A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America 0754607798, 9780754607793

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
1 The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World
Columbus: First Contact with American Animals
The Letters of the Physicians
Vespucci
Pinzón and a Curious Animal
Cabral and the ‘Land of the Parrots’
Fernández de Enciso and Roger Barlow: Geography, Animals and Empire
The Animals of Patagonia
2 Soldiers and Amerindians
Hernán Cortés and the Menagerie of Tenochtitlán
The Mercenary and the Hero: Two Views on the Animals of the River Plate and Paraguay
Pedro Cieza de León: the Animals of a Soldier–Historian
The Brazilian Zoo of a German Among the Tupi
Vargas Machuca: a Handbook for the Conquistador
Animals in an Aztec Encyclopaedia. Bernardino de Sahagún and his General History of the Things of New Spain
The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso
3 The New Histories of the New World
The Letters of an Italian Humanist. Peter Martyr and his Decades
Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, the Pliny of the New World
A Chronicle of the Conquest. López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies
Aristotle and the New World. José de Acosta and his Natural and Moral History of the Indies
The Relaciones of the Indies and Herrera’s General History of the Deeds of the Castilians
The Natural Histories of the New World
4 Joyful and Profitable News from the New World. Animals, Medicine and Commerce
Francisco Hernández and his History of the Animals of New Spain
Animal Drugs: Monardes’s Medicinal History and Ximénez’s Four Books
Exotic Animals. Knowledge and Interests. Clusius and his Exotica
Georg Markgraf and Willem Piso. The Dutch West India Company and the Historia naturalis Brasiliae
The Literature about the New World in Reformed Europe and the Expansion of the Northern Powers
Useful and Strategic Knowledge on Animals of the New World
5 Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars
Fernão Cardim and his Treatise on the Land and the Climate of Brazil
The Franciscan Claude d’Abbeville and the History of the mission of
Capuchin Fathers to the Island of Maranhão
Catholic and Calvinist Views on the Animals of French Brazil
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and his Historia naturae maxime peregrinae
Athanasius Kircher: Noah’s Ark, a Wondrous Museum and Animal
Magnetism
Gaspar Schott and his Physica curiosa
6 New World Animals and Shifting Conceptions of Natural History
Natural Philosophy and Philological Quibbles. Cardano vs Julius Caesar Scaliger
Brazilian Birds and the Classics. Belon and L’histoire de la nature des
oyseaux
Animals in a Jungle of Words. Gesner’s Historia animalium
New World Animals Play a Role in the Theatre of Nature. Aldrovandi
and his Historia animalium
The ‘Who’s Who’ of Seventeenth-Century Natural History. John Jonston and his Encyclopaedia on Animals
New World Animals and the ‘Scientific Revolution’
The Loss of an Enchanted View
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A NEW WORLD OF ANIMALS

This page has been left blank intentionally

A New World of Animals Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America

MIGUEL de ASÚA and ROGER FRENCH

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2005 Miguel de Asúa and Roger French Miguel de Asúa and Roger French have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Asúa, Miguel de A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America 1. Animals – Latin America – History. 2. Latin America – Discovery and exploration. I. Title. II. French, Roger 591.9'8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Asúa, Miguel de A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America / Miguel de Asúa and Roger French p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Animals – Latin America – History. I. French, Roger. II. Title. QL223.A88 2005 591.98–dc22 2005000466

ISBN 9780754607793 (hbk) Typeset by IML Typographers, Birkenhead, Merseyside

Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1 The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World Columbus: First Contact with American Animals The Letters of the Physicians Vespucci Pinzón and a Curious Animal Cabral and the ‘Land of the Parrots’ Fernández de Enciso and Roger Barlow: Geography, Animals and Empire The Animals of Patagonia 2 Soldiers and Amerindians Hernán Cortés and the Menagerie of Tenochtitlán The Mercenary and the Hero: Two Views on the Animals of the River Plate and Paraguay Pedro Cieza de León: the Animals of a Soldier–Historian The Brazilian Zoo of a German Among the Tupi Vargas Machuca: a Handbook for the Conquistador Animals in an Aztec Encyclopaedia. Bernardino de Sahagún and his General History of the Things of New Spain The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso 3 The New Histories of the New World The Letters of an Italian Humanist. Peter Martyr and his Decades Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, the Pliny of the New World A Chronicle of the Conquest. López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies Aristotle and the New World. José de Acosta and his Natural and Moral History of the Indies

ix xi xiii 1 1 7 9 13 14 15 21 25 27 28 34 37 39 42 46 53 54 62 74 76

vi

Contents

The Relaciones of the Indies and Herrera’s General History of the Deeds of the Castilians The Natural Histories of the New World

85 88

4 Joyful and Profitable News from the New World. Animals, Medicine and Commerce

91

Francisco Hernández and his History of the Animals of New Spain Animal Drugs: Monardes’s Medicinal History and Ximénez’s Four Books Exotic Animals. Knowledge and Interests. Clusius and his Exotica Georg Markgraf and Willem Piso. The Dutch West India Company and the Historia naturalis Brasiliae The Literature about the New World in Reformed Europe and the Expansion of the Northern Powers Useful and Strategic Knowledge on Animals of the New World 5 Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars Fernão Cardim and his Treatise on the Land and the Climate of Brazil The Franciscan Claude d’Abbeville and the History of the mission of Capuchin Fathers to the Island of Maranhão Catholic and Calvinist Views on the Animals of French Brazil Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and his Historia naturae maxime peregrinae Athanasius Kircher: Noah’s Ark, a Wondrous Museum and Animal Magnetism Gaspar Schott and his Physica curiosa 6 New World Animals and Shifting Conceptions of Natural History Natural Philosophy and Philological Quibbles. Cardano vs Julius Caesar Scaliger Brazilian Birds and the Classics. Belon and L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux Animals in a Jungle of Words. Gesner’s Historia animalium New World Animals Play a Role in the Theatre of Nature. Aldrovandi and his Historia animalium The ‘Who’s Who’ of Seventeenth-Century Natural History. John Jonston and his Encyclopaedia on Animals New World Animals and the ‘Scientific Revolution’ The Loss of an Enchanted View

93 104 109 115 123 136 141 144 148 152 162 170 178 183 184 189 190 197 203 209 228

Contents

vii

Conclusions

231

Bibliography Index

237 251

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Illustrations Maps 1 The West Indies 2 South America

xvii xviii

Black & White Illustrations 1.1

2.1 3.1

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

Picture in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars decima, Oppenheim, 1619), illustrating the text of Vespucci’s Lettera (Four Voyages). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library A rendition of an armadillo in Hans Staden’s Zwei Reisen nach Brasilien (Marburg, 1557). Iguana and manatee. Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural y general de las Indias (Salamanca, 1547). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Penguin in Clusius’s Exoticorum libri decem, reproduced from the diary of the Dutch expedition that set sail to the Magellan Strait in 1598. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Matuituí (bird) and abacatuaia (fish) in Markgraf’s Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae libri octo (Amsterdam, 1648). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Plate in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars nona, Frankfurt, 1602) depicting a hunt of penguins by the Dutch on Penguin Island (1599). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Engraving representing a composite scene in Port Desire, reproduced in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars undecima, appendix [Oppenheim, 1620], plate xx) and originally illustrating the second part of The East and West Mirror (1619), the narrative of Spielbergen’s expedition around the globe. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library The fish abacatuaia and two manatees, very much like large puppies, in Ogilby’s America (London, 1671). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

12 38

67

114

119

128

129

133

x

4.6

5.1 5.2 5.3

5.4

6.1

6.2

6.3 6.4

6.5

6.6

6.7

Illustrations

Engraving in Simon de Vries, Curieuse aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en West-Indische verwonderens-waerdige dingen (Curious remarks about the most peculiar and surprising things in the East and West Indies) (Utrecht, 1682), one of the many Dutch illustrated works on the New World published in the seventeenth century A picture of the toucan in Thevet’s Singularités The beast called su in Thevet’s Singularités Three picture of armadillos in Nieremberg’s Historia naturae. The first was taken from Gesner’s Historia animalium and the other two from Clusius’s Exotica. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Zainus (peccary) in Nieremberg, Historia naturae maxime peregrinae (Antwerp, 1635). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library ‘Indian sheep from Peru’ in Gesner’s Icones animalium quadrupedum viviparorum (Zurich, 1660, 2nd edn). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Reversus Indicus anguilliformis (‘eel-like’ reversus) in Aldrovandi, De piscibus (Bologne, 1613), taken from Gesner. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Reversus Indicus squamosus (‘spiky’ reversus) in the same work Engraving in Johannes Jonston’s Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri (Amsterdam, 1657). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Plate with several pictures of birds taken from Markgraf, in Francis Willughby, Ornithology (London, 1678). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Plate illustrating the dissection of a peccary in Edward Tyson’s paper ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Moschiferus, or the Anatomy of the Mexico Musk-Hog’, Philosophical Transactions (1683) Plate illustrating the chapter on the dissection of a coati in Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux. Dressez par M. Perrault, de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1676). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

134 154 154

168

170

195

201 202

205

216

224

227

Preface The story of the writing of this book has been long and, in the end, sorrowful. It began when in 1998 Roger French and I embarked on a three-year joint project financed by a grant for collaborative research awarded to us by The British Council and Fundación Antorchas (Argentina) on a competitive basis. This allowed me to spend four successive Michaelmas terms at Cambridge. In 2000 I stayed as a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, and returned in 2001 and 2002 as a visiting member, always enjoying its wonderful facilities, the kind hospitality of the fellows and the competent service of the secretaries and personnel, for which I remain extremely grateful. I was also accepted as a visiting fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science on two of these occasions (1999 and 2000), receiving an equally warm welcome. The research leading to this book was done mostly at the Cambridge University Library and the Whipple Library. I wish to acknowledge the courteous, patient and efficient help of all the librarians, particularly those at the Rare Books Room. They graciously tolerated my hectic pace of research and urgent demand of books. My work at home was backed by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). I also wish to express my gratitude to the Dean of the Graduate School of Universidad Nacional de San Martín for granting me the necessary leave permits for travelling. Fundación Antorchas was generous enough to finance the fourth visit and also provided extra money for the bibliography. The opportunity of working with Roger French has been a cherished privilege. His outstanding talents as a scholar were beautifully matched by his human virtues, his generosity, his natural kindness. Many times we met at Clare Hall or at his office to discuss the plan, scope and progress of the research, and his insights were invaluable for defining and focusing what were at the beginning only some loose ideas. The sad news of his untimely death in May 2003 reached me when I was in Buenos Aires. By that time I had completed a basic manuscript, which he carefully reviewed and annotated. We had already signed an agreement for publication with Ashgate, and the editor, John Smedley, thought it was worthwhile to carry on the book to completion. Anne, Roger’s wife, kindly agreed to send back the manuscript, which I used as a basis for the writing of the definitive version. The editorial assistance given by Ashgate has been invaluable. At every moment John supported me and took special care at each stage of the editing process.

xii

Preface

I hope this work will be understood as an honest and sincere tribute to Roger and the open and friendly spirit with which he used to welcome people from foreign parts. All the merits of the book are his and to me are attributable any shortcomings the reader may find in it. The last acknowledgement is due to my wife María Natividad and our sons Ignacio and Javier. They shared the days of toil and worry, the many travels and other undeserved inconveniences. For all that I warmly thank them. Miguel de Asúa

Introduction It would be difficult to overstate the historical importance of the expansion of Europe into America. Much has been written by historians on the cultural, economic and political consequences of the phenomenon.1 The discovery of these new lands led to the interchange of animal and plant species across the Atlantic. While plants travelled two ways and many American crops became staples of the European diet, animals followed a one-way route from Europe into the New World.2 This book treads a middle road, that of the fluid interface between the cultural and the natural dimensions of the encounter. The subject of our inquiry is an aspect of the discovery of the New World that has been largely ignored: the newness of its animals. Our story is not concerned with the zoological identification of species seen by Europeans for the first time; it is a story of the encounter between early modern Europeans and the so far unknown animals of the New World, about the ways these were perceived, interpreted, imagined and assimilated. Conceptual patterns that had taken centuries to develop were faced with a huge conundrum. The discovery of a New World shattered the European world-picture and challenged pre-modern moulds of thought. The ‘age of discovery’ was an age of conquest, of colonization, of mission, of bloodshed and amazement. The European powers set out to complete the settlement and exploitation of the recently discovered lands, and in the wake of this race for new sources of wealth and markets they had to cope with an alien and disturbing reality. True, the most profound and puzzling encounter was that between Renaissance Europe and the native peoples and major Indian cultures of America, enacted as a clash of civilizations, certainly one of the main events in the course of world history. But on the other hand, there was also the meeting with the natural world of America. A New World meant an exotic nature, new landscapes, new minerals, new plants and new animals. Animals, of course, have always been a prominent element in civilization, an unavoidable presence in the ‘human’ world. The Western tradition of learning had 1 For a classical general overview see J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650 (Cambridge, 1970). 2 See Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange. Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn., 1972) and idem, Ecological Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986).

xiv

Introduction

often raised questions about these sentient beings and instituted inquiries to name them and make an inventory of their dazzling variety. Two main approaches to the animal world can be distinguished in the European tradition of learning. Aristotle, in his treatises on animals, tried to understand them in terms of his natural philosophy, which purported to explain the natures of natural beings and spell out the causes which made them what they were. In the second place Pliny, working at the height of Roman expansion, made an attempt to compile a catalogue of all nature, a project embodied in his Naturalis Historia in which animals play such an important part. Both traditions served as models for much of what turned out to be the medieval approach to the subject. During the Middle Ages, scholarship in the universities developed along the lines laid out in the Aristotelian corpus, which had recently re-entered Europe through a long detour of absorption and elaboration in the Islamic world. The scholastic commentaries on the Aristotelian works on animals formed the basis of knowledge about animals until the Renaissance and beyond. But Pliny was more fun to read. His enthusiasm, matched only by his credulity, and his stout Roman denial of all things Greek and philosophical, gave him a loyal following in the Latin West.3 Indeed, very early in the West there had developed unique ways of looking at animals which had little to do with either Aristotle or Pliny. While Greeks as long ago as Aesop gave personalities to animals and told tales about them that had morals (for example, the dog in the manger and the fox and the sour grapes), the Physiologus told animal stories whose morals were Christian metaphors or parables. The snake’s eyes from which the scales fell in the warmth of the morning sun was a metaphor for the faithful facing Christ’s truth. Such stories were included in that characteristically medieval collection of images of animals, the Bestiary. This was often illustrated, and included representations of bizarre animals supposedly encountered by Alexander the Great’s retinue as he campaigned towards India. From these sources, a new erudite genre developed: that of the works ‘on the nature of things’ or medieval ‘encyclopaedias’, which consisted of systematic compilations of knowledge about the three kingdoms of nature and were conceived as tools for preachers, who could draw upon them to find examples to enliven and illustrate their sermons. There were also other kinds of works, such as treatises on hawking and hunting, on husbandry and on herbals, and collections of recipes dealing with animal drugs. The whole of this literature and its derivative products embodied the lore on animals available to the learned person in the low Middle Ages. These, then, would have been in the minds of those who explored the New 3 See Roger French, Ancient Natural History. Histories of Nature (London and New York, 1994).

Introduction

xv

World.4 Learned men had long believed that Alexander had sent specimens of animals back to Aristotle, his teacher; if they were well-to-do they had perhaps read a royal treatise on hawking; they would certainly have known their Pliny, Aristotle and Aesop. But their very familiarity with these sources meant that most animals were known to them. They may not have seen those from distant countries, but they knew they existed on the authority of the ancients. Animals were known to them in a particularly Christian way: the Bible said that Adam had named all the animals. It was not merely that Adam was the most ancient of authorities, but that before the Fall, he had full communion with God’s knowledge and gave the animals their names according to their natures or essences: names meant something. But animals in the New World did not fit personal knowledge or ancient authority; worse, they had no names. How were they to be explained? The answer to this question is the theme of this book, which covers a time span of two centuries, since the arrival of Columbus. We shall focus on several centres of interest in the process of discovery of the animals of the New World. The first is represented by the diaries and travel reports which resulted from the early voyages of discovery to Iberian America. Here belong the accounts by sailors and expeditionary explorers who registered in vivid and colourful pages the freshest view of the new animals. The period of conquest and initial settlement, the dramatic acme of the confrontation between non-Western and Western civilizations, is approached through two major written documents containing much information about the Amerindian views on animals of the Indies and a selection of the chronicles written by conquistadores, foot-soldiers and mercenaries. After that we shall consider the ‘natural histories of the New World’, the first large frescoes on the nature of the Indies which inaugurated a new genre in the writing of natural and general history. Next comes an overview of the work on the animals of New Spain (Mexico), which was the result of an expedition prompted by the growing interest of the Spanish crown in the potential benefits that could be derived from the knowledge of American plants and creatures. In connection with this, we shall explore other authors interested in the pharmacopoeia arriving in Europe from the New World, who acted as mediators in the transmission of knowledge about American animals. The Dutch colonial enterprise in Brazil – which had as a by-product the writing of two of the most influential ‘scientific’ works on American medicine and natural history – was a consequence of the rise of the Low Countries and England as sea and colonial powers during the seventeenth century. This turn of events in world power politics had also as a 4 See Luis Weckman, ‘The Middle Ages in the Conquest of America’, Speculum 26 (1956), pp. 139–41.

xvi

Introduction

result the publication of a consistent group of books on America which promoted the involvement of the Protestant European countries in the New World, helping at the same time to spread the knowledge of its natural life. Most educated persons who arrived in the newly discovered lands were religious, and a chapter is devoted to chronicles written by missionaries. These views are complemented by a glance at the works of a group of Jesuit authors who wrote in Europe about natural philosophy with special attention to the new animals of the Indies. Finally, we examine the development of the monumental encyclopaedias of natural history, which interpreted the writing about animals as erudite exercises in philology and hermeneutics. Our story ends by considering the role played by the fauna of the New World in the proposals for a ‘new’ natural history, advanced by authors working in the institutions for the study of natural philosophy and the sciences during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Map 1 The West Indies

Map 2 South America

Chapter 1

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World Columbus: First Contact with American Animals When Columbus set sail in 1492, he expected to find Cathay and the kingdom of the Great Khan, the pearls of Cipangu, species, gold, riches, perhaps the marvels of India, the biblical islands of Ophir, Saba, Tarshish, the distant Taprobana, the Aurea Chersonese and, without being aware of it, he found a new land. He expected to find lions, elephants, unicorns and camels, but instead he found animals no human being had seen before. The story of Columbus’s discovery is a chronicle of deception, of a conflict between marvellous expectations and bare, unsolicited facts. It is also a story of the workings of an imagination which resisted disillusion and strove to create a reality of its own, superimposing on the sun-bathed shores of the Caribbean a golden mirage of aged Oriental civilizations and, on the new but undistinguished animals, a tinge of the fabulous creatures with which the ancients had peopled the East. During the century which followed the discovery, the Europeans who risked facing a different reality – out of greed, desperation or vain hope – would eventually substitute an acceptance of the wonders of the New World for the early image which still had much of the Old in it. This chapter explores the incidents of that long and complex process, which began with Columbus landing on the beach of Guanahaní. Of course, Columbus did not know he had arrived in a new continent. But he expressed amazement at the spectacle of the landscape of what would be presently recognized as the New World. He was not only surprised; he was enchanted and delighted, and the brief passages of his log in which he left a record of his experience during his first excursions on land reach an almost lyrical intensity. Fernando (also spelt Hernando), Columbus’s minor son, recorded in his History of the Admiral – first published in Italian in Venice, 1571 – that on the momentous day his father landed on the island of Guanahaní (San Salvador) on 12 October 1492, the natives brought him, among other things, parrots, and that in that island ‘there were no types of animals except for parrots’.1 Parrots, the first American animals 1 Hernando

Colón, Historia del Almirante, ed. Luis Arranz (Madrid, 1984), p. 112. For a

2

A New World of Animals

the Europeans saw, would become one of the symbols of the New World, appearing frequently in early maps of America.2 Parrots from the Indies were painted by Carpaccio in Venice in 1507 and in the Vatican by Giovanni da Udine in 1516.3 When Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage, he was carried in triumph along the streets of Seville, followed by a retinue of Indians and a display of golden masks and colourful popinjays. And when the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, Isabella and Ferdinand, received him, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea awoke the admiration of the court by showing the treasures brought from the Indies: Indians, pearls, a handful of gold, tropical fruits and parrots.4 In a deserted native town in Guadalupe, one of the Lesser Antilles, the Spaniards had found macaws, ‘as large as roosters’, red, blue and white.5 And when in the course of the second voyage Antonio de Torres returned to Spain with twelve ships and 400 Indian slaves, he took with him seven of these macaws, which were admiringly described by a contemporary chronicler, delighted by their many colours.6 The queen and king were probably pleased with the fowls brought from the Indies, for they sent a letter to Columbus – who had not yet returned to Spain – asking for ‘falcons’ and all kinds of birds, which they were eager to see.7 While at sea, Columbus had sighted a great number of new birds such as boobies, frigate birds, tropic birds and pelicans.8 When early in his first voyage he disembarked upon the island he called Isabela (Crooked Island), Columbus was surprised by the scenery of hills and grasslands, sweet as the April meadows in Spain, a landscape of copses and ponds and brooks and so many birds that they nearly darkened the sun. He is said to have been so enraptured by the melodious singing of the ‘nightingales’ that he could not break away from them.9 But his elated mood probably plunged at the view of what he describes as a ‘serpent’ seven feet long and one foot wide. The beast escaped and disappeared into a pool, but was speared by the Spaniards and afterwards general presentation of Columbus’s voyages see Phillips, William D. and Carla R. Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, 1992). 2 Wilma George, Animals and Maps (London, 1969), pp. 57–60. 3 Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land (London, 1975), pp. 35–7. 4 Colón, Historia, chap. 65 (ed. Arranz, p. 234); Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols (México and Buenos Aires, 1951), book I, chap. 78 (vol. 1, p. 332). 5 Las Casas, Historia, book 1, chap. 84 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 1, p. 352). 6 Peter Martyr, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, trans. Joaquín Torres Asensio (Buenos Aires, 1944), Decade I, book 2, chap. 2, p. 16. 7 Las Casas, Historia, book I, chap. 103 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 1, p. 411). 8 Georg Friederici, El carácter del descubrimiento y de la conquista de América, trans. W. Roces (México, 1973), p. 14. During the second voyage, in a group of islands near Cuba the sailors saw ‘scarlet cranes’. See Colón, Historia, chaps 56–7 (ed. Arranz, pp. 186 and 189). 9 Colón, Historia, chap. 26 (ed. Arranz, p. 118).

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

3

recovered and skinned. The Admiral, always mindful of the curiosity of his sovereigns about the marvels of nature, set down in his log that he had ordered the skin to be salted and kept in store to be later presented to them.10 Despite the terrifying appearance of the animal, the newcomers eventually became used to its meat, which had a pleasant flavour. This first account of this kind of ‘serpent’ compares it to a crocodile or lizard, dark green, with a row of sharp projections on its back from head to tail, very timid. The Indians called it ‘iguana’.11 Bernáldez, the historian who wrote a History of the Catholic Kings which included material from Columbus’s first voyage, referred to it as the ‘most disgusting and nauseating thing which man ever saw’.12 Parrots were beautiful exotic ornaments and iguanas could inspire curiosity or repulsion, but there was an animal product which was much more valuable: pearls, which since Pliny’s time had been seen as a token of an insolent display of luxury. In his two letters about his third voyage Columbus reports that in the region of Paria (on the northern coast of present-day Venezuela), having seen natives adorned with pearls, he inquired from them where they had got them and was prevented from following their directions to sail westward because he had to deliver perishable supplies to the settlement in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo). Nevertheless, before weighing anchor he ordered his men to fish for pearls, promising a substantial reward for anyone who found any, but the experiment was unsuccessful. Thus he resigned himself to wistfully naming the place the Gulf of Pearls, and sailed on.13 A year later in Hispaniola, Columbus was still making plans for the establishment of pearl fisheries in Paria. Pearls not only fired the desires of the Admiral, but also invited him to indulge in learned speculations. He argued that if Pliny was right and pearls were generated by the dew falling upon opened oysters, sooner or later they would find many pearls in the sea by the shores of Paria, given the profusion of large oysters in those waters.14 (Had he continued his exploration by sailing west, he would have had his conjectures confirmed by the rich pearl fisheries of the islands of Margarita and Cubagua.) 10 Francesca

Lardicci (ed.), A Synoptic edition of the log of Columbus’s first voyage, trans. Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan (Turnhout, 1999), p. 57; Colón, Historia, chap. 26 (ed. Arranz, p. 118). 11 Las Casas, Historia, book I, chap. 53 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 1, p. 257). 12 Cecil Jane (ed.), The Four Voyages of Columbus, 2 vols bound in one (New York, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 120–23. 13 ‘Letter of Columbus on the Third Voyage’ (Hispaniola, 18 October 1498), in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 2, pp. 20–21, 24–5, 34–5 and 50–51. The first letter of Columbus on his third voyage communicating the discovery of Trinidad Island was dispatched from Hispaniola on 18 October 1498 and addressed to the sovereigns. The second letter was addressed to Doña Juana, a sister of Antonio de Torres who had been nurse of Prince Juan II of Castile. 14 Las Casas, Historia, book I, chaps 176 and 135 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 2, pp. 174 and 20). Columbus also noted the mangroves with their branches covered with oysters, which he

4

A New World of Animals

By the end of the fourth Columbian travel (1504), twelve years had passed since the Europeans first arrived in the Indies. By then the process of discovery and conquest was in full swing and many new animals had been seen and hunted by Columbus and the hundreds of men and women who flocked to the Indies lured by the call of easy riches and social advancement: a multitude of admirable birds, ‘wild pigs’ (peccaries), ‘crocodiles’, giant serpents, all kinds of fish, so many butterflies that they darkened the sky, so many sea turtles that it seemed the ship would go aground on them.15 One day in August 1494, in the course of Columbus’s second voyage, what could have been the first seal-hunt in the New World took place on a small island near Hispaniola: eight ‘sea lions’ were pounded to death with staves by the crew. On this voyage the explorers discovered in the group of islets called by Columbus Jardín de la Reina (off the south coast of Cuba) the fish reverso, one of the main protagonists in the animal chronicles of the New World. This fish was used as bait for fishing, for which purpose the natives fastened a cord to its tail and, holding the other end tight in their canoes, let the reverso go. These fish, says Fernando, have ‘a rough patch on their heads which extends down the spine and attaches itself to any other fish that comes near’, so that when they stick to their prey, the fisherman pulls the cord and brings back the reverso together with its prey, which is usually a turtle, a small shark or a manatee.16 (The story, rehearsed by the chronicler Peter Martyr, was ridiculed at Rome in the time of Leo X.) But the feverish eyes of the sailors sighted creatures even more fantastic than the sucking-fish. On 9 January 1493 Columbus recorded in his log that he saw three mermaids near the island of Hispaniola, very much like those he had seen along the coast of Guinea, although ‘they were not so beautiful as they are depicted, for only after a fashion had human form in their faces’.17 Bernáldez reports that in the course of the second interpreted as evidence of a calm coast, which meant that the oysters would be duly exposed to the dew. In this chapter, Las Casas expatiates on the generation of pearls, drawing upon a rather impressive number of classical and medieval authors. Cf. also Pliny, Naturalis Historia, IX.54–9 (from now on cited as ‘NH’). 15 Andrés Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Kings, in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 1, p. 150. For a list of ‘first-seen’ animals see Wilma George, ‘Sources and background to discoveries of new animals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, History of Science 18 (1980): 79–104. 16 Colón, Historia, chaps 60 and 56 (ed. Arranz, pp. 195 and 187). This fish (remora or Echeneis) was also called guaicanum or guaicano. For references to this fish in other chroniclers, see Juan Ignacio de Armas, La zoología de Colón y de los primeros exploradores de América (Havana, 1888), pp. 151–3. A more detailed discussion with excerpts in English can be found in E. W. Gudger, ‘On the use of the sucking-fish for catching fish and turtles: studies in Echeneis or remora, II’, The American Naturalist 53 (1919): 289–311, 446–67 and 515–26. 17 Lardicci (ed.), Synoptic edition of the log of Columbus, p. 113; Las Casas, Historia, book I, chap. 66 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 1, p. 300).

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

5

voyage an exploring party which landed on Cuba found tracks of very large animals which they supposed were griffins.18 Fernando Columbus, who accompanied his father on the fourth voyage, narrates that close by a harbour in presentday Panama the sailors found Indians living in cabins built on treetops, a custom which they explained on the grounds that the natives were afraid of the griffins living in that country.19 (Fernando does not say why they thought that the Indians were escaping from, of all things, griffins.) Columbus died thinking he had found a way to Asia. And Asia was the imaginary space upon which Western conscience had projected much of what was felt as alien, dangerous and marvellous. The historiae of Herodotus, the encyclopaedia of Solinus, Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, the chapter in Augustine’s De civitate Dei with its famous enumeration of monstrous races, the various versions of the Romance of Alexander, the journals of the expeditions of thirteenth-century Franciscan missionaries to the Mongol Empire, the travels of John of Mandeville – these and many other ancient and medieval works described all sorts of fantastic creatures haunting the deserts and mountain ranges of the East. It has been argued that what Columbus ‘saw’ in the New World was informed by the late medieval worldview he got from his readings.20 We know for certain what books he read because five of them, with marginal annotations in his own writing, have survived. Columbus’s library – for the most part gathered after his second voyage – included the late medieval encylopaedia Imago mundi, Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and the Travels of Marco Polo.21 A survey of his marginal notes on these volumes reveals that a good number of them refer to the animals supposedly inhabiting the exotic Eastern lands he expected to visit in his search for spices. Among them we find elephants, serpents, unicorns, griffins, the tragelaphon, the phoenix, dragons, ostriches, apes, basilisks, camels, cranes, oxen, lions, leopards, giraffes and other familiar and fantastic beasts.22 If 18 Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Kings, in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 1, p. 144. 19 Colón, Historia, chap. 94 (ed. Arranz, p. 310). 20 Valerie

I. J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton, NJ, 1992). 21 The works are: (1) the Imago mundi by Pierre d’Ailly (written in 1410); (2) the Historia Rerum ubique gestarum by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II); (3) the Latin version of Marco Polo’s narrative by Pipino of Bologna with the title De Consuetudinibus et Conditionibus Orientalium Regionum; (4) Alfonso Palencia’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives; and (5) Landino’s Italian version of Pliny’s encyclopaedia. Columbus’s postille have been originally edited, together with the fragment of the text they refer to, in Cesare De Lollis (ed.), Scritti di Christophoro Colombo, Raccolta … di Documenti e Studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, part I, vol. 2 (Roma, 1894). See also the Spanish edition of Marco Polo’s Il Milione with Columbus’s notes: Juan Gil (ed.), El libro de Marco Polo anotado por Cristóbal Colón. El libro de Marco Polo de Rodrigo de Santaella (Madrid, 1987). 22 Columbus wrote marginal notes on animals in chaps 10, 13, 19, and 22 of Pius II’s

6

A New World of Animals

Columbus was hoping to find these animals in the jungles of what he thought were the kingdoms of Cathay and Cipangu he undoubtedly suffered a bitter disappointment, alleviated perhaps by his discovery of ‘mermaids’ swimming blandly in the warm waters of his dreams.23 In a letter to the sovereigns narrating his third voyage, Columbus relates that when some boats went ashore on the peninsula of Paria, the mariners found the hills covered with ‘gatos paules’.24 Also, in his letter on the fourth voyage the Admiral reports that in an Indian village near the modern Mosquito Coast a Spaniard had shot an animal with an arrow – the beast resembled a ‘gato paul’, but it was larger and had the face of a human being. Transfixed by the arrow, the creature raged and the sailors chopped off one of its arms and a leg with a sword. When taken aboard and confronted with a ‘hog’ (that is to say, a peccary), the animal twisted its tail around the hog’s snout and with its remaining ‘hand’ managed to strike the head of its opponent against the floor. Columbus describes minutely the beastly combat, ‘so novel and so fine hunting’, perhaps bearing in mind Pliny’s famous description of the epic battle between the elephant and the snake.25 In any case, the source of the Spanish name ‘gato paul’ – which was applied to the monkeys of the New World – is Marco Polo’s book Il Milione. In Columbus’s copy of that work the passage in which the Venetian talks about the ‘cats which are called pauli’ and inhabit the kingdom of Comari in India has been marked and commented.26 Moreover, in a chapter about the country of the Tartars, Marco Polo mentions the Pharaoh’s rats, large animals used for food. Columbus made a marginal note on this passage, which reads ‘hotias’ meaning hutias, an extinct animal of the Caribbean islands to which we shall return in the next section.27 Historia, in chaps 12, 16, 18, 23, 33, 36, 37, and 49 of Imago mundi and in chaps 19, 22, 50, 65 (book I), 17, 40, 43, 46, 61 (book II), 15, 18, 32, 39, 41, 44, 46 and 47 (book III) of Marco Polo’s book (we have used the de Lollis edition for this survey). Pliny’s Naturalis Historia has only 24 notes (all of them corresponding to book VI), but Columbus might have read more than this. 23 It is usually claimed that what the navigators of the Caribbean sea called ‘mermaids’ were in fact manatees. 24 ‘Letter of Columbus on the Third Voyage’, in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 2, pp. 18–19. 25 ‘Letter of Columbus on the Fourth Voyage’ (Jamaica, 7 July 1503), in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 2, pp. 100–101. Cf. Pliny, NH, VIII.11.32. 26 The passage in Il Milione corresponds to book III, chap. 32: ‘Sunt ibi symee multe habentes effigiem hominum. Ibi sunt catti qui dicuntur pauli, valde diversi ab aliis.’ Columbus’s marginal note reads ‘simee multe, gatti pauli’ (De Lollis, Scritti, p. 470). This has already been pointed out by Juan Gil. See idem, Marco Polo, p. ix. 27 Marco Polo’s text, in the Latin translation used by Columbus, reads ‘ibi eciam sunt animalia magna … que dicuntur ratti Pharaonis’ (De Lollis, Scritti, p. 470) and corresponds to book III, chap. 47. This has already been pointed out by Consuelo Varela in the prologue to her edition of Columbian documents. See Cristóbal Colón, Textos y documentos completos, ed. Consuelo Varela (Madrid, 1982), p. xxxvi.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

7

When reading Columbus’s log, one cannot help thinking of him as an incredibly tenacious, single-minded visionary, half immersed in a dreamy world, making every effort to fit the reality he faced into the compartments of his hopes and ambitions. He saw what he wished to see: species, pearls, griffins and mermaids. The beasts of the New World were never such for someone who believed that the hutia of Hispaniola and the Pharaoh’s rat of the Asian steppes were one and the same animal.

The Letters of the Physicians In Renaissance times the study of the natural world was to a large extent the province of physicians. A doctor was supposed to display a sound knowledge of the curative properties of herbs, fruits and plants. If he had attended a university, he should also be familiar with Aristotle’s books on animals and should be able to argue about the dietetic and therapeutic virtues of all kinds of foods in terms of Galenic principles. Two letters written by physicians about the second voyage of Columbus have reached us. One of them is due to Dr Diego Álvarez Chanca, a Sevillian physician to the fleet who wrote to the municipal council of his natal city relating his experiences in the Indies. The other is a letter in Latin by Nicolò Scillacio, a physician and lecturer on philosophy in the University of Pavia who never left home and drew upon reports from travellers who had accompanied Columbus. Scillacio’s letter, published in Pavia as a brief pamphlet around 1494–95, was, after Columbus’s own letter, the earliest imprint on what would soon become known as the New World.28 Scillacio extols the abundance of aromatic and medicinal plants and the flavour of fruits in the Indies. Among the animals of the ‘Isle of Cannibals’ he mentions ‘rabbits’, snakes, ‘large lizards’ and dogs that never bark. These dogs, he says, ‘never go mad’ and are used by the cannibals as food in case they run short of human flesh – they cut the dogs along the spine and roast them on one side.29 The mute dogs had been seen by Columbus during his first voyage in one of the Indian villages of Fernandina (Long Island).30 They would silently greet the Admiral in 28 See the Spanish–English edition of Dr Chanca’s letter in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 1, pp. 20–73 and an English translation of Scillacio’s letter in Samuel E. Morison, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (New York, 1963), pp. 229–45. For a commentary on these documents see Antonello Gerbi, La naturaleza de las indias nuevas. De Cristóbal Colón a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, trans. Antonio Alatorre (México, 1978), pp. 37–45. 29 The ‘lizards’ could be iguanas. 30 Colón, Historia, chap. 26, p. 117; Lardicci (ed.), Synoptic edition of the log of Columbus, p. 151.

8

A New World of Animals

many of his wanderings throughout the Caribbean sea and were mentioned by each and every chronicler.31 What was the cause of this phenomenon, dogs that do not bark? Scillacio remains as silent as the dogs and soberly refrains from advancing any explanation. But he expatiates upon the dietary properties of the fish in Isabela. There is a kind of fish, he says, which has a delicate flavour and after tasting it the doctors began to prescribe it because it ‘helps to restore the sick to good health’. The other ‘fish’ was as large as cattle and it was eaten with relish, because it tasted like veal – once its ‘legs’ had been removed.32 Dr Chanca, who wrote in Spanish, praised the virtues of the plants of the New World, many of which were new to him. He was also amazed at the diet of the natives: fish and birds mostly, but also snakes, lizards, spiders and worms which they found in the ground and considered as delicatessen. In Hispaniola, he says, there is a kind of fish which is more wholesome than any in Spain, although it putrefies quickly by reason of the hot and humid climate. Chanca’s comments on the dietary qualities of animals in the Indies are not phrased in doctors’ jargon. His letter contains some intriguing descriptions of new creatures. In Haiti he saw no four-footed animals except for dogs of various hues and an animal which had ‘the colour of a rabbit and with similar fur; it is the size of a young rabbit, has a long tail, and hind- and fore-feet like those of a rat’. These little beasts climbed trees and their flesh was good to eat.33 Chanca’s remark about the edibility of the animal which has been identified as a hutia (the Capromys which Columbus thought were the Pharaoh’s rat mentioned by Marco Polo) is telling of what constituted a basic and primary concern for all those who travelled to the Indies at this early stage when the availability of domestic European animals was almost nil: native animals were, first and foremost, food.34 And much of the talk about animals in the early chronicles is, in the end, talk about food, hunting and cooking. Seldom is a new animal described without mentioning the way the Indians cook it or without comparing its flavour with that of a similar dish at home.

31 For

a discussion of these dogs see Raymond M. Gilmore, ‘Fauna and Ethnozoology of South America’, in Julian H. Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians (Washington, 1950), vol. 6, pp. 378 and 425; Armas, La zoología de Colón, pp. 32–7; Enrique Álvarez López, ‘El perro mudo americano’, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 40 (1942): 411–17. 32 Niccolò Scillacio, ‘De insulis meridiani atque indici maris nuper inventis’, in Raccolta … di Documenti e Studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, part III, vol. 2 (Roma, 1893), p. 91; Morison, Journals, p. 243. The ‘fish’ with legs was the manatee. 33 Letter of Dr Chanca in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 1, pp. 70–71, 62–3 and 42–3. 34 The Indians learned to barter hutias for trifles with the Spaniards. See Colón, Historia, chap. 101 (ed. Arranz, p. 329).

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

9

Vespucci A few years after the first contact with the New World, the initial inflated expectations about the riches of the Indies slowly began to wither away. Neither species nor gold arrived in significant quantities in Spain, and the crown did not officially endorse the slave trade initiated by Columbus. It is only logical that rumours about the discovery of pearls in Paria in the course of the Admiral’s third voyage spread quickly. This news prompted Alonso de Ojeda – who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the Bahamas and the West Indies – to seek and obtain official support for an expedition. In May 1499 Ojeda sailed with four ships towards the northern coast of South America. Along with him travelled Juan de la Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci, the man who gave the new continent its name.35 The naming of the New World as ‘America’ can be considered the result of a very successful campaign of propaganda. The unintentional publicity agents were the German geographer Martin Waldseemüller and the learned professors of the Gymnase Vosgien, who in 1507 published a book entitled Cosmographiae introductio (Introduction to Cosmography). This work, a manual of geography based on Ptolemy, also contained the Latin translation of the Lettera delle isole nuovamente trovate (Firenze, 1505?) (Letter about the new-found islands), addressed to the Florentine ruler Piero Soderini by Vespucci. The letter was an account of Vespucci’s four voyages to the New World and it claimed that the Indies were not a part of Asia but a new continent. Waldseemüller called this continent ‘America’, a name also printed on the chart accompanying his treatise. Much of what is known about Vespucci depends on a series of letters (some of them published in his times, some found as manuscripts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), but scholars debate fiercely the authenticity of those documents.36 It had been customarily assumed that Vespucci made four voyages to America, on the basis of the so-called published letters: the already mentioned Lettera (also called Four Voyages) and a little book entitled Mundus novus (Florence, c. 1502–3).37 However, since the 1920s historians have argued that 35 William Lemos, ‘Ojeda, Alonso de’, in Silvio A. Bedini (ed.), Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration. An Encyclopedia (New York, 1998), pp. 523–4. 36 The following discussion is based on the introductory essays by Luciano Formisano to the English and Spanish editions of Vespucci’s letters. Luciano Formisano (ed.), Letters from a New World. Amerigo Vespucci’s Discovery of America, trans. David Jacobson (New York, 1992); Amerigo Vespucci, Cartas de viaje, trans. Ana María R. de Aznar, rev., introd. and notes by L. Formisano (Madrid, 1986). See also Frederick Pohl, Amerigo Vespucci. Pilot Major (New York, 1944). 37 Mundus novus (supposedly addressed to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de’ Medici) attributed to Vespucci a journey at the service of the king of Portugal Manuel I along the coast of South

10

A New World of Animals

these works are forgeries.38 Besides these printed works, there is a group of three manuscript letters – usually called ‘familiar letters’ – addressed by Vespucci to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de’ Medici. The first of Vespucci’s ‘familiar letters’ narrates the voyage along the northern coast of South America made for the king of Spain between May 1499 and June 1550 with Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. The other two familiar letters refer to a second voyage, financed by the king of Portugal, in which Vespucci visited the coast of Brazil and lived among the Tupi, between 1501 and 1502.39 These documents would be authentic.40 Thus current opinion now assumes that Vespucci travelled only twice to America. On his first voyage, Vespucci did indeed find pearls. One of the letters to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de’ Medici (1500) narrates that when the ships arrived in the Gulf of Paria the sailors were presented by the natives with many pearls – some of them very large – and also with parrots of various colours. Pearls might have spurred Vespucci’s greed, but the birds certainly fired his imagination. If we believe him, he was amazed at the incredible number of birds, some of them red like cochineal, a few green spotted with lemon yellow, others black. Their colours and musical singing and the sweet and balsamic scent of the trees aroused in him images of the Terrestrial Paradise.41 After sailing westward from the gulf, he assumed that the coast he sighted was the mainland because of the many animals that could be seen: ‘lions’, roe deer, ‘wild boars’, rabbits and others which, he says, are not found in the islands.42 Vespucci’s Paradise was complete, with serpent and all: a snake having a length of eight arms and as thick as a man’s waist America until 50° S, between May 1501 and July 1502. The Lettera claims that Vespucci travelled to America four times: (1) a first voyage from May 1497 to October 1498 (which, if true, would have given Vespucci priority over Columbus as to the first European to have set foot on the continent); (2) another from May 1499 to September 1500; (3) the third from May 1501 to September 1502; (4) the fourth from May 1503 to June 1504. See Formisano (ed.), Letters, pp. xix–xxiv. 38 In the 1920s the Italian scholar Alberto Magnaghi proposed that the only documents that could be authentically attributed to Vespucci were the manuscript letters, while Mundus novus and the Lettera (also known as Four Voyages) would have been forgeries. See Alberto Magnaghi, A. Vespucci (Rome, 1924). 39 The first of these letters was written from Seville on July 1500; the second and third from Cape Verde, June 1501 and Lisbon, 1502. See Formisano (ed.), Letters, pp. xxv–xxvi. 40 Recent criticism has nuanced Magnaghi’s dismissing of the printed works as forgeries (Formisano, Letters, pp. xxviii–xxxiv). On the strength of linguistic and stylistic considerations Formisano claims that there are too many coincidences between the authentic and the inauthentic letters. He has argued that the apocryphal writings were based on authentic materials and proposes to consider Mundus novus and the Lettera as ‘para-Vespuccian’ instead of ‘pseudo-Vespuccian’ writings. 41 Formisano (ed.), Letters, pp. 10 and 5. 42 Ibid., p. 11. The Italian is ‘lioni, cervi, cavrioli, porci selvatici, conigli e altri animali terrestri’. Mario Pozzi (ed.), Il Mondo Nuovo di Amerigo Vespucci, 2nd edn (Alessandria, 1993), p. 65.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

11

put him and his scouting party to flight. In the 1502 letter about his second voyage along the coast of Brazil, Vespucci tells us once more how the pleasant smell of flowers and the rich savour of the fruits moved him to believe that he was in the Terrestrial Paradise. He goes on with an enumeration of wild beasts, using freely the names of Old World animals, such as lions and baboons. The variety of animals was such, he says, that he could not accept that so many species could have entered Noah’s Ark.43 Vespucci’s references to the Terrestrial Paradise and his enumeration of the animals have an antecedent model in Columbus’s writings. During his third voyage the Admiral of the Ocean Sea discovered for the Europeans the mouth of the Orinoco River, which he took for one of the four rivers associated with Eden in the biblical Genesis. In his letter on his fourth voyage Columbus mentions a series of quadrupeds such as lions, stags, and fallow deer.44 Philological analysis of the parallels between Vespucci’s and Columbus’s narratives on the Caribbean coast of South America suggests that both of them used the same classical literary topos – the locus amoenus – and the same style of rhetoric in their accounts. Vespucci’s and Columbus’s lists of wild animals, most of them quadrupeds, also call to mind similar enumerations by Marco Polo.45 It seems that descriptions of the New World were not totally independent of literary conventions. Vespucci’s printed works – currently assumed as forgeries – convey a less beautified and more bizarre image of the animals of the New World. Mundus novus mentions ‘lions and bears, countless snakes and other dreadful and illformed beasts’.46 The author of the Lettera (Four Voyages) states that the explorers landed near an Indian village and found the natives roasting a beast which resembled a serpent ‘without wings’. When they came closer to the huts, they saw a few of these fierce ‘serpents’ bound at their feet and with a cord around their muzzle. They were about an ell and a half (about 1.7m) long and had thick clawed feet, a hard variegated skin, a muzzle like that of a snake and a saw-like crest running along the middle of the back to the tip of the tail. Overcoming their initial repugnance, the sailors ate them and found them good.47 This description of an iguana is not altogether different from those in the Columbian writings. It is interesting to see that the engraving illustrating this story in a volume of America – the famous collection of voyages published by Théodore de Bry which we shall 43 Formisano (ed.), Letters, p. 31; Pozzi (ed.), Mondo Nuovo, pp. 86–7. 44 Letter

of Columbus on the Third Voyage in Jane (ed.), Four Voyages, vol. 2, pp. 34–43 and 100–101. 45 This has been suggested by Formisano (in Vespucci, Cartas de viaje, 1986, pp. 29–30). For example, in his 1502 letter Vespucci uses the word lonze (lynxes), which has a parallel in Il Milione. 46 Formisano (ed.), Letters, p. 51. 47 Ibid., pp. 69–70.

12

A New World of Animals

1.1 Picture in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars decima, Oppenheim, 1619), illustrating the text of Vespucci’s Lettera (Four Voyages). The iguanas mentioned in the text as ‘serpents’ are depicted as fantastic winged dragons following contemporary conventions of representation.

discuss in Chapter 4 – depicts a group of large winged lizards according to the traditional pattern of representation of dragons in Renaissance and medieval iconography (see Figure 1.1). This picture is a fine example of how the translation of a narrative about an animal of the New World into an image or ‘visual statement’ could generate new meanings barely suggested in the text. Vespucci seems to have been quite pliable to the intimations of the fauna of the Indies. His allusions to the Terrestrial Paradise are reflections of the mental equipment that people like he and Columbus took to the new lands – it has been claimed that the same blazing green landscape that set Columbus into speculating about the biblical Paradise reminded Vespucci of Dante’s Paradiso.48 In any case, behind Vespucci’s description of a tropical Eden looms the uneasiness of an 48 Gerbi, Fernández de Oviedo, p. 54.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

13

unsettling exuberance. We shall see how the exalted tones in which these two early explorers interpreted the novelty of New World nature were amplified and modulated in other chronicles of voyage and discovery.

Pinzón and a Curious Animal Novel creatures awaited those who ventured into the New World. Naturally, upon their return these travellers wished to convey their experiences, to rehearse what they had seen. The communication of visual perception poses some obvious problems. How do we describe to others something they have never seen before? The obvious way is to resort to comparisons with familiar things. But comparisons can be misleading, especially when they are brief, as is the case with most of those we shall look at. What does it mean to say that an animal is ‘like a sheep’? Perhaps that it is four-footed and woolly? What about its size, its colour, its shape? Vicente Yañez Pinzón – with his brother, Martín Alonso – accompanied Columbus on his first voyage to the Indies and afterwards developed a career as an explorer in his own right.49 Having heard of the 1498 letter about the Gulf of Pearls which the Admiral visited on his third voyage, Pinzón got a licence and financial backing for an expedition to those lands. Between the years 1499 and 1500 Vicente Yañez sailed along the northern coast of South America, from Cape São Roque to the Gulf of Paria, discovering on his way the estuary of the Amazon. In Paria, near Boca del Dragón, Pinzón saw a prodigious beast: a quadruped with its anterior half like a fox and its posterior half like an ape, with feet like those of a human being and ears like those of an owl.50 In its belly it had something like a pouch, where the young ones were concealed until it was safe for them to get out and look for their food without the help of their parents. He took this ‘almost monstrous animal’ – a female with three young ones – to Seville and then to Granada, with the intention of presenting the king with it. Unfortunately the young ones had died on the journey back, but not before several witnesses had looked at them with curiosity.51 In this first account of an 49 John

Frye, Los otros. Columbus and the three who made his enterprise of the Indies succeed (Lewiston, Queenstown and Lampeter, 1992); William Lemos, ‘Pinzón, Vicente Yañez’, in Bedini (ed.), Christopher Columbus, pp. 548–9. 50 There is an account of Pinzón’s voyage in a letter sent to Admiral Domenico Malipiero by Angelo Trevisan, secretary of the Ambassador of Venice to Spain, which was published, among other works, in Simon Grynaeus’s Novus Orbis (Paris, 1532), p. 106. We will use the Italian version ‘Navigatione de Pinzone’ in T. O. Marcondes de Souza, O descobrimento do Brasil (São Paulo, 1956), pp. 244–6. 51 ‘Navigatione de Pinzone’ in Marcondes de Souza, O descobrimento do Brasil, p. 246.

14

A New World of Animals

opossum by a European we have an early example of what we could call the ‘jigsaw-puzzle’ description of a new animal. What the writer does to convey the image of the beast is to decompose it into parts and establish a relationship of likeness between each of them and the corresponding part of a known animal. The result is a sort of ‘Frankensteinian’ creature, made out of the fragments of several beasts. Granted, the description does not affirm that the front half of the animal in question is that of a fox; it says it is like a fox, it does not say that its feet are human; it says that they are like human feet, but the overall effect resulting from this procedure is nevertheless a ‘composite’ beast. A relationship of likeness implies that two things are in part alike and in part different, but the differences can be easily swept aside as irrelevant subtleties and what results is a ‘jigsaw’ monster. If we make the experiment of trying to obtain a mental image of the beast described by Pinzón without resorting to our familiar picture of the opossum, we shall be able to get at least a glimpse, no matter how distorted, of what a sixteenth-century European reader of this text could have experienced. The textual animals which arrived in Europe in the form of ‘jigsaw’ description were travesties of the real ones, a synthesis of viewing and imagining, always on the verge of the monstrous and the anomalous.

Cabral and the ‘Land of the Parrots’ After the exploits of Bartolomeu Dias, who, looking for the kingdom of Prester John, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and of Vasco da Gama, who had reached Calicut when returning to his native Portugal in 1499, King Dom Manuel prepared an expedition to consolidate and further the expansion of Portugal towards the East. Alvares Cabral was put in charge of thirteen ships which departed in March 1500 heading for India, but after leaving the Cape Verde Islands and for reasons still discussed by historians, he sailed westward. Whatever the motives for this decision might have been, the outcome proved it was worth taking: they reached the coast of Brazil on 23 April and, after a short stay of eight days, resumed the original goal of the expedition and arrived in India. Giovanni Matteo Cretico, the nuncius of Venice in Portugal, informed his Signoria in a letter dated 27 June 1501 that a new land had been discovered which was called ‘of the parrots [papaga]’, because ‘some are found there which are an arm and a half in length, of various colours’. He added that he had seen two of them, brought by the sailors.52 Although Cabral did not leave a personal chronicle 52 William Brooks Greenlee (ed. and trans.), The Voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London, 1938), p. 120.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

15

of his voyage, there is one by Pedro Vaz de Caminha, in the form of a letter to King Dom Manuel. Pedro Vaz was much impressed by the birds – the only animals he talks about at some length. While cutting trees in a grove, he saw parrots, some of which were green, others grey; some were very large, others small.53 In another report of the Portuguese discovery of Brazil by an anonymous author, it is also said that they found parrots of many colours and ‘some of them as large as hens’ (probably macaws).54 Although the Portuguese were familiar with some species of parrots brought to Europe from Guinea, they were astonished to see the bigger ones, so far unknown to them. Pedro Vaz states that the Europeans traded the usual trifles with the Tupi and in exchange received very large and beautiful parrots, the famous mantles made of feathers that the Indian sorcerers and personages used as a symbol of power and also feathered hats ‘with a little tuft of red and grey feathers like those of a parrot’.55 Animals were not only a notorious presence in the mental images the Europeans brought back home from America, they soon also became objects of trade. Around 1503 the Portuguese crown granted to a consortium of merchants led by Fernão de Noronha a trade monopoly with Brazil. The products of the new land more sought after by the merchants were brazilwood and slaves, as well as monkeys and parrots. In these early expeditions the sailors carried on their own private business, capturing exotic animals to sell in Europe.56 Parrots became symbols of the new lands and the marinheiros soon found out that some symbols had an interesting market value attached to them.

Fernández de Enciso and Roger Barlow: Geography, Animals and Empire During what has been called the ‘Island period’ of discovery and conquest (1492–1519), the Spaniards made their first incursions into the interior of the Isthmus of Panama and Darien, ravaging the land and almost exterminating the native population in a delirious pursuit of gold.57 In a scene dominated by plunder, lawlessness and exploitation, where ruthless military leaders competed for the spoils of conquest, the lawyer Fernández de Enciso made a brief and unsuccessful entrance. He would later write a book on the geography of the New 53 Ibid., p. 27. 54 Ibid., p. 59. 55 Ibid., pp. 9 and 26. 56 See H. B. Johnson, ‘The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil’, in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, pp. 249–86 (from now on cited as CHLA). 57 J. H. Elliott, ‘The Spanish Conquest and Settlement in America’, in CHLA, vol. 1, pp. 149–206; see pp. 170–71.

16

A New World of Animals

World which should be seen as an instrument of imperial Spain. Paradoxically, Enciso’s Suma de Geografía was translated into English by Roger Barlow, who had travelled with Sebastian Cabot to the River Plate and entertained plans for the sea expansion of England which, in his view, should strive to supersede Spain in the dominion of the seas. Fernández de Enciso (1469–1530?, usually called ‘el Bachiller’) practised law in Santo Domingo until he became involved in an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda, Juan de la Cosa and Diego de Nicuesa which set off looking for gold, silver, pearls and ‘monsters and serpents’ in Urabá, the gulf between Panama and the Caribbean coast of present-day Colombia.58 Ojeda could not overcome the staunch resistance of the natives in the territory he was supposed to conquer and, with a half-mutinous crew, sailed back to Santo Domingo. Meanwhile, Enciso, who had remained expectantly in Santo Domingo, left late in September 1510 with reinforcements and arrived in Urabá carrying with him Vasco Nuñez de Balboa – the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean – who travelled hidden in a barrel, running away from some ‘difficulties’ he had met in the city. Enciso founded the city of Santa María la Antigua in Darien but eventually the once-stowaway Balboa managed to gain control over the settlement and imprisoned Enciso who, when released, travelled to Spain in 1511 to raise a complaint. In 1514 Enciso returned to Santa María – this time as alguacil mayor (chief magistrate) of Castilla del Oro (Darien) – in a fleet which also took Pedrarias Dávila, the new governor who would substitute (and later execute) Balboa. With them also arrived Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, overseer of the gold-refining works in Darien (whom we shall discuss in detail in Chapter 3).59 Enciso was more of a lawyer and administrator than a soldier: his expedition to the land of Sinú, near Cartagena, ended in utter disaster. But once back in Spain he obtained a privilege from the king in 1518 to publish his Suma de Geografía (Zaragoza, 1518; Seville, 1530). Enciso’s Suma could be conceived as a chart for imperial expansion. It was addressed to the young Charles I of Spain, who in 1519 (a year after the publication of the Suma) would become elected head of the Holy Roman Empire. Enciso dedicated the work to his royal patron as a handbook of geography written in vernacular in which the sovereign could learn about all the lands of the world which, it was expected, would ultimately fall under his dominion. It has even 58 Enrique de Gandía, ‘Exploraciones geográficas y conquista del Nuevo Mundo’, in Ricardo Levene (ed.), Historia de América, 4th edn (Buenos Aires, 1941), vol. 4, pp. 99–182, see p. 105. 59 Martín Fernández de Enciso, Suma de Geografía (transcription of the edition of Seville, 1530), introd. by José Ibañez Cerdá (Madrid, 1948), pp. x–xii; E. G. R. Taylor (ed.), A Brief Summe of Geographie by Roger Barlow (London, 1932), pp. xii–xiv.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

17

been claimed that the now-lost planispherium originally attached to the work was, in fact, a programmatic map of Charles’s future conquests.60 In the dedication, Enciso proclaims that he has described ‘each province with its boundaries and the rivers that flow into the sea, and their sources and the mountains whence they flow and the provinces they traverse’, so that Charles could see the countries conquered and subjugated by Jason, Hercules, the Goths, King Pelayo, Alexander the Great and the Roman Senate. Enciso hoped that the future emperor would go further and conquer the provinces and lands in the possession of non-Christian peoples, that is, America, for the Lord had granted him ‘greater provinces and kingdoms and states than those that the emperors who are his ascendants ever had when they began their conquering campaigns’.61 Needless to say, Enciso advocated the view of the Spanish empire as the rightful bearer of the banner of the true faith. The discovery and conquest of the Indies was a tangible proof of divine favour, the source of the wealth and power required for establishing the universal empire. In his Suma, ‘el Bachiller’ boasts of having been perhaps the first to use the requerimiento (injunction). This curious legal instrument had been designed in 1510 by the Spanish political theorist Palacios Rubio and consisted in a proclamation which should be read aloud to the Indians before proceeding to attack them.62 The Spanish commander should enjoin the Indian cacique to assent to the dogma of the Holy Trinity and admit that the Son had delivered the world to the pope, who in his turn handed it over to the Spanish monarch, to whom the Indians should submit themselves in order to receive benefits and instruction in the faith. In his expedition to Sinú, Enciso read the requerimiento before the caciques, but was met with mockery and insult.63 The Suma was of interest not only to the emperor, but also to navigators. The preface consists in a navigating manual translated from a Portuguese model and the work is in fact a router, with altitudes and distances between the different ports and lists of cities and relevant geographical accidents. It also contains some interesting pages about the fauna of Darien. As most early chroniclers, Enciso refers to the wild beasts using the names of Old World animals. He talks about lions, tigers, hogs, ounces and tailed cats (‘gatos rabudos’, that is, monkeys). When he finds no ready parallel, he resorts to the use of comparisons, qualified names or, when available, Indian names like ‘yaguanas’ (iguanas). His is the first description of the tapir, which he sees as a large, fleshy animal of a brownish 60 See Gerbi, Fernández de Oviedo, pp. 99–100. 61 Fernández de Enciso, Suma de Geografía, p. 7. 62 J.

H. Parry, The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1940),

p. 7. 63 Enciso reproduces in his work the full, interesting text. See Fernández de Enciso, Suma de Geografía, pp. 220–21. Fo a commentary see Gerbi, Fernández de Oviedo, pp. 101–3.

18

A New World of Animals

colour, with hoofs and legs like a cow’s and ears like a mule’s, called by the locals ‘cows without horns’ (vacas mochas). The caymans are called ‘big lizards’, covered from head to tail by a shell so tough that spears cannot pierce it. Enciso compares the new animals with those familiar to his audience, as in the following description: In this land there is a small animal, no larger than a piglet. Its feet and hands are like those of a horse and its head is like that of a small horse with little ears. It is covered with a shell from ears to tail, so that it looks like an armoured horse. They are beautiful to look at and graze like a horse.64

The comparison between an armadillo and a small armoured horse was perhaps telling for the Castilians, people used to the sight of heavy cavalry charging against the Moors. After all, Granada had been conquered little more than a couple of decades before the publication of the Suma, with Queen Isabella heading the attack in shining white armour. Leaving aside the question of the aptness of the similes used by Enciso, it is evident that he made a point of distinguishing between what he saw and what he was told about. He claims that he was present when a group of men killed a ‘lion’ and that he saw ‘big lizards’; but as to ‘ounces’, that was a different matter: he had only been told about them but had not seen any.65 The value assigned by Enciso to personal experience of events and things – a trait common to most chroniclers and writers on the New World – can be illustrated by a passage about the properties of a wonderful tree. It grows in Santa Marta, he says, and gives as fruit a kind of apples which, once eaten, turn into worms inside the body. Enciso states that he saw how a dog ate one of these apples and died as a result of it; when its body was opened, it was found filled with worms. The story concludes with a robust ‘and all this has been seen and experienced by me’.66 Like many of the Spaniards who dared to cross the Atlantic, Enciso was a Renaissance character, at the same time man of affairs, scholar in a way and, although it seems that as a soldier he was a failure, not unwilling to brandish the sword. He was also an articulate mouthpiece for the burgeoning imperial vocation of his country, which he served and legitimized with his Suma de Geografía. The Indies he depicted and the new animals he described were part and parcel of the vast dominions of Charles V. Of course, there were many who perceived the strategic value of such a work, among them Roger Barlow. By the end of the fifteenth century there was in Andalusia a well-established colony of powerful Bristol merchants.67 One of them, Robert Thorne, was among the first 64 Fernández de Enciso, Suma de Geografía, p. 224. 65 Ibid., pp. 223–4. 66 Ibid., pp. 215. 67 Taylor (ed.), Brief Summe of Geographie, p. xxi.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

19

to encourage the search for a northern passage to the East, following the routes opened by John Cabot to Newfoundland and the eastern coast of North America (1496–98). Thorne invested in a Spanish expedition with the alleged purpose of crossing through the southern strait, but his hidden agenda could have been to train somebody in the navigation of the Pacific Ocean who could eventually help him with his original project.68 Roger Barlow was the person chosen for this job. The ships were commanded by Sebastian Cabot, son of John Cabot (the Cabots had strong ties with the Thorne family). Sebastian Cabot sailed with Barlow in April 1526 and on the island of Santa Catarina, off the coast of Brazil, heard from a survivor of a previous expedition the tale of a land of silver, which prompted him to abandon his original route to the Moluccas for the more enticing enterprise of finding the country of the White King – ‘white’ in this case meant silver.69 The small fleet entered the estuary of the River Plate and sailed into the Paraná River up to the city of Asunción in present-day Paraguay. On the banks of the Paraná River Barlow saw red deer, ostriches and ‘a straunge facion of shepe’ (guanacos), which the Indians hunted with dogs – perhaps from the previous Solís expedition.70 Testimonies from Luis Ramírez, Cabot’s page, state that the captain captured a few ‘wild sheep’ which resembled camels.71 Cabot remained on the River Plate and Barlow returned to Lisbon, arriving in October 1528. There is evidence that he brought with him live guanacos which were exhibited at the court of Charles V.72 But by that time Francisco Pizarro had returned from his conquering expedition to Peru, bringing with him some domesticated llamas. The emperor was much more interested in the woollen fabrics made from the hair of the animals than in their use as beasts of burden.73 Eventually, Barlow also began to champion the project of finding a northern passage and in 1540–41 wrote his 68 Charles V was willing to sell his claim to the Moluccas to Henry VIII, who asked Edward Lee, his ambassador in Spain, to obtain more information on this matter. Lee in his turn wrote to Thorne, who answered him with a letter in which he expounded Thorpe’s views on British expansion to the Pacific. See James A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion. Vol. I. The Old Colonial Empire (London and New York, 1965), pp. 75–6. 69 Edward J. Goodman, The Explorers of South America (New York and London, 1972), pp. 56–8. 70 Taylor (ed.), Brief Summe of Geographie, p. 160. 71 M. Ternaux-Compans (trans.), ‘Lettre du Louis Ramirez sur le voyage de Sébastien Cabot en Rio de la Plata, traduite du manuscrit inédit de la Bibliothèque de M. Ternaux-Compans’, Nouvelles annales des voyages et sciences géographiques 3 (1843): 39–73. 72 This story is told in a deposition by Casimir Nuremberger to the Court, made in July 1530: ‘Preguntado que cosas ay en la tierra dixo que avia … y que ay ganados como los que truxo Rojer barlo [Roger Barlow] e obejas como la de aca porque este testigo vio pellejos e que asy mismo ay aforros de servales y raposos y de otros animales’. Taylor (ed.), Brief Summe of Geographie, p. xli, note 2. 73 William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (London and New York, 1908), pp. 177 and 185.

20

A New World of Animals

translation of Enciso’s Suma as a way to obtain the necessary support. Barlow’s Summe was enriched by the account of his voyage to the River Plate and also included material about Magellan’s expedition. The treatise, which was not published, was presented to the king in around 1541. Barlow opens the section of the Summe devoted to the New World with a narrative of his voyage to the River Plate. Particularly striking are his accounts of the birds in the coastal forests and islands of the broad Paraná River. We may look at two of them by way of example. In a group of islands Barlow found popinjays and turtle doves and ‘other sorts of small birds which be no bigger of body than the tip of a man’s thumb but they have the goodliest coloured feathers that ever man might see, the colours would change in moving of them as it were changeable silk’.74 The explorers captured one of these hummingbirds alive and put it into a cage, but alas it did not live long. So they skinned it, stuffed it with dry moss and stored it away in a box, which was soon filled with a pleasant musky odour. These birds, says Barlow, make their nests over the top of a twig, so that monkeys cannot jump at them, the twigs being too weak to support them – a mystery, he goes on, which moves us to praising God, who has endowed this little bird with enough intelligence to defend itself from bigger enemies. Barlow also describes carefully the nests of the parrots, which are round and hang from the ends of branches. They have a hole for the birds to get in and out, which is crooked and thorny, so that when the monkeys introduce their paws to snatch away the young ones, they get entangled in the labyrinthine thorny entrance of the nest. The manoeuvres of the intruders are further hindered by the fact that the nest, hanging loose from the branch, is moved by the slightest puff of wind.75 Barlow adapted Enciso’s work to his own purposes. What had originally been the future map of a never-realized Spanish and Catholic universal empire was transformed into a plea and argument for the finding of a northern passage to the Spice Islands for the benefit of the English merchants who would strive endlessly to undermine Iberian hegemony in the Indies. Besides, Barlow grafted onto Enciso’s Suma a personal account of his journey to the River Plate region, which reveals him as an acute observer of nature, his descriptions of birds being among the liveliest in the whole body of early chronicles about the New World. The explorers who came to America and discovered new animals took them home: the ‘monstrous’ opossum of Pinzón, Barlow’s guanacos and, above all, parrots from the Antilles and from Brazil, ‘the land of the parrots’. From ancient times exotic animals had been displayed in the courts and aviaries of rulers and 74 Taylor

(ed.), Brief Summe of Geographie, p. 161 (spelling modernized). Barlow’s might well be the first description of a hummingbird. 75 Ibid., pp. 161–2.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

21

potentates of East and West as a symbol of luxury and power. The variety and strangeness of the animals of the Indies accounted for the future universal extension of an inchoate empire and they became, in a way, an emblem of dominium. Enciso and Barlow talked about the same animals but with opposite aims, for they served conflicting projects of expansion. Both saw that geographical knowledge of the new land – which entailed a knowledge of its fauna – could be a helpful instrument for the realization of the causes they served.

The Animals of Patagonia Europeans began to take cognizance of the animals of Patagonia and the southernmost extreme of America through the French and Italian versions of the narrative of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world by Antonio Pigafetta published in the early 1530s.76 Pigafetta was an Italian from Vicenza with relations in the papal court who had embarked as Magellan’s man of confidence (criado). One of the eighteen survivors of the expedition, he was able to stimulate the imagination of learned Europeans for many years to come with his account of a race of southern giants, the Patagonians. When Shakespeare makes Caliban invoke the demon Setebos he is drawing on Pigafetta’s description of a supposed Patagonian deity perhaps known through Eden’s History of Travailles (1577). During the first three quarters of the sixteenth century all the voyages to the southern strait – beginning with the momentous crossing of Magellan – were organized and financed by Spain. Either to find alternative commercial routes to the Spice Islands through the Atlantic and dispute Portugal’s influence in the East or to search for alternative ways of communication with the viceroyalty of Peru whence came the precious metals that in great measure supported – and distorted – the economy of Europe, the Spaniards fitted a series of expeditions with uneven results. The Treatise of Tordesillas signed in 1494 between Portugal and Spain had divided the world into two halves separated by a meridian which passed 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Since everything west of this line would belong to Spain, the discovery of the Pacific by Balboa in 1513 encouraged the Spanish search for a westward passage. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese who thought the Moluccas were near enough to the new continent, succeeded in obtaining Charles V’s support for his expedition. A fleet of five ships sailed in September 1519 and three years later the Victoria, commanded by the Basque 76 There

are extant French and Italian manuscripts of the text. The first edition was French and published without date (probably between 1526 and 1536). The Italian edition was published in 1536.

22

A New World of Animals

Sebastián Elcano, entered into the harbour of San Lucas de Barrameda with a cargo of spices from the Moluccas while his captain was celebrated as the first man to circumnavigate the earth.77 The chronicles of the expeditions which crossed the strait after Magellan’s do not add much more to Pigafetta’s inventory of Patagonian and Fueguian animals, which might be seen almost as an established canon. For example, we may collate Pigafetta’s account with the record of the Loaysa and Elcano expedition written by captain Andrés de Urdaneta, which crossed the strait in 1526.78 In Brazil, Pigafetta saw little yellow monkeys which resembled lions and were very handsome (golden marmosets), pigs with a navel on their back (peccaries) and birds with their beaks like spoons (obviously spoonbills).79 While sailing along the coast of Patagonia he discovered a kind of large ‘geese’, black, with beaks like crows and covered with feathers of the same shape and size all over the body.80 These birds could not fly and were so fat that the sailors were unable to pluck them. If Pigafetta described the penguins as ‘geese’, a few years later Urdaneta likened them to ‘ducks without wings’.81 Pigafetta also left an account of ‘sea wolves’, animals with the head of calves, small and round ears, large teeth, no legs, feet joined to the body resembling a human hand, small nails and skin between the fingers like geese.82 Eventually, the crew of the Loaysa expedition inaugurated what would become a ritual exercise of all the sailors in the southern Atlantic seas: they intended to hunt these ‘seals’ with clubs and lances, but their skin was so thick that they could kill only one of them. Inside its belly they found stones as big as a fist. The ‘seal’ had much more meat in its fore- than in the hindquarters but what they ate was the liver, with the dire consequence of becoming sick ‘from the head to the feet’.83 77 J. H. Parry, Europe and a Wider World, 1415–1715, 3rd edn (London, 1966), pp. 49–51. 78 García

Jofré de Loaysa and Sebastián Elcano commanded a fleet dispatched in July 1524 and purported to reach the Moluccas. This expedition crossed the Strait of Magellan in 1526 and arrived in the Spice Islands only to find that Charles V had sold them to Portugal. The narrative of this voyage was written by captain Andrés de Urdaneta, who, many years later, in 1564, when he was 66 years old and a monk of the Augustine order, found a return route from the Philippines to Tehuantepec, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. See Samuel E. Morison, The European Discovery of America. The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492–1616 (New York, 1974), pp. 474–98; Sir Clements Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan (London, 1911), pp. 15–23. 79 Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage around the World by Magellan, translated from the accounts of Pigafetta and other contemporary writers, trans., notes and introd. by Lord Stanley of Alderley (London, 1874), p. 46; idem, Primer viaje alrededor del mundo, ed., notes and introd. by Leoncio Cabrera (Madrid, 1988), p. 61. 80 Pigafetta, First Voyage, p. 49; idem, Primer viaje, p. 63. 81 Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, p. 48. 82 Pigafetta, First Voyage, p. 49; idem, Primer viaje, p. 64. 83 Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, p. 48.

