient book nobody had seen but whose existence was never questioned. Consequently, claims like Fernández de Oviedo’s or Smith’s that historians were unable to report events they had not witnessed, were less forceful in England. Truth depended not on the writer’s accuracy – either as an eyewitness or as a compiler of direct testimonies (i.e. other eyewitnesses’ accounts) – but on the veracity of his sources. That way, a book was true if what it contained came from previous books, regardless of what those books said – as long as it was in a book, it was true; seeing was not a question of being an eyewitness of events but of being an ‘eyewitness of books’. John Smith, in his being, along with Harriot, the first one in describing the New World, had to overcome a lack of previous sources, the same problem Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford faced.42 Yet, although Smith’s writings were viewed with suspicion to some extent, it cannot be said that this Spanish tendency to distrust eyewitnesses was thoroughly shared by English historiography. Eventually, despite some suspicions, Smith, with Hakluyt, became ‘the standard work on America for English readers’. Even twentieth-century skeptical historians like Helen C. Rountree, one of the main critics of Smith’s rendering of his rescue by Pocahontas, had to make use of Smith’s works to study the Powhatans, and many later anthropological or ethnological studies on the Powhatans rely solely on early English travel writings. Although Hakluyt had, in vain, demanded from the English monarchs a national historiography, it was its very absence that soon proved to be the source of all evils for Spanish eyewitnesses, questioned in Spain while their English counterparts became authoritative sources. In contrast to the fierce criticisms eyewitnesses faced in Spain, in England, the situation was more favourable to eyewitness testimony, which would determine Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s historical status. Their respective historical consideration, analysed in Chapter 6, would have much to do with the consideration of eyewitness testimony in Spain and England.43 Purchas wrote that ‘I mention Authors sometimes, of meane qualitie, for the meanest have sense to observe that which themselves see, more certainly then the contemplations and Theory of the more learned’, something unthinkable for a Spanish historian. English historians applied this ‘credibility’ not only to their own chroniclers and recorders, but also to Spanish chroniclers. For instance, the first English edition (1583) of Las Casas’ Brevísima relación, titled The Spanish Colonie, or briefe chronicle of the acts and gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies, called the Newe World attributed to Las Casas the condition of a historian whose words should be considered true. Notwithstanding that one of the reasons why Las Casas was considered a historian was that it was most convenient for the English to give credit to stories denouncing the brutality and wrongdoings of the Spaniards in America and to back up the Black Legend, it is significant that they gave full credit to Las Casas’ words. Meanwhile, Las Casas’ historical status was questioned in Spain until the twentieth century, long after

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the institution of slavery had been abolished. Additionally, Las Casas was not the only Spanish eyewitness who was given credit as a historian by English historiography. If Las Casas was considered important for helping to define the role of England in America, the translations of Martyr’s, López de Gómara’s and Fernández de Oviedo’s works by Richard Eden also contributed to the arousing of Englishmen’s interest in the colonization venture.44 Gradually, eyewitnesses benefited from a change in the concept of history during the Renaissance, which saw history no longer as a branch of rhetoric and which put an end to the practice of equating truth with verisimilitude. The publication of other eyewitnesses’ reports allowed ‘a traveler to legitimize his experiences . . . by inspiring others to follow his example’ and contributed to dispel the belief that their testimony was worthless without the mediation of historians. Díaz del Castillo’s efforts to contribute his own vision of the conquest of New Spain to Spanish history were not appreciated at the time and he saw how historians still preferred López de Gómara’s history to his, as he had feared. Díaz del Castillo’s ‘commoner’s version of a conquest chronicle’, could not compete with López de Gómara’s Historia, ‘the most popular single work of history on the New World produced in the century’, running to nine editions. Even worse, in 1632, when Historia verdadera was first published in Spain, friar Alonso Remón edited it so extensively that very little of what Díaz del Castillo had originally written was left and the book went mostly unnoticed and was scarcely known. When Benito Cano’s edition (1795–96) brought it into public attention again, Historia verdadera was seen as the work of a vain man. It took some time to bring about a change in Spain until it reached its present state, where Díaz del Castillo’s account is now the preferred one over López de Gómara’s history and even over Cortés’s letters.45 By 1632, the publication of Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera revealed that the old dichotomy between eyewitness testimony and authority was breaking down. When it came to America, direct, personal observation proved to be more reliable than traditional authority, which was constantly superseded by eyewitnesses’ accounts. Eventually, ‘a century of writing on the Indies had shifted the boundaries of the discursive encounters and made possible the incorporation of authors undreamed of a hundred years earlier’ and eyewitnesses’ testimonies were gradually paid more credit. Meanwhile, in England, Harriot and Smith, on the weight of their first-hand experience, became the basis and the sources for all subsequent English works on America.46 Since history was regarded as the preserve of professional historians – erudite men with a formal training and a classical education – those who had gone to America strove to have their testimonies truly recorded in the pages of history. With historians failing to oblige them, the latter decided to write their own accounts. They wrote at a time when America was, for the most part, unknown, an unbelievable and improbable place, and where verisimilitude was constantly challenged. As a result, they had to make their accounts credible and trustworthy, a task greatly complicated by the blurry boundaries between literature and history. Suspected (or downright discredited), eyewitnesses had to overcome both the difficulties inherent in writing, for which they lacked adequate preparation, and the distrust they received in return for their efforts. With existing genres failing them when it came to recording the wonders of America

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and with historians accusing them of lying for purely selfish motives such as greed or boastfulness, they had to convince their readers of their legitimacy to write about their own experiences instead of letting historians record them, as was expected. Men like Díaz del Castillo, Fernández de Oviedo, Smith or William Wood, among others, got their accounts published and strove to have them recognized as authoritative sources on America. In order to vindicate the value of their contributions as eyewitnesses, they tried to assert the veracity of their words by meeting standards unavailable to historians, just as historians used as the yardstick for history writing elements out of grasp for most eyewitnesses. It was against this backdrop of distrust and suspicion that a multitude of books on America were published after 1492, each presenting a different vision of America – even in two books by the same author.

Notes 1 Joyce Oldham Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York, London: Norton, 1998), 245. Wayne Franklin, Discoverers, Explorers, and Early Settlers: The Diligent Writers of Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 39. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 49–50. 2 Enrique Pupo-Walker, ed. Los Naufragios (Madrid: Castalia, 1992), 89. Rolena Adorno, ‘The Discursive Encounter of Spain and America: The Authority of Eyewitness Testimony in the Writing of History.’ William and Mary Quarterly 49, 2 (1992): 211. Thomas Scanlan, Colonial Writing and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire ([Cambridge]: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3. Anthony Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum: Text and Experience in the Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas.’ Representations 33 (1991): 155. Emily Rose, ‘Texts of Imagination and Empire: The Virginia Company.’ http://www.folger.edu/html/folger_institute/ jamestown-new/c_rose.htm (accessed 27 March 2008). 3 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Origins of Study of the Past: A Comparative Approach.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 4, 2 (1962): 219. Quoted in Francisco Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana. 2nd revised edition (Madrid: Gredos, 1992), 21. Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 220–221. 4 Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 42. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. 1632. 11th edition (México D.F.: Porrúa, 1976), 30–1. Quoted in Patricia Seed, ‘“Failing to Marvel”: Atahualpa’s Encounter with the Word.’ Latin American Research Review 26, 1 (1991): 10. 5 Quoted in Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 217–8. Quoted in David A. Boruchoff, ‘Historiography with License: the Catholic Monarch and the Kingdom of God.’ Proceedings of the Early Ibero-Anglo Americanist Summit http://www.mith2.umd. edu/summit/Proceedings/boruchoff.htm (accessed 6 March 2008). Ellman Crasnow and Philip Haffenden, ‘New Founde Land.’ Introduction to American Studies, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and Howard Temperley. 1981. 3rd edition (Harlow and

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7

8

9

10 11

12 13

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others: Pearson, 1998), 24–5. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983), 109. Frederick W. Hodge and Theodore H. Lewis, ed. Spanish Explorers In the Southern United States, 1528–43 (Austin, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 1990), 131. María de la Luz Ayala, ‘La historia natural en el siglo XVI: Oviedo, Acosta y Hernández.’ Estudios del hombre 20 (2005): 21. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, ed. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (Madrid: Dastin, 2002), 57. Richard S. Dunn, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Historians of America.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 198. Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández, ed. La Relación o Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Potomac, Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, 1986), xiii–xiv. Martin Gosman, ‘Marco Polo’s Voyages: The Conflict between Confirmation and Observation.’ In Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Travel Writing, ed. Zweder von Martels (Leiden and others: E. J. Brill, 1994), 72. Samuel Eliot Morison, ed. Of Plymouth Plantation. By William Bradford. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), xxix–xxx. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed. Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 33. Michael J. Puglisi, ‘Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas and a Clash of Cultures: A Case for the Ethnohistorical Perspective.’ The History Teacher 25, 1 (1991): 103. Percy G. Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800. 1962 (New York: Dover, 1980), 202. Quoted in Alan B. Howard, ‘Art and History in Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation’. William and Mary Quarterly 28, 2 (1971): 261. Quoted in J. H. Elliott, El Viejo Mundo y el Nuevo (1492–1650), [The Old World and the New, 1492–1650. Translated by Rafael Sánchez Montero]. 1970 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972), 55. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 154. James C. Murray, Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century (New York: Twayne, 1994), 33. Ramón Iglesia, ‘Two Articles on the Same Topic: Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Popularism in Spanish Historiography and Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Criticisms of the History of the Conquest of Mexico, by Francisco López de Gomara.’ Hispanic American Historical Review 20, 4 (1940): 534. Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 210. Mary C. Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Fugitive Gold: Reference and Deferral in The Discoverie of Guiana’. Representations 33 (1991): 44. Scanlan, Colonial Writing, 3. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 97. Quoted in Edwin C. Rozwenc, ‘Captain John Smith’s Image of America.’ William and Mary Quarterly 16, 1 (1959): 31. John Smith, Advertisements For the unexperienced Planters of New England (London: John Haviland, 1631). Quoted in Jarvis M. Morse, ‘John Smith and His Critics: A Chapter in Colonial Historiography.’ Journal of Southern History 1, 2 (1935): 134, 125. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 59. Quoted in Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 155. Lewis Hanke, ‘Bartolomé de las Casas, historiador.’ Historia de las Indias, por fray Bartolomé de las Casas, ed. Agustín Millares Calvo. 2nd edition (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), xx, lvii. Francis Higginson, New England’s Plantation, Or, A Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country. 1629. 15 September 2000. http://www.rootsweb.com/~nysuffol/truedesc.html (accessed 25 July 2007).

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14 M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, ‘The Conquistador Who Wrote a Captivity Narrative: Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios as a Captivity Narrative.’ Americana IV, 2 (2008), http://americanaejournal.hu/vol4no2/gomez-galisteo (accessed 9 February 2009). Kupperman, Captain John Smith, 33. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. 1993 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 62. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 160. Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 163. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 8. Manuel M. Martín Rodríguez, Gaspar de Villagrá: Legista, soldado y poeta (León: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de León, 2009), 188–9. 15 Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers, 276. B. W. Ife, ‘ The Literary Impact of the New World: Columbus to Carrizales.’ Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 3 (1994–5): 71. Jacques Lafaye, Los conquistadores. 3rd edition (México D.F., etc.: Siglo XXI, 1978), 19. Jacques Lafaye, Mesías, cruzadas, utopías: El judeocristianismo en las sociedades ibéricas. [Trans. by Juan José Utrilla] (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), 116. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 16. Michael Harbsmeier, ‘Writing and the Other: Travellers’ Literacy, Or Towards an Archaeology of Orality.’ In Literacy and Society, ed. Karen Schousboe and Morgens Trolle Larsen (Copenhaguen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989), 198. Iglesia, ‘ Two Articles,’ 525. Kupperman, Captain John Smith, 207. Smith, Advertisements. Gaspar de Villagrá, Historia de Nuevo México, ed. Mercedes Junquera (Madrid: Dastin, 2001), 102. 16 Quoted in Beatriz Pastor, Discurso narrativo de la conquista de América (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1983), 184. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 59. Quoted in Hanke, ‘De las Casas, historiador,’ xlvii. Quoted in Barry W. Ife and Robert T. C. Goodwin, ‘ “Many Expert Narrators”: History and Fiction in the Spanish Chronicles of the New World.’ http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/pub/b009.html (accessed 17 February 2009). Lafaye, Los conquistadores, 103. 17 Franklin, Discoverers, Explorers, Early Settlers, 2, 4. Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 210. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 150–1. 18 Iglesia, ‘Two Articles,’ 526, 535–6. Herbert Cerwin, Bernal Díaz: Historian of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 74. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 167. Quoted in Carmen BravoVillasante, La maravilla de América: Los cronistas de Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1985), 63–4. Quoted in Campbell, Witness and Other World, 230. Quoted in R. E. Watters, ‘Biographical technique in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia’. William and Mary Quarterly 2, 2 (1945): 162. 19 Fussner in D. R. Woolf, ‘Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England.’ Renaissance Quarterly 40, 1 (1987): 11. Quoted in James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 7. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 11. Quoted in Jonathan P. A. Sell, ‘The Rhetoric of Wonder: the Representation of New Worlds in English Renaissance Travel Literature.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Alcalá, September 2002. 39. Quoted in Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans. [1938] Vol. 2 (New York and others: Harper & Row, 1963), 667. 20 Axtell, Beyond 1492, 7. Woolf, ‘Erudition and History,’ 19–20. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 160. D. R. Woolf, ‘Genre into Artifact: The Decline of the English Chronicle in the Sixteenth Century.’ Sixteenth Century Journal 19, 3 (1988): 347. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, ix.

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21 Quoted in Phillip H. Round, ‘Neither Here Nor There: Transatlantic Epistolarity in Early America.’ In A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer (Malden and others: Blackwell, 2005), 427. Quoted in Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879), 172. Gosman, ‘Marco Polo’s Voyages,’ 72. Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. 1966 (New York: Vintage, 1968), 16. 22 Quoted in Peggy Samuels, ‘Imagining Distance: Spanish Explorers in America.’ Early American Literature 25, 2 (1990): 237. Paul Zumthor, ‘The Medieval Travel Narrative.’ New Literary History 25, 4 (1994): 812. 23 Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 150–1. Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 9. Quoted in Hans Galinsky, ‘Exploring the “Exploration Report” and Its Image of the Overseas World: Spanish, French, and English Variants of a Common Form Type in Early American Literature.’ Early American Literature 12, 1 (1977): 18. Gerassi-Navarro quoted in Carmen V. Vidaurre Arenas, ‘La interacción de diversos tipos textuales en la obra de Álvar Núñez.’ Sincronía (2000), http://fuentes.csh.udg. mx/CUCSH/Sincronia/nunez.htm (accessed 2 November 2006). Higginson, New England’s Plantation. 24 Guillermo Serés, ‘La crónica de un testigo de vista: Bernal Díaz del Castillo.’ In Lecturas y ediciones de crónicas de Indias: Una propuesta interdisciplinaria, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Fermín del Pino (N.p.: Universidad de Navarra/ Iberoamericana/Veuvert, 2004), 117. Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 74. Iglesia, ‘Two Articles,’ 541. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 30. Quoted in Vance Briceland, ‘The Credit of Truth: Thomas Hariot and the Defense of Ralegh.’ http://www. grandiose.com/vb/hariot.html (accessed 8 November 2006). 25 Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 78. Quoted in Iglesia, ‘Two Articles,’ 526. 26 Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 123. Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 74. Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario, 57. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 154. Cerwin, Bernal Díaz. Iglesia, ‘Two Articles,’ 525–6. 27 Quoted in Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 216. John Smith, Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 209. Quoted in J. F. Jameson, ‘The History of Historical Writing in America: The Seventeenth Century.’ New England Magazine 9, 5 (1891): 647. 28 Larzer Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery in Early Writings from America.’ American Literature 68, 3 (1996): 517. Quoted in Franklin, Discoverers, Explorers, Early Settlers, 39. 29 Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 81, 164–5. José Luis de Rojas, ‘Influencias internas y externas en los cambios de valoración de las crónicas: mi experiencia con Bernal Díaz del Castillo y Alonso de Zorita.’ In Lecturas y ediciones de crónicas de Indias: Una propuesta interdisciplinaria, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Fermín del Pino ([N.p.]: Universidad de Navarra/Iberoamericana/Veuvert, 2004), 202. Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas, ‘Introducción.’ In Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. By Bernal Díaz del Castillo. 1632. 11th edition (México D.F.: Porrúa, 1976), xvii. Quoted in Lee W. Dowling, ‘Story vs. Discourse in the Chronicle in the Chronicle of the Indies: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación’. Hispanic Journal 5, 2 (1984): 91.

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30 André Saint-Lu, ed. Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias. By Bartolomé de las Casas. 10th edition (Madrid: Cátedra, 1996), 19–20. Rolena Adorno, ‘Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, and the Twentieth-Century Reader.’ MLN 103, 2 (1988): 253, 247. Ayala, ‘Historia natural,’ 27. Wesley Frank Craven, ‘A New Edition of the Works of John Smith.’ William and Mary Quarterly 29, 3 (1972): 480. Rose, ‘Imagination and Empire.’ Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print. English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 142. 31 Quoted in Serés, ‘Crónica de un testigo,’ 108. Ángel Delgado Gómez, ‘Escritura y oralidad en Bernal Díaz.’ In Lecturas y ediciones de crónicas de Indias: Una propuesta interdisciplinaria, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Fermín del Pino ([N.p.]: Universidad de Navarra / Iberoamericana / Veuvert, 2004), 152. Higginson, New England’s Plantation. 32 Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 9, 100. A. MacC. Armstrong, ‘The Conquistadores and the Classics.’ Greece & Rome 22, 65 (1953): 88. Ayala, ‘Historia natural,’ 33. Adorno, ‘Discourses on Colonialism,’ 245. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 164. Quoted in Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery,’ 516. Knapp, Empire Nowhere, 217. 33 Woolf, ‘Erudition and History,’ 13. Quoted in Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 101. Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario, 55. 34 Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 150. Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 80–1. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History (London: Taylor and Francis, 1855). http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup⫽Plin.⫹Nat.⫹1.dedication (accessed 3 March 2006). 35 Lafaye, Los conquistadores, 211. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 1. Rozwenc, ‘Smith’s Image,’ 31. 36 William H. Sherman, ‘Stirrings and Searchings (1500–1720).’ In The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24–5. Rozwenc, ‘Smith’s Image,’ 28. Bruce Catton and William B. Catton, The Bold and Magnificent Dream: America’s Founding Years, 1492–1815 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 15. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992), 23–4. McAlister in Ramón Sánchez, ‘The First Captivity Narrative: Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación’. Proceedings of the II Conference of SEDERI (1992): 262. Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 34. Quoted in Luis Weckman, ‘The Middle Ages in the Conquest of America.’ Speculum 26, 1 (1951): 134. Ife, ‘Literary Impact’, 83. Luis Sáinz de Medrano Arce, ‘Reencuentro con los cronistas de Indias.’ Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 6 (1977): 54, 24. Pagden, European Encounters, 63–4. Ayala, ‘Historia natural,’ 24. David Henige, ‘The Context, Content and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca’. The Americas 43 (1986): 11. Benjamin Keen, ‘Main Currents in United States Writings on Colonial Spanish America, 1884–1984.’ The Hispanic American Historical Review 65, 4 (1985): 666. 37 Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery,’ 513. Quoted in Pagden, European Encounters, 42. 38 Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 218–9. 39 Quoted in Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 74. Pliny, Natural History. Quoted in Hanke, ‘De las Casas, historiador’, lxxxi. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 65. 40 J. F. Jameson, ‘The History of Historical Writing in America The Eighteenth Century.’ The New England Magazine 9, 6 (1891): 726. William Raleigh Trimble, ‘Early Tudor Historiography, 1485–1548.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 11, 1 (1950): 30.

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41 Trimble, ‘Early Tudor Historiography,’ 31–2. Quoted in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 42 Henige, ‘Context, Content, Credibility’, 8–9. 43 Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 389. David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 10. Karen Robertson, ‘Pocahontas at the Masque.’ Signs 21, 3 (1996): 558. Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 32. 44 Quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 146. ‘Latin American Literature.’ Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2006. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-236909 (accessed 10 November 2006). Fernando Beltrán Llavador, ed. De la plantación de Plymouth (León: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de León, 1994), 20. 45 Gustaaf Van Cromphout, ‘Cotton Mather: The Puritan Historian as Renaissance Humanist.’ American Literature 49, 3 (1977): 328. Games, Web of Empire, 42. Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 212. Steve J. Stern, ‘Paradigms of Conquest: History, Historiography, and Politics.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 24, Quintecentenary Supplement (1992): 7. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 223–4. Henry R. Wagner, ‘Notes on Writings by and about Bernal Díaz del Castillo.’ Hispanic American Historical Review 25, 2 (1945): 205. Esteve Barba, Historiografía indiana, 167–8. Ramírez Cabañas, ‘Introducción,’ ix. 46 Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 55. Seed, ‘Failing to Marvel,’ 10. Adorno, ‘Discursive Encounter,’ 228.

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3

Describing an Unknown Land A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism In 1492, America apparently showed up out of the blue, where not even Columbus expected it to be. Inspired by the belief that God had preserved America hidden in preparation for their future coming, Spaniards and Englishmen soon regarded themselves as the only owners of the newly discovered lands. Entitled to them and all they contained, their claims were the only legitimate ones in contrast to the feeble arguments of rivalling countries. Since conquest implied a vast array of meanings, so did the notion of America – it alternatively appeared as the earthly paradise, a place where utopias became true, a shelter from persecution, a virgin land and so forth. Accounts were further shaped by authors’ reasons for writing about America – promoting further conquest and colonization, advancing one’s career, attracting potential investors and colonists, making one’s name known to posterity, presenting America as a place for religious reformation or as an antidote for social unrest – with the practical concerns of those who had been to America standing in marked contrast to the agendas of those who had never left their country. Still, the appearance of an unknown territory was not an entirely new idea when it came to the European mind. Allusions to a place still to be discovered can be found in classical writings of Ancient Greece and Rome and in a multitude of stories which featured an unknown, foreign land. Classical, biblical, mythological, popular, folkloric, mythical and invented references, all were assembled to convey such a powerfully pervasive image that America was not discovered just from a physical point of view but also mentally.1 When Columbus returned from his first journey to the New World, bringing news of unknown lands, he was confirming ancient suspicions about the existence of lands beyond the oikoumene (the part of the world inhabited by humans). Since the classical age, there had circulated the idea that there must be places beyond Finisterre Cape (whose name means ‘cape of the end of the earth’) yet to be discovered. So firm was this belief that the existence of an unknown continent was unquestionable, although its exact location was the object of heated debate. The Bible sustained this theory in that it stated that most of the world extension consisted of dry land, and the fundamental notion of symmetry that cosmographers since the Greeks had entertained demanded that Africa be balanced by another continent across the Atlantic.2

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The writings of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne in the fifth century, speaking of a place ‘beyond the indies where the world begins and where (they say) earth and sky meet’, acquired new relevance, as did other ancient stories about faraway civilizations. In one of his dialogues, Critias, Plato mentioned a war between those living westwards from the Strait of Gibraltar and those living eastwards and Aristotle wrote about the existence of an island first discovered by the Carthaginians. In Medea, Seneca wrote: ‘in later years there will come an age when Ocean will loosen the chain of things, and the great earth will lie open, Tethys will uncover new worlds, and Thule will not be the last among lands’ and in the Divine Comedy, Dante spoke of Ulysses going westwards through the Strait of Gibraltar, in the direction of ‘the new experience/Of the uninhabited world behind the sun’. Also in the west were the Elysian Fields and the island of Avalon. Because it was the souls’ eternal destination too, the idea of the west as better than Europe had been circulating for several decades by the time it was confirmed that America was westwards and was not part of the Indies. The Protestant migration to the New World seemed to confirm the west as the residence for moral people, as advocated by English Puritan divine John Edwards, which eventually translated in ‘the notion of the translatio imperii, or translation religionis, that is, the progress of the Gospel from East to West during the course of providential history’.3 The rediscovery of classical works through the Muslims caused such a revival of the classical influence to describe the New World that, in time, it would even surpass the Bible’s. However, useful as it was in providing writers with a language to speak about America, sometimes this very dependence involved an unwillingness to discover what America really was like. For example, Peter Martyr ‘compared New World parrots with those described by Pliny, the life of the islanders on Hispaniola to the Golden Age depicted by Virgil and Hesiod, the elusive cannibals of the Caribbean to the Thracians who went to Lesbos to impregnate the Amazons’. Plenty of myths with a classical origin were pursued in the Americas, such as the Fortunate Islands (also identified as the Canary Islands), with classical tales by Hesiod and others spreading the belief that Phoenicians, Carthaginians or Greek sailors had found marvellous islands beyond the Mediterranean.4 To properly understand the influence of myths and folk tales in the exploration of America, we have to make reference to the concept of geosophy, a Greek-based neologism made up of the words geo (earth) and sophia (knowledge), first introduced by John K. Wright in 1947. While geography is the study of the earth, geosophy is the study of how people have conceived, imagined and interpreted the world – accurately or not. Even before its actual discovery, America was one of the most prolific subjects of geosophical inquiry, and rumours or ideas about imagined places decisively shaped the exploration and conquest of America. Although the influence of these ideas has often been discarded or only mentioned in passing, their importance was such that some countries based their territorial claims on these folk tales. For instance, Fernández de Oviedo grounded the Spanish legitimate right to the Indies on the belief that ‘yo tengo estas Indias por aquellas famosas Islas Hespérides (assi llamadas del duodécimo rey de España, dicho Hespero)’ [I see these Indies as those famous Hesperides Islands (called after the twelfth king of Spain, the aforementioned Hespero)]. In the late seventeenth

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century, ethnologist and scholar Diego Andrés Rocha grounded Spain’s authority on the New World on the derecho de reversión or right of restitution to its true owners. In England, Hakluyt, among others, would use the legend of Prince Madoc of Wales, who had reportedly discovered a ‘Great Land’ across the Atlantic, to defend English claims on America on the grounds of Queen Elizabeth’s Welsh ancestry.5 Very often, these popular legends made their way into cartographical representation and we can find maps locating mythical places given that for fifteenth- to seventeenthcentury men, legends were indistinguishable from more ‘scientific’ sources of knowledge. The primary sources for geographical knowledge before 1492 included rumors of ancient and classical voyagers northwestward from Europe, legends of Celtic exploration west from Ireland in the sixth or seventh centuries, empirical and nonempirical lore derived from the Norse explorations of the tenth through the twelth centuries, Medieval tales of Atlantic isles, apocryphal voyages supposedly occurring between the Norse discoveries and Columbus, and speculative-butpossible explorations by Portuguese and English in the years immediately preceding the first Columbian voyage.

For those partaking in the discovery and exploration of America, all were equally valid foundations of knowledge, long established. Indeed, Strabo, the first-century Greek geographer, did not limit his object of study to the oikoumene, but included unexplored regions as well, which he deemed similar to the already known places. Popular tales and geographical lore often largely determined the course of expeditions and friar Marcos of Nice’s expedition was launched to find the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. One of John Cabot’s goals was to reach the mythical Isle of Brasil, while the English exploration of the North American coast was fuelled by rumours about Norumbega, a land of gold and silver.6 Often undervalued and left out in histories of the discovery and exploration of the New World, so pervasive was the influence of these legends that Columbus believed he was finding mythical places in the course of his travels. Because in America the frontier between myths and reality was blurred, explorers and conquistadors enthusiastically devoted themselves to the task of finding (or, rather, rediscovering) mythical places. Juan Ponce de León searched for the Bimini islands, and Antilia and Hy-Brasil were described late in the fifteenth century as goals of the first and second voyages of Cabot. Another legendary place was El Dorado, about which stories began to circulate after the return of the expedition of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada to the Andes region in 1537. Quesada had encountered the Muisca, who reportedly celebrated a ceremonial ritual of covering the chief or priest in gold – thence the name ‘el dorado’ (the golden one). While El Dorado at first named this ritual, it was later used to refer to a region in the Bogotá area and when El Dorado was not found there either, new theories that located it in Venezuela or Guiana appeared. One of the most popular English myths was that St. Brendan, an Irish monk, had sailed to North America in 530 and discovered the Island of the Blessed, according to the ninth-century work Voyage of St Brendan the Navigator. Legends had it that Venetian brothers Niccolo and Antonio Zenno

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(‘the Zenii’) had found lands south and west from Iceland and Greenland in the fourteenth century.7 However, for all the biblical resonances and the many classical models, eventually many New World commentators would find it impossible to reconcile the myths and legends they had brought with them with the undeniably different American reality that extended before their eyes. Because America defied a number of traditional and folk beliefs, it was necessary to first assume that America was not a prolongation of the Old World but a new one. While Columbus clung to his theory of America being Asia until his death, most travellers found it impossible to keep their preconceived ideas intact after initial contact. Amerigo Vespucci concluded that ‘nothing shows any conformity with the things of this part [of the world]’. So different was America that conquistador Rodrigo de Quiroga cautioned future travellers to ‘have nothing to do with the things of this land until you understand them, because they are different matters, and another language’. When describing America, writers were certainly aware of their own limitations because of their ignorance of such disciplines as zoology, botany, ethnology, anthropology, etc. As Columbus regretted, ‘yo no sé donde me vaya primero, ni me sé cansar los ojos de ver tan fermosas verduras y tan diversas de las nuestras; y aún creo que ha de ellas muchas yerbas y muchos árboles, que valen mucho en España para tinturas y para medicinas de especería, mas yo no las conozco, de que llevo grande pena’ [I do not know where to go first, and I cannot get my eyes tired of seeing such beautiful vegetables and so different from ours; and I believe, though, that there are many herbs and many trees which are very costly in Spain for dyes and medicines, but I do not know them, which grieves me much]. With language failing them, analogy and metaphor soon proved insufficient or inadequate to describe the otherness of America.8 Given the vast amount of information brought from America, contemporary men no longer believed that all information could be found in books. While previously authoritative books had been narrowed down to the Bible, Ancient Greek and Roman texts, and a few modern works thought to compile all knowledge, Columbus, though inadvertently, launched a full-scale attack on all previous conceptions of the world. The very existence of new lands posed a most serious threat to the veracity of the Bible at a time when this was already challenged by the rediscovery of classical works. As historian Guicciardini wrote in the 1530s, ‘not only has this navigation confounded many affirmations of former writers about terrestrial things, but it has also given some anxiety to the interpreters of the Holy Scriptures’. If the Bible asserted that the Gospel had been announced to everybody, how was it possible that there were people who had never heard about Jesus Christ? The existence of lands beyond the orbis terrarum populated by human beings ignorant of the birth of Christ was almost blasphemous. As French writer and soldier Denis Vairasse d’Alais wrote, the discovery of America, Polynesia and Australia had brought things ‘contraires à la Religion’ [contrary to religion].9 Before the Discovery, theologians had for centuries debated whether there were more inhabited lands. While St. Angus denied that the antipodes existed, and in the remote case that they did, he argued that they would be unpopulated, St. Isidore of

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Seville conceded that unpopulated and unreachable lands may exist in the Southern hemisphere. With the confirmation that the world was a sphere, ideas about regions in the antipodes of Europe reappeared, but religious considerations prevented their full approval. Trying to provide a conclusion to this matter, Roger Bacon came up with a new theory Columbus learnt through D’Ailly – that the orbis terrarum was so vast that there were antipode regions within it. However, Bacon’s theory became widely disputed as classical teachings and Aristotle’s works on physics circulated throughout Europe.10 With the confirmation, despite Columbus’ stubbornness, that these lands belonged to a new continent, an adjustment of writing modes and describing methods to accommodate the unknown was urgently needed. The phrase ‘unknown to Ptolemy’ became a favourite one to express sixteenth- and seventeenth-century men’s astonishment at the classical writers’ ignorance. ‘Had I Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny or Solinus here . . . I would put them to shame and confusion’, wrote Spanish conquistador in Chile Barros in 1531 while Fernández de Oviedo called for the compilation of new cosmographic and cartographical charters, given the classical writers’ omission of America. Josselyn claimed that ‘Pliny and Isidore write there are not above 144 kinds of Fishes, but to my knowledge there are nearer 300’, adding that ‘I supposed that America was unknown to Pliny’. Classical natural writers, too, ‘had they been in New-England, they might have found a thousand, at least, never heard of nor seen by an Englishman before’. The regard for the classics was drastically altered, as Jean de Léry pointed out: ‘I have revised the opinion that I formerly had of Pliny and others when they describe foreign lands, because I have seen things as fantastic and prodigious as any of those – once thought incredible – that they mention’. Consequently, a reform of educative methods was proposed, as they largely consisted of the study of the classics. At the same time, classical theories previously rejected as pagan and, very often, contradictory to the Bible (such as Ptolemy’s theory that the earth was a sphere or that there was a continent in the antipodes) were now vindicated, while others, such as the idea of unnavigable seas and uninhabitable lands, were discarded. With the Discovery, some theories were abandoned, others persisted and yet another group survived after undergoing a transformation.11 As the New World became the topic of many a contemporary writer, eyewitness or armchair traveller, they tried to describe the nameless to give their fellow countrymen information to build upon their own images. Analogy was particularly fruitful because it allowed writers to convey their impressions while providing their readers with some known elements upon which to base the new. Because ‘ “America” awakens to discover herself written into a story that is not of her own making, to find herself a figure in another’s dream’, there are almost as many descriptions and visions of America as writers. Choosing one way or another to represent America was not fortuitous but largely indebted to the writer’s agenda. Philosophical, social, financial, theological, moral, and even national, concerns resulted in different meanings of what America was. Yet, all these visions shared an idea at their core – America as a special place, which even permeated texts other than conquest and colonization accounts and apparently unlikely vehicles, such as political speech. Speaking to the House of Commons, Henry

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Wilkinson, a Presbyterian minister, claimed that Englishmen in America had been ‘raised to the highest pitch, aiming at nothing under a thorow Reformation; Zion and Jerusalem is in their eye and in their heart continually: Men seem to be aspiring and even ambitious to contribute something to that work which shall be the glory of the world’.12 The target audience of works dealing with America was far from being uniform either. At first, accounts were written for entrepreneurs likely to back up the American adventure financially, but soon they were written for a larger audience who might never participate in the New World conquest but who was thirsty for adventures and knowledge, albeit in a surrogate manner. New formats and genres replaced older ones that no longer met the needs of writers, who lacked the exact words to render their perceptions (‘the Edenic problem of name-giving’) and sometimes were unable to perceive reality first-hand, obscured by many layers of preconceived and inherited ideas, lies or misrepresentations that had circulated for several years already. More often than not, writers’ enthusiasm for the task did not match their ability with words – not to mention their readers’ lack of imagination to picture so novel ideas and concepts. Moreover, from the beginning in New World accounts (like in the medieval travel narratives that preceded them), reality and fiction fused, up to the point that it was hard (or impossible) to tell them apart. Despite eyewitnesses’ claims of their works being true accounts, fantastic stories were integral in their texts.13 In spreading the news about America, the invention of the printing press was decisive. Travel and literature went hand in hand, as evidenced by the sailing directions given to Henry Hudson – ‘send those on land that will show themselves diligent writers’. Similarly, Sebastian Cabot’s ordinances of 1553 instructed that ‘the marchants, and other skilful persons in writing, shal daily write, describe, and put in memoric the Navigation of each day and night’. Since New World expeditions had the necessity of writing reports to inform those who had stayed at home, voyage preparations were made with this in mind. Thus, John Rastell, in his failed expedition in 1517, intended to establish a printing press in their projected colony and English merchants were urged to keep a minute record for future travellers. In Spain, royal instructions made sure that every single event was properly recorded, an indication that ‘verbal testimony alone could not be trusted to be accurate. This reflects the significance of the written word for the Spanish, for whom it not only validated speech acts, but also made into a historical act’. Because of the didactic purpose of writing travel reports, travel became a state affair in the service of one’s country as well as a means to improve society, despite the dangers (including moral corruption) for the traveller.14 Reactions to this strange land were diverse – amazement, wonder, admiration, awe, fear, fascination, uncertainty, tremor, puzzlement, anxiety, etc. Coming to a place much dreamed about and spoken of but about which little was known with certainty, involved the reconfiguration of all the previous mental images newcomers might have brought. Still, it was inevitable for writers to base their descriptions up to a certain extent on Old World patterns, models and situations, given that their perception of the newness of America was filtered by their previous experience. Writers were influenced by previous testimonies too, and so, a striking characteristic in New World reports is

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the repetition of certain features up to the point that they can sound repetitive. While for some this coincidence casts doubts on their veracity, suggesting that there existed a more or less self-conscious plagiarism, it is not so much a case of textual borrowing or plagiarism but of writers sharing a common pool of rhetorical strategies and devices as well as of experiences. To make sense of the new, ‘the balance between recurring elements and unique situations appears throughout the early American exploration and conquest literature’.15 America had a dream-like quality, as Díaz del Castillo put it – ‘we were astounded . . . some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream’. Dream and fantasy merged in New Spain and he saw Tenochtitlan as ‘an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis . . . It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of or seen before’. Similarly, for Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca, ‘when I attempt to draw forth a fact, I cannot determine whether I have read, heard, or dreamt it; and I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories’. This wonder, ‘the central figure in the initial European response to the New World, the decisive emotional and intellectual experience in the presence of radical difference’, might be genuine or just a literary device to enhance the newness of the Americas. Ways to cope with it were diverse, one of the most popular being reducing the unfamiliar to familiar terms, with a double-fold goal – that readers ignorant of the American reality appreciated its worth and that authors could come to terms with what they were seeing. Practical and fabulous aspects were combined to keep the interest of prospective investors, potential colonists and avid readers, and, above all, everything was filtered through literary models of epic tales, romances and heroic narratives.16 Despite the multiplicity of visions about America, one was specially powerful and pervasive: America as a terrestrial paradise, the exact location of Eden. Competing with classical myths, many saw a one-to-one identification of America with the Old Testament description of the Garden of Eden. While the location of the terrestrial paradise had been a matter of much controversy before the Discovery, its actual existence had never been questioned. German writer Friedrich Schiller asserted that ‘all peoples that have a history have a paradise, a state of innocence, a golden age’. In the case of America, this paradise could have a religious dimension (like the Pilgrims’ and the Puritans’ perception) or not (for most conquistadors and for English entrepreneurs). As Gilbert Chinard noted, in America ‘the terrestrial Paradise became something tangible and present . . . the essential traits of the American mirage were fixed . . . the land of plenty and the land of liberty’. When Columbus arrived in America in 1492, he entertained preconceived ideas about what he might find in Asia, reportedly his intended destination, but as America proved to be more and more unlike what he had in mind, in his subsequent voyages he no longer took Asia as his reference point. Instead, in Columbus’ eyes, America became the terrestrial paradise, although this did not prevent him from perceiving a one-to-one correspondence between certain American lands and mythical places as well. In his third voyage, Columbus wrote to the Catholic Monarchs: ‘yo muy asentado tengo el ánima que allí, adonde dixe, es el Paraíso Terrenal’ [I have my heart set that there, where I said, is the Terrestrial Paradise]. Because those engaged in the American enterprise, ‘all too often saw what

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they expected to see’, Columbus, a deeply religious man, saw the new American reality filtered by the biblical description of Eden, an image that allowed him ‘to provide moral justifications and incentives . . . especially for his sovereigns’. So closely did he associate the biblical paradise to the reality before his eyes that he engaged in a scholastic argument to explain the observed physical phenomenon. The river, he argued, indicated that they had arrived at a place near the Garden of Eden. Using the authority of the Bible in the book of Genesis, as well as the writings of St. Isidore, Strabo, Duns Scotus, and others, he proceeded to demonstrate that Earthly Paradise had to be located in the Orient (he is, of course, certain that he is in the Far East), and that it contained the spring from which all the water of the world flowed. After establishing this axiom, the rest of his syllogistic argument is very rational. The river they encountered must flow from this fountain; hence, Paradise must be nearby. This argument was so compelling and convincing to Columbus that he did not hesitate to change his idea of the shape of the earth itself to accommodate his new discovery. The earth, he now maintained, was not perfectly round, but rather shaped like a pear, with the Garden of Eden at its peak.17

Authors were so comfortable with their own vision that they rarely saw the need to have it validated by an external source. In the rare instances when they sought confirmation, Native Americans were, due to their greater knowledge of the American reality, these tools for external validation. It began with Columbus that whenever the natives were asked, their answers always agreed with Columbus’ ideas. Las Casas commented that Columbus ‘habíase ya persuadido a lo mismo, así todo lo que por señas los indios le decían, siendo tan distante como lo es el cielo de la tierra lo enderezaba y atribuía a lo que deseaba’ [had convinced himself so that everything the Indians told him by signs, being so distant as the sky is from the earth, he put it to right and attributed it to what he wished]. The same was true for later ‘askers’, and in case the Spaniards’ expectations about what to find in America did not match the American reality, it was always attributed to the Native Americans’ cheating, not to miscommunication. That Spaniards and Native Americans did not have a common language did not prevent the former from blaming the misunderstanding on their part on the latter’s treachery.18 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers, burdened by medieval legends about the existence of a terrestrial paradise that had been enhanced by the golden age theories of Latin poets, found it impossible to give America a fresh, new look. In their writings, often we cannot see America but the ideas of America held then. Colonists, whose first-hand experience gave them more elements to describe America, also saw the new lands as the ‘ “new Canaan,” the “second Paradise,” the “promised land,” the “new heaven on earth” ’. Everyday contact with the American reality contributed to modify their idealized views to some extent but, still, eyewitnesses spoke of an Edeniclike innocence in America, and George Alsop, author of Character of Maryland (1666), saw America in the state of Eden before Adam named its fauna. For all the difficulties that living there involved, America still retained its paradise-like outlook for colonists. Paradisiacal features included ‘rivers run with milk for you’, according

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to an anonymous French propagandistic poem published along with an account of Cartier’s expedition, fruitful lands, mineral riches, abundance of fish and many others. Prominent religious figures also succumbed to the trend of locating in America the biblical terrestrial paradise. Friar José de Acosta spoke of America in the most praising terms: ‘for what poets sing of the Elysian Field . . . or Plato recounts, or avers, of his Isle of Atlantis, men could in fact find in these lands, if with a generous spirit they would master their avarice for money rather than remain slaves to it as they now are’.19 Closely intertwined with the idea of America as a paradise was the notion of its being suspended in a golden age, long ago vanished in Europe. Going to the colonies, therefore, was much more than expanding the imperial power of one’s nation, for it meant a return to the golden age, the mythical origins of the world, when everything had been pure, idyllic and perfect. As Locke wrote in his Second Treatise of Government (1690), ‘in the beginning all the world was America’. Marc Lescarbot, a participant in Samuel de Champlain’s 1606 expedition to Canada, happily announced that ‘contentment prepares itself for those who will live in New France . . . in New France will be restored the golden age’. Dreams of a long vanished, ideal golden age are as recurrent and widespread as that of the terrestrial paradise: the Greek and Latin tradition was of an ancient age of gold when all men were brothers and the living was really easy, with fruit dropping daily from the trees to regale the happy residents beneath (rather as Peter Martyr and Vespucci said it really did in the New World, at least in some of the better neighborhoods); or of a land of healthy, hardy, virtuous, simple, innocent people such as the nomad Scythians or the Getae or the Germans of classic times (rather as Lescarbot and various others noted for some New World regions). Some classic writers saw such a vision of ‘primitivist’ times – the people of the Golden Age being, for the most of the classic references, Old World examples of ‘primitive’ peoples – as a moment of pristine perfection from which mankind had been ever since decaying, a view strengthened in Christian analysis by the proposition that the earliest people, made new by God, must have represented perfection since God’s work (before corruption by human misbehavior) could only be perfect. Some authorities (Hesiod, Plato) seemed to see such an ideal vision as a summit to which toiling mankind might return in vast cycles of time. Incidental traits in the various Golden Age pictures differed enormously. The essential point pretty generally common to most was that in the Golden Age – as in the Garden of Eden before the Fall – people were ‘naturally’ good, not bad.20

Sometimes instead of finding New World accounts shaped by golden age writings, the opposite is true and New World reports expanded previously existing golden age theories. It did not take long for writers to portray America as a place where the golden age still reigned: Martyr extolled the heavenly qualities of the New World, investing its inhabitants with all the attributes of purity, brotherly love, and perfection which God had intended for

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Early Visions and Representations of America mankind before the fall. Ronsard, having initially sited such felicity in the Canaries (1553), thereafter recognized it among the somewhat unprepossessing aborigines of Brazil, praising their freedom from the shackles of morality, and exhorting his compatriots to leave them, a reproach to contemporary vice, uncontaminated by European civilization. . . . Vasco de Quiroga had earlier concluded that the New World was so called because it embodied primeval virtue, and in Mexico, fortified by his reading of Lucian on the Age of Gold, set about reorganizing native society according to the precepts of More’s Utopia, that innocence might be the basis of the purest Christianity.

