The first accounts of Native Americans, the native peoples of the Americas, that were widely read in the West were those of Columbus in 1493 and Amerigo Vespucci in 1505. Vespucci’s account was so well known that the new land was called America, after his Latin name, Americus.
Columbus in his letter of 1493, speaking about the Taino people of the Caribbean:
all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them
They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they fitted to use them. This is not because they are not well built and of handsome stature, but because they are very marvellously timorous… It is true that, after they have been reassured and have lost this fear, they are so guileless and so generous with all that they possess, that no one would believe it who has not seen it.
They do not hold any creed nor are they idolaters; but they all believe that power and good are in the heavens
I have not been able to learn if they hold private property; it seemed to me to be that all took a share in whatever any one had, especially of eatable things.
an island “Carib”, … is inhabited by a people who are regarded in all the islands as very fierce and who eat human flesh.
He is probably guessing about their religion and ideas of property. He did not see any cannibalism first-hand, but is repeating what the Tainos said about their enemies.
Amerigo Vespucci in “Mundus Novus” (1505) on the Tupi people of the coast of Brazil:
All of both sexes go about naked … just as they spring from their mothers’ wombs…
all things are held in common. They live together without king, without government, and each is his own master. They marry as many wives as they please; and son cohabits with mother, brother with sister, male cousin with female, and any man with the first woman he meets. They dissolve their marriages as often as they please, and observe no sort of law with respect to them. Beyond the fact that they have no church, no religion and are not idolaters, what more can I say? They live according to nature…
human flesh is a common article of diet with them. Nay be the more assured of this fact because the father has already been seen to eat children and wife…
The women as I have said go about naked and are very libidinous;
They live 150 years.
This is overblown at best. For example, the Tupi did not eat human flesh as everyday food but practised ritual cannibalism – to honour the dead, to gain the courage of an enemy fallen in battle.
The stereotype of Native Americans as “savages”, noble or otherwise, comes from Columbus and Vespucci. The people they saw were hardly what the West would now call “primitives” or hunter-gatherers. They were farmers. They had towns. Instead they seemed “savage” because they were seen through a Eurocentric deficiency model.
Source: Berkhofer, Robert F., “The White Man’s Indian” (1979).
See also:
- The Spanish
- Tainos
- The term “Indian”
- Native Americans
- Examples of the deficiency model
“They marry as many wives as they please”
‘S what I’m talkin’ about! 🙂
“They live according to nature…”
Can’t say I disagree…
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The reason they called them savages was so that they could have “a reason” to kill them.
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In the letter Columbus writes in 1493 describing the Tainos, it shows how wicked his agenda is. And the disdain he has for these people. The Tainos were more human civilized then he was. It shows what an animal he was.
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@ Jess
Exactly. If they were seen as human, then the Europeans would have had to deal with their pesky conscience. The Europeans were never going to admit that they were the true savages.
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Sad, sad indeed! First, the Europeans had to describe them in terms of being worthy of being enslaved or killed. Nonetheless, history certainly tells us that those butchering henchmen Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vesucci were peering through distorted lens when describing the Taino people.
This is what made it all the more easy to commit genocide.
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The description of Tupis living/relatiionship looks eerily similar to what i suppose outsider would describe Mosuo culture. Were Tupi indeed similar or is that false impression?
Abagond, when you say it is overblown do you mean the government/cannibalism or also their relationship culture?
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@ TMK
The stuff on cannibalism, incest and life expectancy do not fit what we know now. I said “overblown at best” because some of it could just be flat-out made up: scholars are unsure how much of “Mundus Novus” comes from Vespucci himself.
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Right, these descriptions paved the way for genocide, slavery, etc.
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@abagond
Heh, i missed the 150 years.
By incest you mean the partt where he writes about cohabitation? I have read it differently – as i mentioned above, it reminded me of Mosuo (south-west China) . I am not sure if you are familiar with them, but their famly structure is very different, basically, the live in matrilinear households – the household consist of oldest woman and her brothers, her daughters and sons, and they live together despite having intmate relationship outside (the famous walking marriage).
The second paragraph looks to me exactly as someone from our culture would describe something like that at least at first glance. So i have read >cohabit< as live together in one house, but perhaps it means what you said.
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This is a well written post.
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It’s so shameful they will always be described as nobel savages or blood thirsty savages. The fact that they casn’t be seen as just human.
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Mother earth rewards you with long simple lives if you follow and respect Nature. These people did that and Columbus and Vespucci saw this and hated.
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[…] The first accounts of Native Americans, the native peoples of the Americas, that were widely read in the West were those of Columbus in 1493 and Amerigo Vespucci in 1505. Vespucci's account was so … […]
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[…] RE-BLOGGED FROM: https://abagond.wordpress.com […]
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And things have not changed with the european , what are their descriptions of us? And this excuses hem to exercise monstrous acts against us just like in the Trayvon Martin murder, he was a thug that, “deserved” to die.
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Reblogged this on Consult your Life and commented:
Reblog from
SUPPORT Agabond
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[…] Reblogged from Abagond: […]
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Now do you see why our Native American friends refuse to acknowledge Thanksgiving and have declared November 28th “The National Day of Mourning? a writer stated it well when he wrote” it is day to recall the genocide experienced by American native population at the hands of settlers and pilgrims. ” To this I say more power to them. I also thank native americans for re-educating us about the lies and myths that have been passed through time lies and myths whites told about the early days of settlement in America.
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It is utterly the most beautiful dream that the white ….. never set foot outside of Europe.
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@Abagond
Nice post. How about a future post on how Caribbean peoples resisted European conquest throughout the archipelago? It really took centuries before Europeans (Spanish, French, Dutch, British, etc.) truly subjugated all of the region. The ‘Caribs’ and Garifuna would be interesting to study.
The Spanish may have established a foothold and killed most of the people living in the Greater Antilles, but the Lesser Antilles held out much longer.
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The Description of Vespucci is plagiarized from columbuses the same way All Other Europeans Plaguarized them
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they weren’t savages, but they did eat people. lol, okaaaaaayyyyyy
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