The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World

23

But what most impressed the seamen were neither the fatty penguins nor the large sea lions, but the ‘giants’, so tall that a normal person would only come up to their waist. These were the people called by Magellan Patagones on account of their large feet.84 The first of the ‘giants’ they saw – who jumped, danced, sang, and threw sand upon his head while pointing up with one finger on high – was clothed in the skin of an animal which had, says Pigafetta, ‘the size of a mule, and the neck and body of the fashion of a camel, the legs of a deer, and the tail like that of a horse, and it neighs like a horse’. When the Patagonians came near the ship they carried with them these animals (guanacos) tied with a rope in couples, like dogs. It seems that they hunted them by tying one of the young to a bush, so that the larger ones were attracted to it, while the hunters waited in ambush to kill them with bow and arrows.85 Urdaneta’s account also mentions the Patagonians, who were ‘large and ugly, wearing the skin of a zebra’ and also ostrich feathers on their heads; they lived in huts made of the skins of ‘zebras’ (the so-called ‘zebras’ were, of course, guanacos).86 In the port of St Julian the sailors found a large quantity of long mussels or oysters with pearls in the middle.87 They also saw foxes, ‘sparrows’, ‘rabbits’ (perhaps the mara or Patagonian hare) and ‘ostriches’ (actually, they were rheas).88 The expedition sighted Cape Virgins on 21 October 1520 and came out into the Pacific Ocean on 27 November, after having crossed the strait which would be named after its discoverer. The Portuguese Simón de Alcazaba, who was appointed governor and captaingeneral of Nueva León (the southern lands of modern Chile including Patagonia), led an expedition which reached the strait in 1535 but went no further than the ‘First narrows’, where the sailors mutinied and killed him.89 The chronicle, written by a certain Alonso, looks suspiciously similar to Urdaneta’s in what concerns animals. There are some parallels in the description of the sea lions and the story of the fevers and headaches suffered by the sailors who ate their liver.90 But the meat of the ‘seals’, says Alonso, was very good, like mutton’s, and the grease was very abundant and without smell at all, so that it could be use to fry fish, which tasted better than if it had been fried in pig’s lard. The sailors killed 200 to 300 sea lions, enough to fill eight barrels with salted meat. The ships 84 Pigafetta, First Voyage, pp. 55–6; idem, Primer viaje, p. 69. 85 Pigafetta, First Voyage, pp. 50–51; idem, Primer viaje, p. 65. 86 Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, p. 45. 87 The sailors of the Loaysa expedition also found many mussels containing pearls on the northern coast of the strait. Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, p. 49. 88 Pigafetta, First Voyage, p. 56; idem, Primer viaje, p. 71. 89 Morison, The Southern Voyages, pp. 596–7; Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, pp. 135–6. 90 Markham (ed. and trans.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, p. 152.

24

A New World of Animals

entered the strait as far as the island of the ‘ducks’ (that is, Penguin Island or Elizabeth Island, as Drake would call it) and brought back to the ships around 300 of these ‘ducks’ which, according to the chronicler, ‘were a new kind’ and ‘unable to fly’.91 If penguins were still considered new, by this time the guanacos were familiar to the Europeans: they are no longer called ‘zebras’ but ‘a tame sheep like those they have in Peru’.92 In the diary of the expedition led by Antonio and Francisco de Camargo, which crossed the strait in 1540, the only interesting mention of animals is that at one point on the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego, they saw so many foxes that the place was called ‘Harbour of the Foxes’. They also mention the ‘ducks’ and the ‘seals’ with skins 36 feet long.93 Juan Fernández Ladrillero led an expedition sent from Chile to explore the western entry to the strait between 1558 and 1559. His short narrative gives plain evidence that, by that time, the guanacos were called as such and no longer ‘sheep of Peru’, at least by the people who lived in Chile. He states that the Indians were wrapped in the hides of guanacos, with the wool on the inside of the cloak and, in another passage, mentions the sheep and the guanacos, so it would seem that he perceived them as different species.94 We have surveyed some testimonies of encounters with new animals during the years of discovery. They contain in nuce many of the questions, approaches and perspectives that would be deployed in the more mature literature on the nature of the New World. This early body of writings suggests that the image of the animals the explorers tried to convey to their readers at home was formed on the basis of their expectations and beliefs, language playing a not insignificant part in its construction. The revelation of new animals was part of the broader process of the meeting of two worlds, an asymmetrical encounter in which Western Europe – represented at this stage by the small kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula – imposed itself on the less technically advanced native peoples of America in a process of world expansion. If during the years of exploration the newness of the recently discovered nature was the dominant theme in the reports of the chroniclers, the following decades would witness a more diversified response, as we shall see in the remaining chapters.

91 Ibid., p. 143. 92 Ibid., p. 146. 93 Ibid., p. 166. 94 Pablo Pastells, El descubrimiento del Estrecho de Magallanes (Madrid, 1920), pp. 196–8.

Chapter 2

Soldiers and Amerindians The lust for precious metals was like a fever. The conquistadores knew they suffered ‘from a disease of the heart which can be cured only by gold’.1 All of them aspired to become rich, inordinately rich; they wished to climb up the ladder of society, to change their status of dependence and turn into señores, if possible, to obtain a title of nobility. And so they set off for the New World. But if gold was not to be found, there would always be land, cattle, Indian servants, social standing and, above all, honra, the honour bestowed upon the few successful conquistadores. Those who travelled to the New World were a mixed lot. Many were artisans, peasants, manual labourers and that characteristic Spanish social type: the impoverished hidalgo.2 But most of them were professional soldiers, veterans of the Italian wars and even of the Reconquista, ruffians, mercenaries or ambitious upstarts with nothing to lose and a world to conquer. The military expeditions in the New World were led by an adelantado or captain-general appointed by the crown, who at the same time acted as a magistrate with administrative and judicial functions and often became the governor of the conquered land. His seconds-in-command were the captains, elected by him. Finally came the foot-soldiers or the slightly more distinguished horsemen. As a whole, they resembled more a loosely organized contingent of armed men than an army, for the authority of the commander depended much on his personal qualities of leadership. Animals brought from Spain were crucial as offensive weapons and victuals.3 It made a world of difference whether one had a horse or was a mere foot-soldier. The Spaniards used mastiffs trained to capture and kill the Indians, and herds of Castilian long-legged pigs accompanied the expeditions to provide food.4 As anyone who set foot in the New World, these soldiers had the opportunity to experience its varied wildlife. Some of them even left narratives and chronicles, descriptions of the Indian peoples against whom they fought and 1

Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, trans. and ed. L. B. Simpson (Berkeley, 1964), p. 58. 2 Elliott, ‘The Spanish Conquest and Settlement in America’, in CHLA, vol. 1, p. 191. 3 For the question of the animals introduced into America see Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, pp. 74–113 and idem, Ecological Imperialism, chaps 4 and 8. 4 Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 96–100; Crosby, Columbian Exchange, pp. 75–9.

26

A New World of Animals

accounts of the things they saw – fiery landscapes, bloody battles and strange beasts. The result of the coming of the white man to the Caribbean islands was the virtual extinction of their native population. The Arawaks and Caribs of the Antilles practically disappeared within a few decades after the discovery. Before the arrival of Cortés, 25 million Indians lived in Mexico; by 1580 they had been reduced to 1.9 million. In the northern Andes the fall was from 10 million in 1530 to 1.5 million in 1590.5 The main cause for this decimation was disease: smallpox, measles, ‘influenza’ and other infectious maladies. The second cause was the unbearable oppression imposed by the Spaniards. The European settlement resulted in a thorough collapse and disintegration of the Amerindian civilizations. We have some texts, transcribed from oral reports of Indian informants, which record the reactions of the conquered peoples to this wreckage.6 The dogs and horses which gave the conquerors an important strategic advantage and the domestic cattle and pigs which the Spaniards soon introduced into the Indies were realities as new for the indigenous peoples as the llamas, iguanas and opossums were for the Spaniards. The Incas called the Spaniards viracochas (sons of the civilized god), not only because they were white and wore different costumes, but mainly because they saw them ‘riding on the backs of huge animals with silver feet’.7 The autochthonous dwellers of Central and South America lived intimately with the animals. They were important for their economies as beasts of burden and source of materials and remedies; obviously they served as food, provided symbols for rituals, weapons and objects for bodily adornment and were an integral part of their religious and mythical systems of belief. In what follows, we shall look at some chronicles of soldiers of very different rank and background who left impressions of their discovery of the American animals from Mexico to the River Plate. After that we shall explore two accounts of animals of the higher Indian cultures – the Aztecs and the Incas – which, though cast in European genres of writing, can still give us some insights into the views of the vanquished.

5

Nathan Wachtel, ‘The Indians and the Spanish Conquest’, in CHLA, vol. 1, p. 212. See, for example, The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, ed. with an introd. by Miguel León-Portillo, trans. from the Nahuatl into Spanish by Angel Mario Garibay and from Spanish into English by Lysander Kemp (London, 1962), and Nathan Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished. The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530–1570, trans. by Bon and Siân Reynolds (Hassocks [Sussex], 1977). 7 Wachtel, Vision of the Vanquished, p. 22. Extracted from the relation of the Inca Titu Cusi. 6

Soldiers and Amerindians

27

Hernán Cortés and the Menagerie of Tenochtitlán ‘I wish to consign to memory all the horses and mares which were carried across.’ Thus the chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo in his True History of the Conquest of New Spain began the enumeration and description of the sixteen horses that Cortés took with him when in 1519 he sailed from Cuba with 600 men.8 The conquest of the powerful Aztec empire in two years’ time by so small a number of soldiers was facilitated by the superior warfare techniques of the Spaniards, who used guns and horses, fantastic creatures in the view of the Indians who thought they talked and were able to understand the verbal orders of their riders.9 Well aware of the fearful impression the beasts elicited in the Aztecs, the Spaniards attached small bells to the breast straps of the harness to add to the ominous atmosphere surrounding the war-horses. In much the same way, the Spaniards were struck by the animals of the Aztecs, as can be seen in the Letters of Cortés. The conquistador par excellence was not an illiterate person; on the contrary, he had studied two years in Salamanca, where he acquired a practical command of Latin and read what was expected of an hidalgo; besides, he had spent fifteen years as a notary in Hispaniola.10 Cortés had a gift for narration, and his letters, addressed to Charles V, convey a forceful picture of the land and the people he set about to conquer.11 Most famous is Cortés’s description of the palaces of Montezuma in the capital city of Tenochtitlán, which has impressed generations of readers as a picture of the lost grandeur of the Meso-American empire. We learn from him that one of the various residences of the Aztec ‘emperor’ in the city was ornamented with magnificent gardens and ten pools with all kinds of waterfowl, salt-water pools for the sea birds and freshwater pools for the river birds. Three hundred men were in charge of their feeding – they consumed daily 250 pounds of fish, taken from the lake surrounding the city – and there were also ‘veterinarians’ who attended the sick birds.12 These pools were not uncommon. Cortés says that the chief’s 8

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María (Barcelona, 1992), p. 67. For the role of horses in the conquest see Crosby, Columbian Exchange, pp. 80–84. 9 Mentioned in the Chronicle of Michoacán, a narrative of the conquest compiled by a Franciscan around 1540 from Tarasca informants. Cited in J. H. Elliott, ‘Spanish Conquest’, p. 173. 10 J. H. Elliott, ‘The mental world of Hernán Cortés’, in idem, Spain and its World, 1500–1700. Selected Essays (New Haven and London, 1989), pp. 27–41. 11 Cortés wrote in all five letters, of which the second, third and fourth were published by Jacob Cronemberg in 1522, 1523 and 1525, respectively. See Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. by A. Pagden, with an introd. by J. H. Elliott (New Haven and London, 1986). 12 Ibid., p. 110 (second letter).

28

A New World of Animals

house in the city of Ytztapalapa had a pond with fish and so many birds, ducks and widgeons that the water was covered with them.13 And a farm built by Montezuma for the king of Spain in one of the provinces had been provided with a water tank with 500 ducks, which were plucked yearly (the feathers were used to make clothes).14 Besides the building complex with pools and waterfowl, the palaces of Tenochtitlán had a menagerie with three sections. One of them housed birds of prey in cages with their ceiling divided in two parts, one tiled and the other made of latticework, so that the birds could perch under the roof during the night or on rainy days and also enjoy the sunlight during the day. A second department of this Aztec zoo consisted in a series of cages with wild beasts, ‘lions, tigers, wolves, foxes and cats of various kinds’ which were looked after by 300 men. The third part of this building must have been a frightful sight: its cages contained human beings with physical handicaps and, says Cortés, ‘each manner of monstrosity had a room to itself, and likewise there were people to look after them’.15 Cortés also depicts the marketplace of the capital city of the Aztecs, which was in his estimate twice as big as that in Salamanca. In one of the streets the Indians sold ‘chickens, partridges and quails, wild ducks, fly-catchers, widgeons, turtledoves, pigeons, cane birds, parrots, eagles and eagle owls, falcons, sparrowhawks and kestrels’ and also rabbits, hares, stags and small gelded dogs bred for eating.16 Cortés was a warrior leader, but also an ambitious politician. His description of the wealth and exotic luxuriance of Tenochtitlán serves obliquely as a literary device of self-aggrandizement. Seldom does he talk about birds and beasts in the wild. The animals he wrote about were either game or a symbolic display of the dialectics of power and submission which befitted the spirit of a conquering people like the Aztecs as well as his own.

The Mercenary and the Hero: Two Views on the Animals of the River Plate and Paraguay Gold and silver, immensely rich Indian kingdoms lost in the midst of the tropical jungle, the Silver Sierra, the country of the White King, the city of the Caesars – 13

Ibid., p. 83 (second letter). Ibid., p. 94 (second letter). 15 Ibid., pp. 110–11 (second letter). 16 Ibid., p. 103 (second letter). These dogs were also used as food in Nicaragua and traded with hens, pigeons, partridges and pheasants. See ibid., pp. 398 and 395 (fifth letter). According to the editor these dogs were called itzcuintlis, are now extinct and were similar to the present Chihuahua (note 63 on p. 471). 14

Soldiers and Amerindians

29

legends all of them, disfigured reports and embellished stories about the Inca empire which reached Spain with the survivors of the trips of Solís and Sebastian Cabot to the River Plate. Many lost their minds and lives in hopeless quests across the forests and deserts, ravines and mountains of the southern extreme of America seeking the silver-plated mirage that lured them into the unknown. In 1534 the Spanish crown fitted out a small armada of thirteen ships and around 1,500 men under the command of don Pedro de Mendoza, the first adelantado of the River Plate. Two of the ships of that fleet had been financed by German bankers – the Fuggers and the Welsers – and were manned by Germans. One of that group was Ulrich Schmidl, a soldier of fortune and commercial agent of the Welsers, who financially supported the emperor Charles V and had been granted the colonization of present-day Venezuela as a private venture.17 Schmidl left a chronicle of his wanderings into the heart of the South American wilderness under the undaunted and brutal captain Domingo Martínez de Irala. In 1540 a further expedition was sent to those lands commanded by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had distinguished himself as an explorer during his legendary shipwrecks and adventures in North America between the late 1520s and early 1530s. Cabeza de Vaca was a mythical character with a rare combination of courage, endurance and righteousness who as a governor tried – and failed – to impose some law in the midst of the Paraguayan jungle.18 Schmidl remained in the land from 1535 through 1552, sailed up the Paraná River, explored the Paraguay River with Irala up to the Matto Grosso and the confines of Peru, and finally departed from his leader who by that time had become the strong man in Paraguay. He crossed by land through the territory of the Guairá to the Portuguese colony of São Vicente, on the southern coast of Brazil, whence he set off for Europe, with fifty Indian slaves and his cages of parrots. The narrative of his adventures, the True and agreeable description of some principal Indian lands and islands (Frankfurt, 1567) was probably written by another person – perhaps paid by the bankers who employed him – and reproduced in Latin in the collections of voyages published by de Bry and Hulsius. Schmidl, the soldier–merchant, is willing to impress his readers with frightful tales of monstrous animals, dwellers of the majestic waterways of the rainforest along which he sailed, fought and wove his dreams of silver. For instance, he 17

See Germán Arciniegas, Los alemanes en la conquista de América (Buenos Aires, 1941), pp. 175–90 and the introduction to The Conquest of the River Plate (1535–1555). I. Voyage of Ulrich Schmidt [sic] to the Rivers of La Plata and Paraguay. II. Commentaries of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, trans. with notes and an introd. by Luis L. Dominguez (London, 1891), pp. xiii-xxxix. The translation of Schmidl’s A true and agreeable description of some principal Indian lands and islands, which have not been recorded in former chronicles … is on pp. 1–91. 18 For a short account see Goodman, Explorers of South America, pp. 58–64.

30

A New World of Animals

talks about a huge black and yellow snake in the Paraná River, twenty-five feet long and as thick as a man, which coiled around the natives while they bathed in the river and then swallowed them. Eventually, this anaconda was shot, cut into pieces, roasted and eaten by the Indians.19 Later on, he tells us about another gigantic snake in the Uruguay River which was as large and lethal as the other and swam with its head above the water, looking for its prey, animal or human.20 Perhaps anticipating disbelief, Schmidl hastens to add that he himself measured the first serpent and that his companions and any ‘Christian’ who had lived in that land could bear witness to the magnitude of those river snakes. The book also tells of another hideous creature, the yacaré (an Indian name for the cayman), which Schmidl considered a ‘fish’ with a very hard skin. Comparing it with the more familiar crocodile, he rehearses a story according to which the yacaré could kill a man just by looking at him or by the power of its breath, although he adds that this ‘is not according to truth, for man must also die without that, and nothing is more certain’. Schmidl also reported – and dismissed – another ‘fable’ associated with this beast: the only way to kill a cayman caught in a well is by showing it a mirror, in such a way that, looking at its own terrible face, it will panic and die.21 In one of the manuscripts of Schmidl’s True account the yacaré is called basiliscus.22 The basilisk was a fantastic creature whose power of killing at a distance through its breath and sight had been mentioned by Pliny and, after him, by all the ancient and medieval authors of works on animals, from Solinus to thirteenth-century scholastics such as Albert the Great.23 Apart from the fact that Schmidl rejected the stories about the mortal virtue of the yacaré, the identification of this reptile with the deadly snake of antique lore is yet another example of how the animals of the New World were viewed and understood in terms of Old World traditions. Schmidl’s book was published ten years after Nicolaus Federmann sent to the press his Historia Indianisch (1557) – the narrative of his adventures in Venezuela as an officer of the Welsers – and probably catered for the same market of readers eager to hear about exotic peoples and repulsive beasts. But if he found no difficulty in providing his potential readership with this kind of fare, at the same time he strove to show himself as drawing a line of demarcation between legend and fact. Schmidl has become famous for his descriptions of the different tribes of 19

Schmidl, True Description, p. 16. Ibid., p. 84. 21 Ibid., pp. 42–3. 22 See Schmidl, Viaje al Río de la Plata, in Bibliotheca indiana (Madrid: Aguilar, 1962), vol. 4, p. 303. This is a Spanish translation by E. Wernicke based on the Stuttgart manuscript collated with that of Lafone Quevedo, based on the Munich manuscript. 23 See the original account in Pliny, NH, VIII.30.78. 20

Soldiers and Amerindians

31

Indians he met and is often cited in the ethnographical literature on this account. Each time he mentions a tribe in his narration, he also makes a brief list of the plants and animals they ate. Among other things, he tells of a kind of bee up the Paraguay River, which, he says, are very small, do not sting and produce plenty of honey, so that from a single tree flow out five or six measures of pure honey from which ‘good wine’ can be obtained, ‘like the mead here in Germany, and even better’.24 But his reports about the Indians of Paraguay having ‘Indian sheep’ in their diets are considered doubtful.25 Schmidl’s Indians are for the most vicious folk, depicted as barbaric and ferocious, as when he claims that in Buenos Aires the Querandí drank blood from a deer.26 His dry and impersonal accounts of the massacres, pillage and slave-hunting of which he as foot-soldier dutifully (and probably enthusiastically) partook, perhaps turn his opinions on the savagery of the natives into an ironic self-comment on the text. Different indeed is the case with Alvar Nuñez, who headed a march from the Island of Santa Catarina, on the southern Brazilian coast, to Asunción (the present capital of Paraguay) through the wild forests of the Guairá (approximately the land route which a few years later would be covered by Schmidl in the opposite direction).27 On this journey, he took 250 Indians with him, crossed the jungle barefoot to inspire them and discovered the Iguazú Falls. It was not the first time he had made such an expedition. This man, who felt more at home with the natives than with his countrymen, had walked across the whole of Texas barefoot and stark naked, living among the aborigines as medicine man and with only three companions on an epic journey that took him three years to complete. Alvar Nuñez was sent to the River Plate as the second adelantado of those territories. Once settled in the town of Asunción, he led a large expedition sailing up the Paraguay River between 1543 and 1544 and reached Puerto de los Reyes, the settlement founded by Irala on the journey he had undertaken with Schmidl.28 On the return of the adelantado, Irala rose in rebellion, put Alvar Nuñez in jail and dispatched him to Spain, where he was acquitted after a long trial. The coup – a prelude to many future ones in Latin American politics – succeeded since the governor was extremely unpopular among the troops due to his efforts to stop the abuses of the Spaniards against the Indians and the relaxed life that reigned in Asunción, where each Spanish male had a huge ‘harem’ of Guaraní women. The Relaciones y Comentarios del gobernador Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, which 24

Schmidl, True Description, p. 77. Gilmore, ‘Fauna and Ethnozoology’, p. 415. 26 Schmidl, True Description, p. 7. 27 See Morison, The Southern Voyages, pp. 562–80. 28 For an account of Alvar Nuñez in Paraguay see Morris Bishop, The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca (New York and London, 1933), chaps 2, 3 and 4 of the second part of the book. 25

32

A New World of Animals

tells the story of his deeds and misfortunes in the Indies, was issued in Valladolid in 1555. The Commentaries, dealing with his adventures in Paraguay, were written by his secretary, Pedro Fernández.29 We now look briefly at this work. Compared with Schmidl’s stereotyped enumerations of animals and hyperbolic reports of man-eating snakes, Alvar Nuñez’s descriptions and stories are, notwithstanding their unadorned directness, most engaging. For example, he relates how in the forests of the Guairá the monkeys, hanging from their tails from the top of pine trees, snatched kernels from the trees and threw them down; when the ground was covered with them, they climbed down and had a banquet. But what usually happened was that wild boars waiting in ambush suddenly came out to steal the fruit, while the impotent monkeys were left shrieking and scampering along the branches.30 Most of the references to animals in the Commentaries are related to the part they played in the life of the Guaraní, the Indians of the tropical forest of southeastern Brazil who accompanied Alvar Nuñez on his journeys as allies. We learn, for example, that ‘wild boar’ and ‘ostrich’ flesh were important in their diet, but they also consumed anta (tapir), deer, partridges, quail, pheasants and honey; they reared fowls, geese and other birds and had fisheries in the river.31 In Paraguay, they hunted ‘water-pigs’ and otters.32 When the Guaraní and their enemies, the Guaicurú, ceased their hostilities and met to trade, they bartered skins of ‘tiger’, anta, deer and also venison and ‘wild boar’ roasted on barbecues.33 The agriculturists Indians of Puerto de los Reyes on the Paraguay River, reared geese to combat the ‘crickets’ which gnawed at their mantles: when the crickets fell down from the straw roofs, these geese devoured them eagerly, something that happened twice or thrice a day.34 The Indians also reared fowl which were brought indoors at night because of the bats, which according to Alvar Nuñez were as large as the doves in Spain and used to bite the toes and noses of those who ventured to sleep outdoors with teeth so sharp that the victim felt nothing at all. On one occasion, these winged fiends were disrespectful enough to bite the toe of the governor who was sleeping on a brigantine over the river – when he woke up in the morning, Alvar Nuñez found that a slice of his toe had been chopped off. Besides these bloodthirsty bats, 29 We will follow the translation by Domínguez, in The Conquest of the River Plate, pp. 93–262 (hereafter cited as ‘Commentaries’. 30 Ibid., p. 113 (chap. 8). 31 Ibid., p. 118 (chap. 10), p. 138 (chap. 20), p. 149 (chap. 27), and p. 141 (chap. 2). For the species of fowl, duck and geese domesticated by the Indians see Gilmore, ‘Fauna and Ethnozoology’, pp. 388–90. 32 Commentaries, p. 189 (chap. 50). The ‘water-pigs’ could have been capybaras. 33 Ibid., pp. 154–5 (chap. 31). 34 Ibid., pp. 167–8 (chap. 39) and pp. 199–200 (chap. 54). These ‘crickets’ were probably reduviids, vinchucas or barbeiros, the carriers of Chagas’s disease.

Soldiers and Amerindians

33

the jungle teemed with red and black ants, the sting of which inflicted intolerable pain during 24 agonizing hours. The Indian fishermen were also frequently stung by the tip of the saw-like tail of the river-ray, which caused wounds which did not heal for a month.35 The Guaicurú fixed the very sharp teeth of a fish to a wooden stick in the manner of a saw, which they used to cut off the heads of their enemies, an operation they were able to perform with utmost ability in a few seconds.36 Alvar Nuñez also speaks of the fishing of the dorado. He reports that this magnificent fish can weigh around 12 lb. and the oil extracted from it is such that those who eat it become ‘fat and sleek’. Also, broth made from the fish, if taken daily during a whole month, would cure ‘skin diseases and leprosy’.37 As can be gathered from this paraphrase, Alvar Nuñez’s account of animals is, allowing for a slight anachronism, almost a chapter of ethnozoology, a sympathetic rendering of the role that small and large beasts alike played in the lives of the aboriginal tribes. In the Commentaries, animals of the New World are designated with the names of Old World beasts: the peccaries are ‘wild boars’, the jaguar is a ‘tiger’ and so on. This way of talking is not peculiar to Alvar Nuñez, since all the chroniclers from Columbus and Vespucci onwards did the same thing.38 The proper identification of animals is a tricky business, of course, and one should not expect an unrefined soldier to inquire into such subtleties. Arguments about the irreducible newness of the Indies is, as we shall see in the next chapter, characteristic of educated writers like Acosta and Oviedo – and even in these authors things get rather murky when it comes to the distinction between species of both worlds. In any case, if we read literally chronicles such as Alvar Nuñez’s Commentaries, we find the Indies full of lions, tigers and all the wild beasts known at that time by the common folk in Europe. Perhaps unconsciously, the unsophisticated adelantados – and in some cases also the sophisticated authors of natural histories – closed the gap which separated the two worlds, superimposing their images of the old upon the new.39

35

Ibid., pp. 199–200 (chap. 54). Ibid., p. 147 (chap. 25). 37 Ibid., p. 195 (chap. 52). The arroba is equivalent to 25 lb. 38 For collections of texts describing American animals by early chroniclers see Alberto Salas, Para un bestiario de Indias (Buenos Aires, 1968) and Agustín Zapata Gollán, Mito y superstición en la conquista de América (Buenos Aires, 1963). 39 Pagden has elaborated on this point, which he calls the ‘principle of attachment’. See Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World. From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 17–49. 36

34

A New World of Animals

Pedro Cieza de León: the Animals of a Soldier–Historian Cieza de León was a soldier who carried with him the precious manuscript of his chronicle amidst the din and turmoil of battle. He travelled thousands of miles along the mountain ranges of the Andes beholding everything, conversing with everyone, fighting and writing, so that it could be known ‘in future times how the emperor settled the kingdoms of Peru’. In January 1531 Francisco Pizarro had left Panama with 180 men and thirty horses in three ships. In November 1532 he fell upon the city of Cajamarca and captured the Inca Atahualpa; a year later he took Cuzco. The carnage and violence of the conquest of the kingdom of the Incas and of the ensuing intestine wars among the followers of Pizarro and Diego de Almagro is the main subject of Cieza’s chronicles. Their background is the flora and fauna of the Andean region from Colombia to Bolivia. Pedro Cieza de León (1518?–54) set off for the Indies when he was thirteen years old. From 1535 to 1547 he joined several expeditions in New Granada (Colombia), assisting in the foundation of cities and fighting under different captains up and down the valley of the Cauca River. Eventually he served under Sebastián de Benalcázar in the march which the conqueror of Ecuador led from Popayán along the volcanoes and high páramos of the Andes, until he joined forces with Pedro de la Gasca, the imperial envoy who confronted and defeated Gonzalo Pizarro in Jaquijahuana (1548).40 Already in Lima and having secured the patronage of de la Gasca (who named him ‘chronicler’), Cieza continued his journey southwards, through the territory of present Bolivia, reaching Lake Titicaca and Potosí. In all, he travelled from northern Colombia to Bolivia, a total of about 3,000 miles. After many years of arduous writing, Cieza finished his chronicle in 1550 in Lima.41 He returned to Spain and published the first part of the work in Seville in 1553, one year before his death. The Chronicle was planned as consisting of four parts dealing with the geography of Peru, the history of the Incas, the conquest of the country by the Spaniards and the civil wars (in its turn divided in five parts).42 In the dedication 40

See the long introduction by Victor W. von Hagen to The Incas by Pedro de Cieza de León, trans. by Harriet de Onis (Norman, 1959), pp. xxv–lxxx. The book is an edition of the second part of the Chronicle with selections from the first part. 41 See the introduction by Franklin Pease to Pedro Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú. 1ra parte (Lima, 1984), pp. xi–xl and the bibliography on Cieza on pp. xli–xlvi. This edition is the transcription of the first edition of the work (Seville, 1533). We will refer to it as ‘ed. Pease’. There is an English translation of the first part: Travels of Pedro Cieza de León, ed. Clements Markham (London, 1864). We will refer to this edition as ‘ed. Markham’. 42 The second part was lost and finally found during the nineteenth century (it was published in Madrid in 1880); the third part was also lost and has been recently found by Francesca Cantù in the Vatican (published in Rome, 1979). Cieza wrote only three books of the fourth part (on

Soldiers and Amerindians

35

to Prince Philip, Cieza – an uneducated man – complained that his subject-matter would require a Livy, and even those great writers of the past would find this a hazardous enterprise, ‘for who can enumerate the mighty things of Peru? The lofty mountains and profound valleys over which we went conquering and discovering? The numerous rivers of such size and depths? The variety of provinces with so many things in each, of the tribes with all their strange customs, rites and ceremonies? So many birds, animals, trees, fishes, all unknown?’43 The first part of the Chronicle consists of a description of the land, its native population and its natural world. It commands a fair amount of historical materials and follows a sequence broadly based on the author’s long journey southwards. The paragraphs on the ‘unknown animals’ are like small self-contained scenes scattered among a vast historical and geographical fresco. Animal descriptions are perfunctory and brief. Like Alvar Nuñez, Cieza is concerned more with the interactions between animals and the aboriginal inhabitants of the land or the enumeration of animals within a given region than with their morphology or identification. For instance, he reports that the Indians of Cartagena, on the Caribbean seaboard, prepared a poison for the tips of their arrows with a paste made from ground herbs to which they added a mixture of poisonous ants as big as Spanish beetles, large spiders and a kind of hairy worms.44 An alternative recipe sounds like the contents of a witch’s cauldron: the head and tail of a poisonous fish, wings of a bat and the flesh of snakes.45 The enumeration of the animals of the Cauca valley between San Sebastián and Antioquía is an example of Cieza’s brief accounts of regional fauna. He says that in that country it was possible to find herds of more than 1,000 wild pigs roaming the land, ‘lions’, ‘bears’, ‘tigers’, ‘marked cats’ and large monkeys which made a loud noise, as if they were pigs.46 There were also the iguana, the hicotea (a land tortoise), turkeys, pheasants, parrots, macaws, small eagles, pigeons, partridges, doves, night-birds, birds of prey and animals so strange that nobody knew whether ‘they are fish or flesh, for we see them run down into the the War of las Salinas, War of Chupas and War of Quito), leaving only fragments of the last two books (War of Huarina and War of Xaquixaguana). See the note by Miguel de Maticorena in Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú. 1ra parte, pp. xlix–liv. 43 Chronicle, dedication (ed. Markham p. 2; ed. Pease, p. 7). Since Markham’s translation is not always faithful to the original we shall refer to both editions. 44 He states that a Spaniard bitten by one of these ants was in so much pain that he lost his feeling and also suffered several attacks of fever until he recovered. 45 Chronicle, chap. 7 (ed. Markham, pp. 38–9; ed. Pease, pp. 44–5). The herb, according to Markham, is the Hippomane mancinella L. (manshineel tree). In the previous chapter Cieza had said that the juice with which the Indians anointed their arrows was so poisonous ‘that no man who is wounded with it so as to draw blood, can live, although it should not be as much as would flow from the prick of a pin’ (Chronicle, chap. 7 [ed. Markham, p. 37; ed. Pease, p. 43]). 46 The bears were spectacled bears and the monkeys probably howler monkeys.

36

A New World of Animals

water, where they are quite at home’.47 Cieza remembers the occasion when Lieutenant Juan Graciano was travelling along a road with three companions and suddenly saw a snake more than twenty feet in length. The serpent, which had a red head and green protruding eyes, attacked Pedro Ximón, one of the party, who died. After it was killed, they found in its stomach an entire deer, which the Spaniards ate out of hunger.48 While Schmidl sought to validate his stories about gigantic serpents, invoking his own reliable testimony, Cieza strove after the same effect by carefully recording the names of all the actors involved in the episode. In the dedication of the Chronicle, Cieza affirms that ‘much that I have written I saw with my own eyes, and I travelled over many countries in order to learn more concerning them’.49 When going southwards across the equator, he alludes to the claims of Virgil, Ovid and Ptolemy, the ancient cosmographers who had affirmed that those lands were uninhabitable. The soldier – who apparently had enough learning to mention these authors at least from hearsay – contends that, on the contrary, the lands below the equator are inhabitable and fertile, due to the fact that day and night are of equal length.50 Moreover, these regions were full of birds, like the condor and the ‘gallinazas hediondas’ or auras (turkey vultures).51 Cieza’s self-conscious affirmation against the weight of learned authority shows itself again when he relates that in the provinces under the equinoctial line there were many of those pigs which ‘have the navel on the back, which, however, is not really the navel, but some other thing that grows there. As they did not find a navel below, they called this excrescence on the back a navel.’52 An observant and unread person, the chronicler was free from the theories proposed by physicians who attributed physiological functions to this supposed navel (as we shall discuss in the following chapters). The Chronicle of Peru has two chapters devoted to the llamas and similar animals. The first describes the ‘royal hunts’ of these beasts, organized every four years by the Incas.53 There is also a chapter on the llamas, guanacos and vicuñas, in which Cieza insists that the Spaniards had much diminished their number (he was rather sympathetic to the Indians and slightly critical of the conquest). He goes on to describe cursorily the llamas as animals ‘as large as small donkeys, with long legs, broad bellies, and a neck of the length and shape of a camel’s’.54 47

Chronicle, chap. 9 (ed. Markham, pp. 41–2; ed. Pease, pp. 47–8). Ibid. (ed. Markham, pp. 42–3; ed. Pease, pp. 48–9). 49 Ibid., dedication (ed. Markham, p. 3; ed. Pease, p. 8). 50 Ibid., chap. 46 (ed. Markham, p. 173; ed. Pease, pp. 151–2). 51 Ibid. (ed. Markham, p. 175; ed. Pease, pp. 153–4). 52 Ibid. (ed. Markham, p. 174; ed. Pease, p. 153). 53 Ibid., chap. 81 (ed. Markham, p. 287–9; ed. Pease, pp. 236–7). 54 Ibid., chap. 111 (ed. Markham, p. 393; ed. Pease, p. 294). 48

Soldiers and Amerindians

37

He also speaks of the wild guanacos trotting over the plains and of the smaller but swifter vicuñas, the wool of which is better than that of merino sheep in Spain. The alpacas he deems ugly and very woolly.55 At one point Cieza reproduces the stories of local folklore. He states that in some forests of the Andean regions there were ‘tigers’, ‘lions’, striped cats and serpents as big as tree trunks, although quite inoffensive. The natives explained the gentleness of these beasts on the grounds that in the time of the Inca Yupanqui the evil snakes had exterminated an Indian army which made its way into the forests. When an old enchantress heard about this tragedy, she was allowed to go into the woods and perform an incantation powerful enough for the animals to change from wild to tame.56 In that region there lived also a wild people, whose males mated with big she-monkeys which gave birth to some monsters, small and hairy, with the head and genitals of human beings and the hands and feet of apes; they did not talk but howled instead. Cieza shows himself at first rather sceptical, but then goes on to relate that in 1549, in the region of the Charcas, he had met Yñigo López, who told him that a Spaniard had seen one of these monsters dead in the mountains. And also Juan de Vargas, a neighbour of La Paz, related that the Indians in Guánuco believed that during the night they heard the cries of these beings.57 Only when he is referring to an episode that could be considered as out of the usual run of things does Cieza indicate the source of his story.58

The Brazilian Zoo of a German Among the Tupi Hans Staden is a character very similar to Ulrich Schmidl: both were mercenaries and representatives of the German banks who joined the sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions to South America, afterwards publishing books about their adventures in the New World. Staden had an interesting story to tell, the tale of his captivity among the Tupinamba of Brazil. His book was supervised and corrected by Dr Dryander, Professor at Marburg, and it was published in that city in 1557. Unlike Schmidl’s, Staden’s History was an immediate success and went through 55

Ibid. (ed. Markham, p. 393–4; ed. Pease, pp. 294–5). Ibid., chap. 95 (ed. Markham, p. 338; ed. Pease, p. 264). 57 Ibid. (ed. Pease, p. 265). The English edition does not includes this passage, which Markham considered ‘unfit for translation’. 58 He says that ‘those things which I did not see, I took great pains to inform myself of, from persons of good repute, both Christians and Indians’ (ibid., dedication [ed. Markham, p. 3; ed. Pease, p. 8]). 56

38

A New World of Animals

three reprints that same year, being translated into several languages.59 The first part of the book narrates Staden’s captivity among the Indians, with crude details about their practices of ritual cannibalism, which probably contributed to the success of the work. The second part of Staden’s History is a sort of ‘anthropological’ treatise, describing the ‘trade and manners’ of the Tupinamba preceded by a short geographical description of the land. In this second part, the author devotes six brief chapters to animals, which are illustrated by two woodcuts representing quadrupeds. Staden’s Brazilian zoo is very small, no more than a dozen beasts. His sketchy descriptions are very like those of the other chroniclers considered in this chapter who tried to put into words what they saw, often resorting to comparisons with familiar beasts, paying attention to the overall size, and highlighting a few characteristic traits of the animal. Staden’s bare, minimalist descriptions of the opossum, the armadillo, the capybara and the flamingo are nor devoid of interest, like paintings in petit format. Some animals receive more attention than others, but all descriptions share a matter-of-fact quality. For example, the dattu (that is, tatou or armadillo), which, he says, measures a span high and a span and a half long, has an armoured mail and a long and pointed snout and long tail, and its flesh is said to be fat. The naïve drawing depicting the dattu shows a creature resembling a fox but with narrow stripes on its back, intended perhaps without

2.1 A rendition of an armadillo in Hans Staden’s Zwei Reisen nach Basilien (Marburg, 1557). The small woodcut resembles a fox with a striped body, perhaps an attempt at representing the shell. 59 Wahrhaftig Historia und Beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen Grimmigen Menschfressen Leuthen in der Newenwelt America … (Marburg, 1557). We will use the following English translation: Hans Staden, The True History of his Captivity, 1557, trans. and ed. with introd. and notes by Malcolm Letts (London, 1928). In the Netherlands it went through no fewer than twenty-five editions. See Hans Staden, Zwei Reisen nach Brasilien, 1548–1555, ed. by Karl Fouquet, 2nd augmented edn (Marburg am Lahn, 1963), p. 157.

Soldiers and Amerindians

39

particular success to represent the ‘armour’ (Figure 2.1).60 Of the cativare (that is, capybara), he says that it lives in the water as well as on land, eats the reeds of the river bank and is able to dive. They are larger than sheep, with a head shaped like that of a hare, and short ears, short tail and comparatively long legs; their hair is blackish-grey and their flesh tastes like that of a pig.61 The only bird Staden describes is the uwara pirange (flamingo), which lives on the shore, is the size of a hen, and has a long beak and legs like a heron, but shorter. When they are born, their feathers are light grey, then the plumage turns into dark grey and finally, after they have flown for a year, the whole bird becomes red – the Indians, he says, are very fond of these feathers.62

Vargas Machuca: a Handbook for the Conquistador One can suppose that the majority of those who embarked on the adventure of conquest were persons like Vargas Machuca – ambitious, courageous and violent, with a strong will to conquer at any cost and to enjoy the spoils of victory: the produce of land, the admittance to the colonial élite of landowners, and the prestige of the victorious soldier. Bernardo de Vargas Machuca (c. 1557–1622) was born in Simancas (Castile) and at the age of fifteen set off for the Italian wars. After six years of battle experience he sailed to the Indies, where he remained for twenty-two years, participating in several military expeditions under the title of caudillo general. It is possible that he built fortifications and castles in Portobello and Margarita island, where he served as captain-general. Vargas finally established himself in the city of Bogotá, New Kingdom of Granada, and afterwards returned to Madrid. In 1599 he published a curious book entitled Militia and description of the Indies, followed by two short works on military horsemanship (one of them dedicated to the Prince of Spain Philip IV, the other to Count Fugger) and also an Apology and Discourses of the conquest of the Indies, which was an attack on the Brevísima relación of Father Bartolomé de las Casas, the famous tract denouncing the abuses of the Spaniards against the Indians.63 It is only logical that Father de las Casas was particularly odious to Vargas Machuca and the interests he represented. The view on animals of this caudillo was part and parcel of his system of beliefs. He was interested in the domestic animals which represented wealth, 60

True History part 2, chap. 29 (ed. Letts, p. 164). Ibid., chap. 30 (ed. Letts, p. 165). 62 Ibid., chap. 34 (ed. Letts, p. 167). 63 See ‘Noticias de la vida y obra del capitán don Bernardo de Vargas Machuca’, in Vargas Machuca, Milicia y descripción de las Indias, 2 vols (Madrid, 1892). 61

40

A New World of Animals

concerned about the noxious little animals which could diminish the offensive power of the army and attracted by some pragmatic aspects of the wild animals of the Indies, for example as sources of remedies. But behind this practical point of view, it is possible to discern a turn of mind, themes and the distinctive worldview of the European Renaissance as interpreted by a half-educated soldier with literary pretensions. The Militia and description of the Indies, dedicated to the president of the Council of the Indies, comprises two parts and an appendix (the latter is a Spanish version of a treatise on the Sphere of Sacrobosco, a basic astronomical textbook). The first part, the so-called ‘militia’ is, according to its author, ‘a school for the many caudillos who in those parts [the Indies] undertake conquests and pacification without any knowledge’.64 In other words, this could be considered as a handbook for the would-be conquistadores. It begins by listing the qualities of a real caudillo: a good Christian, of noble birth, rich, liberal with his subordinates, a tower of strength, cautious, affable and very determined. Then follow instructions about the equipment necessary for the military enterprise, the tactics and strategies to be deployed in the war with the Indians and, finally, the procedures for the division of the conquered land, the establishment of cities and villages and the fair treatment that should be given to the defeated. The second part of Vargas’s work, the Description of the Indies, consists of a geographical and climatological description of the different kingdoms, an account of the native inhabitants of the Indies and a ‘natural history’ dealing with trees, animals and minerals. In his enumeration of the lands not as yet ‘pacified’ (El Dorado, Mexico, La Florida), Vargas offers the future conquistador suggestions as to possible lucrative endeavours.65 It goes without saying that for him the Indians were very nasty people, since ‘all their fights are founded on treacheries’ and ‘they are people without any kind of consideration or value’.66 The short chapters on animals treat successively the ‘vicious little beasts’, the domestic animals from Spain, the domestic and wild animals from the Indies, river and sea fishes, and domestic and wild birds. Vargas depicts each animal with a few strokes, emphasizing ‘useful’ knowledge. His ‘vicious vermin’ are for the most part snakes, an obvious menace for those who explored the wilderness – as witnessed by the numerous references to them by the authors considered in this chapter.67 Among the serpents Vargas mentions the ‘silly’ snakes which are the size of a log but harmless. It often happened, he says, that the soldiers made a halt during a night journey and sat upon one of them, thinking that they were the trunk of a fallen tree. There were 64

Vargas Machuca, Milicia, vol. 1, p. 18. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 67–8. 66 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 40–42. 67 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 117–21. 65

Soldiers and Amerindians

41

also rattlesnakes in the hot lands which were dangerous for the Indians, who used to walk barefoot. In the mountains there was a very dangerous snake called ‘tiros’ which dwelled among the high branches of the trees and threw itself down upon anyone who passed underneath.68 Vargas is also obviously interested in the domestic animals brought from Spain: horses for the war and cattle as a source of wealth.69 He claims that the Mexican steeds are the best, but there were also many horses in the southern pampas of Tucumán and the River Plate. Reading Vargas, we know that the breeding of mules was a profitable business in the Indies, and he affirms that there were also plenty of cattle: in some valleys it was possible to count more than 100,000 heads, and a landlord with 30,000 to 50,000 heads was not deemed particularly rich.70 When dealing with animal remedies and diseases, the caudillo allows himself to enrich his pragmatic point of view with some speculations. His explanations rest mostly on the Renaissance doctrine of sympathies and antipathies between the different things of the natural world (which we shall discuss more fully in the next chapter). For example, he claims that the best bezoar stones of the Indies (the concretions found in the intestinal tract of animals, to which we shall return) are found in deer living in temperate climates which are compelled to spend some time in the hot lands. The usual explanation for this was that after a poisonous snake had bitten the deer, the latter ate a particular herb which had the power to ‘congeal’ the venom, out of which was formed the stone with its antidotal powers. Vargas thinks that what happens is that the animal, once bitten, plunges itself into very cold water, which ‘congeals’ the poison in its stomach thus preventing the spread of the venom to the brain and heart.71 The abundance of water is, according to our author, the cause of the absence of rabid dogs in the Indies. He recommends the hoof of the left hand of the anta (tapir) as a cure for the ailments of the heart.72 As an alternative remedy he suggests the claws of the sloth, for this animal, says Vargas, scratchs its chest with them because it usually suffers from heart disease.73 The wild animals are dealt with quite briefly in this book. Of each animal we learn in what kind of climate it lives, whether it is noxious or harmless, whether it is edible and, on occasion, something about the way the Indians hunt it. But three ‘notable’ animals are singled out by reason of their extraordinary and bizarre 68

This had been described by Pliny as the iaculum. NH, VIII.35.85. Vargas Machuca, Milicia, vol. 2, pp. 122–7. 70 For more information on the importation of cattle to America see Crosby, Columbian Exchange, pp. 85–92. 71 Vargas Machuca, Milicia, vol. 2, pp. 130–31. 72 Ibid., p. 134. 73 Ibid., p. 138. 69

42

A New World of Animals

form: the ‘zazapi’ (opossum), the ‘perico ligero’ (sloth) and a very ‘elegant beast’ (‘animal galano’), which is no other than the armadillo or ‘encubertado’, which he compares with an armoured French horse.74 Old World fantastic creatures could also be found in the Indies, according to Vargas. He says that he had been told that once in Venezuela a ‘griffin’ persecuted a horseman who was hunting. The mythical beast followed the hunter until he was able to enter into a river with his horse.75

Animals in an Aztec Encyclopaedia. Bernardino de Sahagún and his General History of the Things of New Spain During the sixteenth century, the Franciscan order deployed in New Spain (Mexico) an active movement inspired by the idea of creating a new Christian civilization on the basis of the evangelization of the native peoples along the lines of millenary expectations.76 In August 1523 three Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico and the next year Cortés himself knelt down before the socalled Franciscan ‘Twelve Apostles’. Fr Bernardino de Sahagún (1499/1500– 1590), who left Spain in 1529 in the wake of this missionary flow, compiled from native ‘informants’ a vast encyclopaedia in Nahuatl: the General History of the Things of New Spain, which constitutes a valuable testimony of the beliefs of the Aztec people before the conquest.77 Sahagún spent his first two decades in New Spain at various monasteries learning the native tongue and teaching to the youth of the Indian nobility at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco from 1536 to 1540. Although during these years he collected a certain amount of materials, the systematic phase of his project began in the late 1550s. Basically, what Sahagún did was to circulate a sort of questionnaire, which was answered by his Indian informants, who drew pictures and talked about them, while Sahagún’s native students wrote down these accounts in Nahuatl. Much of the interest of the 74

Ibid., pp. 136–8. Ibid., p. 135. 76 See John Leddy Phelam, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2nd edn rev. (Berkeley, 1970). 77 The General History of the Things of New Spain has been published in a bilingual Nahuatl–English version in 13 vols, the first of which contains two introductory essays by the editors upon which our account of Sahagún’s life is based (further specialized bibliography can be found in the said volume). See Charles E. Dibble, ‘Sahagún’s Historia’ and Arthur J. O. Anderson, ‘Sahagún: Career and Character’ in Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (eds and trans.), [Fr Bernardino de Sahagún] Florentine Codex. A General History of the Things of New Spain (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City, 1950–82), 13 vols, part 1 (Introduction and Indices), pp. 9–23 and 29–41, respectively. See also Luis Nicolau d’Olwer, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1599) (Mexico, DF, 1952). 75

Soldiers and Amerindians

43

Franciscans was stirred because they found out that the conversions of the first decades following the conquest had been superficial and the aboriginal population managed to keep their old beliefs and continued practising their ancient rites under a varnish of Christianity. Obtaining first-hand information about Aztec culture was a way to detect traces of hidden idolatry.78 One of the books of the General History (book 11) is entirely devoted to natural things: animals, trees and herbs, and minerals. Although allowance should be made for the facts that Sahagún’s editing process could have incorporated some bias and that his Indian collaborators were partly Europeanized, nevertheless these chapters tell us a great deal about the ways the native inhabitants of Central America looked at their natural environment. The section on animals of Sahagún’s ‘encyclopaedia’ is quite impressive: the text alone occupies more than 100 pages of the two-column bilingual edition, to which should be added 342 pictures.79 The animal world is divided into fourfooted animals, birds, animals which live in water (aquatic birds, fish, small water animals, animals which live in rivers and lagoons, and small edible water animals, inedible water animals including aquatic serpents), and serpents and creatures which live upon the ground, including insects. This plan of exposition, with its overlapping classificatory criteria, immediately calls to mind that we are no longer dealing with Western mental categories. Even a hasty reading of Sahagún’s General History shows it to be the result of a culture and way of looking at things that, although inevitably influenced by the realities of the conquest, still retained much of its original character. Of the tlacaxolotl (tapir) it is said that it is ‘bigger than a cow’ and also that ‘its hooves [are] like a bull’s, very large’. The size of the coiametl (peccary) ‘does not equal the pig which comes 78 Because of changes in the authorities of the Franciscan order and the coming of the Inquisition to New Spain, Sahagún was forced to scatter the manuscripts to prevent their destruction. After a series of incidents, Fr Antonio de Sequera, the general commissary for the Franciscans in New Spain, secretly took with him to Europe in 1580 an illustrated codex of the work with versions in Nahuatl and Spanish. This is the codex now deposited in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. The codex at the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), usually called the ‘Tolosa codex’, is a copy of the Florentine codex and was used as a basis for all Spanish versions of the General History. For the description of the codices see Dibble, ‘Sahagún’s history’. 79 The chapters on animals are contained in book XI (‘Earthly things’) of the General History, edited as part 12 of the Anderson–Dibble edition (Utah and Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1963). We shall henceforth refer to the General History of the Things of New Spain as ‘GH’, citing book, chapter and the pages of the English–Nahuatl edition. In some cases the spelling of the Nahuatl names follows that in the series of articles by Rafael Martín del Campo, ‘Ensayo de interpretación del libro undécimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’, Anales del Instituto de Biología 9 (1938): 379–91; 11 (1940): 385–408; 12 (1941): 489–506. The identification of animals follows that of the Anderson–Dibble edition.

44

A New World of Animals

from Castile’.80 The Indians utilize as terms of comparison animals brought from the Old World (cow, bull, pig of Castile) with which they were by then familiar enough. But the Aztec descriptions of beasts and birds are quite different in outlook from their European equivalents. For example, of the hibernation of the hummingbird it is said that the bird inserts its bill in the trunk of a tree and then moults and shrivels. With the coming of the spring and the rejuvenation of the tree, the hummingbird grows feathers, comes to life again, and, awakened by the rain, flies away.81 This straightforward, effective story is very far from the dense and learned contemporary discussions by European scholars on the phenomenon of the ‘resurrection’ of the hummingbird (which we shall discuss in following chapters). Some of the accounts of animals in Sahagún’s General History are more or less extensive while others, like those on fish, are brief and not very informative.82 The section on the tlacaxolotl (tapir), for example, begins with a description of the animal and continues with its habitat, its diet and the way the natives hunt it (not with bow and arrows, but by making it fall into a pit camouflaged with grass spread over branches).83 Certain animals are considered to be the ‘chief’ or ‘king’ of a given group. The iztac ocelotl (white ocelot) is ‘the leader of the ocelots’; the iztac mazatl (white deer) is ‘the ruler of the deer’; the tecutlacozauhqui (rattlesnake) ‘is called tecutlacozauhqui for this reason: it comes from “lord” and “yellow”. It is called “yellow lord” because it is said to be the leader of the serpents.’84 It seems that animals of a given colour (white or yellow in these cases) were regarded as enjoying a position of privilege, an analogy with a hierarchically organized human society. Insects are characterized by what they do. The azcatl (ant) ‘is a carrier, a transporter, a storer of things. It is a wooddragger, a dragger of things.’ The papalotl (butterfly) ‘is a flyer, a constant flyer, a flutterer, a sucker of the different flowers and a sucker of liquid’.85 Animals are also understood in terms of human beings: the mapachtli (racoon) is called such ‘because its hands are quite like our hands; likewise, its feet are quite like our feet’; the monkey, rather obviously, ‘has human hands, human feet, nails, real nails’.86 But also the habits of animals are humanized, so that much as in Western fables and folk tales they exhibit distinctive personalities. The ocelotl is ‘cautious, wise and proud … It is noble, proud’; the coiotl (coyote) is ‘cunning, 80

GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 3 and 10). Ibid., chap. 2 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 24). 82 Ibid., chap. 3 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 58–9). 83 Ibid., chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 3–4). 84 Ibid., chaps 1 and 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 2, 15 and 76). 85 Ibid., chap. 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 89 and 94). 86 Ibid., chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 9 and 14). 81

Soldiers and Amerindians

45

astute’; the quauhtli (eagle) ‘is fearless, a brave one … It is brave, daring.’ The tzicatana (a kind of ant) eats everything that is tender and since it travels in a swarm, without ever deviating from the path, it is called ‘the conqueror’.87 The habits of animals can be so characteristic that their names are used to designate socially censured behaviour, for example the quimichin (mouse) enters and damages precious things, no matter how hidden they are, and so an eavesdropper is called ‘a mouse’; the mapachtli (racoon) is a thief; thus a thief is called mapachtli.88 Omens and divination formed a significant part of everyday life in Mesoamerican cultures. In Sahagún’s encyclopaedia the animals more frequently associated with prognostication of the future are birds.89 The capture of a quapetlaoac (wood ibis) is an evil omen: some of the lords will die or war will ensue or the city will suffer some harm. The quatezcatl (purple gallinule) is also a sign of war, and whoever captures it may be taken prisoner in the battle or, conversely, drag the enemy off. When the chiquimoli (a species of woodpecker) shrieks, it means that it is angry, and this is considered a bad omen; but when it whistles, it is happy, which is a good omen for travellers and merchants.90 The General History also takes us into the realm of fantastic animals. The mazamiztli, for example, is a quadruped rather similar to the deer but its teeth are like those of a wild beast, with big jaws and dewclaws like metal hooks. It imitates the deer and goes among them, but suddenly pounces upon a stag and rips its belly and strews its entrails on the ground. The deer can recognize it because it has a very foul odour.91 The auitzotl is like a small dog with pointed ears, black and slippery with a long tail and, at the end of it, something resembling a human hand. It lives in caves under the water and grabs people from the surface with its tail, takes them to its cave, stirs the water and raises a tempest. Afterwards the one who has been drowned reappears without eyes, nails and teeth but with his skin intact. Only the priests of the gods can recover the body of the drowned person, who has gone to heaven, taken by the god Tlaloc.92 The serpent quetzalcoatl has flesh on its back like feathers, and has also feathers around its neck and under its belly and in its tail. Before it bites, it flies high up, and then falls like lightning upon its victim, who invariably dies. And its flight is always accompanied by a violent wind.93 This quetzalcoatl or ‘feathered serpent’ should be identified with the 87

Ibid., chaps 1, 2 and 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 1, 6, 40 and 91). Ibid., chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 17 and 9). 89 For omens and divination, see Frances F. Berdan, The Aztecs of Central Mexico. An Imperial Society (New York, 1982), pp. 139–42. 90 GH, book XI, chap. 2 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 32 and 52). 91 Ibid., chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 5–6). 92 Ibid., chap. 4 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 68–9). 93 Ibid., chap. 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 85). 88

46

A New World of Animals

culture hero and beneficent god of the same name, the giver of script, calendar and agriculture whose attributes were the feathers of the quetzal. Sculptures of the ‘feathered serpent’ are among the most popular themes of Aztec sculpture and have become almost an icon of that civilization.94 The chapter on serpents is a long one and full of marvels. The tecutlacozauhqui (rattlesnake), when stalking its prey – a squirrel, for example – coils itself and then rears up; ‘something like a rainbow comes forth from its mouth’, so that the squirrel falls to the ground and is swallowed whole by the serpent. This property of attracting prey is also shared by the acuetzpalin (crocodile), which attracts human beings with its breath and swallows them in one piece. The maquizcoatl is a Mexican amphisbena: it has a head and a mouth at each end and four black stripes on its back. It can go nowhere, except by stretching itself, running at both ends.95 Sahagún’s encyclopaedia is rich in animal remedies, which have always played an important role in folk medicine. For example, it claims that the protuberance of the totoli (turkey), given in chocolate sauce to the incautious enemy, causes impotence, and that the skin of the serpent mazacoatl scraped and drunk with water is an aphrodisiac. The fat of the tecutlacozauhqui applied to the affected part is extolled as a cure for the gout; its skin, ground in water and taken as a potion, will cure fever. The infusion of opossum tail was used as cough medicine and the salve of opossum-tail to alleviate constipation, and also, in childbirth, to assist the delivery of the baby.96 The text also details the procedures to cure or relieve the symptoms of the victims of poisonous beasts. The bite of the serpent chiauitl or chiauhcoatl causes the limb to swell and become hot, and from it ‘something like water’ drips like spray. And if the person survives, his or her arms or legs will shrivel and dry and sometimes just break off. The cure is to suck the wound immediately after the bite, wrap it with a cloth made with fibres of maguey and stretch the affected part over live coals or rub it with tobacco. The cure for the bite of the scorpion (colotl) is also to suck it and apply tobacco to it.97

The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso are a monumental and somewhat romanticized chronicle of the Inca empire before and during the Spanish 94 See Friedrich Katz, The Ancient American Civilizations (London, 1969), pp. 120–22 and Berdan, Aztecs of Central Mexico, pp. 129–30 and 152. See also Campo, ‘Historia de Sahagún’ 11 (1938), p. 389. 95 GH, book XI, chaps 4 and 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 67, 75 and 79). 96 Ibid., chaps 2, 5 and 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 53–4, 80, 76 and 12). 97 Ibid., chap. 5 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 77 and 87).

Soldiers and Amerindians

47

conquest. Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616, not to be confused with the Spanish poet of the same name) was the son of the Inca princess Chimpu Ocllo and of Sebastián de la Vega Vargas, a Spanish conqueror of noble birth. He was born in Cuzco during the decades of the last period of the conquest of the Inca empire. When his father abandoned his mother to marry a Spanish woman, Garcilaso suddenly became illegitimate and was deprived of his heritage. Upon reaching his majority he travelled to Lima and thence to Spain with the purpose of asking for a financial reward on account of his father’s services to the crown. He did not suceed and after that bitter disappointment Garcilaso lived rather obscurely in Córdoba (Andalusia) as a private scholar besieged by chronic financial problems. His works are few but substantial: the translation into Spanish of Leon Hebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, the Florida (a record of the second expedition of Hernando de Soto) and the Royal Chronicles. The first part of the Chronicles was published in Lisbon (1609) and concerns the history of the Incas and their civilization. The second part, published posthumously, is about the Spanish conquest. Garcilaso does not condemn the coming of Pizarro and the Spaniards, but idealizes the Inca period. The whole work is an implicit apology of the mestizos, the sons and daughters of Inca and Spanish parents who suffered a steady decline in their social status since the coming of viceroy Francisco de Toledo in 1569, who firmly established Spanish power and quashed every hint of rebellion during the first years of his rule. Garcilaso is usually considered the prototype of the ‘educated’ Indian. What makes his approach appealing is, of course, the latent dual perspective that permeates the whole work: in the two books devoted to the description of the native fauna of Peru, for example, we can find quotations from Boccaccio and Ariosto.98 When arguing for the existence of chickens in the land before the conquest on the grounds that the Indians had a word to name them, Garcilaso, at one point, cuts short the discussion saying ‘I, as an Indian, can vouch for this’.99 And it is because he writes as an Indian and as a Spaniard at the same time that his view on animals is so important at the time of investigating the encounter of the two worlds. The Inca Garcilaso writes from the point of view of the historian, with the result that his animals are integrated into a broad cultural and economic panorama. This approach is revealed most clearly when he deals with the animals brought to America by the conquistadores. He relates the circumstances in which each of the domestic beasts was introduced to Peru, going into particulars about their route of entry, the development of local methods of domestication and 98

Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Part One, trans. and with an introd. by Harold V. Livermore (Austin and London, 1966). 99 Ibid., book VIII, chap. 23 (trans. Livermore, p. 591).

48

A New World of Animals

breeding, their reproduction, acclimatization and distribution in the country, the uses they were put to and the evolution of the prices paid for them. As usual, the author begins with horses. These animals so impressed the Incas when they first saw them that they thought that horseman and mount were a single creature. He tells of the introduction of the first horses into Hispaniola, how a wild race had originated from them, how these wild steer were caught and broken in, the small fortunes paid for a good horse during the conquest and so on.100 The same approach is used with cows and oxen, camels, asses and goats, pigs, sheep and domestic cats, rabbits and pure-bred dogs, fowls and pigeons. For example, Garcilaso remembers the episode when, as a child, he first saw a pair of oxen in the valley of Cuzco, in 1550. Everyone was bewildered by the spectacle of those beasts driven by a Spaniard whom they considered too lazy to do the job by himself. ‘I really believe [he says] that the solemn triumphs of Rome in all its glory were no more admired than the oxen that day.’ He also describes how the cattle turned wild and multiplied in Santo Domingo, Cuba and the Caribbean islands, and how they were pursued and brought down by being struck on the hock with lances with a metal crescent on the end handled by riders who could knock down thirty or forty ‘in a run of two harquebus shots’.101 Garcilaso tells a story narrated to him by an Indian who affirmed that a priest called Andrés López brought the first rabbits. The Indian servant who carried the cage inadvertently left one out, which happened to be a pregnant female, so that the species spread all over the land.102 There is a chapter of the Commentaries which discusses the introduction of rats into the New World, a much-debated and politically sensitive subject at the time, since Indians accused Spaniards of having brought them to the country while the latter argued that rats were aboriginal. Garcilaso claims that the Spaniards brought only a ‘large’ kind of rats (‘Spanish rats’) – which had multiplied in the coastal region of Peru and reached enormous size – but that the country already had a kind of its own, called ucucha, which were combated by the Incas with poison.103 The theme of European animals introduced to America is a staple subject of the early chroniclers of the New World. But while most of the historians had tackled the problem of the encounter of the Europeans with the native American fauna, Garcilaso turns the question upside down and records the reactions of the Indians in the face of European domestic animals and the atmosphere of alienation that besieged the Spaniards, who were willing to pay incredible prizes in gold for anything coming from Spain, even suckling-pigs, ‘as though they could not live without it’.104 100

Ibid., book IX, chap. 16 (trans. Livermore, pp. 579–82). Ibid., chap. 17 (trans. Livermore, pp. 582–4). 102 Ibid., chap. 21 (trans. Livermore, p. 587). 103 Ibid., chap. 22 (trans. Livermore, pp. 588–90). 104 Ibid., chap. 19 (trans. Livermore, p. 585). 101

Soldiers and Amerindians

49

Book eight of the Commentaries deals with the indigenous fauna, like ‘lions’, bears, ‘tigers’ and monkeys, land and waterfowl (tame and wild), partridges, pigeons and other lesser birds, parrots and river fish. The most rewarding paragraphs are those on tame and wild herds. The former are the huanacullama (llama) and the pacollama (alpaca) – ‘llama’, says Garcilaso, means ‘cattle’. His description of the llama compares it to European deer and to a camel without its hump (camels had been imported to Peru from the Canary Islands to be used as pack animals but, alas, they all died).105 These animals were an essential part of Indian material culture, because they provided wool for clothes, hide to make shoes (their skin was made soft by greasing it with tallow), meat and, above all, they were used as beasts of burden. Garcilaso describes in picturesque detail the herds ranging from 600 to 1,000 llamas carrying coca, cloths and other wares along the 200 leagues from Potosí to Cuzco, a voyage which took two months, since the animals covered only three leagues in a day. Reading these pages we can almost see the Indians or the Spanish soldiers – who made the most of their idle time by engaging in business – leading the herd, pitching the tents to spend the night by the road, taking care of the packs or bargaining the price of the merchandise. The Inca also records all the remedies tried when an epidemic of carache or llama-mange swept the country and the only remedy was the use of warm pig lard to prevent the animals from scratching themselves (since the disease did not affect the deer, he reflects that both kinds of beasts must be ‘of a different complexion’). The pacollama (alpaca) is said to be smaller and, although they cannot be used as pack animals, their wool is very good; the Incas made three different kinds of textiles with it. Of the wild herds Garcilaso describes the guanaco, which is like a llama but has a uniform chestnut colour, and the vicuña, which lives in the highest deserts and is similar to the pacollama, but smaller and runs so fast that it cannot be caught up by a greyhound.106 Then he continues with brief references to other animals such as the taruca (a kind of Andean deer), the wild cats, foxes, skunks and vizcachas. These animals are not described in detail; what interests the author is how good their meat is, if they come into the villages or shun human society, and the use of their hair for weaving. It is natural that, as a self-appointed interpreter between two cultures, the Inca Garcilaso would take a special interest in names. Garcilaso pays attention to the Quechua names of animals and regrets that he has forgotten some of them, since at the time he was writing forty-two years had passed since he had left his 105

Llamas and alpacas are described in ibid., book VIII, chap. 16 (trans. Livermore, pp. 512–16). 106 Ibid., chap. 17 (trans. Livermore, pp. 516–18).

50

A New World of Animals

country. As a rule, he mentions first the Indian and then the Spanish name of the animals, for example ‘the Peruvian Indians had no domestic fowl except for a variety of duck, which are very like those in Spain and are called ducks by the Spaniards’.107 In the view of the Inca Garcilaso the newcomers were not particularly sensitive to the rather manifest differences between American and European animals, for example they called the llamas ‘rams’ and ‘sheep’, ‘despite the great difference’ between the two species.108 As for him, he usually compares the native animals with those known to the Europeans. We have seen that Garcilaso calls the llama ‘a camel without a hump’ – a description also used by Cieza de León and other authors – and he says that the American lions (pumas) are ‘neither so large nor so fierce as the African kind’.109 He seeks to explain the rationale for the native names of animals, for example, when he says that many birds are called after the sound of their song. For instance, one kind of partridge was called yutu, because its song sounds like ‘yut-yut’.110 It seems that the Indians used ‘generic’ names to designate the animals: hawks were called huaman independently of the species; fish, which according to Garcilaso are quite different from the European (they have skin, no scales, and their head is broad and flat), are called challua, which means ‘fish’.111 Although when talking about the variety of birds in Peru Garcilaso laments that he ‘cannot describe [them] as I have not observed them closely’,112 nevertheless birds receive a good deal of attention from the Inca: the ñuñuma (a kind of duck), the neblí (a kind of hawk), the condor, the hummingbird (called tominejo by the Spaniards and quenti by the Indians), the turkey buzzards (called gallinazas by the Spaniards and suyuntu by the Indians), the alcatraz (gannet), different kinds of partridges, various kinds of doves, kestrels and, in Chile – which once belonged to the Inca empire – ostriches (actually rhea), which the Indians called suri.113 Garcilaso says that there were many sorts of birds, which he cannot describe because of their great number ‘and the inadequacy of my memory’.114 He is an old man writing several decades after he left Peru and the whole text distils a heavy-hearted yearning for the lost home and a world that would be no more. The frequent use of expressions such as ‘in my time’ or ‘I remember …’, reminds us that the Royal Commentaries are not only a rather personal and at times subtly melancholic account of an expatriate, but also the 107

Ibid., chap. 19 (trans. Livermore, p. 520). Ibid., chap. 16 (trans. Livermore, p. 513). 109 Ibid., chap. 18 (trans. Livermore, p. 518). 110 Ibid., chap. 20 (trans. Livermore, p. 523). 111 Ibid., chaps 19 and 22 (trans. Livermore, pp. 521 and 529). 112 Ibid., chap. 19 (trans. Livermore, p. 523). 113 Ibid., chaps 19–20 (trans. Livermore, pp. 520–25). 114 Ibid., chap. 20 (trans. Livermore, p. 524). 108

Soldiers and Amerindians

51

self-conscious testimony of a twilight culture. In his account of animals, the Inca seems to imply that Peru was free from disgusting beasts. He describes the llama, the Peruvian beast par excellence, as a ‘noble’ creature which does not need feeding, is hard working and requires neither shoeing nor packsaddle.115 Peru is free from ‘lions’ (the Incas had exterminated them in their royal hunts) and also from ‘vipers and many other poisonous creatures’.116 This idealized view surely helps to create the image of a mild and gentle place, where beasts are tame or, at least, not very harmful. It is a blessed landscape such that when Garcilaso contemplates the flocks of sea birds flying over the Pacific in long formations, he is moved ‘to give thanks to the Eternal Majesty which created such an infinite number of birds and sustains them with an infinite number of fish’.117 Conquest, the brutal imposition of a human group on another, is sometimes a double-edged sword. The revenge of the conquered can adopt curious forms, like the seduction of the conqueror by the subjugated land. Among the soldiery that ravaged the peoples and the riches of America, among all the sacking, raping and destruction, we find those like Alvar Nuñez and Cieza de León, who could not resist the beauty of the wilderness, the luxuriance of the plants and the enigmatic attraction of the animals of the New World. In turn, the vision of the conquerors should be compared with that of the vanquished. The Aztec encyclopaedia of Sahagún and the Royal Commentaries by the Inca Garcilaso show that the two major Indian civilizations possessed an elaborated lore of the native fauna. Of course, their kind of knowledge was different from that of the West. Amerindian cultures, to begin with, lacked calligraphic writing and the conceptual structures inherent in it. But as we shall see in the following chapters, the writings of the Europeans assimilated many of their views on animals. The ‘natural histories’ of the Indies repeat many Indian stories about animals: the bezoar stone of the New World was first used by the Incas; the featherworks of the Aztecs and the Tupi were considered worthy of a king; the Europeans adopted the llama as a beast of burden and so on. Briefly, the animal world of America was perceived and managed by the newcomers as part of the human landscape they met – and in great part destroyed. Although Garcilaso is sometimes belittled as the product of acculturation, his Commentaries are a treasure-trove of memories about the world of the Incas. His longing for the mother country is also a longing for its nature and its animals, the sad effort to instil in the faded images of the creatures of his land a last breath of life. 115

Ibid., chap. 16 (trans. Livermore, p. 514). Ibid., chap. 18 (trans. Livermore, p. 518). 117 Ibid., chap. 19 (trans. Livermore, p. 522). 116

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 3

The New Histories of the New World So far we have explored a few accounts by the actors in the experience of the discovery, conquest and settlement of America. But in the course of the sixteenth century this vast historical process was also translated into political and military narratives ultimately aimed at discussing the political rights of the Indians, glorifying the exploits of a given conqueror or eulogizing the whole enterprise of imperial Spain. Some very significant works, such as Bartolomé de las Casas’s History of the Indies and Brief Apologetic History (Apologética historia sumaria) were not published until the nineteenth and twentieth century; Díaz del Castillo’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain was edited in 1632 and Ginés de Sepúlveda’s De orbe novo went through the presses by the end of the eighteenth century. The Spanish crown followed a fairly consistent policy of treating any kind of information about the Indies as a state secret, which may account in part for the fact that many works remained for centuries in manuscript form. Thus the few major treatises on the New World made available to contemporary readers in the course of the sixteenth century became a source upon which many authors drew for compilations and much work that was derivative in nature. The Decades of the New World, a collection of letters written by the Italian humanist Peter Martyr – who personally knew many of the protagonists of the enterprise of the Indies – was one of these contemporary sources. The passages in which Martyr talks about the new animals were eagerly quoted, plagiarized and held as truth for two centuries, no matter how fantastic some of them were, judged by contemporary standards. But people who had a serious interest in plants and beasts in the Indies read Oviedo and Acosta, those two stout, ponderous pillars upon which much of the early modern knowledge of American nature was built. Oviedo’s Natural and General History of the Indies and Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies were the scholarly and authoritative works on the subject. Moreover, these authors established a new genre of writing: ‘natural and moral’ or ‘natural and general’ history. The works of Oviedo and Acosta cover at the same time the world of necessity (the natural world) and the world of free will (the human world). Notwithstanding some antecedents, the idea of encompassing in a single embrace both dimensions was

54

A New World of Animals

uniquely associated with the discovery of America. As an answer to the challenge of conveying the whole reality of the New World to contemporary readers, Oviedo and Acosta articulated natural and political history in works of sweeping scope. In doing so, they brought together the two senses of the Latin historia: as an inquiry into unusual things – a meaning manifest in Aristotle’s Historia animalium and in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia – and as a record of past events, in the sense of the Ciceronian vita memoriae or the medieval account of res gestae. The histories of the Indies by Oviedo and Acosta constitute a turning point in our inquiry, for they were the main avenues through which knowledge of the new animals reached Europe. Animals also cropped up in unexpected texts, such as López de Gómara’s History of the Indies. This long chronicle, which culminates with Cortés’s conquest of Mexico, contains scattered notes about animal life in America. In the same way, the cumbrous official history of the ‘deeds of the Castilians in Tierra Firme and the Isles of the Ocean Sea’ written by Antonio de Herrera during the first two decades of the seventeenth century includes many accounts of beasts, birds and fish of the New World, most of them copied from the relaciones de Indias. These relaciones were the reports of geography, natural resources and local conditions submitted by municipal officials in the New World to Philip II’s Council of the Indies. The information on New World plants and animals contained in works like those of Gómara and Herrera was obviously second-hand. Nevertheless, such works were eagerly searched for and utilized by contemporary scholars, who used them as digests of otherwise unavailable sources. The Letters of an Italian Humanist. Peter Martyr and his Decades The first broad historical narrative about the discovery and early conquest of the New World is due to Peter Martyr (1457–1525), an Italian scholar and man of affairs active at the Spanish court. His work was written over a span of more than thirty years, in the form of letters addressed to different patrons and three Renaissance popes.1 Individual letters or collections of them were partially published in authorized or pirated editions until the appearance of the complete work, which bore the title De orbe novo Petri Martyris … decades (Alcalá de Henares, 1530).2 Peter Martyr was born in Milan into an illustrious family and 1 Leo X, Adrian VI and Clement VIII. Martyr also published an important collection of 800 letters, the Opus epistolarum (Alcalá de Henares, 1530). 2 The first Decade was published without authorization in 1511 and there was an authorized edition of the first three Decades in 1516. For a complete chronology of the editions see Edmundo O’Gorman, ‘Pedro Mártir y el proceso de América’, in Cuatro historiadores de Indias (México, 1972), pp. 36–7.