So pervasive was this notion of a golden age that some authors, such as Marcel Batallion, believed that this recovery anxiety was characteristic of the intellectual climate of the period. But just as the golden age had come to an end in Europe, so did it in America as contact between Europeans and Native Americans gradually increased. By the end of the century, almost all writers noted that the Europeans had brought about an end to the golden age.21 Originally, since history was considered to be cyclical, it was believed that the golden age would one day be restored. Hesiod’s Works and Days, the oldest record of the myth of the Four Ages, maintained that the Age of Gold had survived in the Isles of the Blessed, the last haven for the souls of heroes. The Platonic conception was more elaborate: in those days God himself was their shepherd and ruled over them, just as man, who is by comparison a divine being, still rules over the lower animals. Under him there were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children, for all men rose again from the earth, having no memory of the past. And although they had nothing of this sort, the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden, and were not planted by the hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in the open air, for the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds, but lay on soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of the earth.

Beginning with Empedocles in the fifth century B.C., classical writers used and modified the golden age to advance their philosophical ideas. Far from subsequent visions that the golden age was paradisiacal because its inhabitants had no need to work, Aratus, a Greek didactic poet, described it in the third century B.C. in Phaenomena as follows: ‘nor yet in that age had men knowledge of hateful strife or carping contention, or din of battle, but a simple life they lived. Far from them was the cruel sea, and not yet from afar did ships bring their livelihood, but the oxen and the plough and Justice herself, queen of the peoples, giver of things just, abundantly supplied their every need’.22 Native Americans played a prominent role in characterizations of the golden age in America. For the Europeans, just as American nature had remained suspended in its original state, so had its inhabitants. Native Americans remained in a natural

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state, in which the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Romans had been once. While it was impossible to learn about this stage in the civilization of these ancient nations for there was no written record of it, now it was possible for contemporary men to observe the Native Americans so as to learn from them and establish comparisons, given that, as Arthur Barlowe’s diary of the 1584 expedition to Roanoke reads: ‘we found the people most gentle, loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason and such as live after the manner of the golden age’. In the Spanish side, Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca described Native American society as closely resembling that of Ancient Rome.23 The vision of America as a virgin land, previously untouched, was second only to the vision of America as a paradise. Both were closely related – paradise, uncorrupted by man, untainted by vice, was, by definition, perceived as virginal. Also, it complemented the idea of brave explorers coming to take possession of virginal America, for ‘the prevalence of gendered language in exploration narratives reveals an operative fantasy of the New World as a “virgin bride,” beautiful, unspoiled, passive, and welcoming’. Raleigh wrote in The Discoverie of Guiana that ‘Guiana is a countrey that hath yet her maidenhead’ and George Chapman refers to it in ‘De Guiana, carmen Epicum’ as follows: Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of golde, . . . Stands on her tiptoes at faire England looking, Kissing her hand, bowing her mightie breast, And euery signe of all submission making, To be her sister, and the daughter both Of our most sacred Maide: Whose barrenness Is the true fruite of vertue, that may get, Beare and bring foorth anew in all perfection, What heretofore sauage corruption held In barbarous Chaos; and in this affaire Become her father, mother, and her heire.

This vision had its detractors too and Ben Jonson satirized Raleigh in Eastward Ho: ‘come boys, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her maidenhead’.24 This feminization of America was closely related to the fact that England was ruled by Elizabeth I: as a response to having a female monarch, ‘for explorers the idea of a female head of state and uncharted territories translated into their interpretations of themselves as conquerors’. Hakluyt summarized the problems that the English colonization of Virginia encountered as ‘first, his condemnation of slanderous reports based on ignorance; second, and in a rather latent way, a recognition that the act of taking possession is necessarily at odds with the law of nations; and third, the difficulty of Elizabethan males in having to deal with a female sovereign’. Raleigh continued this identification of America with the female monarch in naming Virginia after the Virgin Queen, which ‘seems to indicate a peculiarly English contribution to the chivalric and epic Iberian-Mediterranean genre: a tendency to endow faraway lands with feminine attitudes’.25

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In other instances, America was not a maiden, but a prostitute offering Europeans her services. Keymis, a member of Raleigh’s expedition to Guiana, perceived America as such: ‘whole syeres of fruitfull rich groundes lying now waste for want of people, doe prostitute themselues vnto us, like a faire and beautifull woman in the pride and flower of desired yeares’. One way or another, be America a maiden to be deflowered (either willingly or by force) or a prostitute, its representation as a woman fulfilled an important aspect of imperial discourse: the erotics of imperial conquest were also an erotics of engulfment. At one level, the representation of the land as female is a traumatic trope, occurring almost invariably, . . . in the aftermath of male boundary confusion, but as a historical, not archetypal, strategy of containment. As the visible trace of paranoia, feminizing the land is a compensatory gesture, disavowing male loss of boundary by reinscribing a ritual excess of boundary, accompanied, all too often, by an excess of military violence. The feminizing of the land represents a ritualistic moment in imperial discourse, as male intruders ward off fears of narcissistic disorder by reinscribing, as natural, an excess of gender hierarchy.

Once again, Columbus was the initiator of this identification of America with the female body. In a letter from Hispaniola in 1498, he explained that the world was not perfectly round, but instead, it was ‘something like a woman’s nipple’. As it happened to English explorers, subjects to a queen, that Columbus had been hired by Queen Isabella imposed certain restrictions upon his writings, especially when it came to describe the natives’ sexual mores or their willingness to convert to Catholicism.26 Ideas about a virginal, untouched America to the contrary, Native Americans’ activity was clearly visible in the American landscape. Actually, the ecological situation in preColumbian America was a far cry from a virgin land because of Native Americans’ impact on the environment: clearings were far-fetched and extensively carried out, and fire was used to clear the vegetation of large areas to turn them into agricultural fields. Smith, an early observer of America explained that near their habitations is but little small wood or old trees on the ground, by reason of their burning of them for fire, so that a man may gallop a horse among these woods any way except when the creeks or rivers shall hinder. At their buntings in the deserts there are commonly two hundred or three hundred together. Having found the deer they environ them with many fires, and betwixt the fires they place themselves.

Native American agricultural techniques had affected the environment ‘in terms of physiognomy, species composition, and reduced biodiversity – long before the arrival of Europeans. Native American use of fire, clearance for cultivation, and other forms of manipulation or exploitation had left an unambiguous imprint’. Even by contemporary standards, this destruction was extensive, particularly taking into account the size of Native American population.27

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In Virginia richly valued (1609), Hakluyt described that ‘there is an immense quantity of Indian fields cleared ready to our hand by the natives, which, till we are grown overpopulous, may be every way abundantly sufficient’ and Virginia colonists occupying Native Americans’ lands after the 1622 massacre found it unnecessary to clear more land. In the seventeenth century, Edward Waterhouse, secretary of the London Company, was encouraging his fellow countrymen to ‘blast the savages off the face of the earth, since their removal would, among other things, help conserve the native deer and turkies which were being killed off ’. Ironically, the return to that natural state the first European comers to America were so fond of reporting in their chronicles had not been possible until the mid-eighteenth century, when the annihilation or removal of the Native Americans had put an end to their destructive agricultural practices.28 While previous discoveries of faraway territories such as Asia or Africa had not resulted in a utopic effect (Zumthor’s term), the discovery of America and utopias went hand in hand. Jean de Léry wrote that ‘Asia and Africa could also be named new worlds with regard to us’, but they never produced the fascination or the same number of writings as America. Neither did the discovery of the Islamic world cause in medieval Europe the upheaval of the Discovery. Echoes of Thomas More’s Utopia, written in 1515, can be easily perceived in descriptions of America and, moreover, some of the things described by More were true in America: if in Utopia pearls are used as marbles for children to play with, while collars for the slaves and chamber pots are made of gold, the first reports of America recurrently mentioned the Native Americans’ disregard for gold and other things the Europeans considered precious (which offered the possibility of trading them for trifles to the Native Americans’ disadvantage). So pervasive was the influence of Utopia that Vasco de Quiroga, a Spanish judge in the Indies, suggested that the government of the Spanish colonies be carried out according to its teachings.29 Although inspired by America, More was little interested in it despite his family’s involvement in the exploration of the New World (his brother-in-law, John Rastell, had organized a failed expedition in 1517 and his son, John Rastell, Jr., participated in the 1536 expedition reported in Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations). More’s description of Utopia is heavily indebted to classical writings (most notably Plato’s) and reports by sixteenth-century explorers, especially Vespucci’s. This book would also exercise a great influence on the minds of those exploring America, given that America had been scarcely explored by Englishmen by the time Utopia was published. Nevertheless, More’s aim was not to promote a more extensive exploration of America; rather, for him, America was ‘an informing presence whose newness “explains” the desire to create society anew, an impetus to formal and cultural innovation’, as the Pilgrims (and many others) intended. Through utopias, authors could put forward their own ideas about the perfect society (in opposition to the one they lived in) while not openly criticizing the current state of affairs in their countries. Thus, writers could be subversive by making use of ‘the traveller-writer’s ambivalent relationship with the rhetorical consensus intellectuum, the intellectual consensus. For, if accused of sedition, he could either claim representational incompetence or seek refuge in the traveller’s reputation for being a liar’. Francis Bacon

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found inspiration in the mythical Atlantis to model New Atlantis (1626) after, in which he reproduced the English current social and political situation.30 The Renaissance was a particularly prolific historical period when it came to the publication of utopias, whose popularity was explained by Foucault because ‘utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold; they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the road to them is chimerical’. With the Discovery, the road to utopia seemed within reach. However, if America was greatly influenced by utopias, the reverse is also true, and after the Discovery, utopias were often located in the west and frequently modelled after America. This was logical, for the encounter with exotic and even outlandish places and cultures was bound sooner or later to affect utopian conceptions. It had been standard literary practice since the time of Herodotus to use the customs and institutions of distant lands, real or invented, as a critical or satirical commentary on one’s own age and people. The European voyages revived this practice by adding immeasurably to the store of knowledge of strange worlds – not to mention the sense of possibility they opened up with their vistas of vast spaces still to be explored and perhaps settled. European ships returned regularly with colourful accounts of the ways of far-flung cultures, East and West. A vast new literature and culture of the voyages of discovery began to accumulate, whether in sailors’ fireside yarns or in the detailed reports of the explorers, conquistadores and missionaries. These travellers’ tales were, many of them, the raw material of utopias – almost incipient utopias.31

Soon, America was regarded as a place for testing ideas that were considered unfeasible in Europe, ideas such as liberty, religious freedom, new agricultural techniques, universal literacy and so on, because political thinkers imagined America as a tabula rasa where they could put into practice their ideal political systems. John Locke in Second Treatise of Government described America as a place where the perfect government he envisioned could become true. This view of America was a fabrication rather than an accurate portrayal, but it was crucial in forming attitudes and opinions about America. Nevertheless, the fact that authors such as Martyr or Montaigne spoke about liberty in America did not mean that they were revolutionaries or that they had any serious intention of moving to America to try to carry out these speculations they entertained and so heatedly debated about. For many, America was a place for others to put their ideas into practice while safely staying at home. In the author’s note to the reader in his complete Essays, Montaigne affirmed most eloquently that ‘if I had lived among those nations, which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature’s primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked’, but he never intended to be one of those going to America. Hakluyt, despite helping to finance Raleigh’s failed attempt to plant Virginia in 1587, turned down two offers of going to America to become instead ‘the best-traveled man in England’.32

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If Europeans shaped their own national identity by contrasting Europe and themselves with America and the natives, ‘the matriarchal, gynocratic Amazons are the radical Other figured but not fully contained by the collective imagination of European patriarchy’. Columbus in his second voyage log, Cortés instructing his cousin, president of the Audiencia of New Spain Nuño de Guzmán, Juan Díaz in the Yucatán, Pedro de Valvidia in Chile, all sought for the Amazons. With this, Europeans soon ‘learned to dismiss the idea that women in the Americas . . . might be innocuous, unremarkable, or even beautiful’. However, Amazons were not the only mythological creatures peopling America. Medieval fantasy allowed the existence of lands populated by magical beings such as cannibals, giants, pygmies, tritons, fairies, cynocephali, bearded women, griffons and dragons, and sightings of many of these would be often reported in America. Stories had it that a dragon had been killed by a knight so that it no longer disturbed the dwellers of Puebla.33 Another mythical place to identify America with, was Atlantis, a comparison that, from a religious point of view, fulfilled a fundamental function – if America was peopled by descendants of the inhabitants of Atlantis, it meant that God’s mercy had saved a handful of them as He had saved Lot when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and then Native Americans would not be a godforsaken people. One of the staunchest advocates of this theory was López de Gómara, who found proof of this in the term ‘atl’ which Mexican natives used for water. Other defenders of this theory included Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and Agustín de Zárate, while Acosta opposed them. Fernández de Oviedo, in turn, found the Indies to be the Hesperides and, what is more, gave them a Spanish origin: ‘it has now been 3193 years that Spain and Hesperus, her king, have held dominion over those islands. . . . So, with such ancient right, . . . God returned this domain to Spain after so many centuries’. Still, others saw the Native Americans as the primitive descendants of the tribes of Israel.34 To explain the newness of America, the comparison between Europe and America was particularly fruitful. From the very beginning, Columbus saw America as (dis) similar to Europe, lacking in, or having, European realities, and he included a number of comparisons: ‘la mar como el río de Sevilla’ [the sea like the river in Seville], ‘aquellos árboles, que eran la cosa más fermosa de ver que otra que se aya visto, veyendo tanta verdura un tanto grado como en el mes de Mayo en el Andaluzía’ [those trees, which were the most beautiful thing to see that has ever been seen, seeing as many vegetables as in the month of May in Andalucia], ‘verdad es que algunos árboles eran de la naturaleza que ay en Castilla; porende avía muy gran diferençia, y los otros árboles de otras maneras eran tantos que no ay persona que lo pueda decir ni asemejar a otros de Castilla’ [truth is that some trees were of the kind that grows in Castile; in other places there was a big difference, and other kinds of trees were so many that no person can say or compare them to others in Castile], ‘las noches temperadas como en Mayo en España, en el Andaluzía’ [the mild nights as in May in Spain, in Andalucia].35 Regardless of how different America was from Europe, authors never failed to find similarities: ‘the Indies, for all the wonder they inspired, for all their original exoticism, became a mirror that reflected a grander version of the European original. . . . Difference created analogies, and analogies made the New World familiar’. Describing

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how similar America was to Europe helped to bridge the distance between both, not only in a metaphorical sense but also from a geographical point of view. If this distance were perceived as shorter, expeditions would be more easily launched and thus, Raleigh assured that Guiana could be reached in six weeks, when it had actually taken him six months. His description of Guiana could well be applied to England: We beheld plaines of twenty miles in length, the grasse short and greene, and in divers parts groves of trees by themselves, as if they had beene by all arte and labour in the world so made of purpose: and still as we rowed, the deere came downe feeding by the waters side, as if they had been used to a keepers call.

John Winthrop would go so far as to disregard any difference that he claimed ‘for the country itself, I can discern little difference between it and our own’.36 As exploration and conquest went under way, eyewitnesses began to acknowledge that American nature was not comparable to European specimens. Conquistador of Guatemala and Peru Antonio de Ulloa noted that ‘distant lands, and in particular the Indies, strike the judgement of those who encounter them at a distance, as very strange. . . . When they recognize that what is in them is new, it is as if, in reality they had passed over into another world’. Acosta wrote that comparing American and European nature was ‘like calling an egg a chestnut’ and recorded how he ‘laughed and made fun of Aristotle and his philosophy’ because of his own observation of phenomena deemed impossible by classical authors. Nevertheless, most of his contemporaries continued to see (and write about) the New World in comparison to the Old for several more centuries.37 Generally speaking, minute descriptions of the land, which highlight its financial prospects, serve economic interests as well. In exploration accounts, detailed descriptions of Nature and a careful classification of the plants, minerals and animals to be found pave the way for carrying out a financial assessment of them and open up possibilities of economic exploitation. While describing Nature, Spaniards and English paid extra attention to those elements that were difficult to find in their native countries. For Spaniards, in contrast to the economic crisis caused by unskilled agricultural techniques, the reconversion of arable land into pasture and the growing number of beggars in the early sixteenth century, America represented the land of plenty and fertility. So was it for the English, as they were plagued by failed harvests from the 1580s until the 1660s (with the 1590s and the 1620s being particularly bad), a cloth industry in decay and exhausted forests. The fruitfulness of America stood in sharp contrast to the barrenness of England, and Laurence Keymis, speaking about Guiana, wrote: it is not mere wretchednesse in us, to spend our time, breake our sleepe, and waste our braines, in contriving a cavilling false title to defraude a neighbour of halfe an acre of lande: whereas here whole shires of fruitfull rich grounds, lying now waste for want of people, do prostitute themselves unto us, like a faire and beautifull woman, in the pride and flour of desired yeeres.

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For Captain Arthur Barlow, sent by Raleigh to explore the eastern American coast, ‘in all the world the like aboundance is not to be founde’, and Gilbert spoke of the ‘great abundance of golde, silver, precious stones, cloth of gold, silkes, all maner of spices, grocery wares, and other kinds of merchandize of an inestimable price’. This love for gold reflected European monarchs’ constant shortage of gold because of their excessive spending on Asian luxury items. However, the Native Americans failed to understand the Europeans’ fascination for gold, with an Aztec remarking ‘as if they were monkeys, the Spanish lifted up the gold banners and gold necklaces. . . . Like hungry pigs they craved that gold, swinging the banners of gold from side to side’.38 While authors generally devoted a great deal of attention and space to Nature, some deliberately chose to ignore it altogether. Conquistador of Peru Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán explained why he did not deal with American Nature in his book: ‘no os contaré tanto lo que vi como de lo que me pasó, porque . . . este libro no es syno de mis acaescimientos’ [I will not tell you what I saw as much as what happened to me, because . . . this book is about my deeds.] Sometimes, the omission was unintended and Puritan descriptions of New England denote a myopia of description, an absence (without exception) of survey: a void is hollowed out between the generality of the commonplace and such isolated detailed reported by the text, a void filled neither by interpretive gloss nor authorial subjectivity. The text yields to its reader toponomies (often undisguised), aspects of foreign customs, remarks about monuments, and data on the respective powers of nations (for many travelers this last is an obsession).

Columbus never saw the New World as a void, for he perceived signs of human habitation on the land, but many New World writers strove to present America in such a way. Devoid of any visible signs of civilization such as impressive buildings, America was for many a ‘vast and empty chaos’, as Pilgrim entrepreneur Robert Cushman called it. The question whether America was full or empty turned into a heated controversy, with political or financial overtones. If the description of America as full of riches underscored Europeans’ eagerness to go there, ‘the subtext of the New World’s purported wilderness and even, as others had it, its emptiness, [was] an important pretext for colonial hegemony and commercial expansion as well as the dissemination of a utopian imaginary’.39 At the same time that writers put forward ideas about how to profit and improve America (that their actions might have a negative effect never entered their minds), they recorded the effects of the land on themselves. Smith was the first Englishman to speak about America not only as a passive object of Europeans’ activities, but also as a shaping force changing Europeans. Because newcomers believed that the wilderness was contagious and were afraid of losing their civilized state, America often appears as a place for moral degeneration and a potential threat to the European sense of civilization – an idea later exploited in captivity narratives. This marks a radical departure from the message conveyed in sermons and pamphlets speaking of the moral reformation of criminals and rogues who were to be shipped to America. While this fear about the

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perniciousness of America is more obvious in the case of Englishmen (and particularly, Puritans), Spanish conquistadors also felt it: Rodrigo de Quiroga forewarned that ‘this land weakens the judgment, disturbs the spirit, harms and corrupts good customs, engenders unfamiliar conditions, and creates in men effects contrary to those which they previously had’.40 In contrast to the wishful thinking found in most Spanish accounts, responsible for the launching of new expeditions looking for mythical objectives, the English were particularly careful not to exaggerate so as not to mislead future travellers. For all the accusations against Smith’s tendency to exaggerate and adorn the truth (especially with regard to Pocahontas), he chose to understate America and thus save others from future disappointments (despite exaggerating his role in the founding and colonization of Virginia). Yet, sometimes exaggerated remarks about America were the product of editorial work and not authors’ fault. Smith’s original statement read ‘heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for mans habitation being of our constitutions, were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people’. Unfortunately, the last part is more often than not omitted both in seventeenth-century and present-day editions, thus significantly altering Smith’s original meaning. What is more, True Relation, Smith’s first account, was extensively altered by a London editor and published without Smith’s knowledge or consent while he remained in Jamestown, the editor being forced to apologize in the second edition for not having included Smith’s name. This was not an exceptional case, as many manuscripts from the colonies were printed without their author’s knowledge.41 The Discovery soon acquired transcendental religious overtones. Columbus was convinced of his being a tool of divine providence, which he expressed in his Diary – ‘me abrió Nuestro Señor el entendimiento con mano palpable a que era hacedero navegar de aquí a las Indias, y me abrió la voluntad para la ejecución de ello’ [Our Lord opened my understanding with visible hand that sailing from here to the Indies could be done and He opened in me the will to execute it]. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the emergence of ‘the omphalos syndrome governing territorial organization, both in its spatial aspects (people believing that they are at the center of the world) and its religious one (people believing that they have been divinely appointed)’. Both the English and the Spaniards believed that ‘the very finger of God’ had pointed out America for them. If Isidore of Seville saw the Goths as having been divinely appointed to conquer Spain from the Romans, messianic ideas took on an added dimension with the rule of Isabella and Ferdinand. Cortés thought that his enterprise was directly ordained by God and the same sense of being destined to a divine mission characterized the English colonization of America. Already the advent of the Tudors to the English throne had been interpreted as a providential sign, especially Elizabeth’s reign, and the acquisition of American possessions just helped confirm this feeling. In Mundus Alter et Idem (1605) by Joseph Hall, the protagonist-narrator, Peter Beroaldus, commented: that American continent was so long hidden, and moreover I believe it would still be hidden today had God himself not lately sent us a dove from heaven, who, plucking an olive branch from this land, taught us that there still remains some

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land left that is insufficiently concealed by the waves; ought not his name inherit perpetual fame and holiness from the thanks of his successors?

Francis Higginson wrote that ‘because the life and welfare of every creature here below, and the commodiousness of the country whereas such creatures live, doth by the most wise ordering of God’s providence, depend next unto himself, upon the temperature and disposition of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire’.42 That the Spaniards had gone to America decades before them represented no problem for Englishmen wanting to believe that America was reserved for them by divine will. Raleigh wrote that ‘it seemeth to mee that this empire is reserved for her Majesty and the English nation, by reason of the hard successe which all these and other Spanyards found in attempting the same’. Jonathan Edwards stated in Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England (1740) that ‘this new world is probably now discovered, that the new and most glorious state of God’s church on earth might commence there; that God might in it begin a new world in a spiritual respect, when he creates the new heavens and new earth’. That God had kept America hidden up to then was closely related, in the minds of prominent Protestants, to the difficulties they had encountered in England before leaving it: to provide a shelter for them, divine providence had allowed that America was discovered. John Cotton confided in a letter to a friend that God having shut a door against both of us from ministering to him and his people in our wonted congregations, and calling us, by a remnant of our people, and by others of this country, to minister to them here, and opening a door to us this way, who are we that we should strive against God . . .? If we may and ought to follow God’s calling three hundred miles, why not three thousand?

His grandson Cotton Mather wrote in Magnalia Christi Americana: if the Wicked One in whom the whole World lyeth, were he, who like a Dragon, keeping a Guard upon the spacious and mighty Orchards of America, could have such a Fascination upon the Thoughts of Mankind, that neither this Ballancing half of the Globe should be considered in Europe till a little more than two Hundred Years ago, nor the Clue that might lead unto it, namely, the Loadstone, should be known, till a Neapolitan stumbled upon it, about an Hundred Years before; yet the overruling Providence of the great God is to be acknowledged, as well in the Concealing of America for so long a time, as in the Discovering of it, when the fullness of Time was come for the Discovery: For we may count America to have been concealed, while Mankind in the other Hemisphere had lost all acquaintance with it, if we may conclude it had any from the Words of Diodorus Siculus.43

This was a belief shared by non-Puritan colonists too. Edward Hayes, a participant in the Raleigh expedition, was convinced that he and his countrymen had ‘now arrived

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into the time by God prescribed of their vocation, if ever their calling unto the knowledge of God may be expected’, and even Thomas Morton saw the New World as a ‘God-given place’. America’s physical features showed divine favour and the land’s advantages meant that God had wanted the Christians to profit from them – ‘all the rich endowments of Virginia, her Virgin-portion from the creation nothing lessened, are wages for all this worke: God in wisedome having enriched the Savage Countries, that those riches might be attractives for Christian suters, which there may sowe spirituals and reape temporals’, as Purchas put it. America’s diversity and abundance of medicinal herbs was another sign of God’s ‘goodness towards His chosen people’.44 If the Discovery was, for some, a matter of joy, others found it a source of worry. While William Strachey wrote that ‘Yt now pleased the eternal wisdome . . . that those misteryes and secrettes of this goodly workemanshippe of his, should to his utmost boundes be extended, reveyled, and layd open, and those goodly Nations and regions discovered’, the revelation of these secrets distressed others. With all things having been already discovered, there would be nothing else to discover or learn about, and sixteenth-century French historian and philosopher Louis LeRoy wrote : all the mysteries of God and secrets of nature are not discovered at one time. The greatest things are difficult, and long in comming . . . How many have bin first knowen and found out in this age? I say new lands, new seas, new formes of men, manners, lawes, and customes; new diseases and new remedies; new waies of the Heavens, and of the Ocean, never before found out; and new starres seen? Yea, and how many remaine to be knowen by our posteritie?

Francis Bacon stated that ‘both many parts of the New World and the limits on every side of the Old World are known, and our stock of experience has increased to an infinite amount’ and astronomer Johannes Kepler feared that ‘since soon there would be no more stars or peoples to discover, the end of times was imminent’.45 Contemporary men’s attitude towards America having been so long hidden was ambivalent. On the one hand, it was convenient that God had waited until they were ready – that is, that the Reconquista had been successfully completed in Spain and that the Reformation had come to England. On the other hand, this meant that America had been excluded from the salvation brought about by Jesus, given that it was not known at the time and the Bible failed to mention it. The biblical silence with regard to America aroused great controversy, both in Europe and in America. Ninety years after the Discovery, Heinrich Büntig’s map of the world, Die gantze Welt in ein Kleberblat, still tried to come to terms with it. The same difficulties were found by English millennialist thinkers Nicholas Fuller in Miscellaneorum Sacrum libri duo (1622) and Joseph Mede in Clavis Apocalyptica (1627), both concluding that America had not enjoyed Jesus’ grace, just as Acosta had done in The Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1604).46 Many a European considered America as the realm of Satan’s minions, the last place in the world to learn about the gospel and where the devil’s presence was constant. French explorer Jacques Cartier said about the Labrador peninsula in 1534: ‘I am

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inclined to regard this land as the one God gave to Cain’. For Mede, America was the location of Hell and Lope de Aguirre, in his letter to Philip II (1561), claimed that Amazonia is a terrestrial inferno, a ‘fearsome lake’ and ‘ill-fated river’ to which no more fleets should be sent ‘because in Christian faith I swear, King and lord, that if a hundred thousand men come none will escape, because the stories are false and in this river there is nothing but despair, especially for those newly arrived from Spain.’

In their view, America was not a place where Europe and Christianity could start anew, but a mirage, a false image of paradise, as proved by the abundance of snakes .47 In New England, the matter was not settled until the eighteenth century. Curiously enough, for all the talk that America was the city upon the hill that would be the example for other nations going astray, there was no full-scale defence against such negative views of America. During the Great Migration, when propagandistic accounts of New England abounded, no argument against the notion of America being a godforsaken place was advanced. It would not be till the eschatological revival of the 1690s when Mede’s assertions were questioned. Puritan judge Samuel Sewall in Phaenomena quaedam Apocalyptica . . . Or, some few Lines towards a description of the New Heaven (1697) contended that Mede had made a mistake in identifying America with Hell. Instead, he gave America a prominent role in Christ’s millennial kingdom, a very different one from Mede’s ideas that the Native Americans, as the peoples of Gog and Magog, would rise against Christ’s millennium. Sewall’s defence of America was as follows: the promise of preaching the Gospel to the whole World, is to be understood of the Roman empire only, according to the extent of it in John’s time: As it is said Augustus made a decree that all the world should be taxed. The Roman Empire contained about a third part of the Old World: and this Triental only was to be concernd with the Apocalypse. The Prophesies of the Revelation extend but to such Kingdoms or Monarchies of the World, where the Church in all Ages still was: therefore not to the West-Indians, nor Tartarians, nor Chineses, nor East-Indians.48

Once America was discovered, the next question was how to take possession of it. There was no doubt in the minds of Europeans that America legitimately belonged to them and to no other rival power. Still, how to assert their authority over distant lands, far away from their native countries, and over peoples who had never heard of them and who would not readily recognize their authority, became a central concern for both the authorities and the actors in the colonial arena. Each colonial power chose a different way to mark their possession of America – by physical objects (the Englishmen), speech acts (the Spaniards), gestures (the Frenchmen), numbers (the Portuguese) or description (the Dutch). This was not prompted so much by the need to justify their rightful possession of the lands they claimed as by the intention to make their rivals in America acknowledge those rights.49

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Medieval theory had it that all islands were the property of the Pope, who had allowed the Spaniards to carry out the colonization of America through the bulls Romanus Pontifex (8 January 1454) and Inter Caetera (4 May 1493) and who had divided America between Spain and Portugal through the Treaty of Tordesillas. For the Spaniards, the procedure to take possession was as follows: upon first landing, symbols to signal their arrival (such as flags or crosses) were set in the land, followed by the verbal expression of their intention of remaining in the land by reading the Requerimiento or a similar document. The placement of symbols was often omitted, though, considering the Requerimiento enough. While mere claiming of possession was sufficient for most European powers, for the English, possession of the land was not effective unless followed by actual settlement and farming (for which the Dutch and the Spanish mocked them). As Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius put it, ‘to discover a thing is not only to seize it with the eyes but to take real possession thereof ’. Notwithstanding that sometimes the English, especially in the early times, planted crosses and read sermons aloud upon arriving in America, the fundamental event to mark possession was erecting a house. The building of a house with fences and a garden constituted, for Englishmen, a decisive sign of their intention to settle down in America.50 Although the Spaniards and the Portuguese based their power on the Pope’s, the issue became controversial because later popes refused to stand behind them, and second because the northern powers, however Catholic they might be, brushed them aside with ridicule. While the Iberians continued to uphold the legitimacy of their papal grants as late as the eighteenth century, by the 1540’s they had shifted their main title defense to arguments based on discovery and possession. . . . The Spanish and the Portuguese (the latter only until the early seventeenth century) regarded symbolic possession as sufficient possession.

Especially active were the English and the French, who questioned the papal powers in spiritual and temporal matters and rejected papal dominium over non-Catholics too. Already in the late medieval world there had been a debate between Pope Innocent IV’s position that papal jurisdiction was only over Christians and Hostiensis’ posture that the Pope enjoyed jurisdiction over anybody anywhere. That papal orders had authority only over Catholics was an argument very much favoured by the English (although the Catholic French rejected the papal bulls and the Treaty of Tordesillas too) for obvious reasons. Even some Catholic scholars reached the same conclusion, such as the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca – although the Pope’s authority over spiritual affairs was accepted, he was denied any such privilege over secular matters or over nonCatholics. Spaniards, however, a few dissidents notwithstanding, continued using papal authority as their justification for the colonization of the Americas until the end of the seventeenth century, despite criticisms. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Philip II, a deeply religious man, deleted any reference to papal authority when the Requerimiento was replaced by the ‘Instrument of Obedience and Vassalage’, which defined the king

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as ‘the only and singular defender of the Church’. However, because instructions and codes were not written on stone and national policies with regard to America changed, England altered its discourse in time and by 1620 it was invoking the preemptive code (possession without settlement) to justify its American possessions, whose use by the Spaniards Englishmen had previously attacked.51 That the English were very active in criticizing papal authority should not be interpreted as a sign that they denied divine agency in the colonization of the New World. On the contrary, for them, the conquest of America had a ‘divine character’ and taking possession of America was ‘a God-ordained duty’. For John White, ‘if it were then the minde of God, that man should possesse all parts of the earth, it must be enforced that we neglect our duty, and crosse his will, if we doe it not, when wee have occasion and opportunitie’. In England, because of the break with the Catholic Church, the highest authority was the monarch; consequently, just as the Pope, as the ruler of the Catholics, could distribute rights upon America, so could Elizabeth I as the ruler of the English Protestants. Moreover, according to English law, the monarch was the owner of all the land in the kingdom. All in all, there was no question in their minds that they were ‘entitled to America’, and Raleigh’s account of Guiana promised Elizabeth an empire full of natives willing to submit to her authority.52 As Europeans argued and fought over their rights upon America, Native Americans were consistently deprived of any right or privilege upon the lands they peopled. In contrast to the Europeans’ lawful possession of America, Native Americans played the role of usurpers who had been enjoying and taking advantage of lands and resources that did not rightfully belong to them. Some voices denounced this, voices like Friar Francisco de Vitoria, who in 1539 at his Reelecciones De Indiis et de Jure Belli at the University of Salamanca contended that neither the Pope nor Charles V could dispossess the Native Americans. He asserted that the supposed crimes of the natives (such as idolatry, human sacrifices or sexual aberrations) did not involve the loss of their rights. However, the Spaniards were entitled to live in America, take possession of unpeopled lands, trade and spread the gospel; should the Native Americans prevent the Spaniards from doing so, it would constitute a valid reason to declare war on them.53 The English soon established a crucial distinction between the ‘original Indian title’ and their own, legal title. After the massacre of Englishmen at the hands of Native Americans in Jamestown in 1622, Purchas, in “Virginias Verger” (1625), declared that ‘Christians . . . have and hold the world and the things thereof in another tenure, whereof Hypocrites and Heathens are not capable. These have onely a Naturall Right’. He asserted that the Native Americans had ‘lost their own Naturall, and given us another Nationall right . . . so that England may both by Law of Nature and Nations challenge Virginia for her owne peculiar propriety’. Others had already deprived Native Americans of their rights, claiming that their heathenism (i.e. their fall from divine grace) prevented them from enjoying their natural rights, which were reserved for Christians. This claim rested on the notion of dominium, which denied non-Christians any rights, since every right was granted by divine grace. Dissenters were few and far between, two of the most well-known ones being Las Casas and Roger Williams.54

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Native Americans’ hospitality, which had favourably impressed the Europeans, was conveniently reinterpreted as indicating the Native Americans’ desire for the Europeans taking over the land and the power from them. Their failure to contradict newcomers’ claims to their lands was also taken as evidence of their willingness – Columbus stressed that he was unchallenged by the Native Americans after taking possession of their lands (‘y no me fué contradicho’ [and I was not contradicted]), notwithstanding that the lack of a common language made the Native Americans unable to assent or contradict him. That Native Americans were perceived as wanderers and nomadic settlers with no permanent residence further validated the Englishmen’s case. For Thomas More, it was a fair casus belli ‘when any people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good or profitable use’. Sir Edward Coke maintained that English common law ruled that infidels were perpetui enemici (perpetual enemies) and, therefore, were in a state of permanent war with Christians, an argument that became the basis for England’s legitimacy in Virginia until the eighteenth century.55 Similarly, Raleigh claimed that if the title of occupiers be good in land unpeopled, why should it be bad accounted in a country peopled over thinly? Should one family, or one thousand, hold possession of all the southern undiscovered continent, because they had seated themselves in Nova Guiana, or about the straits of Magellan? Why might not then the like be done in Africa, in Europe, and in Asia? If these were most absurd to image, let then any man’s wisdom determine, by lessening the territory, and increasing the number of inhabitants, what proportion is requisite to the peopling of a region in such a manner that the land shall neither be too narrow for those whom is feedeth, nor capable of a great multitude? Until this can be concluded and agreed upon, one main and fundamental cause of the most grievous war that can be imagined is not like to be taken from the earth.