The New Histories of the New World

55

studied under the protection of Juan Borromeo, count of Arona.3 While in Rome, he moved among the humanist circles of Giulio Pomponio Laeto and became a protégé of the powerful Cardinal Sforza. He sought and obtained preferment at Isabella’s court and after his ordination as a priest the queen sent Martyr on a diplomatic mission to the Sultan of Egypt, hoping to persuade him to abstain from taking revenge on the Christians after the Muslim defeat in Spain.4 Martyr was able to remain in a position of influence through the troubled years which followed the death of Ferdinand and Isabella and ingratiated himself so effectively with the new Habsburg dynasty that in 1520 Charles V named him chronicler (cronista) and four years later designated him member of the Council of the Indies. The Italian man of letters moved at ease in a society teeming with conquistadores, adventurers, captains, friars and officials. He boasted of a friendly acquaintance with the great personages of the American enterprise – Columbus, Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, the Pinzón brothers and many others – who poured into his avid ears the precious stories of their exploits and adventures.5 Martyr dedicated the 1516 edition of the three first Decades to Charles I of Spain ‘chosen by the powers above’. After eulogizing the magnificence, richness and vastness of the newly discovered lands, he urges the king to ‘come and embrace’ the New World, where he will find ‘the instruments by which the whole world will obey you’.6 We have seen that arguments of this kind, conceiving the Novus Orbis as a basis of effective, de facto power for establishing a universal dominion, were also utilized by Fernández de Enciso in his Suma de Geografía, published two years later.7 But Martyr – whose native Milan would turn into a 3

For biographical data and general presentations see Henry R. Wagner, ‘Peter Martyr and his Decades’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society n.s. 56 (1946): 238–88; O’Gorman, ‘Pedro Mártir’, in Cuatro historiadores, pp. 13–37; Alberto M. Salas, Tres Cronistas de Indias, 2nd edn (Mexico, 1986), pp. 17–26. There is a modern English translation of the Decades: De Orbe Novo. The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghera, trans. with notes and an introd. by Francis A. McNutt, 2 vols (rptd New York, 1970). We will refer to this as ‘trans. McNutt’. Quite recently, an excellent edition and English translation of the first Decade has appeared: Geoffrey Eatough (ed.), Selections from Peter Martyr (Turnhout, 1998). We will use this text when quoting the first Decade as ‘ed. Eatough’. The Latin edition used is De orbe novo Petri Martyris Anglerii … Decades octo quas scripsit ab anno 1493 AD 1526, ed. J. Torres Asensio, 2 vols (Madrid, 1892). This modern Latin edition will be cited as ‘De orbe novo’. The Spanish translation is Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, trans. by Joaquín Torres Asensio (Bs. As., 1944), cited as ‘trans. Torres Asensio’. 4 Peter describes this voyage through Egypt in his Legatio Babylonica, which was published together with the 1511 unauthorized version of the first Decade (Seville, 1511) 5 For a complete list of the informants mentioned by Martyr in the Decades, see Salas, Tres cronistas, pp. 45–6. 6 Translation in Eatough, Selections, p. 27. Cf. trans. Torres Asensio, pp. 113–15. 7 For the juridical arguments see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c.1800 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 37–62.

56

A New World of Animals

province of the empire in 1540 – was not an imperial scribe. His implicit audience were the quarrelsome and hypercritical humanists of the papal court. Playfully excusing himself for his use of Spanish or indigenous terms in his letters, he ironically remarks that nobody could expect him to write elegant Latin, for he was born in Lombardy, not in the Latium.8 But despite Martyr’s protests to the contrary, the Decades are written in elegant Latin and Martyr used Latin words when their Spanish equivalents would have been perhaps the natural choice. For example, he substitutes architalassus for almirante, praetor urbanus for alcalde, praeceptus for adelantado and so on. What at face value could be considered as a stylistic refinement actually has the effect of resignifying the meaning of the story. When Martyr uses the Latin terms for Roman institutions in his description of the ‘senatorial house’ of the Aztec ‘emperor’ Montezuma, he is implicitly superposing a Roman scenery upon the American landscape (words in brackets are those of the Latin original): On one side of the great market-place there stands a court of justice [domus senatoria] where ten or twelve chosen ancients [longaevi viri] continually sit as judges [iureconsulti], to decide all cases presented. They are assisted by servants like lictors armed with staves [sceptrati lictores], who carry out their orders. Ediles [aediles] are also in attendance there to regulate accounts and measures.9

Martyr compares the alliance of an Indian tribe with Cortés against Montezuma with the episode in De bello Gallico when the ‘Hedui et Sequani’ addressed to Caesar their complaints against Ariovistus.10 The mummified corpses of the ancestors of cacique Camagro which truculently hang from ropes in one of the rooms of his house are likened to the Roman penates.11 The ecstatic state of the bohutis or Indian medicine-men reminds Martyr of ‘Apollo shaking his Sibyls in a fit of frenzy’.12 And so on and so forth. Through the use of language, Martyr was able to evoke the ambiguous atmosphere which the early modern pictorial imagination conveyed visually through images of tall Amerindians with feathery regalia and a noble countenance set against landscapes of tropical forests and classical ruins. The Decades, an epistolary chronicle of the first momentous meeting between 8

Decade II, book 7 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, pp. 254–5). Decade V, book 4 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 114). The original Latin is far more impressive: ‘Domus est in maioris plateae lato campo senatoria ingens. Ibi perpetuo sedent autorati longaevi decem aut duodecim viri, ut iureconsulti de rebus emergentibus iudicaturi. Astant illis scaeptrati lictores ministri, qui iussa illorum exequantur. Adsunt et aediles qui numeris et mensuris raesint’ (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 124). 10 Decade V, book 1 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 61; trans. McNutt, vol. 2, pp. 58–9). 11 Decade II, book 3 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, pp. 219–20). 12 Decade I, book 7 (ed. Eatough, p. 108). 9

The New Histories of the New World

57

Europe and the Indies, are not a work of natural history. Martyr’s model of writing was that of the Renaissance historians or, perhaps, Herodotus.13 He concludes one of the few sections of the work devoted almost exclusively to the discussion of the natural world of the Indies by claiming that there has been enough talk of quadrupeds, birds, insects, trees, herbs and like things and it is time to ‘draw our bow upon the customs of mankind’.14 It is the account of significant human actions that interests Martyr, the drama for which nature is, at best, the background.15 After going through a prolix enumeration of the alimentary roots eaten in Hispaniola he forestalls an imaginary attack by malicious literati, who would accuse him of dwelling on ‘small things’, invoking the example of Pliny, who mingled ‘great things and small, generalities and detail’ so that it would be possible to know the products and the nature of things in different countries and regions.16 Pliny, Aristotle and ‘the moderns’ are the authorities on which Martyr rested when dealing with geography or the creatures of the New World. For example, in his account of Columbus’s first landing on the Caribbean islands he mentions that the Spaniards saw, among different kinds of parrots, the ‘Indian’ parrot – green with a bright red collar – mentioned by Pliny, which would prove that they had actually reached the East.17 And he goes on to recall that Aristotle and Seneca have attested that the shores of India are not very far away from Spain. In his second Decade Martyr mentions that the Río Grande in Urabá harbours as many crocodiles as the Nile, a river he had navigated when sent as an ambassador to Egypt. Could we infer from this that the Río Grande is an affluent of the Nile? No, says Martyr, for ‘the moderns’ have found out that crocodiles can live elsewhere than in the Nile river.18 Browsing through the Decades we find some dramatic animal stories, like the episode of the three ‘tigers’ sent to Spain by Cortés, two of which got loose from the cages and played havoc with the crew of the ship, killing two sailors.19 Other tales are on the fringe of the fantastic, like that about the sick man who for some untold reason could not be bled by phlebotomy but was in the event providentially bitten by a bat which sucked his blood and rescued him from his deathbed.20 Martyr also depicts vivid hunting scenes, as when he describes how 13

See O’Gorman, ‘Pedro Mártir’, pp. 17–18 and Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance (Ann Arbor, 1995), p. 181. 14 Decade VIII, book 7, chap. 3 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 381). 15 Decade III, book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 385). 16 Ibid. (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 385). 17 Decade I, book 1 (ed. Eatough, p. 47). Cf. Pliny, NH, X.117. 18 Decade II, book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 264). 19 Decade V, book 8 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 177). 20 Decade VIII, book 7 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 377). Martyr also affirms that the poison of the bats of Darién could be counteracted by cleaning the bite immediately with sea water. See Decade II, book 4, chap. 2 (trans. Torres Asensio, pp. 149–50).

58

A New World of Animals

the natives caught marine fowl by submerging themselves in the water with their heads inside a large gourd kept at surface level – they approached their prey unnoticed and caught the birds at ease with their hands.21 The Decades also contain vivid pictures of animal life, like the elaborate ritual of the giant turtles of Portobello laying their eggs on the beach22 or the plunge-diving for fish of the alcatraz – identified by Martyr with the onocrotalus, that is, the pelican – which, hovering over the sea, suddenly swoops down so briskly and with such impetus that the sea would be divided and the stunned fish let themselves be caught.23 Martyr utilizes a particular version of the ‘jigsaw-puzzle’ descriptions of animals, which introduces qualified comparisons. He says that in the Gulf of Urabá and Veragua (Panama) ‘one animal in particular has Nature created in prodigious form’. This animal is as large as a bull, and has a trunk like an elephant and yet it is not an elephant. Its hide is like a bull’s; and yet it is not a bull. Its hoofs resemble those of a horse, but it is not a horse. It has ears like an elephant’s, though smaller and drooping, yet they are larger than those of any other animal.24

(The solution of this zoological riddle is left to the reader.) His description of the manatee is not particularly happy. This aquatic mammal is said to be ‘a species of monster’ and compared to a turtle ‘covered with scales instead of a shell’.25 But Martyr tells a charming story about an amiable manatee which somehow conveys a sense of the animal. This particular manatee was a pet of the chieftain Caramatexius and lived in Lake Guarabo, near the ‘palace’ of its master in Hispaniola. Caramatexius caught it when it was very young and fed it daily with roots over twenty-five years, until it grew big. Matum – as the pet manatee was called – answered to the sound of its name and ate from the hands of sympathetic 21

Decade III, book 10 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 410). Ibid., book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 391). 23 Decade VII, book 8 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, pp. 303–4). Cf. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, 5 vols (Madrid, 1959) (hereafter cited as HGNI), 1st part, book 14, chap. 6 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 72–3). Gilmore identifies the ‘alcatraz’ with the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). See Gilmore, ‘Fauna and Ethnozoology’, p. 385. But it has been claimed that alcatraz was the word used by Spanish and Portuguese to designate birds like the gannet (genus Morus) and the booby bird (genus Sula). See Morison, Journals, p. 55, note 1. Oviedo was aware of the differences between pelicans and boobies and described them in different chapters of his Summary. See Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Natural History of the West Indies, trans. and ed. Sterling A. Stoudemire (Chapel Hill, 1959) (hereafter cited as Natural History), chaps 32 (booby) and 37 (pelican), pp. 61 and 64. The editor also takes the view that alcatraz was in fact the gannet. See ibid., p. 64, note 50. 24 Decade II, book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 263). 25 Decade III, book 8 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 373). 22

The New Histories of the New World

59

humans. It would play and wrestle gently with the ‘chamberlains’ of the king and attracted the attention of natives who were amazed at the sight. Yet it would shun Spaniards, because once a young Christian miscreant had thrown a pike at it. Matum was even able to transport people across the lake on its back: people said that it had once carried ten persons from one shore to the other, all of them singing and enjoying themselves. The marvels of the lake of Baiae or the boycarrying dolphin of Arion, says Martyr, are not as admirable as this aquatic creature of the Indies. One of the most engaging and accomplished animal descriptions in the Decades concerns an insect: the cocuyo (fire beetle).26 Swamps in the Indies were plagued by swarms of different kinds of mosquitoes, says Martyr, but nature provided the remedy for the plague, since these obnoxious insects were eaten by the cocuyos (it did not seem to bother our humanist that his nature showed greater benevolence towards humans and cocuyos than towards poor mosquitoes). The natives captured the cocuyos by brandishing a torch while crying out ‘cocuyo, cocuyo’, although according to Martyr the insects were probably attracted more by the light of the torch than by the calling of the human voice. The bugs thus captured were then liberated within the houses to free them from gnats. A further benefit derived from the cocuyos was that they could also be used as lanterns: the Indians spun and wove during the night by their light – these helpmates of human beings remained within the huts as long as there were mosquitoes to eat. A man from Seville even affirmed that he had read very long letters by the light of a cocuyo. The young Indian rascals of the New World, says Martyr, used to smear their faces with a paste made with ground cocuyos and derived great joy from surprising stragglers lost in town at night with their glowing faces. In Martyr’s view, nature in the Indies was bounteous, immensely generous, happily munificent. He sings praises to the fertility of Urabá in paragraphs evocative of evergreen pastures, rich harvests, the diversity of wild life and the ripeness of the varied tropical fruits. The animals imported from Spain were strengthened by the vitality of the soil so that ‘everything the Spaniards sowed or planted in Urabá grew marvellously well … O admirable fertility! The cucumbers and other similar vegetables soon were ready for picking in less than twenty days.’27 Martyr takes delight in his descriptions of the fruits of the land: the guaravaná, the sweet potatoes, the mameis, the guananalá, the hovos (which he identifies with the myrobalanum, that is, the Egyptian ben-nut described by Pliny).28 The fortunate island of Hispaniola is a new Arcadia, with its healthy air, 26

Decade VII, book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, pp. 310–12). Decade II, book 9 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 269). 28 Ibid. (De orbe novo, vol. 1, pp. 298–302; trans. McNutt, vol. 1, pp. 261–2). 27

60

A New World of Animals

healthy waters, and a ‘perpetual spring and perpetual autumn’.29 Not only the inhabitants claim – perhaps hyperbolically, admits Martyr – that the oxen reach the size of an elephant, but also, on account of the climate, all quadrupeds are either pregnant or feeding (and even both!) all the year round. The cows begin to calve when they are ten months old and live longer than in other countries.30 This overflowing, benevolent power of nature manifests itself in the production of marvels. Some are what we would today call wonders of nature, like the spring of pitch in Cuba, or the mountain that ‘breeds’ perfectly spherical globes of stone (‘mons globorum lapidorum’),31 or the ‘fisher fish’ (called guaicano by the natives and reverso by the Spaniards) which we have seen described in the literature of the Columbian voyages.32 Other more fantastic stories are about trees. The fumes produced by burning the wood of a tree found in Darien were said to be mortally poisonous, so that the Indians once intended to fumigate the Spaniards with it – the plot was discovered and the culprits paid for their crime with their lives.33 But not all trees were deadly in the Indies: some of them were even beneficial. The jaruma, for example, had the wonderful property of healing all kinds of wounds. Once a native old woman used it to restore ad integrum the arm of a Spaniard which had been all but severed by a sword. Martyr proclaims his belief in the power of nature to perform these things and even greater ones (‘haec et maiora posse in natura fieri credere constituimus’).34 During the fourth voyage of Columbus, he says, perennially green trees had been seen by the sea on the coast of Cariai (present-day Costa Rica), with branches growing upwards from which shoots descended straight towards the ground (probably the mangrove tree). Martyr reminds us that Pliny had spoken of these trees in his Naturalis Historia, although the Roman had only mentioned those that grow upon the earth and remained silent as to those that live in the sea.35 Father Tomás Ortiz and the Dominican friars of Chiribichi, in Cumaná (coast of present-day Venezuela), told Martyr a number of wonderful stories about local animals. It would seem that ‘over the other side of the mountains’ there were some wild beasts which had faces, hands and feet like those of human beings and could even stand on two legs (the historian cautiously remarks that some persons 29

Decade III, book 7 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 364). Decade VII, book 9, chap. 1 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 348; trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 306). 31 Ibid., book 7, chap. 2 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, pp. 335–7; trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 296). 32 Decade I, book 3, chap. 5 (ed. Eatough, p. 65). 33 Decade VI, book 3, chap. 4 (trans. Torres Asensio, p. 256). 34 Decade VII, book 1 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 277). ‘For my part, I am resolved to believe that nature has even more extraordinary power than this’ (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 248). 35 Decade III, book 4 (trans. McNutt, vol. 1, p. 321; cf. trans. Torres Asensio, p. 231). Pliny mentions an Indian ficus with this characteristic (actually the Indian banyan). Cf. NH, XII.11.22. 30

The New Histories of the New World

61

thought that these monsters were plain bears and, actually, nobody had ever seen any of them).36 There was also another fantastic animal, the aranata, which looked like a hound with a beard and had a somewhat venerable appearance. Their hands and feet were humanlike and they roamed the jungle in big groups, so that the friars believed they were squads of demons. Martyr thought that this creature could be some kind of cercopithecus, but the missionaries denied it. Another hideous animal expelled snakes instead of excrement. It had the face of a she-fox, the hair of a wolf and a horrid smell. The friars held one in captivity but could not bear its penetrating stink and eventually killed it. If children and even adults on occasion expel worms, asks Martyr, why should we doubt the existence of such a monster? Many and diverse were the beings bred in the sierras of Cumaná. Once in a while, at nightfall, a ferocious animal, the size of a dog, came down to town and roamed the empty streets wailing with so human a voice that the people, assuming it was a crying child, came out of their houses only to be killed by it. Another beast, the cappa, covered with black hair, was larger than an ass and showed itself to be an enemy of dogs. Its feet resembled ‘a French shoe’, large and rounded in the front, and with pointed spurs.37 Martyr also tells that in the region of Maya (near Chiribichi, in Cumaná) some Spaniards caught sight of a creature swimming in the sea that had the head, hair, beard and arms of a human being; when it plunged into the waters, they saw that its body was like that of a fish. The chronicler soberly affirms: ‘tritones esse arbitramur’ (we think they are Tritons) – and Tritons, he goes on, are said to be related to Neptune. Creatures of a similar kind had been sighted in the nearby islands of Cubagua and Margarita, famous for their pearl-fisheries.38 Martyr closes his seventh Decade reporting that in Camará, near the sources of the Dabaiba river (present-day Nicaragua), a terrible storm had brought with it two monsters, ‘almost similar to the harpies of the Strophades celebrated by the poets … they had the face, chin, mouth, nose, teeth, eyes, eyebrows and physiognomy of a virgin’.39 The larger one was able to snatch a man from the ground with its claws and, in a soaring flight, took its victim to its haunt in the high mountains to devour it. Some men, such as the iureconsultus Corrales, the chantre Osorio and a 36

Decade VIII, book 7 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, pp. 423–4; trans. McNutt vol. 2, pp. 375–6). Ibid. (trans. McNutt, vol. 2, pp. 374–6). 38 Ibid., chap. 2 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 427; trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 378). Martyr affirms that melodious voices of maidens had been heard in the Cantabric sea at certain times of the year, which are believed to be (‘putant’) Sirens singing when driven by appetite to procreate (ibid.). 39 ‘Ea vi deportatas ferunt in regionem volucres duas, decantatis strophantum harpiis fere similes, quod virgineo vultu, mento, ore, naso, dentibus et levi supercilio, oculisque venerandis, et facie constarent’. Decade VII, book 10 (De orbe novo, vol. 2, p. 373; trans. McNutt, vol. 2, p. 326). 37

62

A New World of Animals

certain Espinosa, saw how this creature was finally killed with an ingenious trick. The Indians attached firmly to the ground a big wooden pole with the carved effigy of a man on its top. When the harpy came swooping down and plunged its claws into the dummy, it got stuck and the Indians were able to dispose of it with their arrows. It is no wonder that the Decades, written as contemporaneous reports of the discovery, are impregnated with the fantastic images which only a cultivated humanist could impose on the New World. Perhaps more than any other chronicle, they tell us as much about the expectations and anxieties of the sixteenth-century European mind as about the events they claimed to report.

Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, the Pliny of the New World When Oviedo ascended the volcano of Masaya in Nicaragua to take a close look into the frightening and exciting spectacle of its cone, did he recall Pliny the Elder dying stoically from suffocation during the eruption of Vesuvius?40 ‘A Pliny of the New World’ he styled himself, during the long and troublesome years he employed in the writing of his General and Natural History of the Indies which, he insists, was modelled on the 37 books of the Naturalis Historia. Francisco Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557) is perhaps the most famous of the early chroniclers of the Indies. His long and adventurous life working in the New World for the crown of Castile in administrative and military capacities, his confrontation with the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas, his literary output expressed in a variety of genres, his energy and voracious curiosity, make him a mirror of the sharp contrasts of light and shade which characterized the encounter between two worlds.41 Oviedo spent two years in Italy, where he received some artistic and literary culture – later in life he would boast of his supposed meetings with Leonardo and Mantegna and adorn his writings with quotations from Petrarch, Boccaccio or Dante.42 A veteran of the Italian wars, Ferdinand the Catholic named him supervisor of the smelting of gold in Tierra Firme (the mainland) and he left for the Indies, arriving at the village of Santa María (on the coast of the Gulf of Urabá) with Pedrarias Dávila and Fernández de Enciso in 1514. Four years later 40

HGNI, 1st part, book 42, chaps 4–5 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 62 ff.). For Oviedo’s biography see the long introductory essay by Juán Pérez de Tudela Bueso in the first volume of HGNI. The major work on Oviedo is Antonello Gerbi, La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas. See also Salas, Tres Cronistas de Indias, pp. 71–8; O’Gorman, Cuatro historiadores de Indias, pp. 41–67 and Stoudemire’s introduction to his edition of Oviedo’s Summary. 42 Oviedo’s relationships with Italy are extensively discussed in Gerbi, La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas, pp. 170–251. 41

The New Histories of the New World

63

the new king, Charles I – the future emperor Charles V – designated Oviedo general notary of the province and councilman of Santa María, and ordered him to write a history of the New World. Among many benefits derived from his official position in the Indies, Oviedo was entitled to a portion of the tax collected by the crown upon each Indian enslaved and shackled.43 When in 1523 he returned to Europe to raise some complaints about the ruthless rule of Pedrarias – who, as mentioned in Chapter 1, had beheaded Balboa – the emperor asked Oviedo to write an abstract of the history he had begun writing in America. The result was the Summary of the Natural History of the Indies, published in Toledo in 1526. After a sojourn in Nicaragua (1526–30), Oviedo returned to Spain and was named ‘official chronicler’ of the Indies. The first part of his General and Natural History of the Indies (nineteen books dealing mostly with the island of Hispaniola), was published in Seville in 1535.44 By then Oviedo divided his time between his office as alcalde of the fortress of Santo Domingo and the administration of his large estate in the island. He died in 1557 at the age of seventy, leaving behind him all kinds of works dealing with official history, heraldry, genealogy and spirituality.45 In the opening letter of the General and Natural History of the Indies, Oviedo affirms that ‘in a certain way, I understand that I follow and imitate the very Pliny’.46 Despite this claim, only fifteen out of the fifty books of the first part of the General and Natural History have to do with natural history; the rest is a chronicle of historical events during the years following the arrival of Columbus in the New World.47 The layout of the second and third parts of the work is based upon a geographical criterion, for they deal in turn with the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of America, mingling geography with the history of discovery and conquest. All this said, it remains true that the sections of the work devoted to natural history have a strong ‘Plinian’ flavour. Moreover, there is an evident parallel between Pliny’s inventory of the multifarious manifestations of a natura whose limits were those of the Roman oikumene and Oviedo’s effort to account 43

Tudela Bueso, ‘Preliminary study’ to HGNI (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. xlvi). The second edition was in Salamanca, 1547. 45 Soon after his death, there was an edition of book XX (the first book of the second part of the History) which narrates the discovery of the Strait of Magellan and the Loaysa expedition (Valladolid, 1557). See Daymond Turner, ‘The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies’, The Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 105–25. For the manuscript tradition of the work see Turner, ‘Aborted First Printing’; idem, ‘Forgotten Treasures from the Indies: The Illustrations and Drawings of Fernández de Oviedo’, Huntington Library Quarterly 48 (1985): 1–46 and Jesús Carrillo, ‘Taming the Visible: Word and Image in Oviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias’, Viator 31 (2000): 399–431. 46 HGNI, book I, Dedicatory letter (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1 , p. 11). 47 There have been arguments about Oviedo’s supposed abandonment of his original ‘Plinian’ project. For a summary of this discussion between Salas and O’Gorman, see Salas, Tres cronistas, p. 92, note 11. 44

64

A New World of Animals

for what he had seen in the ‘occidental empire of the West Indies, Islands and Main of the Ocean Sea’.48 While Pliny had dedicated his work to Titus – the son of the emperor Vespasianus and soon to be emperor himself – Oviedo wrote his Summary and his General and Natural History for Charles V, whom he insistently calls ‘Caesar’ or ‘His Caesarean majesty’, thus explicitly underscoring the analogy.49 Now, Oviedo’s Plinian project of a natural history was articulated with a more ambitious programme of a general history. The dedication of his General and Natural History deploys in triumphant phraseology a vision of Castilian greatness and power resonant with messianic overtones.50 The apotheosis is reached in the letter which opens the second part of the work, in which the heroic feats of the Spaniards are shown to be far superior to those of the ancients. The travels of Theseus, Jason and Medea, says Oviedo, are childish when compared with the glorious exploits of the ‘valiant and experienced men of Spain’ who acquired for the emperor a whole hemisphere. For while Alexander’s empire was limited to the northern hemisphere, Charles’s dominions embrace both halves of the globe. And what could the Romans boast of? Are not the Goths far superior to them? Satan, Oviedo continues, is vanquished everywhere, the Moors have been expelled from Iberia, the idolatrous savages of the Indies are converted to the true faith. All this should be attributed ‘to the warlike and noble Spanish nation and to the fortune and proper goodness of her Prince’.51 The celebration of empire which looms in the opening paragraphs of Martyr’s Decades and was further developed in Enciso’s Suma is here brought to completion. In comparison with the dedications of the Natural and General History, Oviedo’s address of his Summary to Charles V is rather sober. The Summary is written in a somewhat colloquial style as an imaginary conversation between the author and the emperor in which the name of the Augustan addressee is insistently mentioned. This brief treatise, which enjoyed a number of translations, deals for the most part with natural history, describing the animals, plants, climate and customs of the Indians of the island of Santo Domingo.52 The compact and friendly format of the Summary helped to spread its author’s fame as 48

Natural History, introduction (ed. Stoudemire, p. 3). Actually, the General and Natural History is dedicated to Fray García Jofre de Loaysa, cardinal of Spain and president of the Royal Council of the Indies, but its first chapter is addressed to Charles V. 50 ‘It is only fair that this history should be manifested to all the Republics of the world, so that in all of it could be known the amplitude and greatness of the States that God kept for the royal crown of Castile, because of the fortune and merits of His Caesarean majesty, under whose favour and protection I offer this work’. HGNI, 1st part, Dedicatory letter (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 10). 51 HGNI, 2nd part, Dedicatory letter (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 212–16). 52 For the translations see Turner, ‘Forgotten Treasures’, pp. 2–6. 49

The New Histories of the New World

65

the first naturalist of the New World, thus paving the way for the reception of the larger work, the General and Natural History, the first part of which was published almost a decade later. The chapters on animals, for example, feature most of the characteristic quadrupeds and birds of Central America: the ocelot, the cougar, the peccary, the anteater, the armadillo, the sloth, the racoon, the monkeys, the opossum, the toucan, the hummingbird, the iguana, the alligator. As one would expect, Oviedo employs the fauna of Spain as a term of comparison for describing the appearance and qualities of New World animals: ‘the opossum in Tierra Firme (like the marten in Castile) comes to the houses at night to eat the chickens’ and the armadillo is ‘quite different from any animal in Spain’.53 Animals who had been seen by the Spaniards need not be described in detail, like the monkeys, which seem to have been prized as a living token to bring back home, so that there were plenty of them in Spain.54 The Summary opens with a chapter on the ‘tiger’ (in fact, the jaguar).55 We may look briefly at Oviedo’s account of this fierce beast, for it condenses several of the meanings which he imposed on the natural world of the Indies. While at first sight the New World tiger would show no significant differences with respect to its Old World sibling, on closer consideration it reveals a different, perhaps inferior, nature. Oviedo says that the first Spaniards who saw these animals covered with black spots all over the body and legs called them ‘tigers’. But after reminding the emperor of the live specimen kept in Toledo, he expresses his misgivings that these are real tigers, because Pliny had affirmed that tigers are extremely swift, which is not the case with New World tigers. So he entertains the possibility that there might be different kinds of tigers just as there are different types of humans (some of them courageous, some cowardly) and different kinds of bats (those of Spain are innocuous, those of the Indies venomous). So, tigers in the Indies might be of a different kind than those described by Pliny. But after all these speculations, Oviedo flatly affirms that, in his view, New World tigers are neither tigers, nor panthers, nor any other animal which could be found in the writings of the ancients. American animals, he says, belong to a land discovered by Columbus, who cleft the rock which separated the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, establishing its halves in Cadiz and Seville as the new Pillars of Hercules, the very same pillars depicted in Charles V’s heraldic emblem with the legend Plus ultra.56 53

Natural History, chaps 27 and 22 (ed. Stoudemire, pp. 58 and 53). Ibid., chap. 25 (ed. Stoudemire, p. 56). 55 Ibid., chap. 11 (ed. Stoudemire, pp. 45–8). 56 ‘These are words indeed worthy of our great and universal Emperor and not appropriate to any other prince, for your Catholic Majesty has placed them [the pillars] in strange lands thousands of leagues farther than Hercules or any other prince has ever done’ (ibid., chap. 25 [ed. Stoudemire, pp. 45–8]). 54

66

A New World of Animals

Oviedo concludes his chapter on the tiger by recommending the emperor to order the keeper in Toledo to take every precaution with that most cruel beast, because ‘those animals should never live among people, since they are fierce and by their very nature indomitable’. He himself had had a tiger in a cage in the Indies and, although it had been apparently tamed, one day it tried to escape and killed its guardian. The peculiar distinctiveness of the tiger of the New World (slower and wilder than its Old World counterpart) draws attention to the distance between the two worlds and suggests the vastness of Charles’s empire, the expansive power of which reaches further and beyond the limits imposed on the heroes of Antiquity – plus ultra, across the Pillars of Hercules and towards the unknown and untamed regions of the globe. The Summary brings more striking examples of the originality of American beasts, such as the sloth, ‘so unlike any other animal’.57 It was mockingly called by the Spaniards perico ligero (meaning something like ‘swift so-and-so’) because of the extreme slowness of its movements. Oviedo claimed that it was ‘the stupidest animal that can be found in the world’ and that he had never seen ‘such an ugly animal’ or one that was ‘more useless’. Notwithstanding his quite low opinion of the beast, he attributes to it the creation of music. He says that at night the perico ligero sings a melody of six notes, a descending scale very much like ‘la, sol, fa, mi, re, do’, which sounds ‘ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah’. The monotonous musical phrase is repeated until dawn. As the armadillo could have been the origin of comparison with a horse, so by hearing the sloth ‘sound its six notes the first inventor of music would have had the first suggestion in the world on which to base his scale’. Oviedo also confirms the commonly held opinion that this animal did not eat: ‘I had one [sloth] in my home, and from my observations I have come to believe that this animal lives on air’, for it ‘turns its head and mouth into the wind more often than in any other direction’. The world of the adelantados valued reckless action and physical prowess. Oviedo was not only shocked by the laziness of the sloth; he was also disgusted by the timid habits of the anteater, which he qualifies as ‘cowardly and defenceless’, for it seems it was easy to capture them by beating, and they were easily caught by dogs.58 According to the description of the Summary, this animal was like the bears known in Europe, except that it had a much longer snout and did not have a tail (sic). In pure Plinian style, Oviedo affirms that the anteater is the ‘natural enemy’ of the ants. His account of how it uses its tongue to feed from the anthills is quite accomplished. The books on animals of the General and Natural History of the Indies are four 57 58

Ibid., chap. 23 (ed. Stoudemire, pp. 54–5). Ibid., chap. 20 (ed. Stoudemire, pp. 51–3).

The New Histories of the New World

67

and deal in turn with beasts, sea and river fish, birds and insects.59 There also some important chapters with rich information on animals in other parts of the work.60 The organization of materials in the books devoted to quadrupeds and birds aims basically at distinguishing between native animals and those brought to the New World from Spain. Oviedo treats separately the animals discovered by Columbus in Hispaniola because some of them, he says, have been extinguished or almost so by the relentless hunts triggered by the famines which besieged the first Spanish settlers (for example, this was the case of the ‘mute dogs’).61 Oviedo also reports on the near extinction in his times of three kinds of rodents in the island of Santo Domingo, which were used as food: the hutia, the quemi and the mohuy.62 The 1535 edition of the work was illustrated with drawings, slightly improved in the 1547 Salamanca edition. Pictures such as that of the iguana and the manatee were among the first images of American animals known to Europeans (Figure 3.1).63

3.1 Iguana and manatee. Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural y general de las Indias (Salamanca, 1547). These drawings were among the very first images of animals of the New World to reach Europe. 59

The differences between Oviedo’s treatment of animals in his Summary and in the larger HGNI have been discussed in Enrique Álvarez López, ‘La historia natural en Fernández de Oviedo’, Revista de Indias 17 (1957): 541–601. 60 For example, one of them describes in detail three animals of the province of Paria (HGNI, book XXIV, chap. 13 [ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2 , pp. 429–31]). Three other chapters contain a summary of the fauna of the River Plate and Patagonia in connection with the narratives of the travels of Juan Díaz de Solís and Magellan, which are the subject of book XX (HGNI, book XX, chap. 8 [ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 248–9] and book XXIII, chaps 5 and 7 [ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 360–63 and 366–7]). These books belong to what originally was published as the second part of the work. 61 HGNI, book XII, chap. 5 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 30–31). See Enrique Álvarez López, ‘El “perro mudo” americano’. 62 Ibid., chaps 1–3 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 29). For taxonomic information about these species see Gilmore, Fauna and Ethnozoology, pp. 370–71. 63 See Turner, ‘Forgotten Treasures’.

68

A New World of Animals

Curiously enough, Oviedo inaugurates the series of books on animals of the Natural and General History with a numerological dilemma.64 Pliny had famously consecrated to animals the eighth book of his Naturalis Historia, while in the General and Natural History animals are treated in book 12. This unwelcome divergence is explained by Oviedo in terms of the associations evoked by these numbers.65 ‘Eight’, he says, was an apt designation for a book on animals because eight is the number of the main ‘winds’ of the sphere and of the persons who were saved from the Flood in Noah’s ark, together with the animals. But if the whole human race is descended from these eight survivors, it is evident that Pliny’s inventory is incomplete, for it does not include the Indians. Oviedo wishes to ‘help Pliny to write what he did not know neither found written about the southern and western regions of the Indies’. In other words, he expects to consummate the Plinian enterprise, which the Columbian discovery has revealed as pitifully lacking. He declares his willingness to follow in the steps of his intellectual mentor and at the same time emphasizes his own peculiar originality.66 It can be argued that the unending list of sacred and profane meanings which Oviedo associates with the number twelve (that of his book on quadrupeds) contrives to raise him above Pliny: twelve are the Apostles, the months of the year, the articles of the faith, the age at which Jesus taught in the Temple, the tribes of Israel, the duration of the triumvirate of Octavianus, Lepidus and Marcus Antonius and so on (the whole list occupies two packed columns of small print). The Indians, continues Oviedo, who as descendants of the eight survivors of Noah’s ark were rational animals and should have remained as such, had been transformed into ‘irrational and beastly beings, with their idolatries and sacrifices and infernal ceremonies’. From this dire state they would be saved thanks to the providential fact that the crown of Castile was spreading the evangelical doctrine of the twelve apostles in the new land. As a by-product of this doubtful exercise in numerology – which enraged Las Casas, who saw through it as an abstruse attempt at legitimizing cruelties and abuses against the natives – we are left with the impression that the General and Natural History would be a monument higher than its Plinian model.67 64

For a panoramic view of the relationships between Oviedo and Pliny, see Enrique Álvarez López, ‘Plinio y Fernández de Oviedo’, Anales de ciencias naturales (Madrid) 1 (1940): 40–61 and 2 (1941): 13–35. The approach of this paper is extremely anachronistic. 65 HGNI, book XII, preface (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 27–9). 66 For example, when he says ‘of the many animals of Tierra Firme, and among them those that I will consider, no ancient writer makes any mention’ (HGNI, book XII, chap. 10 [ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 40]). 67 This is a fragment of Las Casas’s view of Oviedo’s General and Natural History: ‘Whenever his History speaks of the Indians, he [Oviedo] opens his mouth only to damn and annihilate them as much as his forces allows him … it does seem that his ultimate goal and bliss when he wrote it, was to utterly slander them all over the world; and his History already

The New Histories of the New World

69

Oviedo’s subtle claim to superiority over Pliny seems to depend also on the Spaniard’s methodology, tersely summarized in statements such as ‘I write about what I have seen and experienced’68 or ‘I do not write resting on the authority of some historian and poet, but as an ocular witness’.69 And if perchance he appeals to an ancient auctoritas, it is only for the reason that those who are far from the Indies cannot ‘see’ and need to be convinced on the basis of textual authority of things which anyone in the Indies can see for himself.70 When discussing animals engendered by spontaneous generation, Oviedo recalls Pliny’s claim that some worms generate within the human being and also in putrefied meat, and then he asks ‘what is the point of using Pliny or any other ancient author to prove the things we see everyday and are evident to all?’71 The things told in the General and Natural History, says its author, ‘were not taken from two thousand volumes, as Pliny writes … but I have accumulated everything that I write from two thousand labours and dangers, during more than twenty two years, in which I have experienced these things by myself’.72 Oviedo’s indictment of those who write from hearsay (as he himself does on many occasions, despite his claims to the contrary) is also a shot aimed at Martyr’s Decades.73 Oviedo proclaims that what he writes is ‘true history, removed from the fables that other writers presume to write in elegant and rare Latin letters, on the basis of information brought to them by many’.74 In other words, the result of ‘seeing’ and personal experience should be expressed in plain, vernacular language, in the tongue of the Goths. Latin, the language of the Romans, was in Oviedo’s view associated with bookish authority and hollow rhetoric. (As Las Casas was happy to point out, Oviedo could not read Latin and read his Pliny in Italian.75) flies, deceiving everyone who reads it and, without either reason or cause, generating hatred of them, so that they be not considered as human beings and that the ghastly inhumanities he and his accomplices committed against them could be excused’ (Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, book III, chap. 142 [ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 3, p. 321]). The complete text occupies chapters 142 through 146 of Las Casas’s History of the Indies. It is possible that the edition of the second part of the General and Natural History was delayed because of Las Casas’s active opposition. See Oviedo, Natural History of the West Indies, editor’s introduction, p. xvii. 68 HGNI, book XIII, chap. 4 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 54). 69 Ibid., book II, preface (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 13). 70 When describing the turtles of Santo Domingo, Oviedo recommends to those who doubt his account to read what Pliny says in NH, IX.12.35 regarding the turtles of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, whose shells were used by the inhabitants as houses and boats. HGNI, book XIII, chap. 8 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 63). 71 Ibid., book XV, chap. 4 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2 , p. 82). 72 Ibid., book I, Dedicatory letter (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 11). 73 For the polemic with Peter Martyr see Gerbi, La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas, pp. 284–9. 74 HGNI, book I, Dedicatory letter (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 9). 75 Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, book III, chap. 143 (ed. Millares Carlo, vol. 3, pp. 323–4).

70

A New World of Animals

Oviedo used the Naturalis Historia mostly as a source of glosses or particular pieces of information. For example, when he says that some iguanas have a short tail, he recalls Pliny’s observation of the regeneration of the lizard’s tail.76 Some of these references to the Roman encyclopaedia are trivial, but others are more to the point. Our historian of the Indies confesses that he did not know that leeches could be used for bleeding until he read in Pliny that this procedure was equivalent to using cupping glasses.77 In many cases Oviedo identifies or compares animals of the New World – or a particular trait of them – with their counterparts in the Naturalis Historia. The serpents that hang from the trees and viciously attack those who pass under the tree-tops are identified with the iaculus or javelin-snake,78 the sea lion (‘lobo marino’) is the same animal as that which Pliny calls vitulus marinus (‘sea calf’).79 (Pliny claimed that the hide of the sea calf, when flayed from the beast, bristled at high tide; Oviedo had observed that the same happened with the hide of the sea lion.) Sometimes the procedure is reversed and a beast mentioned by Pliny is compared with its cognate in the new land: Oviedo believes that the physeter cited by the Roman must have been a whale80 and the insects which according to Pliny lack orifices to evacuate the blood they suck and easily burst out are deemed to be ticks.81 The Spanish historian recalls that the fish ‘torpédine’, which is mentioned but not described in the Naturalis Historia, produces a terrible discharge even when touched from afar with a spear or pole. The Spaniards found this fish in the Indies – in the Huyaparí river – but did not know its name.82 Had they read their Pliny, says Oviedo, they would not have considered it such a marvel.83 It is evident that, despite his claims about the originality of the fauna of the Indies, at the time of using Pliny the Spaniard seems to admit that there is enough ‘zoological continuity’ between the New and the Old World to allow for a degree of identification between animals from both. In at least one particular instance Oviedo calls upon an auctoritas to bear witness on a question concerning the identity of New World animals. He begins by criticizing Martyr’s assertion that the iguanas are identical to the crocodiles of the Nile on the grounds of the obvious different size of the animals, a fact evident to all those who have seen them. Oviedo then quotes Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies on the crocodile and concludes that the iguana could never be a 76

HGNI, book XII, chap. 7 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 32). Ibid., book XV, chap. 6 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 84). 78 Ibid., book XII, chap. 8 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 37). Cf. NH, VIII.35.85. 79 Ibid., book XIII, chap. 5 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 60). Cf. NH, IX.15.41. 80 Ibid., chap. 2 (ed. BAE, vol. 2, p. 57). The physeter is mentioned in NH, IX.3.8. 81 Ibid., book XV, chap. 6 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 83). Cf. NH, XI.32.94. 82 Ibid., book VI, chap. 34 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, pp. 193–4). Cf. NH, XXXII.2.7; the name is actually torpedo. 83 HGNI., book XXIV, chap. 13 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 429–30). 77

The New Histories of the New World

71

crocodile because, as Isidore says, these are large animals and usually of a yellow colour (‘crocodilus a croceo colore dictus’), while the iguanas measure about four feet and are green or brownish. Besides, Isidore holds that the crocodile is the only animal which elevates the upper maxillary, something the iguanas are unable to do.84 Oviedo then continues with an aquatic reptile in the River Plate (probably a cayman) which would also exhibit this supposed peculiarity of moving its upper jaw upwards. He admits that they might be crocodiles, but of a different kind than those of the Nile, because of their different colour. ‘The lizards of the River Plate’, he concludes, ‘are crocodiles as to their jaw, but not as to the colour.’85 The implicit presupposition of a ‘zoological continuity’ between the Old and the New World – such as we have already discussed when dealing with the torpedo – is in this case counterbalanced by the existence of peculiarities proper to the Indies: the reptile of the River Plate is in part a crocodile and in part not. On occasion, Oviedo emphasizes that a particular New World animal was not mentioned by the ancients. Of the manatee he says that ‘neither Pliny talked about it, nor Albertus in his De proprietatibus rerum, nor do they exist in Spain’.86 (The attribution to Albertus Magnus of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum is of course mistaken.) Summing up, Oviedo puts his Pliny to different uses. The Naturalis Historia enriches Oviedo’s narrative with occasional bits of information and it helps him with some puzzling identifications of American animals. Pliny is the basis upon which Oviedo builds a sense of ‘continuity’ between the two worlds, but also the occasion for his forceful remarks about the originality of New World creatures. Only exceptionally does Oviedo use Pliny to support his own observations. No matter how much a keen, indefatigable observer of nature Oviedo was, he certainly was not a sound scholar. His quotations – as in the case of the attribution of De proprietatibus rerum to Albertus – were sometimes mistaken and the repertoire of authors he drew upon did not proceed beyond Pliny, some Isidore, the commentary on Eusebius’s De temporibus by the famous Spanish biblical commentator Alonso Tostado and some occasional, probably second-hand, references.87 Of course, philosophical arguments are banished from the General 84 Ibid., book XII, chap. 8 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 33–4). Cf. Isidore, Ethymologiae, XII.6.19–20 and Decade I, book 3, chap. 4 (trans. Torres Asensio, p. 34). Cf. also NH, VIII.37.89. The crocodile cannot elevate its upper maxillary. 85 HGNI, book XXIII, chap. 5 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 360–62). 86 Ibid., book XIII, chap. 9 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 63). Cf. book XIII, chap. 6 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 61). Oviedo also proudly observes that Pliny mentioned neither the manatee nor the shark in his list of viviparous aquatic animals. Cf. NH, IX.15.41. 87 He quotes Gregory’s Moralia in Job in the chapter on the tiger and Hilarius’s De Trinitate in a chapter on monkeys. HGNI, book XII, chap. 10 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 40) and book VI, chap. 52 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, pp. 222–4).

72

A New World of Animals

and Natural History. Oviedo affirms that Pliny’s purpose was to show the things which are manifest in nature without looking for occult causes.88 Neither does he indulge in causal inquiries and for the most part remains faithful to a descriptive, phenomenological approach. It has been argued that Oviedo’s use of a prose which aims to convey to the reader the subjective ‘experience’ of its author was the result of his years as an official notary, trained to codify into a legal language the things he saw.89 His rhetoric is built upon the register of evidence. His proclaimed criterion of belief depends upon sense experience or the coincidence of testimonies, ‘granting credit not to single witnesses but to many, in those things not experienced by myself’.90 But in some cases he also has recourse to authorities. We might look, for example, at his treatment of a report about certain mermen (hombres marinos) which had been sighted swimming in the River Plate by the cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who sailed in Sebastian Cabot’s expedition. Oviedo begins by paraphrasing Pliny’s enumeration of sea creatures resembling human beings and continues with the story, told in Tostado’s commentary on Eusebius, of a being who came out of the sea on the coast of Galicia, lived on land for a year and then returned to its marine abode.91 He completes these learned testimonies with the contemporary reports of sailors, like the pilot Diego Martín and Joan Farfán de Gaona, from Seville, who attested that they had seen, in the island of Cubagua, a merman sleeping on the beach who, when attacked by dogs, ran on two legs towards the sea and plunged into the waves. Furthermore, the said Gaona and a certain Joan Gallego also told Oviedo about the discovery of a similar creature in the sea near that island. It was half the size of a man and had a colour between brown and red, smooth complexion with long soft beard, sparse and black hair on the head, a flat and broad nose, big mouth and small ears. Everything about him was human except for his fingers and toes, which were joined. When cudgelled to death, he wailed with groans similar to those of sows when dreaming or suckling. Santa Cruz and some other sailors also sighted from their ships mermen and also ‘seahorses’ (caballos marinos) in a river near Pernambuco. And Alonso de Santa Cruz, says our historian, should be given full credit, because he is an honourable person and a principal man in Cabot’s fleet – besides, all those who saw the creatures thought they were mermen. Oviedo’s efforts to invest his informants with marks of credibility and his accumulation of testimonies betray perhaps his own misgivings. Curiously, all those sea-creatures were males; not a single mermaid alleviated the monotonous masculine confraternity of the New World seas. 88

HGNI, book XV, chap. 1 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 77). See Carrillo, ‘Taming the visible’, pp. 402–5. 90 HGNI, book II, preface (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 13). 91 Ibid., book XXIII, chap. 5 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 361). 89

The New Histories of the New World

73

Griffins also occur in the fauna of the Indies described by Oviedo. We might recall here that the Spaniards called the monkeys of the New World ‘monkeycats’ (gatos monillos).92 Oviedo reports a very special case of monkey-cat, which had a double nature. His account begins by discussing griffins – creatures with the head and wings of an eagle and a lion’s body – on the basis of Isidore’s Etymologies and Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum. This incursion into ancient and medieval animal lore is justified, in Oviedo’s eyes, as a prelude to the description of an animal seen in the southern regions of Peru, which ‘is not less marvellous than the griffin’.93 The head, arms and upper half of the body of this particular monkey-cat were covered with brownish feathers; its legs and long tail were covered by short hair of a reddish hue. The marvellous animal, no bigger than one span, was the pet of the Inca Amaro’s sister, who had married a Spaniard well known in the emperor’s court. Her husband persuaded her to send the curious animal to the empress, which she did, with the unfortunate result that it was accidentally killed on its way to Spain. Rich gentlemen worthy of credit had arrived at Santo Domingo and told Oviedo that the little beast had teeth and, when resting on the shoulders of a person, could sing like a nightingale or a mockingbird. The chronicler would not believe that this creature was the result of an ‘adulterous’ union between a cat and a bird, on grounds of the discordance of the genital organs of each species. He rather thought that it constituted ‘a species in itself and a natural one, like the griffin, because the teacher of Nature has done greater works and wonders’. In the prologue to his book on insects, where he gives vent to his feelings of wonder at the extreme intricacy of insect life, Oviedo discriminates even more clearly between the Christian idea of an omnipotent creator and the ancient conception of a powerful nature, ‘so that not to Nature (as Pliny and the gentiles would want) would any Catholic wish to refer the grace of these marvels, but to the Teacher of Nature’.94 Oviedo is faithful to the Renaissance picture of nature when he finds parallels between different kinds of beings.95 The property of the torpedo fish to cause a shock even when touched with a pole and the horrid smell of the zorilla (the skunk) transmitted through the wind into the entrails of its victims are seen as cases of action at a distance.96 The intriguing bivana, a quadruped which exhibits 92

They are treated in a chapter of the General and Natural History. HGNI, book XII, chap. 26 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 50–51). 93 Ibid., book VI, chap. 52 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 223). 94 Ibid., book XV, prologue (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 76). 95 See Robert Lenoble, Histoire de l’idée de nature (Paris, 1969), pp. 279–308. 96 HGNI, book VI, chap. 34 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, pp. 193–4). For the torpédine see ibid., book XXIV, chap. 13 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 429–31) and for the zorrilla see ibid., book XII, chap. 17 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, p. 44) and also book XXIV, chap. 13 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 429–31).

74

A New World of Animals

the peculiar property of having its hair oriented towards its head, calls to mind the accipenser, a fish mentioned by Pliny, which has its scales oriented towards the mouth.97 ‘By these variations’, says Oviedo, ‘is Nature beautiful, because she sometimes conforms the things of the sea with those of the land, like the torpédine with the zorrillas and the accipenser with the bivana’.98 Nature, the ministering servant of the creator, would be able to engender composite creatures such as mermen and produce symmetries between the inhabitants of land and sea.

A Chronicle of the Conquest. López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies ‘Except for the incarnation and death of the Creator, the greatest event since the creation of the world was the discovery of the Indies; and thus they are called New World.’99 This sonorous declaration, redolent of epic glory, opens the dedication of López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies to Charles V. Gómara, a priest who had spent ten years in Italy under the patronage of the Spanish ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, accompanied the emperor in the 1541 failed attack on Algiers and on that occasion met Cortés, remaining his chaplain or private secretary for a couple of years. The first part of Gómara’s General History of the Indies intertwines the history of the Spanish expeditions to the New World with a geographical description of the different regions of America. The more renowned second part tells the story of Cortés’s conquest of Mexico (Conquista de México), probably based on what Gómara might have heard while he was on close terms with the conquistador, the obvious hero of his chronicle. The work, first published in Zaragoza in 1552, was a success everywhere except in Spain, where it was eventually prohibited by order of Prince Philip (the future Philip II), perhaps instigated by Las Casas, outraged by Gómara’s glorification of Cortés.100 Reflecting on the meaning of the novelty of the Indies, Gómara declares that this New World is called such not only on account of its very recent discovery, but 97

Ibid., book VI, chap. 34 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 194). Cf. NH, IX.27.60 for the accipenser. For the bivana see also book XXIV, chap. 13 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 429–31). 98 Ibid., book VI, chap. 34 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 1, p. 194). 99 López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias, 2 vols (Madrid, 1941), dedicatory (vol. 1, p. 4). We will refer to this edition as ‘HGI’. 100 See the biography by Leslie Byrd Simpson in the introduction to the modern English translation of the second part of Gómara’s chronicle, in López de Gómara, Cortés. The Life of the Conqueror. Also Henry R. Wagner, ‘Francisco López de Gómara and his Works’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 58 (1948): 262–82.

The New Histories of the New World

75

also because all the things which belong to it are ‘very much different from those in our [old] world’. And he continues with an important distinction: Animals [in the New World] in general, although there are few species of them, are different [from those of the Old World] … And this shows that the consideration of the Creator is not small, because the elements are one and the same thing here and there. But men are like us, except for the colour, because otherwise they would be beasts and monsters and would not have descended from Adam, as they do.101

Animals, although built out of the same materials, are different on either side of the Ocean Sea. On the contrary, human beings constitute a single kind, for they descend from a common ancestor. Thus, despite Oviedo’s insinuations to the contrary, according to Gómara human beings in the Indies are neither animals nor monstrous. This argumentative gambit held in view the cluster of questions which arose from the encounter with the Indians: were they properly human beings? where they had come from?, could they be Christianized? could they be enslaved? how legitimate was the war of conquest waged on them? what was their legal and political status?102 In the face of these problems, Gómara’s affimation of the unity of the human race was a statement pregnant with political and juridical meanings. And so was his declaration of the distinctive character of American nature, too easily explained by a vague allusion to the creator. Gómara does not seem to have had any serious interest in the natural world, which perhaps may account for his claim about the ‘few species’ of animals in the Indies.103 Since Gómara never went to the Indies, almost all the interesting passages on animals in his General History are taken from other authors and interspersed as short chapters in the work. Martyr’s stories about the manatee and the cocuyos and Enciso’s brief accounts of the animals of Darien are rehearsed and abstracted in this chronicle, among other canonical descriptions.104 There are also chapters on the flora and fauna of Peru and Nicaragua, with sketchy descriptions of birds such as penguins and turkeys.105 The Conquest of Mexico has a chapter on the vicicilin bird (hummingbird) and another on the shark – the latter includes the observation of the paired intromittent organs of the male individuals, in all probability taken from Oviedo’s General and Natural History. Perhaps the most famous passage about animals in Gómara’s work is his account of the ‘humped 101

HGI, dedicatory (vol. 1, p. 4). See Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (Chicago, 1959), in particular chap. 1 and Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982). 103 On the verso of the title page of the first edition of his work, Gómara listed his sources, among them Peter Martyr and Oviedo. See Wagner, ‘López de Gómara’, p. 272. 104 HGI, chaps 30–31 and 52 (vol. 1, pp. 159–61 and 72–4). 105 Ibid., chaps 193 and 204 (vol. 2, pp. 190–93 and 215–17). 102

76

A New World of Animals

oxen’ of Quivira (‘vacas corcovadas’, American bison), which was reproduced by Hakluyt in his collection and became a locus classicus for early modern descriptions of this beast.106 Gómara talks about ‘oxen’ of the colour of bulls, but with shorter horns. Their distinctive traits are a hump between their shoulders and a horse’s mane upon their back, with tufts of hair also hanging from the forehead, chin and neck. The males resemble a camel or a lion, because they have a long tail with a knob of hair at its end. This is a fierce beast which, when angered, can kill a horse with its horns, charging against it head on. The Indians made all their utensils from the hide, sinew, hair, horns and viscera of these animals, which provide them with everything necessary for life.107 The 1553 Spanish edition of Gómara’s work was illustrated with a woodcut representing this animal. Although from a distance Gómara does not impress us as a particularly interesting source in what concerns animals, his contemporaries thought otherwise. Sixteenth-century authors looking for information about the natural aspects of the New World drew indiscriminately on any kind of text, including the chronicles of its conquest. For example, Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (which we will examine in Chapter 5) is somewhat indebted to Gómara.

Aristotle and the New World. José de Acosta and his Natural and Moral History of the Indies The intellectual quest of the Renaissance was characterized by a longing for the learning of the ancients and the purity of the classics, a love of philology and a sedulous reverence for the written word. But if the Greek manuscripts which reached Italy with the falling of the Byzantine empire opened new vistas to scholars and natural philosophers, the body of knowledge they transmitted would soon show itself unable to contend with some of the problems posed by the discovery of the New World. Ptolemy’s astronomy, Strabo’s geography, Pliny’s natural history, Aristotle’s natural philosophy – all these works discussed problems and built systems of thought on the grounds of what was known factually about Europe and, very vaguely, Asia and Africa. The New World was an unexpected and unruly guest in the sophisticated and polite symposium of those classic personages and, as such, made itself notorious by asking the wrong questions – questions for which the 106 Ibid., chap. 214 (vol. 2, pp. 237–8). Cf. Hakluyt, Richard, The Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of Foreign Voyagers (London, Toronto and New York, 1928), vol. 2, pp. 178–9. 107 Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca had described the bison in his Naufragios, the story of his adventures in Florida and Texas. He compared them with the short-horned cows of Morocco and mentioned their long hair, not unlike the merino sheep of Spain. See idem, Naufragios y Comentarios (Buenos Aires and México, 1942), chap. 18 (p. 61).

The New Histories of the New World

77

Greeks could provide no answers, but which were formulated, for the most part, in the language of ancient philosophy. The figure of José de Acosta might be understood against this background. A brilliant young man full of apostolic zeal, he joined the newly created Society of Jesus and asked to be sent to Peru, where the Jesuits were experimenting with a network of educational establishments. Once in the Indies, he confronted many of the cosmological and natural philosophical questions which arose from the encounter between the Aristotelian philosophy in which he had been educated and the reality of the New World. In his efforts to get to grips with the conflict, he pushed to its limits – and at times even transgressed – the world picture that was already crumbling and falling to pieces. José de Acosta (1540–1600), a theologian involved in the ecclesiastical and political affairs of the Indies, was also the author of an influential work on the recently discovered lands: the Natural and Moral History of the Indies.108 Born in Castile, he joined the Jesuits at an early age and studied in Alcalá de Henares, a leading university at the time, famous for its atmosphere of progressive humanism. Acosta set off for Peru in 1570 and was welcomed by the viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who encouraged the arrival of Jesuits. Acosta deployed an intense missionary and intellectual activity in the new continent, where he remained until 1587. He was rector of the college of San Pablo in Lima – the first Jesuit educational institution in Latin America – founded several colleges and played a leading role in the organization of the Third Council of Lima, where guidelines for a programme of evangelization were laid down. Once back in Madrid, he saw through the press the two books on natural history of the New World he had written so far. These works bore the title De natura novi orbis libri duo and were published as an introduction to De procuranda Indorum salute libri sex (Salamanca, 1588), a work on the evangelization of the Indians.109 Acosta 108

Joseph de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. by Edward Grimston (London, 1604). We have used the reprinted edition Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. with notes and introd. by Clements Markham, 2 vols (London, 1880). From now on, all references will be made to this edition as HNMI (the spelling of the quotations has been modernized). There is a short biography of Acosta in Barbara G. Beddall, ‘Father José de Acosta and the place of his Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias in the History of Science. I. Biographical introduction’, in José de Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Sevilla, Juan de León, 1590), introducción, apéndice y antología por Barbara G. Beddall (Valencia, 1977), pp. 13–27. This work contains a facsimile reproduction of the 1590 edition of Acosta’s work, plus a bilingual (English–Spanish) introductory essay and a brief anthology of English translations of parts of the work, with the title ‘Scientific contributions of Father José de Acosta’, pp. 11–129. See also the biographical chronology in Edmundo O’Gorman, ‘La historia natural y moral de las Indias del padre Joseph de Acosta’, in Cuatro historiadores de Indias, pp. 174–7. 109 It was the general of the Jesuits, Claudio Acquaviva, who had the idea of publishing both works in one volume. See O’Gorman, Cuatro historiadores, p. 178. For a list of the editions of the works, see ibid., pp. 178–81.

78

A New World of Animals

translated his natural history into Spanish and enlarged it with five books – the result was the Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590), which enjoyed great popularity and was widely translated.110 Eventually, he got involved in the conflicts between Philip II and the Society of Jesus, which took him to Rome between 1593 and 1594. He ended his life as rector of the Jesuit college in Salamanca, devoted to the writing of religious works.111 The time interval stretching between the publication of the first part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies (1535) and the appearance of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History (1590) amounts to little more than half a century. But the distance separating the works should be seen in the light of the difference between the two conceptual worlds they represent: the former was anchored in the Plinian tradition of natural history; the latter rested upon Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Acosta opens his work with a bow to Oviedo, admitting that ‘many have written sundry books and discourses of the New World and the West Indies, wherein they describe new and strange things discovered in those parts’. But in the same breath he advances the gist of his own distinctive programme: ‘hitherto I have not seen any other Author which treats of the causes and reasons of these novelties and wonders of nature’. To look for ‘the causes and reasons’ of things is to endorse a philosophical project, which Acosta seems glad to admit when he says that his text is ‘partly historical and partly philosophical’ and that it is possible to find ‘deep Philosophy in the least and basest creatures’.112 Although, as we will see, Acosta criticizes and even mocks particular Aristotelian theses, nevertheless what he understands as natural history is, on the whole, an application to the New World of the model of inquiry proper of Aristotelian natural philosophy.113 We may now summarize the layout of Acosta’s Natural History. The initial books of the work deal with the heavens, temperature and the inhabitation of the world. Book I confronts the cosmological knowledge of Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, Aristotle and Pliny with the fact of the discovery of the New World and addresses the pregnant question of how the human race and land 110

There were Dutch, French, German and English editions, besides new Latin editions and compilations. For the different editions and translations see HNMI, editor’s introduction, pp. xiii–xv. 111 The works were De Christo revelato and De temporibus novissimis, both published in Rome in 1588. Acosta also published the three books of the acts of the Third Council of Lima (Concilium Limense), the three volumes of the Conciones (Salamanca, 1596) and a trilingual catechism (Spanish, Aymara and Quechua) for the Indians. 112 HNMI, author’s advertisement (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. xxiv–xxvi). 113 Cf. Enrique Álvarez López, ‘La filosofía natural del padre Acosta’, Revista de Indias 4 (1943): 302–22. The author defends the view that Acosta was properly a natural philosopher but the perspective of this essay is strongly anachronistic.

The New Histories of the New World

79

animals first arrived in America. Book II discusses the opinions of the ancients about the Torrid Zone – the stretch of land around the equator situated between two temperate zones – which they considered uninhabitable and dry, because of its extreme temperature. Acosta argues that it is very humid (chapters 3–8) and, far from being unable to sustain the inhabitation of people and animals, its temperate climate made it highly suitable for the growth and multiplication of living beings (chapters 9–11). A late sixteenth-century reader would have been able to find in the first two books of Acosta’s Natural History an articulated discussion of some of the main cosmological and geographical controversies related to the new continent: what is the shape of the earth? do the antipodes exist? is the Torrid Zone inhabitable? did the ancients know the New World?114 Books III and IV – originally written in Spanish when Acosta was back in Spain – lack the sharp philosophical and argumentative approach of the previous part and are slightly more akin to the tradition of Naturalis Historia.115 But many of the chapters are still devoted to the search for causes: why is the Torrid Zone always swept by eastern winds? what is the reason for the scant rainfall on the coastal plains of Peru? and so on. Book III of the Natural and Moral History is about three of the four elements or ‘simples’: air (winds), water (seas, tides, fish, lakes, springs, rivers) and earth (land, volcanoes and earthquakes). Book IV deals with the ‘mixtures and compounds’: metals (chapters 2–15), plants (chapters 16–32) and animals other than fish (chapters 33–42). In the first chapter of this last book, Acosta provides a brief account of the Aristotelian chain of being, the hierarchical order of natural things from stones to humans: metals grow in the bowels of the earth by virtue of the power of the sun and planets; plants are living creatures fixed to one place; animals are provided with sensations and movement. Thus the four books of Acosta’s Natural History broadly recapitulate the plan of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Books I and II correspond to De caelo, book III to the first two books of the Metheora, and book IV to the second two books of the Metheora, the pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus and the books on animals. If Oviedo thought of himself as ‘the Pliny of the New World’, Acosta can perhaps be called ‘the Aristotle of the Indies’. Acosta affirms that the intention of his work is ‘to glorify the Author of all nature’.116 The reader is exhorted to admire the wondrous works of nature, to 114 Cf. Theodore Hornberger, ‘Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las indias. A Guide to the source and the growth of the American Scientific Tradition’, Studies in English (Austin: University of Texas), 1939, pp. 138–62. A discussion of these topics can be consulted in Beddall, ‘Father José de Acosta. V. Air, water and earth’, in Acosta, Historia Natural, pp. 61–77. 115 For a panoramic presentation of the contents of books III and IV see also Beddall, ‘Father José de Acosta. VI. Metals, plants and animals’, in Acosta, Historia Natural, pp. 77–97. 116 HNMI, book III, chap. 1 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 104).

80

A New World of Animals

proceed thence towards the understanding of ‘the natural causes of these works’ and finally to raise the intellect and behold the great Architect of these marvels. In its author’s view, a subsidiary aim of the Natural History was to emulate and even improve on the knowledge of the ancients, so that ‘we might compile works no less than those of Pliny, Theophrastus, and Aristotle’. Acosta contemplated the New World as something really new and did not hesitate to criticize Aristotle on the grounds of his own personal experience. He tells us that he had read that during the crossing of the equator he would be scorched by a violent heat, but when he crossed the line he felt so cold that was compelled to warm himself in the sun, as he ‘laughed at Aristotle’s Metheors and his Philosophy’.117 A brief look at the second book of the Natural and Moral History of the Indies may allow us to obtain further insights into Acosta’s epistemology. He begins by claiming that ‘the knowledge of things at the Indies depends on well understanding the nature of the Equinoctial’, that is, the equatorial line.118 This ‘understanding’ of course consists in a search for causes, which should be investigated, ‘not moved thereunto so much by the doctrine of ancient Philosophers, as by reason and certain experience’. These twin roads to warranted belief – reason and experience – guide Acosta throughout his discussion of the Aristotelian opinions that (a) the Torrid Zone is dry and (b) it is uninhabitable because of the scorching heat.119 Acosta concedes that the arguments from which Aristotle departs in his reasoning are probably valid, but the problem is that the conclusions deduced from them (that the Torrid Zone is dry and uninhabitable) are false, because they do not agree with experience. And since it is impossible to deduce a false statement from a true one, he enjoins the reader to gain a foothold on experience and, ‘as assured experience does teach us, then … [we] will endeavour to give a reason, following the terms of Philosophy’.120 In other words, since the empirical statements derived from the theory are incompatible with the facts, he proposes to stick to the facts – the truth of which is undeniable – and afterwards look for the cause which could explain them. Consequently (chapters 3–5) Acosta begins to ascertain that the tropics are moist and, contrary to what is the case in the temperate regions, the summers are rainy and the winters dry. As a second step, he tries to account for these phenomena. The causal explanation he finds satisfactory is that the great force of the sun in the tropics draws from the ocean many vapours, which resolve into rain, ‘whereby we may conclude that the force 117

Ibid., book II, chap. 9 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 90). Ibid., chap. 1 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 73). 119 Ibid., chap. 2 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 74–5). 120 Ibid., chap. 3 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 75–6). 118

The New Histories of the New World

81

and heat of the Sun is the cause of rain in those countries’.121 The problem of the inhabitability of the Torrid Zone is also approached through an analogous discussion which proceeds from evidence to causes.122 It is worth noticing that this discussion about the temperate climate of tropical America is crowned by a reference to the earthly paradise. Acosta seems to suggest – although he explicitly claims that he does not know it for certain – that given the sweet and quiet climate of those lands, the scriptural paradise would have been situated under the equinoctial. In any case, he does not refrain from indulging in utopian dreams when he affirms that Europeans would find in the New World the blessed happiness of the Elysian fields or Atlantis, ‘if with a generous spirit they would choose rather to command their silver and their desires than to remain their slaves as they are’.123 The Natural and Moral History tackles a thorny problem: how did human beings and land animals reach the New World? It does not seem logical, says Acosta, to propose the hypothesis of a second ark or to suppose that they were carried across the heavens by an angel.124 They came either by land or by sea. If the latter was true, they necessarily had to come driven by a sea tempest, for the use of the loadstone for navigation was unknown to the ancients. But Acosta is inclined to think that they actually came by land; otherwise, how could the existence of beasts in the Indies be explained? Sacred Scripture affirms that all animals in the earth descend from those saved in Noah’s ark. The problem posed by the existence of islands inhabited by wild and fierce animals was resolved by Augustine in assuming that they had swum or were taken thither by human beings for their delight in hunting. Acosta finds this argument utterly unconvincing as an explanation of the proliferation of wild creatures in the New World, for who would have wished to take wolves and foxes to America? Consequently, he proclaims his firm belief that there must be some terrestrial connection between Europe and America, either in the north or in the south.125 Furthermore, he argues, the American continent is inhabited by lions, tigers, bears, boars and foxes, which are not found in the Caribbean islands, which shelter only those species brought there by the Spaniards who, of course, did not care to introduce wild animals. If these wild beasts had been brought by sea to America by some hypothetical early travellers, they would also be found in the islands, which is not 121

Ibid., chap. 7 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 85). Ibid., chap. 10 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 93). 123 Ibid., chap. 14 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 102). 124 Ibid., book I, chap. 16 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 45). For the problem of the origin of the early inhabitants of America, see Saul Jarcho, ‘Origin of the American Indians as suggested by Fray Joseph de Acosta (1589)’, Isis 50 (1959): 430–38. 125 HNMI, chap. 20 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 57–61). 122

82

A New World of Animals

the case. The only logical solution open to us, says Acosta, is to affirm that ‘the one world is continued and joined with the other, or at the least they approach one nearer unto another in some parts’.126 Acosta divides animals in three groups: (a) those carried from Spain to the Indies; (b) those common to the Indies and Europe; (c) those unique to the Indies.127 This categorization is similar to that adopted by Oviedo, but as used by Acosta it acquires a deeper meaning, once viewed in the light of the questions that underlie the philosophical thrust that runs through the Natural History of the Indies. As discussed in the previous paragraph, Acosta explained the existence of animal species common to both worlds by supposing a land bridge between them. In the fourth and last book of his natural history he deals with the symmetrical problem of beasts and birds which live only in America. Granted that all species are derived from those preserved in Noah’s ark, how is it that some of those that migrated to the new lands, such as alpacas and guanacos, left no representatives at all in the Old World? Are perhaps the animals peculiar to the New World the result of a special creation? Acosta’s solution is that once the beasts came out of the ark, ‘diverse kinds dispersed themselves into diverse regions, where they found themselves so well, as they would not part; or, if they departed, they did not preserve themselves, but in the process of time, perished wholly’.128 Not only the New World but also Africa and Asia are inhabited by beasts which cannot be found elsewhere. Just as the elephant departed from the ark and lives only in the East Indies, argues Acosta, the creatures of Peru are limited to the New World. He forestalls the objection that the American animals could be considered as not essentially, but only accidentally, different from their European or African counterparts, claiming that they are so diverse, that it would be ‘to call an egg a chestnut, to seek to reduce them to the known kinds of Europe’.129 This is perhaps one of the strongest statements about the irreducible originality of New World nature. Except for his claim that caymans are what the ancients called crocodiles, Acosta shows himself reluctant to identify American animals with those mentioned by the classics. He contends against those that think that vicuñas are the same as the capreas or the eastern wild goats mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny because, unlike the latter, vicuñas lack horns. Acosta pays particular attention to the Indian names of the native animals as a clue to distinguishing them from those brought from Spain: Indians do not have words in their languages for the beasts introduced into the New World by the conquerors which 126

Ibid., chap. 21 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 61–4). Ibid., book IV, chap. 33 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 270). 128 Ibid., chap. 36 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 278). 129 Ibid., chap. 36 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 279). 127

The New Histories of the New World

83

were called by their Spanish names.130 Although this kind of inference could be misleading – for example, he claimed erroneously that the chicken was native to America on the grounds that the Incas used different Quechua words to designate the egg and the hen – it nevertheless reveals his preoccupation with discriminating between the animals of the two worlds.131 In this connection we should not lose sight of the fact that, as we have already pointed out and shall see again in Chapter 6, identification of animal kinds in the sixteenth century was a very nebulous matter. When comparing the American ‘lion’ (puma) with its overseas fellow, Acosta says that ‘the lions which I have seen are not red, neither have they such hair as they usually paint them with. They are grey and not so furious as they seem in pictures.’132 It is evident that he had never seen a live lion, only some pictorial representation of it. This example suggests the kind of problems a writer such as Acosta had to confront when attempting to distinguish between animals of the New World and those of the Old. Like Cieza de León, Acosta was able to differentiate the camelids of Peru: pacos (alpacas), ‘sheep of Peru’ or ‘sheep of the land’ (llamas), vicuñas and guanacos.133 But he did not distinguish between the jaguar and the tiger. In any case, he mentions a fair number of American birds (aura or turkey vulture, American rhea, condor, macaws, tinamou, hummingbird, among others) and of quadrupeds, such as the cuy (guinea pig), guadatinaja (paca), micos (New World monkeys), tarugas (Andean deer) and so on. Overall, his brief and candid accounts of the fauna of the New World seem to be the result of firsthand experience. Acosta’s description of the flying fish includes a remarkable sentence: ‘There did one fly or leap into the ship wherein I went, the which I did see, and observe the fashion of his wings.’134 His use of the first person (‘I went’) and of verb forms such as ‘I did see’ and ‘observe’ help to convey the feeling of a lived experience which stands as the warrant for the truth of his statement. Acosta begins to tell the story of how he was cured of an acute ailment in the eyes by the application of a lump of fresh and bloody flesh of a recently killed vicuña, saying ‘I will say what I have seen upon the Sierra of Peru’ (my emphasis).135 The full value of this sentence comes to light if we notice that, a few lines before, he had expressed his doubt about the medicinal value of coverings made with vicuña wool as a cure for the gout, a virtue which, he says, has not been submitted to trial. 130

Ibid., chap. 34 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 273). Ibid., chap. 35 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 276). The word for egg (ronto) was applied to eggs other than those of the chicken. See Beddall, ‘Father José de Acosta. VI. Metals, plants and animals’, in Acosta, Historia Natural, p. 95. 132 Ibid., chap. 34 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 273). 133 Ibid., chaps 40–41 (ed. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 286–92). Acosta mentioned but did not describe the guanaco. 134 Ibid., book III, chap. 15 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 147). 135 Ibid., book IV, chap. 40 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 287–8). 131

84

A New World of Animals

Acosta deals extensively with the uses of animals and animal parts by Indians and Spaniards, paying particular attention to the famous featherworks of the Aztecs. Royal personages, such as Prince Don Felipe, King Philip of Spain and Pope Sixtus V (who was presented with a beautiful picture of St Francis made with feathers), had admired the work of Indian artisans, so beautiful that, according to Acosta, ‘the painters of Spain have, in this point, no advantage over them’.136 Certainly he was not being ironic when he lapsed from the exalted subject of art into a discussion of such a prosaic product of the winged world as manure. Acosta describes how the guano of sea birds was retrieved from the islands off the coast of Peru (where there was a fabulous abundance of it) and praises its properties as a fertilizer. The passages on the usefulness of birds ends with praise to the Creator, ‘who has so appointed that all creatures should serve man’. Acosta also describes the chacus, that is, the vicuña hunts of the Incas mentioned by Cieza and the Inca Garcilaso. Periodically, hundreds of Indians beat a certain area, driving the vicuñas and other wild animals into a corral. The animals were shorn of wool, females and young ones were released and many males were killed for meat and hide.137 A whole chapter of the Natural History is consecrated to the bezoar stones found in the stomach and intestines of guanacos, vicuñas, alpacas and tarugas. The Indians reported that in the province of Xauxa (Peru) there was a poisonous herb known to the vicuña and similar beasts, who by eating it would generate the bezoar which would protect them from being poisoned – which explained its qualities as a universal antidote. Unlike Vargas Machuca, who saw here matter for criticism, Acosta accepts this account on the grounds that it agrees with reason and with what Pliny had said about the bezoar. His distinction between the healing properties of the stone in the metropolis and in the Indies is another instance of his views on the specificity of American nature: he claims that he has experienced its salutary effects in cases of tabordete (fever) in Spain, but not so much in Peru.138 While Oviedo’s natural history was conceived as an orderly Plinian catalogue of the animals of the Indies with an emphasis on description warranted by the proclaimed principle of autopsia, Acosta treated animals as a particular instance of natural philosophical problems with an analogous stress on the value of ‘experience’. He addressed issues such as the origin of human beings and animals in America and the specificity of the creatures of the New World, cutting deep into the core of enigmas that arose as a consequence of the discovery. Despite the somewhat misleading title of his work, he construed his experience of nature in 136

Ibid., chap. 37 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, p. 280). Ibid., chap. 40 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 286–8). 138 Ibid., chap. 42 (trans. Markham, vol. 1, pp. 293–5). 137

The New Histories of the New World

85

terms of Aristotelian natural philosophy, not as ‘natural history’. But we should not forget that his main concerns seem to have been religious. Educated in the Jesuit version of Counter-Reformation humanism and late Aristotelianism, Acosta strove to maintain a qualified autonomy of discourse on what he viewed as the created world – which is revealed in his strong polemic against the Patristic and Augustinian opinions on cosmology, strongly dependent on Sacred Scripture and theology.139

The Relaciones of the Indies and Herrera’s General History of the Deeds of the Castilians Within sixty years of the discovery, most of the capital cities of Latin America had been founded and the phase of conquest gave way to a second stage of expansion, settlement and political and administrative organization.140 During the first decade of the sixteenth century two organs were created to centralize the business of the Spanish dominions in the New World. The Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) controlled policy and administration, whereas the licensing of ships and emigrants, custom duties, cartography and navigation were in the hands of the House of Trade (Casa de Contratación). When in 1571 Juan de Ovando was nominated president of the Council of the Indies by Philip II, he carried out a thorough reform of that administrative body through a new set of regulations (the ‘Royal Ordinances of the Council of the Indies’) and embarked on a major programme of surveying the geography and resources of the overseas territories through a series of questionnaires sent to provincial officials in the New World. He was helped in this project by Juan López de Velasco (or Velazco), appointed to the newly created position of Royal Chronicler–Cosmographer, which he held until 1591. Velasco had among his duties the writing of (a) the general and particular history of the Indies and (b) its natural and moral history. Although Velasco never finished the comprehensive work he was supposed to accomplish, at least by 1574 he managed to complete a Geography and universal description of the Indies. This book was based upon the geographical and political information that trickled down from the Indies to Castile as an answer to different surveys.141 Besides, Velasco planned his own, systematic survey of the 139 With respect to Acosta’s Aristotelian and humanist education see O’Gorman, ‘La historia natural’, in Cuatro historiadores de Indias, pp. 143–7 and 153–8. 140 F. A. Kirkpatrick, Latin America. A Brief History (Cambridge 1938), pp. 22–3. 141 Juan López de Velasco, Geografía y descripción general de las Indias, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (Madrid, 1971).

86

A New World of Animals

Spanish domains in America, which was launched in 1577.142 A questionnaire of fifty queries was sent to the viceroys and, descending the ladder of provincial functionaries, reached the lowest local authorities, who were supposed to write a full report about their jurisdictions. The questions were related to the natural products of each region, including geography, population, industry, agriculture and various social aspects. Question number 27 was on animals: ‘Describe the native animals, birds of prey and domestic fowl and those introduced from Spain and state how well they breed and multiply.’143 Although, for the most part, this particular query was answered by a simple enumeration of the beasts, fish and birds of the region, in some cases the informants were quite instructive and contributed some interesting notes. The answers to Velasco’s questionnaire arrived at the Council of the Indies between 1578 and 1586 and came to be known as the relaciones de Indias.144 These documents witness to the interest of the central administration in the natural resources of the overseas provinces of the Spanish empire. In the next chapter we shall see another concrete manifestation of Philip II’s concern for the cataloguing of American plants and animals from which some kind of benefit might be derived. As for the relaciones, they were deposited in the archives of the Council of Indies until Herrera made good use of them. Antonio de Herrera (1549–1625), who succeeded López de Velasco as Royal Chronicler of the Indies, was the author of the Decades or General History of the Deeds of the Castilians in Tierra Firme and the Isles of the Ocean Sea, an official chronicle of the Spanish conquest. It was widely translated and enjoyed a wide European readership.145 Herrera was an ambitious personality who knew his way through the intrigues and dubious businesses of the courts of Philip II and Philip III.146 He acted as a sort of spy for the Duke of Parma, had investments in the Indies in connection with the Fuggers, was involved in briberies and other sordid affairs, and was even imprisoned from 1609 to 1611. Herrera began his Decades in 1596 and it took him nineteen years to complete them. It would not be totally unfair to say that the work was, in a certain sense, a ‘collective’ enterprise. For 142 See Howard Cline, ‘The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577–1586’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 44 (1964): 341–74 and José Urbano Martínez Carreras, ‘Las “relaciones” histórico-geográficas del siglo XVI’, in Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, Relaciones geográficas de Indias. Perú, 3 vols (Madrid, 1965), vol. 1, pp. xli–lxiv. 143 Cline, ‘Relaciones Geográficas’, p. 368. 144 For detailed information about editions see ibid. 145 For the different editions see Antonio Ballesteros-Beretta, Proemium, in Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de los hechos de las castellanos en las islas y Tierra Firme del mar Océano, 15 vols (Madrid: Academia de la Historia, 1934), vol. 1, pp. lxxxvii–lxxxviii. We will refer to this work as ‘Historia’ and to this edition as ‘ed. Academia’. 146 This brief biographical account is based on Ballesteros-Beretta’s Proemium.

The New Histories of the New World

87

example, its first part depends upon Las Casas’s History of the Indies, whole chapters are copied from the History of the Indies by Cervantes de Salazar and the entire War of Quito of Cieza de León found its way into it, without acknowledgement. As Royal Chronicler, Herrera had access to an incredible number of manuscript sources deposited in the king’s cabinet and the Council of the Indies, including the relaciones. The first part of the Decades, entitled Description of the Western Indies, was sheer plagiarism from the manuscript work of Velasco’s Geography.147 Much like Gómara’s General History, Herrera’s Decades contain plenty of material about animals of the Indies included as chapters pirated from other chronicles and the relaciones de Indias. The ‘Columbian fauna’, treated in the first decade of the General History, was taken from Las Casas who, as we have seen, quoted and paraphrased Columbus’s log.148 A chapter devoted almost exclusively to animals (iguana, manatee, cocuyos, hutias) was extracted from López de Gómara’s History of the Conquest; he in turn had drawn upon Martyr and Oviedo.149 The animals of the region of Coro are taken from Fr Pedro de Aguado’s History of Venezuela.150 There are two chapters on the coast of Brazil extracted from the Geographical description of the province of Brasil by Giovanni Battista Gesio, Philip II’s Neapolitan cosmographer.151 The chapters of the Decades dealing with the natural life of the province of Chiapas (New Spain) are extracted from the relación of the licenciado Palacio and contain rich information about birds and serpents, much of it cast in the form of Indian lore.152 The pages describing the province of Vera Paz are based on a relación by Montero de Miranda.153 Other chapters of Herrera’s Decades consist essentially of geographical descriptions with accounts of the local fauna, for example, that in which he describes the surroundings of the city of Quito (abstracted from a 147 For Herrera’s ‘borrowings’ and sources see Ballesteros-Beretta, Proemium, in Historia General (ed. Academia, vol. 1, pp. xliv–lxxiv). 148 Historia, Decade I, book 1, chap. 13 (ed. Academia, vol. 2, pp. 83–7). Cf. Las Casas, History of the Indies, book I, chaps 41–4; Decade I, book 2, chap. 13 (ed. Academia, vol. 2, pp. 185–9). Cf. Las Casas, History of the Indies, book I, chaps 93–5; Decade I, book 2, chap. 1 (ed. Academia, vol. 2, pp. 121–4). Cf. Las Casas, History of the Indies, book I, chaps 64–9. 149 Historia, Decade I, book 5, chap. 11 (ed. Academia, vol. 2, pp. 451–5). The editor of this volume, Ángel de Altolaguirre y Durale, erroneously affirms that the source is Oviedo (ed. Academia, vol. 2, p. 455, note 1). 150 Historia, Decade IV, book 6, chap. 1 (ed. Academia, vol. 8, pp. 337–9). Aguado’s History of Venezuela was written in 1581. This and the following identifications of Herrera’s sources are taken from the notes of the editor of the corresponding volumes, Miguel Gómez del Campillo. 151 Historia, Decade IV, book 8, chaps 12 and 13 (ed. Academia, vol. 9, pp. 157–69). 152 Ibid., book 10, chaps 11 and 12 (ed. Academia, vol. 9, pp. 315–30). 153 Ibid., book 10, chap. 13 (ed. Academia, vol. 9, pp. 331–7).

88

A New World of Animals

relación by Juan Salinas de Loyola)154 or another about the city and district of Guamanga (Peru) extracted from the corresponding chapters of the Chronicle of Peru by Cieza de León.155 What Herrera wrote under the reign of Philip III was purported to be the officially sanctioned account of the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Indies until the ‘pacification’ of Peru in 1554. This vast work served as a reservoir for a huge number of sources, a few of which dealt with animals or, at least, enumerated the fauna of a given district. Herrera figured prominently among the authorities on the New World and he was quoted by natural historians even in the late seventeenth century.

The Natural Histories of the New World Up to a certain point the writings of Peter Martyr, Oviedo and Acosta ultimately refer to classical models – Herodotus, Pliny and Aristotle. The first substantial treatises on the New World were written in the course of the sixteenth century, bearing in mind the patterns of the ancients. Their authors showed themselves as children of their time, as Renaissance historians, naturalists or philosophers who refracted their understanding of America through the prism of the classics. But on these foundations new genres of writing were being created. Peter Martyr wrote history by the expedient of editing his own letters, circumstantial accounts addressed to personages which recaptured in almost journalistic fashion the excitement and toil of the days of discovery. Oviedo and Acosta embodied in their works the genre of ‘natural and moral history’, a two-sided historia which could account for the scenery and the plot of the drama of the Indies in an integrated whole. Adapting and refurbishing the literary genres of antiquity, these authors created a new kind of discourse, an intellectual tool apt for the building of a body of knowledge about nature in the New World. From different standpoints and through the adoption of different conceptual frameworks they managed to systematize and organize a huge mass of information and were able to transmit to Europe the first learned images of American nature. As far as it was an inventory of the plants and animals in the territories newly subjected to Spain, Oviedo’s natural history was ideologically in tune with the project of imperial expansion. In this work the multitude of animals, the variety and strangeness of their shapes, even their exotic names, become a symbol of 154

Ibid., Decade V, book 10, chap. 10 (ed. Academia, vol. 11, pp. 357–63). Ibid., Decade VII, book 3, chap. 13 (ed. Academia, vol. 14, pp. 217–21). This corresponds to chaps 86–8 of Cieza’s Chronicle. 155

The New Histories of the New World

89

Charles V’s imperial power extending itself to cover the entire globe. Acosta’s work was something different. As far as we can gather from his life and writings, his preoccupation was the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. The knowledge of the natural and moral world of the Indies was conceived as a background to the work of the missionaries. Acosta wrote what can be seen as a handbook for the Jesuits sent to Iberian America, so that they could know beforehand what they would find there and perform their task efficiently. The plan of the natural histories of the New World was admittedly moulded upon classical models, but the epistemological foundations and the criterion of truth proclaimed by their authors were different from those endorsed by contemporary European authorities in the field such as Gesner and Aldrovandi (whom we shall discuss in Chapter 6). Oviedo and Acosta insisted that they had ‘seen’ and ‘experienced’ things by themselves and resorted to tradition only occasionally. The new animals demanded the construction of a new discourse on natural history and even of new standards of belief.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 4

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World. Animals, Medicine and Commerce In the course of the two centuries after to the voyages of Columbus, the vegetable kingdom became a major factor in the equation of exchange between the New World and the Old. Maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cacao, manioc, beans, squash, pineapples, bananas and many other American food crops had a profound impact on the agriculture, economy and diet of Europe.1 Allspice and vanilla, dyestuffs, fibres and hardwoods were by the seventeenth century exploited, cultivated and exported from Mexico and the Caribbean.2 America proved to be a source of new plant substances prized at that time for their medicinal value, such as tobacco, sarsaparilla, sassafras, coca, guaiacum and cinchona bark, among others.3 Although to a lesser degree than plants, a few of the new animals also offered opportunities for commercial exploitation and constituted a source of medical products. As has already been discussed, during the years of discovery there was an important transfer to Europe of animal exotica, mostly Indian featherworks and live beasts and birds. Parrots, toucans, monkeys, armadillos and guinea pigs arrived in Seville or Rouen and fetched high prices in the market as luxury commodities. By far the most valuable product obtained from animals were pearls from the pearl-fisheries of the isles of Margarita and Cubagua.4 Oviedo dedicated several pages of his General and Natural History to tell stories about pearls of unusual size and quality, and one of the chapters of his work amounts to an instruction manual for distinguishing the valuable pearls from the worthless.5 Among the main exports from the Indies 1 See for example Earl J. Hamilton, ‘What the New World Gave the Economy of the Old’, in Fredi Chiappelli, Michael Allen and Robert Benson (eds), First Images of America, 2 vols (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 853–83. 2 See Jonathan D. Sauer, ‘Changing Perception and Exploitation of New World Plants in Europe, 1492–1800’, in Chiappelli et al. (eds), First Images, vol. 2, pp. 813–31. 3 See Charles Talbot, ‘America and the European Drug Trade’, in Chiappelli et al. (eds), First Images, vol. 2, pp. 833–44. 4 Murdo J. MacLeod, ‘Spain and America: the Atlantic Trade, 1492–1720’, in Bethell (ed.), CHLA, vol. 1, p. 361. 5 HGNI XIX, chaps 8–11 (ed. T. Bueso, vol. 2, pp. 202–8).

92

A New World of Animals

during the second half of the sixteenth century were vegetal dyewoods like annotto and logwood – shipped in Spanish fleets from Mexico – or brazilwood exploited by the sixteenth-century French traders in Brazil (whence the name of the country). There was also a dyestuff of animal origin: cochineal, a scarlet and crimson dye obtained from small insects which live in the nopal cactus. The Mexican Indians used it before the coming of the Spaniards, who encouraged its exploitation by taking it as part of the tribute exacted from the natives. Much labour was consumed to produce this dye – 70,000 insects were required to produce one pound of stuff.6 By 1560 the annual produce reached a volume of around 2,000 to 3,000 arrobas (approximately 76,000 lb.). When by the beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuits established a pharmacy at the college of San Pablo in Lima, the exportation of bezoar stones to Europe became an important source of profit. It has been estimated that during the first decades of the seventeenth century thousands of bezoar stones were shipped from Peru to Spain.7 Although gold and silver incensed the ambition of the conquistadores, it had been the search for spices which had prompted the Columbian adventure, and the Spanish crown’s interest in the natural resources of the Indies never quite died out. In 1570 Philip II sent the physician Francisco Hernández to make a survey of the plants of Spanish America, hoping to discover some of medical import. An analogous survey was carried out by the end of the first half of the seventeenth century by the Dutch in their short-lived colony in Brazil. Johan Maurits, the military governor of Maranhão appointed by the Dutch West India Company (DWIC), backed the activity of the naturalists Markgraf and Piso whose works had a profound impact on the European perception of New World nature. In Europe physicians and medical botanists of wide repute such as Monardes and Clusius were very alert to the discovery of new American drugs like guaiac, the importation and commercialization of which became a large business during the sixteenth century. Dutch incursions in the Caribbean and the establishment of the colony of New Holland in Brazil were aimed at damaging the sphere of Iberian influence in the Atlantic while furthering trade ventures. The fitting of armed fleets by the DWIC was accompanied by the issuing of a corpus of literature on America produced by Calvinist scholars. A number of works written and edited in the Low Countries conveyed considerable information on the New World and its resources, while at the same time helped to build what has been called the ‘Black Legend’ of Spanish colonization in America.8 Power politics, trade and 6

McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, p. 221. Luis Martín, The Intellectual Conquest of Peru. The Jesuit College of San Pablo, 1568–1767 (New York, 1968), pp. 100–101. 8 See Wim Klooster, The Dutch in America, 1600–1800 (Providence, Rhode Island, 1997), pp. 41–4. 7

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

93

religion proved to be a fertile soil for the crop of literature which called for the sea expansion of the rising North European Protestant powers.

Francisco Hernández and his History of the Animals of New Spain What did King Philip feel when he woke up at dusk and, perhaps banishing from his mind the uncomfortable recollection of Drake’s recent raid against the New Spain fleet stationed in Cadiz, ambled into his antechamber and – behold! – admired the colourful birds and the strange beasts of the Indies which his Italian painters had reproduced in the ceiling for his private solace?9 What did he think while he pored over the codices bound in bluish leather and illuminated with images of herbs, trees and animals painted by his Aztec subjects in the ultimate borders of his domains? They had been brought by a scholar and physician who, some years ago, following a royal decree and consumed by a fervent desire of fama, set off for the New World in a quest for marvellous drugs. At this time, in 1587, Hernández was dying at home, deprived of glory, alone. In the space of a century, the manuscripts with those delicate, exotic pictures kept at the library of El Escorial would be destroyed by fire. The physician Francisco Hernández (1517–87) was the only sixteenth-century Spanish author with ‘scientific’ credentials who wrote a natural history of the New World. The ill fate which haunted his work and prevented its proper publication has been understood as a symbol of the miseries of Spanish learning under Philip II.10 But what remained was avidly received and Hernández is an important milestone in the process of transmission to Europe of information on New World plants and animals. Besides, the notion of Philip II’s unwise scientific policy has been revised. Philip promoted an important number of initiatives in the fields of technology and applied science, with emphasis on geography, nautical engineering, mining, mathematics and military medicine.11 In particular, the monarch had a keen interest in medical botany, the most telling example of which was perhaps his decision to send a botanical expedition to the New World. In fact, 9 About these paintings see J. de Sigüenza, Fundación del Monasterio de El Escorial (Madrid, 1963), pp. 310–11. Quoted in López Piñero, ‘The Pomar Codex (ca. 1590): Plants and animals of the Old World and from the Hernández expedition to America’, Nuncius 7 (1992): 35–52, on p. 51. 10 See, for example, Victor W. von Hagen, ‘Francisco Hernández: naturalist, 1515–1578’, Scientific Monthly 58 (1944): 383–5. 11 See David Goodman, Power and Penury. Government, Technology and Science in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge, 1988). For the field of natural history in particular see José María López Piñero, Ciencia y técnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII (Barcelona, 1979), pp. 279–308.

94

A New World of Animals

it could be argued that Hernández’s was the first ‘scientific’ expedition launched by a European power.12 The physician was accompanied by the Portuguese cosmographer Francisco Domínguez, who travelled through the whole viceroyalty of New Spain carrying out a geographical survey, doing astronomical observations and preparing a book on longitude and latitude.13 A few notes on Hernández’s life might be of help in our discussion of his work on animals. It has been suggested that he studied medicine at the university of Alcalá de Henares, a centre receptive to the teachings of Erasmus.14 In any case, he lived for a while in Seville where he acquired a taste for botanizing, thereafter worked in the hospital of a Hieronymite monastery and by 1565 arrived in Toledo where he began his translation and commentary on Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, which would occupy much of his energies for the following ten years. By and by he obtained access to the court in Madrid and in 1570 was nominated protomédico of all the Indies, a position which involved the licensing of physicians and the control of medical practice over all Spanish America. At the same time, Philip II assigned him the much-coveted mission of conducting an inquiry into the medicinal plants and drugs of the Indies. The king issued a royal brief with very precise and detailed instructions about what Hernández should do. His mission was to obtain information about the curative properties of the local medicinal plants through interviews with doctors and native healers and, when possible, to experience the virtues of the drugs by himself. He should also send to Spain live and dried specimens of the herbs and plants. In the spring of 1570 Hernández set off on his journey to New Spain with his son and Francisco Domínguez. He would remain in America for the following seven years, carrying out a series of land expeditions which covered a great part of the territory of present-day Mexico. In each of these trips he was accompanied by translators, local collectors of herbs, and native artists, who painted the wonderful pictures of plants which were perhaps the main accomplishment of the whole enterprise (Acosta reports that he depicted more than 1,200 plants).15 Yielding to insistent requests from 12

See Jesús Bustamante García, ‘De la naturaleza y los naturales americanos en el siglo XVI: algunas cuestiones críticas sobre la obra de Francisco Hernández’, Revista de Indias 52 (1992): 297–325, here pp. 301–2. This is a paper with much original information on Hernández, recovered from so far uninvestigated sources. For later expeditions see Iris H. W. Engstrand, Spanish Scientists in the New World: The Eighteenth-Century Expeditions (Seattle and London, 1981). For Philip II and medical botany see Goodman, Power and Penury, pp. 230–38. 13 For example, he observed two moon eclipses (1577 and 1578) and together with Jaime Juan, another cosmographer sent by Philip, the eclipse of 1584. 14 Germán Somolinos d’Ardois, ‘Vida y obras de Francisco Hernández’, in F. Hernández, Obras completas (México, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 95–373 (from now on cited as ‘OC’). Our biographical notes are based upon this essay. 15 Acosta, NMHI, book IV, chap. 29.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

95

Philip, in 1576 Hernández shipped to Spain a cargo of sixteen folio volumes; the next year he took with him on his return trip other twenty-two volumes (among which was the manuscript of his translation of Pliny), besides herbals, sacks of seeds and pots with plants. Apparently, he did not experience the warm welcome he expected and spent the last years of his life in obscurity, until his death in 1587. Much impressed by the magnificent pictures of Mexican plants and animals, the king stacked them in his library of El Escorial. (Hernández would have kept copies at home.) Later on in 1580, Philip appointed an undistinguished Neapolitan physician at court, Nardo Antonio Recchi, to prepare a digest of Hernández’s manuscripts. Recchi complied and afterwards distributed a few copies of his epitome, which, it seems, Philip would have tried to get published.16 In any case, a copy of Recchi’s abridgement eventually came into the hands of Prince Federico Cesi, the leading member of the Roman Accademia dei Lincei, created in 1603 and which would count Galileo and Giambattista della Porta among its members. After many incidents the work was finally published as Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus seu Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium mexicanorum historia (Rome, 1651) (Treasure of the medical things of New Spain or New history of Mexican plants, animals and minerals).17 Several members of the Academy of the Lincei collaborated in this volume which consists of several parts: (a) Recchi’s abridgement of Hernández’s original in ten books – one of them, devoted to animals, has twenty-one chapters, some of them with pictures;18 (b) 300 pictures of plants commented on by Johann Schreck (Terrentius); (c) a long commentary on twenty-three pictures of Mexican animals by Johannes Faber; (d) a section with glosses on plants by the botanist Fabio Colonna; (e) Prince Cesi’s tabulae phytosophicae; (f) the Historiae animalium et mineralium novae hispaniae Liber unicus, included as a separate work with independent pagination. This book on the History of the animals and minerals of 16

There is evidence that inquiries about the cost of the publication and even some proofs were made. See Somolinos d’Ardois, ‘Francisco Hernández’, in OC, vol. 1, p. 283 and Goodman, Power and Penury, p. 236. 17 It was edited by Alfonso de la Torre or Turritanus (the secretary to the Spanish ambassador in Rome) in collaboration with Cassiano dal Pozzo. See, for example, Giuseppe Gabrielli, ‘Il cosidetto Tesoro messicano edito dai primi Lincei’, Atti della Reale Accademia d’Italia. Rendicontti della classe di scienze morali e storiche, 7th series, vol. 1, fasc. 1–5, pp. 110–21 (Roma, 1939). For the intricate history of Recchi’s work until it was finally published in 1651, see Simón Varey and Rafael Chabrán, ‘Medical Natural History in the Renaissance: The Strange Case of Francisco Hernández’, Huntington Library Quarterly 57 (1994): 125–51, in particular pp. 135–6. The book was printed several times and with an incredible number of variants; see Francisco Guerra, ‘La leyenda del Tesoro Messicano’, in Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Atti dei Convegni Lincei 78 (1986): 307–31. 18 The book on animals is book IX, pp. 313–34 (pagination corresponds to the exemplar held in the Cambridge University Library) and has ten pictures of animals.

96

A New World of Animals

New Spain (henceforth referred to as History of the animals of New Spain), to which we shall return, was not an abstract, but a copy of the original manuscripts; it was the only part of the Thesaurus which preserved Hernández’s writing.19 The manuscripts and pictures held at El Escorial were lost in the fire which consumed the library in 1671, but Hernández’s own copies survived and somehow found their way into the library of the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, run by the Jesuits. It is frequently claimed that Juan Eusebio Nieremberg used them as a source for his Historia naturae maxime peregrinae (Antwerp, 1635) but, as we shall see in the next chapter, he himself suggests that he utilized the original manuscripts held at El Escorial.20 A copy of Recchi’s abstract also reached Fr Francisco Ximénez, a Dominican friar at a Mexican monastery who in 1615 edited a Spanish version of it with his own glosses (see below).21 In conclusion, as far as animals are concerned, by the middle of the seventeenth century there were various versions of Hernández’s materials in circulation. The Thesaurus included the book entitled History of the animals of New Spain (a faithful copy of the original manuscripts), and also book nine of Recchi’s abstract and the two dozen woodcuts on which Faber commented at length. Two other works drew heavily upon the manuscripts: Nieremberg’s Historia naturae and the pharmacopoeia written by Ximénez in Mexico, which contains a book on animal and mineral drugs. Also, an extant illuminated codex belonging to one of Philip II’s physicians has a few watercolour drawings of American animals which could have been copied from Hernández’s pictures.22 It should be noted that in each of these works two genres of writing are combined, with each being given variable importance. On the one hand, they contain descriptions and classifications of animals, amounting to what could broadly be called ‘natural history’; on the other hand, they discuss the virtues of animal drugs. Thus, while Nieremberg’s Historia naturae was for the most part a work on natural philosophy, Ximénez’s book was primarily a medical treatise. We shall see how this dual character of all the Hernandian literature can be traced to the potential ambivalence already present in the original manuscripts. To better assess Hernández’s treatment of the animals of New Spain we should 19 It had been made in 1626 on Cassiano dal Pozzo’s order. See Giuseppe Gabrielli, ‘Un libro linceo di zoologia esotica specchio storico-letterario di vita romana nel primo seicento’, in Atti del III Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani, ed. Galassi Paluzzi (Roma, 1935), vol. 4, pp. 429–42, here p. 431. 20 The manuscripts in the Colegio Imperial were rediscovered in the eighteenth century and published in part as Historia plantarum novae hispaniae (Madrid, 1790), ed. Casimiro Gómez Ortega. 21 Francisco Ximénez, Quatro libros de la naturaleza y virtudes de las plantas y animales que están recevidas en el uso de Medicina en la nueva España (Mexico, 1615). 22 See López Piñero, ‘The Pomar Codex’.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

97

look first at his translation cum commentary of Pliny’s Natural History.23 He finished this work in Mexico but upon his arrival in Spain was unable to obtain support for its publication from Philip II, to whom the work was dedicated.24 The translation, of which only the first twenty-five books are extant, is annotated with glosses in the form of long footnotes. To take an example, Hernández’s commentary on book VIII of the Naturalis Historia refers twice to the Indies. Talking about the ‘fierce oxen’ of Scythia, he says that he has heard that in the West Indies there is a similar beast, although somewhat different from those already known (he is probably referring to the American bison described by Gómara and others).25 More interesting is Hernández’s long note commenting upon Pliny’s chapter on snakes, in which he announces that he is about to sail to the Indies on the king’s command to look at the serpents and write about them, so that he will be able to accomplish in the New World what Pliny did in the Old. But emulating Pliny was not enough, it seems, and Hernández also figured himself as a new Aristotle. Just as the philosopher had inquired into the animals of Alexander’s newly forged empire, so would the Castilian physician investigate those of Philip’s imperial domains. And just as the Macedonian conquered the East Indies and spread among those peoples the learning of his teacher Aristotle, in a similar manner would Philip enlighten the darkness which enshrouded the New World barbarians with the assistance of Hernández as a torch-bearer.26 These comparisons had been used by Oviedo and would be repeated by many other authors who wrote about New World plants and animals well into the seventeenth century. But they shouldn’t be discarded as a mere commonplace. On the contrary, they pointed out to and took their force from the deeply ingrained notion, shared by all the actors in this story, that imperial expansion necessarily entailed an historia animalium, that is an inquiry into the creatures of the conquered territories.27 In any case, Hernández’s bragging was not totally unfounded. His glosses on Pliny reveal him as somebody fully aware of the state of the art of the writing on animals. He refers to the classics – Aristotle of course, and Oppian, Solinus, Aelian as edited by Gyllius – and also to the ‘moderns’ like Belon, Rondelet, Turner and Gesner, authors with whom he occasionally disagrees. He also mentions Hermolao Barbaro, Mattioli, Ruellius, Cardano, 23

For the translation and commentary on book VIII of the Naturalis Historia, see Francisco Hernández, Historia natural de Cayo Plinio Segundo, trasladada y anotada por el Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. María del Carmen Nogués (Mexico, 1966), OC, vol. 4. See also Enrique Alvarez López, ‘El Dr. Francisco Hernández y sus comentarios a Plinio’, Revista de Indias 3 (1942): 251–90. 24 Nogués, Introduction, OC, vol. 4, pp. xxv–xxxii. 25 Hernández, Historia natural de Plinio, OC, vol. 4, p. 367. Cf. Pliny, NH, VIII.15.38 26 Ibid., p. 366. Cf. Pliny, NH, VIII.14.36–37. 27 See French, Ancient Natural History, pp. 103–13.

98

A New World of Animals

Theodorus Gaza, Realdo Colombo, Vesalius and some of the leading humanists of his time, such as Budé, Erasmus and Nebrija.28 None of these authors is ever mentioned in his History of the animals of New Spain, which we shall deal with in what follows. The Historia animalium novae hispaniae – the transcription of Hernández’s originals appended to the Thesaurus – contains treatises on quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, insects and aquatic animals. Although in its published form the work is not illustrated, we must bear in mind that it had been originally conceived as a composite of words and pictures. More or less faithful renderings of the original pictures of some of the animals were printed in other sections of the Thesaurus, illustrating Recchi’s abstract and Faber’s commentary (see above). The blocks for these woodcuts were made following drawings copied from the Indian original pictures and one can assume that much was lost in the process.29 Hernández himself seems to have thought that the most important part of his work was the pictures. He refers to them repeatedly in the text and also indicates the locality where the animals were ‘portrayed’; for example, he says that the oztohua, a ‘foreign she-fox’, ‘lives in the fields of Ocoituco, where we painted it’,30 the quadruped zacamiztli ‘lives in Pánuco, where we cared to paint and describe it’.31 Hernández’s programme was wider and of a different nature than Oviedo’s had been, for Philip II’s physician set himself to represent not only in words but also in pictures the plants and animals of the New World. The scope of this approach can be better assessed when we recall that a famous scholar such as Johann Faber wrote learned, book-length glosses commenting on copies of Hernández’s pictures.32 28

Hernández, Historia natural de Plinio, OC, vol. 4, pp. 256, 259, 265, 272 and 279. Hernández mentioned three local artists in his testament. See Germán Somolinos d’Ardois, ‘Sobre la iconografía botánica original de las obras de Hernández y su sustitución en las ediciones europeas’, Revista de la sociedad mexicana de historia natural 15 (1954): 73–86. Somolinos affirms that Recchi substituted new pictures drawn in European style for the Aztec originals. Emily W. Emmart had claimed that those responsible for the substitution were the editors of the Thesaurus. See The Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin. 241) Vatican Library. An Aztec Herbal of 1552 (Baltimore, 1940), p. 37. 30 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 16 (Thesaurus, p. 5; OC, vol. 3, p. 303). In parentheses, we shall refer as Historia to the pagination of the work as published in the Thesaurus (Rome, 1651) and to the Spanish translation by Rojo Navarro in volume 3 of the Obras completas (México, 1959). For the names of the animals we follow the Nahuatl spelling of the Spanish translation. 31 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 40 (Historia, p. 12; OC, vol. 3, p. 317). 32 Johann Faber was a physician from Bamberg who lived in Rome for about thirty years, taught medical botany in the university of Rome and was in charge of the papal herbal gardens. He worked for four years on his commentary on Hernández’s pictures of animals, which was finished by 1628 and amounts to 400 pages. Faber’s glosses incorporate many accounts from 29

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

99

Hernández had pictures made only of those animals unknown to the Spaniards or not as yet painted by anybody else; for example, he says that he will not paint the bird querquédula ‘because it is very well known in the Old World and among the modern descriptors of animals’. By the time he wrote the Spaniards were already familiar with the ‘Peruvian sheep’, but he decided to reproduce its picture anyway because he had ‘never seen them represented by anybody’. In case of doubt he preferred to be on the safe side. With respect to the tlalácatl, a kind of goose, he says that it is the same as ‘our wild goose, but anyway will describe it for it also breeds in the Indies’.33 Hernández sought to reproduce all and only the animals of the New World. Contrary to the natural histories of Oviedo and Acosta, his History of the animals of New Spain does not have a section on the domestic animals introduced by the Spaniards in the Indies. It is a treatise on the local fauna. Hernández described many birds, paying particular attention to their value as food and ornament. In the case of serpents he pointed out whether they were poisonous and listed the antidotes. His aquatic animals make up a rather mixed company. Most of them are creatures which lived in the lake upon which the ancient city of Mexico (formerly Tenochtitlán) was built: aquatic insects and their products (of which the Indians used a great variety as food), worms, shells and fish, the famous axolotl, tadpoles, frogs and so on. He also describes fish brought from the Pacific Ocean and the Philippine Islands. Perhaps his most accomplished and balanced accounts are those devoted to quadrupeds. For instance, the chapter on the coyotl or ‘she-fox of the Indies’ begins with a sketchy description of the animal, continues with an anthropomorphic account of its behaviour, enumerates its medicinal virtues and the food it eats, and concludes with a brief mention of the different ways used by the Indians to hunt it.34 Almost all the descriptions of quadrupeds in the History of the animals of New Spain follow a similar pattern. According to the usual practice of the chroniclers of the Indies, missionaries who had been in the Indies. On the occasion of the Jubilee of 1625, many friars of the mendicant orders living in the Indies thronged to Rome and Faber had the opportunity to talk with them. One of them was Gregorio de Bolivar, an observant Franciscan who had lived for twenty-five years in Peru and Mexico and had written a natural history of New World animals which he burnt in a fit of fury. Other informants were Fr Pedro de Aloaysa, a Dominican born in Lima, and Bartolomeo de la Ygarza (perhaps de la Garza), a Spanish Dominican who had lived for forty years in Potosí and was an expert on metallurgy. See Giuseppe Gabrielli, ‘Un contributo dei missionari cattolici alla prima conoscenza naturalistica del Messico’, Il pensiero missionario, vol. 5, part 3 (1933), pp. 263–74 and Silvia De Renzi, ‘Writing and Talking of exotic animals’, in Marina Franca-Spada and Nick Jardine (eds), Books and the Sciences in History (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 151–67. 33 Historia animalium novae hispaniae treatise II, chap. 7; treatise I, chap. 35; treatise II, chap. 98 (Historia, pp. 15, 11–12 and 34; OC, vol. 3, pp. 320, 316 and 340). 34 Ibid., treatise I, chap. 13 (Historia, pp. 4–5; OC, vol. 3, pp. 302–3).

100

A New World of Animals

many quadrupeds and birds are compared to the kinds known in Spain, as can be seen in the description of the buffalo as a ‘wild bull, with a medium size and low body, arched back, long mane and hanging tassels, of a tawny colour’ (no reference is made to the ‘oxen of Scythia’).35 With the exception of the manatee, Hernández does not resort to ‘jigsaw-puzzle’ descriptions. It is not surprising that the physician Hernández – who claimed to be a ‘friend’ of Vesalius – was interested in dissecting his animals. As we have seen in previous chapters, it was believed that the peccary had a navel (umbilicus) upon its back. In the History Hernández says that although an aqueous humour can be obtained from this so-called ‘navel’ when pressed, it is not a true navel but a lump of soft and glandular ‘fatness’, something he discovered by incising into it.36 (Faber, who commented on a picture of the peccary showing a rather undefined structure on its back, expatiated on the supposed navel.37) In his books on plants, Hernández proclaims that ‘in these books ... there is nothing which we have not seen with our own eyes, and tasted through its taste and odour by our experience and that of others’. If we believe him, it would seem that he tasted most of the plants he described and even got poisoned when drinking the ‘milk’ of the quauhtlepatli or ‘tree of fire’.38 On occasions, Hernández talks about the American animals as if they were ‘species’ of those already known to the Spaniards: the tepemaxtla is ‘a species of she-fox with white, black and tawny hair, small head, medium size ears, slim body of about four spans’; the amacpalli or ‘scarlet hand’ is ‘a species of marine sponge, but its substance is harder and it resembles a hand with long and cylindrical fingers’ (emphasis added). He also uses rather indistinctly the term ‘genus’; for example, the iztactzonyayauhqui is ‘a genus of small wild goose, with a broad beak, blue with a white spot on its extreme’ (emphasis added).39 The notions of genus and species were used rather loosely in the sixteenth century and bear only a vague relation to our taxa. Besides, Hernández mixes these categories with the taxonomy used by the Indians. For example, in a chapter entitled ‘On the tochtli or the genera of dasypodes which they call rabbits’ he numbers eight ‘varieties of dasypodes’ (‘Dasipodum differentiae’) besides the izpactli or Spanish rabbit: the eliztactochtli, the zacatochtli, the tocantochtli and so on.40 35

Ibid., chap. 30, p. 10 (Historia, p. 10; OC, vol. 3, p. 313). Ibid., chap. 25 (Historia, p. 8; OC, vol. 3, pp. 310–11). 37 Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (Rome, 1651), pp. 637 and 797. 38 Historia plantarum Novae Hispaniae, book III, chaps 203 and 37 (OC, vol. 2, pp. 154 and 60). For other examples see Somolinos d’Ardois, ‘Francisco Hernández’, in OC, vol. 1, pp. 220–21. 39 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 33; treatise V, chap. 13; treatise II, chap. 155 (Historia, pp. 11, 79 and 45; OC, vol. 3, pp. 315, 393 and 354). 40 Ibid., treatise I, chap. 4 (Historia, p. 2; OC, vol. 3, pp. 297–8). 36

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

101

Evidently, the ‘varieties’ are distinguished by their native names, Nahuatl words composed of a root (in this case, tochtli, which means rabbit) and a prefix that designates a trait characterizing a particular animal. Hernández combines European classificatory notions (genus, differentia, dasypodes) with native names. In other cases he simply adopts the Aztec folk taxonomy. As ‘varieties’ (‘differentiae’) of the miztli (cougar) he mentions the quamiztli, the mazamiztli, the cuitlamiztli and the tlalmiztli.41 These are the same animals mentioned in Sahagún’s encyclopaedia – the mazamiztli is a mythical beast, a result of the interbreeding of a lion with a deer.42 Actually, there are a few chapters in the History of the animals of New Spain which show an intriguing parallel with the Aztec encyclopaedia compiled by Sahagún, such as that devoted to the tzoniztac or ‘white-haired quadruped’43 or that on the itzcuinquani or ‘dog-eater’.44 Surprising similarities can also be found in the accounts of the tlacaxolotl (tapir)45 and of the mapach (racoon).46 The story about the way the cercopithecoi are hunted by the Indians is told in both works in similar terms. The monkeys are attracted by corncobs scattered around a bonfire, into which the hunters throw some stones which, when heated, burst with a loud noise, so that the animals scamper, leaving their young ones behind, which are easily captured by the Indians.47 A legend concerning the way the ocotochtli or dasypodus pinuum (‘rabbit of the pines’) kills its prey is told almost in the same words by Hernández and Sahagún: this generous beast kills the deer with its venomous tongue but leaves the carcass intact to be eaten first by other animals, so that these scavengers are killed by its poison if they eat from the victim first.48 Although it is risky to assume that Hernández actually used the Spanish version of Sahagún’s compilation – parallels can be explained in terms of a common source, that is, orally transmitted native lore on animals – it is quite likely that 41

Ibid., chap. 11 (Historia, p. 4; OC, vol. 3, p. 301). Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 5–6). 43 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 7 (Historia, p. 3; OC, vol. 3, p. 300). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 4). The animal has been identified by the editors of the General History as the Tayra barbara senex. 44 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 12 (Historia, p. 4; OC, vol. 3, p. 302). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 6). 45 Ibid., chap. 8 (Historia, p. 3; OC, vol. 3, pp. 300–301). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, pp. 3–4). 46 Ibid., chap. 1 (Historia, pp. 1–2; OC, vol. 3, pp. 295–6). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 9). 47 Ibid., chap. 19 (Historia, p. 6; OC, vol. 3, p. 306). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 14). 48 Ibid., chap. 15 (Historia, p. 5; OC, vol. 3, p. 303). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson-Dibble, vol. 12, p. 8). For a discussion on the identification of this animal see Campo, ‘Historia General’ (1941), p. 495. 42

102

A New World of Animals

some chapters of the History of the animals of New Spain could have been taken from Sahagún. Hernández used freely Indian names of animals and folk taxonomy, but he also sought to identify Mexican animals using Latin or Spanish terms (this is particularly so in the case of birds). For example, he says that the quachilton is similar to the bird called fulica (a coot) by ‘the moderns’ and foja by the Spaniards. He also affirms that the bird oconenetl is the larger species of picus marcius (a kind of woodpecker) and the bird which the Mexicans call quauhtotli is the sacred falcon of ‘the moderns’.49 Almost all the European birds enumerated in these chapters are illustrated in Belon’s Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, a work which Hernández omits to mention.50 It is not surprising to find in the History of the animals of New Spain references to ancient authors in the section on snakes, for the Spanish physician had translated from the Greek to the Latin Nicander’s De Theriaca, a famous ancient antidotarium. For example, the snake maquizcóatl is considered to be related to the two-headed amphisbena of antiquity, for although it has only one head, it slithers forwards and backwards.51 Hernández’s work on animals is a synthesis in which Indian lore and knowledge derived from ancient and modern literary sources are inextricably intertwined. But Philip II’s instructions committed him to research on the medical properties of plants and animals (Monardes’s work published between 1565 and 1574 helped to create a climate favourable to this enterprise). Did the physician obey the royal command? As far as animals are concerned – it should not be forgotten that the bulk of Hernández’s work deals with plants – he described some medical uses of quadrupeds and a few of birds. All in all, the History of the animals of New Spain does not impress as a treatise on animal drugs. In the best of cases, animal materia medica plays only second fiddle to what seems to be the author’s central concern: the description of the natural beings for its own sake. In his books on plants, Hernández himself confesses that ‘it is not our purpose to account only for medicaments, but to gather the flora and compose the history of the natural things of the New World, laying out in front of the eyes of our lord Philip and our fellow countrymen all the things produced in 49 Ibid., treatise II, chaps 26, 87 and 92 (Historia, pp. 20, 32 and 33; OC, vol. 3, pp. 324–5, 338 and 339). 50 Pierre Belon, L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux (Paris, 1555). Belon’s book shows two pictures of picus, the picus martius maior (p. 299) and the minor, thus accounting for Hernández’s reference to the ‘larger’ species of picus martius. There is also a picture of a fulica (p. 181, wrongly numbered as 161 in the exemplar I used) and of the sacred falcon or sacre (p. 109). 51 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise III, chap. 22 (Historia, p. 63; OC, vol. 3, p. 374). Cf. Pliny, NH, VIII.35.85. Cf. Faber’s essay on the amphisbena in Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (Rome, 1651), pp. 796–7.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

103

this New Spain’.52 But nothing is said in Philip’s ‘instructions’ about writing a natural history of the plants and animals of New Spain. They enjoined him to imitate Dioscorides by looking for medicinal herbs in Asia Minor, not Pliny by describing the wealth of Roman nature. Hernández managed to do both things, carrying out his Plinian programme as far as his duties as physician–botanist would allow it.53 As a result of Hernández’s inquiries from local informants about the powers of plants and animals, the History of the animals of New Spain contains a few Indian recipes. For example, in the chapter on the hoitztlacuatzin or ‘porcupine of New Spain’, he reported that nine spines of this animal burnt and pounded and administered with wine or water, would break up stones in the kidneys, clean the urinary tract and the bladder and excite sexual desire. The entrails of the taletec, a kind of lizard, are said to be good for asthma. The Indians also affirmed that the powder obtained from the bird oconenetl cured dropsy.54 One drachma of the tail of the tlacuatzin (opossum) drunk in water would clean the urinary tract; this substance also was used as an aphrodisiac, to cure fractures and colic and to alleviate constipation.55 The animals of New Spain seem also to have been an inexhaustible source of remedies for the pox, such as the powder obtained from the tail of the ayotochtli (armadillo) mixed with a preparation of sage, the flesh and dung of the izquiepatl (skunk), the cinders of the burnt feathers of the bird hoactzin, the flesh of the tzopilotl, and so on. It is significant that, on one occasion, Hernández refers to the ‘Gallic disease’ as the ‘Spanish disease’, but he hastens to add that it should be properly called the ‘Indian disease’, for ‘it undoubtedly spread from here [the Indies] to the other nations’. It seems appropriate to him that the land which had produced the disease should also provide its cure.56 52

Historia plantarum Novae Hispaniae, book XVI, chap. 34 (OC, vol. 3, p. 116). As far as we can determine, the first to defend this thesis was Bustamante García. This author draws documentary support for this idea from the letters exchanged between Hernández and Juan de Ovando, the president of the Council of the Indies. See idem, ‘De la naturaleza y los naturales’, pp. 305–6. In a report to the king written between 1577 and 1578, Hernández claims that what he has done in America is: ‘(1) to paint and describe the natural things of those lands as well and truly as possible, (2) to have this land measured as to longitude and latitude, (3) to write the history of the occidental regions with their republics, drawings of gods, sacrifices and other antiquities’. Quoted in Bustamante García, ‘De la naturaleza y de los naturales’, pp. 311–12. 54 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 6; treatise III, chap. 53; treatise II, chap. 87 (Thesaurus, pp. 3, 69 and 32; OC, vol. 3, pp. 299, 383 and 338). 55 Ibid., chap. 5 (Thesaurus, p. 3; OC, vol. 3, pp. 298–9). Cf. Sahagún, GH, book XI, chap. 1 (edn Anderson–Dibble, vol. 12, p. 12). 56 Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chaps 2 and 18; treatise II, chaps 50 and 112; treatise I, chaps 19 and 6 (OC, vol. 3, pp. 296–7, 304–6, 330, 343, 306 and 299–300). 53

104

A New World of Animals

Hernández was a multifaceted personality who, among other things, translated several treatises of the intimidating Neoplatonist philosopher Pseudo Dionysius. His work in New Spain and the sad story of the manuscripts have obscured other achievements of somebody who was an intellectual figure of high rank. The fire at El Escorial had indeed tragic consequences, for the Aztec drawings were irremediably lost, but the History of the animals of New Spain was preserved in its original form. Much of this is Indian lore. Hernández’s animal pharmacopoeia is completely based on folk medicine. When he talked about animals he adopted not only their Nahuatl names but also the native taxonomy sifted through Western categories. The result was a blend of European and Aztec knowledge on animals. When John Ray wrote his Ornithology, he excluded the birds described by Hernández from his classification and grouped them apart in an appendix, on the grounds that these descriptions contained much fabulous and legendary material and would not match the standards of the taxonomy he was constructing.

Animal Drugs: Monardes’s Medicinal History and Ximénez’s Four Books It is difficult to exaggerate the economic importance of the spice and drug trade in the sixteenth century, a sizeable part of which took the form of monopolistic ventures in the hands of the great bankers. The Fuggers obtained benefits from the trade in medical products from the Indies such as guaiac, used as a remedy for the pox. The Welsers struggled to obtain the monopoly on balms, such as that of Peru and that of Tolú.57 The Jesuits in Peru would profit during the seventeenth century from the export of cinchona (the ‘Jesuit’s powder’ which contains quinine). Since antiquity, animals had been used as a source of drugs. Books XXVIII through XXX of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia are devoted to animal drugs, as well as the second book of the herbal of Dioscorides; there were also many collections of recipes based on animal products, such as the early medieval Medicina de animalibus attributed to Sextus Placitus.58 In the sixteenth century, animal drugs from the New World came to Europe in the wake of medical botany. Monardes was one of those few in control of this strategic knowledge. The Portuguese García d’Orta and the Spaniard Nicolás Monardes acted as the channels through which the new pharmacopoeia of the East and West Indies was introduced to Europe. Orta, in his Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India – 57

See Francisco Guerra, ‘Drugs from the Indies and the Political Economy of the Sixteenth Century’, in M. Florkin (ed.), Materia Medica in the XVIth Century (Oxford, 1966), pp. 29–54, here p. 38. 58 See Loren McKinney, ‘Animal Substances in Materia Medica. A Study in the persistence of the primitive’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1 (1946): 149–70.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

105

a book written as a series of dialogues on the characteristics and properties of the new ‘simples’ – dealt with the drugs from the East.59 Monardes (1493–1588) reserved for himself the West Indies.60 He lived in Seville, where he attended a busy practice, cultivated a garden of exotic medicinal plants and obtained a wide European reputation with his books on American materia medica.61 Although in his first works he deprecated the drugs of the Indies and extolled those of the Iberian peninsula, he later changed sides and in 1565 published his first treatise on American drugs (accompanied by a treatise on the bezoar stone and the viper’s grass), which was followed by other writings on the subject. His books were finally collected as First, Second and Third Part of the Medicinal History of the Things brought from our West Indies useful in Medicine … (Seville, 1574), dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII.62 This book was translated into Italian, English, Latin, French and German.63 Monardes never left Spain but had strong business interests in America, importing medicinal products and hides and exporting textiles and slaves from 1551 to 1567.64 Jakob Fugger, son of Anton Fugger (the Augsburg financiers who supported the Habsburgs despite their habit of repeatedly declaring bankruptcy), visited Seville with his tutor Clusius during 1564 and the first months of 1565 (the year of publication of Monardes’s First Part of the Medicinal History, which had a chapter devoted to guaiac). The Fuggers had received from the crown the monopoly on the importation of guaiac and not only urged the writing of literature favourable to the new drug, but also distributed ‘commissions’ among the doctors to promote its use instead of the mercury 59 Coloquios dos simples, e drogas e cousas mediçinais da India (Goa, 1563). There is an English translation of the Portuguese nineteenth-century edition: Colloquies on Simples and Drugs of India by García da Orta, new edition (Lisbon, 1895) ed. and annotated by the Conde de Ficalho, trans. with introd. and index by Clements Markham (London, 1913). 60 For a comparison between Orta and Monardes, see C. R. Boxer, Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolás Monardes (London, 1963). 61 For the significance of the drugs and medical plants introduced by Monardes, see José M. López Piñero, ‘Las nuevas medicinas’, in J. M. López Piñero, José Luis Fresquet Febrer, María Luz López Terrada, José Pardo Tomás, Medicinas, drogas y alimentos vegetales del Nuevo Mundo (Madrid, 1992), pp. 127–46. 62 Nicolás Monardes, Primera y Segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven em medicina. Tratado de la piedra bezoar, y de la yerba Escuerçonera; diálogo de las grandezas del hierro y de sus virtudes medicinales; tratado de la nieve y del beber frío (Sevilla, 1574). The first part had been published in Seville in 1565 (printed 1569) and the second in 1571 (also in Seville). For Monardes’s biography see Francisco Guerra, Nicolás Bautista Monardes. Su vida y su obra (México, 1961), pp. 4–15. 63 For the bibliographical list of translations see Guerra, Monardes. Su vida y su obra, pp. 91–100. 64 José M. López Piñero, ‘Nicolás Monardes: el estudio de la materia médica americana en Sevilla’, in idem et al., Medicinas, drogas y alimentos vegetales del Nuevo Mundo, pp. 111–25, here p. 114.

106

A New World of Animals

recommended by Paracelsus (there is no evidence that Monardes was involved in any of these dealings).65 Seville was at that time a rich mercantile city and the main port of entry of goods and bullion brought from America. In the introduction to his Medicinal History Monardes claims that, besides the shipments of gold and silver, more than 100 ships arrived yearly in Seville loaded with parrots, monkeys, ‘griphons’, lions, gerfalcons, tigers, wool, cotton, dyes, leather, sugar, copper, brazilwood and all in such quantities that ‘it is a great thing to see and an incredible richness’.66 Salutary effects had been attributed to the stones obtained from the entrails of animals since ancient times. The most famous of these was the bezoar which, as we have seen in the previous chapter, Acosta praised highly. In his Medicinal History Monardes tells the story of a soldier in Peru who had written him a letter telling how he had learned from the Incas the secret of the stone, a subject on which he had become interested after reading the physician’s little treatise about bezoars from the East Indies.67 But the bezoar from the West Indies, continues Monardes, are far better, because ‘out of ten genuine stones [from the East] we receive 100 which are counterfeits’.68 Although at this time he had not yet tested the Peruvian bezoar stones himself, he claims that ‘they are admirable and its virtue against any kind of poison and pestiferous fevers and venomous humours is extremely powerful’.69 By the time he wrote the third treatise of the Medicinal History Monardes could announce confidently that he would discuss ‘only what I have experimented [on the bezoar] and the effects I have understood, those that have gone through my own hands, so that my report could earn full credit and the stone could be used safely and with total confidence, for its properties will have been known by experience’. He enumerates a list of maladies in which the stones proved useful, like heart disease, poisons, pestilential fevers, melancholy, leprosy, quartan fever, chronic illnesses and more.70 It seems that the pebbles found in the gullets of the caymans of the Caribbean were also good for quartan fevers. (One should lay one of these pebbles on each temple of the patient.) Monardes reports the case of a young man affected by a fever who, upon his arrival from the Indies, was cured using this treatment and another of a young girl 65 See Guerra, Monardes. Su vida y su obra, p. 22 and 91–2 for the controversy between the doctors backed up by the Fuggers and Paracelsus. Cf. also Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson and Roger French, The Great Pox (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 100–104. 66 Historia medicinal, introd., f. 1r. 67 Ibid., book II, ff. 73v-74v. Monardes’s first treatise on drugs of the Indies (1565) was accompanied by the treatise on the bezoar stone, in which he talked of the stones brought from the East (Historia medicinal, Treatise on the bezoar, ff. 125r–148r). 68 Ibid., f. 72r. 69 Ibid., f. 78r. 70 Ibid., book III, ff. 111v–112v.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

107

whose malady improved with it – although, he admits, she was not cured. As an aside, he provides a brief description of the cayman, a very fierce beast who could gobble an entire Indian. Monardes also affirms that the little stones found in the heads of sharks, when crushed and administered as a powder, would dissolve the stones in the kidneys and bladder (which was something ‘well inquired and well known by the Indians’).71 The only picture of an animal included in the Medicinal History is a modest woodcut of an armadillo, copied from a live animal (‘de otro natural’) held in the house of a gentleman, the Sevillian Gonzalo de Molina, who apparently had a gabinete de curiosidades with objects brought from the Indies, animals, coins, arms and many books.72 It was believed that the armadillo had curative properties. Its ‘bone’ (the tail), ground and administered in a dose no larger than a pin’s head, was considered very effective for curing earache and the ringing of the ears accompanied with mild deafness, which ‘the Bishop’, he says, ‘has seen on many occasions’ – one can assume that in those days it was no small recommendation for a doctor to cure the bishop of Seville. Monardes’s description of the armadillo, though brief, is somewhat more rewarding than the picture in his book.73 He also illustrates the healing virtues of the crabs of the Indies with the story of a man who, affected by hectic fever, settled in a group of islets between Margarita and Puerto Rico upon a diet of crabs, a method which cured his disease (on this account, Monardes recalls that Avenzoar had claimed that crabs are good for phthisis).74 Drugs, not animals, were Monardes’s main concern. The story of the bezoar shows us how he operated: people who arrived from the Indies brought plants and other products to him, a physician of world renown, and he tried them on his patients. When he praised the excellence of the stone brought from the West Indies while disparaging those from the East Indies, he was not only setting himself against his potential competitor García d’Orta, but also serving his own interests in the exotic medical drug trade and, more broadly, those of his country in perennial competition with the Portuguese (the crowns of both countries were unified in 1580). When talking about the stones, Monardes says that it is admirable ‘that such a marvellous and prized thing could have come from the Indies of His Majesty [that is, the Spanish Indies], and that they are so easy to find and so authentic and reliable that we cannot hold doubts as to their effects’.75 71

Ibid., book II, ff. 81v–82v. Ibid., f. 81r. Gonzalo de Molina or Argote de Molina (1549–90) was a gentleman devoted to military and literary pursuits (he published various books) with interests in heraldry and hawking. See Guerra, Monardes. Su vida y su obra, pp. 80–81. 73 Historia medicinal, book II, f. 81v. 74 Ibid., ff. 105v–106r. 75 Ibid., f. 72r. 72

108

A New World of Animals

Through unknown channels the Dominican Francisco Ximénez, who worked in the Hospital of the Holy Cross (Hospital de la Santa Cruz) in Huaxtepec (New Spain), received a copy of the abstract of Hernández’s work made by Recchi. Huaxtepec had been visited by Hernández in the course of his botanical expeditions and enjoyed a tradition of Aztec herbal medicine. Ximénez, who at the time of his arrival in Mexico had no formal medical training, joined the Dominicans and began to work as a lay brother in the hospital until he died in 1620.76 From Hernández’s material he worked out his Four Books on the Nature and Virtues of the Plants and Animals used in Medicine in New Spain (México, 1615). The first three books deal with herbs and plants and the fourth is on animals and minerals with therapeutic value. The section on animals has twentyseven chapters, each of them devoted to a single beast, bird or fish. The chapters on animals in Ximénez’s work coincide in part with those included in book nine of Plantarum mexicanorum historia, that is, Recchi’s abridgement of Hernández’s manuscripts, but Ximénez substituted and added chapters of his own.77 We should now compare very briefly Monardes’s treatment of animal drugs with what four decades later Ximénez did in his Four Books. When Ximénez discusses the bezoar stone found in the stags of the New World, he denounces the counterfeiting of this drug, which seems to have been a rather endemic and widespread problem in New Spain despite Monardes’s hopeful declarations about the reliability of the stones imported from the Spanish Indies. By the time Ximénez was writing, it was possible to buy a bezoar in New Mexico for one ducado, while in former times the merchants charged no less than 200 ducados – the depreciation of value betrayed the enthusiasm with which many Mexicans took up the profitable business of making false bezoar stones.78 As a rule, Ximénez lists more uses for a given animal product than Monardes and, although he always takes good care to mention the Sevillian expert on materia medica, not infrequently he contradicts him. For example, when talking about the ayotochtli (armadillo) and after enumerating the medical uses of this animal, the friar denies Monardes’s statement that this animal does not eat,79 for when two armadillos were brought to the convent and set free in the cell of Father Luis Vallejo, they ate 76

Varey and Chabrán, ‘Medical Natural History in the Renaissance’. For a discussion on who could have sent the Hernández manuscript to Ximénez, see pp. 125–33. 77 See the comparison between the works in Guillermo Gándara, ‘La obra de Fray Francisco Ximénez comparada con la del doctor Francisco Hernández, recompuesta por el Dr. Nardo Antonno Recco’, Memorias de la Sociedad Antonio Alzate 39 (1921): 99–120. 78 Quatro libros de la naturaleza, book 4, chap. 20, ff. 190r–191r. The bezoar had been a main subject also in Orta’s Coloquios. See ibid., Colloquies, colloquy 45 (trans. Markham, p. 363). 79 Historia medicinal, book II, f. 81v.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

109

the bugs with which the Indians fed them.80 The paragraphs in the Four Books about the virtues of the stones found in the gullet of the cayman and in the head of sharks are very much like those in Monardes’s work.81 Working in an overseas province of the Spanish empire at the beginning of the seventeenth century at a hospital where a local tradition of writing on materia medica was slowly evolving, Ximénez saw fit to recast Hernández’s materials as a collection of medical recipes, enriching it with what he took from Monardes and his own experience.82 In the book on animal and mineral remedies, he added new chapters on the iguana, the sea lions, the shark and the coris or ‘Peruvian rabbits’ (guinea pigs). Ximénez also provided some information on the animals themselves, most of it taken from Oviedo. The subtitle of the Four Books recommends the work as a medical handbook to be used by those who live in ‘country states or far from doctors and apothecaries’ but, much like the other works considered so far in this chapter, it also contains snippets of information on the ‘nature’ of plants, animals and minerals. Ximénez’s Four Books appeared almost four decades before the Thesaurus. It was not illustrated, but it came to be known and cited by Piso and de Laet, who translated it into Latin.83

Exotic Animals: Knowledge and Interests. Clusius and his Exotica During the late Renaissance a few wealthy burghers of the rich merchant cities of Europe began to amass private collections or ‘cabinets of curiosities’, which displayed natural as well as artistic objects. Everywhere, no matter whether in the lands of the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation, the fever for collecting specimens of plants, animals, fossils and exotica increased.84 In the Low 80

Quatro libros de la naturaleza, book IV, chap. 1, f. 178v. Quatro libros de la naturaleza, book IV, chaps 3 and 7, ff. 180r and 183r. Cf. Historia medicinal, book II, f. 81v–82v. 82 In 1580 Gregorio López wrote a work called De la virtud de las yerbas (Mexico, 1672). See Varey and Chabrán, ‘Medical Natural History in the Renaissance’, p. 129 and note 12. This work has been edited: Francisco Guerra (ed.), El Tesoro de Medicinas de Gregorio López, 1542–1596 (Madrid, 1982). 83 In a letter to Luca Olstenio (10 October 1636) de Laet says that he is expecting the edition of the Thesaurus because although he had a copy of Ximénez’s book, this is not very useful for it lacks pictures. Giuseppe Gabrielli, ‘Il carteggio Linceo della vecchia Accademia di Federico Cesi (1603–1630)’, Memorie della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 6th series, vol. 7, fasc. 1–4, pp. 1–1446 (Rome, 1938–42), see p. 1243. 84 See for example Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994); Giuseppe Olmi, L’inventario del mondo. Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 1992), in particular pp. 211–52; Andreas Grote (ed.), Macrocosmo in microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns, 1450 bis 1800 (Opladen, 1994). 81

110

A New World of Animals

Countries the cabinets des curiosités were particularly in vogue.85 A favourite item of these collections were embalmed animals or birds brought from distant lands, their hides, skins, horns or, by default, pictures of them. Animals from the New World had pride of place and no collector of reputation could fail to exhibit the shell of an armadillo, the beak of a toucan or the skin of an anaconda.86 The pictures representing the fantastic rooms in which the objects were displayed, like the museum of the Neapolitan Ferrante Imperato or the famous collection of Olaus Worm in Copenhagen, show the inevitable armadillo hanging from the roof or attached to one of the walls. Of course, the building of collections was accompanied by an active trade and all kinds of exchanges, either commercial or intellectual. Naturalists and aficionados sent to each other specimens, coloured paintings, drawings and letters describing the objects they possessed or had seen, usually accompanied by reports from persons who had travelled to the lands whence the animals came. The harbour cities of the Low Countries joined to their lively sea traffic a rich acquisitive clientele and were thus one of the main points of entry of animals brought from the New World. In the final chapter we shall see how a vast net of correspondents fed the writers on natural history with a steady current of objects, letters and even live specimens. In what follows, we shall look at Clusius, a botanist interested both in new drugs and new creatures from the East and West Indies. Charles de l’Ecluse (Clusius, 1526–1609) is mostly known as one of the botanists who stimulated the rise of botanical studies in the Low Countries during the end of the Renaissance and early modern times.87 On account of his activity as a translator and his extensive correspondence with many of the leading scholars in his field, he became a key figure in the process of diffusion of knowledge about plants and animals of the New World.88 Clusius graduated from the Collège des Trois Langues in Louvain and spent a year in Wittenberg with Melanchthon where he converted to Protestantism. It was after studying in Montpellier, Antwerp and Paris that he went to the Iberian peninsula as tutor of 85

See Th. H. Lunsingh Scheuleer, ‘Early Dutch Cabinets of Curiosities’, in Oliver Impey and Arthur Macgregor (eds), The Origins of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1985), pp. 115–20 (chap. 14). 86 See Wilma George, ‘Alive or dead: zoological collections in the seventeenth century’, in Impey and Macgregor (eds), Origins of Museums, pp. 179–87 (chap. 21). 87 A. G. Morton, History of Botanical Science (London and New York, 1981), pp. 144–5. 88 See the biography by Édouard Morren in Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Biographie nationale (Brussels, 1876), vol. 5, cols 383–403. See also Boxer, Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine, pp. 24–9 and Andrea Ubrizsy in Savoia, ‘I rapporti tra Carolus Clusius ed i naturalisti italiani del suo tempo’, Physis 20 (1978): 49–69. There is a large study on Clusius, written mostly in Dutch with some chapters in German: F. W. T. Hunger, Charles de l’Ecluse (Carolus Clusius), Nederlandsch kruidkundige 1526–1609, 2 vols (The Hague, 1927–43).

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

111

the Fuggers. During that trip he secured a copy of Orta’s Coloquios, which he translated into Latin.89 He also translated the treatises on exotic drugs written by Monardes and Cristóbal Acosta and in 1582 published the three works in a single volume which went through many editions. Clusius spent some years working in the imperial garden of Maximilian II in Vienna and in 1593 was appointed to the prestigious chair of botany at Leyden, a position he held until his death in 1609. In his Exoticorum libri decem (Antwerp, 1605), he brought together all his work on plants and animals of both Indies. This large volume embraces Clusius’s six books on exotic plants, his translations of Orta, Cristóbal Acosta and Monardes, a translation of Pierre Belon’s Observations (an account of the author’s voyages through Greece and the Near East) and other minor works. Most of the descriptions of animals in Clusius’s Exotica were made on the basis of pictures. Repeatedly he begins the chapters on animals by saying that he has received a coloured picture of a beast or bird sent to him by Jacob Plateau, who had a museum in Tournai. These drawings usually had a caption with the name of the animal and its measurements (length, height, width).90 The accounts of the learned Clusius are very much like a ‘translation into words’ or a textual interpretation of the pictures, but he also strove to identify the animal in question by resorting to modern and ancient authors. For instance, Clusius described the ourissia (some kind of hummingbird) by looking at a picture sent to him in 1603 by Plateau, which had been drawn from the exemplar exhibited in the collector’s cabinet. In his account, he rehearses the story told by a Jesuit who had lived in Brazil and who during his visit to Plateau’s museum explained that the ourissia (an Indian word which would mean ‘sun ray’) was generated from flies, for it partook of the nature of both birds and flies. Clusius dismisses the missionary’s story as a legend and, in order to underpin his argument, quotes extensively from other authors who had described the bird, such as Oviedo, Acosta and López de Gómara. He finally observes than none of these authors mentioned the marvellous song of the bird, which had been reported by Thevet and Léry (whom we shall deal with in the next chapter).91 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the writers willing to deal with New World animals had to find their way through a maze of conflicting descriptions of creatures which in most cases they had never seen alive. The usual 89

Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud indos nascentium historia (Antwerp, 1567). The particular copy which Clusius bought is now deposited in the Cambridge University Library. See Boxer, Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine, p. 25. 90 Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 2, p. 97. Clusius received from him, among other items, three pictures of armadillos or tatous and pictures of two serpents. Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 15, pp. 109–10 and chap. 19, p. 114. 91 Ibid., chap. 2, pp. 96–7.