Later, Winthrop based his claims on the fact that Native Americans had kept the land a wasteland (‘that [land] which lies common and hath never been replenished or subdued is free to any that will possesse and improve it’) and on the fact that Native Americans had fallen prey to a devastating epidemic shortly before their arrival – ‘if God were not pleased with our inheriting these parts, why did He drive out the natives before us? And why does he still make roome for us by dimishing them as we increase?’ The same point was used by John Cotton, who argued that God ‘admitteth it as a Principle in Nature, That in a vacant soyle, hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his Right it is’. Robert Cushman encouraged his fellow countrymen to move to the New World because ‘if therefore any sonne of Adam come and finde a place empty, he hath liberty to come, and fill and subdue the earth there’. For Europeans, improvement became both a sign and a justification for possession because American lands were ‘seen as uncultivated and undomesticated, again in contrast to a preferred standard of cultivation and domestication’. To subjugate Native Americans, the encomienda and other Spanish systems based their claims on the grounds of the Native Americans’ inability to

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become successful farmers on their own. Thus, Queen Isabella wrote to governor of Hispaniola Nicolás Ovando a letter (dated 20 December 1503), instructing him that ‘the Indians shall live in community with the Christians of the island and go among them, by which means they will help each other to cultivate, settle, and reap the fruits of the island, and extract the gold which may be there, and bring profit to my Kingdom and my subjects’.56 Because what constituted possession differed in the eyes of Englishmen and Spaniards, conflict arose wherever their interests met. In 1580, in reply to the Spanish ambassador’s complaints about Francis Drake having violated Spain’s territory, Elizabeth I argued that ‘[Spaniards] had touched here and there upon the Coasts, built Cottages, and given Names to a River or Cape which does not entitle them to ownership; . . . Prescription without possession is worth little’. She further asserted that she understood not why her or any other Princes Subjects should be debarred from the Indies, which she could not perswade herself the Spaniard had any just Title to by the Bishop of Rome’s Donation, . . . nor yet by any other Claim, than as they had touched here and there upon the Coasts, built Cottages, and given Names to a River or a Cape: which things cannot entitle them to a Propriety . . . this imaginary Propriety, cannot hinder other Princes from trading into those Countreys, and, without Breach of the Law of Nations, from transporting Colonies into those parts thereof where the Spaniards inhabit not, (forasmuch as Prescription without Possession is [of] little worth).57

The document the Spaniards used to take possession of America was the Requerimiento, in use since its formulation in 1512 by legal jurist Juan López Palacios Rubios until 1573. It warns the Native Americans of their having been ‘discovered’ and summons them to obey the discoverers or else consequences would follow in retaliation. The Islamic influence of the seven-century Muslim occupation of Spain was easily perceived in the Requerimiento, whose roots can be found in the Koranic injunction that enemies be informed of Islam before punishment be inflicted: ‘we have not been accustomed to punish until We have sent a messenger’ (Koran 17:15). Upon hearing this announcement, listeners were expected to submit (islam means submission) themselves to the superior religion; those who did not accept Islam as their religion or did not pay the corresponding taxes to Muslim authorities (to be allowed to practise their own religion) were regarded as being at war with Muslims and likely to be legally enslaved as war prisoners. In a similar way, should those who heard the Requerimiento fail to surrender to Catholicism, a military attack and the subsequent enslavement of the population would follow.58 For Iberians, the need to spread the gospel in America and convert the Native Americans was closely related to obtaining America’s earthly riches, another notion largely inherited from the Muslims. For the Muslims, the ownership of minerals could only belong to the faithful, to the people of Allah. Following this precedent, the existence of mineral wealth in America was regarded as a divine instrument to

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encourage Europeans to go and Christianize the American peoples. Acosta put it that way: the Eternal Lord who wanted to enrich the lands of the world farthest away, and inhabited by less civil people, and there put the greatest abundance of mines that has ever been found so that with this would invite men to look for such lands, and hold them, and be the means of their communicating their religion and worship of the true God to those who did not know him.59

The process of taking possession was different for Englishmen and Spaniards, and so it was what they took possession of as well. The patents issued by Elizabeth I to Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1578 (for which Raleigh petitioned in 1583 after Gilbert’s death) urged him to ‘discover, find, search out, and view such remote heathen and barbarous lands countries and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people’ and ‘attempt to inhabit within the said countries or any of them or within the space of two hundred leagues near to the place or places within such countries as foresaid if they shall not be before planted or inhabited within the limits aforesaid with the subjects of any Christian prince being in amity with her Majesty’. In other words, he was entitled to take possession of the land, but not of the people. However, as Seed notes, the adjectives that qualify these ‘lands countries and territories’ (‘heathen and barbarous’) are adjectives that apply to people, not to places, thus implying that, along with the land, its peoples will also be taken possession of. Despite the implicit meaning, though, the fact remains that what Gilbert was sent to acquire was land, not its peoples, whereas Spaniards made clear their intention of acquiring Native Americans from the very beginning. To put it simply, the English wanted the lands (and the people who inhabited them), whereas the Spaniards sought for a native slave force (and the lands they occupied). For the English, ‘probably no single word, at least in the secular realm, had more important or revealing connotation . . . [than the word land]. Land was talisman, pole star, magnet, key – the ultimate social security, in every sense of that phase’.60 Narváez, having landed on Easter Sunday of 1528, claimed the land using the ‘Instructions to Conquistadors’ written by Francisco de los Cobos in 1517. Cabeza de Vaca writes that ‘otro día el gobernador levantó pendones por Vuestra Majestad y tomó la posesión de la tierra en su real nombre, presentó sus provisiones y fue obedecido por gobernador, como Vuestra Majestad lo mandaba’ [another day the governor put up banners for Your Majesty and took possession of the land in your royal name, produced his credentials and was obeyed as governor, as Your Majesty commanded], thus marking the Spaniards’ physical presence in the area. According to Fernández de Oviedo’s retelling of the Narváez expedition, it was as follows: otro día siguiente hizo el gobernador alzar pendones por Su Majestad e tomó la posesión de la tierra, e hizo juntar los oficiales de Su Majestad, e a los frailes que allí iban, e la gente que había salido en tierra toda, e presentó sus provisiones reales que llevaba, e fueron obedecidas por todos, y el dicho gobernador, admitido por tal gobernador e capitán general; e los oficiales presentaron las suyas, e asimesmo

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fueron habidos por oficiales de Su Majestad. [“the following day the governor had banners raised for Your Majesty and took possession of the land, and he summoned Your Majesty’s officers and the friars going with them, and all the people who had landed, and he produced the royal credentials he had, and they were obeyed by all, and the said governor, was accepted as governor and general captain; and the officers presented theirs, and they were also accepted as officers of Your Majesty”].61

The situation of the Pilgrim Fathers was completely different. Not going to America as members of a royal expedition, their only legal right to stay in America was the First (or Peirce) Patent, issued by the Company of Virginia to the Merchant Adventurers in 1620. However, they landed in Cape Cod, where their patent did not apply. Because of their being in a legal void, foreseeing that problems may arise, especially because of the different religious principles of those travelling in the Mayflower (‘Saints’ and ‘Strangers’), they decided to write a legal document to rule themselves. This was the Mayflower Compact: IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.

This ‘is the first example of what has become known as a “plantation covenant” . . . that is, a written compact among a group of pioneers who finding themselves outside the protecting arm of the law, establish a basis for law among themselves’. For John Quincy Adams, ‘this is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government’. However, the Mayflower Compact notwithstanding (and this was drafted and signed still on board, not upon first landing), the Pilgrims did not carry out any symbolical mechanism to mark their taking possession of the land.62 Given that their first patent had been rendered ineffectual by their final destination, John Peirce, then leader of the Merchant Adventurers, petitioned to the Council of New England for a new one. Granted in 1621, the Second Peirce Patent came to confirm the

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validity of the Mayflower Compact. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims would not live long under it. Dissatisfied with its terms, which made it impossible for them to pay off their debt with the Merchant Adventurers, they decided that eight Pilgrims (Bradford among them) along with four Londoners (the 12 of them being collectively referred to as ‘the Undertakers’) would assume the plantation’s debt in exchange of some benefits. That new patent, known as the Bradford Patent, was granted by the Council of New England in 1630. Curiously enough, there is no instance of taking possession in Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford describes in a detailed manner the place where they landed but he never claims their taking possession of it. Still, Bradford and his group of Pilgrims soon felt the same sense of proprietorship and dominance over the land as that of the Spanish conquistadors.63 In Mourt’s Relation, much more informative than Of Plymouth Plantation with regard to the Pilgrims’ process of taking possession of the land, the Pilgrims’ arrival is compared to the Jews’ in Canaan: neither is there any land or possession now, like unto the possession which the Jews had in Canaan, being legally holy and appropriated unto a holy people, the seed of Abraham, in which they dwelt securely and had their days prolonged, it being by an immediate voice said, that he (the Lord) gave it them as a land of rest after their weary travels, and a type of eternal rest in heaven but now there is no land of that sanctimony, no land so appropriated, none typical, much less any that can be said to be given of God to any nation as was Canaan, which they and their seed must dwell in, till God sendeth upon them sword or captivity.

Biblical parallelism aside, the rightful title to the Americas is recognized as being the King of England’s: letting pass the ancient discoveries, contracts and agreements which our Englishmen have long since made in those parts, together with the acknowledgment of the histories and chronicles of other nations, who profess the land of America from the Cape de Florida unto the Bay of Canada (which is south and north three hundred leagues and upwards, and east and west further than yet hath been discovered) is proper to the King of England.

The land is described as ‘spacious and void’, scarcely populated by the natives, who are not industrious, neither have art, science, skill or faculty to use either the land or the commodities of it, but all spoils, rots, and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, etc. As the ancient patriarchs therefore removed from straiter places into more roomy, where the land lay idle and waste, and none used it, though there dwelt inhabitants by them, (as Gen. 13:6, 11, 12, and 34:21, and 41:20), so is it lawful now to take a land which none useth, and make use of it.

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It is on the grounds of the Native Americans’ laziness that the Pilgrims felt entitled to take possession of the land to improve it. The Pilgrims’ possession of America is legitimate for a number of reasons: it being then, first, a vast and empty chaos; secondly, acknowledged the right of our sovereign king; thirdly, by a peaceable composition in part possessed of divers of his loving subjects, I see not who can doubt or call in question the lawfulness of inhabiting or dwelling there, but that it may be as lawful for such as are not tied upon some special occasion here, to live there as well as here. Yea, and as the enterprise is weighty and difficult, so the honor is more worthy, to plant a rude wilderness, to enlarge the honor and fame of our dread sovereign, but chiefly to display the efficacy and power of the Gospel, both in zealous preaching, professing, and wise walking under it, before the faces of these poor blind infidels.64

In all these documents, we can see that the attitude of the Spaniards and the Englishmen towards America was different and would produce significant divergences in their conquest and colonization of it. Still, in all the rhetorical devices and actions envisaged by the Europeans to take possession of the land, one can perceive the same belief: that unknown lands were, nevertheless, theirs. As Robert Frost put it in ‘The Gift Outright’: The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia. But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living.

But even more important than the legal appropriation of America was making it one’s own by means of literature. Cabeza de Vaca, Bradford and many others would take possession of America from a literary point of view, a task almost as arduous as its physical conquest. A fusion of myths, preconceived ideas, classical theories, philosophical discussions. . . America awaited conquistadors and the first explorers and colonists to come and interpret it, combining their perceptions with their own expectations, as well as those who had never set their foot on America but had dreamed of it. With all these previous ideas about America, the way was paved for New World writers to produce their first reports about it, not always consistent with their previous mental images.65 The many works describing America produced after 1492 put forward almost as many visions and representations of America. America could be a paradise or the

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location of hell on Earth, a classically inspired haven or an ideal society, the home of mythical and fantastic beings or a godforsaken continent where Satan’s armies hid, a refuge for religious dissenters or a place where one could put revolutionary ideas into practice. To reach their audiences and get their understanding, they had to cast the unfamiliar into familiar terms, establishing comparisons between America and Europe so as to make America graspable and not to alienate their audiences. As Hernán Pérez de Oliva claimed in 1528 about Columbus’ second voyage, their aim was ‘mezclar el mundo y dar a aquellas tierras extrañas la forma de la nuestra’ [to mix up the world and give those strange lands the shape of ours]. Building on previous notions of faraway and fantastic lands that have been popularized in the Middle Ages as well as on previous writers’ works on America, authors strove to present a fascinating and accurate representation of America. And yet, at the same time that they sought to convey America in familiar terms, they had to find room to portray ‘their’ America as they had seen it – facing criticisms if their vision was too different from previous ones. Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford, following the footsteps of previous writers, would produce their own, particular vision of America, far from the image of a terrestrial paradise that many had already contributed to firmly ingrain in the popular imagination.66

Notes 1 David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), 6. Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. 1986 (New York: Vintage, 1988), 42–3. Howard Mumford Jones, ‘ The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the “Promotion” Literature of Colonization.’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 90, 2 (1946): 131. Catherine Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning of America: Printed Representations Before 1630.’ In America in the British Imagination, ed. Catherine Armstrong, Roger Fogge, and Tim Lockley (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 11. Eviatar Zerubavel, Terra Cognita: The Mental Discovery of America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 35. 2 José Luis Abellán, La idea de América: Origen y evolución (Madrid: Istmo, 1972), 26–7. G. R. Crone, The Discovery of America (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969), 117. 3 Quoted in William Brandon, New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500–1800 (Athens and London: Ohio University Press, 1986), 20. Bruce Catton and William B. Catton, The Bold and Magnificent Dream: America’s Founding Years, 1492–1815 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 11. Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, América: Descubrimiento de un mundo nuevo (Madrid: Istmo, 1990), 18. Howard Mumford Jones, O Strange New World. American Culture: The Formative Years. 1952 (New York: Viking, 1965), 4. Quoted in Charles L. Sanford, ‘An American Pilgrim’s Progress.’ American Quarterly 6, 4 (1954): 298, 300. Crone, Discovery of America, 14. Avihu Zakai, Exile and

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5

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Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge and others: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 79–80. Karl W. Butzer, ‘From Columbus to Acosta: Science, Geography, and the New World.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 544. Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 5. Quoted in María del Mar Ramírez Alvarado, ‘Mitos e información: geografía fantástica y primeras apreciaciones del continente americano.’ Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 8 (1998). http://www.lazarillo.com/latina/a/60alva.htm (accessed 13 November 2006). Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 62. John L. Allen, ‘From Cabot to Cartier: The Early Exploration of Eastern North Americana, 1495–1543.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 504. Gesa Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492–1637 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 15. Paul Zumthor, ‘The Medieval Travel Narrative.’ New Literary History 25, 4 (1994): 819. Allen, ‘From Cabot to Cartier,’ 504, 502, 501, 506. John L. Allen, ‘Lands of Myth, Waters of Wonder: The Place of the Imagination in the History of Geographical Exploration.’ In Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy In Honor of John Kirtland Wright, ed. David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 41–3. Benjamin W. Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts: A History (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979), 20. Allen, ‘From Cabot to Cartier,’ 506, 504. Luis Weckman, ‘The Middle Ages in the Conquest of America.’ Speculum 26, 1 (1951): 131. Elizabeth Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 15. Mary C. Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Fugitive Gold: Reference and Deferral in The Discoverie of Guiana’. Representations 33 (1991): 51. Allen, ‘Lands of Myth,’ 55. Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession, 15. J. H. Elliott, El Viejo Mundo y el Nuevo (1492–1650), [The Old World and the New, 1492–1650. Trans. by Rafael Sánchez Montero]. 1970 (Madrid: Alianza, 1972), 21. Zerubavel, Terra Cognita, 37. Quoted in Anthony Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum: Text and Experience in the Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas.’ Representations 33 (1991): 148–9. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 149. Quoted in Sara Castro-Klaren, ‘Viaje y desplazamiento del sujeto: Colón y Léry en los trópicos.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 56. Richard White, ‘Discovering Nature in North America.’ Journal of American History 79, 3 (1992): 881. Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. With April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi. 1992 (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 1, 5. Quoted in Honour, New Golden Land, 84. David S. Lovejoy, ‘Satanizing the American Indian.’ New England Quarterly 67, 4 (1994): 604–5. Quoted in Anthony Pagden, ‘The Savage Critic: Some European Images of the Primitive.’ Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983): 34. Edmundo O’Gorman, La invención de América: Investigación acerca de la estructura histórica del nuevo mundo y del sentido de su devenir. 1958 (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 61–3.

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11 Honour, New Golden Land, 84. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, ed. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (Madrid: Dastin, 2002), 60. Quoted in G. V. Scammell, ‘The New Worlds and Europe in the 16th century.’ The Historical Journal 12, 3 (1969): 393. Quoted in Herbert Adams, ‘John Josselyn, Gent.: Adam with a Quill Pen in Eden.’ Habitat. Journal of the Maine Audubon Society 1, 8 (1984). http://www.scarboroughcrossroads.org/slct/referen/a01/rp1001.html (accessed 26 July 2007). Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘The Puzzle of the American Climate in the Early Colonial Period.’ American Historical Review 87, 5 (1982): 1278. Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 55. Crone, Discovery of America, 179. Gutiérrez Escudero, América, 38–9. 12 Jonathan P. A. Sell, ‘The Rhetoric of Wonder: the Representation of New Worlds in English Renaissance Travel Literature.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Alcalá, September 2002. 148. Louis Montrose, ‘The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery.’ Representations 33 (1991): 6. Quoted in Robert Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 108. 13 Timothy Sweet, ‘Economy, Ecology, and Utopia in Early Colonial Promotional Literature.’ American Literature 71, 3 (1999): 412. Richard S. Dunn, ‘SeventeenthCentury English Historians of America.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 215. Hans Galinsky, ‘Exploring the “Exploration Report” and Its Image of the Overseas World: Spanish, French, and English Variants of a Common Form Type in Early American Literature.’ Early American Literature 12, 1 (1977): 8. 14 Catherine Armstrong, ‘Some Representations of America and Their Diffusion in Elizabethan England: O Strange New World Reassessed.’ Eras Journal 2 (2001). http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-2/armstrong.php (accessed 26 June 2008). Quoted in Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print. English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3. Amy Boesky, ‘Club Med as Utopia: Antedating the Idyll.’ In Transformations of Utopia: Changing Views of the Perfect Society, ed. George Slusser and others (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 117. William H. Sherman, ‘Stirrings and Searchings (1500–1720).’ The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 17. Zhenja La Rosa, ‘Language and Empire: The Vision of Nebrija.’ The Loyola University Student Historical Journal 27 (1995–1996) http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1995-6/rosa.htm (accessed 2 April 2008). Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 18–9. 15 E. Thomson Shields, Jr., ‘The Genres of Exploration and Conquest Literatures.’ In A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer (Malden and others: Blackwell, 2005), 356. 16 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain. [Trans. by J. M. Cohen] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 148. Quoted in Ramón Sánchez, ‘The First Captivity Narrative: Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación’. Proceedings of the II Conference of SEDERI (1992): 265. Quoted in David Henige, ‘The Context, Content and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca’. The Americas 43 (1986): 18. ‘Exploring Borderlands.’ American Passages: A Literary Survey. OPB and W. W. Norton and Co. http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit02/pdf/unit02ig.pdf (accessed 10 January 2006), 51.

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17 Gutiérrez Escudero, América, 20–1. Quoted in Brandon, New Worlds, 164, 24. Cristóbal Colón, Los cuatro viajes. Testamento. 1986 (Madrid: Alianza, 2005), 241. Elliott quoted in Brandon, New Worlds, 148. Valerie I. J. Flint, ‘Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus.’ In Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Travel Writing, ed. Zweder von Martels (Leiden and others: E. J. Brill, 1994), 108. Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau, ‘Introduction.’ In Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, ed. Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau, Jeffrey A. Cole, Nina M. Scott, and Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 2. 18 Quoted in Beatriz Pastor, ‘Silencio y escritura: la historia de la Conquista.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 136. 19 Sanford, ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ 302. Larzer Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery in Early Writings from America.’ American Literature 68, 3 (1996): 510. Quoted in Brandon, New Worlds, 182, 12. 20 Quoted in Brandon, New Worlds, 66. Brandon, New Worlds, 149. 21 Scammell, ‘New Worlds and Europe,’ 396. Álvaro Félix Bolaños, ‘El subtexto utópico en un relato de naufragio del cronista Fernández de Oviedo.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 1223. Brandon, New Worlds, 44. 22 Quoted in Armstrong, Ronsard and Age of Gold, 61. Armstrong, Ronsard and Age of Gold, 59, 58. 23 Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 157. Quoted in Armstrong, ‘Representations of America.’ Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 3. 24 Quoted in Montrose, ‘Work of Gender’, 1. Quoted in Armstrong, ‘Contesting Meaning,’ 20. ‘Exploring Borderlands,’ 53–4. Quoted in Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Gold,’ 58. Quoted in Juan E. Tazón, ‘La frontera en la literatura inglesa de promoción del Nuevo Mundo.’ In La frontera. Mito y realidad del Nuevo Mundo, ed. María José Álvarez, Manuel Broncano, and José Luis Chamosa (León: Universidad de León, 1994), 309. 25 Montrose, ‘Work of Gender,’ 3. Sandra Slater, ‘ “Nought but women”: Constructions of Masculinities and Modes of Emasculation in the New World.’ In Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850, ed. Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 34. Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession, 164. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 59. 26 Quoted in Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Gold,’ 63. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, London: Routledge, 1995), 24. Quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 78. Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 68. Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 13, 9. Antonello Gerbi, La naturaleza de

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Early Visions and Representations of America las Indias Nuevas de Cristóbal Colón a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. [La natura delle Indie nove (Da Cristoforo Colombo a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo). Trans. by Antonio Alatorre] 1975 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978), 27. William M. Denevan, ‘ The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 369–70. Sarah F. McMahon, Valuing Nature (N.p.: Bowdoin College, 2002), 34.Quoted in Hu Maxwell, ‘ The Use and Abuse of Forests by the Virginia Indians.’ William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 19 (1910): 88–9, 73–103. Karl W. Butzer, ‘ The Americas Before and After 1492: An Introduction to Current Geographical Research.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3 (1992): 348. Quoted in Maxwell, ‘Use and Abuse,’ 81. Quoted in Hugh T. Lefler, ‘Promotional Literature of the Southern Colonies.’ Journal of Southern History 33, 1 (1967): 11. Quoted in Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. 1993 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 117. Zumthor, ‘Medieval Travel Narrative,’ 822. Bolaños, ‘Subtexto utópico,’ 112. Jones, Strange New World, 36. Pedro Gallardo-Torrano, ‘The Influence of Literature on Advertising in the Making of Ephemeral Utopias.’ In Transformations of Utopia: Changing Views of the Perfect Society, ed. George Slusser, Paul Alkon, Roger Gaillard, and Danièle Chatelain (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 109. Mark Goldie, ‘Obligations, Utopias, and Their Historical Context.’ The Historical Journal 26, 3 (1983): 735. Sell, ‘Rhetoric of Wonder,’ 45. Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics, 93, 95 Quoted in Peter Ruppert, Reader in a Strange Land: The Activity of Reading Literary Utopias (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986), ix. Percy G. Adams, ‘The Discovery of America and European Renaissance Literature.’ Comparative Literature Studies 13 (1976): 110. Krishan Kumar, Utopia and AntiUtopia in Modern Times (Oxford, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 23. Michael Broek, ‘Hobbes and Locke: Puritans, Pilgrims, and the Conflicted American Mythos.’ 49th Parallel No. 16 (2005), http://www.49thparallel.bham. ac.uk/back/issue16/broek.htm (accessed 15 May 2007). Joan Thirsk, ‘Patterns of Agriculture in 17th-Century New England.’ In Seventeenth-Century New England, ed. David D. Hall and Philip Chadwick Foster Smith (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1984), 39. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays. 1877. [Trans. by Charles Cotton.] Gutenberg Project. 2006. http://www.gutenberg.org/ etext/3600 (accessed 15 May 2008). Brandon, New Worlds, 28. Fuller, Voyages in Print, 141. Patricia Seed, ‘ “Are These Not Also Men?”: The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 25, 3 (1993): 632. Montrose, ‘Work of Gender,’ 25. Jennifer L. Morgan, ‘ “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder”: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500–1770.’ William and Mary Quarterly 54, 1 (1997): 169. Weckman, ‘Middle Ages in America,’ 132–3. Ramírez Alvarado, ‘Mitos e información.’ Quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 62. José Jiménez Lozano, ‘Sobre inditos, sabandijas y meninas.’ In El precio de la ‘invención’ de América, ed. Reyes Mate and Friedrich Niewöhner (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1992), 22–3. Colón, Cuatro viajes, 56, 69, 76.

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36 White, ‘Discovering Nature,’ 878. Quoted in Peggy Samuels, ‘Imagining Distance: Spanish Explorers in America.’ Early American Literature 25, 2 (1990): 246. Michael Zuckerman, ‘Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount’. New England Quarterly 50, 2 (1977): 261. 37 Quoted in Pagden, European Encounters, 3, 53. Quoted in White, ‘Discovering Nature,’ 881. 38 Regina Zilberman, ‘La naturaleza como imagen del país: Actualidad de una representación colonial.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 191. Abel A. Alves, ‘Of Peanuts and Bread: Images of the Raw and the Refined in the Sixteenth-Century Conquest of New Spain.’ In Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, ed. Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau and others (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 64–5. Gloria L. Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and Cultures in Colonial New England (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 26. Francis J. Bremer, ‘In Defense of Regicide: John Cotton on the Execution of Charles I.’ William and Mary Quarterly 37, 1 (1980): 38. Harvey Wish, Society and Thought in Early America: A Social and Intellectual History of the American People Through 1865. 1950 (New York: David McKay Co., 1964), 15. Quoted in Montrose, ‘Work of Gender,’ 18, 7. Quoted in Jones, ‘Colonial Impulse,’ 145. Marvin Lunenfeld, ed. 1492: Discovery, Invasion, Encounters. Sources and Interpretations (Lexington and Toronto, Canada: Heath and Co., 1991), 45. 39 Quoted in Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 33. Zumthor, ‘Medieval Travel Narrative,’ 815. White, ‘Discovering Nature,’ 878. Quoted in Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879), 159. Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics, 79. 40 Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery,’ 511–2. Quoted in Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 149. 41 John Smith, Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 207, 212. Michael J. Puglisi, ‘Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas and a Clash of Cultures: A Case for the Ethnohistorical Perspective.’ The History Teacher 25, 1 (1991): 103. Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning,’ 10. 42 Crone, Discovery of America, 142. Quoted in Gutiérrez Escudero, América, 24. Walter D. Mignolo, ‘The Movable Center: Geographical Discourses and Territoriality During the Expansion of the Spanish Empire.’ In Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America ed. Francisco Javier CevallosCandau and others (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 23. David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm in the New World. Heresy to Revolution (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1985), 20. J. N. Hillgarth, ‘Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality.’ History and Theory 24, 1 (1985): 25, 27. Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. 1966 (New York: Vintage, 1968), 7–8. Quoted in Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics, 25. Francis Higginson, New England’s Plantation, Or, A Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country. 1629. http://www.rootsweb. com/~nysuffol/truedesc.html (accessed 25 July 2007). 43 Quoted in Montrose, ‘Work of Gender,’ 16. Quoted in C. C. Goen, ‘Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure In Eschatology.’ Church History 28, 1 (1959): 29. Quoted

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Early Visions and Representations of America in Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics, 77. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: OR, THE Ecclesiastical History of NEW-ENGLAND FROM Its First Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of our LORD, 1698 (London: 1702), 2. Quoted in Jones, ‘Colonial Impulse,’ 142. Quoted in Francis Jennings, ‘Virgin Land and Savage People.’ American Quarterly 23, 4 (1971): 521. Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 45. Quoted in Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Gold,’ 45. Quoted in Michael T. Ryan, ‘Assimilating New Worlds in the 16th and 17th centuries.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, 4 (1981): 523. Quoted in Roger B. Stein, ‘Seascape and the American Imagination: The Puritan Seventeenth Century.’ Early American Literature 7, 1 (1972): 19. Ryan, ‘Assimilating New Worlds,’ 524. Reiner Smolinski, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall / Hunt, 1998), ix–x. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Puritan Imagination: Essays in Revaluation (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 130, 33, 138. Quoted in Honour, New Golden Land, 16. Smolinski, Kingdom, Power, and Glory, 186. Kim Maryse Beauchesne, ‘Lope de Aguirre’s Letter to King Philip II (1561).’ Proceedings of the Early Ibero-Anglo Americanist Summit http://www.mith2.umd.edu/summit/Proceedings/Beauchesne. htm (accessed 6 March 2008). Smolinski, Kingdom, Power, Glory, 29, 186. Quoted in Smolinski, Kingdom, Power, Glory, 209. Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 179. Weckman, ‘Middle Ages in America,’ 131. Yet, ‘Pope Alexander never claimed possession of the Indies, only rightful title to it.’ John T. Juricek, ‘English Territorial Claims in North America under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts.’ Terrae Incognitae VII, 21. J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 11–2. Patricia Seed, American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 28. Quoted in Juricek, ‘Territorial Claims,’ 10. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 17–8. Juricek, ‘Territorial Claims,’ 9–10, 22. Pagden, Lords of World, 47–8. Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession, 14. Patricia Seed, ‘Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires.’ William and Mary Quarterly 49, 2 (1992): 207. Quoted in Jones, ‘Colonial Impulse,’ 156. Seed, ‘Taking Possession,’ 201. Alden T. Vaughan, ‘From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian.’ American Historical Review 87, 4 (1982): 939. Fuller, ‘Ralegh’s Gold,’ 42. Luisa López Grigera, ‘Relectura de Relación de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 28 (1999): 928. Quoted in Jennings, ‘Virgin Land,’ 521. Pagden, Lords of World, 75. Wilcomb Washburn, ‘The Oral and Legal Justifications for Dispossessing the Indians.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 19, 22. Quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 58. Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession, 267. Quoted in Washburn, ‘Oral and Legal Justifications,’ 24. Pagden, Lords of World, 94.

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56 Quoted in Washburn, ‘Oral and Legal Justifications,’ 24–5. Quoted in Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 31, 33. Quoted in Philip L. Berg, ‘Racism and the Puritan Mind.’ Phylon (1960-) 36, 1 (1975): 4. Quoted in Chester R. Eisinger, ‘The Puritans’ Justification for Taking the Land.’ Essex Institute Historical Collections 84 (1948): 136. McMahon, Valuing Nature, 36. John H. Elliott, ‘Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World.’ In Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 11. Quoted in Asselin Charles, ‘Colonial Discourses Since Christopher Columbus.’ Journal of Black Studies 26, 2 (1995): 139. 57 Quoted in Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 10. Quoted in Juricek, ‘Territorial Claims,’ 12. 58 Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 70, 72, 75–6. 59 God rewarding His chosen people by means of material gains was not a new idea and first Augustine and later Ptolemy of Lucca in his Re Regimine principium argued that the Roman empire was a divine retribution for the virtue of the Romans. Pagden, Lords of World, 52. Quoted in Seed, American Pentimento, 61. 60 Seed, ‘Taking Possession,’ 186. Catton and Catton, Bold and Magnificent Dream, 69. 61 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios. 1542 (N. p.: El Aleph, 2000), 11. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias. 2005. http://www.ems. kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e001.html (accessed 16 October 2008). 62 Douglas Edward Leach, The Northern Colonial Frontier, 1607–1763 (New York and others: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 17. Quoted in Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight B. Heath. 1622 (Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 1963), 17. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 16. 63 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 59–61, 93. 64 Mourt’s Relation, 89, 91–3. 65 Elliott, Viejo Mundo y Nuevo, 41. 66 Quoted in Elliott, Viejo mundo y nuevo, 28.

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America in Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios Dejo aquí de contar esto más largo, porque cada uno puede pensar lo que se pasaría en tierra tan extraña y tan mala, y tan sin ningún remedio de ninguna cosa, ni para estar ni para salir de ella. [Here I stop telling this in more detail, because anyone can imagine what would happen in such a strange and bad land, and without any remedy whatsoever, either to be there or to leave it]. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios As seen in the previous chapters, all writings about America were inevitably coloured by their authors’ circumstances – their expectations about the land, agenda, previous ideas and prejudices, personal aspirations etc. These could not have been more dissimilar in the case of Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford. Cabeza de Vaca, a conquistador seeking glory and recognition, saw his participation in the exploration and conquest of America as a means to receive an encomienda or important royal commissions in the future. Cabeza de Vaca saw himself as forwarding the Spanish conquest and colonization of America, given that the success of the expedition was to contribute to the overall success of the Spanish enterprise in the Americas. Nothing further from the Pilgrims’ minds; having fled from England, the advance of the English possession of America was far from their minds. Bradford and his group were looking for a place where one could live according to one’s religious beliefs while following English ways, which had been impossible in their native country because of the persecution they had suffered. Moreover, they were forced to conceal their involvement to secure a patent, for they would have never been given one on their own – thence, the necessity for the dealings with the Merchant Adventurers and their having to accept the abusive terms of the agreement. For Bradford’s Pilgrims, America was the culmination of a journey that had begun 10 years earlier and whose destination was to be the New Israel, following their typological reading of the Bible. The conviction that they were God’s chosen people led them to believe that they were special and different from any other migratory group in world history. On account of these premises, the ways in which Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford described the foreign land on which they had landed were altogether different. One of the charges Fernández de Oviedo brought against Cabeza de Vaca was his brevity about the existence of gold and metals – ‘yo quisiera esto más claro, e más larga claridad’ [I would like this clearer and more extensively dealt with]. Cabeza de

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Vaca presented America as a place of great prospects for future colonization at the same time that he purposefully concealed specific information. The repeated use of the phrase ‘dejo de contar’ [I stop telling] was a very effective strategy to let readers’ imagination fly without having to explicitly state what had really happened. Even in Cabeza de Vaca and Andrés Dorantes’ interview with Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Mexico, they still withheld some data ‘porque todavia avra alguna particularidad mas que poder decir. . .’ [because there will still be some other detail that could be told]. Cabeza de Vaca’s goal with this strategy of omission was that any future expedition to the area be assigned to him, the only one having the missing information. That the new expedition was eventually assigned to De Soto was, therefore, a hard blow for him. Similarly, drawing on their knowledge, another of the survivors, Estebanico, participated in a new expedition to the region led by friar Marcos of Nice because of his previous experience, which would help locate these promising places.1 In contrast to Cabeza de Vaca’s bright possibilities in the lands he discovered, Bradford’s America is certainly no paradise. Actually, in Of Plymouth Plantation, ‘never had a Promised Land looked more unpromising’. At odds with Bradford’s description of a most unpromising land, la Florida que Cabeza de Vaca describe es ‘maravillosa de ver’, y su vegetación y su fauna tan abundantes y parecidas a las europeas que, diríase, es más una descripción fantástica y no una descripción realista. El naufragio contradice en apariencia ese mensaje: la tierra se comporta con los españoles como si fuese árida, inhóspita, el reverso de la medalla, una tierra de la que se ha desterrado toda posibilidad de placer. [“the Florida Cabeza de Vaca describes is ‘marvellous to see,’ and its flora and fauna so abundant and similar to the European ones, that, we would say, it is a fantastic rather than a realistic description. The shipwreck seemingly contradicts that message – the land appears to the Spaniards as if it were arid, inhospitable, the reverse side of the coin, a land in which any chance at pleasure has disappeared”].

Neither Pilgrims nor Puritans were too concerned about the physical description of America, and Of Plymouth Plantation can be considered a part of a tradition in American literature that deals with ultimates rather than with what actually is. As Pilkington puts it, ‘in general, European literature, fiction in particular, excels in the recounting of the minutiae of life, in depicting manners, social and political, whereas American books are often concerned with ultimates – with a person’s relationships to God, to the universe, and to his own soul’. In Of Plymouth Plantation, scarce attention is paid to America’s natural world in contrast to its emphasis on signs that denoted that the Pilgrims were God’s chosen people and that their current situation in the New World was designed by divine providence. Nothing in America is an end in itself but, rather, a means for Pilgrims and Puritans to speak about themselves and their own relationship with God, which resulted in seventeenth-century histories of Puritanism rather than of America that examine the changes that took place within them instead of their reactions to the land. While Bradford dwelled at length on the reasons why

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they had suffered an earthquake or a hurricane, the flora and fauna of America did not occupy much space in his writings.2 Regardless of their expectations, Narváez’s men and the Pilgrims shared a mutual ignorance of what the lands awaiting them were really like. Narváez’s previous experiences in Cuba had provided him with a vast knowledge, but none of this was useful with regard to Florida. Also, many of his men, including Cabeza de Vaca, had never been to America and found themselves separated from their leader (however ineffectual) and relying on their own (next to nothing) knowledge: yo pregunté a los cristianos, y dije que sí a ellos parecía, rogaría a aquellos indios que nos llevasen a sus casas; y algunos de ellos que habían estado en la Nueva España respondieron que no se debía de hablar de ello, porque si a sus casas nos llevaban, nos sacrificarían a sus ídolos; mas, visto que otro remedio no había, y que por cualquier otro camino estaba más cerca y más cierta la muerte, no curé de lo que decían, antes rogué a los indios que nos llevasen a sus casas. [“I asked the Christians and said that if they agreed, I would beg those Indians to take us to their houses; and some of those who had been to New Spain answered that it should not be discussed, because if they took us to their houses, they would sacrifice us to their idols; but seeing that there was no other remedy, and by any other path death was closer and more certain, I paid no attention to what they said, but instead I begged the Indians to take us to their houses”].

The same ignorance marked the Pilgrims’ arrival in America. Although John Smith had offered them his services as a guide, they had turned him down on financial grounds. Smith later commented that ‘humorous ignorance caused them far more than a year to endure a wonderful deal of misery with infinite patience . . . thinking to find things better than I advised them’. With great expectations and inadequate preparation, thus, Cabeza de Vaca and the Pilgrims set out to discover America.3 To fully comprehend Cabeza de Vaca’s vision of America as conveyed in Naufragios, several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works describing Florida will also be analysed. Unfortunately, we cannot count among them the Joint Report (or relación conjunta) that Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes and Castillo gave to the Audiencia de Santo Domingo, which is long lost, and its only partial, available version is the heavily annotated summary Fernández de Oviedo did in Historia general y natural de las Indias. Although some have claimed a one-to-one correspondence between Naufragios and the Joint Report, the former is entirely the work of Cabeza de Vaca after his return to Spain, whereas the latter was a collaborative effort by Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes and Castillo while they were in New Spain. In the absence of the Joint Report, it is Fernández de Oviedo’s work which is used here, as well as Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias (1526). The presence of the Sumario is justified because, the Historia, written between 1526 and 1549, was unavailable to sixteenth-century men. A series of circumstances, including the apprehension that it provided foreign nations with invaluable knowledge about the New World’s wealth, Fernández de Oviedo’s negative vision of the conquest, the lack of funding to pay for

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the heavy printing expenses because of its length and even Las Casas’ opposition, prevented its publication until its 1851–1855 edition.4 The vision of the Narváez expedition provided by Fernández de Oviedo’s works is further complemented by Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca’s Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Gobernador y capitán general del Reyno de la Florida, y de otros heroicos cavalleros Españoles è Indios, usually known as La Florida del Inca. First published in Lisbon in 1605, it recounts the same events as the Hidalgo de Elvas’ True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Gobernor Don Hernando De Soto and Some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida Now Just Given By a Fidalgo of Elvas Viewed by the Lord Inquisitor (also included for reasons explained later). More importantly, Garcilaso’s articulation of an indigenous identity contrasts sharply not only with Fernández de Oviedo’s Spanishness but also with Cabeza de Vaca’s pains to present himself as a Spaniard (a Christian) and not a Native American, despite his prolonged stay among the Native Americans. Garcilaso’s identity as an Indian (as he put it), Fernández de Oviedo’s as a Spaniard and Cabeza de Vaca’s ambiguous identity, moving between the realms of Native American and Spanish societies and gender roles, all make for a more complete picture of the sixteenth-century Spanish presence in Florida. Additionally, Fernández de Oviedo’s and Garcilaso’s texts are closely interrelated with Naufragios: while Naufragios had its origins in the Joint Report that Fernández de Oviedo retold, Garcilaso extensively used Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia for La Florida del Inca.5 The True Relation (first published in Portuguese in 1557) by the Hidalgo de Elvas, a participant in Hernando de Soto’s expedition, is included because this expedition was the next one after Narváez’s and De Soto largely drew on knowledge provided by Cabeza de Vaca after his return to Spain (although it is unclear how much Cabeza de Vaca told De Soto and how much he kept for himself with the hope of returning as the next Adelantado of Florida). Moreover, they found Juan Ortiz, a participant of the Narváez expedition who had lived since then with the Native Americans and whose life is largely absent from the historical record, including Naufragios. All the accounts analysed in this chapter contribute to a better and more comprehensive approach to the Spanish understanding of Florida. If America had been hidden from Europeans until 1492, Florida was for an even longer period of time. Its actual discovery was a question of chanciness: had Columbus not changed his route, he would have landed in Florida in his first trip. As things transpired, Florida remained unknown until the arrival in 1513 of Puerto Rico governor Ponce de León, who had sailed northwest from Puerto Rico with three ships. A year later, to secure his rights upon the land he had discovered and named, Ponce de León obtained a patent that covered both Florida and the mythical Island of Bimini (just in case it turned out to be real). However, business in Puerto Rico prevented him from launching a new expedition to Florida until 7 years later. In the meantime, Diego Miruelo (a relative of the pilot Miruelo who went in Narváez’s expedition) in 1516 went to Florida and returned with reports about its wealth. In early 1519, Jamaica governor Francisco de Garay sent a three-vessel fleet commanded by Alonso (Álvarez) de Pineda which explored the northern shores of the Gulf, discovering the Mississippi

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River. Pineda was also probably the first European to set foot on western Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, which he collectively named ‘Amichel’. Moreover, he proved that Florida was a peninsula and that there was no Northwest Passage to be found in the area. When at last he could sail off, the 1521 Ponce de León expedition met with a violent opposition from the Native Americans, with Ponce de León getting mortally wounded in a skirmish and dying in Cuba with the unshaken conviction that Florida was an island. The failure of this expedition, the first of a long string of failures, resulted in Florida earning the reputation of an ill-fated land. Its marshes, lagoons, keys and canals, with dangerous and changing undertows, as well as the frequency of typhoons and tornadoes helped to confirm this reputation.6 The course of the Spanish involvement in Florida changed when Garay was appointed Adelantado of Florida in 1523. During his term, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, appeal courts judge at the Audiencia de Santo Domingo, obtained a patent from Charles V for the area of Chicora in 1523. Ayllón would not be able to set up an expedition until 1526, although the previous year, Portuguese sailor Estevâo Gomes, under the sponsorship of Charles V, began a journey in search of the mythical Northwest Passage northward from the Florida coast. Ayllón’s 1526 expedition, made up of six vessels, reached South Carolina and attempted to establish a permanent settlement with 500 people, including men, women, children, three Dominican friars as well as black slaves and 89 horses. Ayllón wrote to the king to reiterate that our principal intent in the discovery of new lands is that the inhabitants and natives thereof, who are without the light or knowledge of the faith, may be brought to understand the truths of our Holy Catholic Faith, that they may come to a knowledge thereof and become Christians and be saved, and this is the chief motive that you are to bear and hold in this affair.

By 1528, Ayllón was dead and problems were rife among the colonists, who, reduced to less than 200, decided to return to Santo Domingo. Although brief, this short-lived settlement gave enough reason for Spain to legitimately claim the Florida territory, and the 1529 map by Diego Ribero, the well-reputed Portuguese cartographer, named the mid-Atlantic regions as the ‘Land of Ayllon’. Although in the meantime others might have explored Florida without leaving any written record because their expeditions were unauthorized, the next man known to try his luck in the Florida region was Narváez, whose patent covered the area from Río de las Palmas to the Cape of Florida and whose fate could be known in Naufragios.7 The Narváez expedition was designed to find riches that could rival those of Cortés’ Aztec empire, but all that they could find was starvation and penury; seeking out to be conquistadors, they ended up getting enslaved by the Native Americans. Under these circumstances, it is, therefore, not surprising that Naufragios reflects Cabeza de Vaca’s ambivalent relationship with both American nature and the natives. His first encounter with Native Americans was an extremely negative one: ‘los indios de aquel pueblo vinieron a nosotros, y aunque nos hablaron, como nosotros no teníamos lengua, no los entendíamos; mas hacíannos muchas señas y amenazas, y nos pareció que nos

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decían que nos fuésemos’ [the Indians from that town came to us and, although they spoke to us, as we had no interpreter, we did not understand them; but they made us many signs and threats and it seemed to us that they were telling us to go away]. However, following this attack, they found some Native Americans most willing to show them where they could find corn: ‘tomamos cuatro indios, y mostrámosles maíz para ver si le conocían, porque hasta entonces no habíamos visto señal de él. Ellos nos dijeron que nos llevarían donde lo había . . . nos mostraron un poco de maíz, que aún no estaba para cogerse’ [we took four Indians, and we showed them corn to see if they knew it because so far we had seen no sign of it. They told us that they would take us where there was . . . they showed us a bit of corn, which was not ripe yet].8 What might be attributed to either a sudden change of opinion on the part of Cabeza de Vaca (are the Native Americans hostile or, on the contrary, friendly and hospitable?) or a sudden change of mind on the part of the Native Americans (are they trying to expel the Spaniards from their lands or do they really want to help them survive and stay to live with them?) is one of the most striking characteristics throughout the whole work. More often than not, a negative description of the Native Americans is counterbalanced by a positive one within the space of a couple of pages, and sometimes in the very same one. In Chapter 9, a hospitable gesture on the part of the Native Americans (offering water to the thirsty Spaniards) is immediately followed by the Native Americans taking a Greek Christian and a black slave as captives. If in page 38 Cabeza de Vaca praises the good Native Americans he finds, in the same page he is afraid of being sacrificed to their idols. Cabeza de Vaca’s problems with the Native Americans (Chapter 8) are contrasted with the Native Americans’ hospitality (Chapter 9), and his complaints about the Native Americans (Chapter 9) are followed by his assertion of his trust on them (Chapter 17).9 Cabeza de Vaca’s depiction of America cannot be considered separately from the harsh living conditions he experienced during his time there. Accordingly, his America is no earthly paradise, no place to test one’s ideals, no utopia, no unpopulated virgin land, no land of plenty (starvation is recurrent throughout the account), no land suspended in a golden age state, etc. The place is as bleak as the torments that Cabeza de Vaca experienced. After the fashion of his paternal grandfather, Pedro de Vera, conquistador of the Canary Islands, Cabeza de Vaca wanted to be a conquistador, a man like Cortés, conquering a whole empire, maybe even greater than Cortés’, if rumours were to be believed. Therefore, it was not unwillingness that prevented his being a conquistador, but his circumstances, as he acknowledges in the proem: hay una muy gran diferencia no causada por culpa de ellos, sino solamente de la fortuna, o más cierto sin culpa de nadie, mas por sola voluntad y juicio de Dios; donde nace que uno salga con más señalados servicios que pensó, y a otro le suceda todo tan al revés, que no pueda mostrar de su propósito más testigo que a su diligencia [“there is a very big difference not caused by them, but only by fortune, or rather by nobody’s fault but God’s sole will and judgement; that makes that one ends up with more valuable services than he thought, and that to another everything goes so wrong that he can produce no proof of his goal other than his diligence”].10

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That Cabeza de Vaca was the treasurer of the expedition imposed upon his writings a number of duties, including the description of the lands and the peoples. However, Naufragios is a good example of how the relación could not accommodate everything the writer was to make an inventory of. Unable to conveniently register or process what he was seeing, Cabeza de Vaca soon gives up the conventions of the relación. Highly significant is the fact that in Naufragios there is no reading of the Requerimiento, which conquistadors were legally bound to do. The ‘Instructions to Conquistadors’ are not mentioned and neither are the instructions Charles V gave to the friars, which read, according to Zubillaga ‘mandamus que la primera e principal cosa que después de salidos en tierra de los dichos capitanes e otros frayles e otras cualquier gentes que hubieren de hazer, sea procurar que, por lengua de interpretes que entiendan los yndios y moradores de tal tierra, les digan e declaren como Nos les embiamos para les enseñar a buenas costumbres, e apartarlos de bicios e comer carne umana e ynstruirlos en nuestra Santa fee’ [we command that the first and main thing to be done by the aforementioned captains and other friars and any other people once they land is to endeavor, by means of interpreters’ language that the Indians and dwellers of such lands understand, to tell them and declare that we send them to teach them our good habits and keep them away from vices and from eating human flesh and to instruct them in our Sacred faith].11 Given the failure of the expedition, which could accomplish none of its goals, Cabeza de Vaca, to protect his reputation, had to exaggerate the value of his contribution, emphasizing the things he saw (but could not take possession of) or the souls he brought to Christianity. Even worse, Cabeza de Vaca had gained no wealth or new territory, but he had lost it all, including the lives of over a hundred men. Accordingly, no me quedó lugar para hacer más servicio de éste, que es traer a Vuestra Majestad relación de lo que en diez años que por muchas y muy extrañas tierras que anduve perdido y en cueros, pudiese saber y ver, así en el sitio de las tierras y provincias de ellas, como en los mantenimientos y animales que en ella se crían, y las diversas costumbres de muchas y muy bárbaras naciones con quien conversé y viví, y todas las otras particularidades que pude alcanzar y conocer, que de ello en alguna manera Vuestra Majestad será servido. [“I could perform no service other than this, which is to bring Your Majesty an account of what in the ten years in which I was lost and naked in many and very strange lands I could learn and see, in regards to the location of these lands and their provinces, as well as about the farming and animals kept there, and the varied customs of many and very barbaric nations I spoke to and lived among, and all the other particularities I could get to know, so that with this your Majesty be somehow served”].

Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his taking possession of the land is merely descriptive and not military or factual, as he could not be a true conquistador.12 Powerless to bring in any profit or new territories, Cabeza de Vaca reinterpreted his story using the motifs of regeneration and redemption to accommodate his narrative to the Spanish Imperial context. Unable to expand the Spanish empire, Cabeza de

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Vaca’s task was pointing out the way for the colonial powers that would characterize the nineteenth century, a function of travellers’ accounts ever since the Middle Ages. Cabeza de Vaca thus stands closer to the fictional John Mandeville, who inspired many to travel, and Franciscan voyagers William of Rubruck and Odoric of Pordenone, in marked contrast to Marco Polo, Columbus and other Spanish conquistadors like Cortés or Pizarro or even Narváez in Cuba.13 Cabeza de Vaca’s first full description of America is a most positive, promising description of the prospects of the expedition: la tierra, por la mayor parte . . . es llana; el suelo, de arena y tierra firme; . . . hay muy grandes árboles y montes claros, donde hay nogales y laureles, y otros que se llaman liquidámbares, cedros, sabinas y encinas y pinos y robles, palmitos bajos, de la manera de los de Castilla. Por toda ella hay muchas lagunas grandes y pequeñas, algunas muy trabajosas de pasar, parte por la mucha hondura, parte por tantos árboles como por ellas están caídos. . . . Hay en esta provincia muchos maizales, y las casas están tan esparcidas por el campo, de la manera que están las de los Gelves. Los animales que en ellas vimos son: venados de tres maneras, conejos y liebres, osos y leones, y otras salvajinas, entre los cuales vimos un animal que trae los hijos en una bolsa que en la barriga tiene. . . . la tierra es muy fría; tiene muy buenos pastos para ganados; hay aves de muchas maneras, ánsares en gran cantidad, patos, ánades, patos reales, dorales y garzotas y garzas, perdices; vimos muchos halcones, neblíes, gavilanes, esmerejones y otras muchas aves. [“the land, for the most part, . . . is flat; the soil, of sand and solid ground; . . . there are very big trees and sparse mounts, where there are walnut trees and laurel trees, and others that are called sweet-gums, cedars, junipers and holm oaks and pine trees and oak trees, low palmettos, like those in Castile. Throughout it there are many big and small lakes, some very arduous to cross, partly because of their depth, partly because of the many trees felled on them. . . . There are many corn fields in this area, and the houses are scattered in the fields, like those in Gelves. The animals we saw there are: three types of venison, rabbits and hares, bears and lions, and other savage animals, among which we saw an animal that carries its children in a bag in its belly . . . the land is very cold; there is very good pasture for cattle; there are many types of fowl, a great number of geese, ducks, mallards, royal ducks, ibises and egrets and herons, partridges; we saw many falcons, marsh hawks, sparrow-hawks, goshawks and many other fowls”].

This constitutes Cabeza de Vaca’s first contact with America, for his previous knowledge was none and the same could be said of the expedition as a whole: ‘íbamos mudos y sin lengua, por donde mal nos podíamos entender con los indios, ni saber lo que de la tierra queríamos, y que entrábamos por tierra de que ninguna relación teníamos, ni sabíamos de qué suerte era, ni lo que en ella había, ni de qué gente estaba poblada, ni a qué parte de ella estábamos; y que sobre todo esto, no teníamos bastimentos para entrar adonde no sabíamos’ [we went dumb and without an interpreter, so that we could hardly understand the Indians, or learn what we wanted from the land, and

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we went into a land we had no account of and did not know what kind it was or what was there or what people lived there, or in which part of it we were; and, above all, we had no provisions to go into where we knew nothing of]. Fernández de Oviedo also stressed Narváez’s ignorance about Florida, despite his expertise about Cuba, but he extended the blame to the friars in the expedition: Querría yo que me dijesen qué les predicaron esos frailes e Pánfilo de Narváez a aquellos españoles que tan ciegos se fueron, dejando sus patrias tras falsas palabras. Y por muchos que mueren, nunca escarmientan. ¿Quién los había certificado haber visto aquel oro que buscaban? ¿Qué pilotos llevaban tan expertos en la navegación, pues que ni conocieron la tierra, ni supieron dar razón de dónde estaban? ¿E qué guías e qué intérpretes llevaron? ¡Oh temerario desatino! ¿Qué mayor crimen puede cometer un caudillo que conducir gente a tierra que ni él ni otro de su hueste haya estado en ella? [“I would like to be told what those friars and Pánfilo de Narváez preached to those Spaniards who went so blind, leaving their fatherlands after false words. And no matter how many die, they never learn. Who had assured them that they had seen that gold they were looking for? What pilots did they have who were so expert in sailing that they neither recognized the land, nor were able to explain where they were? And what guides and interpreters did they have? Oh reckless foolishness! What greater crime can a leader commit than to take people to a land neither he nor anybody in his company has been to?”]14

Cabeza de Vaca’s favourable first impression soon gives way to a negative one characterized by of the barrenness of the land, which he interprets as a divine punishment for their past sins: ‘era tal la tierra en que nuestros pecados nos habían puesto’ [such was the land our sins had sent us to]. But when their fortunes later changed, he uses a religious interpretation to describe America and attributes this change to a miracle and a sign of God’s special favour to them – ‘plugo a nuestro Señor, que en las mayores necesidades suele mostrar su favor, que a puesta del Sol volvimos una punta que la tierra hace, adonde hallamos mucha bonanza y abrigo’ [it pleased our Lord, who usually shows His favor when in the direst need, that at sunset we turned a peak of land, where we found much goodness and shelter]. Throughout Naufragios, there is an interrelation between the hardships and sufferings they undergo in America and their past sins. For Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, America became a purgatory where they found atonement for their sins. As Fernández de Oviedo notes: éste fue el suceso del capitán Pánfilo de Narváez e de su armada, al cual e los demás haya Dios perdonado por su infinita misericordia, tomando en descuento de sus culpas sus trabajos e muertes tan desapiadadas. E así se debe creer que la bondad divina remedió sus ánimas, pues que eran cristianos. [“that is what happened to captain Pánfilo de Narváez and his army, may God in His infinite mercy have forgiven him and the others, taking off from their sins their labor and pitiless deaths. And it must therefore be believed that God’s goodness succored their souls, because they were Christians”].15

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For Cabeza de Vaca, God’s presence was constant during his time in America: ‘dimos muchas gracias a Dios por vernos tan cerca de Él, creyendo que era verdad lo que de aquella tierra nos habían dicho, que allí se acabarían los grandes trabajos que habíamos pasado, así por el malo y largo camino para andar, como por la mucha hambre que habíamos padecido’ [we thanked God greatly because we saw ourselves so close to Him, believing that it was true what we had been told about that land, that the great hardships we had suffered would end there, because of the long and bad walking path as well as the great hunger we had suffered]. God’s presence made America a place where one found redemption; like Puritan captivity narratives, Naufragios conforms to the pattern of the jeremiad, as stated in the Bible: ‘for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth’ (Hebrews 12:6). ‘Estos pecadores de cristianos’ [these Christian sinners], as Fernández de Oviedo referred to them, were punished by God to atone for their previous sins so that at the end of their trial they were redeemed and had obtained a valuable moral lesson.16 It is only towards the end of his account that Cabeza de Vaca changes his negative description of America to a more positive one due to his improved living conditions. Only after the Native Americans, who fed him and his companions, took them for almost gods, does he begin to appreciate American land as fertile. If at first Cabeza de Vaca complains about ‘la mala disposición de la tierra’ [the bad conditions of the land] and records their hardships ‘en tierra tan extraña y tan mala’ [in such a strange and bad land], he begins to appreciate the fruitfulness of the land after the natives regarded him as a healer and almost as a god. America is a wasteland to him as long as he was starving; but he describes America in a far more favourable light after he was offered its riches.17 Cabeza de Vaca’s differing perceptions are not limited just to the fertility of the soil but also include its mineral wealth. Very early in their journey, Narváez was misled by the Native Americans about the existence of gold: ‘señaláronnos que muy lejos de allí había una provincia que se decía Apalache, en la cual había mucho oro, y hacían seña de haber muy gran cantidad de todo lo que nosotros estimamos . . . tomando aquellos indios por guía, partimos’ [they pointed to us that very far-away there was a province called Apalache, where there was much gold and they made signs that there was a lot of all we value . . . taking those Indians as guides, we departed]. This piece of information prompted Narváez to lead the terrestrial party further inland to find the promised gold, which would ultimately result in their getting lost. This search for the promised gold that characterized Cabeza de Vaca’s journey throughout the Southwest culminated by the end of Naufragios. Their personal situation having radically changed by the close of the journey, Cabeza de Vaca could then admonish the natives to take advantage of America’s assets: les mandamos que se asegurasen, y asentasen sus pueblos, y sembrasen y labrasen la tierra, que, de estar despoblada, estaba ya muy llena de monte; la cual sin duda es la mejor de cuantas en estas Indias hay, y más fértil y abundosa de mantenimientos, y siembran tres veces en el año. Tienen muchas frutas y muy hermosos ríos, y otras muchas aguas muy buenas. Hay muestras grandes y señales de minas de oro y plata

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[“we commanded them to settle down and people their towns and plant and farm the land, which, as it was unpopulated, was full of weeds; which is, no doubt, the best soil to be had in these Indies, and more fertile and abundant of crops, and they plant three times a year. They have many fruits and very beautiful rivers, and many other very good waters. There are great signs of mines of gold and silver”].18

The Spaniards’ lack of resources and their inability to provide for themselves because of their inexperience and ignorance stood in marked contrast with the Native Americans’ resourcefulness: ‘nos llevaron a sus casas . . . en las cuales hallamos gran cantidad de maíz que estaba ya para cogerse’ [they took us to their houses . . . where we found a great deal of ripe corn]. Yet, Cabeza de Vaca’s perceptions of the fruitfulness of the land did not prevent him from complaining about the Native Americans’ mismanagement of the land: ‘respondiéronnos cada uno por sí, que el mayor pueblo . . . era aquel Apalache, y que adelante había menos gente y muy más pobre que ellos, y que la tierra era mal poblada y los moradores de ella muy repartidos’ [each replied that the biggest town . . . was the said Apalache and that from there forward there were less people and much poorer than they, and that the land was badly populated and its dwellers very scattered]) or about their poor agricultural skills: ‘ninguna cosa siembran que se puede aprovechar’ [they plant nothing that can be made use of].19 Native Americans’ agricultural techniques were, in Cabeza de Vaca’s rendering, rudimentary at best. To begin with, the Native Americans were mostly nomads, a practice scorned by Europeans and interpreted as a sign of barbarism. It is remarkable at a time when Europeans frequently denounced in their writings Native Americans’ nomadic practices as a sign of their barbarism, that Cabeza de Vaca blames the Native Americans’ nomadic ways on the Spaniards’ persecution: ‘anduvimos mucha tierra, y toda hallamos despoblada, porque los moradores de ella andaban huyendo por las sierras, sin osar tener casas ni labrar, por miedo de los cristianos. Fue cosa de que tuvimos muy gran lástima, viendo la tierra muy fértil, y muy hermosa y muy llena de agua y de ríos, y ver los lugares despoblados y quemados’ [we walked through many lands and we found them all unpeopled because their dwellers were running away across the mountains, without daring to have houses or to farm, out of fear of the Christians. It was a source of great pity, seeing the land very fertile and very beautiful and very full of water and rivers, yet seeing the places unpeopled and burned down]. Travelling to wherever they might find crops, the Native Americans’ techniques for collecting roots were hand-made with little skill, as was their technique for milling corn using glasses. Given the elementary agricultural knowledge the Spaniards credited the natives with, signs of stockbreeding were taken as evidence of the presence of Spaniards in the area: ‘la tierra estaba cavada a la manera que suele estar tierra donde anda ganado, y parecióle por esto que debía ser tierra de cristianos’ [the land was digged in the way of the land trampled by cattle, and because of this he thought it must be land of Christians].20 Mineral wealth or not, America is presented as a dangerous place, plagued by frequent storms, with dangerous waters, their own inexperience making it worse: ‘en una mar tan trabajosa, y sin tener noticia de la arte del marear ninguno’ [in such a

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grueling sea and without any of us having any notion of the art of sailing]. Water and storms often made the continuation of their journey almost impossible: ‘nos tomó una tormenta muy grande, porque nos detuvimos seis días sin que osásemos salir a la mar’ [a very big storm surprised us and we stayed for six days without daring to sail off ]. Sometimes, however, sheer necessity forced them to sail despite the perils of the sea: ‘como porque la tierra era muy peligrosa para estar en ella, nos salimos a la mar’ [as the land was too dangerous to stay, we sailed off ] in spite of the storms – ‘y como vimos que la sed crecía y el agua nos mataba, aunque la tormenta no era cesada, acordamos de encomendarnos a Dios nuestro Señor, y aventurarnos antes al peligro de la mar que esperar la certinidad de la muerte que la sed nos daba’ [as we saw that our thirst grew and the water killed us, even though the storm had not ceased, we agreed to trust ourselves to God Our Lord and risk the danger of the sea rather than waiting for the certainty of death caused by the thirst]. Yet, the sea proved to be as perilous as the land itself: ‘a cabo de estos cuatro días nos tomó una tormenta, que hizo perder la otra barca, y por gran misericordia que Dios tuvo de nosotros no nos hundimos del todo, según el tiempo hacía’ [after four days a storm caught us and made us lose the other barge and by God’s great mercy towards us we did not completely sink, given the weather].21 Hunger, which figures prominently in Cabeza de Vaca’s account, is a major suffering described in captivity narratives regardless of the identity of the captives or the Native American group that had kidnapped them. The most famous Puritan captive, Mary Rowlandson, regarded as the model for subsequent American captivity narratives, extensively dwelt on hunger; during her fifth ‘remove’, she wrote: the first week of my being among them I hardly ate anything; the second week, I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something; and yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash. But the third week, though I could think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that and I could starve of dy [sic] before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savoury to my taste.

Puritan captive Elizabeth Hanson also remarked that ‘the greatest difficulty that deserves the first to be named [is] want of hunger’.22 Hunger is a theme that is recurrent throughout Naufragios and yet, American food is described as far from being delicious. Rather, American products appear as barely edible and the only reason why they were consumed was their extreme necessity – ‘huevos de ellas, que estaban secas; que fue muy gran remedio para la necesidad que llevábamos’ [its eggs, which were dry, were a great remedy for the need we had]. These foodstuffs included ‘unto de venado’ [venison spread] or ‘unos polvos de paja’ [some hay powders]. Starvation forced them into non-traditional eating practices such as eating horse meat (though Cabeza de Vaca was too squeamish for that): ‘de mí sé decir que desde el mes de mayo pasado yo no había comido otra cosa sino maíz tostado, y algunas veces me vi en necesidad de comerlo crudo; porque aunque se mataron los caballos, . . . yo nunca pude comer de ellos, y no fueron diez veces las que comí pescado’ [I can say about myself that since last May I had not eaten anything but

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roasted corn and sometimes I was forced to eat it raw; because although the horses were killed, . . . I could never eat from them and I ate fish less than ten times]. Later on, they even had to eat dog meat: ‘después que comimos los perros’ [after we ate the dogs].23 Another non-traditional eating practice was cannibalism. Although they feared that the Native Americans might eat them, the only instance of cannibalism in Naufragios was carried out by Spaniards. So desperate was their situation that cannibalism became an option for some of Narváez’s men: ‘comenzóse a morir la gente, y cinco cristianos que estaban en el rancho en la costa llegaron a tal extremo, que se comieron los unos a los otros, hasta que quedó uno solo, que por ser solo no hubo quien lo comiese’ [people began to die and five Christians who were in the ranch off the coast got to the point that they ate one another until there was only one left, as there was nobody else to eat him]. The fact that the only cannibals that Cabeza de Vaca met were Spaniards, not Native Americans, is most significant, for cannibalism was reported to be a normal occurrence among Native American groups for centuries, and, moreover, a reason justifying their conquest by the Europeans. However, because instances of cannibalism among Spaniards similar to that reported by Cabeza de Vaca had been known to happen in the Indies, the Spaniards drew a distinction between (European) survival cannibalism and (Native Americans’) ceremonial cannibalism. In contrast to the Spaniards who express moral outrage at cannibalism, Cabeza de Vaca shares the English fear of being devoured by Native Americans.24 Not only was America a dangerous land, but also was it unhealthy in Cabeza de Vaca’s eyes: mosquitoes abounded and there were poisonous trees. While he does not deal with the diversity of American fauna at large, Cabeza de Vaca includes some comments about the animals he had seen, usually in panegyrical terms. Especially significant is his description of the American buffalo, which he calls cow: alcanzan aquí vacas, y yo las he visto tres veces y comido de ellas, y paréceme que serán del tamaño de las de España. Tienen los cuernos pequeños, . . . a mi parecer tienen mejor y más gruesa carne. . . . De las que no son grandes hacen los indios mantas para cubrirse, y de las mayores hacen zapatos [“here come cows, and I have seen them three times and eaten from them, and I reckon they are of the same size as those in Spain. They have small horns, . . . and to my reckoning they have better and thicker meat. . . . With those which are not big the Indians make blankets to cover themselves with, and with the big ones they make shoes”].

Remarkably enough, Cabeza de Vaca’s America lacked the rattlesnakes that abounded in the Southwest, which has made some authors wonder if this silence might be due to superstition. The fact that much of the information provided by him with regard to Native Americans and American fauna and flora is not corroborated by his contemporaries has cast doubts over the veracity of his account. It has been questioned whether Cabeza de Vaca was using this detailed information as a literary device to stress the worth of his contribution to the New World enterprise and the potential profits to be obtained from a new expedition to the area, sacrificing veracity in the process.25

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By the end of Naufragios, Cabeza de Vaca’s America was revealed as a place as rich as other Spanish territories in America: ‘dábannos también muchas cuentas y de unos corales que hay en la mar del Sur, muchas turquesas muy buenas que tienen de hacia el Norte; y finalmente, dieron aquí todo cuanto tenían, y a mí me dieron cinco esmeraldas’ [they also gave us many beads and some corals of the South Sea, many very good turquoises they had from the North; and finally, here they gave up all they had, and they gave me five emeralds] and the land contained ‘grandes muestras de oro y alcohol, hierro, cobre y otros metales’ [great signs of gold and alcohol, iron, copper and other metals]. With this, Cabeza de Vaca was asserting that ‘his’ America was just as valuable as Cortés’ or other conquistadors’, at the same time that he opened up the possibility of a more extensive exploration (and exploitation) of the area. Gold and silver were paid no attention to by local inhabitants, like in More’s Utopia: ‘ningún caso hacen de oro y plata, ni hallan que pueda haber provecho de ello’ [they pay no attention to gold and silver, and see no profit in them]. Since these precious metals were going to waste, no moral or legal objection could possibly be raised against the Spaniards’ use of it. Therefore, exchanging useless objects such as beads for precious metals was not ethically reprehensible at all, given that for the Native Americans gold was as base and worthless as beads were for the Europeans. Worth thus proves to be a social convention that favours the Spaniards’ interests.26 Fernández de Oviedo went to America in 1514 as an officer in Pedrarias Dávila’s expedition and he would spend the rest of his life there except for brief trips to Spain. As seen in Chapter 2, as an eyewitness and historian, Fernández de Oviedo strove to have the validity of his first-hand experiences recognized. Still, his works are not a record of his own deeds and experiences in the Americas. In contrast to Naufragios, Fernández de Oviedo’s works do not recount his own process of discovery of America and how his previous hypotheses are contrasted with what he is seeing. Rather, his works are closer to the editorial labour of compilation of Hakluyt or Purchas in that he wanted to offer his audience extensive information on the Spanish colonies and record ‘a collective imperial enterprise’ in the making.27 Fernández de Oviedo met Cabeza de Vaca in Spain, which led him to add a seventh chapter to the ones he had written on America. His intention for reporting Narváez’s expedition was as follows: deste hidalgo se hará relación e de su desventurado fin e infelice armada . . . según la noticia que hasta el tiempo presente se tiene de su viaje; en el cual sucedieron cosas de mucho dolor e tristeza, e aun miraglos en esos pocos que escaparon o quedaron con la vida, después de haber padecido innumerables naufragios e peligros, como se puede colegir por la relación que a esta Real Audiencia, que reside en esta ciudad de Santo Domingo, enviaron tres hidalgos, llamados Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, e Andrés Dorantes e Alonso del Castillo. . . . E a la vuelta fueron a España a dar relación a Su Majestad, viva voce, de las cosas que aquí se dirán, alargándome a su información, e acortando algunas superfluas palabras que duplicadamente dicen; e no faltaré de lo substancial e médula de lo que su carta contiene y dice. [“about this hidalgo an account will be given and of his unfortunate end and unhappy army . . . according to the news about his journey had until the present moment; in the

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course of which many painful and sad things happened, and even miracles for those few who escaped or survived, after having suffered numberless shipwrecks and dangers, as can be seen by the account that to this Royal Court, located in this city of Santo Domingo, was sent by three hidalgos, called Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo. . . . And upon their return they went to Spain to give account to Your Majesty, personally, of the things that will be said here, adding to their information, and shortening some superfluous words said in duplicate, and I will not omit the main part and structure of what their letter contains and says”].28

All in all, Fernández de Oviedo’s retelling of the Narváez expedition is more detailed than Naufragios, as it includes events that Cabeza de Vaca left out. For instance, Fernández de Oviedo mentions that the Native Americans hit Narvaéz with a stone (an incident missing in Naufragios) and he describes at length the blankets that Cabeza de Vaca’s party were offered by the Native Americans, which are neither described by Cabeza de Vaca nor apparently paid much attention to (at the end of the journey, Cabeza de Vaca claims that they were still naked). Fernández de Oviedo’s description of Apalache’s natural resources is much more detailed than Cabeza de Vaca’s: había gran cantidad de maizales en el campo, e mucho maíz seco en el pueblo. La tierra por donde pasaron estos españoles es llana e arenales tiesos, e de muchos pinares, aunque ralos e apartados unos pinos de otros. Hay muchas lagunas e muy muchos venados por toda la tierra, por las muchas arboledas e árboles caídos a causa de las grandes tormentas e huracanes que muy a menudo en aquella región ocurren, e así vieron muchos árboles rajados de alto a bajo de los rayos que caen. [“there was a great deal of cornfields in the country, and much dry corn in the town. The land these Spaniards crossed is flat and sandy with many pine forests, although the pine trees are few and apart. There are many lakes and many venisons throughout the land, and in the many forests there are fallen trees because of the great storms and hurricanes that happen very often in that region, and so they saw many trees torn from top to bottom because of the lightnings that fall”].

If throughout Naufragios only Cabeza de Vaca’s voice is heard, Fernández de Oviedo also reported Dorantes’ words, which were notably missing in Cabeza de Vaca’s text. What is more, Dorantes is the true protagonist of Fernández de Oviedo’s account; while Naufragios is Cabeza de Vaca’s voice and point of view, Fernández de Oviedo sought to include a broader view of the fate of the Narváez expedition’s survivors.29 Starvation is a constant feature in Fernández de Oviedo’s narrative, which dwells at large on the Native Americans’ limited and poor diet: se estaban dos o tres días sin comer bocado. E a causa de estar todos enfermos e morirse como se morían los naturales, acordaron de se pasar a la Tierra Firme, a unos anegadizos e paludes a comer ostiones, los cuales comen tres o cuatro meses del año los indios, sin comer otra cosa alguna; e padecen mucha hambre, e grandísimo

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trabajo en se defender, de día e de noche, de los mosquitos: que hay tantos, que es cosa incomportable sufrirlos. E no tienen leña ni agua, sino salobre; e otros cuatro meses del año comen hierbas del campo e zarzamoras; e dos meses otros chupan unas raíces, e comen unas arañas muy grandes, e lagartijas e culebras e ratones, puesto que algunas veces tienen venados, e otros dos meses comen pescado que matan en canoas; e otras raíces comen . . . que sacan del agua. [“they went two or three days without taking a bite. And because they were all sick and dying as the natives were dying, they agreed to go to Terra Firme, to some swamps to eat large oysters, which the Indians eat three or four months of the year, without eating anything else; and they go very hungry and strive much to defend themselves, day and night, from mosquitoes: as there are so many, that it is an unbearable thing to suffer them. And they have neither firewood nor water but brackish water; and during another four months a year they eat wild herbs and blackberries; and for two more months they suck some roots, and eat very big spiders, and lizards and snakes, and mice, because sometimes they have venisons, and for other two months they eat fish they kill from canoes; and other roots they eat . . . that they take out from the water”].

At another point, he further elaborated that estos indios comen raíces que sacan debajo de tierra la mayor parte del invierno; e son muy pocas, e sacadas con mucho trabajo, e la mayor parte del año pasan grandísima hambre, e todos los días de la vida han de trabajar en ello e dende la mañana hasta la noche. Asimismo comen culebras e lagartijas, ratones, grillos, cigarras, ranas e todas cuantas sabandijas ellos pueden haber. . . . Algunas veces comen pescado que matan en aquel río; pero poco, sino cuando aviene, que es en el mes de abril; e algunos años crece dos veces, e la segunda es por mayo, y entonces matan mucha cantidad de pescado e muy bueno, . . . pero piérdeseles lo más, porque no tienen sal. [“these Indians eat roots they unearth during most of the winter; and they are sparse, and laboriously taken out, and for the best part of the year they have great hunger, and every day of their lives they must strive for that and from morning to night. They also eat snakes, and lizards, mice, crickets, cicadas, frogs and any bug they can have. . . . Sometimes they eat fish they kill in that river; but it is scarce, and only in season, which is in the month of April; and some years it is twice, and the second time is around May, and then they kill a lot of fish and very good . . . but most goes to waste, because they have no salt”].

Like Cabeza de Vaca, he interpreted the sufferings of the survivors from a religious understanding of sinfulness and atonement, emphasizing a jeremiad-like quality in their penury so that America appears as a land for sinners to atone for their past sins and find redemption: Inmenso Dios, qué trabajos tan excesivos para tan corta vida como la del hombre! Qué tormentos tan inauditos para un cuerpo humano! Qué hambres tan intolerables

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para una persona tan flaca! Qué desaventuras tan extremadas para carne tan sensible! Qué muertes tan desesperadas para un entendimiento tan razonable! ¿Con qué pagaron los capitanes e ministros destos viajes, que tan engañados e burlados llevaron a tantos tristes a morir de tales muertes? [“Good Lord, what excessive labour for such a short life as man’s! What inaudite torments for a human body! What unbearable hunger for such a skinny person! What extreme misfortunes for such a sensitive flesh! What desperate deaths for such a reasonable understanding! How did the captains and ministers of these voyages pay, who took so many, sad ones deceived and mocked, to die such deaths?”]

Fernández de Oviedo’s retelling is also valuable because he compared the Joint Report to Naufragios, calling attention to the changes undergone in Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative from his testimony in New Spain to the publication of Naufragios, at times reproaching him for the later version: ni quiero consentir al Cabeza de Vaca el nombre que en su impresión da a aquella isla, que llama de Mal Hado, pues en la primera relación no le pusieron nombre, ni él se le puede dar, antes en aquella isla fueron bien tratados los cristianos, como él mismo lo confiesa en la una e otra relación. [“I do not want to allow Cabeza de Vaca the name that in his publication he gives to that island, which he calls of Ill Fate, because in the first account they gave it no name, and it cannot be given that name because on that island the Christians were well treated, as he himself confesses in one and the other account”].

The name of Ill Fate was not an invention of Cabeza de Vaca, though, and Fernández de Oviedo was probably aware that it had become a common name in chivalric romances such as Palmerín de Oliva or Primaleón. By giving this name to this place, Cabeza de Vaca was thus appealing to the literary taste of his readers.30 With regard to the final statements in Naufragios about the existence of gold, silver, copper and alcohol in a land formerly called a wasteland, Fernández de Oviedo was especially critical: ‘dice esta relación postrera . . . vieron grandes muestras de oro e alcohol, hierro, cobre e otros metales. Yo quisiera esto más claro, e más larga claridad en ello’ [this later account says . . . they saw great signs of gold and alcohol, iron, copper and other metals. I would like this clearer, and more extensively dealt with]. Not only did he comment on the contents, but also did he point out printing mistakes in some instances. All in all, Fernández de Oviedo’s retelling of the Joint Report is vital in exposing the evolution in Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative. Free from the constraints that a legal setting imposed on him in terms of length, possible juridical responsibilities, use of linguistic devices, etc., Cabeza de Vaca in Naufragios could provide another version of what had happened, discarding the voices of Dorantes and Castillo in the process (Estebanico, being a black slave, never had a voice in the legal record) to use only his own, ignoring Dorantes’ and Castillo’s whereabouts or experiences during their time apart.31 After Narváez, the next one to try out his luck in Florida was Hernando de Soto, who got the post of Adelantado Cabeza de Vaca had coveted. One of the participants in the

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expedition was the Hidalgo de Elvas, whose exact identity is unknown except for the fact that he hailed from the Portuguese village of Elvas, and who later wrote an account of the expedition. Elvas explained the interest in Florida Cabeza de Vaca’s return had aroused: AFTER Don Hernando had obtained the concession, a fidalgo arrived at Court from the Indias, Cabeça de Vaca by name. . . . He brought with him a written relation of adventures, which said in some places: Here I have seen this; and the rest which I saw I leave to confer of with His Majesty: generally, however, he described the poverty of the country, and spoke of the hardships he had undergone. Some of his kinsfolk, desirous of going to the Indias, strongly urged him to tell them whether he had seen any rich country in Florida or not; but he told them that he could not do so; because he and another (by name Orantes [sic], who had remained in New Spain with the purpose of returning into Florida) had sworn not to divulge certain things which they had seen, lest some one might beg the government in advance of them, for which he had come to Spain; nevertheless, he gave them to understand that it was the richest country in the world. Don Hernando de Soto was desirous that Cabeça de Vaca should go with him, and made him favourable proposals; but after they had come upon terms they disagreed, because the Adelantado would not give the money requisite to pay for a ship that the other had bought. Baltasar de Gallegos and Cristobal de Espindola told Cabeça de Vaca, their kinsman, that as they had made up their minds to go to Florida, in consequence of what he had told them, they besought him to counsel them; to which he replied, that the reason he did not go was because he hoped to receive another government, being reluctant to march under the standard of another; that he had himself come to solicit the conquest of Florida, and though he found it had already been granted to Don Hernando de Soto, yet, on account of his oath, he could not divulge what they desired to know.32

At first, De Soto’s Florida seemed to be what Cabeza de Vaca had promised, and even more, taking into account the Native Americans’ description: he sent Juan de Añasco, . . . who brought back two Indians. . . . as much because of the necessity of having them for guides and interpreters, as because they said, by signs, that there was much gold in Florida, the Governor and all the company were greatly rejoiced, and longed for the hour of departure – that land appearing to them to be the richest of any which until then had been discovered.

The land’s wealth seemed to be further confirmed by the existence of pearls – ‘within were found some pearls of small value, injured by fire, such as the Indians pierce for beads, much esteeming them, and string to wear about the neck and wrists’.33 The concern for finding food in America is shared by Elvas, who explains that: the Cacique sent him a present, by two thousand Indians, of many conies and partridges, maize bread, many dogs, and two turkeys. On account of the scarcity of

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meat, the dogs were as much esteemed by the Christians as though they had been fat sheep. There was such want of salt also, that oftentimes, in many places, a sick man having nothing for his nourishment, and was wasting away to bone, of some ail that elsewhere might have found a remedy, when sinking under pure debility he would say: ‘Now, if I had but a slice of meat, or only a few lumps of salt, I should not thus die.’

Although meat is scarce, Florida does not appear as a barren land and De Soto’s men do not starve. As in Naufragios, the Spaniards’ scarcity of food is contrasted with the Native Americans’ resourcefulness: the Indians never lacked meat. With arrows they get abundance of deer, turkeys, conies, and other wild animals, being very skilful in killing game, which the Christians were not. . . . Such was the craving for meat, that when the six hundred men who followed Soto arrived at a town, and found there twenty or thirty dogs, he who could get sight of one and kill him, thought he had done no little.34

Instead of speaking of the barrenness of the land, for Elvas its current condition was the result of the Native Americans’ lack of agricultural skills: ‘the country through which they had come remained wasted and without maize; the grain they had so far brought with them was spent; the beasts, like the men, were become very lean; and it was held very doubtful whether relief was anywhere to be found’. Yet, Elvas’ description is a positive one and he often mentions the abundance of pearls in the region as well as other resources: the country was delightful and fertile, having good interval lands upon the streams; the forest was open, with abundance of walnut and mulberry trees . . . from half a league to a league off, were large vacant towns, grown up in grass, that appeared as if no people had lived in them for a long time. . . . There were also many well-dressed deer-skins, of colours drawn over with designs, of which had been made shoes, stockings, and hose. The Cacica, observing that the Christians valued pearls, told the Governor that, if he should order some sepulchres that were in the town to be searched, he would find many; and if he chose to send to those that were in the uninhabited towns, he might load all his horses with them. They examined those in the town, and found three hundred and fifty pounds’ weight of pearls.35

Nevertheless, De Soto did not seem to be content with the country’s agricultural richness, impatient to find mineral wealth comparable to that already being exploited in other Spanish territories in America: to all it appeared well to make a settlement there, the point being a favourable one, to which could come all the ships from New Spain, Peru, Sancta Marta, and Tierra-Firme, going to Spain; because it is in the way thither, is a good country,

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and one fit in which to raise supplies; but Soto, as it was his object to find another treasure like that of Atabalipa, lord of Peru, would not be content with good lands nor pearls, even though many of them were worth their weight in gold . . . so he answered them who urged him to make a settlement, that in all the country together there was not support for his troops a single month; that it was necessary to return to Ochus, where Maldonado was to wait; and should a richer country not be found, they could always return.