112

A New World of Animals

solution was to admit the existence of different kinds or varieties of the animal. For example, in his chapter on the ‘armadillo sive tatou’, Clusius distinguishes between three ‘genera’ of this quadruped on the basis of three pictures sent to him by Plateau in November 1602. The first ‘genus’ of tatou would be the larger one. Its picture was reproduced in the Exotica as a woodcut accompanying the text of Clusius’s translation of Belon’s Observations, the diary of the latter’s journey through the Middle East. It represents a long-tailed, nine-banded armadillo (see a copy of this drawing in Figure 5.3 (p. 168), middle and Figure 6.4 (p. 205), bottom). In his diary, Belon states that he saw a tatou in the market of Constantinople, ‘brought from Guinea and the New World’. (It seems that these animals were travelling a long way from their original home, which is not surprising if we recall the curative properties ascribed to the powder obtained from their tails).92 The second ‘genus’ of armadillo, says Clusius, is similar to the first, although smaller – thus he does not reproduce its picture. The picture of the third kind of armadillo (‘tatou III genus’) shows a short-tailed, three-banded armadillo with long legs (see a version of this picture in Figure 5.3, bottom). Clusius reflects that the existence of different ‘genera’ or ‘varieties’ of this animal might be accounted for by the differences between the ‘provinces’ it inhabits.93 Clusius was well aware of the shortcomings resulting from his inability to observe the living animals. In the chapter about the ignavus he comments on the picture of a sloth copied from a museum specimen and sent to him by a collector. The animal, he argues, is probably the perrillo ligero described by Oviedo, and if Oviedo’s description does not totally correspond to the picture, this could be due to the fact that embalmed animals sometimes become disfigured.94 In an appendix to his work, Clusius reproduces a second picture of the ignavus, alleging that it fitted Oviedo’s description much better than the other – the new one was drawn from a specimen which had died shortly before the ship which brought it from the West Indies arrived in Amsterdam (see an engraving based upon this picture in Figure 6.4).95 But the sloth was not the only New World animal that travelled as a stowaway on Dutch craft. In his account of the skin of a 92

Petri Belloni Cenomani plurimarum singularium et memorabilium rerum in Graecia, Asia, Aegypto, Judaea, Arabia, aliisque exteris Provinciis ab ipso conspectarum Observationes tribus libris expressae (1606), book III, chap. 51, p. 204. Clusius’s Latin translation of Belon’s work was part of his Exotica. This picture also appears in a scholium to Clusius’s commented edition of Monardes’s works: Simplicium medicamentorum ex Novo Orbe delatorum quorum in medicina usus est Historia, in Exoticorum libri decem, book X, chap. 37, p. 330. It should be noted that Clusius’s picture was different from that in the original edition of Belon’s work, Observations des plusieurs singularités (Paris, 1553). 93 Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 15, pp. 109–10. 94 Ibid., chap. 16, p. 112. 95 Ibid., letter to the reader, ‘Auctarium ad exoticorum libros’, p. 373.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

113

‘serpens peregrinus’ with a length of nine Roman feet, Clusius infers that it was brought from America because there had not been any Dutch expedition to the East during the year it arrived.96 In 1581 the northern provinces of the Netherlands finally declared their independence from the oppressive rule of Philip II after several years of struggle during which the atrocities of the Duke of Alva and his tercios were nearly matched by the barbarities of the Sea Beggars. Shortly before, the kingdom of Portugal had been appended to the Spanish empire (1580). As a consequence, the ensuing war of independence which the Dutch continued to wage against Spain was accompanied by an effort at sea expansion which sought to obtain the necessary financial resources by wrangling from the Portuguese (now allied to the Spaniards) the control of the spice trade in the East Indies. The result was that dozens of Dutch expeditions to the Spice Islands were fitted out. In 1598, two Dutch fleets set sail for the Strait of Magellan with the purpose of exploring the feasibility of that route toward the East Indies instead of the usual one around the Cape of Good Hope. The first Dutch crossings of the strait brought some rewards to Clusius. In a chapter of his Exotica he describes the penguin according to a drawing in the log of a ship which called at the Island of Penguins (Elizabeth Island) in the strait.97 Clusius says that the sailors called these birds ‘pinguins’ because they were fat (pinguis) but that he would rather call them ‘anser magellanicus’ for they probably belonged to the ‘genus’ of geese – a woodcut of the picture of the bird accompanies the long (and rather competent) description (Figure 4.1).98 Clusius depended on the information brought to him by navigators. In the letter dedicating his book to the States-General of Holland and West Friesland, he declares that his project will prosper only if the surgeons and apothecaries of the Dutch ships dispatched to the (East) Indies care to collect, preserve and take back the plants, fruits, barks, roots and herbs with their names and curative properties. In fact, he gave to the surgeons of the ships lists of plants to be brought back and also asked the merchants of the Dutch East India Company (created in 1602) to instruct their subordinates to take this matter seriously. But it seems that although he invested money and received many promises, he could achieve nothing in this respect.99 96

Ibid., book V, chap. 18, pp. 113–14. This was the expedition commanded by Jacob Mahu and Simon de Cordes, which accomplished the first Dutch crossing of the Strait of Magellan. One of the captains, Sebald de Weert, could not get accross the strait and was met by the second expedition commanded by Oliver van Noort. The log until September 1599 was published by Barent Iansz. Potgieter (Amsterdam, 1600) and includes the picture of the penguin used by Clusius. 98 Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 5, p. 101. 99 Ibid., letter to the reader, ‘Auctarium ad exoticorum libros’, pp. 357–8. 97

114

A New World of Animals

4.1 Penguin in Clusius’s Exoticorum libri decem, reproduced from the diary of the Dutch expedition that set sail to the Magellan Strait in 1598. Note the hooked beak like that of an accipter.

Clusius was at the crossroads of a complex network of learned and economic interests related to the exotic drugs trade. His own works on the subject and his Latin translations of the Iberian treatises on drugs from both Indies – some of which he came to know in the course of his visit to Spain accompanying one of the scions of the bankers who controlled the guaiac trade – constituted the core of his Exotica, dedicated to the Dutch States-General when, after many years of wandering, he was nominated professor at Leiden. Although he was a botanist, Clusius also dealt with animals, confronting the usual problems of describing unknown creatures from pictures, of obtaining a negotiated solution out of multiple and contradictory reports and of pinning down the new kinds into the old categories. It has been pointed out that during the seventeenth century knowledge of New World animals stimulated a recasting of the discourse on natural history, which became more empirically oriented (we shall return to this in our final chapter). If this is the case, then Clusius had an important role in this movement.100 Perhaps related to this, he was handling information of economic import and this called for a rather matter-of-fact and concrete approach.

100 See William Ashworth, ‘Natural history and the emblematic world view’, in David Lindberg and Robert Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 303–32, in particular pp. 318–19.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

115

Georg Markgraf and Willem Piso. The Dutch West India Company and the Historia naturalis Brasiliae The struggling Dutch Republic was ruled by a merchant oligarchy dependent upon the sea trade. Since the end of the sixteenth century public opinion had been stirred by groups promoting the colonization of the New World as a way to open new markets while challenging the power of the Iberian empire. When the twelve-year truce between the Netherlands and Spain came to an end (1621) the time seemed ripe for the creation of an instrument that would allow Dutch colonial expansion to America. The DWIC, founded as a mirror image of the East India Company, received a charter from the States-General in 1621 granting it the monopoly for trading in America and Africa and also for conducting land and sea war operations and implementing colonial administration in those lands.101 The Dutch foresaw the establishment of colonies in the New World as a source of raw materials, like those obtained by Spain and Portugal: indigo, sugar, sarsaparilla, hides, pearls, cotton, brazilwood, sugar and so on. By the 1630s the DWIC owned 100 ships and employed 10,000 persons. According to the official history of the company, between 1621 and 1637 more than 600 Iberian ships had been seized in privateering expeditions, most of them in the Caribbean sea.102 It was during those years when the Dutch Brazilian adventure took place. Between 1533 and 1549 Brazil was divided into twelve captaincies, from São Vicente in the south to São Luis do Maranhão in the north (their number was increased to fourteen by the middle of the seventeenth century). Each of these extensive units was granted to a donatário, a lordly proprietor in charge of the settlement and colonization of the territory. The founding of a Dutch colony in Brazil was promoted and supported by the Calvinist predikants escaped from Flanders, who saw in it a possibility of missionary work and the furthering of commerce.103 In 1624 the Dutch were able to seize Bahia, which remained in their power for a year. Six years later a fleet of almost seventy vessels was sent to Pernambuco, which was taken with great losses on both sides. From that stronghold the Dutch began to expand, waging a long war with the Portuguese for the control of Brazil. Johan Maurits, the grandson of a brother of William of Orange, was the ‘strong man’ sent to settle the unstable situation. When in 1641 he finally took Maranhão, the Dutch were in control of seven captaincies. The period of the Dutch colonization in north-eastern Brazil (1624–54) 101

For Dutch sea expansionism see C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (London, 1990; 1st edn 1965). 102 See Klooster, The Dutch in America, p. 21. 103 See C. R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil. 1624–1654 (Connecticut, 1973; 1st edn Oxford, 1957), pp. 2–5.

116

A New World of Animals

brought forth, as a by-product, two of the most influential works on South American natural history written during the seventeenth century – Piso and Markgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae and its sequel, Piso’s De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica libri quatuordecim (Fourteen books on the natural and medical things of both Indies). The heyday of Dutch settlement in the new land was the brief span of seven years during which Johan Maurits, count of Nassau-Siegen, acted as governor-general in Recife (Pernambuco).104 This personage enjoyed both a noble birth and an excellent education, and had considerable experience in the battlefields and in sea warfare. Maurits is said to have conducted an enlightened policy, characterized by good administration, sound business based on the exploitation of sugar cane, religious toleration and, above all, the cultivation of the princely image of a patron of the arts and the sciences in the midst of the Brazilian sertão.105 He had two stately residences built for himself in the island of Antonio Váz (Vrijburg and Boa Vista), which had zoological and botanical gardens, an aviary, landscaped views and sumptuous collections of art objects and ‘curiosities’. The visitor to Maurits’s menagerie could admire parrots, macaws, pheasants, swans, turkeys, tigers, ounces, antbears, apes, goats from Cape Verde, sheep from Angola, tapirs and other birds and beasts from the New and Old World.106 Willem Piso (Pies) (1611–78) was Maurits’s personal physician. He had studied medicine at Leiden, which since Clusius’s time was a centre of exotic medical botany. He set out for Brazil – where he remained from 1637 to 1644 – and upon his return matriculated in Leiden again, when the university was going through the intellectual turmoil of the controversy about medical Cartesianism and Harvey’s ideas about the circulation of the blood.107 Georg Markgraf (1609– 44), after studying various sciences in no less than ten German universities, set off for Brazil in 1637 and remained there until 1643, when he left Recife for Angola, dying of a ‘fever’ shortly after his arrival in Africa.108 Although his official capacity was that of an astronomer in the observatory set up by Johan Maurits, he also worked as a cartographer and carried out enthusiastically his 104

See Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, pp. 112–58 (chap. 4). See the various articles in E. van den Boogaart (ed.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil (The Hague, 1979). 106 See Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, p. 116. 107 See Roger French, ‘Harvey in Holland: Circulation and the Calvinists’, in idem and Andrew Wear (eds), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 46–86. For Piso see the article by Peter W. van der Pas in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (DSB) and Francisco Guerra, ‘Medicine in Dutch Brazil, 1624–1654’, in van den Boogaart (ed.), Johan Maurits, pp. 472–93. 108 See the paper by P. J. P. Whitehead, ‘Georg Markgraf and Brazilian Zoology,’ in van den Boogaart (ed.), Johan Maurits, pp. 426–71, particularly appendix 1 (‘Georg Markgraf. Biography and bibliographic sources’), pp. 446–54. 105

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

117

work on natural history under Piso’s supervision. The scientific interests pursued in Maurits’s entourage were connected with a burgeoning artistic effervescence. At least six artists were at the service of the governor-general and some of them, such as Frans Post and Albert Eckhout, enjoyed considerable prestige.109 Part of the output of these artists consisted in three major collections of drawings of Brazilian animals and plants which were sold by Maurits on his return to Holland: the so-called Handbooks (more than 400 watercolours of animals and plants, perhaps Markgraf’s field drawings), the four volumes of the Theatrum rerum naturalium Brasiliae (1,500 oil and chalk sketches by Eckhout) and the Thierbuch, a collection of watercolours by Zacharias Wagener who served as Maurits’s quartermaster. These images, many of which depict plants and animals, were widely reproduced in drawings, oils and tapestries all over continental Europe.110 Markgraf’s manuscripts, with descriptions of innumerable plants and animals, eventually arrived at the hands of Johannes de Laet (1593–1649), one of the directors of the DWIC and a sound scholar on things related to the New World. De Laet (to whom we shall return in the next section) edited and published Markgraf and Piso’s materials with the financial support of Johan Maurits. The Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Amsterdam, 1648) is an elegant folio volume containing a medical work on Brazilian medicine by Willem Piso (De medicina brasiliensi) and Markgraf’s Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae libri octo, a natural history of the land dealing with herbs, shrubs, trees, fishes, birds, quadrupeds and serpents, insects, geography and the life and customs of the native inhabitants of the country. Markgraf’s original manuscripts were organized by de Laet, whose glosses are punctually indicated as ‘annotationes’.111 The Historia was furnished with 429 woodcuts ‘ab ipso auctore accurate delineatae’ and was dedicated by Piso to Maurits. The author praises his benefactor with the usual clauses of verbose adulation and, as many had done before him, draws a parallel between his patron and the emperor Titus Vespasianus, to whom Pliny 109

See R. Joppien, ‘The Dutch Vision of Brazil. Johan Maurits and his artists’, in van den Boogaart (ed.), Johan Maurits, pp. 297–376. 110 See P. J. P. Whitehead and M. Boeseman, A portrait of Dutch 17th century Brazil. Animals, Plants and People by the Artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau (Amsterdam, 1989) and Whitehead, ‘The original drawings for the Historia naturalis Brasiliae of Piso and Marcgrave (1648)’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 7 (1976): 409–22. Also Joppien, ‘Dutch Vision of Brazil’, pp. 311–20. Wagener’s Thierbuch has been edited: E. de Cerqueira Falçao (ed.), Zoobiblion, livro de animais do Brasil (São Paulo, 1964). Daniel M. Teixeira is currently editing a series of volumes on the iconography of Dutch Brazil, under the general title of Brasil Holandês (Rio de Janeiro, 1993–). 111 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, dedicatory by de Laet, f. 3r. De Laet also added a ‘rerum Chilensium historia’ and glosses on the plants taken from Ximénez’s Quatro libros de la naturaleza.

118

A New World of Animals

had dedicated his Naturalis Historia. Nor does he neglect to recall the illustrious precedent of Alexander and Aristotle, underscoring that the philosopher wrote the Historia animalium as a result of his imperial pupil’s wish to know the natures of animals.112 Ten years after the Historia naturalis Brasiliae came out, Piso published another work bearing the title De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica libri quatuordecim (Amsterdam, 1658). It contains six books on Brazilian medicine and natural history written by him and supplemented by two books by Markgraf, one on topography and meteorology and another about the customs and languages of Brazil and Chile. The East Indies were dealt with by Jakob Bontius, physician to the Dutch East India Company in Batavia, who wrote the remaining six books. The work was obviously intended as a summary of natural history and medicine in both Indies, where the Dutch Companies were pursuing their colonial and commercial undertakings. We shall begin by looking at the relevant parts of Markgraf’s History of the natural things of Brazil and then proceed to Piso’s books On the natural and medical things of both Indies. In his History of the natural things of Brazil Markgraf describes around ninety kinds of fish, many sea animals, eighty-odd birds and a fair number of four-footed animals covering the ‘stars’ of Brazilian fauna such as the ai (sloth), the carigüeya (opossum), the tamanduá guaçu and tamanduá-î (two kinds of anteater), the coati, the capybara, the tapiierete (tapir), the tatu (armadillo), the iaguareté and many more. Among the reptiles we find the iguana, lizards, serpents, frogs, turtles, the cayman and the boi guaçú (boa constrictor), which is given a premium place. The insects Markgraf pays most attention to are the beetles (there are four pictures of them) and he also devotes a chapter to the huge Brazilian spiders.113 Typically, a woodcut representing the animal (without caption) is accompanied by the text, which in some cases is augmented by de Laet’s glosses. The accounts consist mostly of morphological descriptions, which follow a rather uniform pattern for each type of animal. In his descriptions of fish, for example, Markgraf begins with its Brazilian name followed by its Portuguese, Dutch and German equivalents. He then proceeds to detail its size, general aspect, form of the mouth and eyes, number and position of the fins, characteristics of the 112

Historia naturalis Brasiliae, dedicatory by Piso to Maurits, ff. 4v and 3v. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, M. H. K. Lichtenstein published a series of articles on Markgraf’s and Piso’s work, comparing the woodcuts in the books with the original pictures and trying to identify the animal species. See idem, ‘Die Werke von Markgrave–Piso über die Naturgeschichte Brasiliens erlautert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Originalzeichnungen’, Abhandlungen der physikalische Klasse der königlich-preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1814–15 (pub. 1818): 201–22 (mammals); 1816–17 (pub. 1819): 155–78 (birds); 1820–21 (pub. 1822): 237–54 (amphibians), 267–88 (birds); 1826 (pub. 1829): 49–65 (birds, continuation). 113

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

119

scales and colour. In some cases he adds a short clause indicating where the fish lives or specifies whether it is edible or not. The descriptions of birds follow an analogous pattern. De Laet complained that putting Markgraf’s commentaries in order was a painful work.114 Indeed, Markgraf’s History betrays here and there some inconsistencies between text and pictures. For example, the woodcut illustrating the account of the fish abacatuaia does not actually correspond to the fish described.115 The picture had been obtained by de Laet from a young painter and was reproduced in his own work, Novus orbis, with its original caption ‘awah-kattoe’ or ‘iahwe’, which is a Malay name, so it would depict a fish of the East Indies (Figure 4.2).116

4.2 Matuituí (bird) and abacatuaia (fish) in Markgraf’s Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae libri octo (Amsterdam, 1648). The drawing of the bird is quite naturalistic. The picture of the abacatuaia was added to the text by its editor de Laet: it corresponds to a fish of the East Indies.

In the book on quadrupeds, Markgraf records some observations on the behaviour of the animals, but we would look in vain for stories, anecdotes or even notes or commentaries on their habits, breeding behaviour or habitat. The book has a dry, ‘objective’ character and deals almost exclusively with the form (either external or internal) or visual appearance of the creature. It has been argued that Dutch science and Dutch art at that time were particularly preoccupied with the depiction of the surface of things, the representation of their appearances, the faithful and minute reproduction of optic experience. In this sense, Markgraf’s book is a superb example of this artistic and scientific trend.117 There is no 114

Historia naturalis Brasiliae, dedicatory by de Laet, p. 3r. Ibid., book IV, chap. 11, p. 161. In order to simplify, we will refer to Markgraf’s Historia rerum naturalium Brasiliae under the general title of the work Historia naturalis Brasiliae. 116 Johannes de Laet, Novus orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis libri XVIII (Amsterdam, 1633), p. 574. It has been claimed that Markgraf’s description would correspond to the fish Zeus vomer, while the picture is that of Zeus gallus, from the East Indies. See Lichtenstein, ‘Die Werke von Markgrave–Piso’, 1826, pp. 59–60. 117 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the 17th Century (London, 1983). 115

120

A New World of Animals

attempt at introducing problems of classification either. For the most part, we are confronted with a series of pictures and the corresponding morphological accounts. In this single-minded approach lie the virtues – and perhaps the limitations – of the work. Markgraf says that he used a magnifying glass (‘megascopus’) to look at some of the insects.118 In his brief dedication to Maurits, he claims that ‘with relentless care [he] inquired, accurately described and from the live model made pictures’ of the living creatures of Brazil.119 De Laet also emphasizes that the plants and animals of the Historia naturalis Brasiliae were taken ‘not from somebody else’s account, but from [Markgraf’s] own exacting inquiry and exact observation’.120 The enthusiasm the work has aroused among practising zoologists ever since its publication seems to attest to these statements. Markgraf also would have assisted Piso with the vivisection of a few animals: an ai or ignavum (sloth), a carigüeya (opossum) – in which he found nothing of interest except for the pouch under the belly – a tamandua-î (lesser anteater) and an iguana.121 In the introductory epistle to his On the natural and medical things of both Indies, Piso tells the reader that he had taken Markgraf to Brazil – he calls him ‘domesticus meus’ – with the purpose of describing the appearance (‘externas figuras’) of natural creatures, while he would reserve for himself the investigation of their ‘internal powers’ (‘virtutes internas’), in particular, of those that could be of medical value.122 Piso has been blamed by his contemporaries and later scholars for having plagiarized Markgraf’s descriptions, and indeed the most cursory comparison of both works bears witness to this indictment.123 Perhaps only too conscious of this, the Dutch physician strives to distinguish his approach from that of his assistant, claiming that he had no intention to fill the pages with rare or dubious things, but wished to concentrate on those that had been tested by their daily use. He emphasizes that he is writing as a physician, and if he describes the animals ‘it is not to awake delight or admiration in the reader, but for the benefit of the sick and the doctors’.124 It is clear that Piso writes for the 118

With reference to the observation of two little antennae on the head of an insect, he says that ‘sed haec omnia tantum per megascopum observari possint’. Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book V, chap. 7, p. 229. Whitehead’s paper called my attention to this passage. Cf. idem, ‘Georg Markgraf’, p. 440. 119 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, dedicatory to Maurits, p. 2r. 120 Ibid., letter of Laet to the reader, p. 3r. It has been pointed out that there are a few references to Gesner’s books on the text (with mention of the page) and also references to Scaliger’s Historia de animalibus, Clusius and Pliny (Whitehead, ‘Georg Markgraf’, p. 442). 121 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chaps 1, 2, 4 and 11, pp. 221–3, 226 and 237. 122 De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, epistola ad lectorem. 123 See Lichtenstein, ‘Die Werke von Markgrave und Piso,’ 1814–15, p. 204 and Whitehead, ‘Georg Markgraf’, p. 444. 124 De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, p. 47.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

121

doctors. Among many other subjects, he argues for the use of ipecacuanha for dysentery,125 describes a cure for the chigoe (called also ton or tunga)126 and discusses various ‘simples’ such as sarsaparilla, sassafras and guaiac, the staples of medical botany in the West Indies. Piso’s reports on his vivisection of a few four-footed animals are for the most part paraphrases of Markgraf’s accounts (see above). But a closer look reveals some differences.127 Piso claims that quadrupeds are the most useful animals to better illuminate anatomical issues, for they, of all creatures, exhibit the closest affinity with human temperamentum. Immediately afterwards he apologizes for his clumsy dissections, which could not fulfil the expectations of the ‘iatrosophi’.128 In the report on the vivisection of the ai (sloth), Piso includes a picture of the skeleton which had been sent from Brazil to the Theatrum Anatomicum in Leiden, an amphitheatre for dissections built in 1597.129 Also, on the initial page of the section on birds Piso says that all birds have a double stomach, ‘as was shown in the dissections’, which is followed by a long paragraph on the internal anatomy of birds.130 Markgraf had endorsed the claim that the peccary had a navel on its back, against which de Laet had contended on the grounds that Doctor Valkenburg had dissected one of those wild pigs of the New World and supposedly found out that the so-called umbilicum was a mammary gland.131 Piso supports neither, but sides with Hernández, who thought that the structure in question was a lump of fat.132 Overall, internal anatomy seems to play a larger part in Piso’s work than in Markgraf’s (leaving aside the question of who actually carried out the vivisections). This is not surprising since the art of dissecting during early modern times remained the province of the physicians.133 In his work Piso discusses three cases of metamorphosis in the animal realm. 125

Ibid., book IV, chap. 53, pp. 230–32. Ibid., chap.12, p. 189. Piso describes the symptoms and recommends eliminating the bug with a needle (he points out that a ‘megascopus’ is necessary to see the insect). For serious cases, he suggests applying an oil obtained from the plant acaiu or a gumdrop from the reddish-yellow tree carnacarí. He finishes the chapter by saying that he had been compelled to amputate the gangrenous feet of soldiers who had not taken care of the initial lesions. 127 See the reports on dissections of the anteater, the sloth, the opossum and the iguana. De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, book V, chaps 22, 23 and 24, pp. 321– 3, and book II, section 3, p. 105. 128 Ibid., book III, section 3, p. 97. 129 ‘Secui cum domestico meo foemellam vivam (cujus sceleton ex ossibus undiquaque validis compositum, Theatro Anatomico Leydensi donavi).’ Ibid., book V, chapter 23, p. 322. 130 Ibid., book III, section 2, p. 79. 131 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chap. 7, pp. 229–30. 132 De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, book III, section 3, pp. 98–9. 133 See Roger K. French, Dissection and vivisection in the European Renaissance (Aldershot, 1999), passim. 126

122

A New World of Animals

First comes the caayará (mantis) which would transform itself into a plant, so that what was ‘sensitive’ becomes ‘vegetative’ as if nature, speculates Piso, acted incessantly in a circular way, returning to itself in perpetual motion.134 Another transmutation of this kind is that suffered by caterpillars, which originate from eggs and become butterflies.135 But the most astonishing metamorphosis, continues Piso, is that suffered by caterpillars which evolve into a bird, the guainumbí (hummingbird), which has been confirmed by all the ‘scriptores Novi Orbis’. The guainumbí originates from a particular kind of caterpillar, which begins to grow feathers so that, at one point, its upper half is already a bird while its lower half is still an insect. Emanuel de Morais, a Portuguese theologian in Brazil, and many monks had seen this phenomenon and even manipulated the creature during the process of change. Of course, Piso was aware that he was stepping on thin ice and took precautions to invoke the corresponding witnesses – it seems that he held the same liberal views on religion as his illustrious patient, Maurits of Nassau, since he called to the bench a Catholic priest and a quite undistinguished group of monks. To further support this story (which, as we have seen, had been criticized by Clusius), Piso adduces the power of the Author of Nature, which can become manifest in the smallest things despite the disbelief of the unlearned, born out of their ignorance. In the dedication of this chapter to Dr Iohannes van der Linden, professor of medicina practica in Amsterdam, Piso complains about those who, not properly exercised in the investigation of the most hidden recesses of Nature, judge as impossible things that are only new.136 They should not assent to the fallacious perceptions of their senses, Piso admonishes, for these are unreliable guides when it comes to inquire into the faculties of the sublunary bodies. It could be that this critique of an excessive reliance upon sense perception and the implicit correlative defence of a search for occult causes related to the division of labour Piso had established at the beginning of his work: Markgraf was assigned the investigation of the external figures of animals while he reserved for himself the inquiry into their hidden powers. Markgraf and Piso worked, wrote and published under the patronage of Johan Maurits, the governor-general of the Dutch colony in Brazil, and with the active participation of de Laet, one of the directors of the Dutch West India Company. Their work conveyed information on tropical medicine and provided a rich, articulate account of the natural resources of the land, with emphasis on the 134

‘Atque sensitivum quod fuit vegetativum fiat, natura per circulum quasi, succesive agente, motuque perpetuo in se recurente.’ De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, book V, chap. 21, pp. 316–17. 135 Ibid., pp. 318–19. 136 Ibid., dedicatory letter, p. 268.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

123

fauna. Neither of these aspects was unrelated to the commercial interests of the Dutch colonial enterprise.

The Literature about the New World in Reformed Europe and the Expansion of the Northern Powers The defeat of the Armada in 1588 is usually taken as the point when the scales tipped and the Iberian countries began to lose their so far indisputable dominion of the sea. By the middle of the seventeenth century the northern Protestant powers were clearly the rising oceanic empires and began to confront each other, as the wars between England and the United Provinces demonstrate. Commerce and the possibility of trade with the territories of the New World, which breached the wall of Iberian monopoly in the West Indies, were the moving forces of the whole process. But England, the Netherlands and to some extent France, which set off to gain as much territory as possible from Iberian America, also shared a commitment to Reform. Much of the impetus behind the various private enterprises of colonization in the New World was promoted by the zeal of Protestants and, in particular, Calvinists. The struggle on the continental battlefields during the Thirty Years War and the competition for land and revenues in America had its counterpart in the effort to spread ideas, convictions, programmes and historical interpretations through the press. A large output of literature concerning the New World emanated from Flemish, Dutch and English editors, who acted as mouthpieces of empire as well as promoters of the expansion of Reformed Christianity. The results of this vast body of literature were uneven. In England, the well-known collections of voyages published by Hakluyt and Purchas were explicitly aimed at furthering the ideal of a British sea commercial empire. The contents of these works includes geography, history of the Spanish conquest and, above all, the literature of travel and exploration. Understandably, they contain rich material on the nature of the New World (minerals, plants and animals) broadly conceived as a source of raw materials and natural resources. We shall now look at some examples of this genre of writing. Johannes de Laet and his Novus orbis De Laet’s Nieuwe wereldt ofte beschrijvinghe van West-Indien (New World or Description of the West Indies) (1625) summarized in a clear and orderly fashion much of what was known about America at the time of its publication.137 It was 137 See the biography by J. Roulez in Académie Royale de Belgique, Biographie nationale, vol. 5, cols 273–7.

124

A New World of Animals

lavishly published in folio by the Elseviers and translated first into Latin as Novus orbis (Amsterdam, 1633) and then into French (Leiden, 1640).138 One of the assets of this work is the range of sources utilized by its author, who took it upon himself to offer a comprehensive account of the whole continent. In the introduction, after declaring that he does not wish to take sides in the conflict between Spain and Portugal as regards the possession of the Indies, de Laet cites approvingly Elizabeth’s statement denying that the pope could have power to assign portions of the world to particular European powers and defending free trade and colonization of the so-far-unoccupied territories.139 With the bulls of 1493 and the subsequent Treatise of Tordesillas, Alexander VI had divided the world in two halves (assigned respectively to Castile and Portugal) as a way of avoiding future conflicts between those kingdoms. But this donatio had been accepted neither by France nor England, nor even by the Spanish theologians and political theorists after the accession to the throne of Charles I of Spain.140 In 1625, one year after the Dutch fleet had taken Bahia, this was a question de Laet found worth stressing and one that throws light on the context surrounding the publication of Novus orbis. Its prologue culminates with a coup de théâtre, a verbatim quotation of a passage taken from Herrera’s Decades in which the Spaniards proclaim their right to conquer and colonize, facing an audience of Indians whom, says de Laet, ‘they expelled from their lands and massacred by the thousands’. Defence of free trade and national commercial interests was only a part of the background of the work: its author was a prominent Calvinist (he had participated in the synod of Dordrecht) and Novus orbis should also be seen as the most accomplished representative of the group of works on the Indies that appeared during the initial decades of the seventeenth century in connection with the Calvinist effort to promote colonization of the New World. Among the forty-one sources mentioned by de Laet we find, besides the main chroniclers of the Indies such as Cieza de León, Acosta, Herrera, López de Gómara and the Inca Garcilaso, works like Ximénez’s Four Books (which de Laet had translated into Latin) and even the epic poems La Argentina by Martín del Barco Centenera and La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla. As expected, de Laet drew upon a restricted number of chosen authors to account for the animals of a given region. For those of Hispaniola, for instance, he used Peter Martyr and Oviedo (who, oddly enough, is not included in the list of sources).141 Information on animals of New Spain in mostly drawn from Ximénez (the Lincei edition of 138

L’histoire du nouveau monde (Leiden, 1640), dedicatory letter to Charles I. Ibid., pp. 2v–3r. 140 Pagden, Lords of All the World, pp. 46–7. 141 L’histoire du nouveau monde, book I, chap. 4, pp. 5–8. 139

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

125

Hernández had not yet been published).142 The chapter on the ‘horned cows of Quivira’ is taken from López de Gómara.143 His sources for the fauna of Peru were the Inca Garcilaso and Acosta, and so on.144 The list enumerating the pictures of animals, plants and trees contained in Novus orbis, which appears in the first pages of the volume, suggests that pictures were seen by its author as a relevant feature of the work (its long subtitle also calls attention to the fact that it contains illustrations of animals and plants of the New World).145 Almost all the pictures of animals are taken from Clusius’s Exoticorum libri decem (manatee, hummingbird, penguin, armadillo, sloth). In each case the author acknowledges his source as ‘the excellent Clusius’, with whom he was on close terms. Sebald de Weert – the captain of one of the ships in the Dutch expedition which set off for the strait in 1598 – had sent to de Laet’s father a letter addressed to Clusius describing a tree growing in an island near the Strait of Magellan. Although by the time Novus Orbis was published there was already in circulation a consistent body of works on the natural history of the Spanish Indies, a work like de Laet’s was bound to be warmly received, because it managed to embrace a wealth of information organized according to geographical regions. True, he could rely on Clusius’s Exotica and a great number of sources, but in any case de Laet’s was a comprehensive and splendid volume, the product of an accomplished scholar. Obviously, his treatment of animals is derivative. When de Laet drew upon the works of Gómara, Oviedo and Ximénez, the result was a compilation of excerpts. When he copied from works which contained systematic lists of animals, he simply followed the enumeration and on occasion added an item from a complementary list (for example, when he deals with the Brazilian fauna on the basis of Léry, Abbeville and Cardim, whom we shall discuss in Chapter 5).146 The Great Voyages published by the de Bry family Théodore de Bry (d. 1590) was a Huguenot engraver and publisher responsible 142

Ibid., book V, chap. 4, pp. 140–44. Ibid., book VI, chap. 17, p. 220. 144 Ibid., book X, chaps 4 and 5, pp. 328–31. 145 The animals represented are the manatee, the iguana, the walrus, the bird huitzitzil or tominei (hummingbird), the ‘horned cows of Quivira’ (American bison), the penguin, the armadillo, the dorado (a kind of fish), ‘several fishes’ and the sloth. 146 In three chapters, which constitute an inventory of the fauna of northern Brazil, de Laet followed closely Claude d’Abbeville’s Histoire. L’histoire du nouveau monde, book XVI, chaps 13 (birds), 14 (fish), 15 (quadrupeds), pp. 553–8. A similar group of three chapters is devoted to animals of southern Brazil for which de Laet used as sources Léry, occasionally Thevet and ‘a Portuguese author’, actually Fernão Cardim (see Chapter 5). L’histoire du nouveau monde, book XV, chaps 5 (quadrupeds), 6 (serpents), 7 (birds), pp. 484–92. 143

126

A New World of Animals

for two series of collections of travel literature, the Great Voyages (or America) (West Indies) and the Small Voyages (East Indies). He had been born in Liège and as a consequence of the Spanish domination had to leave the city deprived of all his possessions, successfully establishing himself first in Strasbourg and then in Frankfurt, where he was able to raise a prosperous editorial business, continued by his sons.147 The Great Voyages is a series of folio volumes issued in thirteen parts from 1590 through 1634. Most of the travel narratives included in the series are about the French, Dutch and English trips to America.148 The collection was aimed at promoting the seafaring and colonizing activities of the Protestant nations and it contained an implicit invitation to encroach upon the possessions of the Spanish crown in the New World. De Bry had been stimulated in this project by Richard Hakluyt, whom he met during his stay in London (1586–87) and from whom he borrowed a fair quantity of material to publish in the first volumes of the series.149 De Bry also included a heavily edited version of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies, part of Herrera’s Decades and Chauventon’s translation of the History of the New World written by Girolamo Benzoni. Chauventon was a Huguenot minister who actively promoted some kind of alliance with the moderate French Catholics against Spain, during the years in which Henri III and Marie de’ Medici seemed to endorse this kind of policy.150 In his own twovolume Historia Indiae Occidentalis (Génève, 1586), he had published Latin versions of Léry’s Histoire and Benzoni’s History with his own glosses. Benzoni (b. 1519) was an Italian adventurer who travelled extensively through the Caribbean and the Peruvian Pacific in search of fortune during the 1540s and the 1550s. His History of the New World (Venice, 1565) depicts the unbounded greed and senseless cruelty of the Spaniards against the Indians in a pamphleteering style. Perhaps the most revealing of the few passages on animals in the work is that about the llamas in Peru, where the Italian manages to describe an epidemic disease that affected them (mange, in all probability) while giving vent to his strong feelings towards the conquerors: 147

This account of de Bry’s life and works is indebted to Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest. A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s Great Voyages, trans. by Basia Miller Gulati (Chicago, 1981), chaps 1 and 2. 148 The Harriot report of the Grenville expedition to Virginia (1585), the Huguenot expedition of Laudonnière to Florida (1565), the reports of Léry and Hans Staden, Drake’s voyage of 1577–80, Cavendish’s voyage around the world, Raleigh’s and Keymis’s expeditions to Guiana, the travel logs of the Dutch Sebald de Weert, Oliver de Noort, Georges Spielbergen and so on. See an abstract of the contents of the collection in Bucher, Icon and Conquest, appendix 2, pp. 189–90. 149 The propagandist character of the work is discussed in Bucher, Icon and Conquest, pp. 7–10. 150 See Benjamin Keen, ‘The vision of America in the Writings of Urbain Chauventon’, in Chiappelli et al. (eds), First Images of America, vol. 1, pp. 107–20.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

127

They [the Indians] used to have a very great number of a kind of sheep as large as asses, almost like gambelli; and it is said that not long ago a disease came over them like a leprosy, by which they lost a large proportion of them. But the leprosy of the Spaniards has been much worse for they had destroyed nearly the whole of them. The flesh has a game-like flavour.151

Besides Acosta’s Natural History of the New World, many works in de Bry’s collection talk about the fauna of America. One of them is Thomas Harriot’s A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, a famous tract written to propagandize the short-lived colony promoted by Raleigh. This text (the first edited in the series America) provides a list of North American beasts which could be used for trading or as means of subsistence.152 Staden’s report of his captivity among the Tupinamba and the narrative of Schmidl’s voyage to the River Plate were also edited in the collection. All in all, anyone who cared to look for it could find a fair amount of materials on animals of North America, Brazil and the territory of the viceroyalty of Peru buried in the folios of America. But even today, perhaps the greatest appeal of these volumes lies in their copper-engraved pictures, which are grouped together as ‘cycles’ of illustrations corresponding to each of the parts.153 (We have already referred to one of them in Chapter 1, see Figure 1.1.) Most of the plates with animal subjects illustrate the Dutch expeditions which crossed the Strait of Magellan. The set of engravings corresponding to the log of the voyage of Sebastian de Weert (1598–1601), for example, includes a picture representing a hunt in the Island of Penguins. (As we have seen, Clusius obtained his picture of the bird from a chronicle of this expedition.) We see a man brandishing a club against a penguin almost as tall as a human being, with more men battering these animals in the background154 (see Figure 4.3). On 10 April 1599, the hungry sailors, decimated by scurvy, killed between 1,300 and 1,400 birds. Another expedition conducted by Olivier van Noort also killed around 300 penguins on that same spot on 12 August of the same year. The pictures that illustrate the Navigations of Georg Spielbergen 151

Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World, trans. and ed. by Rear-Admiral W. H. Smyth (London, 1857), p. 249. 152 America pars prima (Frankfurt, 1590). The sections of animals are on pp. 7–12 and 20–22. For an analysis of the fauna described by Harriot see Wilma George, ‘Thomas Harriot and the fauna of North America’, The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar, occasional paper no. 5 (1988). 153 There is a useful list of pictures in Bucher, Icon and Conquest, appendix 1, pp. 175–87. See also Michael Alexander (ed.), Discovering the New World, based on the works of Theodore de Bry (London, 1976). 154 Americae pars nona (Frankfurt, 1602), plate 25. Cf. the passage in the ship’s log describing the landing on the ‘insula pinguinarum’ (‘Relatio historica …’), in ibid., p. 23. See also the description of penguins in Olivier van Noort’s log (‘Vera descriptio …’), in ibid., p. 18.

128

A New World of Animals

4.3 Plate in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars nona, Frankfurt, 1602) depicting a hunt of penguins by the Dutch on Penguin island (1599). The image of these penguins very much resembles that in Figure 4.1. Penguin hunts became increasingly common with the early seventeenth-century expeditions to the Strait of Magellan.

(America, part 11) were taken from the original edition of Nieuwe Oost ende West Indische Navigatien (Amsterdam, 1619) (The East and West Indian Mirror), the account of Spielbergen’s voyage around the globe (1614–17).155 One of these engraving shows a couple of Indians, male and female, conducting a four-footed beast which purports to represent a llama with the legend ‘humped sheep in the likeness of a camel’.156 Another picture shows two men on a raft floating on the Bay of Paita with a monstrous bird captured on the island of Lobos.157 Far from Peru, we can also see an image with an imaginative rendition of the landscape of Port Desire, Patagonia, depicting sea lions (represented as terrestrial fourfooted beasts with fins instead of feet), struthiones (rhea), a penguin hunt and 155

The East and West Indian Mirror … (1614–1617) and the Australian Navigations of Jacob Le Maire, trans. with an introd. by J. A. J. de Villiers (London, 1906). 156 Americae pars undecima. Appendix (Oppenheim, 1620), plate 3. The plate refers to the text on p.12. 157 Ibid., plate 12. The plate refers to the text on p.19.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

129

4.4 Engraving representing a composite scene in Port Desire, reproduced in Théodore de Bry’s America (pars undecima, appendix [Oppenheim, 1620], plate xx) and originally illustrating the second part of The East and West Mirror (1619), the narrative of Spielbergen’s expedition around the globe. The sea lions (male and female) are represented as Old World lions with cloven feet ending in something like fins. The quadrupeds grazing in the distant hills are probably guanacos and the trotting birds are rhea. The penguins in the centre of the picture seem indifferent to the sailor, who is attacking them with a stave.

horse-like quadrupeds (guanacos)158 (see Figure 4.4). Some maps in de Bry’s collection show pictures of animals. For example, the map of Guiana included after the title page of the volume narrating the voyages of Drake, Cavendish and Raleigh is said to have been drawn by somebody who accompanied Raleigh on his trip.159 The north-eastern extreme of South America is divided by the equatorial 158 159

Americae pars nona, plate 20. Americae pars octava (Frankfurt, 1599).

130

A New World of Animals

line. Behind the equator, we find an Amazon, the man with his eyes and mouth in his chest about whom Raleigh talks in his Beautiful Guiana, a stag, a lion and a boar – all of them true Old World types. Over the equator we can see an armadillo, a rabbit, and two big cats with the titles ‘tiger’ and ‘leopart’. As a complement to its textual celebration of the voyages of exploration, colonization and pillage of the north European powers, de Bry’s collection conveyed a certain amount of pictorial information on American animals in the form of hunting scenes, several monstrous beasts and small pictures in maps. Fact and fantasy go together in this small gallery of animal images which show that by the beginning of the seventeenth century the New World was still seen by educated Europeans as a land inhabited by bizarre and wonderful creatures. Hakluyt and Purchas The English interest in books about the New World could be dated to Richard Eden, a civil servant educated at Cambridge who was among the first to campaign for British oceanic expansion. On the occasion of the marriage of Mary Tudor with Philip of Spain he published an English translation of the three first Decades of Peter Martyr with abstracts from Oviedo’s Summary (1555).160 Eden’s thesis was that England should learn from Spain and begin to move westwards to the newly discovered lands.161 The literature of discovery was of obvious interest to the colony of English merchants living in Spain during Elizabethan times.162 While captives of the Inquisition, some of them used their time wisely to translate Spanish works. John Frampton, for example, who had been a prisoner in Seville, translated into English parts of Enciso’s Suma de Geografía and also Monardes’s work with the title of Joyfull Newes out of the Newefound World (London, 1577 and augmented editions in 1580 and 1596). Thomas Nicholas translated Gómara’s Conquest of Mexico.163 Knowledge of the lands to be conquered was considered as a condition of empire and one of the first persons in England to fully embody this idea was perhaps Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616). Hakluyt is 160 Decades of the New World (1555). See the modern edition in Edward Arber (ed.), The first Three English books on America [?1511] – 1555 A.D., being chiefly Translations, Compilations etc. by Richard Eden (Birmingham, 1885). Eden’s translation and abstract of Oviedo’s Summary is on pp. 205–42. 161 John Parker, Books to Build an Empire (Amsterdam, 1965), pp. 45–6. 162 See Colin Steele, English Interpreters of the Iberian World from Purchas to Stevens. A bibliographical study, 1603–1726 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 9–14 (chapter 1: ‘Translations before 1603’). 163 John Frampton’s translation of Enciso appeared as A briefe description of the portes, bayes and havens of the West Indies (London, 1578). Thomas Nicholas’s translation of Gómara’s work was published as The pleasant historie of the conquest of the West India (London, 1578). Parker, Books, pp. 85–7 and Steele, English Interpreters, pp. 10–11.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

131

well known because of his compilation of travel literature, his involvement with various schemes related to the northern passage, his support of Raleigh’s colony in Virginia and his official and officious services as an adviser to the crown on overseas affairs.164 While chaplain to the English ambassador in Paris, he was able to buy from Thevet the famous codex Mendoza, a Spanish translation of a chronicle by Mexican scribes which had been stolen by French buccaneers. He also edited a Latin version of Peter Martyr’s Decades (Paris, 1587) and a translation of Laudonnière’s voyage to Florida (London, 1587). But his most recognized work is The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (London, 1589; later three-volume edition, 1598– 1600). A survey of the first edition shows that he made little use of the Spanish sources available to him and the few he utilized were related to North America, the focus of his colonizing concerns.165 As we have seen in Chapter 3, among the items selected was Gómara’s description of the ‘crooked-back oxen’ of New Spain. When Hakluyt died, his papers were inherited by Samuel Purchas (1577–1626), who used them as the basis of his four-volume Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), the last two volumes of which are devoted to the New World.166 In this compilation of travel literature he published extracts from some of the major Spanish chroniclers such as Antonio de Herrera, López de Gómara, Oviedo and Acosta.167 Purchas reshuffled the chronicles of Acosta and Oviedo, bringing together all the materials pertaining to natural history. He reproduced the first four books of Acosta’s work followed by extracts from Oviedo, ‘for the better and more particular knowledge of the Natural Historie of the West Indies’, since ‘Acosta and Oviedo have best deserved of the studies of Nature, that is, of the knowledge of God in his works’.168 Afterwards 164

See the collection of essays in D. B. Quinn (ed.), The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols (London, 1974). 165 K. R. Andrews, ‘Latin America’, in Quinn, Hakluyt Handbook, vol. 1, pp. 238–43. The second edition of Hakluyt’s contained many narratives of privateering voyages to the Caribbean and much information on English voyages to Brazil under Henry VIII. 166 See the essays in L. E. Pennington (ed.), The Purchas Handbook. Studies of the life, times and writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–1626, 2 vols (London, 1997). Purchas’s edition of sources on Iberian America has been studied in detail. See C. R. Steele, ‘Latin America’, in ibid., vol. 1, pp. 301–11. 167 Acosta’s work had been translated to English by Edward Grimston from the French as The naturall and morall historie of the East and West Indies (London, 1604). For a list of English translations of Spanish and Portuguese works on the New World see Steele, English Interpreters, pp. 169–89. 168 Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, vol. 15, pp. 1–148, here pp. 147 and 149. What Purchas includes from Oviedo is his own revised version of Eden’s translation plus material taken from the Italian translation in the third volume of Ramusio’s Delle navigationi et viaggi (Venetia, 1606; there are earlier editions). For a discussion see Steele, ‘Latin America’, pp. 302–4.

132

A New World of Animals

come Acosta’s last books, that is, the ‘moral history of the New World’. Purchas also published several narratives about the English ventures in Guiana and the English translation of the Jesuit Fernão Cardim’s treatise on Brazil, thus providing a very important source of knowledge on plants and animals of the New World for the English-speaking audience. He also included the first English translation of parts of the Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso and a version of the voyage of Schmidl to the River Plate.169 Later Developments In 1671 Arnoldus Montanus – a Dutch predikant, supporter of the Orange dynasty and rector of the Latin School in Schoonhoven – published a book on the New World dedicated to Johan Maurits entitled The New and Unknown World.170 An English translation of Montanus’s work was published in London in the same year by the English editor John Ogilby as a part of his series of Great Atlases, with the title America, being an accurate description of the New World.171 In his Dunciad, Pope mentions Ogilby among those whose books ‘serve (like other Fools) to fill a room’. Indeed, Ogilby’s America, despite its luxurious presentation, its many folded coloured maps and the generous number of copper engravings, is anything but an ‘accurate description’. Being a geographical work, it includes quite a lot of information about animals of the New World – although not always of the best quality. For example, in the chapter on New Galicia (northwestern Mexico) it is said that the river Guadalajara produces all kinds of fish ‘and also a sort of Hedge-hogs [sic] call’d iguana, which live both in the water, and on the land’.172 But in the pages on Guatemala the ‘iquanna’ had been described as an innocuous serpent with ‘a bag under its chin, a glittering comb on its head and sharp bones on its back, which stand like a saw and a long tail’.173 The work affirms that in Tlascala there are many crocodiles which lay an incredible number of eggs, and things would get problematic for the inhabitants 169 For a review of these materials see Steele, ‘Latin America’. The fragments of the Royal Commentaries published by Purchas did not include the chapters on animals. See Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, vol. 17, pp. 311–412. 170 Arnoldus Montanus, De Nieuwe en onbekende Weereld (Amsterdam, 1671). For biographical details and bibliography see the article in Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden (Haarlem, 1869), vol. 12, pp. 1006–9. 171 Ogilby did not mention the original author in his edition, which is considered plagiarism. He was in partnership with Jacob van Meurs of Amsterdam, the publisher of Montanus’s work. For Ogilby see Katherine S. van Eerde, John Ogilby and the Taste of his Times (Folkestone, Kent, 1976), pp. 107–16. 172 America, book II, chap. 6, p. 282. 173 Ibid., chap. 4, pp. 224–6.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

133

‘were it not that the Indian mice call’d ichneumones destroy’d them’ (the ichneumon is of course the Old World mongoose).174 Also, the paragraph on the ‘tigers’ of Mechoacan begins with Bontius’s narrative of a tiger hunt in Batavia and continues with a story enacted by one of these big cats in Bengal.175 As a description of the fauna of Hispaniola we are offered a version of the corresponding passages in Martyr’s Decades.176 The corresponding picture shows a couple of manatees (represented as fatty dogs with a mane and without hind-legs, wistfully resting by the seashore) and a figure of the fish ‘abaca tuya’, copied from Clusius (or from Piso) (see Figure 4.5). Ogilby’s America is a good example of the process of degeneration of knowledge about New World animals as it was copied and disfigured by commercial editors, but the cohabitation of beasts and birds from East and West Indies was not uncommon in representations even as late as the second half of the seventeenth century. For example, in a thematic

4.5 The fish abacatuaia and two manatees, very much like large puppies, in Ogilby’s America (London, 1671). In all probability, the fish was copied from Markgraf’s work on the natural history of Brazil. Ogilby’s was a luxurious volume in large format, but the quality of its textual and visual information was poor. 174

Ibid., chap. 5, section 3, p. 266. Ibid., chap. 5, section 2, p. 262. 176 Ibid., chap. 13, p. 316. 175

134

A New World of Animals

4.6 Engraving in Simon de Vries, Curieuse aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en WestIndische verwonderens-waerdige dingen (Curious remarks about the most peculiar and surprising things in the East and West Indies) (Utrecht, 1682), one of the many Dutch illustrated works on the New World published in the seventeenth century. Through an amalgam of real, distorted and imaginary animals this plate conveyed an image of a fantastic and monstrous nature. A pelican and a penguin can be easily identified.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

135

series of paintings on the continents by the Flemish artist Jan van Kessel executed between 1664 and 1666, the panels corresponding to cities of Iberian America show some fantastic incursions of Old World animals, such as unicorns in Buenos Aires, elephants in Vera Cruz and giraffes in Santo Domingo. The series of French cartoons for tapestries woven at the Gobelins factory, based on paintings by Post and Eckhout which bore the title Les Indes, also incurred in this kind of mélange – for example, one of them depicts an elephant together with an anteater.177 In 1682 the Dutch Simon de Vries published a popular book on natural marvels in both Indies with plates of animals entitled Curious remarks about the most peculiar and surprising things in the East and West Indies.178 The plates of this book, much like Ogilby’s America, represent groups of ‘most peculiar’ animals from the West Indies distributed against some kind of ‘exotic’ landscape, like that with a penguin, a pelican, a monstrous web-footed quadruped and several very ugly-looking fish (see Figure 4.6). Although it is beyond the range of time and problems covered in this book, the work of Maria Merian deserves to be briefly mentioned for it provides an interesting contrast to the approach to animals considered in this chapter. The conquest of Surinam by the Dutch in 1667 resulted in the establishment of a colony noted for its religious tolerance towards dissidents. A member of the pietist community of the Labadists, the German artist Maria Sybilla Merian (1647–1717) travelled with one of her daughters to the Dutch Guiana with the sole purpose of painting caterpillars and butterflies. The result of this work in Paramaribo between 1699 and 1701 was published in 1705 as an amazing grand folio with sixty plates as Dissertatio de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum surinamensium (Dissertation on the generation and metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam).179 As a rule, the plates consist of a picture of a fruit or the leaves of a plant with a caterpillar, pupa and adult insect resting on them. Sometimes more insects are drawn, flying about. The whole is intended as an artistic rendering and it has been claimed that the main merit of the work is the

177

Honour, The New Golden Land, pp. 99–102. Simon de Vries, Curieuese aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en West Indische verwonderens-waerdige dingen (Utrecht, 1682). 179 There was a 1705 Dutch version of the work and it was posthumously edited with seventy-five copper engravings (Amsterdam, 1719). For Merian’s biography see Natalie Z. Davis, Women on the margins (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 140–202. Also Elizabeth Rücker, ‘The Life and Personality of Maria Sibylla Merian’, in idem and William T. Stearn (eds), Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam. Commentary to the facsimile edition of Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (Amsterdam, 1705) based on original watercolours in the Royal Library Windsor Castle (London: Pion, 1982), pp. 1–39. This book includes a complete English translation of Merian’s book on the insects of Surinam. 178

136

A New World of Animals

achievement of an aesthetic product.180 Merian’s Dissertatio opens with a letter to the reader in which she proclaims her interest in insect metamorphoses, ‘in what way they change their original colour and form into a clothing and finally result transformed into butterflies, beetles, bees and flies’.181 The 1719 edition of Merian’s book on the metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam has plates of animals other than butterflies, for instance, that which represents the metamorphosis of a species of ‘American’ river frog (plate 72). The condition of possibility for the work of Maria Merian was the Dutch colony in South America, a late outcome of the earlier expansion of the United Provinces towards the Atlantic. But unlike Piso and Markgraf, this woman artist did not carry forward a survey of vast proportions supported by the colonial power, but worked as an independent naturalist who undertook to represent in minute detail some of the secret beauties of American animal life.

Useful and Strategic Knowledge on Animals of the New World All the authors, patrons and publishers considered in this chapter had at least one thing in common: they were anxious to exploit whatever joyful and profitable news could come from the New World. From the perspective of the initial ‘natural histories of the Indies’ written by Oviedo and Acosta, Hernández’s expedition and the systematic inquiry into Brazilian nature accomplished by Markgraf and Piso can be seen as a second stage in the process of European assimilation of knowledge about animals of the New World. Although Acosta’s Natural and Moral History was published almost two decades after Hernández started on his journey, it belongs to an earlier phase in the development of the genres of writing about New World nature. Some significant differences can be recognized between the first comprehensive natural histories of the Indies and the more complex and ambitious undertakings of Hernández, Markgraf and Piso. To begin with, Acosta’s work was not illustrated and Oviedo’s General and Natural History had just a few images of animals, while it could be argued that the lost pictures which accompanied Hernández’s manuscript were as significant as the text itself. In the same way the more than 400 pictures of the Historia naturalis 180 See Rücker, ‘Maria Sybilla Merian’, p. 1, and also Davis, Women on the Margins, p. 180. Cf. Sharon Valiant, ‘Maria Sibylla Merian: Recovering an Eighteenth-Century Legend’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 26 (1993): 467–79. This review paper has much information on the criticisms received by Merian’s illustrations and their recent vindication. 181 Maria S. Merian, Dissertatio de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum surinamensium (Amsterdam, 1719). Cf. William T. Stearn, ‘The plants, the insects and other animals of Merian’s Metamorphoses insectorum surinamensium’, in Rücker and Stearn, Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

137

Brasiliae conveyed almost as much information about the tropical fauna as Markgraf’s careful descriptions. After the publication of the works of Belon, Rondelet, Salviani and Gesner during the sixteenth century (authors we shall examine in our final chapter), natural history could hardly be conceived as anything but an amalgam of text and images. Second, Oviedo and Acosta understood their descriptions of New World nature as the opening part of a more comprehensive account of the Indies: natural history was one of the tablets in a diptych embracing ‘natural and moral’ history; it was the first element within a dual historical discourse integrating nature and the actions of human beings. Hernández and Piso – physicians both of them – wrote something different. Hernández endeavoured to articulate his interests in natural history with the survey of medical botany he was supposed to carry out, while Piso would have liked to situate Markgraf’s natural historical inquiry under the aegis of his own medical concerns. The former belonged to the sixteenth century and had been educated in the best traditions of Spanish humanist medicine, while the latter was a product of the seventeenth-century flourishing medical school of Leiden. But although separated by three-quarters of a century, they shared an analogous training in the sciences, anatomy, pharmacopoeia and natural history. Far from being the vocational account of a talented descriptor of nature like the ‘royal chronicler’ Oviedo or the philosophically oriented inquiry of the missionary Acosta, the works of Hernández and the Dutch were the result of systematic undertakings. They were conducted with the backing of the Spanish crown and the powerful DWIC, which hoped to obtain from their investments some kind of profit or future revenue in the form of useful knowledge about drugs, the country and its creatures. Both Hernández and Markgraf carried out methodically oriented surveys of American nature, but they belonged to different centuries and contexts and their results were consequently diverse. The Spaniard absorbed a vast amount of native lore on plants and animals, which is not surprising when one considers his Renaissance outlook open to marvels and the mixture of cultures characterizing the societies evolved in Spanish America. On the contrary, Markgraf’s view was the result of the isolationist character of the north European colonies founded along the coasts of the New World and the ongoing ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, a purely Western conceptual approach to an exotic nature purified of aboriginal accretions. In the later decades of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, knowledge about plants and animals of the New World was strongly connected with medicine, for the expectations of discovering new drugs to substitute or add to those brought to Europe from the East Indies were high. Monardes had become rich (and afterwards lost everything) importing drugs

138

A New World of Animals

from the Indies, and in the later years of his life Clusius had close links with the Dutch East India Company. The main concern of these authors was the discovery and acquisition of plant drugs. Animals entered within the scope of their interest in so far as they could be the source of materia medica. Living in Seville, Monardes was in the best of places to receive the inrush of products and news from the Indies during the decades of Spanish world dominance. Clusius enjoyed an analogous situation in Leiden in the early period of Dutch involvement in the Eastern spice trade. While these figures embodied the association of technical expertise with commercial interests characteristic of the exotic drug trade, Ximénez constitutes a case apart. The uneasy compromise between natural history and medical pharmacopoeia achieved by Hernández in his work was loosened by Ximénez, whose work was decidedly focused on the curative ‘virtues’ of plants and animals – although he never entirely lost sight of their ‘natures’. Finally, in the corpus of literature on the Indies which issued from the Netherlands and England, furthering overseas colonization and trade during the period of their ascendancy as oceanic powers, we can find many pages about the natural world of the West Indies. Most of the works canonized by the publishers of the great collections of voyages such as de Bry, Hulsius, Hakluyt and Purchas were those written by Protestant authors bent on arguing against Spanish expansion into America. Léry’s History and Chauventon’s translation of Benzoni’s work have been considered as the core of a ‘Huguenot corpus’ of literature about the New World (as we shall see in Chapter 5, a substantial portion of Léry’s work is about the plants and animals of Brazil).182 Works specifically dealing with natural history can also be associated with this bibliographical canon. Piso and Markgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae was edited by de Laet and financed by Johan Maurits, so that for all practical purposes it can be considered as part of the scholarly facet of the colonial enterprise of the DWIC. And a fortiori the same can be said of de Laet’s Novus orbis. Besides, the Latin versions of the reports of Harriot, Le Moyne de Morgues and Léry published by Théodore de Bry in his collection were due to Clusius who, like de Bry, had suffered the despotic rule of the Duke of Alva. Much as in the sixteenth century Barlow had translated Enciso’s Suma to propagandize British expansion, Purchas included in his compilation the natural histories of Oviedo and Acosta and Cardim’s Treatise to serve the same political programme. His decision to put together all the material related to natural history suggests that knowledge about 182

See Marcel Bataillon, ‘L’Amiral et les “nouveaux horizons” français’, in Actes du colloque L’Amiral Coligny et son temps (Paris, 24–28 octobre 1878) (Paris, 1974), pp. 41–52. Cf. also Bucher, Icon and Conquest, pp. 6–10.

Joyful and Profitable News from the New World

139

the natural resources of America was thought of as a significant component of the plans for Atlantic expansion.183 It would be erroneous to assume that these editors and authors used a partisan religious criterion to decide what to include and what to leave aside. Information on geography, animals, plants and minerals was sought as valuable per se and admitted even if it was embedded in the work of a Jesuit – although Purchas took pains to apologize for offending the sensibility of his readers with his publication of Cardim’s treatise. An editor such as de Laet, alert to the potential benefits which could be derived from a better acquaintance with the natural life of America, showed that his first and foremost concern was to make public as much as could be known about the New World. The many works considered in the last sections of this chapter were the means through which glimpses of the animated Brazilian forests and the imposing highlands of the Andes reached the members of the illustrated merchant bourgeoisie of northern Europe, who could afford lavishly printed volumes. New World animals were part and parcel of a worldview in which trade and faith constituted two sides of a single political and economic dynamism projecting itself into the lands beyond the Atlantic.

183

It has been claimed that Purchas’s emphasis on Peru and Mexico reveals that the search for precious metals was as powerful a motive for English ventures as that of colonization. Steele, English Interpreters, p. 50.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 5

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars The discovery of America opened a vast field to the activity of Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. The mendicant orders in New Spain (Franciscans and Dominicans), the Jesuits in Brazil and Peru, the secular clergy who depended on the crown by virtue of the Patronato real or, in Portugal, the Padroado (royal patronage) – all were inextricably linked with the process of colonization and the emergence of the new societies.1 The strict control of the secular clergy by the crown was one side of a coin whose other side was the assumption that the conquest of New World territories was at the same time a Christianizing mission. The root of this idea is to be sought in the militant spirit of the long-fought Reconquista, very much alive in Spain during the sixteenth century. But the belief that the crown was responsible for the Christianization of the lands incorporated under its dominion derived its juridical force from the notion that the Indies were a papal grant.2 The recurring conflicts in Iberian America, between the secular clergy and bishops on the one side and the missionary orders and religious congregations always striving for some kind of independence from royal control on the other, should be understood against this background. The missionaries represented the most intellectually dynamic part of the Catholic Church in America and almost all the books about the social and natural dimensions of the New World were written either by Franciscans, Dominicans or Jesuits. In our account of Acosta (Chapter 3), we have suggested a motive for the intense literary activity of the missionaries. They needed to have some grasp of the peoples among whom they would live and to whom they would preach. The proliferation of Jesuit treatises on the natural world of America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be accounted for on these grounds.3 A working knowledge of the native languages was of primary importance, of course, but the 1 For an overview of the Spanish Church and missionaries in the Indies see J. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London, 1966), pp. 152–72 (chap. 8, ‘The Spreading of the Faith’). Specific references will be given as necessary. 2 Pagden, Lords of All the World, pp. 32–3. 3 Miguel de Asúa, ‘Los jesuítas y el conocimiento de la naturaleza americana’, Stromata 59 (2003): 1–20.

142

A New World of Animals

missionaries should also be informed about the local climate, geography, plants and animals, for they were supposed to find their way into the interior of the land and live among the natives. In several cases they acted as explorers and pioneers treading jungle paths, crossing deserts and navigating uncharted rivers all along and across the continent.4 These friars were among the most educated persons who travelled to the New World. As the cases considered in this chapter will show, their accounts of animals were informed more by what can be loosely described as the worldview of their times than by explicit religious considerations – although, as expected, the latter were never altogether absent from their chronicles. During the seventeenth century, Jesuit scholars in Europe also cultivated an interest in American animals. Nieremberg is perhaps the best-known example of this concern, for it was his Historia naturae (1635) which helped to make known much of what Hernández had written on the subject. But also the learned Athanasius Kircher in Rome and his student Gaspar Schott in Germany showed a consistent preoccupation with New World animals. Late Counter-Reformation Jesuit scholarship was much attracted by the ‘occult’ phenomena of nature, and conceptual systems as elaborated and impressive as a Baroque façade were built to account for them. The strangeness and peculiarities of New World animals, the Indian legends surrounding them, the ingrained idea that somewhere in those immeasurable plains and forests could live mysterious creatures with hidden powers – all these conceptions lent themselves to interpretation in terms of a natural philosophy oriented towards the study of the mirabilia naturae. In previous chapters we have already seen the Aztec encyclopaedia compiled by the Franciscan Sahagún and the natural and moral history of the Jesuit Acosta, who lived for many years in Peru and New Spain. Occasional reference has also been made to the History of the Indies of the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas, one of the earliest chroniclers of the Indies. We shall begin this chapter by looking at the description of the land and the animals of Brazil by two missionaries, the Portuguese Jesuit Fernão Cardim, active during the last decades of the sixteenth century, and the French Capuchin (Franciscan) Claude d’Abbeville, who worked in the north-east during the seventeenth century. Afterwards we shall deal with the narratives of two sixteenth-century French travellers to Brazil, the Cordelier (Franciscan) André Thevet and the Calvinist minister Jean de Léry. Neither Thevet nor Léry was properly a missionary, but their strong commitment to either side of the religious divide during the French wars of religion somehow bore on their chronicles. Finally, we shall consider the network of Jesuit scholars who 4 See for example Goodman, Explorers of South America, pp. 87–101 (chap. 5, ‘The Missionaries’).

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

143

taught in Europe during the seventeenth century and wrote on American animals as part of their natural philosophical inquiries – Nieremberg, Kircher and Schott. Many were the sixteenth-century chroniclers of Brazil. The best known are Pero de Magalhães de Gândavo – an operator of a sugar mill who wrote his Treatise of the Land of Brazil around 1570 – and the sugar planter Gabriel Soares de Sousa, author of the most important early account on the country (the Descriptive Treatise of Brazil, 1587).5 With the exception of Fernão Cardim, who spent almost all his life in the New World, the other authors we shall look at stayed briefly: the Huguenot Léry ten months, the Franciscan Abbeville four months and the Cordelier Thevet just a few weeks. Each of them visited a different region: Cardim travelled extensively along the eastern coast of Brazil, Abbeville carried out his missionary work in Maranhão (northern coast of Brazil) and the other two stayed near present-day Rio de Janeiro. The activities each of them carried out were also different. Thevet had travelled to Brazil as a chaplain and was not concerned with evangelization. The Huguenot Léry and his companions were intent on founding a Calvinist colony in French Brazil. Abbeville had travelled with the purpose of converting the Indians, and Cardim arrived in Brazil as one of the Jesuits sent by the king to instruct the natives in the ways of Christianity. Despite all these differences, these four persons had something in common: they were educated persons with a strong religious concern. The two French Franciscans, Thevet and to a lesser extent Claude d’Abbeville, shared the Renaissance philosophy of nature which we have already seen manifested in authors as diverse as Martyr, Oviedo or Vargas Machuca. Thevet talked of ‘sympathies’ and affinities between things, of wonders and monsters, of the endless resourcefulness of nature to create new and marvellous beings, of the ‘correspondence’ between the creatures of land and sea. Abbeville believed in astrological influences and ‘hidden powers’ as an expression of the omnipotence of the creator. But while Thevet discourses about the bizarre and ‘deformed’ aspect of the Brazilian animals, Abbeville prefers to emphasize the action of the Providence which created such an earthly paradise as Maranhão. The work of the latter is almost a brief systematic treatise, with a cosmological introduction and an articulated philosophy of nature in which it is possible to detect the characteristic Franciscan love of the natural world and all living creatures, conceived as a gift of God to be cared for and contemplated. Abbeville denies everything that could be unpleasant or violent; his Brazil is a Franciscan Eden of peace and beauty. Cardim’s Treatise is different. It shows, here and there, the 5 For a brief survey see Nelson Papavero, ‘Os 500 anos da zoologia no Brasil’, Ciência Hoje 28 (2000): 30–35.

144

A New World of Animals

concerns and travails of the missionary, for example, the sting of the insects is deemed useful as penance. Indeed, this is not the lyric world of Abbeville, who sings praises to the niguas; this is the realistic view of a down-to-earth Jesuit. As was usually the case in much of the ‘missionary-handbook’ genre of literature, exalted religious outbursts are a telling absence in Cardim’s Treatise, which expounds pragmatically the nature of the land, its plants and animals, and describes the life and customs of the Indians. Thevet’s Singularités reveals many of the rhetoric devices used by travellers to exotic lands to transmit what they saw: the use of pictures, permanent allusions to personal ‘experience’ of events and things, the ‘jigsaw-puzzle descriptions’ and so on. Thevet handles skilfully all the literary resources required to endow his narrative with the marks of credibility – perhaps too skilfully. A comparison of Thevet’s and Léry’s accounts shows that the description of an alien nature could also be a ground for the European religious confrontations of the sixteenth century. Léry’s work was consciously addressed to reveal to the public the alleged lies of the Catholic Thevet, to curb the overconfident and arrogant excesses of the royal protégé of the Valois with the sobriety, method, self-denial and modesty that would suit a Calvinist. All this said, it remains true that both authors shared the viewpoint of learned humanism, which to a certain extent overarches the gap separating their works and colours them with a rather uniform hue.

Fernão Cardim and his Treatise on the Land and the Climate of Brazil In an attempt to reinforce the defences of his overseas possessions, King João III of Portugal named Tomé de Sousa the first governor of Brazil and simultaneously charged the Jesuits with the Christianization of the Indians. Since in 1549 Father Nóbrega arrived in Bahia with five companions, the Jesuits became the most influential of the religious orders to come with the Portuguese.6 (Nóbrega was the author of a letter that touched on the climate and nature of the country, the Informaçao das terras do Brasil, 1549.) The Jesuit method of preaching, which consisted in separating the Indians from the Portuguese in closed villages called aldeias (very much like the famous reducciones in Paraguay), soon enraged the landlords, who saw themselves deprived of labour force for their sugar 6 For the Jesuits in Brazil during the sixteenth century see Serafim Leite, História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 2 vols (Lisboa and Rio de Janeiro, 1938), and for a more panoramic presentation until their expulsion in the eighteenth century see idem, Suma histórica da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (assistência de Portugal), 1549–1760 (Lisboa, 1965).

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

145

plantations. Eventually, under governor Mem de Sá (1557–72) the Jesuit system flourished.7 This was the religious and political scenario in which Fernão Cardim lived and worked.8 Born in Lisbon around 1548, he embarked as a missionary to Brazil in 1583, travelled from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and served as rector in the colleges of Bahia and San Sebastian (Rio de Janeiro). He was sent to Rome in 1601 with fifteen fellow Jesuits but the ship was captured by the pirate Francis Cook, who took Cardim and his manuscripts (including his Treatise on Brazil) to England. Once rescued and after several incidents, Cardim returned to his college in Bahia, which was destroyed when the Dutch expedition sent by the DWIC stormed and occupied that city in 1624. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Cardim’s Treatise on Brazil was published by Purchas.9 Like most of the works on the nature of Brazil written by sixteenth-century Jesuits (for example, De algumas cousas mais notáveis do Brasil by Francisco Soares and the list of 351 Tupi names of animals made by Leonardo do Valle around 1585),10 Cardim’s treatment of animals in his small encyclopaedia of sixteenth-century Brazil is quite systematic. For example, the huge Brazilian snakes are divided into non-poisonous and poisonous. The most impressive of the former kind is the giboia (boa) which, he says, reaches a length of 20 feet and is able to swallow an entire deer. Since they have no teeth, they stalk their prey and pounce upon it, winding themselves around their victim so forcefully that they crush their bones, after which they lick the dead body and swallow it.11 Among the big river snakes, Cardim singles out the sucurijuba, one of the largest of Brazil (‘sucuri’, the anaconda). It attacks cows, stags and hogs in the same fashion as the giboia, but after its prey has been swallowed the sucurijuba settles down to die and consequently rots; the ravens eat her to the bones and from them new flesh – and a new snake – grows again. The people of the country explained this marvel by claiming that the ravens leave intact the serpent’s head, which is the seat of life out of which the whole body is vivified.12 Among the poisonous land snakes Cardim mentions the different kinds of the jararaca (a crotaline 7

Johnson, ‘The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil’, in CHLA, vol. 1, pp. 270–72. This account was taken from the essay by Rodolpho Garcia in the introduction to the Portuguese edition of Cardim’s work. See Fernão Cardim, Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil, introd. and notes by Baptista Caetano, Capistrano de Abreu and Rodolpho Garcia (Rio de Janeiro, 1925), pp. 11–21. The treatise Da clima e terra do Brasil is on pp. 35–109. 9 It appeared as ‘A Treatise of Brasil, written by a Portugal who had long lived there’. We will used the edition Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, vol. 16, pp. 418–503 (cited from now on as ‘Treatise’). 10 Papavero, ‘Zoologia no Brasil’, p. 32. 11 Treatise, chap. 4, p. 457. The spelling of Tupi names is given according to the Portuguese edition cited above. 12 Ibid., chap. 6, p. 497. 8

146

A New World of Animals

snake), the boicininga (rattlesnake) and the scorpions. He shows his concern for the havoc caused by these dangerous serpents among the Indians and Portuguese alike. When the brethren go to sleep at night, he says, they find snakes ‘in the beds, and within the boots, when they put them on’. The cure he proposes for snake bites is a mixture of native and European medicine: one either has to cut the wounded skin and let the blood drain or administer to the patient carima (an Indian remedy) or ‘unicorns horne’, a well-known antidote used in early modern times.13 Although in previous pages Cardim had affirmed that the climate of the country was good and temperate, and the natives lived until they reached the age of ninety or one hundred years, later on he claims that the air ‘flows in poison’, which accounts for the multitude of snakes, scorpions, spiders and other ‘unclean creatures’.14 The birds which most attracted Cardim’s interest were the macaws and the big parrots, the different kinds of which he describes in loving detail. Of the guainumbí (hummingbird) he says that it has two modes of generation: some are hatched from eggs, and some from little ‘bubbles’ which turn into a bird, which is ‘a wonderful thing, and unknown to the philosophers’. There are, of course, many other interesting birds in Cardim’s Treatise, such as the tangará (a species of manakin), the characteristic dance of which – not improperly – he compares with the fits of the ‘falling sickness’ (epilepsy). The Indians did not eat it, since they thought that the bird could bring on that disease. Moreover, they used to perform a ritual dance in which one of the dancers mimicked a fit and then lay on the floor as if he were dead, while his companions danced around him, jumping, skipping and singing until the ‘dead’ Indian rose up again and the performance turned into a great feast.15 A permanent interest of Cardim’s is the Indians, to whom he frequently makes reference when he talks about animals. He describes the hunts, tells folk animal stories and dwells on how the Tupi made use of animals. For example, he reports that they made purses with the shells of armadillos and that they pierced their ears with the bristles of the canduaçú (Brazilian porcupine). The feathers of macaws were used by the Indians to adorn their swords and to make head-dresses and pictures, and the teeth of the sharks were employed for the tips of their arrows.16 According to the Jesuit, the Portuguese also took advantage of the rich animal world of Brazil, as shown by this example. The Indians used to eat oysters and afterwards threw their shells away, always in the same place. As time went by, these heaps of shells were covered by earth upon which grew coppices of trees. 13

Ibid., chap. 4, p. 459. Ibid., chap. 3, p. 449 and chap. 4, p. 460. 15 Ibid., chap. 4, pp. 463–5. 16 Ibid., pp. 453 and 460–61; chap. 6, p. 487. 14

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

147

The earth beneath these mounds was very rich in lime and the Portuguese used it as building material for the important edifices of Bahia, such as the Jesuit college and the palace of the governor.17 Cardim describes at length many sea ‘fish’: the whale, the swordfish, the turtle, the flying fish, the shark, the torpedo, the toadfish and the ox-fish (manatee). Perhaps the most curious paragraph in this section is that on sea monsters. He affirms that many Indians died at the sight of the ypupiapra, a creature frequently seen in Porto Seguro which resembles a man with hollow eyes – on the contrary, the females of the species have long hair and are beautiful. In the year 1682, in Jagoaripe, an ypupiapra took away a Portuguese. This was not an isolated event, for these creatures as a rule embraced innocent human beings and crushed them to death, after which they repented and set the bodies free or took them to the sea depths where they ate only the eyes, nose, tips of the fingers, toes and private parts, so that it was not unusual to find mutilated corpses lying on the beach. Gandavo and Gabriel Soares had also mentioned these frightful beings in their chronicles.18 Unlike Acosta’s Natural History of the Indies, Cardim’s Treatise does not betray a philosophical cast of mind. The Jesuit education of its author can be divined only by the orderly, exhaustive and, at the same time, flexible style of the work. As most missionaries, Cardim had a foot in each world. He shows himself to be a thorough European in his constant references to Portugal and his conception of Brazil as a ‘second home country’. On the other hand, he is evidently familiar with the world he is describing and has first-hand knowledge of the animals he is talking about. Except for the passage on the sea monsters, there are no wonders or marvels in his account, no grandiloquent praises of the country, no callings to exploit its riches. His is almost an ‘ethnographic’ text which obeys the pattern of the works written by other Jesuit missionaries in the New World: a prolix enumeration and detached description of the animals and plants of the region in the context of the native societies with some colourful anecdotes which enliven the reading.19

17

Ibid., chap. 6, pp. 491–2. These shell mounds were called sambaqui by the Indians. See John Memming, ‘The Indians of Brazil in 1500’, in CHLA, vol. 1, pp. 119–43. 18 Treatise, chap. 6, pp. 489–90. Cf. Pero de Magalhães, The Histories of Brazil, trans. and annot. by John B. Stetson, Jr, 2 vols (New York, 1921), chap.9, ‘About a marine monster that was killed in the captaincy of São Vicente in the year 1564’ (vol. 2, pp. 79–82). 19 Simão de Vasconcelos’s Chronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado de Brasil (Chronicle of the Society of Jesus of the State of Brazil), edited in 1663, contains in its second book an account of Brazilian nature conceived along these lines. Simão de Vasconcelos’s Chronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado de Brasil (Lisboa, 1865), vol. 1, book 2.