However, their pursuit of mineral wealth makes their situation worse. The expected gold and silver mines are nowhere to be found and, even worse, after they leave this land, the fruitfulness of the first descriptions of Florida is replaced by a bleaker picture: ‘in seven days the Governor arrived at the Province of Chelaque, the country poorest off for maize of any that was seen in Florida, where the inhabitants subsisted on the roots of plants that they dig in the wilds, and on the animals they destroy with their arrows’.36 One of the most interesting passages in Elvas’ text is their discovery of Juan Ortiz, a member of the Narváez expedition. Ortiz had been captured by Chief Hirrihugua of the Uzica, from whom Narváez had tried to get information. Because the Chief had not satisfactorily answered Narváez’s queries about the location of gold in the region, Narváez had had the Chief ’s nose cut off in retaliation, while his mother was devoured by the Spaniards’ dogs. When found by De Soto’s expedition, Ortiz had been twelve years among the Indians, having gone into the country with Panphilo de Narvaez, and returned in the ships to the Island of Cuba, where the wife of the Governor remained; whence, by her command, he went back to Florida, with some twenty or thirty others, in a pinnace; and coming to the port in sight of the town, they saw a cane sticking upright in the ground, with a split in the top, holding a letter, which they supposed the Governor had left there, to give information of himself before marching into the interior. They asked it, to be given to them, of four or five Indians walking along the beach, who, by signs, bade them come to land for it, which Ortiz and another did, though contrary to the wishes of the others. No sooner had they got on shore, when many natives came out of the houses, and, drawing near, held them in such way that they could not escape. One, who would have defended himself, they slew on the spot; the other they seized by the hands, and took him to Ucita, their Chief.37

Hirrihugua’s plan was to spare Ortiz (whom he erroneously believed to be Narváez’s son) for an especially cruel death, ‘barbacoa’, which involved placing the captive on the fire to slowly roast and have a painful death. The legend goes that the chief ’s daughter begged her father to spare Ortiz’s life.38 This episode is most relevant because Cabeza de Vaca failed to mention the return of the ships and Ortiz’s disappearance, although he included a chapter (the 38th) on what happened to the people in the ships after the disappearance of the terrestrial expedition. A possible reason why he did not include Juan Ortiz in the second edition of Naufragios might be that, even if he learnt about his story afterwards, in Cabeza de Vaca’s eyes, Ortiz

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would have surely lost all legitimacy. Those who committed ‘acts of cultural betrayal’, ‘ceased to have legitimacy in the Spanish Imperial context’. In contrast, Cabeza de Vaca repeatedly asserted that he always remained a Christian and never totally assimilated into Native American culture. Even though he became a trader and a go-between among different Native American groups, he justified his ‘job’ from a European point of view, which allowed him not to lose sight of his cultural identity. Ortiz, who turned his back on his Spanish heritage to become a native, was, therefore, not a good example to be cited and was not included in the second edition of Naufragios.39 The illegitimate son of Spanish conquistador of Peru Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega Vargas and an Incan princess baptized Isabel Suárez, Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca often mentioned his mixed ancestry, a rarity in Spanish letters. If New World eyewitnesses had to strive for their credibility, Garcilaso also had to create a literary and social space for himself that allowed him to write despite his mixed ancestry. Given that no literary persona or identity suited him, Garcilaso had to create one for himself; thus, ‘the quasiutterance “porque soy indio,” “because I am an Indian” which . . . constitutes a motif in the work of Garcilaso, places him outside European discourse; it also marks the direction of Garcilaso’s “voyage” as the reverse of that taken by Europeans writing about the New World, and its corresponding subjectivity as marginal’. In order to make room for his writings, he had to adjust to European modes of history writing, with the result that his ‘account was long regarded as the orthodox version of Inca matters, if only because it so congenially mirrored European ideas of what historical writing should be all about’. If Cabeza de Vaca’s goal was to vindicate his deeds in America despite his having brought nothing to the Spanish empire, similarly, the real value of Garcilaso’s text is its vindication of Native Americans’ legitimacy to write history. Garcilaso, who was not a participant in the De Soto expedition, sought no material rewards; neither did he champion the historical credibility of eyewitness testimony. What he pursued was historical recognition, a most pressing concern for him since mestizos were suspected as unreliable sources of information, even more untrustworthy than Native Americans.40 Like Fernández de Oviedo, Garcilaso points out what he finds to be inaccurate in Cabeza de Vaca’s account: I feel it wise not to continue my story without pausing to touch upon what Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca writes of the province of Apalache in his Comentarios. Here he describes the country as rough and craggy; covered with forests, swamps, rivers, and troublesome passages; and poorly populated as well as sterile. Since all of these characteristics are contrary to what we are writing.

Divergences between Naufragios and La Florida del Inca are many, for where Cabeza de Vaca’s descriptions of the land were mostly negative, Garcilaso’s descriptions are far more positive, as advanced in the preface: our purpose in offering this description has been to encourage Spain to make an effort to acquire and populate this kingdom (now that its unsavory reputation for being sterile and swampy has been erased) even if, without the principal idea of

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augmenting the Holy Catholic Faith, she should carry forward the project for the sole purpose of establishing colonies to which she might send her sons to reside. . . . For Florida is fertile and abundant in all things necessary to human life, and with the seed and livestock that can be sent there from Spain and other places, it can be made much more productive than it is in its natural state. As will be seen in the course of our history, it is a region well adapted to such things.41

From the very beginning, in contrast to Cabeza de Vaca’s Florida, Garcilaso’s is full of riches and he wrote extensively about the pearls De Soto was presented with – ‘vino el curaca a visitar al gobernador y le hizo un presente de una hermosa sarta de perlas, que, si no fueran agujereadas con fuego, fuera una gran dádiva, porque la sarta era de dos brazas y las perlas como avellanas y todas casi parejas de un tamaño’ [the shaman came to visit the governor and gave him as a present a beautiful string of pearls that, had they not been pierced with fire, would have been a great gift as the string measured two fathoms and the pearls were like walnuts and all almost of the same size]. References to pearls in Florida are several: ‘al cual preguntó el gobernador si aquellas perlas se pescaban en su tierra. El cacique respondió que sí, y que en el templo y entierro . . . había mucha cantidad de ellas, que si las quería se las llevase todas, o la parte que quisiese’ [whom the governor asked if those pearls were fished in his lands. The chief replied that they were and that in the temple and the graveyard . . . there was a great quantity of them, that if he wanted to, he could take them all, or as many as he wanted]; ‘sacaron los indios diez o doce perlas gruesas como garbanzos medianos . . . eran muy buenas en toda perfección, salvo que todavía el fuego con su calor y humo les ofendía su buen color natural’ [the Indians extracted ten or twelve big pearls like medium-size chickpeas . . . they were very good in all their perfection, except that the fire heat and smoke had damaged their natural color]; valía en España cuatrocientos ducados, porque era del tamaño de una gruesa avellana con su cáscara y todo, y redonda en toda perfección, y de color claro y resplandeciente, que, como no había sido sacada con fuego como las otras, no había recibido daño en su color y en su hermosura. [“[the pearl] would cost in Spain four-hundred ducados, because it was the size of a big walnut with its shell and everything else, and perfectly round, and of a light and glittering color, which, as it had not been extracted with fire, unlike the others, had not been damaged in its color and beauty”].42

Garcilaso’s text does not mention starvation at all – where Cabeza de Vaca and Fernández de Oviedo complained of scarcity of food, Garcilaso offers an extensive catalogue of American foodstuffs: el comer ordinario de ellos es el maíz en lugar de pan, y por vianda frisoles y calabaza de las que acá llaman romana, y mucho pescado, conforme a los ríos de que gozan. De carne tienen carestía, porque no la hay de ninguna suerte de ganado manso. Con los arcos y las flechas matan mucha caza de ciervos, corzos y gamos,

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que los hay muchos en número y más crecidos que los de España. Matan mucha diversidad de aves, así para comer la carne como para adornar sus cabezas con las plumas. [“their common eating is corn instead of bread and as meals beans and pumpkin of those here called Roman, and much fish, given the rivers they enjoy. They lack meat, as there is no sort of domestic cattle. With bows and arrows they kill much game of deer, roe deer and bucks, which are very numerous and bigger than in Spain. They kill a great diversity of fowl, to eat their meat as well as to decorate their heads with their feathers”].

The mines also offered good prospects: dijeron que las minas eran de muy fino azófar, como el que atrás habían visto, mas que entendían, según la disposición de la tierra, que no dejarían de hallarse minas de oro y de plata. . . . la tierra que habían visto era toda muy buena para sementeras y pastos; y que los indios . . . los habían recibido con mucho amor y regocijo y les habían hecho mucha fiesta y regalo. [“they said the mines were of a very fine quicksilver, like the one they had seen before, but that they understood, given the disposition of the land, that they would no doubt find mines of gold and silver. . . . the soil they had seen was all very good for crops and pasture; and that the Indians . . . had welcomed them with much love and joy and had made them many celebrations and gifts”].

Where Cabeza de Vaca was cautious with regard to Florida’s wealth so as not to attract too many prospective travellers and reserve Florida for himself, Garcilaso is convinced of the possibilities and the riches it could render. However, Garcilaso still warns about the uncertainty about Florida, which inevitably marred subsequent accounts of the area: ‘la descripción de la gran tierra Florida será cosa dificultosa poderla pintar tan cumplida como la quisiéramos dar pintada, porque como ella por todas partes sea tan ancha y larga, y no esté ganada ni aun descubierta del todo, no se sabe qué confines tenga’ [concerning the description of the great land of Florida, it will be a difficult task to be able to picture it as well as we would like to describe it, because, as it is in all parts so broad and long, and it is not completely conquered or discovered, its confines are not known]. Uncertainty or not, with its encouraging prospects and its promising potential, Garcilaso shaped the image of Florida for subsequent generations more than any other writer, including Cabeza de Vaca.43 Despite their being pioneers in exploring the Southwest of the United States, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions’ contribution soon fell into oblivion and was overshadowed by De Soto. In fact, in A Description of New England, Smith failed to mention Cabeza de Vaca while crediting De Soto with the little information known about Florida despite suspicions that Smith had probably learnt about the Narváez expedition through the Hidalgo de Elvas’ account: Florida is the next adjoyning to the Isles, which unprosperously was attempted to bee planted by the French. A Country farre bigger then England, Scotland, France

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and Ireland, yet little knowne to any Christian, but by the wonderful endevours of Ferdinando de Soto a valiant Spaniard: whose writings in this age is the best guide knowne to search those parts. Virginia is no Ile (as many doe imagine) but part of the Continent adjoyning to Florida; whose bounds may be stretched to the magnitude thereof without offence to any Christian inhabitant.

Yet, Smith is more well known for describing Virginia and New England, where the Pilgrim Fathers would settle and which was recorded by Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation.44 Seeking power, glory, fame and future rewards, what Cabeza de Vaca found in America dramatically differed from his expectations – slavery to the Native Americans, ill treatment and physical abuse, starvation and penury, atonement, etc. Unable to take possession of Florida or bring any riches to his country, he in turn offered a picture of these lands emphasizing their good agricultural prospects as well as promising gold and silver mines on the basis of stories fuelled by the Native Americans. Inspired by Cabeza de Vaca’s enthusiastic confidence in the opportunities Florida could render to the Spaniards, later expeditions to the region would have outcomes similar to that of the Narváez expedition. Thus, they succeeded in planting the idea that Florida was a hostile territory but full of promising prospects. Instead of describing the land by using conventional images such as the earthly paradise, images that had been recurrent since Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca and many who followed him looked upon North America as a purgatory where one found atonement for one’s sins and finally, redemption. In his pursuit of worldly riches, Cabeza de Vaca would find divine providence at work. A century after the Narváez expedition disembarked in Florida, Bradford and his group of Pilgrims would come to New England seeking a religious shelter, finding support in the same belief – that they had been guided by divine providence.

Notes 1 Quoted in Roberto Ferrando, ed. Naufragios y comentarios. 1984. 3rd edition (Madrid: Historia 16, 1985), 28. Juan Francisco Maura, ed. Naufragios. By Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. 2nd edition (Madrid: Cátedra, 1996), 103, 108. Quoted in Juan Francisco Maura, El gran burlador de América: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Valencia: Parnaseo, 2008), 14. 2 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Vintage, 1958), preface. Margo Glantz, ‘El cuerpo inscrito y el texto escrito o la desnudez como naufragio.’ In Notas y comentarios sobre Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, ed. Margo Glantz (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1993), 415–16. William T. Pilkington, ‘Epilogue.’ In Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, ed. Cyclone Covey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 149. Richard S. Dunn, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Historians of America.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 196. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 302, 279.

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3 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios. 1542 (N. p.: El Aleph, 2000), 38–9. Quoted in Christopher Hilton, Mayflower: The Voyage that Changed the World (N.p.: Sutton Publishing, 2005), 95. 4 María de la Luz Ayala, ‘La historia natural en el siglo XVI: Oviedo, Acosta y Hernández.’ Estudios del hombre 20 (2005): 21–2. 5 Mariah Wade, ‘Go-between: The Roles of Native American Women and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in Southern Texas in the 16th Century.’ Journal of American Folklore 112, 445 (1999). M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, ‘Subverting Gender Roles in the Sixteenth Century: Cabeza de Vaca, the Conquistador Who Became a Native American Woman.’ In Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400– 1850, ed. Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough. (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2011). 6 Consuelo Varela, ed. Los cuatro viajes. Testamento. By Cristóbal Colón. 1986 (Madrid: Alianza, 2005), 56. William F. Keegan, ‘Columbus’s 1492 Voyage and the Search for His Landfall.’ In First Encounters. Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570, ed. Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, Florida Museum of Natural History, 1991), 27. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 34. José M. Gómez-Tabanera, ‘Presentación.’ In Conquista y colonización de La Florida por Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, ed. Eugenio Ruidiaz y Caravia (N.p.: Ediciones Istmo, n.d.), v. 7 Herbert E. Bolton, ed. The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest. 1921 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 15, 20. Douglas R. McManis, Colonial New England. A Historical Geography (New York, London, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1975), 5–6. Quoted in Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands, 16. John Francis Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821. 1970. 4th edition (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 22. Weber, Spanish Frontier, 38. Maura, Gran burlador, 13. 8 Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 11–12. 9 Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 38. 10 Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 4. 11 Enrique Pupo-Walker, ‘Los Naufragios de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: glosa sobre la construcción evasiva del texto.’ Agencia Interamericana para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo. http://www.iacd.oas.org/Interamer/Interamerhtml/azarhtml/az_pupo. htm (accessed 2 November 2006). Quoted in María Antonia Sáinz, La Florida, siglo XVI, descubrimiento y conquista. 1991. (Madrid: Mapfre, 1992), 43. 12 Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 5. Trinidad Barrera, ed. Naufragios. By Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. 1985 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2005), 29. 13 Ramón Sánchez, ‘The First Captivity Narrative: Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación.’ Proceedings of the II Conference of SEDERI (1992): 265–6. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 26. Beatriz Pastor, ‘Silencio y escritura: la historia de la Conquista.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 152. 14 Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 21, 13. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias. Part 2, Book 35. 28 July 2005. http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/ content/etext/e001.html (accessed 16 October 2008).

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Early Visions and Representations of America Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 27, 29. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 18. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 24–5. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 12–3, 103. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 16, 22, 57. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. 1993 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 2. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 97, 20, 36. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 27–9, 32, 34. Quoted in James Henry Phillips IV, ‘The Lessons of Hunger: Food, Drink, and The Concept of Corrective Affliction In Three Puritan Captivity Narratives.’ M.A. Thesis. Raleigh: North Carolina State University, 2007. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/ available/etd-06042007-184148/unrestricted/etd.pdf (accessed 16 October 2008), 28, 5. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 28, 93, 37–8, 70. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 42. Wilcomb E. Washburn, ‘A Moral History of IndianWhite Relations: Needs and Opportunities for Study.’ Ethnohistory 4, 1 (1957): 49. Patricia Seed, American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches. (Minneapolis, Minnesota and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 96–7, 247, 107, 109–111. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 58. Luisa López Grigera, ‘Relectura de Relación de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 28 (1999): 924. Maura, Naufragios, 97. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 94, 99. José Rabasa, ‘ “Porque soy indio”: Subjectivity in La Florida del Inca.’ Poetics Today 16, 1 (1995): 89. Robert T. C. Goodwin, ‘Texts and Miracles in the New and Old Worlds: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/pub/b035.html (accessed 17 February 2009). Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. In the same manner, Matías de la Mota y Padilla’s Historia del Reino de Galicia (1742) ignores Cabeza de Vaca except for one single mention (and he gives his name as Juan and not Alvar) and gives more prominence to Dorantes. In contrast, the main protagonist of Antonio Herrera y Tordesillas’ La historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del mar océano o ‘décadas’ (1601–1615) has Castillo as its protagonist. Maura, Gran burlador, 93–4. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. R.T.C. Goodwin, ‘ “De lo que sucedió a los demás que entraron en las Indias”: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and the Other Survivors of Pánfilo Narváez’s Expedition.’ Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXXIV, 2 (2007): 163. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. Juan Francisco Maura, ‘Caballeros y rufianes andantes en la costa atlántica de los Estados Unidos de América: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón y Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 35, 2 (2011): 306. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia. Hidalgo de Elvas, True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Gobernor Don Hernando De Soto and Some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida Now Just Given By a Fidalgo of Elvas Viewed by the Lord Inquisitor, ed. Edward Gaylord Bourne [Trans. by Buckingham Smith] (New York: Allerton Book Company, 1922). Mirror of a Transcription by Dr. Jon Muller. http://www. floridahistory.com/elvas1.html (accessed 16 October 2008).

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Elvas, True Relation. Elvas, True Relation. Elvas, True Relation. Elvas, True Relation. Elvas, True Relation. This story of a European soldier being rescued by a Native American princess closely resembles John Smith’s later description of how he was rescued by Pocahontas; since Elvas’ account had already been published in England in 1609, chances are that Smith read the book and modelled his own account after Elvas’. Coker in Bill Kaczor, ‘Did Smith Plagiarize Pocahontas Tale?’ New Standard 11 July 1995. http://archive. southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-95/07-11-95/0711APpocahontas.HTML (accessed 8 April 2008). M. Carmen Gómez-Galisteo, ‘Leaving the New World, Entering History: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, John Smith and the Problems of Describing the New World.’ RAEI 22 (2009): 115–26. Sánchez, ‘First Captivity Narrative,’ 266. Wade, ‘Go-between.’ Gomez-Galisteo, ‘Subverting Gender Roles.’ Tzvetan Todorov, La conquista de América: el problema del otro. [La conquête de l’amérique, la questino d l’autre. Trans. by Flora Botton Burlá] 1982. (Mexico D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1989), 209. Rabasa, ‘Porque soy indio,’ 81, 100. David Henige, ‘The Context, Content and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca’. The Americas 43 (1986): 1. Jorge CañizaresEsguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 4–5. Quoted in José B. Fernández, ‘Opposing Views of La Florida – Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.’ Florida Historical Quarterly. 55 (1976): 175, 173. Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca, ed. Sylvia L. Hilton (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986), 338–40. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida del Inca, 80–81, 341, 73. Fernández, ‘Opposing Views,’ 170. Smith, Captain John Smith, 207–8.

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5

America in Of Plymouth Plantation Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation Although Of Plymouth Plantation is often credited as the official history of the foundation and early years of Plymouth, it was far from being the only work recounting these events or even the first one. The anonymous Mourt’s Relation (1622) recorded the Pilgrims’ arrival and their first year and Edward Winslow’s Good News from New England, or a True Relation of Things very Remarkable at the Plantation of Plimouth in New England (1624) included from 1620 to the fall of 1623. Therefore, to properly analyse the image of America in Of Plymouth Plantation within its historical context, I make use of Mourt’s Relation among other texts. The description of Plymouth provided by Bradford is complemented by John Smith’s A Description of New England (1616) and Advertisements for the Inexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere, or The Pathway To Experience to Erect a Plantation (1631) and New English Canaan (1637) by Thomas Morton. The significance of the inclusion of the latter stems from the fact that Morton’s account is the only existing alternative version to the Pilgrims’, since Mourt’s Relation was most probably written by Bradford and fellow Pilgrim Edward Winslow. Also included are the recorded impressions of John Pory, who visited Plymouth in 1622, and Emmanuel Altham, who did in 1623 and again in 1625. Their respective opinions about Plymouth reflect the situation that had prevailed at the plantation during its early years, long before it was mythologized by later generations. Contrasting Pory’s and Altham’s accounts is especially significant because Pory, an employee of the Company of Virginia, could not be suspected of any bias in favour of the Pilgrims, while Altham, although not a Separatist, was very much in favour of their cause.1 New England history books typically begin with John Smith’s accounts of the region, or, more rarely, with retellings of the failure of the Sagadahoc colony. However, in previous decades, fishermen had frequented Newfoundland and New England without writing a single word about it, as Gilbert realized when he arrived in Newfoundland in 1583. Gilbert, who claimed possession of the area in the name of Elizabeth I, failed to find a suitable place for the permanent settlement he planned to establish and decided to leave this task to a future expedition he would lead to the area. However, in his way back to England, his ship disappeared, putting an end to his plans.2

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Despite these English incursions, the first exploration voyages had been Spanish. In September 1524, the expedition commanded by Estevâo Gomes, a Portuguese sailor employed by the Spanish crown, sailed from Spain. Sponsored by Charles V to find the Northwest Passage, Gomes’ expedition inspected the shores from Narrangansett (or Buzzard’s) Bay to Cape Breton as well as explored the Río de San Antonio (presentday Merrimac River) and the Cabo de las Arenas, later renamed Cape Cod. Although a map of the expedition exists, the lack of a log limits the amount of information known about their course. Gomes failed to leave a permanent trace, but his expedition sustained the Spanish claim to New England and left a cartographical imprint: Diego Ribero’s map of 1529 identifies the region as the ‘Land of Estevâ Gomez’.3 On the English side, in 1602, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold’s Concord landed in the Maine coastland (then called North Virginia). After the failure of Roanoke, Englishmen intended to found a new post from which they could launch economic incursions into the rest of the area. The expedition consisted of 32 men (one of them Gilbert’s son), of which 20 were prospective permanent colonists. Gosnold arrived in the cape he named Cape Cod, where they found seemingly friendly Native Americans who ‘spoke divers Christian words’. However, shortage of provisions made 8 of the 20 prospective settlers decide to return to England; the ‘colony’ had lasted just 5 weeks. The Native Americans and the land itself turned out to be the two major obstacles for the English in America, beginning with Gosnold and following well into the three next centuries. In March 1603, Captain Martin Pring’s expedition came back reporting the abundance of sassafras in the area. While this expedition did not establish any permanent English post, it was vital for the future colonization of the region in that it created the image of New England as an attractive financial prospect, where fur trade could be carried out, and as a place peopled by friendly Native Americans. This positive description of New England got a further boost after George Weymouth’s 1605 expedition, when ‘promotional literature depicting New England as something approximating an earthly paradise reached its apex’.4 The next English venture in New England was the Sagadahoc colony, which was a failed attempt. Its brief existence is recorded in several reports, Purchas’ probably being the most well known. Sagadahoc was a privately funded venture that began in 1607 in the Plymouth Company territory. Run by a local council, its first president was George Popham, with Raleigh Gilbert taking over after his death. But this colony was abandoned after one year, with several reasons suggested for its abandonment, including hostilities with the Native Americans. Pierre Biard, a French Jesuit missionary to the area in 1612, explained the disappearance of the colony following an Indian attack. This, however, is mentioned by no other contemporary account, leaving Biard as the only supporter of this thesis. In his private correspondence, Sir Ferdinando Gorges spoke of ‘the malice of the Divell’ and of ‘ignorant, timorous and ambitouse persons’ creating ‘childish factions’. He further mentioned the harsh winter weather and the 1608 fire. Other Sagadahoc residents did not recount any incident with the Native Americans either. For Cave, Sagadahoc ultimately failed because from the outset the venture was unrealistic. The colonists had little understanding of the climate and resources of the region and were even more misguided in their expectations of their Indian trading partners.

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Not only did they assume erroneously that the indigenous peoples of the Maine coast could supply them with precious metals, but their belief that kidnapped Indians were in thrall to the superior race, that English power would invariably over-awe the Indians, and that fear would lead to both submission and love set the stage for failure.

Once Sagadahoc was abandoned, it is probable that some of the English sailors who went to America on fishing and fur trading expeditions settled down for several months at a time in the New England coast. For example, it is reported that Richard Vines and a group of men stayed in a camp at the mouth of the Saco River during the winter of 1616–1617 and the Labrador Peninsula remained a favourite stop for sailors.5 Plymouth Harbor, which the Pilgrims chose to establish their community in 1620, had been thus named by Smith in his 1614 voyage, and the Pilgrims, considering it very fitting that it bore the same name as their last English port before crossing the Atlantic, kept the name. The area had already been explored and mapped by French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604 and English sailors had navigated around it. There are reports of two instances, one in 1611 and the other in 1614, of English sailors abducting Native Americans in the area to take them to England, which would mark the beginning of the Native Americans’ hostility against prospective English settlers.6 Though better known as a propagandist for Jamestown, after leaving Virginia, Smith turned his attention to New England as a new career path. The three-month exploration journey he participated in served him well for writing and keeping his hopes up of being sent to the area in an official commission for the next 15 years. Smith is a central figure in the history of the English presence in New England since he gave the region the names that, for the most part, replaced the original ones and are still in use. Among others, Smith’s ‘New England’ soon replaced the former Norumbega and the generic Northern Virginia. When Smith turned to New England in April 1614 to consider it as a site for his new exploring ventures as well as the subject matter for his future writings, he was conscious of the fact that New England had a reputation that it was insalubrious for English life, especially because of the failed venture of Sagadahoc. Wanting to dispel this negative image of Sagadahoc, Smith explained the circumstances behind the formation of that ill-fated colony: this part of America hath formerly beene called Norumbega, Virginia, Nuskoncus, Penaquida, Cannada, and such other names as those that ranged the Coast pleased. . . . few have adventured much to trouble it, but as is formerly related. Notwithstanding, that honourable Patron of virtue, Sir John Popham, Lord chiefe Justice of England, in the yeere 1606. procured meanes and men to possesse it, and sent Captaine George Popham for President. . . . extreme frozen Winter was so cold they could not range nor search the Country, and their provision so small, they were glad to send all but 45. of their company backe againe. . . . finding nothing but extreme extremities, they all returned for England in the yeere 1608. and thus this

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Plantation was begunne and ended in one yeere, and the Country esteemed as a cold, barren, mountainous, rocky Desart.7

Because of this failed experience, Smith knew that his writings would be largely responsible for the future colonization of the area or, were he not persuasive enough, for the abandonment of the region as a site for English colonization: ‘all our Plantations have been so foyled and abused, their best good willers have beene for the most part discouraged, and their good intents disgraced, as the generall History of them will at large truly relate you’. Smith was conscious of the fact that he had to be careful not to exaggerate or overstate the region’s advantages. His description of New England stressed the abundance of wood as well as of fish, which he saw as the source for the survival and the financial subsistence of future colonies: ‘the maine Staple, from hence to bee extracted for the present to produce the rest, is fish; which howeuer it may seeme a mean and a base commoditie: yet who will but truely take the pains and consider the sequell, I thinke will allow it well worth the labour’.8 That Smith saw the region’s wealth in fish did not, however, mean that the soil was not fruitful; in fact, it was just the opposite, for the ground is so fertill, that questionless it is capable of producing any Grain, Fruits, or Seeds you will sow or plant, growing in the Regions afore named: But it may be, not euery kinde to that perfection of delicacy; or some tender plants may miscarie, because the Summer is not so hot, and the winter is more colde in those parts wee haue yet tryed neere the Sea side, then we finde in the same height in Europe or Asia. . . . All sorts of cattell may here be bred and fed in the Iles, or Peninsulaes, securely for nothing. In the Interim till they encrease if need be (obseruing the seasons) I durst vndertake to haue corne enough from the Saluages for 300 men, for a few trifles; and if they should bee vntoward (as it is most certaine they are) thirty or forty good men will be sufficient to bring them all in subiection, and make this prouision; if they vnderstand what they doe: 200 whereof may nine monethes in the yeare be imployed in making marchandable fish, till the rest prouide other necessaries.

Even the apparent absence of gold, a major setback for Jamestown colonists, did not compel Smith to utter a single negative word. On the contrary, he did not give up the hope that there might be precious metals in the region: of Mynes of Golde and Siluer, Copper, and probabilities of Lead, Christall and Allum, I could say much if relations were good assurances. It is true indeed, I made many trials according to those instructions I had, which doe perswade mee I need not despaire, but there are metalls in the Countrey: but I am no Alchymist, nor will promise more then I know: which is, Who will vndertake the rectifying of an Iron forge, if those that buy meate, drinke, coals, ore, and all necessaries at a deer rate gaine; where all these things are to be had for the taking vp, in my opinion cannot lose.9

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Smith was therefore convinced that successful colonization could be achieved despite the negative precedent set by Sagadahoc: and surely by reason of those sandy clifts, and clifts of rocks, both which we saw so planted with Gardens and Corne fields, and so well inhabitated with a goodly, strong, and well proportioned people, besides the greatnesse of the Timber growing on them, the greatnesse of the Fish, and the moderate temper of the aire . . . who can but approve this a most excellent place, both for health and fertilitie; and of all the foure parts of the world I have yet seene nor inhabited, could I have but means to transport a Colony, I would rather live here then any where.

Apart from Smith’s glowing description, New England scores over England in comparison: here are no hard Landlords to racke us with high rents, or extorting fines, nor tedious pleas in Law to consume us with their many yeeres disputation nor Justice; no multitudes to ocassion such impediments to good orders as in popular States: so freely hath God and his Majestie bestowed those blessings on them will attempt to obtain them, as here every man may be master of his owne labour and land, or the greatest part (if his Majesties royall meaning be not abused) and if he have nothing but his hands, he ay set up his Trade; and by industry quickly grow rich, spending but halfe that time well, which in England we abuse an idlenesse, worse, or as ill. Here is ground as good as any lieth in the height of forty one, forty two, forty three, etc. which is as temperate, and as fruitfull as any other parallel in the world.10

Cautious not to present an exaggerated view of America, Smith stressed the necessity of hard work. To avoid misleading colonists, his intention was to open the eyes of those who thought that everything in America was free for the asking. ‘A little extraordinary labour’, in Smith’s words, was indispensable if one wanted to survive and succeed in the New World. He contrasted his own first-hand experience with the differing reports of America which presented it as a land of leisure and idleness: mine owne eies that have seene a great part of those Cities and their Kingdomes (as well as it) can finde no advantage they have in Nature but this, they are beautified by the long labour and diligence of industrious people and art; This is onely as God made it when hee created the world: Therefore I conclude, if the heart and intrailed of those Regions were sought, if their Land were cultured, planted, and manured by men of industry, judgement, and experience; what hope is there, or what need they doubt, having the advantages of the Sea, but it might equalize any of these famous Kingdomes in all commodities, pleasures, and conditions, seeing even the very edges doe naturally affoord us such plentie, as no ship need returne away emptie.

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Although Smith realized the worth of gaining material riches in America, his prospects were not solely financial, for he saw a grander, nobler goal in the task of colonization: who can desire more content, that hath small meanes; or but only his merit to advance his fortune, then to tread, and plant that ground hee hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of birtue, and magnanimitie, what to such a minde can bee more pleasant, then planting and building a foundation for his Posteritie, gotte from the rude earth, by Gods blessing and his owne industrie, without prejudice to any? If hee have any graine of faith or zeale in Religion, what can hee doe lesse hurtfull to any, or more agreeable to God, then to seeke to convert those poor Salvages to know Christ, and humanitie, whose labours with discretion will triple requite thy charge and paines? What so truely sutes with honour and honestie, as the discovering things unknowne? erecting Townes, peopling Countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and gaine to our Naïve mother-countrie a kingdom to attend her; finde imployment for those that are idle, because they know not what to doe: so farre from wronging any, as to cause Posteritie to remember thee; and remembering thee, even honour that remembrance with praise?

To dispel all previous misconceptions about the weather, Smith clarified that ‘the Summer is not so hot, and the Winter is more cold in those parts we have yet tried neere the Sea side, then wee finde in the same height in Europe or Asia’.11 Smith’s description of the area also included references to the Pilgrim plantation: at New-Plimoth there is about 180 persons, some cattle and goats, but many swine and poultry, 32 dwelling houses, whereof 7 were burnt the last winter, and the value of five hundred pounds in other goods; the Town is impaled about half a mile in compass. In the town upon a high Mount they have a fort well built with wood, loam and stone, where is planted their Ordnance: Also a fair Watch-tower, partly framed, for the Sentinel. The place it seems is healthful because in these last three years, notwithstanding their great want of most necessities, there hath not one died of the first planters. They have made a saltwork, and with that salt preserve the fish they take, and this year hath filled a ship of 180 tons. The Governor is one Master William Bradford; their Captain Myles Standish, a bred soldier in Holland; the chief men for their assistance is Master Isaac Allerton, and divers others as occasion serveth; their preachers are Master William Brewster and Master John Lynford. The most of them live together as one family or household, yet every man followeth his trade and profession both by sea and land, and all for a general stock out of which they all have their maintenance, until there be a dividend betwixt the planters and the Adventurers.

Smith spoke in laudable terms of ‘the Brownists of Leyden and Amsterdam at New-Plimoth, who although by accident, ignorance, and willfulnesse, have indured

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with a wonderfull patience, many losses and extremities: yet they subsist and prosper so well, not any of them will abandon the Country, but to the utmost of their powers increase their number’. Still, he complained that his offers to guide them had been rejected in favour of his own books: now since them called Brownists went, some few before them also having my bookes and maps, presumed they knew as much as they desired, many other directors they had as wise as themselves, but that was best that liked their owne conceits; for indeed they would not be knowne to have any knowledge of any but themselves, pretending onely Religion their governour, and frugality their counsell, when indeed it was onely their pride, and singularity, and contempt of authority; because they could not be equals, they would have no superiors: in this fooles Paradise, they so long used that good husbandry, they have payed foundly in trying their own follies, who undertaking in small handfuls to make many plantations, and to bee severall Lords and Kings of themselves, most vanished to nothing, to the great disparagement of the generall businesse, therefore let them take heed that doe follow their example.12

In analysing the image of America advanced by Of Plymouth Plantation, we should take into account the fact that the Pilgrims did not go to America to seek better economic prospects. They only chose to leave their native country because living conditions in England were no longer good. This inevitably marked their expectations and instead of the usual optimism of voyagers to America, the Pilgrims already foresaw that their life there was not going to be easy. In a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, William Brewster and John Robinson commented on the difficulties inherent in moving over to the new place, although they felt confident about overcoming them: we verily believe and trust the Lord is with us . . . and that He will graciously prosper our endeavours according to the simplicity of our hearts therein. . . . We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord . . . by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each other’s good, and of the whole. . . . It is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again.13

Also, with regard to Bradford’s first impression of America as conveyed in Of Plymouth Plantation, it should be borne in mind that Bradford started his journal in 1630 when 10 years of living in Plymouth had inevitably taken its toll on his impressions of the New World. It was the year 1630 that witnessed the beginning of the Great Migration with the arrival of John Winthrop’s 11-ship fleet in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Bradford was convinced that this event would be a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, but at the same time it made him fear that the larger Puritan colony would overshadow them. With Bradford already knowing what America was like, with its hardships and the sufferings that he and his group had endured, it was impossible for him not to let this knowledge interfere with his ‘first’ descriptions of New England.

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How to describe it as an earthly paradise when he had already experienced the hardships awaiting them? How to feel confident that life in America would be easy when he knew that it had not been so? This makes Of Plymouth Plantation a less valuable testimony of Bradford’s first impressions upon seeing America than, for instance, Winthrop’s Journal, written as events took place. Here arises the necessity of reading Of Plymouth Plantation along with Mourt’s Relation, published 2 years after their arrival.14 Right from the start of writing Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford takes the position of ‘a moralist who understood the Christian life as constantly beset by adversity’. Not even at the very beginning, when the Pilgrims in the Netherlands were considering about the convenience of moving over to America, did their possible destination resemble any sort of paradise. In stark contrast to Smith’s description of Massachusetts Bay as ‘the Paradise of all those parts’, Bradford writes that the miseries of the land which [old people and women] should be exposed unto, would be too hard to be borne and likely, some or all of them together, to consume and utterly ruinate them. For there they should be liable to famine and nakedness and the want, in a manner, of all things. The change of air, diet and drinking of water would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses and grievous diseases. And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties should yet be in continual danger of the savage people, who are cruel, barbarous and most treacherous, being most furious in their rage and merciless where they overcome; not being content only to kill and take away life, but delight to torment men in most bloody manner that may be; flaying some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the members and joints of others by piecemeal broiling on the coals, eat the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live, with other cruelties horrible to be related.15

America is presented as a place where bodily illnesses may afflict them (as opposed to the ‘illnesses of the soul’ in the Netherlands) and where Native Americans could pose a serious threat to their survival. If Bradford’s America ever was any sort of paradise, metaphorical snakes abound in his description and so, no paradisiacal pleasure can be discerned amidst them. Actually, Bradford cannot even draw comfort from his use of biblical parallelism as his group’s sufferings were greater than those of any other people before them: it is recorded in Scripture as a mercy to the Apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them . . . were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men – and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from

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this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue.

Not even in the biblical famine can Bradford find solace when he compares it with their own sufferings: when I think how sadly the Scripture speaks of the famine in Jacob’s time, when he said to his sons, ‘Go buy us food, that we may live and not die,’ (Genesis xlii. 2 and xliii. 1) that the famine was great or heavy in the land. And yet they had such great herds and store of cattle of sundry kinds, which, besides flesh, must needs produce other food as milk, butter and cheese, etc. And yet it was counted a sore affliction. Theirs here must needs be very great, therefore, who not only wanted the staff of bread but all these things, and had no Egypt to go to.

Despite the absence of friends to comfort the Pilgrims upon their first arrival in America (‘being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as maybe be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour’), Bradford finds comfort in God – ‘what could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace’? All in all, Bradford’s description of America makes a truly surprising use of the wilderness landscape. . . . the setting functions as the crucial figure that reveals the Pilgrims’ relation to spirit. More a poetic image than a historical reality, the landscape is described not in and for itself but for the sake of the insupportable idea it has been made to represent and over which the passage gains sublime triumph: the dreaded possibility that the Pilgrims have mistaken their call and that, far from being an advance of the community towards its goal, the migration may have been an error.16

The miseries of America did not end there, for hurricanes and typhoons were regular occurrences: ‘this year, the 14th or 15th of August (being Saturday) was such a mighty storm of wind and rain as none living in these parts, either English or Indians, ever saw. Being like, for the time it continued, to those hurricanes and typhoons that writers make mention of in the Indies’. Natural phenomena, which appear prominently in Bradford’s journal, are interpreted as signs of God’s favour or wrath: ‘about the first or second of June, was a great and fearful earthquake . . . and about half an hour, or less came another noise and shaking, but neither so loud nor strong as the former, but quickly passed over and so it ceased’. America is, therefore, presented as a place where natural calamities occurred, which was in contrast to the relative safety of Europe in terms of twisters, hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, etc. These phenomena led the

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Pilgrims to question whether America was the most suitable place for their plans and if it really was ‘God’s intended destination’ for them. Interpreting any event as a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure towards His chosen people, the Pilgrims, always sensitive about how events might reveal God’s plans to them, could not ignore earthquakes or the bleakness of the New England winter. For the Pilgrims, far more than for any other seventeenth-century group, God’s Hand was as visible as Satan’s evil doings and could be perceived in Nature. Nature was a powerful antagonist in America, often cruel to the Pilgrims, who sought to interpret it according to their framework of opposing divinesatanic forces. Finding a reason for natural events was peremptory because men ascribed to every event a deep meaning. . . . Everything was the product of the intent of some mover. A tree did not fall; it was felled. . . . In an era in which men believed literally in signs, portents, curses, spells, and imprecations, to say nothing of witches, they had to seek a meaning to their own unusual experiences. . . . it was essential to know whether an incident was the product of divine or devilish interference.17

As presented by Bradford, America was a most threatening place, a wilderness, no paradise, no Heaven on earth, no repository of the golden age. . . . Rather, it looked like ‘the Lord’s waste, and for the present altogether void of inhabitants, that indeed minded the employment thereof to the right ends for which land was created (Genesis 1. 28)’. But in contrast to the frustration and desperation of other colonists upon realizing that the expected gold and easy fortunes to be found in America were nothing but wishful thinking and a pack of lies they had gullibly believed in, the Pilgrims, and later the Puritans, found assurance in the difficulties they encountered; for them, ‘the hardships presented by nature were not to be grudgingly tolerated; they were to be read as part of a divine plan of education’. They drew comfort from the idea that America was the wilderness that the Bible proclaimed – ‘and thou shalt say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrew hath sent me unto thee, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness’ (Exodus 7:16). This wilderness thus performed a dual function – as a place of sanctuary (as God had sent His chosen people there) and as a place of trial – given the sufferings that plagued them. Wherever he looked, Bradford saw the wilderness, a vision of America that became extremely pervasive throughout the colonial period.18 At odds with the traditional images of the New World as a land of plenty, the land the Pilgrims found was not overflowing with any biblical abundance. Bradford, unconcerned about fulfilling propagandistic goals to encourage colonization, has no qualms about painting the bleakest face of America. Having arrived in winter, there was not much to commend America to the Pilgrims. This contrasts with the testimony and experience of most Englishmen, who arrived in summer and seeing America’s most beautiful aspects, found it easy to describe America as an Eden-like place. Bradford’s account, on the contrary, far from the enthusiastic tenor of other New World reports, is ‘a story of simple people impelled by an ardent faith in God to a dauntless courage in danger, a boundless resourcefulness in face of difficulty, an impregnable fortitude in

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adversity’, an epic quest that later generations would magnify by repeatedly retelling their ancestors’ fight against the wilderness, mythologizing it in the process.19 Bradford’s America was no land for leisure, but a place where making a living was hard enough. The Puritans also had a similar view. Instead of considering America as a place that offered everyone the opportunity to become rich without their putting much effort, ‘Puritans in particular wished to see the New World in straitened terms. They proclaimed it a “howling wilderness,” the better to hold its attractions at a distance. They denied desire for “prelapsarian ease,” the more effectively to accommodate their image of the continent as “a land preoccupied with toil.” ’ While propagandistic accounts emphasized the financial prospects of America, for the Pilgrims, the true worth of America lay in whether they could live there according to their principles, a path the Puritans would follow a decade later. For Bradford and for Smith before him, America was merely the background for more important things to happen. Rather than being interested in the description of America itself or its financial prospects, America served them well to picture the experience of a single man (Smith) or a small group of people (Bradford’s Pilgrims) in the face of adversity, unaware (or uninterested) of the landscape’s value. In Bradford, like ‘in most early American authors . . . their information about plants and animals of the New World take second seat to their other interests’.20 For Bradford and his group, Nature was an alien entity, an enemy or, at the very least, an adversary, never useful, productive or even beneficial up to the point that ‘the outside world existed for Bradford, but only as a supporter, a satanic enemy, a weeping sympathetic spectator’. The barricades that the Pilgrims built around Plymouth were designed as much to keep Native Americans at a distance as the wilderness, trying to reproduce the enclosed English garden. Nature, for the Pilgrims, did not exist in its own right, but for illustrating higher concepts about the fight between good and evil. Consequently, instead of having texts depicting Nature in America in a descriptive, objective manner, we find texts dealing with American natural theology, showing ‘the New World landscape as a source of higher laws, a key to the golden future, and a proof-by-association of the interpreter’s spiritual regeneration’.21 However, in spite of those bleak first impressions, America was gradually portrayed more favourably, as the land of plenty after wintertime, thanks to ‘God’s mercy’. Bradford related how here is to be noted a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that here they got seed to plant them corn the next year, or else they might have starved, for they had none nor any likelihood to get any till the season had been past, as the sequel did manifest. Neither is it likely they had had this, if the first voyage had not been made, for the ground was not all covered with snow and hard frozen; but the Lord is never wanting unto His in their greatest needs; let His holy name have all the praise.

As New Englanders got to know the land better, they were forced to change their views about America and they began to appreciate it. Despite his initial misgivings about the land, Bradford was forced to admit that there were positive elements in

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America too: ‘they found water and refreshed themselves, being the first New England water they drunk of, and was now in great thirst as pleasant unto them as wine or beer had been in foretimes’. They later found ‘a pond of clear, fresh water, and shortly after a good quantity of clear ground where the Indians had formerly set corn’. In Bradford as much as in Cabeza de Vaca, food soon became a central concern in their narratives.22 Contrary to accounts showing America as a paradise first just to disappoint us later, Bradford showed America’s worst face only to present a more favourable aspect later: ‘all the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees)’. The almost starvation at the beginning was replaced with abundance as the Pilgrims knew the American soil better: ‘from these extremities [eating dogs, toads, and dead men] the Lord in His goodness kept these His people, and in their great wants preserved both their lives and healths. Let His name have the praise’, ‘by this time harvest was come, and instead of famine now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God,’ ‘it pleased the Lord to give the Plantation peace and health and contented minds, and so to bless their labours as they had corn sufficient, and some to spare to others, with other food; neither ever had they any supply of food but what they first brought with them’. Not only did their labour render plenty of provisions, but also did the weather turn out to be very conducive to their health, as Bradford added at a later date: well agreeth with our English bodies that they were never so healthy in their native country, generally all here, as never could be rid of the headache, toothache, cough and the like are now better and freed here and those that were weak are now well long since and I can hear of but two weak in all the plantation. God’s Name be praised and although there was wanting at the first, that provision at the first glut of people that came over two years since, but blessed be God here is plenty of corn that the poorest have enough. Corn is here at 6 shilling 6 [pence] a bushel, in truth you cannot imagine what comfortable diet the Indian corn do make and what pleasant and wholesome food it makes. Our cattle of all do thrive and feed exceedingly.

Yet, in spite of its bleakness and fruitlessness, this America certainly was a utopia for them, a place where one could put one’s religious ideas into practice and worship at will, as well as found the ‘Society of the Elect’. While the Pilgrims were not the first ones in considering founding a new society , they certainly were the first ones to actually carry out these plans in America.23 Given that Of Plymouth Plantation was written retrospectively, the contrast with Mourt’s Relation is all the more marked: in Mourts Relation, we find a similarly sensuous language, a thorough engagement with the tangible; Bradford is a man for whom the ‘fine small gale’ as the voyage opens matters intensely. By comparison Bradford’s Of Plimmoth Plantation . . . seems burdened by a weight of intangibilities; it was this shift to matters less visible, to the intricacies of colonial administration, that marked the coming onto the

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increasingly familiar land of a literature that theretofore had stayed largely at its edge, where it was lavish of imagery but frugal in its use of narration.

Mourt’s Relation was the first account of the Pilgrim Fathers’ experience in the New World to be published, which makes it especially valuable since Of Plymouth Plantation (although privately circulated in manuscript form) was not published until 1856. It is useful to compare Mourt’s Relation to Of Plymouth Plantation because it sheds light on a number of features of the latter which are identical to those of the former, for Bradford’s treatment of the first year at Plymouth is a curious combination, consisting largely of passages identical with those in Mourt’s Relation, together with discursive classical allusions and philosophic ruminations. Bradford’s style generally tends to be more analytic than descriptive, and the specificity of detail which makes this text such a rich source material for the historian and ethnographer rarely occurs elsewhere in Bradford’s work.

Because of such similarities with Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford’s share in the composition of Mourt’s Relation and who the title Mourt was are still matters of heated controversy. The foreword ‘to the reader’ is signed by G. Mourt (who denies his authorship), a possible misspelling of George Morton or a pseudonym. The most accepted suggestions point out to Edward Winslow as its author, with Bradford helping him, since Mourt’s Relation is a collaborative effort – ‘as for this poor relation, I pray you to accept it, as being writ by the several actors themselves’.24 In Mourt’s Relation, the change of course that led them to Cape Cod and not to their intended destination is presented as a positive outcome: ‘as we cannot but account it an extraordinary blessing of God in directing our course for these parts’; ‘the benefit of one of the most pleasant, most healthful, and most fruitful parts of the world’. Contrary to Bradford’s description of the area, Mourt’s Relation offers a more appealing face of Cape Cod: ‘the appearance of it much comforted us, especially seeing so goodly a land, and wooded to the brink of the sea’. This America was the land of abundance (‘there was the greatest store of fowl that ever we saw’) and the description is enthusiastic – ‘the ground or earth, sand hills, much like the downs in Holland, but much better; the crust of the earth a spit’s depth excellent black earth; all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, vines, some ash, walnut; the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit either to go or ride in’, ‘we went on further and found new stubble, of which they had gotten corn this year, and many walnut trees full of nuts, and great store of strawberries, and some vines’, ‘we saw great flocks of wild geese and ducks’, ‘and sure it was God’s good providence that we found this corn, for else we know not how we should have done’. Moreover, the Pilgrims became masters of their new, alien environment quite quickly: in this little time that a few of us have been here, we have built seven dwellinghouses, and four for the use of the plantation, and have made preparation for divers others. We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six

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acres of barley and pease, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings, or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and, God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn.

All in all, it presents a far more favourable picture of America and its financial prospects for the Pilgrims than Of Plymouth Plantation.25 Thomas Morton, an English entrepreneur, lived in Plymouth for several weeks before leaving to establish his own, neighbouring colony in 1625, which Bradford called ‘Merrymount’, the third attempt to populate this area after the failed ones of Thomas Weston (1622) and Robert Gorges (1623). After his departure from Plymouth, conflicts between Morton and the Pilgrims soon arose. Morton’s ‘Christianity’ and the relationships his colonists established with the Native Americans stirred trouble in Plymouth, further aggravated by Morton’s failure to observe rules which were crucial for the Pilgrims. Because the Pilgrims refused to acknowledge any holiday not explicitly mentioned in the Bible and even forbade the celebration of Christmas (Bradford comments on this in Of Plymouth Plantation), Morton’s organization of Maypole festivities was considered a serious affront. For the Pilgrims, Morton threatened civilization and order, already in danger of disappearing in the face of the wilderness. Eventually, Morton was arrested and expelled from New England. His account of his experiences, New English Canaan, was first published in Amsterdam in 1637, ‘for the better information of all such as are desirous to be made partakers of the blessings of God in that fertile Soyle’ as well as for the curious. While Bradford harshly criticized Morton in Of Plymouth Plantation, Morton, in turn, caricatured the Pilgrims in his work.26 Morton certainly was no religious reformer and, consequently, his vision of New England was shaped by a different agenda. Descriptions of New England as a shelter for God’s chosen nation, or a providentially found place, so prominent in Puritan accounts, are complemented by New English Canaan, ‘almost the only natural history of New England that we have for the first half-century of its settlement’. In contrast to the Pilgrims’ neglect of Nature in America, the wildlife occupies a fundamental role in Morton’s description, which features fowls, fish and fruits and which he considers better than their English counterparts. He also wrote at length about the Native Americans and the geography and geology of the region.27 The very title of his work is indicative of his intentions, for Morton might conceive the land as a Canaan, but proper Pilgrims and Puritans never could. They knew too well that no earthly habitation could be, as he supposed, a ‘paradise.’ They felt too keenly that no country could be, as he declared, ‘nature’s masterpiece.’ For they were certain that, in every country alike, men would suffer, sin, and die. Morton saw his domain as a setting of sensual splendor and delight. The people of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay believed that nature everywhere was corrupt and had to be subdued.

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At odds with Bradford’s bleak picture of America, for Morton ‘the Land to mee seeme paradice’, and ‘a Country whose indowments are by learned men allowed to stand in a parallel with the Israelites Canaan’. Far from other writers’ fears that the American climate might corrupt Englishmen, he regarded New England as lying on the zona temperata of the world and ‘most fitt for the generation and habitation of our English nation’. He found New England to be a place where winds and rain were not as violent as in England and where water had healing properties. He found nothing to dislike or complain about (‘the more I looked, the more I liked it’) and went as far as to state that ‘this Country of new England is by all judicious men accounted the principall part of all America for habitation and the commodiousnesse of the Sea, Ships there not being subject to wormes as in Virginea and other places, and not to be paraleld in all Christendom’.28 After a few years, promotional writings in praise of New England had hastily gone into print to attract settlers, portraying it not as a remote destination but as a place that offered realistic prospects for investment and colonization. Sir William Alexander published An Encouragement to Colonies (1624; reprinted 6 years later as The Mapp and Description of New-England), while William Hilton wrote a laudable report of Plymouth for his London cousin in A Relation or Iournall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth in New England (1621), calling it ‘one of the most pleasant, most healthful, and most fruitful parts of the world’. The year 1625 saw the publication of New-England, or a Briefe Enarration of the Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish and Fowles of that Country . . . in Latine and English Verse by William Morrell, who had been the chaplain in Robert Gorges’ 1623 voyage to New England and saw New England as the ‘grand-child to earth’s paradise’. Christopher Levett published in 1628 a report of A Voyage into New England begun in 1623 and ended in 1624; committed to accuracy, he affirmed that I will not tell you that you may smell the corn field before you see the land, neither must men think that corn doth grow naturally (or on trees), nor will the deer come when they are called or stand still and look a man until he shoot . . . nor will the fish leap into the kettle nor on the dry land, neither are they so plentiful that you may dip them up in baskets, nor take cod in nets to make a voyage, which is no truer than that the fowls will present themselves to you with spits through them. But certainly there is fowl, deer and fish enough for the taking if men be diligent.29

In 1622, John Pory, secretary to the Governor and Council of the Virginia Company, travelled to Plymouth in his official capacity. From there, he wrote several letters recounting his perceptions of New England, one addressed to the Earl of Southampton (dated 13 January 1622/1623 and later) and another to the Governor of Virginia (dated autumn 1622). Pory’s visit was necessitated by conflicts between the Virginia Company’s fishing interests and the fishing monopoly rights James I had granted to the New England Council; his task was to report on the fishing industry in New England. However, Pory, a seasoned traveller and author of A Geographical Historie of

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Africa (1600), did not limit his observation to these matters but included additional information on aspects such as Plymouth’s fauna and agricultural prospects.30 Consistent with accounts about Englishmen taking peaceful possession of lands which the Native Americans had let go to waste, Pory recounted the Pilgrims’ arrival in the following manner: it pleased Almighty God (who had better provided for them than their own hearts could imagine) to plant them on the seat of an old town which divers [years] before had been abandoned of the Indians. So they both quietly and justly sate down without either dispossessing any of the natives, or being resisted by them, and without shedding so much as one drop of blood. Which felicity of theirs is confirmed unto them even by the voices of the savages themselves, who generally do acknowledge not only the seat, but the whole seigniory thereto belonging, to be, and do themselves disclaim all title from it; so that the right of those planters to it is altogether unquestionable – a favour which, since the first discovery of America, God hath not vouchsafed, so far as ever I could learn, upon any Christian nation within that continent.

For Pory, Plymouth made for a good settlement because of ‘the wholesomeness of the place (as the Governor told me) that for the space of one whole year of the two wherein they had been there, died not one man, woman or child’ – he never knew that Bradford had been seriously ill during the first winter, when half of the colonists died. He also commented that there was ‘much plenty both of fish and fowl every day in the year, as I know no place in the world that can match it’ and mentioned the abundance of eels, herring, bass, bluefish, lobsters, cod, hake, mussels and clams but noted the absence of oysters. The fruitfulness of Plymouth included ‘all sorts of water fowl’, for ‘this bay is such a pond for fowl as in any man’s knowledge of our nation that hath seen it, all America hath not the like’. He also saw raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, strawberries, plums, grapes and sassafras, the latter a much-valued species at the time.31 Emmanuel Altham, a gentleman, was one of the Adventurers who helped to finance the launching of Plymouth plantation. Altham, though not a Separatist himself, ‘became an admirer of the colonists and New England with such ardour that he could more easily envision the colony’s future success than see the hardships which the planters were enduring when he first arrived’. His first visit to Plymouth was in 1623, when he recorded his impressions in two letters to his eldest brother, Sir Edward Altham (dated September 1623 and March 1624) and one to James Sherley (May 1624). Another letter to his brother (dated June 1625) gives a testimony of his second visit to Plymouth. Altham’s enthusiasm coloured his assessment of Plymouth, resulting in a glowing report. On the healthiness of the place, he commented that ‘after our arrival in New England, we found all our plantation in good health, and neither man, woman or child sick’ (despite his own bout of illness: ‘some few have had agues at the first coming over, but not sick above a week – and myself was ill for three or four days, but I thank these good friends of mine at the plantation, I am recovered pretty well, thanks be to God’).

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Fishing was a special concern of his, given the fact that he was to assess the future profitability of the colony: ‘first, to speak of the fishing that is in this country. Indeed it is beyond belief, but I can assure you thus much: that if a man be well provided with all things necessary for to make a fishing voyage, he may easily make his voyage two for one’. He noted the abundance of salmon, bass, trout, eels, lobsters, clams and, Pory’s account to the contrary, oysters. Altham also saw handsome profits in the fur trade because of the abundance of beavers, otters, martins, foxes and raccoons. He mentioned the good timber, sarsaparilla, sassafras, berries, salt, metals, eagles, pigeons, turkeys, geese, swans, duck, partridges and fowl in general. All in all, Altham was so persuaded of the goodness and the bright prospects of Plymouth that ‘I think we might compare our plantation to the Spaniards’ Indies’.32 If the testimony of those who had stayed in Plymouth for extended periods of time was important, the writings of some who never set foot there played a major role in shaping public opinion on the plantation too. From the beginning, cynics and satirists actively contributed to debunk favourable reports of America. The Sagadahoc colony was often mentioned and the writings of those who had returned from Plymouth or Salem with failure were made the most of. Rumours and negative reports were so harmful that Smith recounts in New Englands Trials that after the Jamestown massacre, ‘the honourable Company have been humble suiters to his Maiestie to get vagabonds and condemned men to go thither . . . so much scorned was the name of Virginia some did chuse to be hanged ere they would go thither’. To counteract pernicious testimonies, colonists strove hard to suppress critics’ voices.33 Presenting a positive image of New England was further complicated because most books on New England were historical chronicles of Puritanism and the first colonies, where the description of the land occupied little space. William Wood’s New England’s Prospect (1634), the first book with accurate information on America to be published in England, was an exception. New England’s Prospect provides a detailed picture of colonial New England, a task Wood most readily took upon himself so as to limit the damage caused by previous, defamatory reports about America: because there hath been many scandalous and false reports passed upon the country, even from the sulphurous breath of every base ballad-monger. . . . To wipe away all groundless calumniations, and to answer to every too, too curious objections and frivolous questions (some so simple as not ashamed to ask whether the shun shines there or no) were to run in infinitum.

Wood complained about those who went to New England and produced mixed reports, not always extolling the virtues of their new country. In London, reports of bitter colonists coexisted with promotional pamphlets and reports about New England. Printed accounts about the region were so numerous and varied that all sorts of opinions jostled for acceptance, in print, in manuscript and by word of mouth. Glowing reports of the land were in tension with criticisms of Puritan bigotry. Deficiencies in the natural environment offset commendations of the godly

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commonwealth. By the middle of the seventeenth century the English could draw on four main sets of opinion about New England: first, that the land was marvelous and that the saints were planting there a model of godliness and good government; second, that the land was indeed wonderful, but the Puritan experiment was gravely in error; third, that the environment was difficult and disappointing but worth enduring because of the righteousness of God’s cause; and fourth, that both cause and environment were worthless and ought to be abandoned. Reporters faced the difficulty of separating their descriptions of the natural history of New England from their feelings about its government and people.34

Closely related to the need of eyewitnesses to assert their authority and the superiority of their in-depth knowledge of the New World in contrast to the scarce and shallow knowledge of those who wrote extensively about America without having been there or having stayed but briefly, are eyewitnesses’ testimonies conceived to correct previous, false reports. Writers describing America sought to put forth their own views about the New World at the same time that they felt obliged to counterattack pernicious rumours, a concern that was at the core of the writings of all the major authors of the period. They felt the acute need to correct previous writers, who, as Father Pierre François-Xavier Charlevoix, eighteenth-century traveller and author of Histoire et Description Generale de la Nouvelle France (1744), remarked, ‘alone deserve the discredit that they have brought upon all the others’. Harriot similarly complained that ‘there haue bien divers and variable reports with some slaundeorus and shamefull speeches bruited abroade by many that returned from thence’. Attacking those who spoke ill of the new lands and debunking negative arguments soon became common features in many eyewitnesses’ writings. If investors were going to back up the colonies and if new immigrants were to come, then producing glowing reports of New England was absolutely essential. In the case of the Puritans, not financial but religious reasons led them to exercise a tight control over what made its way into print: ‘bad mouths’ were punished and Henry Linne in 1631 Boston was whipped and banished ‘for writing into England falsely and maliciously against the government and execution of justice here’. The opposite was also true, and ‘a letter from New England . . . was Venerated as a Sacred Sprint, or as the Writing of some Holy Prophet’, in the words of Joshua Scottow.35 Winthrop’s letters to his son John and wife offer an insightful vision into the origins of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially because they show a different picture depending on his addressee. Writing to his wife on 9 September 1630, Winthrop’s vision of America was toned down by the recent deaths of some colonists (including his second son), although God’s mercies compensated for the losses: the Lady Arbella is dead, and good Mr. Higginson, my servant old Waters of Neyland, and many others. Thus the Lord is pleased still to humble us; yet he mixes so many mercies with His corrections as we are persuaded He will not cast us off, but in His due time will do us good, according to the measure of our afflictions. He stays but till He hath purged our corruptions and healed the hardness and error

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of our hearts and stripped us of our vain confidence in this arm of flesh that He may have us rely wholly upon Himself. . . . I praise God, we have many occasions of comfort here and do hope that our days of affliction will soon have an end and the Lord will do us more good in the end than we could have expected. That will abundantly recompense for all the trouble we have endured. Yet we may not look at great things here. It is enough that we shall have Heaven, though we should pass through Hell to it. We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ; is not this enough? What would we have more? I thank God, I like so well to be here as I do not repent my coming, and if I were to come again, I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions. I never fared better in my life, never slept better, never had more content of mind, which comes merely of the Lord’s good hand, for we have not the like means of these comforts here which we had in England, but the Lord is all-sufficient, blessed be His holy name.

In a letter to his son on 28 March 1631, Winthrop acknowledged the difficulties they were undergoing despite God’s favour: ‘among many the sweet mercies of my God toward me in this strange land, where we have met many troubles and adversities, this is not the last’. Yet, despite the hardships, Winthrop’s descriptions were so glowing that he was warned not to fall into blasphemy.36 Francis Higginson, a minister, moved to Salem with his wife and eight children in 1629. Higginson was appointed to the local council of Naumkeag, and his responsibilities included teaching and preaching to the Native Americans. A man of an exquisite formal education, he recorded in his journal his impressions of New England. Known as True Relation (its full title was A True Relation of the last Voyage to New England, declaring all circumstances, with the manner of the passage we had by sea, and what manner of country and inhabitants we found when we came to land, and what is the present state and condition of the English people that are there already; faithfully recorded, according to the very truth, for the satisfaction of very many of my loving friends, who have earnestly requested to be truly certified in these things), it was widely circulated in manuscript form in London among his friends and acquaintances and later published as New England’s Plantation, Or, A Short and True Description of the Commmodities and Discommodities of that Country (1630). For his critics, Higginson’s portrayal is unrealistic and too idealized, out of touch with reality, misleading readers and potential colonists about what they might find, particularly with regard to the warm weather he experienced upon his arrival. Unfortunately, it was not long afterwards that he died as a result of the hardships of his first New England winter.37 Gentleman John Josselyn makes for an unusual colonist in that he was born into an aristocratic English family, at odds with the humble social origins of most New England colonists. Josselyn was not the type who was likely to engage in acts such as the colonization of America, but what strengthened his resolve to go to New England was that his father was a partner of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the colonial entrepreneur and founder of Maine. Josselyn went to America for the first time in 1638 to visit his brother Henry and returned to England 15 months later. He was back in New England

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in 1663 to visit his brother again, and this time he stayed for 8 years. Living at his brother’s farm in Scarborough, Maine, during most of his stay, he had plenty of time to observe the local fauna and flora. The conspicuous lack of detailed descriptions of the American landscape in first-generation New England journals can be largely attributed to the belief that ‘the beauties of the physical world were all too likely to distract men’s minds from religious truth or to arouse in them feelings alien to those proper for the study and worship of the divine’. Because observation and description of the land occupied only a small amount of space in the Puritans’ lives, it consequently occupied little space in their writings In contrast, Josselyn, no friend of the Puritans, observed and described the land at length.38 As a result of his observation of Nature in New England, he published New England’s Rarities Discovered in 1672, a year after his return to England, in which he recorded his impressions. His stated intention was ‘to discover the natural, physical, and chirurgical rarities of this new-found world’. Although it is not known whether he had trained as a physician, as some have suggested, Josselyn’s strong interest in botany and medicine can be seen throughout his writings. A learned man, he often quoted from the Bible, Pliny, Lucan, Isidore and Paracelsus and made reference to the works of Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir John Davies, Sylvester, George Sandys, John Smith and Charles I. In 1674, Josselyn published his second book, Account of Two Voyages to New England, a detailed catalogue of the flora and fauna of Maine and Massachusetts. Moved by the conviction that ‘it is true that nothing in nature is superfluous and we have the Scriptures to back it, that God created nothing in vain’, he was as minute an observer as possible. However, because of his harsh criticisms and irreverent comments on New England Puritans (despite his family’s sympathies for the English Puritan party), the book did not gain the same approval as his first work.39 Weather was a topic of special interest for European observers of the New World. Believing that temperatures were solely determined by latitude, people of the seventeenth century thought that the weather remained unchanged in a given latitude, regardless of other factors. Accordingly, the English presumed that North American weather would strongly resemble that of Southern Europe, which the warm climate of New England in the summertime seemed to confirm. Accordingly, they trusted that they would be able to grow the products that England imported from Spain, Italy, France and Greece. However, soon enough they came to realize that the weather in the eastern North American coast was different and that factors other than latitude played a role. Such knowledge about the weather was obtained on the basis of trial and error and settlers in New England during the 1620s expressed uncertainty and bewilderment about the weather. Plymouth colonists reported frost and snow in November and December of their first winter, 1620–1, and said they had heard the region was both hotter and colder than England, although they had not yet experienced this. The next report from the Pilgrim leaders confirmed that the winters were colder but that they did not know why. The cold was mitigated somewhat, they said, by the longer winter days.

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The Pilgrims, ignorant of almost everything with regard to America, soon faced an extreme winter, as North America during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries experienced the harsh winters of the Little Ice Age. Some reasons advanced by Bradford and Winthrop to explain why the climate differed from England’s or Spain’s were the occurrence of supernatural events or catastrophic influences. Because they associated human intervention with a better or worse weather, that the very harsh winters of the 1630s and the 1640s were followed by milder ones in the 1650s, seemed to prove their hypothesis that man could improve the landscape and, in so doing, also the weather (when it was actually due to the end of the Little Ice Age).40 Having realized that New England’s weather was different from expected, it was important to stress that it was still fit for English bodies and character. It was vital to reassure prospective comers that English foodstuffs could be grown in America, for they tried, as much as possible, to keep the same diet as in England. Morality and weather were closely connected as well, for it was supposed that the weather shaped character, with hot weather leading to laziness and moral degeneracy. Actually, it was on the grounds of its warm climate that Guiana, despite Raleigh’s interest in founding a British colony there, was considered inadequate. The English disposition was attributed to moderate weather, and contemporary commentators warned that a warm climate, though suitable for Frenchmen or Spaniards, would be deadly for Englishmen, with medical treatises confirming this warning. Consequently, writers took pains to portray New England’s weather as inducing hard work and not the moral and physical weakening of hotter latitudes.41 Despite their commitment to recording history in as accurate a manner as possible, there was a great deal of self-fashioning in Puritan histories. One of the most powerful elements to shape their identity as the chosen ones was the image of the wilderness. Although the Pilgrims and Puritans were far from being the first or only ones in using it, this image was especially pervasive in colonial New England because of its biblical resonance. The wilderness, which evoked the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, was most useful for advancing their agenda: ‘as the Bible juxtaposed the wilderness with the Promised Land, the Puritans were persuaded that they could transform the sinful areas into gardens of the Lord. The spiritual metamorphosis of the wilderness thereby became a prime justification for converting the Indians and expanding the areas of settlement in New England’. A comparison of America with the wilderness resulted in the conclusion that ‘America was a place, like any other place, where a Christian did his duty; America was a place . . . where the great work of Reformation might be completed at last’. Subduing the wilderness was, therefore, interpreted as a moral reward for their hard work, an achievement that second- and third-generation Puritans would glorify.42 As the Puritans lacked adequate models to describe America but were compelled to describe it in their writings, despite their scarce (or non-existent) knowledge about the country, the wilderness image helped them to fill this void and to make generalizations even before they left England. It encompassed a multiplicity of meanings – paradise, wasteland, the New Canaan, a spiritual darkness, shelter, a wonder-inspiring place, the land of opportunities and even a Garden of Eden in the

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making. Actually, the very reason for its pervasiveness in colonial New England was this multiplicity of meanings up to the point that the wilderness ‘became an all-purpose, and hence almost meaningless, metaphor, embracing the American environment, the temptation of Jesus, Luther’s suffering in his exile, king David’s wandering, and above all, the children of Israel fleeing Egypt’. It also conveyed the idea that there would be difficulties plaguing the lives of the chosen ones, similar to Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. Moreover, the wilderness largely shaped the Puritans’ vision of Native Americans since ‘the emotional energy necessary to sustain the violence of this wilderness imagery was rooted in the Puritans’ inability to separate the landscape from its Indian inhabitants with whom they were forever involved in a real and bloody war. In this howling desert, the Indian was naturally a wild beast, the most ferocious animal, literally a man-eater; the imagery of the landscape was inextricably bound to this image of the Indian’.43 Yet, the first New England settlers did not embrace the same image of America as a wilderness as later generations would. The first generation emphasized that the New England wilderness had been subdued in a relatively short period of time due to their efforts, thus diminishing the idea of an unconquerable, formidable wilderness. Early promotional reports spoke of a garden (another fruitful biblical image) and it would not be until late in the colonial period that the idea of the desert wilderness would become the predominant one. The wilderness would make its way into colonial histories and accounts but only for self-serving polemical purposes after the successful settlement of New England. Puritan preachers and historians used the term in order to depict the first comers as heroes, made of sterner stuff, and also to associate the English migrants with the Israelites under Moses. The first comers were more inclined to see Canaan or Goshen than the Sinai desert Company.

What is more, the terms ‘wilderness’ or ‘desert’ hardly appear in reports before 1633 (New English Canaan mentions none). Because the notion of subjugating an American wilderness had no place in the aspirations of the English religious dissenters who came to New England in the years after 1620 . . . no one attached significance to their wilderness-destination, certainly nothing comparable to the animism which overcame Puritan thinking about the wilderness in the course of the [seventeenth] century.

Richard Mather, in a letter dated 1636, described America as ‘a rude and unsubdued wilderness’ only to assert next that it had already been turned into a soil fit enough for producing a plentiful harvest just 6 years after the Puritans’ arrival.44 Second- and third-generation Puritans, however, were keen on presenting the wilderness as wild and untamable as possible to make their ancestors’ achievements look more impressive. Beginning in the 1640s, the desert wilderness image increasingly grew in popularity and by the 1650s it was being used both in England and New England, as illustrated by Of Plymouth Plantation itself and in Edward Johnson’s

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Wonder-Working Providence (1654). Johnson called America ‘a forlorne Wilderness . . . hideous, boundless and unknown’, for Winthrop, it was ‘a wilderness where are nothing but wild beasts and beastlike men’; for Thomas Hooker, it was ‘a vast and roaring wilderness’, and John Winthrop, Jr., in 1663, referred to New Englanders as ‘the English of this wildernesse’.45 By the mid-seventeenth century, the Puritans’ wilderness mission became a powerful identity-formation component in New England to define their journey to the New World as ‘an errand into the wilderness’. The wilderness metaphor created a new sense of the past (vs. the dreadful present) at a time when New England’s future seemed threatened by internal dissension and strife. The apocalyptic tone of Puritans fleeing to New England in search of a shelter from God’s imminent punishment falling over England was replaced by a glorification of their immediate colonial past (and the subsequent need to preserve it). Cotton Mather in Magnalia Christi Americana was largely responsible for the elevation of New England’s colonial past at the same time that he decisively contributed to perpetuate two of the most pervasive myths: the wilderness and the desert, in consonance with the Bible for ‘the wilderness of the Old Testament is often depicted as a desert or wasteland’. In the introduction to his work, Mather clarified the goal of his work thus: I write the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the Depravation of Europe, to the American Strand: And, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do, with all Conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth it felt, Report the Wonderful Displays of Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath Irradiated an Indian Wilderness.

References to America as desert or wilderness continue throughout his work: ‘tis possible, That our Lord Jesus Christ carried some Thousands of Reformers into the Retirement of an American Desart, on purpose, that, with an opportunity granted unto many of his Faithful Servants, to enjoy the precious Liberty of their Ministry’.46 Once the wilderness had been subdued and the merits and achievements of the ancestors conveniently asserted, colonists needed a new image to capture the relationship they had with the American land, and that was the garden image. First, the ‘desert’ had assisted in the development of closely-defined, stable communities; it prevented a too quick dissipation of spiritual and material resources. But the burgeoning population of a new nation needed, at the end of the eighteenth century, to get to the other side of the mountains, and half a century later to the other side of a great river. The Garden image developed to resolve the conflict between a wilderness foreign to man and man’s need for water, timber, rich soil and open range.

Once the wilderness had been tamed, the image of the garden, imbued with biblical and religious echoes, was adopted to describe Nature in America. The garden represented the opposite of the wilderness, that of a nature subdued, controlled and

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kept under limits. Additionally, the garden was a powerful symbol to convey the Englishmen’s intention to permanently settle down in America.47 Nevertheless, although dropped in favour of the garden image during the colonial period, the wilderness image was not lost and it was later used in the eighteenth century to encourage the western expansion. Thus, in 1792, General Benjamin Lincoln wrote: ‘Civilization directs us to remove as far as possible that natural growth from the lands which is absolutely essential for the food and hiding-place of those beasts of the forests upon which the uncivilized principalle depend for support’.48 Even today, ethnohistorians refer to the colonial American environment as a wilderness and contemporary historians have wholeheartedly assumed the notion of America as a wilderness successfully subdued by Pilgrims and Puritans. Harvey Wish speaks of ‘this wilderness people’ and Peter Carroll mentions that ‘only a painful process of trial and error enabled the Puritans to adjust to life in the wilderness’. Similarly, Dennis Connole writes that ‘only a few small scattered English settlements were established in the interior wilderness between the years 1643 and 1674’ and Joseph Citro explains that ‘in the mid-1600s a small band of sturdy settlers began to trickle into the bleak, but beautiful, Swift River Valley. . . . such a desolate and distant place – the primeval forest. The very heart of a New World wilderness’.49 For colonists to make sense of the foreign American reality, some kind of negotiation and mental adjustment was needed. In order to cope with their respective experiences, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford made a religious, God-oriented interpretation of America – as a purgatory where atoning for past sins or as the shelter God had provided for His chosen people. Building on a tradition that saw each one’s own country as divinely appointed to carry out the all-important task of discovering and colonizing the New World, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford interpreted their doings in America as a divine mission. If Spaniards believed in messianic ideas of their special place, seemingly confirmed by the Reconquista and the Discovery of America under the Catholic Monarchs’ reign, Englishmen believed their nation chosen by God to fully complete the Reformation and be a beacon for the rest of the world. Later writers did not always share Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s perception of America. Those who wrote about Florida and New England after them often did so with a different purpose. Garcilaso used Naufragios to write his own version of Native American historiography so as to claim the validity of Native American voices in recording the history of America, whereas Fernández de Oviedo sought to write a compendium of knowledge about the Spanish colonial empire using Cabeza de Vaca as his source but having no qualms about reprimanding or correcting Cabeza de Vaca if needed. The Hidalgo de Elvas’s account, written to justify and chronicle the De Soto expedition, at first described Florida enthusiastically, only to present it in a most unfavourable light once conflicts with the Native Americans prevented the progress of the expedition. Smith, in writing about both Florida and New England, was trying to make a historical reputation for himself, while Morton satirized the Pilgrims’ plantation at the same time that he stressed the freedom and joy to be found in his own colony, seeing America as a true Paradise, in contrast to Bradford’s more negative vision. Pory and Altham, although men of different, non-Separatist backgrounds, also

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saw the potential of Plymouth and spoke of it highly. Puritan settlers in New England wrote glowing reports back home to attract more settlers to the area and to counteract negative reports as well as harmful slanders, while colonists like Josselyn attacked Puritan society. In order to convey in their writings the foreign American reality as well as their own experiences accurately, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford had to make use of existing genres. However, the genre of their choice proved to be too limiting for what they had to tell, a shortcoming they faced in a different manner. Cabeza de Vaca used the relación for his own purposes, adapting it and including fantastic elements that did not fit its formal structure. Bradford, in the Second Book of Of Plymouth Plantation, tried to impose a providential understanding to the events taking place in Plymouth but, as this became gradually harder, he limited his role to a mere recording of events, without providing any interpretation or explanation. His decision of ultimately leaving his work unfinished, testifies to his failure and that of the genre to accommodate his American experiences. Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford reflected common patterns when it came to describing the New World, regardless of nationalities or of personal circumstances. Both works present America as a space different from Europe, with God being their guide throughout their journeys and experiences, a constant presence in their lives; man, in contrast, is but a small entity, forced to recur to God. Additionally, in their relationship with the local people, the feelings of both are of ambivalence, seeing the Native Americans both as an instrument for their survival and as a potential threat. Being newcomers to America, the writings of both exemplify their encounter with an alien nature, threatening their permanence in the land. In their being perfectly aware of the historical transcendence of their coming to America and their deeds there, both Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford wrote with a sense of historical duty. These are not trumpeting victorious accounts of the colonization of America, but, rather, reports tainted with a somewhat bittersweet flavour. With their American experiences having been written down, the next step was the interpretation and evaluation historians would do of their works.

Notes 1 Kenneth Alan Hovey, ‘The Theology of History in Of Plymouth Plantation and Its Predecessors.’ Early American Literature X (1975): 47. Gesa Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492–1637 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 276–7. 2 Benjamin W. Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts: A History (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979), 21. Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print. English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 11. 3 Douglas R. McManis, Colonial New England. A Historical Geography (New York, London, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1975), 5–7. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 37–8.

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4 Quoted in John Bakeless, The Eyes of Discovery: The Pageant of North America as Seen by the First Explorers (Philadelphia, New York: Lippincott, 1950), 209. Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts, 21. Douglas Edward Leach, The Northern Colonial Frontier, 1607–1763 (New York and others: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), 14, 1–2. McManis, Colonial New England, 13–14. 5 Alfred A. Cave, ‘Why Was the Sagadahoc Colony Abandoned? An Evaluation of the Evidence.’ New England Quarterly 684 (1995): 625, 640. Quoted in Cave, ‘Why Was Sagadahoc Abandoned?’ 627. Tee Loftin Snell, The Wild Shores: America’s Beginnings (N.p.: National Geographic Society, 1974), 17. Leach, Northern Frontier, 15–16. 6 Bakeless, Eyes of Discovery, 218. Christopher Hilton, Mayflower: The Voyage that Changed the World (N.p.: Sutton Publishing, 2005), 125. 7 Joseph A. Conforti, Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 21. McManis, Colonial New England, 19. Bruce Catton and William B. Catton, The Bold and Magnificent Dream: America’s Founding Years, 1492–1815 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1978), 85. John Smith, Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill, North Carolina and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 219–20. 8 John Smith, Advertisements For the unexperienced Planters of New England (London: John Haviland, 1631). Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed. Captain John Smith: A Selected Edition of His Writings (Chapel Hill, North Carolina and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 219. John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, NewEngland, and the Summer Isles. London: I.D. and I.H. for Michael Sparkes, 1624. http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/smith/smith.html (accessed 9 February 2009), 25. 9 Smith, Generall Historie, 29–30, 33. 10 Smith, Captain John Smith, 226–8. 11 Smith, Captain John Smith, 228–9, 232, 241. 12 Quoted in Hilton, Mayflower, 188. Smith, Advertisements. 13 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 236–7. 14 Walter P. Wenska, ‘Bradford’s Two Histories: Pattern and Paradigm in Of Plymouth Plantation’. Early American Literature XIII (1978): 154. Robert Daly, ‘William Bradford’s Vision of History.’ American Literature 44, 4 (1973): 561. 15 Samuel Eliot Morison, By Land and By Sea: Essays and Addresses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 245. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 26. David D. Hall, ed. Puritans in the New World. A Critical Anthology (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 10. Quoted in McManis, Colonial New England, 21. 16 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 61–2, 130–1, 61–3. David Laurence, ‘William Bradford’s American Sublime.’ PMLA 102, 1 (1987): 55–6. 17 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 279, 302–3. Peter N. Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness: The Intellectual Significance of the New England Frontier, 1629–1700 (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969), 73. Oscar Handlin, ‘The Significance of the Seventeenth Century.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 9–10. 18 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 282, 62. O. Glade Hunsaker, ‘Roger Williams and John Milton: The Calling of the Puritan Writer.’ In Puritan Influences in American

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22 23

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27 28 29

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Literature, ed. Emory Elliott (Urbana and others: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 5. Carroll, Puritanism and Wilderness, 62. Hall, Puritans in the New World, 10. Catherine Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning of America: Printed Representations Before 1630.’ In America in the British Imagination, ed. Catherine Armstrong, Roger Fogge, and Tim Lockley (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 11. Morison, By Land and By Sea, 234. Michael Zuckerman, ‘Identity in British America: Unease in Eden.’ In Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 126. McManis, Colonial New England, 27–8. Richard S. Dunn, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Historians of America.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History¸ ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 202. Norman S. Grabo, ‘Ideology and the Early American Frontier.’ Early American Literature 22 (1987): 283. Alden T. Vaughan, ed. New England’s Prospect. By William Wood (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 7. Zuckerman, ‘Identity in British America,’ 133, 135. Sacvan Bercovitch, ed. The American Puritan Imagination: Essays in Revaluation (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 13. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 66, 65. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 90, 122, 132, 178. Quoted in Hall, Puritans in New World, 34. David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm in the New World. Heresy to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1985), 6. Wayne Franklin, ‘The Literature of Discovery and Exploration.’ In Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliott (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 21–2. Dwight B. Heath, ed. Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. 1622 (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1963), xii–xv, 4. Mourt’s Relation, 3, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 24, 26, 81–2. Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Jr (New York: Burt Franklin, 1967), 110. Zuckerman, ‘Pilgrims in Wilderness,’ 262. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 97. Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession, 278. Zuckerman, ‘Pilgrims in Wilderness,’ 261. Morton, New English Canaan, 121, 179–81, 229–33. Quoted in David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 7, 10–11. Cressy, Coming Over, 7–8. Sydney V. James, Jr., ed. Three Visitors to Early Plymouth. Letters About the Pilgrim Settlement in New England During Its First Seven Years. By John Pory, Emmanuel Altham and Isaack de Rasieres (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1997), 4, 3. John Pory, ‘John Pory to the Earl of Southampton, January 13, 1622/1623, and later.’ In Three Visitors to Early Plymouth. Letters About the Pilgrim Settlement in New England During Its First Seven Years, ed. Sydney V. James, Jr (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1997), 6–11. James, Jr., Three Visitors, 21, 23–8. Cressy, Coming Over, 13. Quoted in Armstrong, ‘Contesting the Meaning,’ 23. Quoted in Cressy, Coming Over, 17–18. Dunn, ‘English Historians,’ 206. Cressy, Coming Over, 20.