148

A New World of Animals

The Franciscan Claude d’Abbeville and the History of the mission of Capuchin Fathers to the Island of Maranhão Several books were published as a result of the short period of French settlement on the isle of Maranhão (Brazil) during the second decade of the seventeenth century, the most influential of which was an account by the Franciscan Claude d’Abbeville.20 Upon a charter granted by the regent Marie de’ Medici, Admiral Rasilly took with him a colonizing party and a group of four Capuchins. 21 The French arrived in Maranhão in August 1612 and Claude remained there for four months, returning to France with Rasilly and six Tupi Indians, whom they paraded in a triumphal entrance into Paris. This pageantry was part of a publicity campaign aimed at obtaining funds from the crown to support the colony, which was expected to produce profits out of the trade in brazilwood and petun (tobacco). The full story of the mission by Abbeville appeared in 1614 as Histoire de la mission des pères Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisins (History of the mission of the Capuchin Fathers to the Island of Maranhão and neighbouring lands). As a result of the alliance between France and Spain sealed by the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, the French colonists were abandoned to themselves and eventually taken prisoner by the Portuguese. Claude’s Historie was retired from circulation in 1615 and its sequel, written by Yves d’Evreux, and a similar work by François Huby were destroyed.22 The explicit goal of d’Abbeville’s Histoire was to promote settlement in the new colony by the expedient of extolling the virtues of that generous and prolific land. Although Claude’s main subjects are the life, customs and beliefs of the Tupi, a substantial portion of the book deals with the climate, plants and animals of the country and for all practical purposes constitutes a small treatise on Brazilian natural history. These chapters are preceded by others on the climate and the beauty of the land, which depict Maranhão as an idyllic and enchanted paradise. Providence is perhaps the key concept in Abbeville’s account of 20 The Franciscans had been established in Brazil since Fr Melquior de Santa Catarina, a Portuguese Franciscan, led five companions in 1585 to found a friary in Olinda (Pernambuco). Before that Franciscans had erratically ventured to that country in several opportunities. See Odulfo van der Vat, O.F.M., ‘The First Franciscans of Brazil’, The Americas 5 (1948–49): 18–30. 21 See the introduction by Alfred Métraux and Jacques Lafaye to Claude d’Abbeville, Histoire de la mission des pères Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisins (Paris, 1614; rptd Graz, Austria, 1963). We will refer to this work as ‘Histoire de la mission’. 22 The work by Father Yves d’Evreux, Voyage dans le Nord du Brésil fait durant les années 1613 et 1614, was finally published by Ferdinand Denis in 1864. François Huby’s Suite de l’histoire des choses plus mémorables advenues en Maragnan ès années 1613 et 1614 prompted de Lastre to write his Histoire véritable, a work defending the royal policy.

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

149

Maranhão. What confers unity on all the ‘hidden powers’ active in the natural world is the presence of the Creator, who conducts the events of the material universe. Nowhere is the air better than in the blessed island of Maranhão, Claude says, because God providentially tempers the climate, causing ‘a purity and moderation of the air’. Europe is saturated with infected vapours and putrid fumes which from time to time give rise to atmospheric disorders and meteora such as mice, frogs, worms, blood and milk falling from the sky.23 Guinea (Africa) harbours wild beasts and poisonous vipers which corrupt the air. But in Brazil, claims Abbeville, not even the snakes, crocodiles and toads are poisonous. Since in order to become fruitful the four elements must mix under the influence of a favourable ‘aspect’ of the heavens, Brazil, the mildest of countries, is also the most fruitful, which is confirmed by the infinite variety of its birds and abundance of fish.24 Despite the fact that one of the three Capuchins who accompanied Claude to the New World died shortly after his return and the other two contracted unknown diseases, his enthusiasm for the new land prompts him to affirm that the water in Maranhão is so healthy that there is no need for medicinal waters.25 The animals enjoy pure air and good pasture and as a consequence they multiply enormously. And if Brazil breeds neither oxen nor lambs nor horses, there are in compensation other kinds of animals unknown to the French, such as the pac, the agouti, the tatou or the tapyroussou.26 It is evident that this apotheosis of the natural bounties of Brazil is the result of various and mixed motives: Claude’s sensitivity to the lustful spectacle of Brazilian wild life, his faith in the providential operations of the Creator and the pressing need to attract settlers and investors by promoting the richness and goodness of the land. In one of the initial chapters of his book, Claude had provided an account of the elements of the universe, in particular earth and water. Drawing heavily upon biblical quotations, he teaches that all the waters of the earth constitute a single mass, so that they partake of the same nature and the same power endowed by the divine spirit to engender and nourish life.27 Like Bartholomaeus Anglicus in his De proprietatibus rerum, Claude classifies his animals in terms of the three elements in which they live – air, water and earth.28 Air, he says, is the abode of the elementary animals, which are under the influence of the heavenly houses of the celestial animals (the Zodiac). The Sun is the soul of the world and the source 23

Histoire de la mission, chap. 35, f. 192rv. Ibid., chap. 36, ff. 201r–203v. 25 Ibid., ff. 205r–206r. See Métraux and Lafaye, introduction, in Claude d’Abbeville, Histoire, p. vi. 26 Histoire de la mission, chap. 35, ff. 208r–208v. 27 Ibid., chap. 6, f. 43r. 28 Ibid., chap. 40, f. 243r. 24

150

A New World of Animals

of vital heat, whereas Jupiter is the most temperate planet and the cause of all temperate things in the world. Since these celestial bodies move within the band of the zodiac, the tropics receive their full influences, which accounts for the variety and beauty of Brazilian birds. How many European birds can be taught to speak? Five or six at most. Well, many more talking birds live in Brazil and all of them are adorned with wonderful feathers. Some birds, such as the ouénonbouyh and the iappy, are so small that they arouse boundless admiration for the works of the Creator.29 Claude’s raptures carry him to the extreme of singing praises to the ton (that is, the tunga or chigoe), the small insects which torment humans ‘merveilleusement’. No one who has admired the variety and beauty of the birds in Maranhão could deny God’s wisdom and providence. Of course, this providential world bestows its benefits mainly on the creatures of the highest order (human beings), since one of the good things about Brazil is that all its animals are edible.30 Claude’s natural philosophy is more sophisticated than his treatment of animals, which is not informed by learned categories. His is a curious taxonomy, to say the least. For example, birds are grouped as birds of prey, parrots, edible birds, small birds, night birds, aquatic birds, domestic birds and birds which walk on the ground because nature did not provide them with strong wings. Terrestrial animals are categorized as ‘wild animals’ (twenty-one of them are described): ferocious beasts, monkeys and she-monkeys, the unaü (sloth), a kind of domestic dog and crawling animals. Each of these lists begins with the most impressive or biggest animal of the group. The naming of birds opens with the ouyra ouassü (probably a harpy eagle), a bird of prey which could snatch up a human from the ground – one of them was presented to the king. The first fish in Abbeville’s list is the ouäraouä (a manatee), which is as big and fat as an ox.31 Although Claude enjoys rhapsodizing over the uniqueness of American animals, when it comes to talking about each of them in particular the differences between those of the New and the Old World become blurred. For example, he says that in Brazil there are common hens which are called ouira-sapoukay, geese called upec, ducks called potiry, and pigeons called picassou-tin. There does not seem to be any difference between Brazilian and French domestic fowls other than their names. In other cases, Claude sees Brazilian birds as particular cases or varities of the birds of the Old World; for instance, the ouyra ouässu are the ‘true’ eagles of Brazil, the yandou is ‘a kind of ostrich’,32 and so on. 29

Ibid., chap. 39, ff. 235v–239v. We shall follow d’Abbeville’s spelling of Tupi names. Ibid., chaps 42 and 39, ff. 256r–257r, 243r and 231v. 31 Ibid., chap. 39, f. 232r and chap. 40, f. 243v. 32 Ibid., chap. 39, f. 242r. 30

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

151

Claude’s chapters on animals are neatly laid out. As a rule, they consist of a very brief introduction followed by a series of paragraphs, each of them devoted to a single creature. Since in the seventeenth-century edition of the book their names are printed on the margins, it is easy to find a given animal and the book serves as a handy guide to the local fauna. This is his account of the tapir: ‘One can see the tapiyre-été, fierce cows or wild cows, which are very similar to the cows here [in France], except that they have longer ears, the tail and the legs shorter, sharper teeth and lack horns. Ordinarily, one can find a bezoar stone in them.’33 It seems that to find out what a tapiyre-été is like, we have to figure out a cow, stretch its ears, shorten its tail and legs, sharpen the teeth (our cow is opening its mouth) and remove its horns. This does not impress us as a particularly apt description. Neither are those of the tamándoua (anteater) or the couäty (coati). But Claude took good care to register the Tupi names and native classifications of animals; for example, he mentions seven kinds of tatu and briefly describes each of them.34 In some of the accounts, it seems that Claude might have been influenced by his reading of Thevet and Léry (to whom we shall come in the next section). Like them, he affirms that the tayässou (peccary) uses its dorsal ‘navel’ to breathe and also claims that the sloth has a round, humanlike head (something his predecessors had stressed).35 But Abbeville omits the story told by these authors that the sloth never eats; on the contrary, he says that it feeds from the leaves of a tree and does not climb down until it has eaten all of them. When comparing Claude’s account with those of Thevet and Léry, one also misses the characteristic appeal of the latter to ‘experience’. Abbeville’s allusions to experience teach caution. He reports that the pouraké (torpedo fish) causes a painful shock when touched with a sword, adding that a gentleman ‘made the experience at his own cost’. And the reward for those who wished to ‘make the experience’ of allowing the ton (tunga) to grow into their feet was that they were soon unable to walk.36 It might be that since the Franciscan did not talk about marvellous or unusual creatures or phenomena, he did not feel compelled to urge belief through the rhetoric of autopsia. The only wondrous thing we are told about is the sheer existence of Maranhão, its ravishing beauty, its incredible fertility, its amazing variety of birds and plants. And this is a ‘natural’ wonder, a portent within the limits of the regular course of a nature, which although acting through sympathies and hidden powers has ceased to be the capricious magician of Renaissance thinkers. A citizen of the seventeenth century, Claude gapes at the 33

Ibid., chap. 41, f. 250r. Ibid., ff. 249v–251r. 35 Ibid., ff. 249r–252r. 36 Ibid., chap. 40, f. 246v and chap. 41, f. 256v. 34

152

A New World of Animals

spectacle of nature expressing the providential workings of the Great Artisan, but his nature seems to act according to law and order. An anachronistic reading might find in him hints of the idea of an ecological cycle: he says that the tons are eaten by the koeuioup (which he compares with the cricket), the koeuioup are eaten by the hens, the hens are eaten by the human beings and these are prey to the tons.37 To read twentieth-century ideas into Claude’s Histoire is nonsense, of course, but this amusing ‘cycle’ of life suggests an underlying conception of the regularity of natural phenomena, a regularity conceived as depending on God’s providential dispensations.

Catholic and Calvinist Views on the Animals of French Brazil When in 1550 Henri II arrived in Rouen, a marvellous spectacle took place before him. Fifty Indians and 250 French sailors disguised as natives moved around an artificial Brazilian wood, hunted monkeys with bow and arrows, climbed trees to get fruit, walked in pairs as paramours. The scene developed into a sham battle, which showed how the Indians fought in the France Antarctique.38 This lavish theatrical representation, a showcase of the tropical New World in Normandy, was the result of the private commercial ventures which had taken place during almost half a century between the Normans and the Tupi, who lived in the southern coast of present-day Brazil. The first contact of the French with that region was probably in 1504.39 The voyages of exploration of the North American coast by Verrazano, Jean Cartier and Roberval during the first half of the sixteenth century were succeeded by the foundation of a French colony in Brazil, following the route well known to Norman sailors, who had established themselves around the Bay of Rio de Janeiro and lived among the Indians trading in brazilwood. By 1555 the idea of colonizing that region gathered momentum and an expedition was organized. André Thevet and Jean de Léry wrote accounts on the new lands recently opened to the view of Europeans. The former was a Cordelier who enjoyed extensive royal patronage whereas the latter was a Calvinist minister toughened by the siege of Sanserre. They confronted each other in a bitter polemic which can be seen as just another chapter – and a very minor one – of the religious wars that were ravaging France at that time. 37

Ibid., chap. 42, ff. 257v–258r. Steven Mullaney, ‘Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs: The Rehersal of Cultures in the Late Renaissance’ in Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), Representing the English Renaissance (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 65–92, here pp. 70–73. The original account is in Ferdinand Denis, Une fête brésilienne célebrée à Rouen (Paris, 1850). 39 Pierre Pluchon, Histoire de la colonisation française, 2 vols (Paris, 1991), vol. 1, p. 41. 38

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

153

André Thevet’s Singularités de la France Antarctique André Thevet (1516?–1592) was born in Angoulême, entered the local Franciscan monastery and attended the universities of Poitiers and Paris.40 Thevet had a wandering life – or, at least, that is what he would have wished his public to believe. In any case, it is certain that he made an extensive tour through the Near East.41 The foundation of a French colony in Brazil was envisaged by Nicholas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon, a veteran soldier with a solid humanistic education who managed to marshal the support of Admiral Cologny, the Cardinal of Lorraine and King Henri II for his venture. Thevet joined as chaplain to the expedition which set sail in 1555 and established a settlement on the ‘island of the French’ (now Ilha de Viragalham) at the entrance to the Bay of Rio. He did not stay in Brazil more than a few weeks and returned to France, a sick man, in January 1556 (if we are to believe him, sailing along the Atlantic coast of America until Newfoundland and then crossing the Atlantic). Back at home, he distributed among various influential personages the exotic ‘curiosities’ and treasures he had brought with him from la France antarctique and began writing his book, which came out in 1557. On this account, he was named royal cosmographer, a title he would manage to hold under four Valois monarchs. Thevet remained at court as a rather flamboyant character, defending himself against the charge of being a ‘liar’, which Léry and others brought to bear until his death in 1592. Les singularités de la France Antarctique is the amusing narrative of a journey to exotic lands, much as Thevet’s previous book about his excursion to the Near East had been. The chapters follow broadly the course of his navigation to Brazil and back to Europe, but the return trip might be a fiction.42 Like Martyr’s 40 The life of Thevet is surrounded by uncertainties. See Frank Lestringant, André Thevet. Cosmographe des derniers Valois (Geneva, 1991). A different perspective can be found in the essay by Jean Baudry, ‘Un dossier Thevet’, which serves as an introduction to the facsimile edition of André Thevet’s work. See idem, Les singularités de la France Antarctique autrement nommée Amérique (Paris, 1982), facsimile of the 1558 edition (we will refer to this edition as ‘Singularités’ when quoting French passages of the work). There is also a short biographical account in Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, André Thevet’s North America. A Sixteenth-Century View (Kingston and Montreal, 1986), pp. xix–xxvi. See also Jean-Claude Julien, Les débuts de l’expansion et de la colonisation françaises (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Paris, 1947), pp. 373–97 and Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World. The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery (Cambridge, 1994). 41 Back at home, Thevet published his Cosmographie du Levant (Lyon, 1554; Antwerp, 1556). Baudry defends the view that Thevet visited America for the first time between 1550 and 1551, in an expedition commanded by the Norman pilot Le Testu; this is denied by Lestringant. 42 Schlesinger and Stabler, André Thevet’s North America, pp. xx–xxi. It has been also shown that the chapters on Africa are bookish and their contents taken from rather obsolete literature. See Lestringant, André Thevet, pp. 110–13.

154

A New World of Animals

Decades, the Singularités is enriched with classical references, introduced in the draft of the text by a scholar hired by Thevet for the purpose.43 For instance, the colourful Brazilian parrots are an excuse to recall Columella’s mention of Cato’s complaint about the dissolute spectacle offered by the Romans when they trotted along the streets of the ancient city bearing these birds on their hands.44 But the burning climate and awesome variety of animal and plant life in the tropics do not quite tally with the serene Mediterranean landscape. Thevet dwells upon what he sees as a lack of due proportion and frequently mentions the exaggerated size or the ‘monstrous’ bodies of Brazilian animals. He describes a river fish, the tamouhata, which is ‘very monstrous for a fresh water fish’; the toucan is said to

5.1 A picture of the toucan in Thevet’s Singularités. The huge beak of the toucan attracted considerable attention and it became a much sought-after item for collectors to display in the cabinets of curiosities.

5.2 The beast called su in Thevet’s Singularités. This awe-inspiring visual interpretation of the opossum was widely reproduced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works on the beast of the New World. 43

The story is told in Lestringant, André Thevet, pp. 100–104. We shall use the 1568 London edition (the spelling has been modernized). Andrewe Thevet, The New Found Worlde or Antarctike (rptd. Amsterdam and New York, 1971), chap. 48, f. 76r (from now on cited as ‘New Found Worlde’]. 44

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

155

be ‘difformed and monstrous, having the bill greater and longer than the rest of the body’ (see Figure 5.1); the haüt (sloth) ‘is much difformed as possible’; in Patagonia there is ‘a ravenous beast, made after a strange maner’ (called by Thevet ‘su’, the opposum was fancifully represented in a picture – see Figure 5.2); Florida, he says, breeds ‘diverse kinds of monstrous and strange beasts’; the tapihire (tapir) is an animal ‘much desired for his deformity’.45 In Thevet’s Brazil everything is either gigantic or abnormal. The chapter narrating his arrival in the new land underscores this sense of ‘strangeness’ and alienation from a familiar world. ‘Antarctique’, says Thevet, is ‘a flat country, covered with strange kinds of trees, the like of which are not in Europe’; there are many kinds of birds, ‘all differing from those of our Hemisphery’. No doubt those modern authors who write books on the properties of birds, he continues, ‘will find these things very strange … but without shame it may be reputed to their ignorance, being ignorant of these West parts, and also of the small knowledge they have of strange things’.46 The notion of singularité is essential to the text. It means the peculiar character that nature adopts in each country, how ‘she’ expresses herself. The marvellous works that nature accomplished in Brazil show that ‘she can make things strange, great, incomprehensible, and wonderful to man’s judgement’. Therefore, ‘it is a thing impertinent to seek out the cause and reason, as many daily go about to do. For this is a very secret of nature, the knowledge whereof is reserved and kept to the only creator.’47 Nature is a maker of wonders, of ‘singular’ things, and these secreta naturae can neither be reduced to reason nor accounted for in terms of logic, for it is God who is the ultimate mystery behind the occult operations of nature – a line of argument also followed by Oviedo. The Cordelier is not particularly interested in philosophical causal inquiries and he hands over to the turba philosophorum the difficult problems. After expressing his astonishment at the great variety of fish near the equator and the unbearably loud noise they produce, he remarks that ‘whether this is because of the heat of the Sun or for any other reasons, I leave to the philosophers’.48 In some passages Thevet speaks as perhaps too enthusiastically endorsing the Renaissance – and ultimately Plinian – personification of nature as a skilful artisan who creates parallel worlds on land and in the sea (a theme also discussed and illustrated by Oviedo). For example, he says that on the coasts of America there is a strange fish with a head which is ‘like a calf, and its body slender. So 45

Ibid., chap. 24, f. 40r; chap. 47, f. 74r; chap. 52, f. 80v; chap. 56, f. 88v; chap. 74, f. 121v and chap. 49, f. 78r. 46 Ibid., chap. 20, ff. 39v–40r and chap. 48, ff. 76v–77r. 47 Ibid., chap. 52, ff. 80v–81v. 48 Ibid., chap. 18, f. 29r.

156

A New World of Animals

that in this you may see the industry of nature, that has altered the beasts according to the diversity of their kinds, as well on the land as on the water.’ And on the ‘island of rats’ there is a monstrous fish, which has ‘like goat’s dugs, a thing on the chin, that was like a goat’s beard’. The existence of these creatures induces Thevet to reflect on ‘how Nature, the great workmistress, takes pleasure to vary her works, as well by water as by land, as the cunning workman beautifies his work’.49 Although it is evident that Thevet supported the orthodox Christian view that nature is a minister of the godhead and not a self-subsistent being operating on her own account (as can be seen in the prologue of the Cosmographie universelle), his somewhat ambiguous utterances on this sensitive point in the Singularités exposed him to Léry’s criticisms. Thevet faces the problem of convincing his readers that what he says, no matter how fabulous, is nevertheless true. Hence his insistence on the claim that he himself ‘saw’ with his own eyes what he is about to report.50 For instance, he says that porpoises produce such a loud noise that it could be judged ‘strange and incredible’, but ‘I will affirm it to be so, for that I saw it’. He claims that the toucan is not a water bird, ‘because I have seen the contrary’. And when he recalls that Pliny and Isidore in his Etymologies talked about the ability of dolphins to presage tempests, he says that this is something ‘which I have also known by experience, which is surer than the witnessing either of Pliny or of any other’.51 Like his contemporary, Oviedo, the French chronicler viewed ‘experience’ as a sounder warrant for belief than authority. As a veteran traveller in quest of the rare and the exotic, he was aware that his readers would value more highly personal testimony allegedly backed by experience than recourse to authority. The question of endowing a travel account with the marks of credibility takes us to the closely related issue of pictures. The Singularités include a fair number of woodcuts representing animals, plants and scenes of the life of the Tupinamba.52 Thevet was alert to the fact that things can be represented either through words or pictures, an idea he expressed in so many words in the chapter in which he describes the city of Tenochtitlán. Pictures and words, he says, are the means through which it is possible to convey a mental image of places or countries which ‘is not possible for all men to see’.53 The traveller’s eyes are a substitute for those of the reader. That Thevet had – and probably deserved – a reputation as a liar, 49

Ibid., chap. 49, f. 78v and chap. 67, f. 108v. This is associated with what Pagden has called the ‘autopic imagination’; see Pagden, European Encounters with the New World, pp. 51–87. 51 New Found Worlde, chap. 20, f. 32r; chap. 47, f. 74r and chap. 82, f. 134r. 52 See Lestringant, André Thevet, pp. 325–34 for an exhaustive account of the reproduction of Thevet’s pictures in books on natural history. 53 New Found Worlde, chap. 73, f. 118r. 50

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

157

charlatan and myth-maker does not count. What seems to be significant is that he had an articulated notion of what was expected of him. He finishes his work by promising that he will soon publish another, with some kind of cartographic representation of the position of the places he has ‘observed by eye’ and which he hopes ‘to show you by eye and represent by lively figures’.54 But pictures, just like words, can lie. The chapter about the Amazones, for example, is illustrated by a woodcut representing an invasion of Indians to the islands of those legendary warrior women. Both bands are armed with bow and arrows and the Amazones are seen protecting themselves behind shields made of turtle shells. The text accompanying the picture tells how the ferocious Amazones used gigantic turtle shells and adds: ‘le tout comme vous pouvez voir à l’oeil par la present figure’.55 Like all those who had to transmit to Europeans what they had seen – or imagined, or thought they had seen – in the New World, Thevet practises the subtle art of comparison. In the Singularités we stumble upon the usual ‘jigsawpuzzle’ animal, in this case the coaty: ‘as great as a fox, having the muzzle a foot long, black like a mole, and little like the muzzle of a cat, his hair rough, a slender tail like to the tail of a wild cat, spotted white and black, having ears like a fox’.56 In at least one case Thevet compares an animal of the New World with another he had known during his travels trough the Near East. When he describes the haüt, he affirms that this very strange beast ‘was never seen eating’ and adds that he had the opportunity to observe a sloth in captivity during twenty-six days and it neither ate nor drank. In the following lines he associates this marvellous property with his previous experience: ‘I have seen by experience certain Chameleons in Constantinople, that lived only with the air’.57 Very much like in Cardim’s chronicle, animals in Thevet’s work are almost always associated with humans. Rare is the case when he mentions a beast, bird or fish without also referring to ‘the savages’. Feathers figure prominently in his account. He says that the Indians used the skin of the toucan to make garments and hats and to garnish their wooden swords; feathers were also used by the Tupi as coin. Thevet presented the French King Henri II with a hat made of toucan feathers and he also gave to Monsieur Troisteux, a gentleman at the service of the Cardinal of Sens, a feathered gown.58 The rich treasure of exotic things Thevet was able to collect during his brief stay in Brazil was the basis for the creation of Henri II’s cabinet 54

Ibid., chap. 83, f. 137v. Singularités, chap. 63, f. 124v. Since the English translation did not include the woodcuts, the translator skipped this sentence. 56 New Found Worlde, chap. 49, f. 78r. Cf. also the description of the ‘agoutin’, in idem, chap. 33, f. 51r. 57 Ibid., chap. 52, f. 81v. 58 Ibid., chap. 47, f. 73v–74r and chap. 24, f. 39r. 55

158

A New World of Animals

des curiosités at Fontainebleau which was entrusted to the Cordelier, who was named ‘garde des curiosités du Roy’.59 Thevet’s book provides descriptions of many American animals such as the armadillo, the hammerhead-shark, the manatee, the bison, the penguin, the sloth, the opossum, the coati, the toucan, the hummingbird and also of plants such as the banana tree, the pineapple, manioc and tobacco (there was a harsh dispute with Jean Nicot over ‘priority’ in this issue).60 This travel book, which enjoyed dubious fame as a pack of lies and exaggerations, remained a favourite source of information on New World animals until the first decades of the seventeenth century. Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil Jean de Léry (1534–1613) was born in Burgundy and, as a young man, was trained in Geneva as a Calvinist missionary to France.61 In 1555 he joined a party of fourteen Calvinists who travelled to the French colony in Rio following an initiative of Admiral Gaspar Coligny. But religious tensions and a sudden shift in Villegagnon’s religious allegiance led to open confrontation with the Catholics, as a consequence of which the Calvinists abandoned the island and moved to the mainland. They lived there in precarious conditions, supported by the Indians until they were able to take a ship to France (because of the famine and the bad state of the craft, the journey turned into an ordeal). After many incidents, Léry was able to publish in 1578 his Histoire d’un Voyage, the chronicle of his experiences in Brazil. In the prologue he launched an abusive attack on Thevet, who in his Cosmographie universelle (1575) had given an interpretation of the successes at Fort Coligny favourable to Villegagnon and vilified the behaviour of the Calvinists (in fact, Léry claims that his book was published ‘in order to refute those falsehoods of Thevet’).62 Léry spent the last years of his life in Switzerland and died of the plague. 59

Alfred Métraux has identified a gown made with feathers kept at the Musée de l’Homme, as that which Thevet brought back home. See Baudry, ‘Un dossier Thevet’, in Les singularités, pp. 38–40 and 50–51. 60 Thevet describes the tobacco in chap. 32 of Les singularités. For a discussion of this issue see Baudry, ‘Un dossier Thevet’, in Les singularités, pp. 41–3 and Lestringant, André Thevet, pp. 327–30. 61 These biographical data are based on the introduction by Janet Whetley to the English translation and edition of Léry’s work; see Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, trans. and introd. by Janet Whetley (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1990), pp. xvi–xviii (this work will be cited from now on as ‘History of a Voyage’). 62 Ibid., preface (ed. Whetley, p. xlvi). Thevet, in his Vrais pourtraits et vies des Hommnes illustres (1584) answered Léry’s challenge and the polemic continued. The whole conflict has been traced in detail in Frank Lestringant, ‘L’escursion brésilienne: note sur les trois premières éditions de l’Histoire d’un voyage de Jean de Léry’, in Mélanges sur la littérature de la Renaissance à la memoire de V.-L. Saulnier (Geneva: Droz, 1984), pp. 53–72.

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

159

In Léry’s History Brazilian animals are dealt with in three successive chapters. One of them is devoted to venison, big lizards, snakes and other ‘monstrous beasts’ of America; another deals with birds and vermin and the last one talks about fish and fishing. Contrary to Thevet’s haphazard style, Léry’s exposition is neatly organized in thematic paragraphs. The Histoire is basically a travel narrative with a strong emphasis on the life of the Tupinamba. The account of the animals eaten by the Indians begins with a careful, almost pictorial, description of the wooden grill used by them to roast their meat, the boucaner (conceivably the name buccaneer derives from this word, since the French pirates used this kind of grill).63 The fish are praised or disparaged according to their taste and at times the text resembles a cook-book, which is understandable if we take into account that Léry was stranded and had to live on the diet of the Indians.64 Léry always seeks to convey an idea of the size of the animals he describes, comparing them with familiar ones; for example, he says that the agouti is the size of a piglet and the pag (spotted cavy) is as big as a pointer.65 His descriptions are brief and rather direct, without the use of comparisons other than those related to size.66 In what was probably a barb against Thevet, Léry claimed that he was writing for those ‘who prefer the truth simply stated over the adorned and painted lie of fine language’ and not for those ‘Frenchmen, who have such delicate ears and are so enamoured of the fine flowers of rhetoric’.67 Echoes of Oviedo’s diatribes against Martyr’s elegant Latin can be heard here. Although for very different reasons, Léry and Oviedo shared a common concern for the literary style which they thought should be used to account for the natural life of the New World. This should be plain language, free of embellishments and tropes which can distort a reality which, in order to reveal its full novelty, should be described with a few, precise words. The economy of discourse was at the same time seen by these authors as a warrant for the truth of their statements, a token of credibility which set their works apart from the usual exaggerated and disfigured reports characteristic of travel stories – like those written by Thevet. The methodical listing of animals in each of the chapters and the neat descriptions tally with Léry’s care in adopting the authorial voice of a candid, trustworthy and almost self-effacing observer. Just like Thevet, he wishes us to know that ‘experience’ is his only guide to natural things. When he sees that porpoises hold their little ones in their bellies instead of multiplying by eggs like 63

History of a Voyage, chap. 10 (ed. Whetley, p. 79). Ibid., chap. 12 (ed. Whetley, p. 96). 65 Ibid., chap. 10 (ed. Whetley, p. 80). 66 Lestringant has discussed Léry’s avoidance of metaphors and hyperbole and compared it with Thevet’s florid style. See idem, ‘L’excursion brésilienne’, pp. 67–8. 67 History of a Voyage, preface (ed. Whetley, pp. lxi–lxii). 64

160

A New World of Animals

other ‘fish’, he proclaims that ‘lest anyone would argue the point by citing to me those who have firsthand experience – rather than those who have only read books – no one will meanwhile prevent my believing what I have seen’.68 A note of defiant self-assurance in the face of those imaginary contenders who would compel him to accept the yoke of bookish learning combines with a staunch affirmation of ‘belief’ in what he ‘saw’. In the preface, he had made it clear that he intended to speak from his experience about novel things.69 At times, Léry interrupts the uniform, intentionally dull discourse of his chapters on animals with amusing stories, like that about his encounter with a lizard larger than a person, or the anecdote of the parrot which seemed to understand human speech.70 The distinctiveness of New World animals and their abnormal nature, conspicuously underscored in Thevet’s Singularités, is also stressed in Léry’s Histoire. Of the four-footed beasts the latter says that ‘there is not a single one in that land of Brazil in America that is in all respects exactly like ours’; birds are ‘not only different in kind from those of our Europe, but are of a wholly different range of colours’, and the beak of the toucan is, for all its magnificence, at the same time ‘prodigious and monstrous’.71 Brazilian animals are inferior to their European counterparts: the hay and the coati are ‘strangely defective with respect to those of Europe’; the taiassou (peccary) ‘resembles a boar’, but it has a ‘strange deformity, a natural opening on the back like the porpoise on its head’.72 Although Thevet has been much criticized for his suggestion that the haüt (sloth) is a marvellous animal which lives on air, the fact is that Léry shared this opinion, which had been transmitted to him not only by the natives, but also by the French traders who lived in Tupi villages.73 ‘I have seen’, he says ‘things as fantastic and prodigious as any of those … that [Pliny and others] mention.’74 But in any case, belief in marvels seems to be the exception with Léry and he sets himself against the ‘common opinion’ that there is a parallel between animals of land and sea, which, as we have seen, Thevet had defended and illustrated. Léry seems to wish to dispel any shadow of doubt and to declare as plainly as possible what are his convictions on this question, in so far as the issue grazes the core of his faith. 68

Ibid., chap. 3 (ed. Whetley, p. 18). Ibid., preface (ed. Whetley, p. lxi). 70 Ibid., chaps 10 and 11 (ed. Whetley, pp. 83 and 88–91). 71 Ibid. (ed. Whetley, pp. 78 and 90). 72 Ibid., chap. 10 (ed. Whetley, pp. 85 and 80). 73 See New Found Worlde, chap. 52, f. 81r, where Thevet says that he had a sloth in captivity for almost a month during which the animal neither ate nor drank. Cf. Thevet, Cosmographie universelle, 2 vols (Paris, 1575), vol. 2, fol. 940v and Léry, History of a Voyage, chap. 10 (ed. Whetley, p. 85). 74 Ibid., preface (ed. Whetley, p. lxi). 69

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

161

When he describes the marvellous plumage of the birds arat and canidé (macaws), he says that ‘in contemplating them, one is moved not only to glorify nature, as do the profane, but rather their great and wonderful Creator’ (emphasis added).75 Was this an allusion to Thevet’s outbursts of enthusiasm about the power of a marvellous nature? A final word should be said with respect to the authors Léry mentions and omits in the chapters on animals of his work. Aristotle, for example, is a very conspicuous absence. Pliny is only named with reference to Thevet’s quotations and in a context of mocking critique.76 What Léry quotes are modern authorities. He cites Belon’s Observations des plusiers singularités and L’histoire de la nature des poisons. None the less, the most quoted author is López de Gómara, whose General History of the Indies Léry had read in the French translation of Michel Fumée. This preference for the moderns is probably related to Léry’s efforts to differentiate his work from Les singularités, with its display of sham classical quotations. More than individuals who wrote alternative contemporary accounts of Brazil, Thevet and Léry could be seen as symbols of two contrasting views. We can assume that the Catholic Thevet and the Calvinist Léry saw the same animals. Moreover, the latter perhaps borrowed from the former some of his descriptions (textual parallels and even some literary coincidences have been pointed out between a number of passages in Léry’s Histoire and Thevet’s Singularités and Comographie universelle).77 But their texts have a different character. Léry writes in a subdued, sober, orderly prose, assuming the viewpoint of an unpretentious and neutral witness, avoiding the mention of authorities, trying to play down the autonomy of a personified ‘Nature’. His animals are items in a well-ordered catalogue which helps to control the perturbing variety of experience and attributes the whimsical operations of nature to the power of the Creator of things. In this approach we might see Léry’s answer to the meandering discourse of Thevet’s Singularités, exorbitant and superlative, always on the verge of credibility, overconfident, seductive and capricious. But both authors also had a core of presuppositions. First, Brazilian animals were viewed as grotesque and outlandish creatures, essentially different from those of the Old World. (This Eurocentric devaluation of New World animals and the more general thesis of the inferiority of American nature would be articulated during the eighteenth century as an influential theory by savants like Buffon and 75

Ibid., chaps 12 and 11 (ed. Whetley, pp. 98 and 87). Ibid., chap. 10 (ed. Whetley, p. 81), cf. New Found Worlde, chap. 33, f. 50v; History of a Voyage, chap. 11 (ed. Whetley, p. 89), cf. New Found Worlde, chap. 48, f. 75v; History of a Voyage, chap. 3 (ed. Whetley, pp. 18–19), cf. New Found Worlde, chap. 14, f. 22r. 77 Baudry, ‘Un dossier Thevet’, in Les singularités, pp. 65–8. 76

162

A New World of Animals

de Pauw.78) Also, both books pertain to the literature of voyages to exotic lands, and their authors strove to show themselves as reliable informers, invoking experience as the ground of truth. Contemporaries of Rabelais and of the young Montaigne (whose essay on the cannibals is said to be indebted to the description of the Tupi), Léry and Thevet shared the Renaissance outlook on the New World proper to a sixteenth-century educated Frenchman and modulated by the contrasting accents of their respective religious allegiances. In this respect at least, the duellists were closer to each other than they would have wished to be.

Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and his Historia naturae maxime peregrinae The culture of Counter-Reformation in Spain, Italy and the lands of the Habsburg empire during the first half of the seventeenth century rested in great part upon the backbone of Jesuit learning. Some leading members of the Society of Jesus were engaged in intellectual programmes characterized by a blend of experimental, mechanical and mathematical sciences with natural magic, alchemy and hermetic knowledge. These scholars and natural philosophers were bent on the construction of a distinctive Baroque–Catholic worldview capable of unifying the basic tenets of Aristotelian natural philosophy with the early modern mechanical image of the world and occult knowledge. It was expected of this system that it would be able to explain the operations of nature as well as the ‘marvellous’ dimensions of reality and the occasional interventions of the supernatural.79 Athanasius Kircher and his disciple Gaspar Schott were among the most characteristic exponents of this intellectual atmosphere. The movement had a few Spanish representatives, such as the Cistercian J. Caramuel Lobkovic (a polymath, alchemist and natural magician who spoke twenty-four languages and wrote around one hundred books) and Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a Spaniard of German descent who, although mainly a spiritual writer, was also attracted by this approach to natural philosophy. In the following pages we shall deal with each of these. Nieremberg taught at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid during the first half of the seventeenth century. Most of his numerous books are on theology, spirituality and the Bible, but he was also attracted to natural philosophy. Besides the Historia naturae maxime peregrinae (Antwerp, 1635), he also wrote the Oculta y curiosa 78

See Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World. The History of a Polemic, 1750–1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh, 1973). 79 See R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700. An Interpretation (Oxford, 1979), pp. 311–446 (part three, ‘The intellectual foundations’).

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

163

filosofía (Curious and hidden philosophy), a work conceived along the lines of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, much like those of Kircher.80 The Historia naturae was dedicated to Gaspar de Guzmán, Count of Olivares (the powerful minister of Philip IV) and amounts to a summary of natural philosophy and ‘natural history’ focused on animals. Its first part comprises seven books which expound the theoretical grounds for the study of natural philosophy. After an introductory treatment explaining the dignity, usefulness and pleasure derived from the study of the subject, Nieremberg follows an order of exposition framed within Aristotelian categories, after which he proceeds to consider animals from the point of view of the four Aristotelian causes. Then begins properly the study of natural beings considered as peregrini (marvellous and exotic), which starts with human beings, follows with animals (quadrupeds, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and zoophytes), continues with plants and finishes with metals and the elements. The work is supplemented by two books on marvellous natural things in Europe and Palestine (‘in terra Hebraeis promissa’). Surprisingly, Nieremberg’s Historia is not the kind of late scholastic exposition one would expect from the titles of its books. It is as if the author had smuggled in his own eclectic perspectives under a conventional Aristotelian scheme or, in the best of cases, had tried to square one with the other. In all likelihood the work was the result of Nieremberg’s teaching activity, perhaps a reworking of his lecture notes. Nieremberg says that he inaugurated his course on the history of animals in the ‘Academia regia’ (Colegio imperial) with a story about monkeys in the New World which were able to buy wine in a tavern and even paid with small change. The tale was sceptically received by his audience, but a student who had actually been to the Indies and seen that this really happened stood up and bore witness to the truth of the story.81 The first book of the Historia naturae has all the flavour of the introductory lessons to a course. Nieremberg begins by eulogizing the science of animals, spelling out its relationships with theology, philosophy and medicine and explaining its utility. In this initial book Nieremberg touches briefly on the rationale of the work. He claims that nature had shown to the ancients only one side of her face, but now exhibits her whole countenance and through the new scenes (‘nova spectacula’) of the New World she reveals herself as ‘other or different’ (‘altera aut diversa’).82 The Jesuit then lays down the epistemological foundations of his exposition, mindful of the fact that the marvellous or strange things about which he is going to talk might strain too much his audience’s 80

The biography is taken from Hughes Didier, Vida y pensamiento de Juan E. Nieremberg, trans. M. Navarro Carnicer (Madrid, 1976), pp. 45–54. 81 Historia natural, book I, chap. 16, p. 11. The story is told by Acosta in his chapter on monkeys. 82 Ibid., chap. 23, p. 16.

164

A New World of Animals

disposition to believe. Hence he affirms that what should be believed is that which has been perceived by the senses and not that which is merely probable to reason. The teaching about animals rests upon experience and the senses, but since not everybody can experience and see everything for himself or herself, one has to allow for a degree of ‘dependable faith’, for ‘the circumstance that you have not seen Rome does not make its existence more uncertain than that of the city in which you live’. What Nieremberg seems to be saying here is that the testimony of the senses, either direct (the personal witnessing of some event) or indirect (‘faith’ in somebody else’s report about something), has a privileged epistemological status when compared to reason, for reason merely assigns a degree of probability to the truth of a statement on speculative grounds. ‘Verisimilitude [he says] is one thing, truth another. Something which lacks verisimilitude can be nevertheless true: nature has made larger things than those which can be proved by reason.’83 The argument is by now a familiar one: the power of nature goes beyond our rational judgements; nature cannot be bound by the limited scope of reason. Nieremberg explains that the admiration caused by marvellous events ceases as soon as one becomes aware of the power of the artisan. A force not fully grasped by reason agitates the hand of the Creator and wonder must give way to faith.84 Nieremberg endorses the Augustinian doctrine that ‘all nature is something of an image or better an enigma of the divinity’.85 Nature is not a spectacle that should be contemplated per se, but the mind must elevate itself ex se towards the author of this wondrous ‘theatrum’ which, as an index finger, points at higher things.86 As the Jesuit he was, Nieremberg is fond of using plastic and theatrical metaphors and similes. He brings in the example of Apelles’s pictures: the mob admired the colours and the beautiful garments of the figures, but only the connoisseurs were able to understand the hidden and mysterious signification of the work inspired by the divinity. Nieremberg supplements the usual demonstration of God from his works with a Neoplatonic interpretation: the workings of nature are not only arguments pointing at the divinity; they are also evidence of the mysteries of God’s mind.87 When ‘hunting’ – that is, inquiring into – wild beasts, one should be hunting God (‘per feras venari Deum’). The three rays of God’s invisible light (the highest power, the highest wisdom, the highest goodness) are expressed in his creatures, respectively, as the abundance of beings, the wise disposition of their forms and their utility. As a consequence, 83

Ibid., chap. 15, p. 10. Ibid., chap. 16, p. 11. 85 Ibid., book III, chap. 1, p. 28. 86 Ibid., book I, chap. 22, p. 14. 87 Ibid., chap. 17, p. 11 and chap. 22, p. 15. 84

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

165

the natural philosopher should not be a mere collector of stories about animals; he should also understand that in these stories something sublime is being expressed: God’s light. Those who do not proceed beyond the appearances are like those who can read the letters but do not grasp the meaning of the words. Nature is God’s text and the ‘physiologus’ (that is, the natural philosopher) should strive to interpret its hidden meanings. All these exalted reflections, which dwell on Pseudo-Dionysian and Neoplatonic themes, bring us back to the world of the medieval bestiary, to the Augustinian idea of nature as God’s text (scripta digiti Dei), denying the hard-fought struggle of thirteenth-century Aristotelianism to grant nature a certain degree of autonomy. Nieremberg is considering Aristotle a mere ‘collector’ of histories and interpreting the history of animals in terms of the Pauline ‘videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate’.88 The alleged foundations of his natural history are what could be expected from the contemplative writer he was. The second book of Nieremberg’s Historia naturae claims to deal with the substance and essence of animals, but its contents respond only indirectly to the title. True, the first chapter defines an animal as ‘an animated body provided with senses’,89 but the rest consists in a polemical discussion against the hylozoistic opinions that the world, the angels, the plants and the elements are animals. This is followed by a brief treatise on the heavens, the gist of which is to argue that they are not animals either. The following book is about the senses of animals. The senses are what separate animals from the rest of the animated bodies and Nieremberg now addresses the issue of the relationships between animals, plants and rational beings; in other words, he aims to discern the place of animals within the hierarchy of beings. He first poses some questions on animals and plants, for example: are there intermediate beings between animals and plants?, what have animals and plants in common?, which animals can be generated from plants?, can plants have other senses than that of touch? Then he explores what differentiates animals from human beings, first expounding the arguments of those who would wish to endow beasts with reason (on the grounds that they have astuteness, can understand human speech and play games, and are subjected to passions like fury and to virtues like chastity) and then denying that animals can reason because ‘we would be brutes if brutes were like us’. Animals, says Nieremberg, have impulses similar to our affects, but they have neither affects like human beings nor free will, only a ‘ruda libertas’.90 Book IV of this work is something like a protracted commentary on the first 88

I Corinthians 13:12, Vulgate. Historia naturae, book II, chap. 1, p. 17. 90 Ibid., book III, chap. 20, p. 43 and chap. 26, p. 48. 89

166

A New World of Animals

chapters of the book of Genesis (we must remember that Nieremberg taught the Bible besides natural philosophy). He contends against the opinion that animals were created through the mediation of the heavens and on the strength of his exegetical analysis affirms that they were created from the elements (fish and birds from water, terrestrial animals from the earth). The last part of the book raises several questions on the origin of animals within the framework of the narrative of creation: how did the first animals arise from the earth?, which animals provided the hairy tunic with which Adam covered himself?, were carnivorous animals created in the beginning?, why did God create poisonous and noxious animals?, to what species belongs the serpent which deceived Eve? In book V we find two references to the generation of fantastic creatures in the New World. In a passing allusion to Peter Martyr’s story about the existence of harpies in America (mentioned in Chapter 3), Nieremberg says that he does not deny that these monsters could be ‘boiled up’ from the earth, in so far as they are generated by the power of the earth with the concurrence of the Divine Providence, which creates them in order to induce humans to atone for their sins.91 Interestingly, in the chapter in which he discusses whether there are griffins in the New World, Nieremberg comes up with a rationalistic answer claiming that the creatures called ‘griffins’ might be any large and fierce fowl, such as eagles, vultures or the cóndores of the Indies.92 But the New World is for the Jesuit the subject of a query already addressed by Acosta: how did human beings and animals get there? Nieremberg goes quickly over this problem and concludes that humans arrived partly as a result of a shipwreck or in ships and partly by land. Animals would have been carried in ships or migrated from the neighbouring continents.93 The books about peregrine animals in Nieremberg’s Historia naturae are based upon Hernández’s manuscripts and follow closely the same order of exposition as the History of the animals of New Spain, that is, quadrupeds, birds, fish, reptiles and imperfect animals. Although he incorporated in his work a few animals from the East Indies, the bulk of it deals with the fauna of New Spain. Despite the elaborate reflections in the first part of the work about the study of animals as a disclosure of aenigmata conducive to the contemplation of God, for the most part these books are a plain treatise on exotic animals.94 We shall now 91Ibid., book V, chap. 3, p. 75. 92

Ibid., chap. 23, pp. 89–90. Ibid., chap. 2, p. 74. 94 The exceptions are the two last chapters of book IX. One of them enumerates anecdotes that purport to demonstrate the respect of animals toward saintly men and women, and the other deals with the miracles of José de Anchieta – a Jesuit martyr and missionary in Brazil – in which animals intervened. Historia naturae, book IX, chaps 94 and 95, pp. 202–5. 93

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

167

look at some of the chapters of book IX. Nieremberg suggests that he used Hernández’s manuscripts kept at the library of El Escorial – it might be that the copy discovered in the Colegio Imperial in the eighteenth century was a result of his research.95 The Jesuit’s Historia naturae is embellished with numerous woodcuts by the Antwerp woodcutter Christopher Jegher based on the original Aztec illustrations which accompanied Hernández’s manuscripts.96 Another important source of text and pictures for Nieremberg’s Historia naturae was Clusius’s Exoticorum libri decem. Both works were published by Plantin. A few of Nieremberg’s glosses on Hernández’s descriptions are of the kind found in the Physiologus and the late medieval literature of exempla in which the characteristic traits or behaviour of a given animal are allegorically interpreted. This is the case, for example, of Hernández’s story about the ocotochtli (discussed in our previous chapter) which represents it as a poisonous feline which, after killing its prey, invites the other animals to eat from it first lest they become contaminated by its venom. Nieremberg draws the moral that anyone who wishes well is in the end beneficent, disregarding the scarce means he or she could have to attain his or her goal.97 He closes the chapter on ‘animals with spines’ by reflecting that Mother Nature is economical in her dispensations for she fulfils many of her functions with a single instrument, an example of which is the spines that serve for the defence of the animals and at the same time have medicinal virtues (we have discussed in our section on Hernández the healing powers attributed to the spines of the hoitztlacuatzin).98 Hernández was not Nieremberg’s only source. Chapters in the Historia naturae are brief compilations of extracts taken from authors such as Clusius, Oviedo, Gómara, Peter Martyr, Herrera, Raph Hamor, Staden, Thevet, Léry, Cardano, Scaliger, Maffei and so on. The chapter on ‘animals with breastplates’ (animalia loricata) may serve to illustrate the way Nieremberg handles his sources.99 After listing the different names used by various authors to designate these beasts, he reproduces Hernández’s description of the aiatochtlus (armadillo) followed by Oviedo’s account. Nieremberg concludes by explaining that the differences between the authors should be attributed to the fact that they 95 ‘De hoc lapide sententiam Francisci Hernandi, quem saepius laudavi non extra institutam narrationem erit hic exhibere e manuscriptis servatis in Regia bibliotheca S. Laurentii in Escuriali.’ Ibid., chap. 60, p. 185. 96 Clauss Nissen, Die zoologische Buchillustration. Band II: Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1978), pp. 122–3. Cf. Somolinos d’Ardois, ‘Francisco Hernández’, in Hernández, OC, vol. 1, pp. 303–4. 97 Historia naturae, book IX, chap. 1, p. 154. Cf. Hernández, Historiae animalium novae hispaniae, treatise I, chap. 15 (Historia, p. 5; OC, vol. 3, p. 303). 98 Historia naturae, book IX, chap. 2, p. 155. 99 Ibid., chap. 6, pp. 159–60.

168

A New World of Animals

5.3 Three pictures of armadillos in Nieremberg’s Historia naturae. The first was taken from Gesner’s Historia animalium and the other two from Clusius’s Exotica. Single pictures of a given animal were assumed to be representative of a generic ‘variety’. Encylopedists such as Nieremberg and Jonston included all of them in their works for the sake of completeness.

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

169

are talking about different ‘species’ of animalia loricata, which live in different provinces of the New World (an explanation taken from Clusius).100 He uses the same argument to explain the contradiction between Monardes’s affirmation that he had never seen one of these animals eat anything and Gesner’s claim that he had seen one of them in France eating seeds and fruits. Nieremberg then rehearses Clusius’s distinction between three ‘genera’ of loricata and his description of a three-banded armadillo (Clusius’s ‘tatou III genus’). As a conclusion, the Jesuit tells a story about the chirquinchi (actually quirquincho, a species of armadillo). While lying on its back, he says, this animal collects the rain in its concavity, thus attracting a thirsty stag which comes to drink. The chirquinchi then closes its shell around itself and snaps the snout of the stag, which dies as a result of suffocation. Nieremberg points out that this was reported by ocular witnesses. Another story describes how the Indians used an armadillo for a magical rite aimed at discovering and punishing thieves. The whole account is illustrated by three pictures of the animal (see Figure 5.3).101 On some crucial and disputed questions Nieremberg tepidly risks his opinion. As usual, the chapter on the sloth is a compilation of several accounts. Hernández and Oviedo had affirmed that the sloth lives on nothing but air. The Jesuit claims that this statement should not be understood as absolute (a scholastic way of saying that it should not be taken literally). The structure of the chapter was inspired by the corresponding section of Clusius’s work, but Nieremberg suppresses Clusius’s quotation of Acosta’s description of the sloth.102 Acosta, Nieremberg’s fellow Jesuit, is a telling absence in the Historia naturae.103 In the chapter on the zainus (peccary), Nieremberg dutifully rehearses Hernández’s claim that the supposed umbilicus on the back of this animal is but a lump of fat and declares that this opinion is better than that held by Herrera and Léry, who had written that its function was respiration.104 The chapter is illustrated by a woodcut which ostensibly shows the structure (see Figure 5.4). Nieremberg’s Historia naturae made available much of what Hernández had written on the animals of New Spain before the publication of the Thesaurus (the work describes around one hundred quadrupeds and a similar number of birds). In many cases this material is compared with other available sources on the 100

See Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 15, pp. 109–10. The first is from Gesner’s Historia animalium and the other two woodcuts are those in Clusius’s Exotica. 102 Historia naturae, book IX, chap. 13, p. 166. Cf. Exoticorum libri decem, book V, chap. 16, p. 112. 103 Acosta is cited when Nieremberg, discussing the existence of wild beasts in America, attributes to him the suggestion that wild animals crossed to the mainland when escaping from the islands. Historia naturae, book V, chap. 1, p. 72. 104 Ibid., book IX, chap. 25, p. 170. 101

170

A New World of Animals

ZAINVS.

5.4 Zainus (peccary) in Nieremberg, Historia naturae maxime peregrinae (Antwerp, 1635). The picture shows the umbilicus or navel which the animal was supposed to have on its back and whose function was the subject of much controversy.

subject, although some of them are taken second-hand from Clusius; on whom Nieremberg drew heavily. Like most early modern European scholars who wrote about New World animals well into the seventeenth century, the Jesuit does not distinguish between the different genres or kinds of sources he uses. The reports of travellers such as Léry and Thevet, chronicles such as those of Herrera and López de Gómara, medical texts such as those of Hernández and Clusius – all of them are treated uniformly and granted the same value as reports of ‘facts’. When considering the five books of the Historia naturae which treat ‘de animalibus in particulari’ we might bear in mind that they were not intended as a mere collection of animal stories. On the contrary, the variety, strangeness and utility of New World animals were seen by Nieremberg as an expression of God’s light and, on that account, a way to contemplation. His was a mystical zoology. Athanasius Kircher: Noah’s Ark, a Wondrous Museum and Animal Magnetism Athanasius Kircher (1602–80) was a Jesuit polymath, a prodigy of scholarship whose learning, oriented by a mixture of a late Renaissance outlook and a qualified mechanicism, failed to survive its author.105 Kircher wrote on almost 105

For a comprehensive view of Kircher’s life and writings see Conor Reilly, S.J., Athanasius Kircher S.J., Master of a hundred Arts, 1602–1680 (Wiesbaden and Rome, 1974). The biography by Hans Kangro in the DSB (Dictionary of Scientific Biography) is quite informative. On the perception of the value of Kircher’s work see Fred Bauen, ‘Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680)’, Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (1982): 129–34.

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

171

every subject: on the various branches of experimental physics and natural magic (mostly optics and magnetism), on natural philosophy, ancient languages, history, antiquities, medicine and religion. Much bent on Hermeticism, he longed after a prisca sapientia, a unified knowledge which would be recovered from the writings of the sages who preceded the Christian Revelation. His search for the ancient universal language, his attempt at deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, his belief in an overarching ars combinatoria, his interest in the optical, acoustic and physico-mechanical devices were for him different aspects of one and the same universal learning.106 The facts of Kircher’s life are simple. He joined the Society of Jesus when he was fourteen years old, and after graduating from the gymnasium in Fulda, began to study and teach humanities, sciences, philosophy and theology in several universities of Central Europe (Padeborn, Cologne, Koblenz, Heiligenstadt, Mainz). After being ordained in 1628 Kircher taught philosophy, mathematics and ancient tongues in Würzburg and in 1631, escaping from the Thirty Years War, ended up in the papal city of Avignon. His stay in France allowed him to become acquainted with Peiresc, Gassendi and Malebranche. Pope Urban VIII and his ally Cardinal Francesco Barberini nominated him professor at the College of Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life, with some interruptions. In the ancient city he organized his famous museum, wrote his more than forty works, kept an active correspondence with innumerable savants and Jesuit missionaries scattered throughout the Old and New World and became a cherished symbol of the establishment of Catholic learning. His life was divided between the pursuit of his own intellectual interests and the fulfilment of his duties as scholar for all seasons in the courts of Italy and the empire. He enjoyed the patronage and suffered the tyranny not only of Urban, but also of Pope Alexander VII (former Cardinal Chigi), Prince Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II, the emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold. Kircher’s museum, with its display of optical apparatuses, mechanical gadgets, curiosities of natural history and antiquities, was a sort of everyday meeting place and centre of public relationships of the papal court.107 Among all this amazing activity, Kircher found some time for New World animals. Noah’s Ark At the beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century Kircher published 106

See Thomas Leinkauf, Mundus combinatus. Studien zur Struktur der barocken Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602–1680) (Berlin, 1993). 107 See John Fletcher, ‘Athanasius Kircher: a man under pressure’, in idem (ed.), Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen zum gelehrten Europa seiner Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1988), pp. 1–15.

172

A New World of Animals

his Arca Noë (Amsterdam, 1675). The work, dedicated to Charles II of Spain who at that time was twelve years old and was being educated by the Jesuits, can be seen as a quaint specimen of children’s literature.108 It tells the story of Noah and the Flood as a sort of popularized biblical exegesis, drawing upon historical knowledge and elementary natural philosophy. Noah’s Ark is divided into three books: the first deals with the history of humanity before the Flood, the second discusses the events of the Flood and its duration, and the last considers the deeds of Noah after the waters receded. Like Acosta, Kircher became interested in the exegetical and natural philosophical problems which arose from the existence of animal species in the New World. In Arca Noë he addresses the very pragmatic problem of the distribution of stables and animal lodgings within the ark. The text is illustrated by a beautiful two-page engraving of a cross-section of the ark showing the distribution of the cubicula for each kind of animal.109 Kircher’s discussion of the construction of the stalls allows him to comment on the creatures admitted to the ark. In one of the chapters, for instance, he asks whether all the animal species would have found a place in the ark. His answer – expounded in more detail in an appendix to the work – is that there are metamorphoses in the animal kingdom whereby the species can transform into each other. This phenomenon, he says, takes place mostly in the Torrid Zone, because of the excessive heat of the air which stimulates the earth to produce vapours. The vapours excite the micelles of the ‘seminal reasons’ (rationes seminales), which in turn generate the variety of imperfect animals characteristic of the tropics (insects, serpents and so on). The animals which passed from Europe to the New World degenerated to such a degree, continues Kircher, that it is very difficult to figure out in each case which the original parental species was.110 Evidently the discovery of new creatures in the New World inflated the inventory of animals. How could it have been possible to put this large number of animal kinds in an ark with limited proportions? Kircher resolved the problem by assuming that the number of species before the Flood was smaller than after it. The following chapter of the book addresses a question related to the former: were insects and ‘inferior’ animals conserved in the ark? Kircher denies that this was the case on the grounds that these animals propagate through spontaneous generation, thus there was no need to keep a pair of each species to guarantee 108 For a brief panoramic survey of the work see Don Cameron Allen, ‘The Arca Noe of Athanasius Kircher’, in idem, The Legend of Noah. Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science and Letters (Urbana, 1949), pp. 182–91 and for reproductions of its pictures see Joscelyn Godwin, Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Knowledge (London, 1979), pp. 25–33. 109 Arca Noë, book I, section 3, pp. 41–2. 110 Ibid., chap. 3, p. 49.

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

173

their future propagation. But while the Bible says that God ordered the reptiles to be saved in the ark, everybody knows that snakes are noxious beings. Kircher solves this question by reasoning that it was convenient for humankind to be reminded of the serpent which tempted Eve. Besides, snakes are not altogether noxious creatures, for some benefits can be derived from them, such as the theriaca, a universal antidote made with viper’s flesh. This exegetical dubium is an occasion for Kircher to describe a number of snakes and also some four-footed reptiles. Interestingly, he affirms that the serpents of the New World did not get into the ark because they were generated from the ‘spermatic putrefaction’. This is the case of the haemorrhous (a New World creature which falls from the sky after prolonged rain) and also of the big serpents of the Indies which through the action of the sun upon the earth reach inordinately large proportions.111 One of the chapters in the first book of Noah’s Ark consists of a series of short descriptions of the quadrupeds which either got into the ark or were kept out of it. In most cases, these accounts are illustrated by small woodcuts representing the animals. American creatures are set apart among those listed under the heading ‘animals which are thought not to have been kept in the ark’. These unfortunate beasts, such as the mule, were those generated through interspecific interbreeding (‘ex promiscuo diversarum specierum coitu’). Animals of India and the New World, says Kircher, should also be counted among them, such as the allopecopithicum, which has a pouch under its belly to carry its young ones and is generated from a fox and a monkey. Another animal which did not enjoy the safe haven of the ark was the armadillo. Kircher’s description of this beast is accompanied by its picture. He invites the reader to examine the specimen held at his museum and concludes by saying that this animal resulted from the crossbreeding of a turtle and a hedgehog. As the corcobado (American bison) is an animal of the bovine genus, Kircher does not risk an opinion as to whether it resulted from the union of two disparate species or was the product of a transmutation caused by the influx of the heaven and the particular nature and climate of the New World. In any case, he does not think that it got into the ark.112 The chapter on birds begins by claiming that Noah kept only those species which were ‘perfect’ (‘perfectus status speciei’). After the waters receded, perfect birds expanded throughout the world and from them resulted some monstrous forms. Kircher proposes a number of reasons to account for the generation of these bizarre creatures: (a) that the interbreeding between species is far easier in birds than in mammals; (b) that the egg of a bird can be incubated by a female of another species so that the alien mother transmits to the embryo its ‘nature’, 111 112

Ibid., chap. 4, pp. 54–6. Ibid., chap. 5, pp. 67–70.

174

A New World of Animals

which results in the production of a mongrel; (c) that the mating of birds is usually promiscuous; (d) that the nature of the place and the influences of celestial bodies can alter the nature of a species to the extent of transforming it into another. So all the prodigal variety of the birds which populate the skies of America, Africa, Asia and India need not have been kept in the ark, because they could have originated after the Flood – quod erat demonstrandum.113 Among the species of birds characteristic of the New World, Kircher mentions the pica of Brazil with its huge beak, which he considers a consequence of the action of heavenly influences and the nature of the water and soil of the place (a toucan bill was exhibited in the museum). The anser magellanicus (penguin) awakes Kircher’s admiration because this bird walks not like a fowl, but like a human being. What could have caused its peculiar structure but the constitution and nature of the place, which also produces giant men such as the ‘patagones’?114 Kircher was aware that his explanations of each of the individual cases through the processes of ‘metamorphosis’ rested on a general theory which also accounted for the origin of New World species.115 The book closes with an essay defending the view that God created a limited number of species at the beginning of the world but these were transformed by the action of several causes, which Kircher enumerates as a series of theses. He claims that all the bodies in the universe were formed from the four elements: minerals and plants suffered metamorphoses under the influence of the ‘aspectus caelorum astrorumque’ upon the earth, and the same happened with animals. All original ‘genera’ (quadrupeds, volatile creatures, aquatic creatures, reptiles and insects) went through these transmutations.116 Kircher’s Museum Kircher’s universal curiosity was the main force driving the organization of his museum in the Collegium Romanum. Scientific machines, musical instruments, clocks, ethnographic pieces, animals, minerals, paintings, statues and two model Egyptian obelisks helped to create an atmosphere of exotic and ancient grandeur 113

Ibid., chap. 6, p. 75. Ibid., chap. 6, p. 89. 115 Ibid., pp. 94–7. 116 The causes of the specific changes would be four: (a) the influx of the celestial bodies on the different regions of the earth; (b) the ‘fantastic force and power’ of the quadrupeds when they mate and of the birds during incubation; (c) the mating of one species under the action of the imagination that causes changes in the external form of the brood; (d) the union of different species so that not only the outward appearances are changed, but also the internal structure. Ibid., p. 96. 114

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

175

in the long halls along which the cases with the collections were displayed.117 The first catalogue was prepared by Giorgio de Sepi, one of the curators, and Kircher himself.118 Its long Latin title announces that among its exhibits the museum holds ‘strange things brought from the Indies’. For example, there were the shells of sea turtles, so large that it was said that in Brazil eighty men could dine sumptuously on one of them. There was also an armadillo or ‘mail-clad hedgehog of America’ and an ‘armadillus Mexicanus’.119 The museum had an iguana, three hides of ‘American fox’ from New Spain and a ‘lynx mexicana’.120 After enumerating the animals received from Mexico, the catalogue turns to describe those of Brazil. To begin with, there was a big bill of unknown provenance; some said it was from a Brazilian pica, others that it belonged to the bird ramphastus (different contemporary names for the toucan) – still others claimed that it was from the bird called rhinoceros (a hornbill of the East Indies). Also, the plumage of many different birds had been sent from Brazil to the museum in all probability by some of the Jesuit missionaries in that country. Although unidentified, they were described as ‘rarae et curiosae’ on account of the beauty and variety of their fiery colours. Finally there was a ‘corvus purpureus Brasiliae’ (perhaps the purplish jay). Father José de Anchieta tells the story that once, when he was at sea and the sailors could not bear the extreme heat and sultry weather, a flock of these birds covered the sun and the ship could arrive safely into harbour, a miracle that converted many natives to the Christian faith.121 It seems that these objects were valued as much for their ‘scientific’ interest as for the admiration they could awake. Most of them came from Mexico and Brazil – two of the lands where the Society of Jesus was strong – and it seems 117 See Silvio Bedini, ‘Citadels of Learning: The Museo Kircheriano and other seventeenthcentury Italian science collections’, in Maristella Casciato, Maria Grazia Ianniello and Maria Vitale (eds), Enciclopedismo in Roma Barroca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico (Venice, 1986), pp. 249–67. This anthology has several articles on Kircher, his museum and his scientific milieu. 118 Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum celeberrimum, cuius magnum Antiquariae rei, statuarum, imaginum, picturarumque partem … exponit Georgius de Sepibus (Amsterdam, 1678). 119 Ibid., part 2, chap. 6, pp. 26–7. Kircher, in his work on Noah’s ark, calls the armadillo with the Latin name of ‘erinacheus cataphractus’. Arca Noë, book I, section 3, chap. 5, p. 69. 120 Musaeum, part 2, chap. 6, pp. 28–31. It seems that there is a mistaken identification of the author of the catalogue with respect to the fox (shown in the picture), which is called ‘vulpes marina Americae’ (‘sea fox’). Rondelet had described a ‘vulpecula marina’, which was probably the cause of the confusion. See Schott, Physica curiosa (Würzburg, 1662), book X, chap. 52, p. 1384. 121 Musaeum, part 2, chapter 6, pp. 32–3. Kircher interchanged correspondence with Anchieta. See Ignacio Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria. Epistolario de Atanasio Kircher con los novohispanos (Mexico, 1993), p. xvii.

176

A New World of Animals

highly likely that they were sent or brought to Rome by Jesuit missionaries, probably naïve collectors of natural curiousities. The specimens from America displayed in the Kircherian museum could have played a role in Kircher’s speculations on the ‘metamorphoses’ of species and the origin of the New World fauna. New World Animals and Magnetism The catalogue of the Kircherian museum praises the donations of Alexander Favian, a Mexican priest and dilettante who had studied at the Colegio del Espíritu Santo in Puebla and had inherited a considerable fortune indulged in some ill-defined interests such as music and natural magic.122 Through a common friend – the French Jesuit François Guillot – Favian asked Kircher for copies of his books which the latter sent together with a number of scientific apparatuses. In exchange, the Mexican sent to Rome chocolate (of which Kircher seems to have been very fond) and ‘everything strange and rare that I could find’. Favian promised that he would follow Kircher’s hint and send to ‘Cardinal Chissi’ all kinds of ‘animals, birds, herbs, flowers and plants … with explanations’.123 Cardinal Flavio Chigi was a friend of Kircher’s and a noted Roman collector.124 (Favian aspired to use the cardinal’s influence to get a bishopric in Mexico; he also sent a ‘feathered picture’ to the emperor with the purpose of obtaining a recommendation.125) Kircher induced Favian to read Jesuit authors who wrote about natural magic, such as Sebastián Izquierdo, Juan Caramuel and Gaspar Schott.126 The German even dedicated a book to Favian, his Magneticum naturae regnum sive disceptatio physiologica de triplici in natura rerum magnete (Rome, 1667). In this work, Kircher reproduces a letter sent to him by Favian describing the 122

See Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, pp. xv–xix. Letter of Favian to Kircher dated December 1665 or January 1666. See Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, p. 56. In May 1666, the ambitious and enterprising priest sent Kircher a shipment of three boxes with chocolate and things ‘very curious and beautiful’. Letter of Favian to Kircher on 2 August 1666. See Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, p. 97. 124 Flavio Chigi (d. 1693) from Siena was the nephew of Cardinal Fabio Chigi (later Pope Alexander VI). See Migne, Dictionnaire des cardinaux (Paris, 1857). For his museum see Bedini, ‘Citadels of Learning’, pp. 255–7. 125 Letter of Favian to Kircher dated 10 March 1666. See Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, pp. 70–71. There is a letter sent by Kircher to Chigi telling him that a shipment from the New World was being prepared by Favian, who had sent representatives to all the corners of America to obtain curious objects. Bedini, ‘Citadels of Learning’, p. 256. 126 See Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, p. xxii. Juan Caramuel y Lobowitz, a Spanish Cistercian monk, maintained an active correspondence with Kircher. See Thomas Glick, ‘On the influence of Kircher in Spain’, Isis 62 (1971): 379–81. 123

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

177

‘magnetic’ effect of a kind of rounded ‘sea shell’, which can cause a shock to those who touch it, like that of the torpedo fish (two of these ‘shells’ had been sent to the museum by Favian).127 In his long commentary on the letter, Kircher claims that since the ‘shells’ have been found in the stomach of a fish – whose name he did not know – this would of necessity be the torpedo. His explanation of the ‘narcotic’ effect of the ‘shell’ basically amounts to saying that the torpedo would be able to transfer to it its ‘magnetic’ power. He also claims that the ‘shell’ is, in fact, a kind of sea urchin and that this phenomenon does not occur in the Old World, because the torpedoes of the Mediterranean are smaller than those of the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) and cannot swallow the sea urchin. Certainly, the catalogue of the Kircherian museum confirms that Favian had sent an ericium marinum (sea urchin) claiming that it had the power to produce a shock in those who touched it, although this had not been confirmed.128 In this interchange between Favian and Kircher, it is clear that the former played the role of a ‘field naturalist’ who stumbled upon a curious phenomenon and, finding himself unable to explain it, reported the discovery to Kircher, hoping that the European erudite would ‘philosophize’ about it – which he did. In fact, Kircher had already shown his interest in the problems relating to New World animals and magnetism in his Magnes seu de arte magnetica (1641).129 Book three of that work is devoted to the phenomena of attraction in general, with particular attention to materia medica. One of its sections enumerates several ‘magnetic’ animals such as, for example, the torpedo, which, as we have already discussed, was thought to have ‘magnetic’ properties. Among those magnetic animals, Kircher also discusses the case of the anguis stupidus or comauhcoatl of New Spain, described by Hernández (as canauhcóatl) and dutifully mentioned by Nieremberg in his Historia naturae. This snake had the alleged property of attracting the deer by the sheer force of its breath. This story – other versions of which are registererd by Sahagún and Cardim – was explained by Nieremberg, who claimed that the snake attracted the deer ‘by the force of its spirit, like a magnet attracts a piece of iron’.130 The Spanish Jesuit then recalls that the vizcachas also draw their prey out of their caves by means of their breath. Nieremberg did not explicitly say that this is a case of magnetic attraction; he only affirmed, perhaps ambiguously, that it is ‘like’ magnetic attraction. But 127

Kircher, Magneticum naturae regnum (Rome, 1667), pp. 119–29. Musaeum, part 2, chap. 6, p. 27. 129 For Kircher and magnetism see William Hine, ‘Athanasius Kircher and magnetism’, in Fletcher, Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen, pp. 79–97. 130 ‘Cum prope accedit cervus, vi spiritus sui attrahit ad se ut magnes ferrum’. Nieremberg, Historia naturae book XII, chap. 17, p. 274. Cf. Hernández, Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise III, chap. 9 (OC, vol. 3, p. 371). 128

178

A New World of Animals

Kircher takes him literally and sets off on a long argument denying that in the case of the snake attraction occurs through magnetic force. He postulates alternative mechanisms, such as horror vacui or some kind of ‘narcotic quality’ emitted by the snake. To support his own account, Kircher brings forth the example of the aiotochtlus (armadillo) which, he says, attracts ants by means of its particular scent and not through any kind of ‘magnetic’ power.131

Gaspar Schott and his Physica curiosa Like Kircher, the Jesuit Gaspar Schott (1608–66) was a native of Franconia. He studied in Würzburg with his countryman and then completed his education in Palermo, residing in Sicily for twenty years.132 After his long Sicilian experience he reassumed collaboration with his mentor in the Collegium Romanum for three years and afterwards was sent to Mainz and Würzburg, where he taught mathematics and began to work on the mass of materials he had collected during his Roman years. His main interest lay in the discussion about the void, a subject he discussed in his Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica (Würzburg, 1657). Schott became the centre of a network of scientific correspondents, and the epistolary materials he was able to collect (some of them obtained from the letters sent to Kircher by Jesuits from all over the world) were the basis for the eleven titles he wrote during the last decade of his life. His most significant books of this period are the Magia universalis (Würzburg, 1657–59), the Physica curiosa (Würzburg, 1662) and the Mechanica curiosa (Würzburg, 1664).133 Schott’s Physica curiosa is indeed a curious work. It belongs to the genre of literature on wonders and marvellous phenomena (natural and supernatural). The heavy volumes contain in their 2,000 pages an amazing collection of mirabilia of the heavenly and earthly worlds. The first six books are devoted to mirabilia of angels and daemons, ghosts, human beings, possessed men and women (energumeni), monsters and portents. The remaining six books deal with mirabilia in animals, meteors and miscellanies. A fair percentage of the work is occupied by the material on animals. As Schott himself says in the ‘letter to the benevolent reader’ which opens the work, his goal was not to write an original 131 Athanasius Kircher, Magnes sive de arte magnetica (Rome, 1654), 3rd edn, book III, part 6, chap. 2, § 2, p. 522. 132 See the biographical account by A. G. Keller in the DSB and the biography in Bernhard Duhr, S.J., Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge in den zweiten Hälfte des XVII. Jahrhunderts (Munich and Regensburg, 1921), vol. 3, pp. 589–92. 133 For Schott’s views on natural magic see Wayne Shumaker, ‘Gaspar Schott, Magia universalis’, in idem, Natural Magic and Modern Science. Four Treatises 1590–1657 (Binghamton, NY, 1989), pp. 137–67 (chap. 5).

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

179

treatise, but to present things which had been omitted in his previous work (Magia universalis) or were communicated to him after its publication. He states that his method is not to collect bits and pieces from a multitude of authors but to quote verbatim long texts (‘integra’), acknowledging the sources – and this is truly what he does.134 In the proemium Schott begins by listing those authors who have written on animals, such as Aristotle, Pliny, Oppian, Basil, Ambrose, Albert the Great, Gesner, Aldrovandi, Nieremberg, Piso, Bontius, Johannes Nider, Agricola, Laurentius Forerus, Cardan, Jonston, Antonio de Ballinghem, Rondelet, Belon, Gyllius, Wotton and Sperling.135 One should note that Schott is writing in the second half of the seventeenth century. Physica curiosa could be taken as a compendium of the knowledge on animals available at that time (although, of course, allowances should be made for the particular rationale behind the selection of sources). Schott forestalls sceptical criticism of his marvellous stories when he claims that ‘not everything which breeds admiration and escapes our autopsia goes against the truth, neither what is strange and has not been seen by us is false’.136 He quotes Nieremberg on this issue (who had talked in similar terms) and declares that the marvels of the New World proclaimed by the Spaniard should be granted credence since they were told by ocular witnesses or written in works and manuscripts worthy of belief, such as those of Hernández.137 The works of Piso, who lived in the New World, should also be consulted.138 Talking about wonderful stories of exotic animals, authors such as Nieremberg and Schott faced a dilemma. On the one hand, they had to defend the criterion of autopsia (‘this is true because I saw it with my own eyes’), for this constituted the epistemological warrant of the accounts written by those who had been to the New World. On the other hand, they wished readers of marvellous stories to keep their minds open and not to adopt the ‘I-saw-it-myself’ criterion as a touchstone of what they could believe, for otherwise they would close their minds to anything out of the ordinary. A way out, as suggested by Schott, was to distinguish between autopsia on the part of the author as a warrant for truth and autopsia on the part of the reader as a mind-narrowing demand for veracity. The order of presentation of the different groups of animals followed by Schott 134

Physica curiosa, letter to the reader. Johannes Nider was a fifteenth-century author who wrote a Formicarius (Cologne, 1475), a work belonging to the literature of animal exempla that aimed to convey moral teachings through the example of the ants. Laurent Forer (1580–1659) was a Jesuit who wrote polemical works against the Reform and also a Disputatio philosophica de animalibus (Ingolstadt, 1618). Johann Sperling (1603–58) was the author of the Zoologia physica (Lipsiae, 1661) and the Disputatio physica de monstris (Wittebergae, 1657). 136 Physica curiosa, book VII, proemium (vol. 2, p. 776). 137 Ibid., book VIII, chap. 26 (vol. 2, p. 1004). 138 Ibid., book VII, proemium (vol. 2, p. 776). 135

180

A New World of Animals

is the same, he says, as that which Moses used when he wrote the book of Genesis. Animals are divided into terrestrial, aerial and aquatic (reptiles belong either to the first or the third category).139 Thus the whole exposition is framed within the discourse of biblical zoology and explicitly acknowledges Moses – dubbed Theodidactus – as a natural philosopher, which was one of the basic tenets of Hermetic wisdom. But this biblical classification is enhanced by a modern categorization. Schott endorses the ‘taxonomy’ used by authors such as Aldrovandi, which divided the terrestria or gressillia into solipeda, bisulca and digitata or multipeda (the last category is in turn divided into vivipara and ovipara).140 He claims that he has ‘picked up ears’ from these authors and gathered them in his own books, following the alphabetical order used by Gesner and Jonston (authors we shall treat in the next chapter). We may look now at Schott’s chapter on the archopithecus or pigritia (sloth).141 Its first paragraph is devoted to the description of an ‘experiment’ carried out by the Jesuit Juan Toro, who taught at the college in Cartagena (New Kingdom of Granada). The experiment (which had been communicated to Kircher) was aimed at proving or denying the claim that the sloth could live without eating. Father Toro hung a sloth from a beam and observed that the animal remained alive for forty days without either eating or drinking. The rest of the chapter reproduces the descriptions of the animal by Thevet and Piso. Schott modestly limits himself to a cut-and-paste methodology. When the accounts he receives are inconsistent or contradictory, he simply divides the chapters into ‘paragraphs’. For some reason, Piso seems to be granted a place of precedence with respect to other auctoritates. For example, in the chapter on the achaus or tamandoa (anteater), Schott expressly recommends Piso’s account as better than Nieremberg’s, because the former would have talked ‘clarius and distinctius’ about that beast.142 In the chapter on ‘animalia manticata’ (animals with a pouch, like the opossum) Schott again disregards any description of the animal other than that by Piso and Markgraf.143 The book on animals which live in the air brings some surprises. One would expect, in a work that claims to be a compendium of mirabilia, that its author would enthusiastically admit the existence of fantastic and legendary beings. Actually, this is not the case. In the dissertation on the griffins Schott does not recall the stories about the griffins of the New World which figure so prominently in many chronicles, and concludes by endorsing Nieremberg’s rationalistic 139

Ibid., book VIII, proemium (vol. 2, pp. 896–7). Ibid. (vol. 2, p. 897). 141 Ibid., chap. 2 (vol. 2, pp. 907–10). 142 Ibid., chap. 5 (vol. 2, pp. 917–19). 143 Ibid., chap. 18 (vol. 2, pp. 953–60). Cf. Piso, De India utriusque, book V, chap. 24, p. 323. 140

Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars

181

explanation that this bird indeed exists, but it might be some species of very large and fierce eagle. Schott also argues that the harpies and the phoenix should be deemed fabulous creatures.144 There are few birds from the New World in the Physica curiosa and those mentioned have been taken from Nieremberg’s Historia naturae, like the ‘aura’, the ‘anser magellanicus’, the ‘acolin’ or the ‘ave nivea’.145 It does not seem to be a coincidence that most of the American birds which found their way into the Physica curiosa have a name beginning with the letter ‘a’. It seems that Schott at some point of the book ceased to borrow from Nieremberg. Obviously, these lacunae should be attributed to his method of compilation, which he seems to have used mechanically and without full concern for the contents. For example, he says he will treat neither insects nor crustaceans on the grounds that their inclusion would lengthen the work excessively.146 The work of Gaspar Schott bears a strong affinity with the animal encyclopaedia of John Jonston (whom we shall treat in the next chapter). The problems they confronted and the answers they proposed were very much the same. Both had at their disposal heaps of volumes on the animals of the New World and had to find their way through that labyrinthine literature. Schott probably viewed Nieremberg’s work as akin to his own cast of mind, and great portions of the Historia naturae were incorporated in the Physica curiosa. The Jesuits who engaged in a kind of learning aimed at disclosing the hidden recesses of nature harboured expectations of finding in the animals of the New World things new and marvellous, secreta and occult powers – expectations that were bitterly criticized by the standand-bearers of the sceptical critique. If we compare the works of the European Jesuits with the contemporary products of the Royal Society (see Chapter 6), it becomes clear that Kircher, Schott and their likes were engaged in what with hindsight could be considered as a losing battle. Their compromise between mechanics and occult wisdom was the last stand of a defeated worldview. In the overseas provinces of the Spanish empire the Jesuits would continue to write works which belonged to the genre of ‘natural and moral history’ which Acosta had exploited so successfully. This is the case of Bernabé Cobo (1580–1657), the author of the History of the New World (Historia del Nuevo Mundo), which remained in manuscript form until the late nineteenth century.147 Cobo was a Jesuit who spent almost all his life in Peru, 144

Physica curiosa, book IX, chaps 42, 45 and 61 (vol. 2, pp. 953–60, 1196 and 1243). Ibid., chaps 9, 10, 11 and 12 (vol. 2, pp. 1123–6). Cf. Nieremberg, Historia naturae, book X, chaps 10, 2, 22 and 73, pp. 209, 206–7, 214 and 233. 146 Physica curiosa, book VIII, proemium (vol. 2, p. 897). 147 Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, preliminary study by Francisco Mateos, 2 vols (Madrid, 1956), prologue, p. 4. For a panoramic view of the work and a synthesis of the manuscript tradition see Margarita del Olmo Pintado, ‘La histora natural en la “Historia del nuevo mundo” del P. Cobo’, Revista de Indias 52 (1992): 795–823. 145

182

A New World of Animals

mostly in the college of San Pablo (Lima). His History of the New World was to be divided into three major parts, the first dealing with the nature and qualities of the things the Spaniards found in the New World and the second and third with the social, administrative and ecclesiastical history of the kingdoms of Peru and New Spain, respectively. Only the fourteen books of the first part remain – the natural history – plus three books of the second part dealing with the foundation of the city of Lima. The books devoted to animals in Cobo’s History are quite extensive. He wrote 55 chapters on aquatic animals, 59 chapters on birds and 71 chapters on ‘imperfect’ and ‘perfect’ terrestrial animals. Cobo could have had in mind Oviedo’s model, but manifested neither the former’s enthusiasm for Pliny, nor Acosta’s keen natural philosophical approach. His main virtue is, perhaps, that he offers a reasonably complete inventory of New World creatures. True, the books on animals of the History of the New World are fun to read and full of firsthand information on the fauna of the two major centres of Spanish colonization in America (Peru and Mexico). But the withered conceptual layout of Cobo’s History, its eclecticism and its lack of references to contemporary works reveals it as a quite lifeless cultural product. The genre of the ‘natural and moral histories’ as cultivated by the Jesuits would still flourish in Spanish America until the expulsion of the Society in the 1770s. But these later works were accounts of the local nature and history in each of the lands of mission, no longer the comprehensive histories ‘of the Indies’ intended by Acosta and Cobo.

Chapter 6

New World Animals and the Shifting Conceptions of Natural History During the Middle Ages there was no genre of writing which can properly be called ‘natural history’. Pliny’s Naturalis Historia circulated as fragments or abridgements, and discourse on nature was spread over various sorts of literary genres, such as the Physiologus with its religious overtones, the Aristotelian commentaries written in the universities, the encyclopaedias on the nature of things, the manuals for preachers with stories about animals to enliven the sermons, the herbals, the lapidaries, the treatises on hunting and hawking and others. The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century made possible a new approach to the production of works about the natural world. The Ortus sanitatis, one of the first incunabula, was a herbal with much of a medieval outlook, but also with small woodcuts illustrating the three kingdoms of nature. The publication of the works of the medical botanists Brunfels, Fuchs and Boeck in the course of the sixteenth century proved to be momentous, for it made fully manifest the powerful association of texts and pictures.1 While the transformations of botanical writing came from authors committed to Reform, like those mentioned, the new works on animals originated for the most part in Catholic France and Italy with Belon, Rondelet and Salviani.2 Their works, specialized in a given kind of animal (birds, fish), were richly illustrated with woodcuts which were also printed separately as independent collections with short explanatory commentaries. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Zurich bibliographer and erudite Konrad Gesner wrote a monumental Historia animalium which set the pattern of what could be called the ‘philological’ discourse on animals. About that time the mathematician and physician Girolamo Cardano published his works on natural philosophy. Gesner’s enterprise was of an altogether different kind from Cardano’s; it was a massive encyclopaedia on 1 See William M. Irvins, Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), chaps 2 and 3, and Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘Illustrating nature’, in Marina Franca-Spada and Nick Jardine (eds), Books and the Sciences in History, pp. 90–113. 2 E. W. Gudger, ‘The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century: Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: a chapter in the history of Ichthyology’, Isis 22 (1934): 21–40.

184

A New World of Animals

animals with hundreds of woodcuts and hundreds of pages. A second attempt at this kind of writing was that of the Italian physician and naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi. His work was written and edited posthumously during the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century and was an even more comprehensive survey which engulfed many genres of writing that had evolved during the late Renaissance. The ultimate representative of this tradition was John Jonston, a Scottish physician active in Poland who wrote during the seventeenth century the last of the great encyclopaedias on animals. Working half a century after Aldrovandi, Jonston drew upon the major works on American nature written by Markgraf and Nieremberg. In the first part of this chapter we shall consider how each of these authors dealt with the animals coming from the New World and afterwards discuss the role played by the fauna of America in the programmes about natural history conceived by authors associated with the Royal Society. Natural Philosophy and Philological Quibbles. Cardano vs Julius Caesar Scaliger Girolamo Cardano (1501–76) is an almost archetypal representative of the Italian Renaissance. His adventurous and somewhat roguish life is told in his autobiography, De propria vita, written candidly during the last year of his life.3 He was a distinguished mathematician who contributed to algebra and the theory of chance and probability applied to gambling and a physician of enough European reputation to spend a year in attendance upon the archbishop of Edinburgh. Cardano taught in such prestigious Italian universities as Pavia and Bologna and expounded his natural philosophy in two of his more than 200 works: De subtilitate libri XXI (1550) and De rerum varietate (1557). These contain extensive sections on animals, with particular attention to those of the New World. The comprehensive treatise De subtilitate elicited the polemical answer of the learned Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), who in his Exotericae exercitationes launched a quarrelsome attack on the Italian in genuine humanist fashion. This Scaliger (who was the father of the more famous Joseph Justus Scaliger) lived as a physician and scholar in Agen (France) and became famous for his polemical writings against leading intellectuals of his time, such as Erasmus and Rabelais.4 3 See the biography by Mario Gliozzi in the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Roma, 1976), vol. 19, pp. 758–63. For his dimension as a physicians see Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror (Princeton, NJ, 1997). 4 For Scaliger’s attack on Erasmus see Anthony Grafton, ‘Julius Caesar Scaliger’, in Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas Deutscher (eds), Contemporaries of Erasmus, 3 vols (Toronto, 1987) vol. 3, pp. 212–14.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

185

He was as well versed in natural history as in the classics, having edited the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis and the two botanical works by Theophrastus. More to the point, he was the author of a commentary on Aristotle’s Historia animalium.5 Cardano’s De subtilitate is a vast encyclopaedia of nature, a pyrotechnic display of its author’s multifarious interests, an erudite and recondite work in which mechanical machines and evil spirits intermingle with Aristotelian quotations, medical receipts and animals of the New World.6 Cardano worked on it for sixteen years until its publication in Nuremberg in 1550.7 The twenty-one books of De subtilitate treat the metaphysical and natural philosophical principles, the elements, the heavens, light, stones, plants and animals, the human being (his nature, senses, soul, intellect), ‘useless subtleties’, the sciences, the arts, the miracles, demons, celestial intelligences and God. Cardano defines subtilitas as ‘the reason by which sensible things are perceived by the senses and intelligible things are perceived by the intellect with difficulty’.8 Subtilitas means not only the difficulties that the human mind should overcome order to obtain knowledge of nature, but also the invention of human-made artefacts as a complement to the ‘art’ of nature and the possibility of exploiting the potentialities of nature through what we would today call technology. Scaliger published his Exotericae exercitationes in 1557. The work discusses with tiresome prolixity in 365 sections almost all the observations, theories and explanations put forth by Cardano in De subtilitate. Some of the exercitationes are contained in brief paragraphs; some run through several pages. Scaliger chastises Cardano from the point of view of a pure Aristotelian outraged by the eclecticism of the latter’s natural philosophy.9 But he also talks as the philologist he was, a champion of Ciceronian Latin scandalized by Cardano’s quite nonchalant use of the language. As we shall see, these two polemical strands – that of the Aristotelian and that of the humanist – are manifest in the critique inveighed against Cardano over his treatment of animals of the New World. 5

See Stefano Perfetti, Aristotle’s Zoology and its Renaissance Commentators (1521–1601) (Leuven, 2000), pp. 155–81. 6 For a detailed analysis of Cardano’s natural philosophy see Alfonso Ingegno, Saggio sulla filosofia di Cardano (Firenze, 1980), pp. 209–71 (chap. 6: ‘Verso una nuova filosofia della natura’). 7 It was reprinted several times in the following years and there was a revised second edition (Basel, 1554). 8 The edition used is that in Cardano, Opera omnia (Lugduni, 1663), vol. 3, pp. 353–672, here p. 357 (cited from now on as ‘Opera’). 9 For example, Cardano’s natural philosophy reduced the four Aristotelian elements to three (air, earth and water), leaving fire aside; he also considered only two of the four traditional qualities: hot and moist (cold and dryness were in his view negative modes, privations of the only two real qualities). See Ingegno, Saggio, passim.

186

A New World of Animals

Cardano’s response, his Apologia adversus calumniatorem, was published as an appendix to the 1560 edition of his work (the year in which his older son was executed on the charge of having killed his wife).10 Cardano’s sources of his knowledge on the nature of the New World were Martyr’s Decades, Vespucci and Oviedo, whom he calls the greatest historian of his times. In Cardano’s view, the astonishing diversity of the creatures of the New World was an expression of the intrinsic rationality of nature which should be disclosed by subtilitas, the careful and penetrating inquiry into the secrets of a subtle nature.11 To take an example, among the ‘four-footed serpents’ Cardano mentions and describes the ‘hyuana’, continues with the ‘bardato’ (armadillo) and concludes by saying that in Castilla del Oro there are snakes which reach a length of 20 feet. He claims that nature endowed the many poisonous animals in the Indies with a small amount of venom, for otherwise they would be too dangerous since thanks to their four feet they are able to move freely. Forestalling the objection that American spiders can be as large as birds, he hastens to add that the bigger spiders are the less poisonous ones. That nature aims at a balanced equilibrium is shown by the fact that she does not allow mobile animals, such as birds, to be poisonous.12 The idea of the balance of nature also hovers over Cardano’s long paragraph on the ‘ursus formicarius’. He claims that if an animal such as the ant reproduces itself too much, nature will create another which feeds on the former – in this case, the anteater.13 Many of Scaliger’s criticisms consist of philological corrections, for example, when he substitutes the term ‘higoana’ for ‘hyuana’, which Cardano had taken from Oviedo.14 On occasions, Scaliger just confronts his contender’s account of an animal with a longer one taken from a different author. For instance, Cardano – again using Oviedo as his source – affirms that the chiurca, which carries its young ones with it, belongs to the genus of the weasel.15 Scaliger, following Gesner, prefers the name alopekopithekos for this beast and provides a fuller description of it.16 A few of Scaliger’s reproofs look quite insubstantial, even if 10 For this polemic see Georges Kouskoff, ‘La querelle entre Jérôme Cardano et Jules-César Scaliger: le De subtilitate ad Hieronymum Cardanum’, in J. Cubalier de Beynac and M. Magnien (eds), Acta Scaligeriana (Agen, 1986), pp. 207–20, and Ian Maclean, ‘The interpretation of natural signs: Cardano’s De subtilitate versus Scaliger’s Exercitationes’, in Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 231–52. 11 See Ingegno, Saggio, p. 210. 12 De subtilitate, book IX (Opera, vol. 3, pp. 509–10). 13 Ibid., book X (Opera, vol. 3, p. 537). 14 Exotericarum exercitationes (Paris, 1557), exercitatio 188, number 8, f. 251r. 15 De subtilitate, book X (Opera, vol. 3, p. 531). 16 Exotericarum exercitationes, exercitatio 207, number 10, f. 277v.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

187

judged on their own terms. For example, Cardano affirms that the light produced by the ‘cocoyu’ (cocuyo) does not depend on its ‘vital soul’, because the insect glows even when dead (an inference drawn from Martyr’s report that Indian children in the Indies anointed their faces with a paste made from cocuyos to make them glow). He advances the hypothesis that what causes the reddening of the children’s skin is the heat of the ‘liquor’ contained in the body of the fire beetles.17 Scaliger comes up with nothing better than a pun relating the shining liquor of the bug with the bright ‘liquor’ of Cardano’s pretended wisdom, while at the same time he makes fun of the Italian for proclaiming as something new the obvious fact that the light of the lightworm is extinguished when the insect dies.18 Reading this polemic, one gets the impression that both scholars were dealing more with ‘textual animals’ than with creatures of flesh and bone, for neither of the contenders had seen any of them. Scaliger devotes one of his exercitationes to the tato and at no point hints that this ‘small pig of the Indies’ covered with a shell could be the same as the bardato, recognizably described by Cardano (tato and bardato were different names for the armadillo).19 At times, Scaliger remarks that Cardano has not described a particular animal exhaustively. Or they might be throwing at each other different descriptions of the same animal taken from different authors. But it seems that early modern readers were willing to appreciate Cardano’s attempts at speculating about the curious properties of New World animals and he was recognized as an authority on the subject by later writers such as Aldrovandi and Schott. After his De subtilitate, Cardano wrote a second treatise on natural philosophy, De rerum varietate (Basel, 1557), which he conceived as a complement to his previous work.20 This treatise covers, in Cardano’s own terms, natural things, artificial things (arts) and supernatural things (this section is mostly concerned with divination as the highest form of knowledge).21 The title calls attention to the ‘variety of things’ in the universe, a diversity which would result from the ‘playfulness’ of nature (‘ludus naturae’) and would be subordinated to a higher order of unity. The first part of De rerum varietate is an encyclopaedia of the natural world which deals with the universe, its ‘divine’ parts, mixed bodies, metals, stones, plants and animals. In the seventh book (on animals) Cardano rehearses much of what he had said in De subtilitate about animals of the New 17

De subtilitate, book IX (Opera, vol. 3, p. 514). Exotericarum exercitationes, exercitatio 194, number 3, f. 262r. 19 Ibid., exercitatio 207, number 1, f. 277v. 20 For the different editions see David F. Larder, ‘The editions of Cardanus’ De rerum varietate’, Isis 59 (1968): 74–7. This brief note includes a comparative table of the contents of De subtilitate and De rerum varietate. 21 De rerum varietate, book XVII, chap. 100 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 348). 18

188

A New World of Animals

World, but also adds new information taken from López de Gómara and Pedro Cieza de León. His earlier work was concerned with the animals of the Caribbean islands and Central America described by Oviedo, such as the iguana, the armadillo, the big snakes, insects such as the cocuyo and the nigua, the dumb dogs of Hispaniola, the opossum, the sloth, the anteater, the turkey vulture, the manatee, the shark, the alcatraz and so on. In De rerum varietate Cardano incorporated the Peruvian fauna taken from Cieza like the ‘sheep of Peru’ (llamas), the vicuñas, the alpacas and the guanacos. He believes indeed that all the beasts of the New World share an unusual, bizarre quality, but considers as ‘absurd’ the fabulous beasts of Cumaná described by Peter Martyr.22 The shrill noise produced by the clash between two rattlesnakes prompts him to reflect that ‘that region [the New World] is suitable for such monsters’.23 Foreseeing a sceptical rebuff to his affirmation that the tapir has tusks like an elephant instead of teeth, he hastens to add that the Indies also breed hogs with a navel on their backs and in the island of Margarita it is possible to find pigs with hooves a span in length.24 Cardano explains the differences between animals of the two worlds in terms of the action of the climate. It is the environment that can account for much of the diversity of living beings and the ‘variety of things’. For example, he attributes the absence of grease in the iguana and its lean flesh to the hot air of the Indies, for in Europe animals of this kind are always ‘juicy’.25 Heat and the quality of food are the causes that explain the diversity of colour in the plumage of parrots and also their different sizes.26 Most of the very early books on the discovery of the New World were published in Italy, since many of the main actors of the Atlantic saga were Italians – Columbus to begin with, and also Vespucci, the Cabots and others. Chroniclers such as Martyr and Benzoni were from Milan (Cardano’s home city) and Spanish writers such as Oviedo and Gómara spent their wandering years in Italy. By the middle of the sixteenth century Naples, Sicily, Sardinia and Milan were Spanish territories. Thus Cardano had easy access to the literature on the New World. He was among the first Europeans to incorporate American animals into a system of natural philosophy. The fauna of the New World provided him with striking examples of the ‘variety of things’ for which he strove to account. He considered the diversity of the unusual creatures of the Indies as just another expression of the infinite potentialities of nature. While Acosta tried to answer the questions raised by the new animals within the framework of a basically Aristotelian 22

Ibid., book VII, chap. 31 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 93). Ibid., chap. 29 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 90). 24 Ibid., chap. 33 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 101). 25 Ibid., chap. 29 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 89). 26 Ibid., chap. 36 (Opera, vol. 3, p. 110). 23

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

189

natural philosophy, Cardano explained their properties and qualities in terms of his own philosophical image of the natural world. For these authors, animals of the New World were not only the subject of natural history, a heap of strange species waiting to be described and catalogued, but also a challenge for natural philosophers who dared to tread upon the virgin land. Cardano wrote as a natural philosopher attempting to account for the ‘variety of things’, and animals of the New World were among the most novel and interesting of those things.

Brazilian Birds and the Classics. Belon and L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux Two authors of the French Renaissance, Guillaume Rondelet (1507–66) and Pierre Belon (1517–64), embodied a new specialized approach to the inquiry about animals.27 The former built for himself a reputation on the grounds of his works on fish, whereas the most famous treatise of the latter is on birds, L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux (Paris, 1555). Belon, a physician, was also the author of an illustrated travel book which included the picture of an armadillo seen in a bazaar in Constantinople.28 Belon’s Histoire became a model of its genre and a reference work which was used by Hernández to match some of his Mexican birds with European species (see Chapter 4). But the presence of the birds of the New World in the profusely illustrated History of birds is limited. One of these few instances is the picture of a beak (probably of a toucan) with the legend ‘bill of a bird of the new lands unknown to the ancients’.29 Perhaps the bill was sold to Belon by a sailor, for he complains that those who travel to the New World make a good profit selling this kind of things, which were exhibited in many cabinets des curiosités. Not unsurprisingly, other chapters of the Histoire des oyseaux deal with birds from Brazil, la France antarctique. Belon describes what he calls the Brazilian magpie (‘pie’), warning the reader that this foreign bird, entirely black and with a yellow line below the wings, lacks a French name and was called pie by those who brought it from the New World.30 The bird trade seems to have been 27 See Paul Delaunay, La zoologie au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1997); Jane M. Oppenheimer, ‘Guillaume Rondelet’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 4 (1936): 817–34. But the best account of zoology is still Julius V. Carus, Histoire de la zoologie, trad. P.-O. Hagenmuller (Paris, 1880), pp. 213–42. 28 Observations des plusieurs singularités … en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges (Paris, 1553). In his Latin translation of this work which formed part of Exoticorum libri decem, Clusius included a picture of an armadillo, different from that of Belon (see Chapter 4). 29 Histoire des oyseaux (Paris, 1555), book III, chap. 28, p. 184. 30 Ibid., book VI, chap. 9, p. 292.

190

A New World of Animals

rather active, because Belon claims that he was able to buy the plumage of another bird, the ‘merle de Brésil’, from travellers who offered the skin for sale.31 Its feathers were of a red so pure, says Belon, that it would be impossible to obtain such a marvellous shade of colour artificially. Again, a picture of the bird – obviously a reconstruction – is shown in the book. In another chapter Belon distinguishes between the popinjays and the parrots (‘papegaux et perroquets’) of the New World, which it was not unusual to find in France at that time.32 Pictures of both kinds of bird enhance the brief descriptions. Belon refers to Pliny’s mention of red-collar popinjays in India and states that the natives of Brazil hunted these birds with blunt-tipped arrows to avoid harming them. Belon’s Histoire des oyseaux has a chapter on the ‘coc d’Inde’ (the turkey). He reminds his readers that the ancients already knew this bird, which had been mentioned by Varro, Columella and Pliny. Belon claims that it is very easy to prove that the ‘coc d’Inde’ is the same as the meleagris (the guinea-fowl, which is the bird about which the ancients talked) and ‘those who think that the cock of the Indies was not known by the ancients delude themselves’. The picture accompanying the text – which represents three turkeys – makes plain that Belon mixed things up. But his enthusiasm about the bird having been described by the classics is still significant. He had ended his chapter on the pie de Brésil disappointingly by avowing that ‘the ancients have not known this bird, because it has been brought from Brazil’.33 L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux is studded with quotations from the classics. The species from the New World, which could not possibly be associated with any classical reference, had a slightly disruptive effect upon the established order of feathered creatures.

Animals in a Jungle of Words. Gesner’s Historia animalium Order was what Gesner strove for, an order imposed upon the unwieldy diversity of animals by the logic of representation in words and pictures. An animal was for Gesner a sum of statements – either verbal or pictorial – and he set out to collect as many of them as he could. Konrad Gesner (1516–65) was a Zurich polymath, a philologist, physician and naturalist active during the middle decades of the sixteenth century.34 He studied with Zwingli and at various universities and after 1541 taught at the Carolinum and began the compilation of his universal 31

Ibid., chap. 27, p. 319. Ibid., chap. 12, pp. 296–8. 33 Ibid., book V, chap. 10, pp. 248–9. 34 See Hans Wellisch, ‘Conrad Gessner: a bio-bibliography’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 7 (1975): 151–247. 32

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

191

bibliography while making a living from the practice of medicine. As his fame grew, in 1545 the Fuggers invited him to Augsburg and in their library Gesner read Aelian’s On animals, which stimulated him to write about natural history. Gesner’s scholarly output, which consisted in an edition of mammoth works of erudition, was developed for the most part in his native city. But his linguistic and philological production was enormous. He compiled a Greek–Latin dictionary and wrote a Bibliotheca universalis, a four-volume bibliography of Hebrew, Greek and Latin authors.35 His botanical writings were published posthumously, but he was able to hold in his hands the four volumes of the Historia animalium, published between 1551 and 1558 (a fifth volume was published after his death). He also published a parallel series of three volumes, the Icones animalium, a sort of illustrated animal encyclopaedia which reproduced the pictures of the previous work complemented by short texts (1553, 1555, 1560). Volume four of the Historia animalium was dedicated to the emperor Ferdinand I, who invited Gesner to the session of the imperial diet in Augsburg in 1559 and offered him a position as physician of the imperial court, which the latter declined on the grounds of his Zwinglian faith.36 Gesner’s History of animals is an all-embracing treatment of every kind of information on the subject. Far from limiting himself to providing a description of the animals or to informing about their habits, he sought to incorporate everything that every author everywhere had ever said about a particular beast, bird or fish. Gesner grouped the animals using categories such as quadrupeds, birds or fish, and within each of these large groups listed the animals in alphabetical order. As a rule, each animal is assigned a single chapter. The materials on a given animal are marshalled in sections designated by upper-case letters: (A) names of the animal (in all ancient and modern languages); (B) morphological description, habitat and varieties; (C) vital actions (food, sleep and so on), diseases, mode of generation; (D) affections, mores and intelligence, sympathies and antipathies; (E) uses of the animal; (F) the animal as food; (G) remedies obtained from the animal; (H) philology. This last category, philology, is further subdivided into eight subcategories denoted with lower-case letters. Subcategory ‘a’ discusses names; subcategories ‘b’ through ‘f’ are devoted to the philological aspects (‘grammatica, philologica et poetica’) of each of the categories identified by the corresponding upper-case letters; subcategory ‘h’ treats everything that did not enter into the preceding sections, such as true and fabulous stories, predictions, prodigies, monsters and auguries, sacred things, proverbs and, finally, emblems. 35 A complete reasoned bibliography of Gesner can be studied in Alfredo Serrai, Conrad Gesner, ed. Maria Cochetti (Roma, 1990). 36 Wellisch, ‘Conrad Gessner’, pp. 165–6.

192

A New World of Animals

In turn, subcategory ‘a’ (names) is further subdivided into sections identified by numbers: (1) names; (2) epithets; (3) metaphors; (4) images; (5) plants and rocks named with the name of the animal; (6) names of animals similar or related to that of the animal in question; (7) names of natural things called by the name of the animal under consideration. Although Gesner intended to treat each animal in his encyclopaedia using this complicated apparatus, in most cases many of the categories are lacking. It is easy to see that the philological aspects occupy a considerable portion of the chapters devoted to each animal. For example, the chapter on the horse uses 98 pages to treat categories A through G and reserves 79 pages exclusively for category H (philology); the chapter on the dog ‘in general’ uses 38 pages for the first seven categories and 23 pages for category H. Gesner’s method is in its essence philological and the Historia animalium owes much to the humanist approach to texts. His animals are ‘textual’ in the sense that a given beast is accounted for by the sum of all the texts, ancient and modern, that make reference or allude to it. But the unending compilation of texts is only one of the two elements on which the work is built. The texts are accompanied by pictures. This fundamental element of visual representation, and a non-negligible concern for the empirical data, set Gesner’s Historia animalium apart from the contemporary ‘humanist zoology’, which consisted in editions of and commentaries on Greek works on animals written by scholars such as Gyllius, Giovio, Pomponazzi, Nifo, Scaliger and many others.37 The Historia animalium soon became a standard work.38 What it contains about American animals is much of what European scholars by the middle of the sixteenth century could hope to know about them. Gesner’s acquaintance with the new creatures depended on a limited number of authors (Peter Martyr, Columbus, Cardano) and the live specimens and pictures sent to him by his European correspondents. These bits and pieces of information he included under section B of the chapters on Old World animals, that is, the section dealing with the various regions in which the animals live. Since the different habitats would explain the differences among the various ‘species’ of a given ‘genus’, the animals of the New World are viewed as ‘species’ or ‘varieties’ of those of the Old World on the grounds of their peculiar geographical distribution (a similar approach was used by Hernández and Clusius, among others). If, for example, we examine the 37 See Perfetti, Aristotle’s Zoology, for Renaissance commentators on Aristotle’s works on animals. 38 There was an early German edition of it, a Latin Epitome (Leipzig, 1605) and also Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts, which was practically a translation of Gesner’s work. Edward Topsell (1572–1625) was a clergyman and naturalist who gave Gesner’s materials a characteristic slant related to his religious interests. See idem, The Historie of the Foure-footed Beast (London, 1607) and The Historie of Serpents (1608). We shall use the following edition: K. Gesner, Historia animalium, 4 vols (Zurich, 1551–8), cited as ‘HA’.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

193

volume of the Historia animalium devoted to birds (De avium natura, Zurich, 1555), it is easy to see that Gesner went through his sources with a fine comb, picking up each and every mention of New World birds he was able to find. Afterwards, he included them in the B section of the corresponding chapter of his work (it was Cardano’s De subtilitate which afforded him the most rewarding reports). There are almost no glosses on these excerpts, which are literally reproduced. For example, when he talks about the different ‘genera’ of geese, Gesner says that, according to Columbus and Martyr, in the island of Hispaniola there are geese whiter than swans, except for their red heads.39 In the chapter on the different kinds of picae (a ‘genus’ characterized by large bills, says Gesner), he mentions the alcatraz and the picutus (toucan) taken from Cardano.40 As was the case with Clusius, it was Gesner’s extensive network of epistolary communication which provided him with really interesting materials, which are usually attached as supplements to the main text. In the appendix to the second volume of the Historia animalium (Zurich, 1554) we find an article devoted to the ‘small rabbit or small pig of the Indies’ (guinea pig) with a picture drawn from a live specimen which Gesner had received from a friend in Paris. Dr Heinrich Munzinger, physician of the Fugger family, also sent him two pig-conies of the Indies (one male and one female) which Gesner fed with herbs and juicy fruits. This account is followed by a chapter on the armadillo or ‘tatu’, based upon a drawing and a shell sent to Gesner by an apothecary in Ulm. Gesner compares the picture of the cloven-hoofed armadillo which illustrates Belon’s book with his own, which purports to show an animal with five toes.41 In the paralipomena to the volume on birds of the Historia animalium, Gesner mentions the ‘duck of the Indies’ (anas Indiae) whose picture, accompanied by a description, was sent to him by Dr Caius. Gesner identifies it with the large ducks Columbus said inhabited the island of Hispaniola.42 The pictorial dimension of the Historia animalium has a life of its own. In the volume about viviparous quadrupeds there is a short chapter on the simivulpa or simia vulpina with a picture showing a sort of bitch with a foxy snout, five-toed hands and feet and big mammary glands with two sucking puppies and no trace of a pouch. The image, which Gesner says was copied from a map, purports to illustrate an opossum (it could have been taken from Waldsemüller’s Carta 39

HA, vol. 3, p. 157. Ibid., pp. 684–5. 41 Ibid., vol. 2, appendix, pp. 19–20. Gesner was right; armadillos have five toes. 42 In Caius’s De rariorum animalium historia libellum there is a short chapter on the ‘anas Indica’ with a detailed description of the bird. HA, vol. 3, p. 767. The picture was reproduced in Gesner’s Icones avium (Zurich, 1555), p. 73. Cf. John Caius, ‘De rariorum animalium historia libellus’, in The Works of John Caius, M.D., ed. E. S. Roberts (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 48–9. 40

194

A New World of Animals

marina of 1516).43 Gesner’s name for this beast, ‘vulpine ape’, suggested a dual nature, a hint developed by Kircher who, as we discussed in the previous chapter, considered it as the result of the interbreeding between a fox and an ape. The volume on fish of the Historia (Zurich, 1558) has two short articles on the reversus. The first repeats Peter Martyr’s report about the guaicano or ‘Indian fish’ according to which this eel-like fish has upon its head a very tough membrane in the form of a pocket which it throws upon its prey. This membrane becomes attached so firmly to the turtle or manatee that it is necessary to exert great force to separate them. The small woodcut accompanying the text shows a creature much like an eel with the narrow end of a pear-like bag stemming from its head while the inflated balloon flattens upon the head of what purports to be a manatee. This picture had been taken from a map.44 The second article is said to be another ‘Indian fish’ of the same nature as the former but of a different form. This time Gesner drew upon Rondelet’s description of the reversus, which said that its back was covered by rough scales with very sharp spines. This account – the original source of which was Oviedo – depicts a very different creature from that described by Martyr.45 As a result of his use of two sources which conveyed different interpretations of the same animal, Gesner described two kinds of reversus, the eel-like fish from Peter Martyr and the ‘spiky’ one from Oviedo via Rondelet. This distinction would be repeated (and amplified) by Aldrovandi. Considering that Gesner published his book about sixty years after the discovery of America, the presence of the fauna of the New World in the Historia animalium seems quite poor. More rewarding in this respect are his Icones animalium, a sort of pictorial handbook based on the woodcuts used for the Historia.46 In the second edition of the volume of the Icones devoted to viviparous quadrupeds (Zurich, 1660) some of the most characteristic South American animals entered the Gesnerian menagerie. For example, after treating the camelopardus (giraffe), Gesner refers to the allocamelus mentioned by Scaliger which he identifies with an animal represented on a printed sheet with an explanatory legend saying that the beast, called ‘ovis indica e Piro’ [sic], had been seen in Middelburg (Zeeland) on 19 December 1558. This ‘Indian sheep of Peru’ had been brought from the New World by a certain Theodoric of Neus, a citizen 43

HA, vol. 1, p. 982. Cf. George, Animals and Maps, p. 63. Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 483–4. Cf. Martyr, Decade I, book 3, chap. 5 (ed. Eatough, p. 65). In the Nomenclator aquatilium animantium (Zurich, 1560), p. 92, the picture has the caption ‘Figura hae desumpta est ex tabula descriptionis Orbis Terrarum’. 45 HA, vol. 4, p. 484. Cf. G. Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis (Paris, 1554), book 15, chap. 17, p. 435 and Oviedo, Summary, chap. 8 (ed. Stoudemire, p. 22). 46 The works were the Icones animalium quadrupedum viviparorum et oviparorum (1553), Icones avium omnium (1555) and the Nomenclator aquatilium animantium (1560). 44

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

195

6.1 ‘Indian sheep from Peru’ in Gesner’s Icones animalium quadrupedum viviparorum (Zurich, 1660, 2nd edn). This drawing was copied from a single sheet which said that the beast, brought from the New World to be presented to the emperor, had been seen in Middelburg (Low Countries).

of Cologne, and presented to the emperor. Gesner called it ‘sheep’ not because it resembled a sheep, but because, despite its size, it was very tame47 (see Figure 6.1). Another apothecary had sent Gesner from Antwerp a picture of the sagoin (marmoset), which the naturalist considered a species of the cercopithecoi (tailed monkeys). The sender said that the animal, brought from Brazil, was very lively, with a very soft skin, and ate dried raisins and white bread. He assumed that it was the result of crossing a monkey and a weasel, which Gesner perhaps thought plausible since he called the charming creature galeopithecus, which means ‘weasel-like monkey’. What comes next in Gesner’s section on cercopithecoi is an old friend, Thevet’s haüt or haüti (the sloth). After reproducing the original account of the Singularités, Gesner indulges once more in his taste for Greek neologisms and calls this particular one arctopithecus, that is, ‘bear-like monkey’.48 The next representative of the American fauna in the Icones is the ‘tatus quadrupes peregina’, a nine-banded armadillo which Gesner assimilates to the aiotochtli mentioned by Cardano. The parade of American quadrupeds is closed by another well-known beast, the su mentioned by Thevet. Gesner offers the reader the account and the picture of the animal taken from the Singularités 47 48

Gesner, Icones animalium quadrupedum, pp. 42–3. Ibid., p. 96.

196

A New World of Animals

without making any reference to the simivulpa of his Historia animalium, which perhaps he considered as a different beast.49 The second edition of the Icones (1560) followed that of Thevet’s Singularités (1557), which accounts for the inclusion of the animals mentioned by the French Cordelier in Gesner’s work. It is evident that the latter was alert to any novelty in the field and avidly incorporated them in his works, which were constantly revised and enriched with pictures and news sent by correspondents. All the American animals of the Icones in turn found their way into the posthumous edition of the Historia animalium (Frankfurt, 1603) albeit with some taxonomic reshuffling. The chapter ‘De simiis diversis’ includes the galeopithecus or sagoin, the arctopithecus (Thevet’s haüt) and, finally, the simivulpa and Thevet’s su, which, although considered as different species, were finally brought together (actually, both are interpretations of the opossum).50 This grouping resulted in the marmoset, the sloth and the opossum being considered as particular kinds of apes. Situated at the crossroads of continental Europe, Gesner functioned as a clearing house for the circulation of specimens, pictures and descriptions of animals. The publication of his Historia animalium turned him into the praeceptor Europae in everything related to animals during the second half of the sixteenth century. It would seem that anybody who in the German-speaking lands and the Netherlands thought that he had stumbled upon some new animal communicated with Gesner. The number of New World animals included in his works increased with each new edition. He added more and more of them as he received reports or pictures from his correspondents and had access to new works. The extracts about animals of the New World taken from other authors and scattered in the Historia are less impressive than the woodcuts, with their images obtained from physicians, apothecaries, collectors and scholars. The visual representation of the new animals was, at least for the non-specialized reader, more telling than a thousand words. And the heart of the matter is that Gesner could not add too many words to his pictures of new animals, for they had not been discussed in the works of the ancients and even lacked a Greek name – a deficit Gesner took pains to compensate. A rough estimate of the balance between space devoted to the printed word and that occupied by the pictures in the Historia animalium shows that in the case of Old World animals the text is far more important than the images, while when it comes to New World animals, what matters are the pictures. American animals entered Gesner’s encyclopaedia in the first place not as written but as visual statements. 49 50

Ibid., pp. 104 and 127. Gesner, Historia animalium (Frankfurt, 1603), vols 1 and 2, pp. 869–71.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

197

New World Animals Play a Role in the Theatre of Nature. Aldrovandi and his Historia animalium Gesner’s Historia animalium is usually associated with Aldrovandi’s analogous and slightly later encyclopaedia on animals. In a certain sense, Aldrovandi is Gesner carried to an extreme. But there is a scenic slant, a characteristic Baroque atmosphere in the work of the Italian naturalist which distinguishes it from Gesner’s. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was born in Bologna to a noble family.51 As a youth, he travelled through France and Spain and studied in Padua and Bologna. Upon graduation, he taught various subjects at the Bolognese studium, where he was nominated professor of medical botany. His chair and his position as director of the botanical garden he created allowed him to teach what amounted to ‘natural history’, for his approach to the subject clearly surpassed the exposition of the medical uses of plants. Aldrovandi’s museum of natural objects and curiosities was one of the largest of his time, holding thousands of paintings, blocks for woodcuts, specimens, a huge herbal and samples of minerals. He thought of it as a teatro di natura, a representation of the whole natural world in a small cabinet, the scale reproduction in an enclosed microcosm of the real macrocosm. Pictures were among the most important items of the museum, painted by artists hired for the purpose. This ‘Theater of nature’ held 8,000 tempera illustrations, 11,000 animals, fruits and minerals, 7,000 dried plants and had fourteen cupboards with the woodcuts Aldrovandi used to illustrate his works.52 His encyclopaedia on animals, plants, minerals and monsters was a duplicate in words and pictures of this collection, something like the image of an image of nature. Three of the works on animals were written by him: the three volumes of the Ornithologia (Bologna, 1599, 1600, 1603), De animalibus insectis (1602) and, perhaps, De reliquis animalibus exanguis edited posthumously in 1606. The rest of the work was edited by his disciple Cornelius Uterverius and upon his death, by Bartolomeo Ambrosino.53 51 These biographical data were taken from the biography by G. Montalenti in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 118–24. Cf. also the brief biography by Carlo Castellani in the DSB. 52 Giuseppe Olmi, ‘Science–Honour–Metaphor: Italian Cabinets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Impey and MacGregor (eds), The Origins of Museums, pp. 5–16. For Aldrovandi’s museum see Maria Cristina Tagliaferri, Stefano Tommasini and Sandra Tugnoli Pataro, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi als Sammler. Das Sammeln als Gelehrsamkeit oder als Methode wissenschaftlichen Forschens?’, in Andreas Grote (ed.), Macrocosmo in microcosmo, pp. 265–81. 53 There are some excellent studies on Aldrovandi. See for example Giuseppe Olmi, Ulisse Aldrovandi. Scienza e natura nel secondo Cinquecento (Trento, 1972); idem, ‘Osservazioni e raffigurazioni della natura in Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605)’, Annali dell’Istituto Germanico in Trento 3 (1977): 105–81; Sandra Tugnoli Pataro, Metodo e sistema delle scienze nel pensiero di Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna, 1981).

198

A New World of Animals

Much like Gesner’s, Aldrovandi’s accounts of animals are a treasure of abstracts, quotations and paraphrases gleaned from the whole universe of learning. This mass of materials is conveniently ordered in several categories, very much like those used by the Swiss scholar. Aldrovandi’s natural history has been characterized as ‘emblematic’. Whole genres of Renaissance scholarship, such as hieroglyphics, ancient numismatics, classical mythology, gnomic literature and emblems, are layered upon each other, swallowed into the deep recesses of his folio volumes.54 As a result, each animal becomes a sort of motif around which a complex net of textual and visual associations is interwoven. Aldrovandi was particularly interested in the natural history of the Indies. The works written by Vespucci, Oviedo and Monardes were ranged in the shelves of his library.55 He had an underlined copy – which he read in its totality – of the Italian version of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History.56 When he got wind of a manuscript in Spain with pictures of plants from the Indies (Hernández’s manuscript, in fact), he wrote to Francesco I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, asking him to instruct his ambassador in Spain to have the pictures copied.57 And when he heard that a Neapolitan physician (Recchi) had made an abstract of the work, he immediately corresponded with the lincei Giambattista della Porta and Fabio Colonna to obtain a copy of it.58 In a manuscript entitled ‘Discorso naturale’ written when he was forty-seven years old, Aldrovandi proclaims that for nineteen years he has felt an ardent desire to visit the Indies and, like a new Columbus, discover their natural riches, animals and plants which, because of the climate, would be entirely different from anything in Europe.59 He even complains of the lack of attention to natural history paid by the historians who wrote on the Indies, such as Oviedo and Gómara – indeed a surprising statement when applied to Oviedo. Moreover, Aldrovandi envisages a large expedition to survey the natural world of the Indies, with scribes, painters and scholars led and inspired by him. This, he goes on, would afford new pleasant knowledge and would also allow the disclosure of ‘segreti di natura’, which the Medici could put 54 For the list of categories used by Aldrovandi see Ashworth, ‘Natural History’, pp. 307–14. It was Ashworth who characterized this kind of natural history as ‘emblematic’. 55 Mario Cermenati, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi e l’America’, Annali di Botanica 4, fasc. 4 (1906), pp. 313–66, here pp. 339–41. 56 Giuseppe Olmi, ‘“Magnus campus”: i naturalisti italiani di fronte all’America nel secolo XVI’, in idem, L’inventario del mondo. Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 1992), pp. 211–52, here p. 227. 57 Letter dated 1 April 1586. See Oreste Mattirolo, ‘Le lettere di Ulisse Aldrovandi a Francesco I e Ferdinando I Granduchi di Toscana e a Francesco II Duca di Urbino’, in Memorie della Reale Academia di Torino, 2nd series, 54 (1904): 355–401, here p. 359. 58 Cermenati, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi’, pp. 349–50. 59 ‘Cose totalmente diverse, siano animali e piante, o altre cosa da quelle che nascono in Europa’. Quoted in Cermenati, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi’, p. 361.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

199

to profitable use. The theme of an inextricable connection between the discovery of the secrets of nature and the reaping of an ensuing profit had been adduced in Philip II’s instructions for the Hernández expedition and was mentioned again in Aldrovandi’s appeal to the Grand Duke. Traces of an active exchange of pictures of animals from the Indies between Aldrovandi and Francesco I de’ Medici were left in their correspondence. The Grand Duke had an important cabinet or studiolo, created during the 1570s, which held many artistic objects from the New World.60 For example, in one of the letters Aldrovandi expresses his gratitude for a picture of ‘serpi et uccelli Indiani’ received from the magnate. In another letter he apologizes because he has not been able to send him a picture of the reverso fish of the Indies. At one point of their learned intercourse, the Bolognese physician informs the Grand Duke that he had his painter make a picture of a live ‘porco Indiano’ which had an orifice on its back for urinating, something he deemed ‘mostrifico’.61 Here and there in the pages of the Ornithologia devoted to Old World birds, we find brief references to birds of the Indies taken from the works of Martyr, Oviedo and Acosta. For example, in the chapter on parrots Aldrovandi seizes the opportunity to proudly announce that his museum – which he explicitly characterizes as ‘a microcosm or a Theatre of Nature’ – holds an image made of feathers of tominei (hummingbird) representing St Jerome’s adoration of the Saviour. This precious image had been sent by the Cardinal of Burgos to Cardinal Paleotti, who in turn gave it to the Bolognese naturalist.62 Aldrovandi then expatiates upon the use of feathers by the Indians and mentions the ‘opera plumaria’ which Montezuma presented to Cortéz, among other jewels of his treasure.63 In the chapter on the onocrotalus or pelican, we find the transcription of Martyr’s description of the alcatraz, followed by extracts from Oppian, Aristotle, Belon and Pliny.64 But the Ornithologia also has a few chapters devoted exclusively to New World birds. The account about the toucan is illustrated by two drawings, one representing the bill he held in his museum and the other a reproduction of Thevet’s picture. Aldrovandi renames this bird as 60

Olmi, ‘Science–Honour–Metaphor’, p. 10. For the presence of South American objects in the Medici collections see Detlef Heikamp, ‘American Objects in Italian Collections of the Renaissance and Baroque: A Survey’, in Chiappelli et al. (eds), First Images, vol. 1, pp. 455–82. 61 Letters from 1 December 1580, 19 September 1577 and 11 June 1585. See Mattirolo, ‘Lettere di Ulisse Aldrovandi’, pp. 368, 364 and 372. 62 Ornithologia, 3 vols (Bologna, 1599), book IX, chap. 11 (vol. 1, pp. 655–6). 63 For the importance of featherworks in cabinets of curiosities see Christian Feest, ‘Mexico and South America in the European Wunderkammer’, in Impey and MacGregor (eds), Origins of Museums, pp. 237–44. 64 Ornithologia, book XIX, chap. 2 (vol. 3, pp. 53–4).

200

A New World of Animals

ramphastos and puts it under the ‘genus’ of birds with cloven feet (‘fissipedi’).65 There is also a chapter on the ‘merula Bressilica’ described by Belon in which Aldrovandi endorses the doubts raised by his colleague about the property of classifying this bird as a merula (blackbird). The text is accompanied by a woodcut with an image of the bird on which Aldrovandi comments, calling the reader’s attention to the discrepancies between this picture and Belon’s ‘mutilated’ and, in his view, somewhat inconsistent description.66 The turkey also features in the Ornithologia. Aldrovandi calls it ‘gallopavo’ or ‘pavo Indicus’ (peacock of the Indies). Although he admits that it resembles more a chicken than a pavus (peacock), he deals with it in the book devoted to the genus ‘pavus’ on the grounds that, just like the peacock, the ‘pavus Indicus’ unfolds its tail. (Gesner had followed the alternative solution assigning the ‘gallipavus’ – turkey – to the genus ‘gallinaceus’.) Two pictures illustrate Aldrovandi’s text, one of a ‘gallopavo’ and another representing the ‘gallina Indica’, the female of the species.67 As can be seen, Aldrovandi quibbles over issues like questions of classification, the degree of accuracy of the descriptions due to other authors and the names of animals (we have seen that his introduction of the term ramphastos for the toucan was an excuse for a discussion about the name of the species in the catalogue of Kircher’s museum). His writing has an argumentative, in cases even a mildly querulous, character. Other New World birds are introduced in the Ornithologia as clusters of pictures, which he received from correspondents or were taken from Gesner. In the book on the chicken there is a chapter about ‘peregrine chickens’. A bizarre ‘Indian eared three-toed cock’ opens this parade. This bird is represented as a sort of monstrous and grotesque peacock, with a parrot-like beak, feathered ears, two combs, two tails and three toes on each foot. (The picture had been sent to Aldrovandi by the marchese Cesare Fachinetti.) Then come pictures of a ‘gallus Indicus’ (actually, a curassow) and three ‘gallinae Indicae’, all sent to him by Francesco I.68 In the book on ducks, Aldrovandi reproduced Gesner’s four pictures of ducks of the Indies.69 The five books on fish and the single one on cetaceans were edited by 65

Ibid., book XII, chap. 19 (vol. 1, pp. 801–3). Ibid., book XVI, chap. 16 (vol. 2, p. 628–9). 67 Ibid., book XIII, chap. 4 (vol. 2, pp. 35–45). 68 Ibid., book XIV, chaps 9–12 (vol. 2, pp. 330–35). One of them is called a ‘gallina Numidica’. There is an English translation of the whole book: Aldrovandi on chickens. The Ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), vol. II, book XIV, translated from the Latin with introd., contents and notes by L. Lind (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963). The section we discuss is on pp. 383–93. 69 Ornithologia, book XIX, chap. 26 (vol. 3, pp. 192–6). Aldrovandi says that he took these pictures from Gesner’s ‘Epitome’, meaning the Icones avium. 66

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

201

Uterverius (Bologne, 1613). The work devotes two chapters to the fish reversus of which Aldrovandi, following Gesner, describes two ‘kinds’. The first is the guaicano, which has the form of an eel and lives in the sea surrounding the island of Hispaniola (this ‘kind’ derives from Peter Martyr’s description) and the other is the ‘scaly’ or squamosus, covered with scales bearing long spines, particularly over the back and on the belly (this ‘kind’ derives from Oviedo’s description).70 Gesner had assumed that there were two kinds of fish and Aldrovandi confused things even more for, besides Gesner’s woodcut of the eel-like reversus, he included a second picture of what supposedly was the reversus squamosus, that is, the ‘spiky’ fish.71 He also modified the picture of the eel-like reversus taken from Gesner by altering the form of the fish, which here looks more like a huge sea serpent with a curved pointed beak (see Figure 6.2). The second picture, the one of the ‘spiky’ reversus, had been sent to Aldrovandi by Tommaso Cavalieri, a

6.2 Reversus Indicus anguilliformis (‘eel-like’ reversus) in Aldrovandi, De piscibus (Bologne, 1613), taken from Gesner. Aldrovandi’s draughtsman modified the original picture and transformed the relatively small sucking-fish (remora) into a sea monster. The ‘bag’ stemming from its head is a graphic interpretation of one of the original textual descriptions and purports to account for the way in which the sucking-fish attaches itself to its prey (in this case a manatee). 70 De piscibus libri quinque et de cetus liber unus … J. Uterverius collegit et H. Tamburinus in lucem edidit (Bononiae, 1619), book III, chap. 15, pp. 299–301 (reversus indicus) and chap. 29, pp. 367–8 (reversus squamosus). 71 The reversus is the remora or echeneis. The fish with spiky scales has been identified as the swell fish, Diodon, which when its belly is inflated with air floats belly up on the surface. See Gudger, ‘On the use of the sucking-fish’.

202

A New World of Animals

6.3 Reversus Indicus squamosus (‘spiky’ reversus) in the same work. Gesner interpreted two different textual accounts as two ‘species’ of the sucking-fish (remora, reversus). Aldrovandi went further and provided a supposed image of the second ‘species’, taken from a specimen sent to him by a fellow collector (of course, not of a remora).

Bolognese who had a cabinet of natural curiosities with many items from the Indies. It has been remarked that Aldrovandi’s artist also manipulated the picture, exaggerating the size of the fish with the result that its image occupies the whole folio page72 (see Figure 6.3). Working by the end of the sixteenth century, Aldrovandi had access to a wider range of sources on New World animals than those available to Gesner, but for all his keen interest in the natural history of the Indies, one has to plough through hundreds of pages of his encyclopaedia to find one of them. As has already been remarked, the new animals did not square with the kind of discourse congenial to late Renaissance naturalists.73 Devoid of all the erudite and classical associations 72

Olmi, ‘Magnus campus’, pp. 238–40. See also Gudger, ‘On the use of the sucking-fish’, p. 305. It is worth noting that in the third book on fish Aldrovandi’s editor included a chapter on the remora with a picture of the fish from the famous Neapolitan naturalist and collector Ferrante Imperato. De piscibus, book III, chap. 22, pp. 335–40, picture on p. 336. 73 See Ashworth, ‘Natural History’.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

203

which occupy the cumbrous volumes of these encyclopaedias, these parvenus of the animal kingdom were relegated to the paragraphs dedicated to the ‘varieties’ of a given genus or incorporated as a separate group in appendices. Pictures were an essential element in this kind of work. As his correspondence shows, Aldrovandi longed for a copy of Hernández’s pictures. He made great efforts to obtain drawings of animals from the Indies and reproduced in his books as many as he was able to obtain. The study of this kind of literature opens a window into the active interchange of specimens and illustrations of New World animals which took place among scholars, potentates and collectors in Italy.74 Diplomatic and church connections seem to have played an important role here, since many of the negotiations geared to obtain pictures and live or dead specimens were channelled through the multitude of political and ecclesiastical connections between Italy and Spain.75

The ‘Who’s Who’ of Seventeenth-Century Natural History. John Jonston and his Encyclopaedia on Animals The animal encyclopaedia due to John Jonston (or Johnstone), edited between 1650 and 1653, brought to a close the tradition embodied in the works of Gesner and Aldrovandi. By the time the handsome volumes of this overripe compilation came out of the press, the approach to the study of animals was undergoing significant changes. Soon the works of Ray and Willughby would recast the way of writing about animals, setting in the foreground the question of classification and dismissing for good the humanistic approach based on the collection and collation of texts. John Jonston (1603–75) was born in Poland to a family of Scottish origin.76 Being a Calvinist, he could not attend the university of Cracow and studied philosophy and theology at St Andrews, and medicine at London, Cambridge and Leiden while serving as a tutor of Polish nobles. After much travelling through Europe, he settled in Laszlo and wrote several works on medicine, the natural sciences and philosophy. He spent the last years of his life in Ziebendorff, in the region of Liegnitz (duchy of Silesia), where a sophisticated culture flourished at that time as a compromise between Counter-Reformation 74 This has been extensively documented and studied in Olmi, L’inventario del mondo and in Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature. See those works for further references. 75 See Giovanni Battista Marini Bettolo, La collaborazione scientifica tra Italia e Spagna per la cognoscenza delle risorse naturali del Nuovo Mondo (Naples, 1993). 76 Tadeusz Bilikiewicz-Krakau, ‘Johann Jonston (1603–1675) und seine Tätigkeit als Arzt’, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 23 (1930): 357–81. This paper includes a bibliography of Jonston’s works on medicine (pp. 364–6). See also the article ‘John Johnstone’ in the Dictionary of National Biography.

204

A New World of Animals

and a survival of Lutheranism and Calvinism.77 Jonston received offers to occupy chairs in prestigious universities, but he chose to lead a private life. One of his works, Thaumatographia naturalis, in decem classes distincta (Amsterdam, 1632), was translated into English as A History of the Wonderful Things of Nature (London, 1657) and went through several editions. Perhaps Jonston’s unsettled and independent life bears some relation to his eclectic cast of mind and the idiosyncrasies of his work; perhaps the cultural atmosphere in which he wrote fostered this peculiar mixture of erudition and interest in marvels which we have already discussed when dealing with Gaspar Schott’s Physica curiosa. But unlike the Jesuit’s rather unattractive quartos and humble woodcuts, Jonston’s folios are visually impressive. The Historia naturalis is illustrated with beautiful full-page copper engravings attributed to Merian (the father of Maria Sybilla). By the middle of the seventeenth century the techniques of visual representation had acquired a considerable sophistication and the images in illustrated books were able to transmit a recognizable sense of ‘realism’.78 The vivid persuasiveness of the several species of unicorns which graze dreamily in the engravings of Jonston’s Historia naturalis still awakes a faint feeling of eeriness. We may now look at the volume of this animal encyclopaedia devoted to quadrupeds. The text is a compilation basically structured upon the materials of Nieremberg’s Historia naturae and Markgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasilae. The eighty copper plates are also for the most part inspired by pictures taken from the sources (see Figure 6.4). Jonston’s original contribution lies in his organization of the treatise in a series of divisions and subdivisions hierarchically arranged: book, title, chapter, article and points within an article. This layout expressed his view on the classification of animals. The four books correspond, respectively, to the solidipeda, bisulca, digitata vivipara and digitata ovipara (the same arrangement used by Schott). There is an appendix on animals which could not be fitted into any taxonomic category. The classification proceeds dichotomically. For example, the bisulca are divided into ruminantia and non-ruminantia and the former into ruminantia with horns and without horns. The digitata vivipara are divided into terrestrial and aquatic and the digitata ovipara into those covered by a shell and those without a shell. When describing each animal, Jonston follows for the most part the order of exposition advanced in the preface of the book, addressing the name, parts, place of living, nutrition, growth, generation, life, animal actions, use and ‘differences’ (differentiae, varieties of each animal).79 Adopting a strategy already employed by Gesner and Aldrovandi, he treats the 77

Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 298–304. Irvins, Prints, pp. 71–92. 79 Jonston, Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri (Amsterdam, 1657), preface, pp. 4–6. Cited as De quadrupedibus. 78

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

205

6.4 Engraving in Johannes Jonston’s Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri (Amsterdam, 1657). We see two species of tamandua (lesser and giant anteater) copied from Markgraf, a drawing of the ignavus (sloth) taken from Clusius’s Exotica and an armadillo (Clusius’s first ‘genus’ of tatou), also reproduced in Nieremberg’s work (see Figure 5.3, middle).

206

A New World of Animals

New World animals as ‘varieties’ of Old World kinds. Only rarely do they enjoy the privilege of being considered as ‘species’ in their own right, as is the case with the sloth, the armadillo and the lizards of the Indies.80 For example, in the article about the animals related to the fox, Jonston includes the carigueja and the tajibi, the two anteaters described by Markgraf (tamandua-guaçu and tamandua-i) and the coati.81 Why did Jonston feel entitled to consider all these different animals as associated to the fox (the article is called ‘De quibusdam vulpi congeneribus’)? Because Markgraf had claimed that each of them was ‘like a fox’. According to the Dutch naturalist, the carygueja (weasel) has ‘a foxy head’, and so does the tai-ibi (tajibi); the coati is said to be a fox the size of a cat, the tamandua-i is the size of a small fox and its flesh smells like that of a fox.82 Briefly, what Jonston has done is to go through the descriptions of the animals and then group into a single category all those that were said to be related to the fox. Jonston’s chapter on the cercophitecoi is another example of this ‘cut-andpaste’ method, although in this case the problem becomes more complicated. He opens the text about the differentiae of the cercopithecoi with Nieremberg’s account of the habits of the cercopithecus and then proceeds to enumerate several kinds of this animal: bearded (‘barbatus’), ‘walking on two legs’ (‘erectus’), leonine (‘leoninus’), musky (‘moschatus’) and ambiguous (‘ambiguus’) – not all of them are American animals.83 Among the ‘bearded’ cercopithecoi Jonston describes the guariba (a howler monkey) and the exquima (an African animal), in both cases following Markgraf. The cercopithecus ‘erectus’ is said to have been described by Gesner and would not be an American animal. Among the ‘lionlike’ cercopithecoi Jonston quotes Markgraf’s accounts of the cagui major and cagui minor and adds the sagovin, which he takes from Nieremberg, who had described this monkey as having ‘a lion-like form’ (all these are marmosets).84 Jonston’s musky cercopithecus is Markgraf’s caitaia (a capuchin monkey). Finally, the Historia de quadrupedibus describes three ‘ambiguous’ cercopithecoi; two of them are not American species, and the third is the cay, first 80

This occurs with the sloth (ignavus), the ‘tato seu echinus Brasilianus’ and the different kinds of lizards of the Indies. Jonston, De quadrupedibus, book III, title 2, chaps 5 and 21, pp. 101 and 120–21, and book IV, title 1, chap. 2, article 3, points 1 through 3, pp. 135–7. 81 Ibid., book III, title 2, chap. 1, article 3, points 1 and 2, pp. 94–5. Cf. Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chaps 2, 4, and 6, pp. 222, 225–6 and 228. 82 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chaps 2 and 4, pp. 223–8. 83 Jonston, De quadrupedibus, book II, title 2, chap. 3, pp. 97–9. 84 Cf. Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chap. 5, pp. 226–7 and Nieremberg’s Historia naturae, book IX, chap. 44, p. 179. Nieremberg refers the reader to Gesner’s Nomenclator, where it is said that this beast is called sagoin or galeopithecus and considered as a cross between a monkey and a weasel (which Nieremberg rejects).

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

207

mentioned by Léry.85 In conclusion, Jonston supplemented Markgraf’s material on the cercopithecoi with Nieremberg’s sagovin and Léry’s cay and distributed all the monkeys in the pigeon-holes of his taxonomic scheme. The illustrations of the cercopithecoi are also worth looking at. In the plate Jonston reproduces Markgraf’s picture of the cagui (major) and another picture of a monkey standing on four legs, with five toes on hands and feet, a big striped tail and a ridiculously small head with bundles of hair coming out of each side, with the caption ‘caitaia’. This second picture was actually a copy of Markgraf’s cagui minor (a marmoset). What probably explains Jonston’s misinterpretation is that in the Historia naturalis Brasiliae the picture of the cagui minor is next to the paragraph on the caitaia, so that it was easy to mix up things (pictures in Markgraf’s Historia lack captions).86 That one of Jonston’s preoccupations was to pin down each and every animal into some of the taxonomic categories constituting the scaffolding of the book is confirmed by the addition of an appendix with various animals he could not situate under any ‘genus’ (almost all of them taken from Nieremberg). Jonston listed here, among others, the cappa and the ejaculatore (originally described by Peter Martyr in his account of the monsters of Chiribichi) and also the su or succarah, mentioned and depicted by Thevet.87 After more than a century, the accounts of these early chroniclers were still being quoted literally. In Jonston’s Historia naturalis, fish and birds of the New World are not considered as ‘varieties’ (differentiae) of Old World taxa but are treated as a whole in separate books. The Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri quinque (Amsterdam, 1657) devotes its fourth book to exotic fish (those of the New World are taken either from Markgraf or from Nieremberg).88 Also, book VI of Jonston’s Historiae naturalis de avibus libri sex (Amsterdam, 1657) is about exotic birds and, again, New World birds are for the most part taken from Nieremberg and Markgraf.89 Jonston probably found that the easiest way to deal 85 Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chap. 5, p. 227. The non-American kinds are the ‘macacquo’ of the Congo and a monkey from Guinea, both taken from Markgraf. 86 Ibid., pp. 226–8. Cf. Lichtenstein, ‘Die Werke von Markgrave und Piso’ (Berlin, 1818), pp. 201–222, here pp. 210–13. 87 Jonston, De quadrupedibus, appendix, chaps 2 and 3, pp. 149–50. Cf. Nieremberg, Historia naturae, book IX, chaps 71, 72 and 74, pp. 187–9. 88 Jonston, Historia naturalis de piscibus (Amsterdam, 1657), book IV, pp. 123–49. The book is divided into three titles, the first of which consist of the transcriptions of the several chapters of book IV of Markgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae. Many of the fish enumerated in title 3 of book IV are taken from book XI (on fish) of Nieremberg’s Historia naturae. 89 Jonston, Historia naturalis de avibus (Amsterdam, 1657), book VI, pp. 117–511. The accounts of birds under the first two titles of this book (on terrestrial and aquatic exotic birds) are basically copied from Nieremberg; the third title, with fifteen chapters and five plates, is called ‘On exotic birds of Brazil from Georg Markgraf’.

208

A New World of Animals

with the multitude of new fish and birds was simply to transcribe the corresponding sections from Nieremberg and Markgraf, including them as independent books of his work. In his Historia animalium Gesner dealt with American animals on the basis of a handful of sources and only in the Icones was he able to open the door to more newcomers. Aldrovandi, despite his high-flown claims to the contrary, also found it difficult to integrate the New World animals in his warp and weft of ancient and modern texts. But these authors attached a particular value to pictures which made their own way through learned Europe, free from the baggage of words.90 If New World animals had a chance to be admitted into these encyclopaedias, it was because these works contained within themselves a universe of images. It has been claimed that Jonston’s Historia naturalis constitutes a turning point in the early modern tradition of natural history writing, for the substantial inclusion of New World animals in it marks it out as something different from the ‘emblematic’ works of Aldrovandi.91 The new animals were not mentioned in the Western scholarly heritage revived in the Renaissance. Neither Aristotle nor Pliny, nor any medieval or early Renaissance author had talked about the sloth or the guinea pig, animals that remained free from the net of linguistic and symbolic associations which constituted the essence of the Renaissance encyclopaedias of natural history. The botanical survey carried out in New Spain by Hernández was done at the bidding of the Spanish crown; the inventory of Brazilian nature accomplished by Piso and Markgraf was supported by the DWIC. This was knowledge of a different kind from that produced in the learned cabinets of Europe for it was expected that material benefits could be derived from it in the form of new drugs, new products for trading or a better understanding of the natural world of the colonial territories. An empirical kind of inquiry, adumbrated in the natural histories of Oviedo and Acosta and consolidated through the works of Hernández and the Dutch, broke through the fabric of texts patiently woven by Gesner and Aldrovandi. If we may so crudely describe it, it is as if the late Renaissance view of natural history buckled under the weight of the new concrete reality that came from America. Up to a point, Jonston tried to come to terms with that situation. He let go the philological ballast of his predecessors but at the same time remained faithful to their methods, outlook and conceptual framework. The compromise was not entirely successful. In De quadrupedibus he used as much as he could of the works on New World animals although always in terms of his pattern, redistributing the materials in ad hoc taxonomic categories. In the last 90 See William B. Ashworth, Jr, ‘The Persistent Beast: Recurring Images in Early Modern Zoological Illustration’, in A. Ellenius (ed.), The Natural Sciences and the Arts. Aspects of Interaction from the Renaissance to the 20th Century (Uppsala, 1985), pp. 46–66. 91 Ashworth, ‘Natural History and the emblematic world view’, pp. 317–19.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

209

volumes he introduced whole chapters taken from Markgraf and Nieremberg as isolated units within his work. But the sheer number and diversity of American animals called for more drastic changes in the conception of natural history if they were ever to be fully integrated into it. The rest of this chapter discusses how these changes were brought about.