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35 Howard Mumford Jones, ‘The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the ‘Promotion’ Literature of Colonization.’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 90, 2 (1946): 131. Quoted in James R. Masterson, ‘Travelers’ Tales of Colonial Natural History.’ Journal of American Folklore 59, 231 (1946): 51. Quoted in E. Thomson Shields, Jr., ‘The Genres of Exploration and Conquest Literatures.’ In A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer (Malden, Oxford, and Carlton: Blackwell, 2005), 361. Matt Cohen, ‘Morton’s Maypole and the Indians: Publishing in Early New England.’ Book History 5 (2002): 2. Quoted in Cressy, Coming Over, 22. Quoted in Phillip H. Round, ‘Neither Here Nor There: Transatlantic Epistolarity in Early America.’ In A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer (Malden, Oxford, and Carlton: Blackwell, 2005), 435. 36 Everett Emerson, ed. Letters from New England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–1638 (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 87. Quoted in Emerson, Letters from New England, 55, 87. James P. Walsh, ‘Holy Time and Sacred Space in Puritan New England.’ American Quarterly 32, 1 (1980): 92. 37 Emerson, Letters from New England, 11. Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879), 169. 38 Kenneth B. Murdock, Literature and Theology in Colonial New England. 1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 36. 39 Quoted in Tyler, History of American Literature, 181. Tyler, History of American Literature, 182. Quoted in Herbert Adams, ‘John Josselyn, Gent.: Adam with a Quill Pen in Eden.’ Habitat 1, 8 (1984). 17 September 1995. http://www. scarboroughcrossroads.org/slct/referen/a01/rp1001.html (accessed 26 July 2007). 40 Gary S. Dunbar, ‘Some Curious Analogies in Explorers’ Preconceptions of Virginia.’ The Virginia Journal of Science 3 (1958): 323. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘The Puzzle of the American Climate in the Early Colonial Period.’ American Historical Review 87, 5 (1982): 1262–4, 1272–3, 1281. Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land, 4. G. R. Crone, The Discovery of America (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969), 179. Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 117. Conforti, Imagining New England, 26. 41 Conforti, Imagining New England, 25. Kupperman, ‘Puzzle of Climate,’ 1266. 42 Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. 1966 (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 27, 26. Carroll, Puritanism and Wilderness, 62. Handlin, ‘Significance of Seventeenth Century,’ 8–9. Charles L. Sanford, ‘An American Pilgrim’s Progress.’ American Quarterly 6, 4 (1954): 302. 43 Carroll, Puritanism and Wilderness, 47, 2, 5, 8. Andrew Wiget, ‘Wonders of the Visible World: Changing Images of the Wilderness in Captivity Narratives.’ In The Westering Experience in American Literature: Bicentennial Essays, ed. Merrill Lewis and L. L. Lee (Bellingham, Washington: Bureau for Faculty Research Western Washington University, 1977), 69–70. Gay, Loss of Mastery, 29. George Huntston Williams, ‘The Wilderness and Paradise in the History of the Church.’ Church History 28, 1 (1959): 4. 44 Cressy, Coming Over, 14, 19. Martin J. Bowden, ‘The Invention of American Tradition.’ Journal of Historical Geography 18, 3 (1992): 6. Alan Heimert, ‘Puritanism, the Wilderness, and the Frontier.’ New England Quarterly 26, 1 (1953): 361. 45 Bowden, ‘The Invention of American Tradition,’ 7, 6. Quoted in Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 289. Quoted in Carroll, Puritanism and Wilderness, 85.

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46 J. F. Maclear, ‘New England and the Fifth Monarchy: The Quest for the Millennium in Early American Puritanism.’ William and Mary Quarterly 32, 2 (1975): 259. David M. Scobey, ‘Revising the Errand: New England’s Ways and the Puritan Sense of the Past.’ William and Mary Quarterly 41, 1 (1984): 10. Carroll, Puritanism and Wilderness, 61. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: OR, THE Ecclesiastical History of NEW-ENGLAND FROM Its First Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of our LORD, 1698. (London: 1702). 47 Wiget, ‘Wonders of the Visible World,’ 80. 48 Quoted in Richard Waswo, ‘The History that Literature Makes.’ New Literary History 19, 3 (1988): 558–9. 49 Harvey Wish, Society and Thought in Early America: A Social and Intellectual History of the American People Through 1865 (New York: David McKay Co., 1964), 30. Quoted in James Henry Phillips IV, ‘The Lessons of Hunger: Food, Drink, and The Concept of Corrective Affliction In Three Puritan Captivity Narratives.’ M.A. Thesis. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University, 2007. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/ available/etd-06042007-184148/unrestricted/etd.pdf (accessed 16 October 2008), 6. Dennis A. Connole, The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England, 1630–1750. An Historical Geography (Jefferson, NC & London: McFarland, 2001), 1. Joseph A. Citro, Cursed in New England: Stories of Damned Yankees (Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press, 2004), 27.

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Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford as Eyewitnesses and Historians I might not this believe Without the Sensible and true avouch Of Mine own eyes William Shakespeare: Hamlet A recurrent complaint among literary scholars is that Of Plymouth Plantation has for long been considered a historical document rather than the potential object of a purely literary treatment, as most scholars engaged in its analysis have been historians, more concerned with historical matters than its literary quality. Bradford is not alone in this literary neglect, for this situation is extensive to the whole of early American literature. In contrast, as a historian, Bradford has achieved an unquestionable historical status and legitimacy, as well as gaining his readers’ trust, all unattainable to conquistadors for the most part and, subsequently, to Cabeza de Vaca. In his ‘History of Historical Writing in America’, Jameson asserted that ‘to turn from Captain John Smith to Governor William Bradford is like turning from Amadis de Gaul to the Pilgrim’s Progress’ and Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s contemporaries would have thought the same about their respective works. This chapter analyses the reasons for this dissimilar historical consideration.1 Bradford began writing Of Plymouth Plantation in 1630, 10 years after their arrival in America, with the intention of producing a written testimony of the Pilgrims’ doings for posterity. Of Plymouth Plantation belongs to the genre of travel narratives of pilgrimage, although their destination is not Rome or Santiago de Compostela, but America and this is to be a permanent stay. Perused by later generations in manuscript form, it did not make its way into print, though. Gone missing during the American Revolution, it was assumed that it had been destroyed and, there being no existing copy, forever lost. However, in 1855, an unidentified manuscript in the library of the Bishop of Canterbury turned out to be the lost History of Plymouth Plantation, as it was also known (Of Plymouth Plantation is the title Bradford gave to his account). Intense diplomatic negotiations made it possible that it was returned to America and published in 1856.2 Although better known as Naufragios, Cabeza de Vaca’s work was first published in Zamora in 1542 under the title La relacion que dio Aluar nunez cabeça de vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias en la armada donde yua por gouernador Panphilo de Narbaez desde el año de veynte y siete hasta el año de treynta y seys que bolvio a Seuilla con tres de su compañía and republished in Valladolid in 1555 as La relacion y comentarios del gouernador

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Aluar nunez cabeça de vaca, de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias. Ever since word had spread that four members of the Narváez expedition had been found and could provide information about the whereabouts of the other participants, there had been a very strong interest in their story. After giving official testimony at the Audiencia de Santo Domingo, Cabeza de Vaca decided to publish his account to satisfy this interest as well as to comply with the requirement to report to Charles V, one of his official duties as treasurer. An explanation must be provided to account for the failure of the expedition, given that the discourse of discovery and conquest was one of success. Despite Cabeza de Vaca’s initial attempt to write an official report, the failure of the expedition prevented his writing an account similar to previous reports such as Cortés’ cartas de relación. If conquistadors wrote to claim their rights, Cabeza de Vaca did to recover his good name. The second edition included Comentarios, written by Pero (or Pedro) Hernández, which was, in the manner of López de Gómara’s history of Cortés’s deeds, an apology for Cabeza de Vaca’s later actions as governor of the Río de la Plata region.3 Taking into account the preference for authorities’ (over eyewitnesses’) accounts analysed in Chapter 2, the main difference between Of Plymouth Plantation and Naufragios in terms of historicity is that whereas Bradford is regarded as both an eyewitness and a historian, Cabeza de Vaca is regarded as an eyewitness attempting to usurp the role of historian. ‘Cabeza de Vaca’s more lasting significance has been literary and cultural, not historical’, declares Pilkington and Maura considers Naufragios a literary piece rather than a historical account. Yet, calling Naufragios a literary piece rather than a historical work obscures the valuable information it provides about America; for instance, his descriptions of Native Americans are unique. Moreover, considering Naufragios as literature led to its contents being rewritten by professional historians such as Fernández de Oviedo. Only if we take into account the conception of literary history at the time, Naufragios can be described, all at once, as ‘an account, history and fiction’.4 Very much like Smith and Díaz del Castillo were aware of their roles in historical terms, Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca were conscious of what their own historical contribution would be. While Bradford calls his book ‘history’ several times, Cabeza de Vaca refers to his as a relación (although he adapted the genre to fit the American reality because of the formal rigidity of the relación). That is, Cabeza de Vaca’s text was not intended as part of the historiographic tradition but to report to the king. However, despite his stated intention of leaving a document for the perusal of future generations, not even Bradford himself could have foreseen the far-reaching effects of his history when he began writing. Little could Bradford imagine how extensively Of Plymouth Plantation would be read and used not only to learn about this particular period of history but also to help define what being Puritan was like, its most Puritanlike elements having been emphasized while dismissing those considered ‘unpuritan’.5 Both Naufragios and Of Plymouth Plantation were written with the intention of being carefully read and perused by the community. Bradford makes it clear at the end of the first book: I have been the larger in these things, and so shall crave leave in some like passages following (though in other things I shall labour to be more contract)

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that their children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled in going through these things in the first beginnings; and how God brought them along, notwithstanding all their weaknesses and infirmities. As also that some use may be made hereof in after times by others in such like weighty employments.

With this, Bradford limited his scope to events relevant not only to his record of the progress of the colony but also to his understanding of the purpose of history. Cabeza de Vaca, in his detailed and careful descriptions of the land and the Native Americans, explicitly states that his goal is to warn others: ‘esto he querido contar porque allende que todos los hombres desean saber las costumbres y ejercicios de los otros, los que algunas veces se vinieren a ver con ellos estén avisados de sus costumbres y ardides, que suelen no poco aprovechar en semejantes casos’ [I have wanted to tell this because, as all men wish to learn about the customs and activities of the others, those who sometime come to meet them are forewarned of their customs and tricks, which they make good use of in such cases]. Cabeza de Vaca, as treasurer of the expedition, had the responsibility of informing and recording for the Crown the experiences he underwent in America. His minute recording is very similar to Bradford’s, only that the Plymouth governor selfimposed that duty, as most journal keepers did.6 With this common starting point, Bradford being both a historian and an eyewitness of events in which he was a direct participant, why is Cabeza de Vaca in turn merely considered an eyewitness? Furthermore, why did Cabeza de Vaca’s role as an eyewitness purportedly prevent him from writing a true account? Why was Bradford not accused of unreliability but, on the contrary, praised for being an eyewitness? Several reasons account for this. To begin with, we should look at their different cultural backgrounds and education. Cabeza de Vaca, despite his family’s illustrious past, was a soldier, not a man of letters. Given his social and economic status, he probably received an education appropriate to his times and social class; claims that he must have been taught the basics of history writing by Latin tutors can hardly be supported in the light of the absence of Latin or classical references in Naufragios. While Fernández de Oviedo in the last book of his Historia could compare the shipwreck of Alonso de Zuazo to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, seeing it as a pilgrimage, Cabeza de Vaca’s lack of a classical education prevented his comparing his own trials to learned works.7 Bradford, although self-taught, was a cultured man who mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Dutch, the owner of a ‘fair-sized library’ of 80 volumes, only matched by William Brewster’s. Cotton Mather, in Magnalia Christi Americana, described Bradford’s linguistic skills thus: he was a person for study as well as action; . . . he attained unto a notable skill in languages; the Dutch tongue was become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied. . . . He was also well skilled in history, in antiquity, and in philosophy; and for theology, he became so versed in it, that he was an irrefragable disputant against . . . errors.

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His command of Hebrew is especially striking because Bradford only began studying it once he had finished writing Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford himself explained that though I am growne aged, yet I have had a longing desire to see, with my owne eyes, something of that most ancient language, and holy tongue, in which the law and oracles of God were writ; and in which God and angels spake to the holy patriarchs of old time; and what names were given to things, from the creation. And though I cannot attaine to much herein, yet I am refreshed to have seen more glimpse hereof (as Moyses saw the land of Canaan afarr of). My aim and desire is, to see how the worlds and phrases lye in the holy texte; and to discerne somewhat of the same, for my owne contente.

Without falling in the pedantic style of the seventeenth century, Bradford quoted from classical and contemporary sources, including Socrates Scholasticus, John Foxe, William Perkins, Emanuel van Meteren, Seneca, Pliny as well as the Bible. In sharp contrast, the only Latin (or any other learned language) in Naufragios is ‘Deo gracias’ in capital letters at the very end of the narrative and even the scarce Portuguese is incorrect. Therefore, Bradford’s work, coming from a learned man, knowledgeable in a number of reputed books of the period, was from the onset more likely to be positively regarded as an authoritative historical account than Cabeza de Vaca’s text, devoid of the learned references expected in an authoritative book.8 Cabeza de Vaca, in writing his story, made use of several strategies to advance his cause – he pointed out the occasions when he was right and Narváez was wrong, distancing himself from him and his failures; pictured Narváez as unable to carry out his commission and careless about his men; diminished his companions’ role while emphasizing his up to the point of portraying himself as a Christ-like figure and establishing himself as one of the big Christian icons of the Spanish conquest; represented himself as the good angel versus Mala Cosa, the bad angel or the devil (one of the central Christian myths in Spanish conquest narratives); and, as the narrative progresses and whenever he could benefit from it, he turned to ‘I’ rather than use ‘we’. This turn to a single first-person text takes place in the tenth chapter; from then onwards, Cabeza de Vaca abandons the third person of the Joint Report to fill Naufragios with autobiographical overtones. Cabeza de Vaca’s ‘I’ constantly stands in opposition to others: Narváez, the royal officers, the Native Americans, his companions, the Spaniards they eventually meet. . .9 Bradford, in turn, never used ‘I’; he spoke of ‘they’ when speaking about his own group of Pilgrims and in the rare occasions when he referred to himself (despite the prominent role he played), he spoke of ‘the Governor’. Even relating his own sufferings, he mentioned them as the sufferings and problems the colony as a whole underwent, whereas Cabeza de Vaca alluded to his own difficulties and problems quite often. Bradford writes: ‘in two or three months’ time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of the winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which their long voyage

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and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them’. Bradford was ill at the time, which he only mentioned incidentally later on when he reported that ‘Bradford was chosen Governor in his stead, and being not recovered of his illness, in which he had been near the point of death, Isaac Allerton was chosen to be an assistant unto him’. Similarly, he failed to record that he almost died as a result of an accidental fire in the house he stayed at during his illness. He wrote of ‘this poor people’s present condition’ but without disclosing that it was his own too. He even reported events in which he was the sole protagonist, but concealing his identity: ‘as this calamity fell among the passengers that were to be left here to plant, and were hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have the more beer, and one in his sickness desiring but a small can of beer, it was answered that if he were their own father he should have none’. The passage is indeed remarkable enough to be recorded, but that he was this ‘one’ did not seem worth recording to him. While Winthrop in his Journal, trying to attract readers’ attention and sympathy, moved from ‘we’ to ‘I’, Bradford’s modesty made him omit personal information such as his family circumstances.10 In contrast, Cabeza de Vaca dwelled on his sufferings quite often and at large, similar to Raleigh’s many references to his own agonies as a means to justify himself during his trial – ‘donde mis indios me habían llevado y donde me habían dado tan gran enfermedad, que ya que alguna otra cosa me diera esperanza de vida, aquélla bastaba para del todo quitármela’ [where my Indians had taken me and afflicted me with such a great illness that even if something else gave me hope to live, that was enough to quash it]. Cabeza de Vaca was far from concealing his illnesses but rather exploited them, in this passage and at many other points, the same that Smith, Díaz del Castillo or JeanBernard Bossu (French explorer in Canada and author of Nouveaux voyages aux Indes occidentales) did. In contrast, Bradford, as leader of Plymouth plantation, recorded the community’s condition, not exclusively his. When in Bradford we see the community’s suffering, in Cabeza de Vaca, we see solely his own.11 The choice of personal pronouns reflects the author’s intention towards his text. Cabeza de Vaca intended to advance his own cause, whereas Bradford appointed himself to the role of historian of his community. Bradford chose ‘they’ to portray the whole plantation in contrast to the use of ‘I’, which implies, as Jean de Léry pointed out in Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amerique, ‘to set down only what I did, saw, heard and observed’. Like Léry’s use of ‘I’ to claim the superiority of his knowledge over others’ who had not been to America, Cabeza de Vaca’s ‘I’ stresses the fact that, given the lack of his companions’ testimony (other than the Joint Report), he was the only one able to describe their wanderings. Using ‘I’, Cabeza de Vaca marked a contrast between himself and all the others, consistent with his presenting himself as a Christ-like hero.12 It is clear from the very beginning that Cabeza de Vaca was seeking royal favour with his narrative. The proem, a letter to Charles V, was his way of acknowledging the king with his deeds and, consequently, suggested his being rewarded for them. The proem is formally very similar to the letter to the king, ‘that common forum of political action in the age of the absolutist monarchy’, and throughout the narrative there are passages designed with the purpose of securing royal grants and favours for its author.

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The proem, thus, comprises the main elements of Cabeza de Vaca’s argumentation, further developed in the following narration. Later on, for his services, Cabeza de Vaca would get a royal commission – that of Adelantado del Río de la Plata, Governor and General Captain, being ‘clothed’ by the monarch after his sufferings and his nakedness. In turn, Bradford’s narration, in which such petitions for honours are missing, was from the start more likely to be given more credibility than Cabeza de Vaca’s, as ‘a statement made to advance one’s interest or to win public approbation or to secure one’s niche in history would have less credibility’.13 Naufragios constitutes Cabeza de Vaca’s attempt to defend his actions during the journey and his subsequent wanderings. He is careful enough to apologize while stressing that the ultimate responsibility for the expedition was Narváez’s, since his opinions were ignored – a disagreement that Cabeza de Vaca made explicit from the beginning. Already in the proem he stated that ‘ni mi consejo ni diligencia aprovecharon para que aquello a que éramos idos fuese ganado’ [neither my advice nor my diligence were put to use to achieve that we went for] and he continued his attack by pointing out Narváez’s negligence, retelling their quarrels and even not including any biographical information about Narváez at the beginning of Naufragios, as was customary. Since Cabeza de Vaca was not the one in command of the expedition, he could clear himself by putting all the blame on Narváez – and thence the use of ‘I’. In his later stint in America, as he was the Adelantado and responsible for the results of his unfortunate administration, he resorted to Pero Hernández to write his Comentarios and defend him, given that the failure was his own and he could not put the blame on his superior, as he had done with Narváez in Naufragios.14 Bradford, on the other hand, did not seek to justify himself or his actions. This speaks to Bradford’s credit, since Winthrop did not refrain from commenting upon his role as leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and turned his Journal from a history of the community into a defence of his administration. The ultimate goal of Bradford’s journal obeys to the belief that God’s ways and intentions could be revealed through the close examination of all events, which had to be minutely recorded for their analysis. In playing the role of ‘the Lord’s Remembrancer’, Bradford rejected the possibility of turning his account into a justification or applause to his time as governor. His careful selection of both private and official letters (or extended passages) testifies to his aim of offering as objective an account as possible – maybe with the exception of his depiction of Thomas Morton and his colony and John Lyford. In short, in not defending himself and in presenting a picture of self-effacement, Bradford gained the same kind of credibility and up to the same extent that was lost by Cabeza de Vaca in defending himself.15 In the title page of his book, Bradford asserted that ‘the which I shall endeavour to manifest in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things; at least as near as my slender judgment can attain the same’, being afterwards praised for his stylistic choice. Bradford’s plain style is not too different from the paucity of Cabeza de Vaca’s descriptions. If Hakluyt and Smith, writing as plainly as possible, got their audiences to equate plain writing with veracity, Cabeza de Vaca’s limited use of complex rhetorical and writing devices as well as his lack of quotations from erudite sources

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had the opposite effect. Naufragios would not be considered serious or authoritative on the grounds of the absence of rhetorical strategies whose use, common since the ancient times, had been reinforced by the Renaissance spirit. This absence makes Naufragios stand in contrast to the historical writings produced by friars, chroniclers and explorers writing within previous historiographical traditions. In a way, the same stylistic simplicity that contributed to Hakluyt, Smith and Bradford, among others, being trusted, was another of the reasons for distrusting Cabeza de Vaca, as he was writing out of the traditional writing modes in Spanish historiography of the period.16 Because of the fact that eyewitness exaggerations were taken for granted by Cabeza de Vaca’s contemporaries, he argued that instead of exaggerating, he was only understating: ‘lo cual yo escribí con tanta certinidad, que aunque en ella se lean algunas cosas muy nuevas y para algunos muy difíciles de creer, pueden sin duda creerlas: y creer por muy cierto, que antes soy en todo más corto que largo’ [which I wrote with such certainty, that although in it can be read some very new things and for some very hard to believe, they can believe them without any doubt, and take as very accurate because in everything I have been shorter rather than larger]. Despite these claims, Cabeza de Vaca added or omitted elements to make his deeds the most remarkable, resulting in his three companions being secondary characters. So far goes Cabeza de Vaca’s neglect that only one Native American first name is included in the entire work, with all the other natives going nameless. While Bradford took pains to allow ‘the historical characters to speak as fully and possible for themselves’, Cabeza de Vaca’s description of Dorantes, Castillo and Estebanico (not to mention all the other members of the Narváez expedition and the Native Americans) is rather simplistic. All his companions throughout the narrative appear as indecisive men, archetypes rather than real people; only Narváez, his antagonist, is dealt with at some length, but the motivations that drive him, other than stubbornness or poor leadership, are not fully accounted for. The same happens to Lope de Oviedo, the man for whom Cabeza de Vaca delayed his escape several years. We are told how faithfully Cabeza de Vaca waited for him so that the two of them could run away – only for Lope de Oviedo to go back to the Native Americans after being threatened by another group of natives. In contrast to Cabeza de Vaca’s patience and loyalty towards his fellow Spaniard, Lope de Oviedo appears as a nonentity, a man without determination or resolution, a puppet needing someone to take orders from. While Bradford presented the community as a whole, Cabeza de Vaca, in his presenting himself as the dominant character in his narrative, obscured and belittled all his other companions, making his figure bigger but also less reliable in the process.17 The main arguments used for attacking Cabeza de Vaca’s trustworthiness and reliability have been his miracles (which include performing heart surgery and healing and even resurrecting Native Americans by praying) and the more fabulous episodes – the mora de Hornachos’ prophecy at the beginning of the journey that only a few or none would survive, the pirate attack on the way back home . . . Surprisingly, these ‘miracles’ have been given enough credibility by historians as to include them in their works (Fernández de Oviedo in Historia natural y general de las Indias, López de Gómara in Historia general de las Indias and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in

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Décadas) and mentioned in lawsuits. All these exaggerations, not too different from Smith’s visualization of America ‘in broad and bold historical terms’, contributed to make readers suspicious of his veracity. In fashioning himself as a hero, Cabeza de Vaca somehow alienated his audience. In contrast, Bradford did not fashion himself as a hero, just as the Governor, not falling into the trap of presenting himself in largerthan-life dimensions.18 Given that they were the only chroniclers of the events and situations in their accounts, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford had to convince their audiences of their being faithful recorders. While Bradford acknowledged his limitations as a historian (‘my slender judgment’), Cabeza de Vaca did not, and in Naufragios we never find an apology for his shortcomings, a rhetorical convention called captatio benevolentiae. One possible explanation for this lack of modesty is that, rather than stubbornness or pride, in Cabeza de Vaca’s case, his lack of a formal education was a real one, not a display of false modesty. Men like Bradford, Fernández de Oviedo, and even Las Casas, could have a certain confidence in their own abilities, but Cabeza de Vaca might have feared that his acknowledging his limitations would have been interpreted as his stating his inappropriateness for the task. Cabeza de Vaca’s proem, thus, indicates that his interests are far from writing a historical work. Bradford’s limitations were different from Cabeza de Vaca’s. Maybe because he was attempting, despite his humble note in the first page, to write the official chronicle of the plantation, Bradford did not write a preface excusing himself for his inadequacy for the task in stylistic terms, in sharp contrast to Puritan writers’ mentioning their limitations.19 Another possible explanation why Cabeza de Vaca did not follow these conventions was that because he sought to eulogize himself in order to obtain royal rewards rather than to assert a number of facts, he had to use a different set of formal devices. As his goal was to gain royal favour and not to write history, he chose the persona of a hero and not to present a humble image of himself. Cabeza de Vaca could not be a traditional conquistador as circumstances made it impossible for him to play the role he had in mind when embarking for America. The failure of the expedition prevented his being a miles gloriosus and forced him to fulfil antiheroic roles, and, in some occasions, even traditionally female roles. Unable to perform his duty of conquering new lands, Cabeza de Vaca could not emulate his grandfather, conqueror of the Canary Islands, and, in turn, could be just a recorder – ‘no me quedó lugar para hacer más servicio de éste, que es traer a Vuestra Majestad relación de lo que en diez años que por muchas y muy extrañas tierras que anduve perdido y en cueros, pudiese saber y ver’ [I had no chance to do any service other than this, which is to bring Your Majesty an account of what I could learn and see during the 10 years I wandered lost and naked through many and very strange lands]. Like Raleigh, Cabeza de Vaca, failing to provide gold, had to cause wonder.20 Because, as already mentioned, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford were the first to write extensively about these regions, both shared the problem of the lack of available sources. They did not start from scratch, though: Bradford could rely on Mourt’s Relation and his correspondence, while Cabeza de Vaca decided not to use the Joint Report. As explained in Chapter 2, in Spain, eyewitnesses had a tough time to be

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considered true historians. Because Cabeza de Vaca, not a scholar but a soldier seeking self-promotion, was bound to be taken lightly, from the beginning of his account, he felt the necessity to assert the veracity of its contents. Bradford, on the other hand, not only did benefit from the circumstance that in England this distinction was not so strict, but also from the Puritan reverence for history. Unpublished until 1856, even if Of Plymouth Plantation had been published earlier, his audience would have been made up of fervent Puritans who respected knowledge coming from authorities (such as a governor) and who would have approved of the doctrine of providence that inspired and sustained his work. Since for the Puritans, the yardstick for the veracity of history was that it presented divine providence at work, Bradford, then, ‘may be trusted implicitly in his entire narrative, and its bulk and minuteness furnish the measure of its value’.21 Moreover, for the first colonists, history was a central support for their enterprise, as it encouraged others to come to America and join them. Both Pilgrims and Puritans were well aware of their important role in world history, thence their painstaking need to record everything they did. They needed to justify in historical terms their break from the Church of England and at the same time put forward their views on England’s special role in apocalyptic history during the sixteenth century. As a result, writing fulfilled a fundamental function for the Puritans, who understood the close interconnectedness between writing and religion: throughout history, literature, in the broadest sense of the word, had been an indispensable adjunct of Christian thought and life. . . . the Puritans must have recognized that no religion or theology had ever made itself a force among men without a literature of some sort. What would Christianity be without its Bible? . . . The emphasis which the Puritan put upon learning and literature proves that in his view they were not decorations for the Christian life but essentials of it.

Because ‘learning how to read and becoming “religious” were perceived as one and the same thing’, in the eighteenth century, history writing would take a religious meaning, with Bradford becoming one of its main historical authorities. The fact that most eighteenth-century New England historians were ministers, ‘the appointed guardians of the Puritan conscience’, and their belief that God revealed Himself through history, meant that to deny or correct historical accounts was perceived as similar to questioning God, something inconceivable for the Puritans. Consequently, they grew to see ‘no difference between the words of godly writers and the Word of God’.22 Equally inconceivable was that a historian might be biased, for he was required to record all events, including those that, at first, might seem unfavourable or those that he could not understand, since God revealed Himself in every single event. When Bradford omitted passages or events, it was ‘for brevity’s sake’, owing to a principle of selection of only those events that ‘may seem to be profitable to know or to make use of ’. Profitability or relevance were the reasons for his including or leaving out things, omitting ‘the tedious and impertinent’ and episodes ‘too long and tedious here to record’. In contrast, where Cabeza de Vaca omitted events, his omissions set the

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readers’ speculation and imagination loose, letting them wonder how much and what is absent.23 Bradford’s sense of history, which is visible throughout the narrative (and, for Daly, ultimately the cause of his leaving it unfinished), is closely intertwined with his conception of truth, as illustrated in the preface: ‘and first of the occasion and inducements thereunto; the which, that I may truly unfold, I must begin at the very root and rise of the same. The which I shall endeavour to manifest in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things; at least as near as my slender judgment can attain the same’. According to Grabo, Bradford’s sense that truth is ‘simple’ is very important existing as it does in what is at once a concept of history and an act of faith. That sense was not peculiar to Bradford. . . . History is true when it accurately reflects God’s providential will in men’s affairs. All of time is seen as a progress toward a predetermined end which is timeless and spiritual and toward which every man and indeed the entire race of man unswervingly tend.

To the Puritans’ respect for history can be added that Bradford chose the Bible as his model, thus placing himself beyond criticisms – censure of his work would necessarily imply questioning the Bible itself. That a model a writer chose could stand criticism and was regarded as an unquestionable source was something that was fundamental, for it meant that not even historians would dare to defy it.24 All in all, Bradford created a new historical model of his own that would prevent both criticisms and help shape historiography in New England for the following decades, starting with his first ‘pupil’, Winthrop. In contrast, Cabeza de Vaca, who worked within existing models (the relación, mostly), adapting them to his own circumstances, could not benefit from the reverence for history and those works taking the Bible as their model that Bradford used to forestall criticisms. Bradford, who placed himself within a certain historiographical tradition (Eusebian according to Daly and Augustinian for Gay and Howard), enjoyed the support, validity and acceptance as a historian that working within a recognizable historical tradition provides.25 Cabeza de Vaca presented his writing as the fulfilment of a divine command, trying to hinder criticisms by presenting it as God’s wish that, should one of them survive, he give a written record of their experiences. He stated this several times: ‘porque aunque la esperanza de salir entre ellos tuve, siempre fue muy poca, el cuidado y diligencia siempre fue muy grande de tener particular memoria de todo’ [because although the hope I had of going away from them was always very remote, I always took great care and diligence in keeping memory of everything] and ‘porque si Dios nuestro Señor fuese servido de sacar alguno de nosotros, y traerlo a tierra de cristianos, pudiese dar nuevas y relación de ella’ [because if God Our Lord pleased to take one of us out, and bring him to land of Christians, he could give news and account of it].26 In Cabeza de Vaca’s hinting at God’s will as the reason for their salvation, there is the same sense of performing a service to the community by means of his account that Bradford displays – both of them write an account for the perusal and benefit of the

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community, as God had asked them to do. Cabeza de Vaca’s claims are not too different from Bradford’s: I have been the larger in these things . . . that their children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled in going through these things in the first beginnings; and how God brought them along, notwithstanding all their weaknesses and infirmities. As also that some use may be made hereof in after times by others in such like weighty employments

or what could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity,’ etc.

If Díaz del Castillo thought that he was duty-bound to write his memoirs just as Julius Caesar had done, duty in Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca did not merely come from a historical need for leaving a record of their experiences but it obeyed a more honourable role – fulfilling God’s design.27 Timing and circumstances have also benefited Bradford – there is no other history of Plymouth, no town records of Plymouth were kept till 1632 (in some cases, they were completed with information from Of Plymouth Plantation) and most contemporary documents are unavailable. Thus, all these factors have proved favourable for Of Plymouth Plantation in that it has gone unquestioned and challenged by other documents (either private or public) that may present a different picture from that of Bradford’s. Cabeza de Vaca, on the other hand, was soon challenged by other expeditions (Hernando de Soto’s, Friar Marcos of Nice’s, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s) sent after his that would either corroborate or refute Naufragios. For all the above reasons, scholars have had no problem in attributing to Bradford the role of a historian – ‘Bradford was the historian of a very small colony’, ‘a stillvalued historian of the Separatist movement [whose] love of his people and their land, his integrity, and his generally tolerant attitude are largely responsible for the attraction Plymouth history still holds for the twentieth century’, or ‘the earliest of New England historians’. He has been hailed as ‘a source for our early history’ and his work as ‘one of the most valued sources for our colonial period’, ‘an orderly, lucid, and most instructive book’, ‘a commanding work of literary art, an act of the imagination as well as the memory’, ‘perhaps the greatest work of history writing in early New England’, and ‘the outstanding book about the seventeenth century in America’. He was ‘the very man who was best qualified for the task [of writing the history of Plymouth]’, having ‘the most entire familiarity with the history of the colony, and time enough to insure deliberation and care’, ‘the father of American history’, Of Plymouth Plantation being ‘more often studied and taught than the works of Bradford’s near-contemporaries in

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the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and probably any other Anglo-American text from the same period’, and reprinted in every American literature anthology. All this resulted in that ‘Bradford’s authority was deservedly high, and Bradford had recorded the critical events from which the New England myth was to be constructed’. Moreover, there was ‘the custom of loyal descendants of the Bay Colony, writing during the nineteenth century, to accept the Puritans’ self-appraisal’ and the fact that second-generation New Englanders’ writings did not surpass those of the first, from which they copied extensively.28 In contrast, Cabeza de Vaca’s role as historian remained debatable. Cabeza de Vaca was an eyewitness, a man writing a relación moving between the realms of fiction and autobiography, but not a history, resulting in a hybrid text. Naufragios and the later Comentarios show a combination of events patterned after the relación format organized to reflect well on Cabeza de Vaca’s character. Still, despite its formal adherence to the relación structure, there is room for fictionalization. The addition of his miracles helped to enhance his fame and forestall any possible accusation (at a time when the Inquisición was very powerful in Spain) of his having engaged in pagan or idolatrous practices, as well as reinforcing the parallelisms Cabeza de Vaca encouraged between himself and Christ. The mysterious characterization of Mala Cosa, an alter ego for the devil, helps to reinforce Cabeza de Vaca’s identification with Christ fighting off Satan. The mora de Hornachos’ prophecy, according to which many would perish and the few survivors would be the recipients of many miracles, was designed to give credibility to his account as well as being an element taken from the Byzantine novels that were so popular then. Other literary elements are the shipwrecks and the pirate attack, both written to satisfy the taste for adventures at the time. Yet, by including them instead of restricting his account to hard facts, he lost historical rigour and opened the door to have the whole work regarded as fiction. Because of these difficulties to be taken seriously, Cabeza de Vaca comes closer to Smith than to Bradford. While Bradford was regarded as a true historian, Smith was a forerunner of American historians, but not universally regarded as a historian himself. Similarly, Cabeza de Vaca would need historians like Fernández de Oviedo to pay him credit by asserting the value of his account (historical, geographical, anthropological) and to transform it into historical material for the advancement of a certain colonization model, or agenda, as Las Casas, a most controversial and questioned historian himself, intended by using Naufragios.29 Even in manuscript form, Of Plymouth Plantation was well known for Bradford’s contemporaries, several of whom used it for their own historical accounts, with mixed results. While the beginning of the Puritan Migration prompted Bradford to write a history to vindicate the importance of Plymouth as pioneers of New England, Winthrop had already begun his Journal while on board and decided to continue it once they arrived. Winthrop used several models (the most important one being the Bible), but Bradford’s history was the closest (and thence the most profitable) to his own work. Of Plymouth Plantation would largely influence Winthrop’s writings, although gradually Winthrop abandoned the third-person account and the objectivity of his predecessor to turn his work into a more personal and

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subjective account of his own administration, convinced as he was by his historical relevance.30 Next, Nathaniel Morton, Bradford’s nephew and secretary of the colony, perused Of Plymouth Plantation as a source for New Englands Memoriall. He paraphrased it, adding new materials and deleting some old contents. However, his most important contribution to New England History was in emphasizing their divine mission, following a trend beginning in the 1640s of celebrating their forefathers’ achievements in contrast to the second generation, which was dangerously straying from the original principles and foundational tenets. Later on, Increase Mather borrowed the manuscript of Of Plymouth Plantation from Bradford’s heirs as a source for his history on the Indian wars and while in his hands, his son Cotton Mather also extensively used Of Plymouth Plantation for Magnalia Christi Americana. Afterwards, Samuel Sewall, called the American Pepys for keeping a well-known diary, kept the manuscript until 1728 – why Sewall borrowed it is unknown, though, as his Diary is more personal than most Puritan diaries and is not a historical chronicle. Reverend Thomas Prince, minister of the Old South Church in Boston, was the next one to consult it for his Chronological History of New England, as did Governor Thomas Hutchinson for the second volume of History of the Massachusetts Bay. This perusal and extensive use of Bradford’s book resulted in the fact that ‘to check colonial historians of New England against one another is all too often to check Bradford against Bradford’.31 All these historians treated Bradford as a source for a historical period for which there was no other account or record, thus placing him in the highest regard. The reverse is true for Cabeza de Vaca, who was used by historians (Las Casas and Fernández de Oviedo, most notably) to promote their own agendas on the Spanish colonization of America or who needed an eyewitness source to validate their accounts. Las Casas, whose role as a historian was repeatedly questioned, in his lifetime and afterwards, was the historian who made the most extensive use of Naufragios. Las Casas realized that Naufragios could serve him as a reliable source for his Apologética historia sumaria not only for his depiction of the Native Americans but also to support his defence for a humane treatment for them. Cabeza de Vaca’s description of how he had, rather peacefully, lived among the natives, being regarded as almost one of them, was all that Las Casas needed to advance his view that living peacefully with the Native Americans was desirable and, furthermore, perfectly possible. Not only had Cabeza de Vaca the authority of the eyewitness, but their having a common enemy, Narváez, whom Las Casas profoundly despised and blamed for massacres against Native Americans, was an asset. Las Casas, a promoter of peaceful colonization, found in Naufragios support for this idea and for others about good-natured Native Americans willing to be converted. Although Las Casas was convinced that his own authority came from his personal experience and the primacy of his eye, he found legitimacy in others’ texts to defend his claims. By relying on Naufragios, he was attesting ‘both to the importance he ascribed to Cabeza de Vaca’s experience and to its potential impact in orienting future missionary efforts’.32 Naufragios was used by Fernández de Oviedo and Las Casas, but the fact that both were eyewitnesses and the latter questioned as a serious historian did not help enhance

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Cabeza de Vaca’s historical reputation. Moreover, given the unpopular causes Las Casas promoted, Cabeza de Vaca’s name being associated with the bishop’s might have even had the opposite effect. In contrast, Bradford was used by serious historians as the only source of the origin of Plymouth plantation and revered as a historian. In the eyes of their contemporaries, Cabeza de Vaca was not a historian but an eyewitness whose writings might be useful for professional historians; in contrast, Bradford was not only a worthy historian, but also the historian of Plymouth, unquestioned and untouchable. Even Smith, who comes closer than Bradford to Cabeza de Vaca in terms of education, character, background, experience, and writing, is accepted as a more reputed historian by English historiography than Cabeza de Vaca by Spanish historiography. Actually, Smith’s works were the yardstick against which to measure more reputed historians’ works, even Bradford’s: ‘only . . . Of Plymouth Plantation and the journal kept by John Winthrop . . . have a value for students of the earliest chapters of our history that is at all comparable to that of the works of Smith’. Naufragios, on the other hand, was unfavourably compared to historical works. Even though it was one of the first sources on North America at a time when hardly anything else was known about this area of the New World, this factor was not deemed relevant or worthy enough for its author to be considered a true historian. Given that not much credibility is attached to Naufragios, it is not surprising that he had his next work, a justification of his administration in Río de la Plata, written by another author.33 While historians did not think much of Cabeza de Vaca, other conquistadors certainly regarded him as a reliable source of information. Interest in further exploring the region where Cabeza de Vaca had wandered for 9 years arose as soon as Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were found. Right after Cabeza de Vaca’s return to Spain, a new expedition was launched to go back to the area. Cabeza de Vaca unsuccessfully tried to get himself appointed as Adelantado of this expedition, a post which eventually went to Hernando de Soto. Cabeza de Vaca rejected De Soto’s offer of being his second-incommand, but De Soto was certainly influenced by the stories about that region which Cabeza de Vaca himself had told. He failed to find anything of what Cabeza de Vaca told (or led to believe), but this did not put an end to the interest generated for the area. Friar Marcos of Nice, taking Estebanico with him as guide, searched the area in 1539. That they found nothing of interest – no gold, no trace of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola, no Trail of the Northeast, did not disappoint them. On the contrary, the friar’s makebelieve account encouraged the launch of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition, which unsuccessfully tried to find what Cabeza de Vaca had suggested and what Friar Marcos had asserted. Although heavily questioned by historians, this proves that Cabeza de Vaca’s text was trusted by other conquistadors and by Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain at the time and promoter of these expeditions. To summarize, Of Plymouth Plantation is the most complete account of that period in colonial history – especially because most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents are unavailable. What Bradford wrote, to a very large extent, has become what is known, taught and accepted as what actually happened. On the other hand, Naufragios has been neglected till date both by American and Spanish historiography for reasons of being written in Spanish and not in English and for being the work

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of an eyewitness. Cabeza de Vaca’s situation was not completely different from that of Bradford, but their personal circumstances and the different historiographical traditions to which they belonged resulted in the one being neglected and the other being praised, sometimes on the accounts of the same features. A scarce formal education when it came to the knowledge of the classics, the vindication of the worth of his contribution to the Spanish empire (if only from a descriptive point of view and with no real territorial gain), the insistence on the importance of his role even at the expense of his companions, his choice of ‘I’ over ‘we’, his distancing himself from the failure of the expedition, aggrandizing his own role, not acknowledging his own limitations, advancing his own interests, not using other documents to support his claims – all these considerations prevented Cabeza de Vaca from being taken as a serious historian. Even similar devices had an opposite effect for Cabeza de Vaca than it had for Bradford such as their stylistic simplicity (their plain style) – praised in the case of Bradford for his straightforwardness, scorned in Cabeza de Vaca’s and being taken as a sign of his scarce formal education. Bradford could benefit from the Puritan respect for historical works penned by their forebears and the lack of available sources other than Of Plymouth Plantation. Cabeza de Vaca, in turn, faced Spanish historians’ distrust (if not downright scorn) for eyewitnesses and, while being the first one in describing these territories, he saw how this did not prevent others from amending his testimony – if not questioning it. Whenever his writings have been recovered as part of American letters, Cabeza de Vaca has been included under the label of Chicano literature more often than not, not as a writer of early American letters. This Chicano appropriation of Cabeza de Vaca runs parallel to his fellow conquistador in New Mexico Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s having also been recovered as a Chicano author. Their display of feelings of displacement and alienation, otherness from their countrymen and the Native Americans, their description of the US Southwest, their transformation because of their stay in America, etc. have all contributed to their being regarded as Chicano authors or forerunners of Chicano literature. Yet, this recovery, while acting as a testimony to their current relevance in American literature, is not enough for their being included in the early American literary canon as English-language authors are, who still have a dominant position in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary scene.

Notes 1 E. F. Bradford, ‘Conscious Art in Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation’. New England Quarterly 1, 1/4 (1928): 133. Michael J. Colacurcio, ‘Does American Literature Have a History?’ Early American Literature 13, 1 (1978): 111. J. F. Jameson, ‘The History of Historical Writing in America: The Seventeenth Century.’ The New England Magazine 9, 5 (1891): 648. 2 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison. 1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 46. Paul Zumthor, ‘The Medieval Travel Narrative.’ New Literary History 25, 4 (1994): 810.

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3 Gerassi-Navarro quoted in Carmen V. Vidaurre Arenas, ‘La interacción de diversos tipos textuales en la obra de Álvar Núñez.’ Sincronía (2000), http://fuentes.csh.udg. mx/CUCSH/Sincronia/nunez.htm (accessed 2 November 2006). Margo Glantz, ‘El cuerpo inscrito y el texto escrito o la desnudez como naufragio.’ In Notas y comentarios sobre Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, ed. Margo Glantz (Mexico D.F.: Grijalbo, 1993). http://www.laciudadletrada.com/MargoGlantz/CuerpoMargo.htm (accessed 1 April 2008). Maura, however, attributes the authorship of Comentarios to Cabeza de Vaca himself. See Juan Francisco Maura, El gran burlador de América: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Valencia: Parnaseo, 2008). 4 William T. Pilkington, ‘Epilogue.’ In Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, ed. Cyclone Covey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984). Juan Francisco Maura, ed. Naufragios. By Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. 2nd edition (Madrid: Cátedra, 1996), 11. Barrera quoted in James C. Murray, Spanish Chronicles of the Indies: Sixteenth Century (New York: Twayne, 1994), 88. 5 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 9, 73, 234. Enrique Pupo-Walker, ed. Los Naufragios (Madrid: Castalia, 1992), 86. Enrique Pupo-Walker, ‘Los Naufragios de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: glosa sobre la construcción evasiva del texto.’ http:// www.iacd.oas.org/Interamer/Interamerhtml/azarhtml/az_pupo.htm (accessed 2 November 2006). Alan B. Howard, ‘Art and History in Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation’. William and Mary Quarterly 28, 2 (1971): 138–9. 6 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 46. Robert Daly, ‘William Bradford’s Vision of History.’ American Literature 44, 4 (1973): 562. Kenneth B. Murdock, Literature and Theology in Colonial New England. 1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 80. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios. 1542 (N. p.: El Aleph, 2000), 75. Rose Wilde, ‘Chronicling Life: the Personal Diary and Conceptions of Self and History.’ 19 April 1997. http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/àuniv302/StudentWork/S97/blondie/ main.html (accessed 29 July 2005). 7 Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 97. Luisa López Grigera, ‘Relectura de Relación de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 28 (1999): 922. Vidaurre Arenas, ‘Interacción de tipos textuales.’ Álvaro Félix Bolaños, ‘El subtexto utópico en un relato de naufragio del cronista Fernández de Oviedo.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 121. 8 Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, xxiii, xxvii. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History I: The Settlements. 1934 and 1964 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 275. Quoted in Jameson, ‘History of Historical Writing,’ 649. Michelle Burnham, ‘Merchants, Money, and the Economics of “Plain Style” in William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation’. American Literature 72, 4 (2000): 714. Fernando Beltrán Llavador, De la plantación de Plymouth (León: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de León, 1994), 41. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 4, 5, 7, 9, 144, 145. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 115, 111–2. 9 Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 95. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 34. Maura, Naufragios, 45, 134, 157, 114. Maura, El gran burlador de América, 9. Rolena Adorno, ‘Cómo leer Mala Cosa: Mitos caballerescos y amerindios en Los Naufragios de Cabeza de Vaca.’ In Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana, ed. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan (Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela, 1992), 105. Sylvia Molloy, ‘Formulación y lugar

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10

11 12

13

14 15

16

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del yo en los Naufragios de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.’ Actas del VII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (Rome, 1982): 761. B. W. Ife, ‘The Literary Impact of the New World: Columbus to Carrizales.’ Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 3 (1994–5): 76. Pedro Lastra, ‘Espacios de Álvar Núñez: Las transformaciones de una escritura.’ Revista chilena de literatura 23 (1984): 93–4. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 88 onwards. Richard S. Dunn, ‘John Winthrop Writes His Journal.’ William and Mary Quarterly 41, 2 (1984): 192. Richard S. Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle, ed. The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–49. Abridged edition (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), xii–xiii. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation¸ 77, 86, 78. William T. Davis, ed. Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, 1606–46. 1908. [1946] (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959), 10, 61. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 47. Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print. English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 13. Quoted in Anthony Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum: Text and Experience in the Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas.’ Representations 33 (1991): 150. Thomas Scanlan, Colonial Writing and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 49. Pranzetti in Murray, Spanish Chronicles, 89. Maura, Naufragios, 134. Rolena Adorno, ‘Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, and the Twentieth-Century Reader.’ MLN 103, 2 (1988): 252. Lucía Invernizzi Santa Cruz, ‘Naufragios e infortunios: Discurso que transforma fracasos en triunfos.’ Revista chilena de literatura 29 (1987): 10. Maura, Naufragios, 55, 182, 205. John D. Milligan, ‘The Treatment of an Historical Source’ History and Theory 18, 2 (1979): 184. Jacques Lafaye, Los conquistadores. [Trans. by Elsa Cecilia Frost]. 3rd edition (Mexico D.F and others: Siglo XXI, 1978), 171. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 4. Dunn and Yeandle, Journal of Winthrop, xiii–xiv, xvi. Jameson, ‘History of Historical Writing,’ 648. Howard, ‘Art and History,’ 266. Norman S. Grabo, ‘William Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation’. In Landmarks of American Writing, ed. Hennig Cohen. 1969 (N.p.: Voice of America Forum Series, 1978), 15. Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. 1966 (New York: Vintage, 1968), 46–7. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 3. Burnham, ‘Merchants, Money, and Economics,’ 704–6. Larzer Ziff, ‘The Literary Consequences of Puritanism.’ ELH 30, 3 (1963): 294–5. D. R. Woolf, ‘Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England.’ Renaissance Quarterly 40, 1 (1987): 48. Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 105–7. Cabeza de Vaca, though, also has his defenders and for Covey, in Naufragios he ‘gives an unvarnished, soldierly account of what he went through in the years 1527–37 which leaves much to be inferred – and much is inferrable. He passes up most of his opportunities to dwell on morbidity or his own heroism, fiercely jealous though he is of his honor and tantalizing as is the possibility, to him, of his having received divine favour. He remains the central figure and guiding spirit throughout the epic, even if omitting to mention this role most of the time.’ Similarly, Hodge claims that ‘he seems to have been an honest, modest, and humane man, who underestimated rather than exaggerated the many strange things that came under his notice, if we except the account of his marvellous healings.’ Cyclone Covey, ed. Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 10. Frederick W. Hodge and Theodore H. Lewis, ed. Spanish Explorers In the Southern United States, 1528–43 (Austin, TX: Texas State

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Early Visions and Representations of America Historical Association, 1990), 7. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 5. Lastra, ‘Espacios de Álvar Núñez,’ 93. Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 19. Lafaye, Los conquistadores, 174. Larzer Ziff, ‘Conquest and Recovery in Early Writings from America.’ American Literature 68, 3 (1996): 514. Lewis in Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 87. Lewis in Vidaurre Arenas, ‘Interacción de tipos textuales.’ Murdock, Literature and Theology, 46. Pupo-Walker, Los Naufragios, 87. Maura, Naufragios, 55. Mariah Wade, ‘Go-between: The Roles of Native American Women and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in Southern Texas in the 16th Century.’ The Journal of American Folklore 112, 445 (1999): 332–42. 339. Trinidad Barrera, ed. Naufragios. 1985 (Madrid: Alianza, 2005), 8. Jonathan P. A. Sell, ‘The Rhetoric of Wonder: the Representation of New Worlds in English Renaissance Travel Literature.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Alcalá, September 2002. 207. Murdock, Literature and Theology, 70, 91. Grabo quoted in Beltrán Llavador, Plantación de Plymouth, 16. ‘Review of History of Plymouth Plantation,’ The North American Review 83, 172 (1856): 269–70. 269. Murdock, Literature and Theology, 74, 1–2, 73. David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. 1989. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 18, 29. Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America. (Cambridge and others: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 6, 13. Gay, Loss of Mastery, 53–4. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation¸ 74, 101, 123. Maura, Naufragios, 103. Daly, ‘Bradford’s Vision of History,’ 557. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 3. Quoted in Beltrán Llavador, Plantación de Plymouth, 16. Dunn, ‘Winthrop Writes Journal,’ 196. Daly, ‘Bradford’s Vision of History,’ 557–8. Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, 5, 82. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 46, 62–3. Adorno, ‘Discourses on Colonialism,’ 245. Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, xi. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. 1976. Revised edition (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1995), 34. Murdock, Literature and Theology, 78. Carl Bridenbaugh, ‘Review of Of Plymouth Plantation’. William and Mary Quarterly 10, 2 (1953): 261. Jameson, ‘History of Historical Writing,’ 649. Moses Coit Tyler quoted in John Griffith, ‘Of Plymouth Plantation as a Mercantile Epic.’ Arizona Quarterly 28 (1972): 231. David D. Hall, ed. Puritans in the New World. A Critical Anthology (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3. Malcolm Freiberg, ‘Review of Of Plymouth Plantation’. New England Quarterly 26, 1–4 (1953): 116. ‘Review of History of Plymouth Plantation,’ 269. Moses Coit Tyler quoted in Walter P. Wenska, ‘Bradford’s Two Histories: Pattern and Paradigm in Of Plymouth Plantation’. Early American Literature XIII (1978): 151. David Read, New World, Known World. Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2005), 43. David Laurence, ‘William Bradford’s American Sublime.’ PMLA 102, 1 (1987): 55. Gay, Loss of Mastery, 54. George M. Waller, ed. Puritanism in Early America (N.p.: Heath, 1950), vii. Richard S. Dunn, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Historians of America.’ In Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 209.

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29 Jameson, ‘History of Historical Writing,’ 646. M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo, ‘Leaving the New World, Entering History: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, John Smith and the Problems of Describing the New World.’ RAEI 22 (2009): 115. 30 Daly, ‘Bradford’s Vision of History,’ 562. Wenska, ‘Bradford’s Two Histories,’ 154. Dunn, ‘Winthrop Writes Journal,’ 196. 31 Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, xxviii–xxx. Murdock, Literature and Theology, 94. David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 76. Gay, Loss of Mastery, 54. 32 Rolena Adorno, ‘The Discursive Encounter of Spain and America: The Authority of Eyewitness Testimony in the Writing of History.’ William and Mary Quarterly 49, 2 (1992): 210, 222, 225. Roberto Ferrando, ed. Naufragios y comentarios. 1984. 3rd edition (Madrid: Historia 16, 1985), 11. Pagden, ‘Ius et Factum,’ 152. 33 Wesley Frank Craven. ‘A New Edition of the Works of John Smith.’ William and Mary Quarterly 29, 3 (1972): 479–80.

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Conclusions Inflamed by Milton, we lie in Mather’s teeth, Good little Pilgrims all, in God’s name napalm the devil’s territories, our epic dream of Pax Americana. Stan Smith: “Robert Lowell dreams the future, Boston, 1968” Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford set off for America from different countries, in different centuries and with different ideas about both these largely unexplored territories and the role they were to play. Once there, their experiences dramatically differed. Cabeza de Vaca’s decade in America was one of starvation, slavery and ultimately of religious leadership among the Native Americans. Bradford was the leader of a small community that derived strength and comfort from the inner conviction that they had been called to fulfil a divine role of utmost importance in world history. When they took upon themselves the task of writing about their experiences, once again their circumstances differed – Cabeza de Vaca was pursuing rewards for his sufferings and seeking a new royal appointment. He had not conquered new territories for the already vast Spanish empire, but he felt his description of America (his purely literary possession of it) entitled him to such honours. As governor of a small plantation, he was apprehensive of being overtaken in fame and territory by a much larger community of newly arrived Puritans, and therefore, Bradford wrote with the goal of keeping a record of their own achievements as pioneers of English colonization in New England. In conveying their experiences in national terms, we can see the challenge that the discovery and exploration of America posed for both Spaniards’ and Englishmen’s respective understanding of their own national identity. While in Spain, the label ‘Spaniard’ had been up to then used to include any inhabitant of Spain (i.e. Christians, Jews and Muslims) and it was only being a Christian that was valuable, the expansion of the empire gave them a deeprooted feeling of being Spanish. In England, their expanding borders gave them a new sense of importance, leaving behind their former isolation and sense of being a secondrate nation. One wrote a relación full of hard-to-believe elements, very fitting to the literary taste of his times; the other, a historical chronicle. But going beyond this, we can see how Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford understood America in similar terms. Both saw the realities of America filtered by their experiences – terrible at first, promising later, feeling God’s hand at work almost on a daily basis. It is a feature of American travel narratives that they show the development from the traveller’s preconceived ideas to his coming to terms with the new reality. Both Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford tried to communicate to their contemporaries their experiences and to receive, in turn, their readers’ understanding and comprehension. They also sought to promote future

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colonization, but while Cabeza de Vaca wanted to achieve this as Adelantado of a new expedition to the area, Bradford exclusively wanted his Pilgrim fellows to come, not just anybody. Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford became examples for subsequent writers who would describe these same regions. Unfortunately, others who followed in their footsteps would be more successful than they, getting all the glory and attention and in the process obscuring Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s respective contributions to American history and letters. De Soto’s expedition became far more popular than Narváez’s and the Pilgrim Fathers became second to the better-known Massachusetts Bay Colony, up to the extent that Bradford is now regarded as a Puritan, a classification he would have abhorred. However, although their merits have been somehow overshadowed, Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford’s Pilgrims continue to haunt the popular imagination. Interest in Cabeza de Vaca’s adventure has not waned ever since Naufragios was first published and as of recently, his adventures have inspired musical compositions, a film (Cabeza de Vaca by Nicolás Echevarría [1993]), poems, several novels, a dramatic play and several books for children. Revival of interest has had, as a side effect, that ‘in the United States, the state historical societies of Florida, Texas, and the U.S. southwest avidly sought evidence to the effect (or simply claimed) that “Cabeza de Vaca slept here.” ’1 Bradford, despite his Englishness, laid the foundation for American literature and identity, providing future generations with a foundational myth, far beyond his aspiration of leaving an account for younger Plymouth people to be proud of their ancestors. The bicentenary of the Pilgrims’ landing in 1820 marked the beginning of the appropriation of this event for the nation as a whole, not just for New Englanders. The Pilgrims’ arrival at the New World became one of America’s founding myths and has helped to shape the American character decisively. It has also had innumerable versions, including its dramatized (with scarce historical accuracy) one in a film starring Spencer Tracy (Plymouth Adventure [1952]), and, more recently, in The Simpsons episode ‘The Wettest Stories Ever Told’ (17X18; first aired on 23 April 2006). The Pilgrims’ story is far from being forgotten, although the versions of all myths are likely to undergo changes to continue to appeal to modern sensibilities and values. The Pilgrim Fathers have been used for a number of different agendas, some of them involving a radical and incorrect interpretation of their ideas. For instance, ‘today the Pilgrim Fathers symbolize the solid, conservative American Establishment; … in their own context they were left-wing individualists discarding all ecclesiastical authority not scripturally sanctioned’. They have been put to so many uses, that sometimes they have been misleadingly presented ‘and a people who liked their liquor hard and straight have even been held responsible for prohibition’! The current relevance of Of Plymouth Plantation has been perceived in a number of political situations in recent American history, such as the unrest and changes of the sixties or George W. Bush’s administration’s policies.2 Cabeza de Vaca was the only Spanish conquistador in present-day United States to live among the Native Americans as an equal; moreover, the close relationship he established with them was not to be repeated by any other Spaniard. While Cabeza de Vaca’s story has often been reduced to a romantic tale of a conquistador in search for

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El Dorado, it is far from it. No other Spaniard could abandon his conquistador mental framework so as to envision the Native Americans as anything other than potential slaves. As a result, ‘as a literary hero, Cabeza de Vaca stands above and beyond the common range of human experience. He overcomes incredible difficulties to become a heroic figure within two distinct cultures’. The influence of Naufragios can be perceived in later travel accounts which emphasized the fantastic elements or put forward social criticism and which eventually developed into fictional travel narratives.3 Bradford was a member of the first group of permanent English settlers in America for an extended period of time and after whom subsequent writers modelled their writings, with Winthrop and his nephew, Nathaniel Morton, being but the first ones of a string of followers. Bradford’s literary impact resonates through American literature: like Gatsby, Bradford in the ‘Second Book’ is engaged in a quest for meaning, the writing of that book of his history is a retrospective search for significant order. In this he anticipates other notable attempts to puzzle the meaning of the past: Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels culminating in the nostalgic evocation of lost possibilities that is The Deerslayer; Hawthorne’s and Faulkner’s intense broodings over their respective regional histories; Adams’ Education, which concludes at one point: ‘In plain words, Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.’4

While Bradford’s historical credibility has never been questioned, Cabeza de Vaca’s account was suspected almost from the very beginning of containing large doses of fantasy. This perception of the credibility of the one and the other has inevitably tainted the literary and historical stature of their respective works and their reputations as reliable sources for a better understanding of the English and Spanish exploration and colonization of America, respectively. Although Naufragios has often been treated as a children’s book, Cabeza de Vaca should be fully acknowledged as a historical authority and the ethnographical value of his work ascertained. Often, when he has been recovered, because Chicanos would oppose his role of conquistador (or wannabe conquistador), he has been identified as a Chicano to make his inclusion somehow more palatable, a process analogous to the way in which Puritans have been made more to the liking of contemporary audiences. Moreover, Cabeza de Vaca has been regarded as a precursor of multiculturalism because of his prolonged stay among the Native Americans.5 Cabeza de Vaca’s identification as a Chicano may respond to the circumstance that ‘minorities have a complicated relation to a Puritan past, especially since we have not taught viable alternatives like pre-Columbian history or even Spanish colonialism. For better or worse, schooling and cultural norms have made the Puritans theirs’. This makes the use of a figure such as Cabeza de Vaca necessary to counteract this Puritan prominence; as Adorno points out, ‘the Mexican-American interest in the Cabeza de Vaca heritage has read the account for its capacity to dramatize the positions of mediation, marginalization, liminality, and multilingualism that so commonly characterize immigrant minority experience today’. Cabeza de Vaca’s neglect in US history and literature has also been taken to a representational and pictorial level – ‘the

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scenes that are evoked at this juncture in the Relación ought to have been the subjects of some of America’s greatest historic art; had they taken place in New England they probably would be’. This telling omission stands in marked contrast to the representation of the Pilgrim landing at the frescos at the Capitol Rotunda, for ‘the scene with which Americans are most familiar as cultural icon pictures a small band of dour Pilgrims on a rocky beach’. In the United States, as Naufragios was written in Spanish and long before the first English exploration voyages, it was considered as separate and unnecessary for the study of genuine American literature. But even in Spain has Cabeza de Vaca been neglected from both a scholarly and popular perspective and there are no statues commemorating him. In his native country, Naufragios has often been read as children’s literature or as an adventure story, obscuring the importance of his assessment of America and his anthropological account of the several Native American groups he met.6 Because Cabeza de Vaca, as much as Bradford, was a pioneer in American letters in first describing these territories, he should be acknowledged and included among America’s foundational myths. His inclination to present himself as a man worthy to be rewarded despite the failure of the expedition hurt his historical reputation. However, his making of the Southwest of the United States a place where miracles happened and great riches abounded opened the way for the mythologizing of America as a special place, which later the Pilgrims and the Puritans would take on to erect America as a divinely appointed place for providential history to unfold and serve as a beacon for the rest of the world. If we firmly establish Cabeza de Vaca in the origins of Early American literature, by having Cabeza de Vaca alongside John Smith and Bradford in American letters, we would be able to perceive a number of threads underlying all these texts that have passed along to later literary works. We could see a continuum of topics and ideas in all of early American literature: in Cabeza de Vaca as much as in later Puritan texts, we see the belief of America as a special place, where divinely appointed occurrences take place, for which God was to be profusely thanked. Although the Pilgrims and the Puritans have often been credited with the interpretation of America in religious terms, already Cabeza de Vaca had perceived America in those lines, constantly feeling God’s presence in his daily life. Also, Cabeza de Vaca would come across as a forerunner of such a genuine American genre as the captivity narrative. The comparison between Bradford and Cabeza de Vaca is all the most pertinent because of the prominent and exclusive presence of the Pilgrims in present-day United States society. Though other settlements rivalled with New England in the colonial period, ‘the society, culture, and religion on New England have been seen as the foundation for many American values, and even as the source of the American “identity.” ’ Because ‘American history begins in the seventeenth century, it looks back to no ancient racial stock, no medieval heritage, no lineage of traditions shrouded in a dim and remote past’, the New England antecedents have been mythologized, with the Pilgrim Fathers being the pioneers not only in going to America but also in American history, letters, folklore, mythology, traditions, etc. It is about time that Cabeza de Vaca’s valuable contribution was better appreciated. One way or the other, Cabeza de Vaca’s and Bradford’s influence transcends that of colonial literature syllabi, bringing

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them back to the twenty-first century very much alive. A great deal has yet to be done in colonial studies, especially when it comes to colonial studies from a multinational point of view. All pieces must be put together so as to form a complete whole, finally having conquistadors and Pilgrims side by side.7

Notes 1 El largo atardecer del caminante (1992) by Abel Posse, Plus Ultra: Life and Times of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (2001) by Alfred Rodriguez, Cabeza de Vaca: El primer blanco en el Oeste by Miguel Álvarez (1999), and Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America (2006) by Paul Schneider. Conquistador in Chains: Cabeza de Vaca and the Indians of the Americas by David A. Howard (1997), Camilla Campbell’s Galleons Sail Westward, Frank G. Slaughter’s Apalachee Gold, and Jeannette Mirsky’s The Gentle Conquistadors. Naufragios de Alvar Nuñez o La herida del otro by José Sanchis Sinisterra. Rolena Adorno, ‘Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: Relación’. Proceedings of the Early Ibero-Anglo Americanist Summit http://www. mith2.umd.edu/summit/Proceedings/Adorno2.htm (accessed 6 March 2008). 2 Joseph A. Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 38. Ann Uhry Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origins (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 1999), 282. Samuel Eliot Morison, ‘Those Misunderstood Puritans.’ http://www.revisionisthistory.org/puritan1.html (accessed 2 November 2005). John J. Fritscher, ‘The Sensibility and Conscious Style of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation’. Bucknell Review 17 (1969): 80–9. 3 David Bost, ‘The Naufragios of Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca: A Case of Historical Romance.’ South Eastern Latin Americanist 27, 3 (1983): 7. Carmen V. Vidaurre Arenas, ‘La interacción de diversos tipos textuales en la obra de Álvar Núñez.’ Sincronía (2000). 4 Walter P. Wenska, ‘Bradford’s Two Histories: Pattern and Paradigm in Of Plymouth Plantation’. Early American Literature XIII (1978): 158. 5 Carreño in Juan Francisco Maura, El gran burlador de América: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Valencia: Parnaseo, 2008), 245. 6 José F. Aranda, Jr., ‘Common Ground on Different Borders: A Comparative Study of Chicano/a and Puritan Writers.’ In Teaching the Literatures of Early America, ed. Carla Mulford (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1999), 298. Adorno, ‘Relación’. Dan Flores, ‘The Environmental History of De Vaca’s Wonderous Journey.’ http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/further_study/ cdv_environmental_history.pdf (accessed 4 March 2008). Andrew Wiget, ‘Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History.’ American Literary History 3, 2 (1991): 211. Maura, Gran burlador, 10. 7 David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), vii–viii. Richard M. Dorson, ‘A Theory for American Folklore.’ Journal of American Folklore 72, 285 (1959): 203.

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Index Acosta, (Friar) José de 34, 37, 59, 65–6, 70, 76 Adventurers see Merchant Adventurers Altham, Emmanuel 117, 132–3, 140 Amadis of Gaul (Amadís de Gaula) 29, 40, 57, 147 America 1 see also Bradford, William; Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez; Naufragios; Of Plymouth Plantation; Pilgrims city upon a hill xi, xiv, 7, 71 classical influence ix, xv, 52, 59, 79–80 dangers in 8, 67–8, 99–100, 125 desert 138–9 differing interpretations ix–x, xiv–xv, 2, 8, 44, 51, 55, 57, 79–80 emptiness 67, 74, 79 and Europe 65–6, 80, 90, 96 and expectations ix, xv, 23, 79, 89 financial prospects 66–7 folktales and legends in 15, 51–3, 80 freedom xv, 57, 64 garden 127, 138–40 golden age 52, 58–60 hell 70–1, 80 monsters in 65 moral place 9, 67, 137 myths in 15, 51–3, 68, 79–80 paradise 51, 57–9, 61, 79–80, 124, 126, 130, 137, 140 pilgrimage 12 Promised Land 137 religious shelter xv, 8, 11, 51, 80, 112, 137, 139–40 special place ix, 170 utopia 51, 63–4, 67 virgin land 51, 61–2 weather 136 wilderness 67, 79, 124, 126–7, 137–40 as woman 61–2, 66

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Bible

ix, 54–5, 70, 136, 150, 156, 158 see also Pilgrims influence on perceptions of America 12–13, 51–2, 57–8, 137–9 see also America Bradford Patent 78 Bradford, William ix, xii–xiii, xv, 78–9, 122, 124 see also Of Plymouth Plantation as author 12, 26, 80, 153 biography ix–x, 11, 132, 149–51 description of America 89–91, 127, 130, 140 expectations about America 89, 91, 112, 167 and God xiii, 124–7, 140–1, 149–50, 157, 167 historical reputation xv, 41–2, 141, 147–8, 150, 155, 157–61, 169 history writing xiii, 141, 148–9, 152–4, 156, 158, 167 later influence xv, 140 sources 154 and writing 42, 141, 152,156–7 Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez ix, xii–xiii, 4, 12, 28, 33, 36, 40, 90–2, 103, 106 see also Naufragios as author 12, 14, 23, 34, 76, 80, 95–6 biography ix–x, xiv, 5, 149, 154, 161 as a Chicano 161, 169 Christ-like figure 150–1, 158 conquistador xv, 89, 94–5, 154 description of America 89–90, 93–5, 137, 149 expectations about America 89, 91, 94, 112, 167 gender roles 92, 154 and God xiii, 98, 100, 140–1, 156–7, 167, 170

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Index

historical reputation xv, 26, 41–2, 141, 147–8, 150, 158–61, 169–70 history writing xiii, 154, 167 later career 106, 148, 152 later influence xv, 140, 167 literary conquest of America 79, 95, 109, 112, 154, 161, 167 and Narváez 150, 152–3 see also Narváez, Pánfilo de and Native Americans x, xiv, 93–5, 98–9, 109, 112, 141, 149, 168–9 see also Native Americans Naufragios y Comentarios ix, 108–9, 147–8, 152, 158, 160, 162n. 3 roles in America x, xv, 5, 98, 109, 154, 167 self-defense 148, 152, 154 sources 154 treasurer 4, 95, 148–9 use of ‘I’ 150–2, 161 veracity and exaggeration 153–5 and writing 28–30, 42, 95, 141, 149–51, 156 Cabot, John 9, 53 Cape Cod 2, 77, 118, 129 Cartier, Jacques 70–1 expedition 59 Castillo, Alonso del 91, 102–3, 105, 153 Catholic monarchs 6, 33, 57, 68, 140 see also Ferdinand; Isabella Charles I (King of England) 136 Charles V of Germany (Charles I of Spain) 31, 37, 41, 73, 93, 95, 118, 148, 151 chivalric romances 39–40, 105 Colón, Cristóbal see Columbus, Christopher Columbus, Christopher (Colón, Cristóbal) ix–x, xii, 1–6, 51, 53–5, 57–8, 62, 65, 67–8, 74, 80, 92, 112 as author 14–15, 24, 27, 33 Cortés, Hernán (Hernando) 3–4, 14, 24, 29–32, 34, 37–8, 65, 68, 93–4, 96, 102, 148 cartas de relación 4, 13, 15, 30–1, 43, 148

Early Visions.indb 192

Cotton, John 7, 69, 74 Cushman, Robert 12, 67, 74 De Soto, Hernando 90, 105–8, 110, 112, 160 see also Elvas, Hidalgo de; Vega, Garcilaso de la expedition 25, 92, 105–9, 140, 157, 160, 167 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 3, 13–14, 28–9, 31, 33–41, 43–4, 57, 148, 151, 157 Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España 24, 29–31, 43 and historians 25 Discovery of America xv, 3, 13–15, 23, 54–5, 57, 63–4, 68, 70, 140 see also America and Bible ix see also Bible in England 5–6, 8, 10 importance ix, 1–2, 12, 16 reconsideration of classical writers ix Dorado, El 10, 53, 169 Dorantes, Andrés 90–1, 102–3, 105–6, 153 Drake, Francis 10, 15, 75 Elizabeth I (Queen of England) 9–11, 15, 27, 53, 61, 68, 73, 75–6, 117 Elvas, Hidalgo de (Gentleman of Elvas) xiv, 25, 106–8, 140 True Relation xiv, 25, 92, 106–8, 111, 140 encomienda xv, 4, 41, 79, 89 England, God’s chosen nation 5–6 insularity and sense of inferiority 5–7, 41, 167 national identity 5–6, 167 overpopulation fears 7, 11 Estebanico 90, 105, 153, 160 eyewitnesses 23 criticisms 23–4, 27–8 and historians’ works xiv–xv, 23, 27, 31, 34–6, 39, 43–4, 134, 154–5, 161 motivations 28–30, 34 shortcomings 27–31, 38, 40, 43 writing strategies xv, 38, 40, 44

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Index Ferdinand (King) 68 see also Catholic monarchs Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo 2, 11, 26–7, 31, 34–44, 52, 55, 65, 92, 102, 140, 149, 153–4, 159 see also Pliny and Cabeza de Vaca 89, 102–5, 109–10, 140, 148, 158 Historia general y natural de las Indias xiv, 13, 26, 28, 39–40, 91–2, 149, 153 and the Narváez expedition 76–7, 97–8, 102–4 Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias xiv, 26, 28, 38, 91 Florida xv, 4–5, 90–3, 106–8, 110–12, 140 see also Elvas, Hidalgo de; Naufragios; Vega, Garcilaso de la Gentleman of Elvas see Elvas, Hidalgo de Gilbert, (Sir) Humphrey 9, 11, 15, 76, 117 gold 3–4, 10–11, 63, 67, 75, 97–9, 102, 105–6, 108, 111–12, 120, 126, 154, 160 see also Naufragios Gorges, Sir Ferdinando 118, 135 Great Migration see Puritan Migration Guiana 11, 53, 61–2, 73, 137 Hakluyt, Richard (the elder) 10–11, 13 Hakluyt, Richard (the younger) 6, 11, 13, 15, 24, 26–7, 42, 53, 61, 64, 102, 152–3 Discourse of Western Planting, A 6, 8 Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, The 6, 63 Virginia Richly Valued 63 Harriot, Thomas 16, 35, 42–3, 134 Henry VII (King of England) 7, 9 Henry VIII (King of England) 9, 15 Hernández, Pero (Pedro) 148, 152 Higginson, Francis 29, 34, 37–8, 69, 135 historians, against eyewitnesses 23–4, 26–7, 41 superiority over eyewitnesses 25, 44 see also eyewitnesses

Early Visions.indb 193

193

Isabella (Queen) 62, 75 see also Catholic monarchs James I (King of England) 27, 77, 131 Jamestown xii, 10, 16, 68, 119–20 see also Smith, John 1622 massacre 63, 73, 133 Joint Report 26, 41, 91–2, 105, 150–1, 154 see also Naufragios Josselyn, John 36, 55, 135–6, 141 Juana I (Queen of Spain) 30 Julius Caesar 30, 38, 157 Las Casas, Friar Bartolomé de 13, 27–8, 30–1, 34, 36–8, 41–3, 58, 73, 92, 154, 158–60 Apologética historia sumaria 28 Brevísima relación 41–2 Historia de las Indias 37 Léry, Jean de 55, 63, 151 López de Gómara, Francisco 1, 4, 12, 29–35, 43, 65, 148 Historia general de las Indias 30, 43 Martyr of Anghiera, Peter 1, 13, 28, 35, 43, 52, 59, 64 Mather, Cotton 2, 32, 69, 139, 149, 159 Magnalia Christi Americana 2, 32, 69, 139, 149, 159 Mayflower Compact 77–8 Mede, Joseph 70–1 Merchant Adventurers 11, 77–8, 89, 122, 132 More, Sir Thomas 63, 74 Utopia 60, 63, 102 Morton, Nathaniel 159, 169 Morton, Thomas xii, 70, 117, 130–1, 140, 152 New English Canaan 117, 130–1, 138 Mourt’s Relation 78, 117, 124, 128–9, 154 Narváez, Pánfilo de 4–5, 26, 76, 91, 93, 96–8, 103, 108, 150, 159 see also Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez; Naufragios expedition 4, 76, 92–3, 97–8, 111–12, 148, 167

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194

Index

Native Americans ix–x, 1, 3, 5, 16, 26, 28, 41, 54, 58, 60, 62, 67, 71, 73, 78, 92–3, 98, 103–4, 118–19, 124–5, 127, 130, 132, 140–1, 159, 161, 169 see also Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez; Naufragios; Of Plymouth Plantation; Puritans agricultural techniques 62–3, 74–5, 78, 99, 107, 130 and Cabeza de Vaca xiv, 91–2, 98, 150–1, 153, 159 cannibalism 95, 101 comparison to Europeans 65 hospitality 74, 111 land use 62–3, 78 language constraints 58, 74 origins 65 and Pilgrims 12 religious conversion xiv, 3, 7–8, 13, 28, 62, 75–6, 79, 93, 95, 106, 109, 159 rights 3, 73, 101 sexuality 62 social integration 7, 75, 159 submission to Europeans 75, 132 and trade 63, 102, 118 visions of 60–1 women 65 Naufragios ix, xiv, 5, 93, 107 see also Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez America: negative description of 89–90, 93, 95, 97–101, 109 America: positive description of 90, 93, 96–9, 102 America: religious interpretation of 97 appeals to readers’ imagination 89–90, 156 cannibalism 101 as captivity narrative 98, 100, 170 end xiv, 98, 101, 103, 105 fantastic elements in 141, 153, 158, 167 genre 95, 141, 156, 158, 167 God’s presence xiii gold 89

Early Visions.indb 194

as history xv, 140, 148, 159–60 hunger in 100–1 impact 159, 169 as literature 148, 158, 167 miracles 153, 158, 170 neglect x, 170 omissions 90, 92, 103, 106, 108, 111, 153, 155–6 publishing history 147–8 style 152–3, 161 taking possession 76 veracity 101 Nice, Friar Marcos of (Friar Marcos de Niza) 160 expedition 53, 90, 157, 160 Niza, Marcos de see Nice, Friar Marcos of Norumbega 53, 119 Of Plymouth Plantation ix, xii, xiv, 11, 15, 90, 112, 128, 130, 147, 150 see also Bradford, William America 123–8, 130, 138 food in 128 God’s presence xiii historical consideration xv, 117, 147, 157–8 impact 168–9 as literature 147 and Native Americans 124 natural phenomena 125 publishing history and circulation 26, 129, 147, 155, 158–9 Second Book x, 141, 169 sources 158–9 style 129 taking possession 78 Ortiz, Juan xiv, 92, 108–9 Oviedo, Lope de xiv, 153 Peirce, John 77 First Peirce Patent 77 Second Peirce Patent 77–8 Pérez de Villagrá, Gaspar see Villagrá, Gaspar Pérez de Philip II (King of Spain) 71–2 Pilgrim Fathers see Pilgrims

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Index Pilgrims

x, xiii, 1, 11–12, 16, 63, 77–8, 91, 112, 117, 119, 123–5, 127–30, 132, 136–7, 140, 147, 150, 167, 170–1 see also Of Plymouth Plantation biblical parallelisms 78, 89, 124–5 cultural impact 167, 169–70 in England 11, 89, 123 expectations about America 89, 123–4 misidentification with Puritans 168 name 12 in the Netherlands 11 Separatist beliefs 11, 13 travel negotiations 11–12 see also Merchant Adventurers; Pierce, John vision of America 57, 126 Pizarro, Francisco 25, 96 conquest of Peru 34 Pliny (the Elder) 24, 35, 38, 52, 55, 136, 150 influence on Fernández de Oviedo 13, 35, 38–9, 41 Plymouth (Plymouth Plantation) xi, 117, 119, 122–3, 130–3, 141, 157–8, 160, 167 see also Of Plymouth Plantation Pocahontas 26, 42, 68, 115n. 38 Polo, Marco 26, 33 Ponce de León, Juan 3, 26, 53, 92–3 Pory, John 117, 131–2, 140 Prince, Thomas 26, 159 Purchas, Samuel 12, 24, 26, 42, 70, 73, 102, 118 Puritan Migration (Great Migration) 9, 52, 71, 123, 158 Puritans xi, xiii, 1, 140, 167, 170 description of America 90, 127, 134–7 and Native Americans 155 reverence for authorities 155 reverence for History 155–6, 161 reverence for printed accounts 134, 155 vision of America 57, 126–7, 130, 137 Quiroga, Rodrigo de 54, 63, 68 Quiroga, Vasco de 60, 63

Early Visions.indb 195

195

Raleigh, Sir Walter 6, 9–10, 12, 27–8, 32, 61–2, 64, 66–7, 69, 73–4, 76, 137, 151, 154 Rastell, John 56, 63 Reconquista x, xiii–xiv, 3, 41, 70, 140 Requerimiento 72, 75, 95 Roanoke 10, 16, 61, 118 Sagadahoc colony 117–19, 121, 133 Sewall, Samuel 71, 159 Smith, John xii–xiii, 8, 10, 12, 16, 26, 28–30, 33, 36–40, 42–4, 62, 68, 91, 119–24, 136, 147–8, 151–4, 158, 160, 170 Advertisements for the Inexperienced Planters of New England (Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England) xiv, 30, 37, 117 as author 15, 111, 140 Description of New England, A xiv, 16, 111, 117 General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Islands, The 37, 40 Map of Virginia, A 16, 36, 40 New Englands Trials 16, 133 Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia, The 16 True Relation 16, 68 Soto, Hernando de see De Soto, Hernando Strabo 53, 55, 58 taking possession xv, 71–2 see also Naufragios; Of Plymouth Plantation for Cabeza de Vaca 76 in England xv, 72–7, 79 for the Pilgrims 78–9 in Spain xv, 72–7, 79 Vázquez de Coronado, Francisco expedition 29, 157, 160 Vega, Garcilaso de la (el Inca) 3, 14, 25–6, 57, 61, 92, 109–11, 140 La Florida del Inca xiv, 25, 92, 109

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196

Index

Vespucci, Amerigo 1, 28, 54, 59, 63 Villagrá, Gaspar Pérez de xii–xiii, 29–30, 39, 161 Historia de la Nueva México xii, 29 Virginia xi, 2, 10–11, 16, 29, 36, 39–40, 61, 63–4, 66, 68, 70, 73–4, 79, 112, 119, 131, 133 see also Jamestown; Smith, John Northern Virginia (New England; North Virginia) 77, 119

Early Visions.indb 196

Williams, Roger xii, 73 Winslow, Edward 117, 129 Good Newes from New England 117 Winthrop, John xiii, 66, 74, 123, 134, 137, 151–2, 156, 158–60, 169 Journal 124, 151–2, 158–60 Winthrop, John, Jr 134–5, 139 Wood, William 23, 33, 36, 44, 133 New England’s Prospect 23, 133

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