New World Animals and the ‘Scientific Revolution’ The complex network of political, social, institutional, intellectual and philosophical changes which is usually called ‘Scientific Revolution’ affected the way in which the inquiry about nature was conceived and conducted during the seventeenth century. We have learned that this movement was neither as scientific nor as revolutionary as historians of science writing a few decades ago would have wished. But making due allowance for any continuity with the past, it seems undeniable that some things did change. Among these transformations we may number the formulation of new approaches to ‘natural history’. These programmes were advanced by leading members of the Royal Society and the Académie des sciences. On the grounds of the social organization of the pursuit of natural knowledge, by the second half of the seventeenth century natural philosophy became a collective enterprise, which affected the epistemological foundations and the criteria of belief which regulated what should be considered a legitimate statement in natural philosophy.92 Presuming that a renewed natural history should be written with new characters on a clean slate, John Ray and Francis Willughby set about to create their own classification of the vegetal and animal kingdoms. In doing so, these authors sought to implement a conception of natural history which bears relation to their familiarity with animals of the New World. In the then predominant Baconian view of knowledge, classification was closely connected with collections, their association spelling out the criteria of display and order embodied in museums and cabinets of nature. The museum of the Royal Society was a repository in which many items from the New World were conserved, exhibited and studied. Grew drew up its first reasoned catalogue, which resorted not infrequently to the previous literature in the field. An alternative and complementary programme of research was postulated by another member of the Royal Society, the physician Edward Tyson. Although Tyson also dabbled in classification, his favourite approach was dissection and comparative anatomy. He saw the systematic dissection of selected species as the ground upon 92 For the Royal Society see Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981).

210

A New World of Animals

which natural history should be built. In France, Perrault and the anatomists of the Académie also set themselves to the task of dissecting animals. In uncompromising terms the French stressed the collective nature of their research as the epistemological warrant for their claims. Collecting, classifying and dissecting were activities which Renaissance physicians and scholars had pursued with zealous energy in different social settings and with different aims and procedures – as far as animals of the New World were involved, we have already caught a glimpse of these undertakings. Now, contrary to Renaissance authors, the natural philosophers and physicians of the Royal Society did not think of themselves as guardians of the past but trumpeted their undertakings as the forging of a new natural history with new methods and new goals. This was the vantage point from which New World animals were viewed by them. Before considering these developments, we should look at an episode representative of the onslaught on the Renaissance worldview by the heirs to the Galilean tradition of ‘experimental’ philosophy. Francesco Redi, an Italian physician and partisan of the scienza nuova, took upon himself to disprove the alleged marvellous effects of the animal drugs from the East and West Indies. While doing this, he attacked vitalistic explanations in terms of sympathies, ‘influences’ and spontaneous generation which were dear, among others, to Kircher. Redi exemplifies the aspiration to submit before the ‘tribunal of experience’ the admirable properties of the wondrous creatures from the New World. The outcome of that learned squabble spelled the beginning of the end of the enchanted view of American nature. The Sceptical Attack on Kircher. Francesco Redi and his ‘Experiments’on Animals from the Indies Francesco Redi enjoys a distinguished place in the canonical histories of biology on the grounds of his experiments aimed at discrediting the idea of spontaneous generation, which were reunited in his Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (1668). In that work Redi explicitly set himself against Athanasius Kircher.93 The German Jesuit had defended the idea of spontaneous generation by putrefaction which he discussed, as we have already seen, in his Archa Noë and also in his Mundus subterraneus. While Kircher could be briefly characterized as a thinker who synthesized many trends of late Renaissance natural philosophy, Redi was on the threshold of the ‘new science’, at least in 93 Redi, Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (Firenze, 1668). When he describes his famous experiments with the generation of flies, Redi contends against Kircher’s ideas, expounded in book XII of the latter’s Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1678).

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

211

what concerns his conviction that ‘experiments’ should be the mark of natural philosophy.94 Redi worked as a physician and naturalist at the court of the Grand Dukes of Florence, Ferdinando II and later Cosimo III. He benefited from their collections, hunting grounds and menagerie, and performed his dissections before a noble audience, eager to admire his display of anatomical virtuosity.95 In a long letter to Kircher, Redi launched a sceptical attack on the alleged properties of many natural products brought from ‘the Indies’ (meaning both the East Indies and the New World). As we have seen in a previous chapter, Kircher was very fond of the marvellous virtues of these exotica to which he had easy access through the network of Jesuit missionaries working in those lands. Redi’s letter was published as Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali, e particolarmente quelle, chi son portate dall’Indie (Firenze, 1671) (Experiments concerning different natural things and particularly those from the Indies) and was later translated into Latin (Amsterdam, 1675). The alleged motive for this polemical little book was to contest the claim that the stone found in the head of the Cobra de Cabelo had properties as a universal antidote. The power of these stones, extolled by Garcia d’Orta, was currently explained in terms of the ‘simpathy’ which existed between them and the poison. But the scope of Redi’s tract is wider, for he took the opportunity to make public a fair number of ‘esperienze’ which he had designed to test many of the supposed pharmaceutical properties of products arrived from both Indies. To begin with, he discusses whether it is true that one drachma of the powder obtained by grinding the shell of the armadillo would cause profuse sweating in those affected by the French disease. In connection with this, he addresses the question whether a quantity of that drug equal to the head of a pin and put into the ear would cure deafness (these statements were taken from Monardes and Ximénez). Redi confidently declares that ‘tutto è mera favola’ (‘all this is mere fable’), something already known by Piso, he goes on, who did not utter a word about the healing powers of the armadillo. Redi also contends against the supposed ‘virtù’ (power) of a Brazilian fish to stop a haemorrhage. He had tested the power of the bones of this fish, which had been presented to his patron, and found nothing. He also takes issue with Willem Piso, who had affirmed in his book that it was possible to find in the stomach of the iguanas a very hard stone, big as a hen’s egg, which cured the ailments of the kidneys, was diuretic and helped to expel bladder stones. The marquis Girolamo Brissi lent one of these stones to Redi, who put it to the test and, again, found its properties ‘imaginary’. As we have seen, Monardes and Piso 94 Redi has been dubbed a follower of Galileo and the experimental method. See Bruno Basile, ‘Redi, i gesuiti e le ‘‘maraviglie d’oltremare”’ in idem, L’invenzione del vero. La letteratura scientifica da Gallilei ad Algarotti (Roma, 1987), pp. 49–88. 95 Findlen, Possessing Nature, 217–20.

212

A New World of Animals

had praised the little stones found in the cayman as a remedy for the quartan fever when applied upon the temples of the patient. After quoting Monardes’s report of his unsuccessful trial of these medicaments, Redi confirms the uselessness of the remedy.96 Redi did not believe that the products obtained from exotic animals possessed marvellous properties (we looked only at some examples concerning the animals from America, but the bulk of the book is concerned with plant drugs from the East Indies). Much of the pharmacopoeia publicized by Ximénez in New Spain and Monardes in Europe – and, to a certain point, also by Piso – was submitted to ‘esperienza’ by Redi and found ineffective. Now, two things should be pointed out. First, the alleged curative results of most of the drugs and products Redi condemned as useless were explained in terms of the idea of ‘sympathy’ or conceived as the expression of a ‘hidden power’.97 Thus, while discrediting the effects of those drugs, Redi indirectly questioned these explanations, which were a central tenet of Kircher’s natural philosophy. Second, Redi’s discourse is carefully phrased in order to underscore his ‘experimental’ approach in the investigation of nature. But in many cases we are left in a void as to the procedures of these ‘experiments’. Redi limits himself to say that he tried the property of a stone or the effect of a drug, perhaps on several occasions, and it did not work. We know that some of his ‘experiments’ involved a great many social skills and were surrounded by all the theatrical apparatus of a courtly event. Redi was not only a virtuoso; he was also an accomplished courtier, as can be seen from the list of personages he takes care to mention in his book. His talk about ‘experiment’ should be understood within the context of this display before a worldly audience. The frontispiece of the Latin edition of the Esperienze shows a New World Indian with an armadillo under his arm addressing an allegorical Minerva, who looks down on him, while pointing with her finger to a microscope and some natural history drawings.98 The message is obvious: the ‘natural things brought from the Indies’ should be tried in the crucible of ‘esperienza’. Animals from the Indies and the stones which were so abundantly extracted from their entrails are no more to be viewed as ‘wholes’ with occult powers which, on the strength of sympathies, cured ailments of all sorts. They are to be tested, dissected, put under the microscope, submitted to the trials of experiment and, in the process, divested of their magical aura of exoticism and mysterious virtues. 96

Redi, Sperienze, pp. 67–77. For the idea of sympathy and natural magic see, for example, Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1972), pp. 113–18. 98 For a detailed analysis of this picture see Findlen, Possessing Nature, pp. 194–8. 97

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

213

American Animals and the New Taxonomies. John Ray and Francis Willughby The life and work of John Ray (1627–1705) were closely associated with those of Francis Willughby, his student, friend and financial supporter.99 Francis Willughby (1635–72) attended Trinity College (Cambridge) where he met Ray who, having graduated in 1651, was lecturing there. The men initiated a lifelong relationship sealed by their common interest in the study of plants and reinforced by several tours through England, Wales and Scotland. Upon his refusal to take the Act of Uniformity, Ray left the university and embarked on a continental tour with Willughby with the purpose of training themselves in natural history. Eventually, both entered the Royal Society and on Willughby’s death Ray remained as tutor of his friend’s children. Ray’s activities embraced many fields, foremost among them the study of plants and natural theology.100 Ray’s two first works on animals (birds and fish) were written on the basis of Willughby’s material, but his own contributions are not meagre. The Ornithologhia was published in London in 1676 in Latin, and this was followed by the Historia piscium (Oxford, 1686). Ray’s own works on animals were the Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis (London, 1693) and two posthumously published books, the Historia insectorum and the Synopsis avium et piscium (London, 1710 and 1713). The Ornithology was translated into English two years after its Latin edition.101 In the preface, Ray claims that he did not wish to write any ‘Pandects on Birds’, neither to compete with Gesner and Aldrovandi in writing a summary of their books, which had already been done by Jonston. Ray’s goal was to write the History of Birds, ‘by so accurately describing each kind, and observing their characteristic and distinctive notes, that the Reader might be sure of our meaning’.102 He declares that every bird was described ‘from the view and 99

For Ray see the biography by Charles E. Raven, John Ray, Naturalist. His Life and Works (Cambridge, 1950). For Willughby’s biography see Mary A. Welch, ‘Francis Willughby, F.R.S. (1635–1672)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 6 (1972): 71–85. 100 For the question of Ray’s changing criteria of botanical classification and his polemic with Continental botanists such as Tournefort and Rivinus see Phillip R. Sloan, ‘John Locke, John Ray, and the Problem of the Natural System’, Journal of the History of Biology 5 (1972): 1–53. 101 Francis Willughby, The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton … in three books wherein all the birds hitherto known being reduced into a method sutable [sic] to their natures are accurately described, the descriptions illustrated by most elegant figures, nearly resembling the live birds, engraved in 78 copper plates. Translated into English and enlarged with many additions … by John Ray, Fellow of the Royal Society (London, 1678); from now on quoted as ‘Ornithology’. For a panoramic presentation of the work see Raven, John Ray, pp. 308–38 (chap. 12). 102 Ornithology, prologue.

214

A New World of Animals

inspection of it lying before us’ and that if they had not actually seen the bird, they transcribed only such particulars ‘whereof we have assurance by the testimony of good Authors, or sufficient Witnesses’. Besides, Ray says that he has omitted ‘what we find in other authors concerning Homonymous and Synonymous words, Fables, Presages, or ought else appertaining to Divinity, Ethics, Grammar or any sort of Humane Learning: and present him only with what properly relates to their Natural History’. It has been claimed that what Ray did was to break away from an interpretative tradition of natural history concerned with meanings embodied in symbols, emblems, hieroglyphs, and particularly in words.103 Ray’s call would have been for natural history to separate itself from the human sciences, philology, texts and hermeneutics, and concern itself with the world of real objects, entities that were awaiting to be perceived by the senses, analysed and classified. Ray saw himself as brushing aside the last remnants of the old hermeneutic style of natural history which still lingered in the layout of Jonston’s Historia naturalis. What place was assigned to birds of the New World in the Ornithology? Ray says that he will exclude from this work the ‘fabulous birds’ (the phoenix, the griffin, the harpies) and even those ‘suspected’ of being fabulous. And, he adds significantly, ‘yet because I would not rely too much on my own judgements, I have put in the Appendix the descriptions of some of that nature out of Hernandez, which I refer to the Readers censure’. Thus Hernández (and a fortiori Nieremberg) do not qualify for Ray as entirely trustworthy witnesses. But since the only available description of birds of New Spain was that due to Hernández, Ray included his accounts, though setting them apart from the main body of the work.104 The appendix consists, for the most part, of the chapters of the History of the animals of New Spain with glosses by Ray. We may now look at some of his commentaries. Hernández had described a bird called daie which, although very small, was said to lay under the ground gigantic eggs which, surprisingly enough, did not have yolk (Nieremberg called it ‘avis ovimagna’). Ray considers this story ‘altogether false and fabulous’ for, he says, birds which lay large eggs lay a single one per clutch. Besides, there could be no exceptions to the general statement that eggs have yolk.105 He applies the same criterion when he rejects the story of the mótmot. Hernández affirmed that this bird had in its tail a quill 103 Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1998), p. 2. 104 ‘An appendix to the History of Birds, containing such birds as we suspect for fabulous, or such as are too briefly and inaccurately describe to give us a full and sufficient knowledge of them, taken out of Franc. Hernandez especially.’ Ornithology, pp. 385–96. 105 Ornithology, Appendix, p. 385. Cf. Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise II, chap. 220 (Historia, p. 56; OC, vol. III, pp. 364–5) and Nieremberg, Historia naturae, book X, chap. 5, p. 207.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

215

longer than the rest which was feathered only at the end. Ray says that ‘this is more strange than true’, because all the birds he had seen had their feathers growing in pairs.106 In both examples, Ray dismisses the reports on the grounds that they constitute unaccountable exceptions to a general rule. What about Markgraf, the other major source of information on American birds? His descriptions of birds are embedded as chapters into the text of the Ornithology, with some comments aimed at identifying the birds mentioned by the Dutch naturalist with those described by other authors. For example, Markgraf had described the Brazilian vulture or urubu which Ray identifies with the Mexican tzopilotl mentioned by Ximénez and the aura reported by Nieremberg.107 Parrots are classified by Ray according to size: the largest are the macaws or cockatoos, those of middle size are properly called parrots and popinjays and the smaller ones are the parakeets.108 The species which fill out this classification are taken from Markgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae and Aldrovandi’s Ornithologia (see Figure 6.5). The Historia piscium, although edited by Ray, was for the most part Willughby’s work.109 The approach to the study of animals expounded in the prologue of the Ornithology is rehearsed in the epilogue of the History of fishes. Ray claims that he did not intend to write a complete catalogue of all the fish but to present those species which ‘have been observed by ourselves or by our friends or reported by apt and trustworthy witnesses and authors’.110 Fish, he goes on, have been described by Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Aldrovandi, Schonfeld and, above all, by Gesner, who surpassed all of them in learning, diligence, truthfulness and modesty. Nevertheless, Ray thinks he can be allowed to take pride upon the discovery of a number of European species so far unknown. There are about eighty American species included in the Historia piscium, which amounts to about 10 to 15 per cent of all the species described. Almost the whole of Markgraf’s book on fish found its way into the Historia piscium. Ray transcribes verbatim the descriptions of the Historia naturalis Brasiliae, recognizing his source. 106

Ornithology, Appendix, p. 386. Cf. Historia animalium novae hispaniae, treatise II, chap. 196 (Historia, p. 52; OC, vol. III, p. 361) and Nieremberg, Historia naturae, book X, chap. 12, p. 209. 107 Ornithology, book II, first part, first section, chap. 5, § 2, p. 68. Cf. Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book V, chap. 10, pp. 207–8. Ximénez’s text is rehearsed in de Laet’s gloss on Markgraf’s chapter. Ray also quotes the statement by Acosta that the young ones of this bird are white and that when they grow they become as black as ravens (this is taken from Nieremberg). Nieremberg, Historia naturae, book X, chap. 55, p. 224. 108 Ornithology, book II, first part, third section, chap. 1, p. 110. 109 Francis Willughby, De Historia piscium libri quatuor (Oxford, 1686). See Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘The Historia piscium (1686)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 54 (2000): 179–97 and also Raven, John Ray, pp. 339–70 (chap. 13). 110 Willughby, De historia piscium, epilogue, pp. 29–30.

216

A New World of Animals

6.5 Plate with several pictures of birds taken from Markgraf, in Francis Willughby, Ornithology (London, 1678). Willughby’s and Ray’s works incorporated many New World animals into an early modern taxonomic system.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

217

The Synopsis methodica was written after Willughby’s death.111 Once more Ray begins by justifying his undertaking on the grounds that the massive volumes of Gesner and Aldrovandi are intimidating and if by chance one stumbles upon one of them in the bookshops, they are so expensive that it is impossible for most people to buy them.112 But a new reason is adduced here, and this is that since the time the large encyclopaedias on animals were written, a great number of species had been discovered in Central and South America by famous men, such as Piso, Markgraf, Clusius, Hernández, de Laet and Nieremberg. The short preface to the Synopsis is rich in references to New World animals. For example, Ray enumerates all those in which the bezoar stone can be found. The book describes around forty animals from the New World, including those from North America. As usual, most of this material is taken from Markgraf, Clusius and Faber’s contributions to the Thesaurus. All the animals described by Markgraf can be found in the Synopsis, but the same cannot be said of the Hernandian fauna. Ray was confronted with the question of assigning each of his New World animals to the proper taxonomic category and on dubious cases he discussed the so-far-accepted solution and proposed a new one. At least one of the categories in Ray’s taxonomy is built mainly on the basis of New World species. For example, in the Synopsis he talks about ‘anomalous’ viviparous quadrupeds with several toes, which can have a long or a short snout (these ‘anomala’ include a good number of American animals).113 Those with a long snout can be toothed or without teeth. The former comprehend, together with the hedgehog, the mole and the shrew, the three species of tatu or armadillos described by Markgraf and the ‘tatu mustelinus’ of the Museum of the Royal Society (the ‘weesle-headed Armadillo’).114 Those without teeth include only the great ant-bear (Markgraf’s tamandua-guaçu or Cardano’s ursus formicarius) and the lesser ant-bear (Markgraf’s tamandua-i).115 Those with a short snout are divided into volatile or bats (‘vespertiliones’) and the ‘tardipes’, which comprehend a single species: the ai or ignavus.116 Ray is very interested in those animals which have been anatomized and provides abstracts of the dissections of American animals made by Tyson and the members of the Académie des sciences (to which we shall return) and also of Willughby’s and George Ent’s dissection of the Cavia 111

For a general presentation see Raven, John Ray, pp. 371–87 (chap. 14). John Ray, Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis (London, 1693), preface. 113 Synopsis methodica, p. 61. 114 Ibid., pp. 233–6 (the descriptions of the four tatus). 115 Ibid., pp. 241–3. Cf. Markgraf, Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chap. 4, pp. 225–6. 116 Synopsis methodica, pp. 245–6. Cf. Markgraf, Historia naturalis Brasiliae, book VI, chap. 1, pp. 221–2. 112

218

A New World of Animals

cobaya.117 The great number of New World beasts incorporated in this book were stripped of any debris of Indian folklore, superstition and wonder; they were reduced to names and sober descriptions in Ray’s rationally purified taxonomy. Those of dubious origins or suspected of being fabulous or legendary were left out. Ray had collaborated with John Wilkins in his project of building a universal language, which resulted in the Essay toward a Real Character and Philosophical Language, published by the Royal Society in 1668. A number of projects of this kind were pursued at that time in England.118 Wilkins’s basic idea was to recover the unity of language which had been lost after Babel. His notion of ‘real character’ meant that the signs of the new artificial language should denote real things and not words, something akin to the pictographic principle of Chinese.119 Evidently this artificial language should also serve as a means of classifying the natural objects of the world. It has been pointed out that Ray not only collaborated with Wilkins in the section on botanical nomenclature, but also had similar preoccupations.120 His emphasis on the external and morphological descriptions as a principle in the classification of animals and his explicit condemnation of the ‘philological’ natural history pursued by the writers of the sixteenth century would have been closely associated with his efforts aimed at recovering the links between words and things. Ray’s conception of natural science as a descriptive and classificatory enterprise was akin to the approach cultivated by Markgraf. The Historia naturalis Brasiliae was conceived precisely in those terms: it was a collection of pictures and texts characterized by a description of morphological appearances, what we could call a ‘discourse about surface and form’. It is significant in this respect that, although Ray took care to rehearse and comment on the reports of dissections, he himself did not anatomize. Ray just absorbed the whole of Markgraf’s work into his (or better, Willughby’s) and rejected or in the best of cases grudgingly admitted Nieremberg’s version of Hernández. As we have discussed, the latter had 117 Synopsis methodica, pp. 223–6. This animal is assigned to Ray’s genus leporinum, which numbers many species of both Americas: the tapeti, aperea, cuandu, aguti and paca (all of them described by Markgraf), the flying squirrel or sciurus Americanus volans and the ‘great grey Virginia squirrel’ or sciurus Virginianus cinereus major. See ibid., pp. 204–30. The dissection of the animal by Ent is in: W. Charleton (1619–1707), Onomasticon zoicon, plerorumque animalium differentias et nomina propria pluribus linguis exponens. Cui accedunt Mantissa anatomica; et quaedam de variis fossilium generibus (London, 1668). 118 For the different programmes related to a reform of language see Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science, pp. 249–65. 119 See William T. Stern, ‘John Wilkins, John Ray and Carl Linnaeus’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 40 (1986): 101–23. 120 See Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘The Historia piscium’, pp. 182–5.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

219

incorporated a fair amount of Aztec lore in his History of the Animals of New Spain and his accounts of animals contained many Indian legends and described animal drugs in terms of folk medicine. It is not surprising that Ray’s critical approach found them utterly uncongenial. New World Animals in the Museum of the Royal Society We have seen that New World animals featured prominently in early modern collections of natural objects. That of the Royal Society was organized around a basic nucleus enriched in 1666 by the purchase of the private cabinet of Robert Hubert, an important ‘museum’ of oddities and exotic items.121 Members of the Society such as its official historian Bishop Sprat and the botanist Nehemiah Grew wished the collection to serve the Baconian programme of reform of knowledge that had informed its origins. They envisaged it as associated with the creation of a ‘new language’ and the taxonomic efforts of people like Ray. Nehemiah Grew was a physician who had studied at Cambridge and obtained his MD at the university of Leiden. Once he joined the Royal Society, John Wilkins urged him to move to London, which he did in 1672. Grew became a plant anatomist and published an important work in his field, but he also wrote the catalogue of the Society’s ‘museum’ (1681) which since 1672 had been displayed at Gresham College, London. A survey of this catalogue may allow us to obtain a picture of the kind of animals and animal parts from the New World which Ray and Tyson could examine. In the introduction to the catalogue, Grew makes clear that his was a very different project from those of Aldrovandi and Gesner. Unlike the former, he would not begin talking of the horse on the grounds that this is the most useful of animals to human beings; unlike the latter, he would not use alphabetical order in his exposition.122 He claims – perhaps as the result of Baconian convictions – that the ‘scale of nature’ is a matter of ‘high speculation’ and so he would commit himself to no particular conceptual scheme. Among the viviparous quadrupeds from the American continent the museum exhibited a monkey (cercopithecus or simia caudata) and three armadillos: a ‘great shell’d hedghog’ which had been described by Clusius, a ‘pigheaded 121

Michael Hunter, ‘Between cabinet of curiosities and research collection: the history of the Royal Society’s “Repository”’, in Michael Hunter, Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Royal Society (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 123–55. 122 Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis or a Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge, made by Nehemjah Grew M. D. Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Colledge of Physitians. Whereunto is Subjoyned the Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts by the same author (London, 1681), preface.

220

A New World of Animals

armadillo or Tatu porcinus’ described by Nieremberg and Worm and the ‘weesleheaded armadillo or Tatu mustelinus’, mentioned by Ray in his Synopsis.123 There was also a sloth in the museum, which Grew thought could be considered a kind of bear, although it had three claws on each foot. The oviparous quadrupeds were represented by a presumably Brazilian crocodile ‘with the tail broken off’ and two senembi or iguanas, also from Brazil.124 A fair number of skins of New World snakes enriched the collection.125 There were also many land birds such as a great red and blue parrot named Psittacus erythrocyaneus, the head of a toucan, a hummingbird from Brazil and two great bats from the Western Indies – which Grew classified under ‘birds’. Among the items corresponding to water fowl there were a head of the jabiru described by Markgraf and a head of the anhima or unicorn bird from Brazil (a gift of Father Hieronymus Lobus). The web-footed birds included the phaenicopter (a flamingo) and a penguin, ‘so called by his extraordinary fatness’.126 The museum had some specimens of Brazilian fish such as the ‘tobaccopipe-fish’ or petimbuaba described by Piso and Markgraf, and many scaled fish.127 There was also a ‘Bahama-spider’ of the tarantula kind and the web of a Bermuda spider which was said to be strong enough to snare a bird as big as a thrush.128 The animals in the museum are rather representative of the holdings in similar collections in other European cities. Most of them came from the West Indies and Brazil and one can suppose that they were the result of exchanges and trade with the Dutch. The fauna of Mexico, Peru and the River Plate were scarcely represented. Tyson’s Dissection of Animals from the New World Among the natural philosophers and physicians who during the seventeenth century organized themselves into societies, several took a particular interest in the anatomy of animal species. In many cases, dissection was not a personal, but a collective, enterprise supported by the new institutions related to natural philosophy and the sciences. The Royal Society, the Private College of Amsterdam, the Germans of the Academia Naturae curiosorum and, above all, the French in the Académie des Sciences – all of these and others developed 123 Ibid., part I, section 2, chap. 1, pp. 17–20. Grew pointed out that this third kind did not answer to the third ‘genus’ of armadillo described by Clusius, so we can infer that he was thinking that the three specimens could have corresponded to the three kinds of armadillo described in the Exotica. 124 Ibid., chaps 1 and 3, pp. 11 and 42–5. 125 Ibid., section 3, pp. 49–51. 126 Ibid., section 4, chaps 1–3, pp. 53–72. 127 Ibid., section 5, chaps 2 and 3, pp. 106 and 112–18. 128 Ibid., section 7, chap. 3, pp. 173–4.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

221

programmes related to animal anatomy.129 But those most concerned with animals of the New World were the members of the Royal Society and, in particular, Edward Tyson. Tyson (1650–1708), who had studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, upon moving to London became a friend of Robert Hooke and started sending contributions to the Philosophical Transactions on the dissections of various animals. The first of the series, ‘Phocaena or the Anatomy of a porpoise’, begins with a ‘Preliminary Discourse concerning anatomy and a natural history of animals’ in which Tyson expounds his views on comparative anatomy as the foundation of the ‘History of Animals’ and defends the notion that in-depth studies of individual species might be the basis of ‘natural history’.130 Tyson’s ‘Preliminary Discourse’ is a whole programme for a new kind of natural history, which can be seen as complementary to that proposed by Ray. That the discovery of the New World was much in the background of these attempts at renovating the study of natural history is shown by Tyson’s comparison between the discovery of new lands and new seas in the ‘Greater World’ and the discoveries that await those who wish to venture into the ‘Lesser World’ through the study of the anatomy of animals. ‘Nor have the discoveries of the Indies’, says Tyson, ‘more enriched the World of old than those of Anatomy now have improved both Natural and Medical science.’131 The trite allusion to Alexander and Aristotle is mentioned in this connection and the universal emperor is said to have made atonement for his ravages when ‘at last committed to Aristotle to write the history of his trophies’. The parallel between the discovery of the New World and the still unexplored oceans of animal anatomy is crowned with the claim that Tyson’s contemporaries are at last witnessing the fall of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’, which limited the possibilities of knowledge to the servile obedience to authorities. The image of the Pillars of Hercules was part of the imaginative landscape associated with the ‘new science’ since it had appeared on the cover of the first edition of Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (1620). The New World also looms largely in Bacon’s New Atlantis, for the fictional sailors who discover the utopic land of Bensalem set sail from Peru into the South Sea and talk with the Bensalemites in Spanish. The title of Joseph Glanvill’s apologia 129

See F. J. Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy (London, 1944), pp. 312–442 (chap.

7). 130 In his paper on the female opossum he declares ‘that for the perfecting a Natural History of Animals, we had a distinct account and Anatomy of some One of a species; which, with a little variation, might serve for all that Family: since I find so great a Master of Natural History as Mr. Ray is of the Same opinion’. Edward Tyson, ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum or the Anatomy of a Opossum, dissected at Gresham-College’, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 20, no. 239 (1698), pp. 105–64, here p. 159. 131 Tyson, ‘Preliminary Discourse concerning Anatomy and Natural History of Animals’, in Phocaena or the Anatomy of a Porpess dissected at Gresham College (London, 1680), pp. 1–2.

222

A New World of Animals

of the ‘new science’, Plus Ultra or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the Days of Aristotle (1668), drew upon and reinforced the symbolic value of this imagery. A century and a half after Oviedo had exploited Charles V’s motto, plus ultra, as a token of his own endeavour as a Pliny of the New World serving the imperial expansion of Castile, Tyson gave it a new interpretative twist as a symbol of his new natural history within the context of Baconian expectations. As Ray had already done, Tyson also criticizes those who had taken more pains in searching through the dusty volumes of former writers than ‘in searching the Book of Nature’ and wasting their efforts in the descriptions of ‘animals of forrain Countreys’ which they could not observe by themselves.132 He, Tyson, would not elude the study of ‘foreign’ animals; on the contrary, but he would ‘observe’ them by himself, cutting deep into their entrails and disembowelling the secrets of their natures. He declares that the new natural history of animals should include three ‘accounts’: physiological, anatomical and medical. While Ray had focused on description and classification, Tyson the physician shows his concern for anatomy and dissection. The ‘physiological’ level of this natural history should include the names and synonyms of the animals, their external description, their species and subdivisions, places of breeding and habitat, an account of their ways of living, their food, their ‘sagacity’, the uses to which mankind could put them (nourishment, food, medicines), the injuries caused by them and their remedies and how to breed, preserve and propagate the species. Tyson admits that these categories had been used by former writers, but they did this ‘nauseating and obscuring the whole by tedious Philological Harangues, or troublesome quotations … relying on others, when Autopsie, and their own opinion can only inform them; and their Conscience and eyes may be as a thousand Witnesses’. ‘Philological’ natural history, the natural history of Gesner and Aldrovandi, should be replaced by ‘autopsy’, by the use of the eyes and, above all, by dissection: ‘I cannot see, says Tyson, how a Natural History of Animals can be writ without Zootomy.’And what is this ‘Zootomy’ about? Dissection constitutes the ‘anatomical’ account of the natural history of animals. It should be comprehensive, embracing not only the dissection and description of the parts, but also the analysis of fluids and embryotomy. Tyson claims that the three ‘accounts’ of natural history (physiological, anatomical, medical) should be completed by a ‘Pseudodoxia or false opinions of the Ancients, and the fabulous traditions concerning them’. The title page of Tyson’s Phocaena has a quotation from Browne’s Religio Medici and the whole work is imbued with the spirit of the author of Pseudodoxia epidemica.133 132

Ibid., p. 4. The quotation is ‘The World was made to be inhabited by Beasts, but studied and contemplated by Man: ‘tis the Debt of Reason we owe unto God, and the Homage we pay him for not being Beasts’, Religio Medici, part I, section 13. 133

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

223

Tyson dissected several animals from the New World: a rattlesnake from Virginia,134 a female opossum also brought from Virginia135 and (in collaboration with Cowper) a male opossum.136 He also dissected a peccary, which had been given to him by Dr Goodall, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.137 We shall look at the paper on the peccary to illustrate Tyson’s ideas and procedures. First, he discusses the name of the animal, going through a minute examination of the precedent literature, from Oviedo to Jonston (including antecedents as remote as the Decades of Peter Martyr). Tyson treats his predecessors harshly. When in his paper on the peccary or tajacu he talks about the shape of the animal, he claims that the tajacu is a kind of swine ‘as plainly appears by our Figure which is much more exact, than either that in Hernandez … or that in Piso, Johnston, etc.’.138 Acosta had affirmed that the bristles of the peccary were used as weapons for defence and Tyson comments that he suspects ‘the truth of this assertion’. Of course, new things should be renamed. When discussing the peccary, Tyson gives the animal a new name related to his anatomical findings – aper mexicanus moschiferus.139 Tyson compares his finding of three stomachs in the peccary with Grew’s description of the two stomachs in the common hog.140 He then goes on to 134

Edward Tyson, ‘Vipera Caudi-Sona Americana, or the Anatomy of a Rattle-Snake dissected at the Repository of the Royal Society in January 1682/83’, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 13, no. 144 (1682/3), pp. 25–58. For a commentary on this dissection see Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, pp. 205–9. 135 Tyson, ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum’. This paper was also issued separately as a booklet: Tyson, Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum: or the Anatomy of an Opossum, dissected at Gresham-College (London, 1698). In this paper Tyson described the marsupial bones (ossa marsupialia) and the associated triangular muscles and gives a detailed account of the genitalia. For a commentary see M. F. Ashley Montagu, Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S., 1650–1708 and the rise of Human and comparative anatomy in England (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 218–23 and Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, pp. 215–16. 136 The paper on the male opossum was E. Tyson, ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum Masculum, or the Anatomy of a Male Opossum: in a letter to Dr. Edward Tyson, from Mr. William Cowper’, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 24, no. 290 (1704), pp. 1565–90. In 1699 Arthur Bayly, a London merchant, had given Tyson two male opossums. One of these animals was dissected by Cowper, while Tyson limited himself to describing the anatomy of the penis at a meeting of the Society. Four years later the joint paper was published in the Transactions. See Ashley Montagu, Edward Tyson, pp. 352–3. For a commentary on Tyson’s and Cowper’s contributions, see Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, p. 217. 137 Tyson, ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Moschiferus, or the Anatomy of the Mexico Musk-Hog’, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 13, no. 153 (1683), pp. 359–85. 138 Tyson, ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Moschiferus’, p. 360. 139 The opossum is called by Tyson Marsupiale americanum, on the basis that the distinctive characteristic of the animal is its pouch. The rattlesnake, for obvious reasons, is called vipera caudisona. 140 Tyson, ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Mexicanus Moschiferus’, pp. 365–6. Grew had a treatise on the stomachs: Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis … Whereunto is Subjoyned the Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts (London, 1681). Cf. Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, pp. 213–14.

224

A New World of Animals

explain how the small intestine of the peccary is tightly attached to the spine by the mesentery, whereas the colon lies loose and falls down (his description is preceded by a quotation from Fr Gregorio de Bolivar, who had previously observed this anatomical peculiarity). Also, he found three ‘large swellings’ or ‘aneurismata’ in the aorta and could not decide whether they were normal or pathological. But the principal question with the peccary was the ‘navel’. He refers to his picture (see Figure 6.6), which represents the orifice of the gland,

6.6 Plate illustrating the dissection of a peccary in Edward Tyson’s paper ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Moschiferus, or the Anatomy of the Mexico Musk-Hog’, Philosophical Transactions (1683). We see the external appearance, skeleton, internal organs and two images of the ‘umbilicus’, which the surgeon identified as a gland. This image is quite telling of Tyson’s programme aimed at systematically exploring the internal anatomy of New World animals.

through which he inserted a probe and also exerted a gentle pressure with his fingers, obtaining a liquor which smelled pleasantly like musk. To demonstrate that ‘the Natural History of Animals’ so far available was insufficient and erroneous, Tyson enumerates the opinions of previous authors on the function of the navel. The authors cited by Tyson (Benzoni, Gómara, Oviedo, Acosta) were taken from Faber, who affirmed as an undoubted truth that the peccary had a navel on its back. Tyson claims that Faber talked of a ‘Navel-string’ because he took for a ‘string’ what in the picture of the Thesaurus would be an arrow

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

225

pointing out the structure.141 And he continues with his critique of Volkenburg, the Leiden physician, who thought that the ‘navel’ was a mammary gland. The third opinion examined is that of Léry and Thevet, who had made it a spiraculum through which the animal could breathe. Hernández had expressly denied that the so-called ‘navel’ was such and considered it some kind of gland or lump of fat. But Tyson finds even here matter for criticism, because the Spaniard had affirmed that the liquor expressed from it had a very bad odour, which is actually not the case, says Tyson, since ‘it yields a fragrant one’ of which he can bear witness because the animal he dissected was dead ‘and observed by me and several others’. Tyson thinks that this gland was one of those scent-bags or scent-glands present in all strongly scented animals like the musquash or the beaver. He accounts for the fact that many authors have talked about the stink by arguing that the gland could secrete great quantities of a very ‘thin, and fluid, and so more vapourable’ fluid, so that the particles penetrate and strike our organ of smell causing ‘pain’, that is, bad odour. Animals from the New World figure prominently in the essay on classification of terrestrial animals which accompanies the paper written by Tyson in collaboration with Cowper on the dissection of a male opossum. In fact, this essay would have been prompted by the difficulties of pinning down the opossum in the current taxonomic schemes. Tyson proposed a classification of animals very much informed by the idea of the ‘chain of being’, that is, the notion of a continuous series of species with no gaps between any two of them. The significant thing for us is that in his scheme American species are well represented: the coati, the cuandu, the tlaquatzin, the tamandua, the opossum and an animal called ‘vantevran’, which was identified by the authors as a South American monkey.142 This is a telling example of how the new animals stimulated the creation of new taxonomical schemes. When dissecting the male opossum Tyson states that it cannot be included in the same category as the dog or the weasel for it lacks a bone in the penis. But he adds a caveat: I must confess we cannot be at a certainty in this matter, unless we had a more perfect Enumeration and Description of the several sorts of animals that are in the world; and by a strict Enquiry into their inward as well as outward parts, observed, how gradually they differ from one another; by easie and gentle steps, the intermediate species linking the whole together.143 141 Tyson, ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Mexicanus Moschiferus’, p. 375. The picture shows a kind of short stripe or ribbon on the back of the animal which seems difficult to interpret as a ‘sign’ to point to the structure. 142 The Ateles ater. See Ashley Montagu, Edward Tyson, p. 355. See Tyson, ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum Masculum’, pp. 1565–75 and the table on p. 1568. 143 Tyson, ‘Anatomy of a male opossum’, p. 1566. This passage has already been referred to in Ashley Montagu, Edward Tyson, p. 353.

226

A New World of Animals

New World animals could be the ‘missing links’ which would account for any breach in the continuity of the chain of being. On the other side of the Channel, the Académie des sciences founded by Colbert in 1666 embarked on ambitious collective projects of research. One of these concerned investigations into animal anatomy.144 The main force behind these activities was Charles Perrault, who like Christopher Wren distinguished himself both as an architect and as a scientist. ‘The Parisians’ – as they were named in the papers of the fellows of the Royal Society – included Pecquet, Louis Gayant, Duverney, Moyse Charas, Philippe de La Hire, the Jesuit Thomas Gouye and Jean Mery.145 They began publishing anonymously a book with the dissection of a tresher-shark and a lion (Paris, 1667) and another with the anatomy of several animals. In 1671 and 1676 two volumes with more dissections were published. These were re-edited in 1676 as a single volume in grand folio prepared by Perrault, Pecquet, Gayant and Duverney with the magnificent engravings of Sébastien Leclerc. The Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux were translated to English by Alexander Pitfeild and published in a more modest quarto edition.146 Many of the animals dissected by the Parisians were from the royal menagerie. The 1676 edition of the Mémoires includes a few animals from South America, such as the coati mondi described by Markgraf, two sapajous (Cebus monkeys) and two Indian cocks (see Figure 6.7).147 The members of the Academy doubted whether the cocks were from Africa or from Brazil but in the end were inclined to think that the bird was the ‘mitu-poranga’ described by Markgraf (the illustration shows a black curassow).148 They also dissected a cervus canadiensis and a beaver, brought from the French dominions in North America. In the same way as Tyson, the French anatomists were keen to reflect on the epistemological foundations of their statements. The Parisians distinguish between two kinds of history: the universal or general narratives and the specialized accounts which they called mémoires or commentaries. Ancient naturalists such as Aristotle, Pliny, Aelian and Solinus had attempted to build 144 For a background picture of the activity of the Académie with respect to research on plants and animals see Claire Salomon-Bayet, L’institution de la science et l’expérience du vivant. Méthode et expérience à l’Académie royale des sciences (1666–1793) (Paris, 1978). 145 For a history of the Académie see Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of an Institution. The Paris Academy of Sciences (1666–1803) (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 1–34 (chap. 1). For short biographies of the académiciens see pp. 330–73. 146 See Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, pp. 393–403 for a detailed bibliographical description of these publications. 147 See the English translation of the work: Memoires for a Natural History of Animals … Englished by A. Pitfeild, fellow of the Royal Society (London, 1688), pp. 115–18, 157–64 and 191–4, respectively. 148 Memoires for a Natural History of Animals, p. 191.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

227

6.7 Plate illustrating the chapter on the dissection of a coati in Mémoires pour servir à a’histoire naturelles des animaux. Dressez par M. Perrault, de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1676). The naturalistic aspect of the animal, made possible by the development of the techniques of engraving, contrasts with the idealized conventional landscape against which it is set. The inset shows anatomical details described in the text.

228

A New World of Animals

comprehensive histories and thus needed to rely on the more specialized memoirs of other authors. But much of the later kind of literature consisted in travel accounts and it is ‘scarcely probable’, claim the academics, ‘that Merchants and souldiers are indowed [sic] with the Spirit of Philosophy and Patiente’.149 Unlike these careless travellers, who wrote many falsities, naturalists like Belon, Piso and Markgraf profess ‘that they say nothing but what they have seen’. But, continue the academics, these assurances are insufficient. Prestigious authors such as Markgraf and Piso and even one of the glories of France like Belon are looked at with suspicion by these anatomists. Individual autopsia was no longer enough. The standard of certain belief after which the Parisians strove was collective witnessing, seeing and handling by a corporate body of savants. They declare that their memories contain ‘only Matters of Fact, that have been verified by a whole Society; composed of Men who have Eyes to see these sorts of things, otherwise than the greatest part of the World, even as they have Hands to seek them with more dexterity and success’.

The Loss of an Enchanted View Redi’s critique of Kircher heralded the advent of new times. So far, physicians and natural philosophers alike had enthusiastically searched for hidden and marvellous powers in the animals of America and explained the supposed curative properties of the animal drugs by resorting to Renaissance concepts of natural philosophy. The naturalist of the Medicean court embarked on a sceptical critique, striving to denounce as ‘fables’ the myriad of marvellous effects of the new drugs attributable to secret powers. Experience was pitted against speculation. Redi’s ‘experiences’ were not controlled experiments in the modern sense (some were not strikingly different from those made by Kircher), but his avowed methodological principles and philosophy of nature pointed towards a very different method of inquiry. The works of Ray and Willughby incorporated in a general classification the animals that Markgraf and Piso had described. The beasts, birds and fishes of the New World were engulfed as a whole in the mainstream of natural history; they became associated with a project of research supposedly guided by criteria of accurate description. The result of these strictures was that while all the Brazilian animals were admitted to the new taxonomy, those of New Spain were left in abeyance. Willughby and Ray sifted the materials at hand through criteria formulated to their own satisfaction and what passed examination was distributed 149

Ibid., preface.

Shifting Conceptions of Natural History

229

among the categories of their taxonomy. Ray and Tyson claimed that the existence of New World animals prompted them to rethink the way animals should be classified. The import of the new species was enough to impinge on the very heart of the new conceptions of natural history publicized by the members of the Royal Society. Tyson also set himself to the task of building a new natural history upon the foundations of anatomy or, better, comparative anatomy. A true Baconian, he thought of himself as sailing beyond the Pillars of Hercules and cutting across the mist of tradition into the dark waters of the dissection table to see things with his own eyes. Many had dissected animals of the Indies before him: Markgraf and Piso, Volkenburg, several unknown Dutch physicians, Fray Gregorio de Bolívar – even Oviedo had a serpent opened when he was in charge of the fortress of Santo Domingo. But Tyson’s work was of a different kind: it was systematic and answered to a programme. The common trait of all the authors considered in this chapter is their ‘critical’ attitude. They maintained that things should be submitted either to experience or to collective observation and reports should be scrutinized to see if they complied with the standards of an ‘accurate description’. From that moment on, these were the criteria according to which animals of the New World were to be judged. Redi had experimented with them, Ray and Willughby incorporated them in new classifications, Tyson dissected them. They were manipulated, pinned down, categorized, anatomized. There was no magic left, no hidden marvels to be discovered. They ceased to be characters in Amerindian fables, texts in an encyclopaedia or the bearers of an occult and valuable knowledge. They were now finally reunited with their confrères from the Old World, lumped together in the same abstract taxonomical scheme, subjected to the ruthless rites of the scalpel. There was hardly anything new about them. Suddenly, they became old and familiar. The wondrous creatures went through a process of final disenchantment.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Conclusions The first early modern Europeans who set foot in the New World thought they had arrived in the East Indies. Only by and by it dawned upon the European conscience that a new continent should be included in the maps. The animals of this unforeseen America were perceived through an ambiguous haze of attitudes and beliefs related to the social, religious and educational background of the travellers. In their accounts, the authors of chronicles, reports and letters invested what they saw with their own expectations, learning and interests. The luxuriant nature of the New World became a screen of gigantic proportions upon which the dreams and fears of the Old were projected. The resulting images were as diverse as the persons who imagined them. Sailors, soldiers, functionaries, friars, adventurers from all Europe crossed the Atlantic and returned home carrying with them marvellous tales about the creatures they had seen and, when possible, the creatures themselves. They imposed upon the animals a multitude of meanings. Some of them argued that they were no more than varieties of the familiar animals, others chose to underscore their absolute newness. Animals could be disqualified as monstrous and bizarre, a token of the inferiority of America. Or their diversity could be adduced as a proof of the inexhaustible prodigality of the new land. Their strange forms were displayed in drawings and paintings as symbols of all that was exotic and alien, wild and fearsome. They were compared and identified with the fantastic beasts about which the Classics had talked, they were viewed as living ‘jigsaw puzzles’ composed of parts of other animals; they were simply considered as food by the hungry soldiers winding their way through deserted highlands after the fabulous wealth of El Dorado. The conquerors brandished the sword as well as the quill and carried in their minds the accumulated knowledge of the West, a conceptual apparatus as intricate as the ever-branching paths of the jungles in the Spanish Main. Worlds of ideas and symbols, centuries of learning were inadvertently marshalled when they strove to convey a mental picture of the new animals. The encounter with the beasts inhabiting the New World was the result of the process of European expansion into the Atlantic which brought about the clash of Western and non-Western civilizations, resulting in some cases in the annihilation of the latter. Some fragments remained of the views on animals developed by the two major Indian civilizations of America as a consequence of the role

232

A New World of Animals

animals played in their material cultures. Much of the native lore about animals was absorbed through a capillary process into the early accounts of the conquerors, as far as these incorporated the aboriginal names, many legends, bits of folk classification and folk animal pharmacopoeia. At least from a certain perspective, the last stages of the story told in this book can be seen as the gradual ‘purification’ of the Western interpretation of the fauna of the New World from all the indigenous material which had been incorporated into it. During the sixteenth century a new genre of writing which aimed at embracing the natural as well as the human landscape of the Indies took form. The ‘natural and moral histories of the New World’ sought to recreate – and control – the total experience of the encounter with America. The Natural and General History of Oviedo and the Natural and Moral History of Acosta were the first significant Renaissance answers to the disruptive challenge posed by the creatures of the New World upon the late medieval order of representation of nature. The weight of ancient learning made itself felt in the outlook of these literary monuments. In what concerns the kind of inquiry into nature, they embodied, respectively, a Plinian and an Aristotelian programme. But notwithstanding these diverse conceptual frameworks, both Oviedo and Acosta endorsed and proclaimed a common empirical approach in their accounts of individual animals, in the sense that they understood that the warrant for the truth of their statements was autopsia and not tradition. This emphasis on the I-saw-it-myself criterion of truth could have been related to a question faced by travellers to the New World, that is, how to invest their at times fantastic reports with the signs of credibility. Rhetoric devices aimed at convincing the reader that the author was a reliable witness to his own experience were prominent in the early accounts about natural life in the New World. The later works of Hernández on the one hand and of Markgraf and Piso on the other can be seen – disregarding for a moment their differences – as the second stage in the development of writings on animals of the New World. These works represented the utilitarian approach aimed at a survey of the natural world of the overseas territories conquered by the European powers. They were also characterized by using both the medical and the natural historical genre of writing. Hernández aimed at striking a compromise between materia medica and a catalogue of animals. Piso reserved for himself the medical point of view and Markgraf was first and foremost a natural historian. A desire to possess, to acquire, to dominate, drove many of those who engaged in the American adventure. We have seen once and again that writers on the natural world of America compared themselves either with Pliny or with Aristotle surveying the imperial domains of Alexander. The ideal of empire was intimately connected with the description of the geography, resources and creatures of the territories occupied by the European nations in this early phase of colonial

Conclusions

233

expansion. The notions of empire and colonization were a constitutive element in the process of building a discourse about nature and animals of the New World. The expansion of Europe meant not only the dominion of the land and the material and symbolic profits derived from it. The financiers of empire and the merchant companies were on the lookout for new drugs which could cure the new diseases ‘imported’ from America and animals were a potential source of remedies, which could improve the health of subjects and citizens. Perhaps they could even be exploited as natural resources. At the very least, the corporate bodies in charge of the administration of the overseas territories considered it essential to know as much as possible about their geography, climate, flora and fauna. Hernández’s expedition, the vast project of the relaciones de Indias and the activity of the Dutch in Brazil were geared to this goal. Meanwhile in Europe people such as Monardes, Clusius and de Laet were anxiously awaiting the arrival of ships laden with ‘joyful news’. The potential utilitarian value assigned to plants and animals of the New World could perhaps have been connected with the fact that a portion of the literature that dealt with them could be broadly characterized as ‘objective’ in character. But other motives can be discerned in the construction of this discourse, which was conceived as resting solely upon experience and observation. First, not many speculative thinkers travelled to the Indies, Acosta being perhaps an exception. What naturalists in the New World accomplished during the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries was, for the most part, ‘field work’, the amassing of reports and descriptions. This groundwork would be accounted for by scholars working in Europe or would simply serve the purposes of political administration and remain stored in the archives of the Council of the Indies or reach the public through the works written by the learned administrators of the Dutch West India Company. The factual approach in the description of the newly discovered animals was also a trait of the works written by authors with a religious commitment. The religious struggles following the Reformation were transferred to the soil of America. As competing exponents of Christianity, Protestants and Catholics alike partook in different degrees and ways in the conquest and colonization of the new land. While Catholic missionaries began to write treatises on the nature of the Indies which could be used as manuals for incoming fellow missionaries sent by the Iberian crowns in the wake of the mandate of evangelization implied by the papal ‘donation’ of America, Calvinist scholars produced a consistent corpus of literature on America which they saw as a land of confessional expansion and a possible source of revenue to support the Protestant cause. The slant introduced into the works of Catholics and Protestants is not easily detected. Actually, they had a common interest in a down-to-earth approach in the description of nature which suited equally the different and conflicting interests of both camps.

234

A New World of Animals

Briefly, Oviedo and Acosta, Hernández and Markgraf and Piso can be seen as milestones in the development of a tradition of writing about animals of the New World which underscored experience and observation as an epistemological criterion and favoured a matter-of-fact style of inquiry. All these authors claimed explicitly to write ‘natural history’. Contemporaneously, a parallel tradition evolved in Europe associated with the genre of Renaissance encyclopaedias on animals, very much depending on an erudite and philological approach which wove a complex net of linguistic associations among the innumerable layers of texts conforming to the Western tradition of writing on animals. This European sixteenth-century tradition of natural history impinged only occasionally on the work of the naturalists in the New World, as can be shown by the merest perusal of the Book on the animals of New Spain or the Historia naturalis Brasiliae. On the contrary, the work of the naturalists in America was progressively incorporated into the animal encyclopaedias. The animals of the Indies, devoid as they were of textual references, found their way into the works of Gesner and Aldrovandi mostly as pictures. To put it bluntly, since these authors did not know how to deal with the newcomers in terms of words, they painted them. The encyclopaedic style of natural history had a late representative in Jonston, who made efforts to absorb the works written by Hernández, Markgraf and Piso. But the severance with the hermeneutical and symbolic approach to animals was explicitly proposed as a battle cry by Ray, Willughby and Tyson, who proclaimed that natural history should do away with all ‘Human learning’ and limit itself to ‘autopsia’. In doing this, they were adopting for themselves the criterion on which the writing on animals of the New World had been based ever since the beginning of the sixteenth century. For all the much-proclaimed reliance on observation, during the sixteenth century the new animals were interpreted in terms of a given philosophy of nature. The Renaissance image of nature, with its insistence on its plastic power, its ‘secrets’ and the possibility of its control through natural magic, could accommodate part of the native lore with which many of the conceptual and literary representations of New World animals were invested. This is already evident in the work of Martyr, Oviedo and the reports of authors such as Thevet and Abbeville. In Europe, the natural philosopher Cardano discussed American animals thematically in his system and they were the subjects of speculation in the worldview cultivated by Jesuit authors during the seventeenth century, concerned with hidden properties, occult powers and marvels. The work of Hernández, with its load of Aztec legends, was warmly welcomed by Nieremberg as a demonstration of his natural philosophy. A telling contrast is the handling of these same materials by Ray, who happily adopted the work of Markgraf and Piso – which he felt akin to his own approach – and dismissed for good Hernández’s

Conclusions

235

accounts of the birds of New Spain on the grounds of their doubtful character. By the end of the seventeenth century many of the animals described in the early chonicles of the New World had been absorbed into the mainstream of natural history.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Bibliography Primary Sources Abbeville, Claude de (1614, rptd 1963), Histoire de la mission des pères Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisins, Paris, rptd Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. [Académie des sciences] (1676), Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux. Dressez par M. Perrault, de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris. —— (1688), Memoires for a Natural History of Animals …, Englished by A. Pitfeild, fellow of the Royal Society, London. Acosta, José de (1880), The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. with notes and introd. by Clements Markham, 2 vols, London: Hakluyt Society. —— (1997), Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Sevilla, Juan de León, 1590), introd., appendix and anthology by Barbara G. Beddall. Valencia: Hispaniae Scientia. Aldrovandi, Ulisse (1599), Ornithologia, 3 vols, Bologna. —— (1619), De piscibus libri quinque et de cetus liber unus … J. Uterverius collegit et H. Tamburinus in lucem edidit, Bologna. [Aldrovandi, U.] (1963), The Ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), vol. II, book XIV, trans. with introd. and notes by L. Lind, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Anderson, Arthur J. O. and Charles E. Dibble (eds and trans.) (1950–83), [Fr Bernardino de Sahagún] Florentine Codex. A General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols, Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and University of Utah. Arber, Edward (ed.) (1885), The first Three English books on America [?1511]–1555 A.D., being chiefly Translations, Compilations etc. by Richard Eden, Birmingham. Belon, Pierre (1553), Observations des plusieurs singularités … en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges, Paris. —— (1555), L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux, Paris. Benzoni, Girolamo (1857), History of the New World, trans. and ed. Rear-Admiral W. H. Smyth, London: Hakluyt Society. Bry, Théodore de (ed.) (1590–1634), America [Latin series], 13 parts, Frankfurt (parts 1–9) and Oppenheim (parts 10–13). Caius, John (1912), ‘De rariorum animalium historia libellus’, in The Works of John Caius, M.D., ed. E. S. Roberts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cardano, Girolamo (1663), Opera omnia, ed. C. Spon, 10 vols, Lyons. Cardim, Fernão (1906), ‘A Treatise of Brasil, written by a Portugal who had long lived there’, in Purchas, Samuel, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, 20 vols, Glasgow: James MacLehose, vol. 16, pp. 418–503. —— (1925), Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil, introd. and notes by Baptista Caetano, Capistrano de Abreu and Rodolpho Garcia, Rio de Janeiro: J. Leite. Cieza de León, Pedro (1959), The Incas, trans. Harriet de Onis with an introd. by Victor W. von Hagen, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. —— (1984), Crónica del Perú. 1ra parte, introd. by Franklin Pease, Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

238

A New World of Animals

Clusius, Carolus (1605), Exoticorum libri decem quibus animalium, plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinarum fructuum historiae describuntur, Antwerp. Cobo, Bernabé (1956), Historia del Nuevo Mundo, preliminary study by Francisco Mateos, 2 vols, Madrid: Atlas (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 91 and 92). Colón, Cristóbal (1982), Textos y documentos completos, ed. Consuelo Varela, Madrid: Alianza. Colón, Hernando (1984), Historia del Almirante, ed. Luis Arranz, Madrid: Historia 16. Cortés, Hernán (1986), Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. A. Pagden, with an introd. by J. H. Elliott, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. De Lollis, Cesare (ed.) (1894), Scritti di Christophoro Colombo, Raccolta … di Documenti e Studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, part I, vol. 2, Roma: Ministerio della Publica Istruzione. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal (1992), Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, Barcelona: Planeta. Domínguez, Luis L. (1891) (trans.), The Conquest of the River Plate (1535–1555). I. Voyage of Ulrich Schmidt to the Rivers of La Plata and Paraguay. II. Commentaries of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, London: Hakluyt Society. Eatough, Geoffrey (ed.) (1998), Selections from Peter Martyr, Turnhout: Brepols. Emmart, Emily W. (ed.) (1940), The Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin. 241) Vatican Library. An Aztec Herbal of 1552, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Fernández de Enciso, Martín (1948), Suma de Geografía (transcription of the Seville, 1530 edition), introd. by José Ibañez Cerdá, Madrid. Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo (1959), Historia General y Natural de las Indias, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, 5 vols, Madrid: Atlas (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 117–21). —— (1959), Natural History of the West Indies, trans. and ed. Sterling A. Stoudemire, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Formisano, Luciano (ed.) (1992), Letters from a New World. Amerigo Vespucci’s Discovery of America, trans. David Jacobson, New York: Marsilio. Gesner, Conrad (1551–58), Historia animalium, 4 vols, Zurich. —— (1553), Icones animalium quadrupedum viviparorum et oviparorum, Zurich. —— (1555), Icones avium omnium, Zurich. —— (1560), Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, Zurich. Gil, Juan (ed.) (1987), El libro de Marco Polo anotado por Cristóbal Colón. El libro de Marco Polo de Rodrigo de Santaella, Madrid: Alianza. Greenlee, William Brooks (ed. and trans.) (1938), The Voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil and India, London: Hakluyt Society. Grew, Nehemiah (1681), Musaeum Regalis Societatis or a Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge, made by Nehemjah Grew M.D., London. Hakluyt, Richard (1928), The Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of Foreign Voyagers, 2 vols, London and Toronto: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton. Harrison, Peter (1998), The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Hernández, Francisco] (1651), Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus seu Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium mexicanorum historia, Rome. —— (1790), Historia plantarum novae hispaniae, ed. Casimiro Gómez Ortega, Madrid. —— (1959–85), Obras completas, 7 vols, México: Universidad Nacional de México. Herrera, Antonio de (1934–57), Historia General de los hechos de las castellanos en las islas y Tierra Firme del mar Océano, ed. Real Academia Nacional de la Historia, 15 vols, Madrid: Tipografía de Archivos.

Bibliography

239

Jane, Cecil (ed.) (1988), The Four Voyages of Columbus, 2 vols bound in one, New York: Dover. Jonston, John (1657), Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri, Amsterdam. —— (1657), Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri quinque, Amsterdam. —— (1657), Historiae naturalis de avibus libri sex, Amsterdam. Kircher, Athanasius (1654), Magnes sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum, 3rd edn, Rome. —— (1667), Magneticum naturae regnum sive disceptatio physiologica de triplici in natura rerum magnete, Rome. —— (1675), Arca Noë in tres libros digesta, Amsterdam. —— (1678), Mundus subterraneus, Amsterdam. Laet, Johannes de (1633), Novus orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis libri XVIII, Amsterdam. —— (1640), L’histoire du nouveau monde, Leiden. Las Casas, Bartolomé de (1951), Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols, México and Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica. Lardicci, Francesca (ed.) (1999), A Synoptic edition of the log of Columbus’s first voyage, trans. Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan, Turnhout: Brepols. León-Portillo, Miguel (1962) (ed. and introd.), The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, trans. from the Nahuatl into Spanish by Angel Mario Garibay and from Spanish into English by Lysander Kemp, London: Constable. Léry, Jean de (1990), History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, trans. and introd. by Janet Whetley, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press. López de Gómara, Francisco (1941), Historia general de las Indias, 2 vols, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. —— (1964), Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, trans. and ed. L. B. Simpson, Berkeley: University of California Press. López de Velasco, Juan (1971), Geografía y descripción general de las Indias, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada with a preliminary study by María del Carmen González Muñoz, Madrid: Atlas (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 248). Magalhães, Pero de (1922), The Histories of Brazil, trans. and annotated by John B. Stetson, Jr, 2 vols, New York: The Cortes Society. Marcondes de Souza, T. O. (1956), O descobrimento do Brasil, São Paulo: Gráfica-Editora Michalany. Markham, Clements (1864) (ed. and trans.), Travels of Pedro Cieza de León, London: Hakluyt Society. —— (ed. and trans.) (1911), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan, London: Hakluyt Society. [Martyr, Peter] [Martir de Anglería, Pedro] (1892), De orbe novo … Decades octo, ed. Joaquín Torres Asensio, 2 vols, Madrid: viuda e hija de Gómez Fuentenebro. —— (1912, rptd 1970), De Orbe Novo. The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghera, trans. with notes and an introd. by Francis Augustus McNutt, 2 vols, rptd New York: Burt Franklin. —— (1944), Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, trans. Joaquín Torres Asensio, Buenos Aires: Bajel. Merian, Maria S. (1719), Dissertatio de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum surinamensium, Amsterdam. Monardes, Nicolás (1574), Primera y Segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven em medicina. Tratado de la piedra bezoar, y de la yerba Escuerçonera; diálogo de las grandezas del hierro y de sus virtudes medicinales; tratado de la nieve y del beber frío, Sevilla. Montanus, Arnoldus (1671), De Nieuwe en onbekende Weereld, Amsterdam. Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio (1635), Historia naturae maxime peregrinae, Antwerp. Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar (1942), Naufragios y Comentarios, Buenos Aires and México: Espasa-Calpe Argentina.

240

A New World of Animals

Ogilby, John (1671), America, being an accurate description of the New World, London. Orta, García D’ (1563), Coloquios dos simples, e drogas e cousas mediçinais da India, Goa. —— (1913), Colloquies on Simples and Drugs of India by García da Orta, new edition (Lisbon, 1895) ed. and annotated by the Conde de Ficalho, trans. with introd. and index by Clements Markham, London. Pastells, Pablo (1920), El descubrimiento del Estrecho de Magallanes, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra. Pigafetta, Antonio (1874), The First Voyage around the World by Magellan, translated from the accounts of Pigafetta and other contemporary writers, trans., notes and introd. by Lord Stanley of Alderley, London: Hakluyt Society. —— (1988), Primer viaje alrededor del mundo, ed., notes and introd. by Leoncio Cabrera, Madrid: Historia 16. Piso, W. and Markgraf, G. (1648), Historia naturalis Brasiliae, Amsterdam. Piso, W. (1658), De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica libri quatuordecim, Amsterdam. Pozzi, Mario (ed.) (1993), Il Mondo Nuovo di Amerigo Vespucci, 2nd edn, Alessandria: Edizione dell’ Orso. Purchas, Samuel (1905–7), Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, 20 vols, Glasgow: James MacLehose. Ray, John (1693), Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis, London. —— (1713), Synopsis avium et piscium opus posthumum, ed. W. Derham, London. Redi, Francesco (1668), Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti, Florence. Rondelet, Guillaume (1554), Libri de piscibus marinis, Paris. Rücker, Elizabeth and William T. Stearn (eds) (1982), Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam. Commentary to the facsimile edition of Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (Amsterdam, 1705) based on original watercolours in the Royal Library Windsor Castle, London: Pion. Schmidl, Ulrich (1962), Viaje al Río de la Plata, trans. E. Wernicke, in Bibliotheca indiana, ed. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois, 4 vols, Madrid: Aguilar, vol. IV, pp. 267–329. Scillacio, Niccolò (1893), ‘De insulis meridiani atque indici maris nuper inventis’, in Raccolta … di Documenti e Studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, part III, vol. 2, Rome: Ministero della Publica Istruzione, pp. 83–94. Sepi, Giorgio de (1678), Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum celeberrimum…, Amsterdam. Schott, Gaspar (1662), Physica curiosa sive mirabilia naturae et artis libris XII comprehensa, 5 vols, Würzburg. Spielbergen, Georg (1906), The East and West Indian Mirror … (1614–1617) and the Australian Navigations of Jacob Le Maire, trans. with an introd. by J. A. J. de Villiers, London: Hakluyt Society. Staden, Hans (1928), The True History of his Captivity, 1557, trans. and ed. with introd. and notes by Malcolm Letts, London: Routledge. —— (1963), Zwei Reisen nach Brasilien, 1548–1555, ed. Karl Fouquet, 2nd augmented edn, Marburg am Lahn: Trautvetter and Fischer Nachf. Taylor, E. G. (ed.) (1932), A Brief Summe of Geographie by Roger Barlow, London: Hakluyt Society. Ternaux-Compans, M. (trans.) (1843), ‘Lettre du Louis Ramirez sur le voyage de Sébastien Cabot en Rio de la Plata, traduite du manuscrit inédit de la Bibliothèque de M. Ternaux-Compans’, Nouvelles annales des voyages et sciences géographiques 3, 39–73. Thevet, André (1568, rptd. 1971), The New Found Worlde or Antarctike, orig. edn London, rptd. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, New York: Da Capo Press. —— (1575), Cosmographie universelle, 2 vols, Paris. —— (1982), Les singularités de la France Antarctique autrement nommée Amérique, facsimile of the 1558 edn with a prologue by Jean Baudry, Paris: Le Temps.

Bibliography

241

Topsell, Edward (1607, rptd 1972), The Historie of Four-Footed Beasts, London, rptd. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, New York: Da Capo Press. Tyson, Edward (1680), ‘Preliminary Discourse concerning Anatomy and Natural History of Animals’, in Phocaena or the Anatomy of a Porpess dissected at Gresham College, London. —— (1682/83), ‘Vipera Caudi-Sona Americana, or the Anatomy of a Rattle-Snake dissected at the Repository of the Royal Society in January 1682/83’, Philosophical Transactions 13 (144), 25–58. —— (1683), ‘Tajacu, seu Aper Moschiferus, or the Anatomy of the Mexico Musk-Hog’, Philosophical Transactions 13 (153), 359–85. —— (1698), ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum or the Anatomy of an Opossum, dissected at Gresham-College’, Philosophical Transactions 20 (239), 105–64. —— (1704), ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum Masculum, or the Anatomy of a Male Opossum: in a letter to Dr. Edward Tyson, from Mr. William Cowper’, Philosophical Transactions 24 (290), 1565–90. Vargas Machuca, Bernardo (1892), Milicia y descripción de las Indias, Madrid: Librería de Victoriano Suárez. Vasconcelos, Simão de (1865), Chronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado de Brasil, 2 vols, Lisboa: Fernandes Lopez. Vat, Odulfo van der, O.F.M. (1948–49), ‘The First Franciscans of Brazil’, The Americas, 5, 18–30. Vega, Garcilaso de la (1966), Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Part One, trans. and introd. by Harold V. Livermore, Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Vespucci, Amerigo (1986), Cartas de viaje, trans. Ana María R. de Aznar, rev., introd. and notes by L. Formisano, Madrid: Alianza. Vries, Simon de (1682), Curieuese aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en West Indische verwonderens-waerdige dingen, Utrecht. Wachtel, Nathan (1977), The Vision of the Vanquished. The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530–1570, trans. by Bon and Siân Reynolds, Hassocks (Sussex): The Harvester Press. Wagener, Zacharias (1964), Zoobiblion, livro de animais do Brasil, ed. E. de Cerqueira Falçao, São Paulo: Documenta Brasiliensia. Willughby, Francis (1678), The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton … Translated into English and enlarged with many additions … by John Ray, Fellow of the Royal Society, London. —— (1686), De historia piscium libri quatuor. Recognovit, coaptavit, supplevit, librum etiam primum et secundum integros adjecit Johannes Raius, Oxford. Ximénez, Francisco (1615), Quatro libros de la naturaleza y virtudes de las plantas y animales que están recevidas en el uso de Medicina en la nueva España, México.

Secondary Literature Alexander, Michael (ed.) (1976), Discovering the New World, based on the works of Theodore de Bry, London: London Editions. Allen, Don Cameron (1949), ‘The Arca Noe of Athanasius Kircher’, in idem, The Legend of Noah. Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science and Letters, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 182–91. Alpers, Svetlana (1983), The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the 17th Century, London: Murray. Álvarez López, Enrique (1940, 1941), ‘Plinio y Fernández de Oviedo’, Anales de ciencias naturales (Madrid), 1, 40–61 and 2, 13–35. —— (1942), ‘El perro mudo americano’, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, 40, 411–17. —— (1942), ‘El Dr. Francisco Hernández y sus comentarios a Plinio’, Revista de Indias 3, 251–90.

242

A New World of Animals

—— (1943), ‘La filosofía natural del padre Acosta’, Revista de Indias, 4, 302–22. —— (1957), ‘La historia natural en Fernández de Oviedo’, Revista de Indias 17, 541–601. Andrews, K. R. (1974), ‘Latin America’, in Quinn, D. B. (ed.), Hakluyt Handbook, London: The Hakluyt Society, vol. 1, pp. 238–43. Arciniegas, Germán (1941), Los alemanes en la conquista de América, Buenos Aires: Losada. Armas, Juan Ignacio de (1888), La zoología de Colón y de los primeros exploradores de América, Havana: Establecimiento Tipográfico O’Reilly. Arrizabalaga, Jon, John Henderson and Roger French (1997), The Great Pox. The French Disease in Renaissance Europe, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Ashley Montagu, M. F. (1943), Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S., 1650–1708 and the Rise of Human and Comparative Anatomy in England, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. Ashworth, William B. Jr (1985), ‘The Persistent Beast: Recurring Images in Early Modern Zoological Illustration’, in Ellenius, A. (ed.), The Natural Sciences and the Arts. Aspects of Interaction from the Renaissance to the 20th Century, Uppsala: Almqvist and Wicksell. —— (1990), ‘Natural history and the emblematic world view’, in Lindberg, David and Robert Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303–32. Asúa, Miguel de (2003), ‘Los jesuítas y el conocimiento de la naturaleza americana’, Stromata 59, 1–20. Basile, Bruno (1987), L’invenzione del vero. La letteratura scientifica da Galilei ad Algarotti, Roma: Salerno Editrice. Bataillon, Marcel (1974), ‘L’Amiral et les “nouveaux horizons” français’, in Actes du colloque L’Amiral Coligny et son temps (Paris, 24–28 octobre 1878), Paris: Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, pp. 41–52. Bauen, Fred (1982), ‘Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680)’, Journal of the History of Ideas 43, 129–34. Bedini, Silvio (1986), ‘Citadels of Learning: The Museo Kircheriano and other seventeenth-century Italian science collections’, in Casciato, Maristella, Maria Grazia Ianniello and Maria Vitale (eds), Enciclopedismo in Roma Barroca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico, Venice: Marsilio Editori. —— ( ed.) (1992, rptd 1998), Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration. An Encyclopedia, New York: Da Capo Press. Berdan, Frances F. (1982), The Aztecs of Central Mexico. An Imperial Society, New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Bethell, Leslie (ed.) (1984–95), The Cambridge History of Latin America, 11 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bilikiewicz-Krakau, Tadeusz (1930), ‘Johann Jonston (1603–1675) und seine Tätigkeit als Arzt’, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 23, 357–81. Bishop, Morris (1933), The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca, New York and London: The Century Co. Boogaart, E. van den (ed.) (1979), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: The Johan Maurits van Nassau Stifting. Boxer, C. R. (1963), Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolás Monardes, London (Series Diamante, 14). —— (1973), The Dutch in Brazil. 1624–1654, Connecticut: Archon Books. —— (1990), The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800, London: Penguin. Bucher, Bernadette (1981), Icon and Conquest. A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s Great Voyages, trans. Basia Miller Gulati, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Bustamante García, Jesús (1992), ‘De la naturaleza y los naturales americanos en el siglo XVI: algunas cuestiones críticas sobre la obra de Francisco Hernández’, Revista de Indias, 52 (195/96), 297–325.

Bibliography

243

Campo, Rafael Martín del (1938, 1940, 1941), ‘Ensayo de interpretación del libro undécimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’, Anales del Instituto de Biología 9, 379–91; 11, 385–408; 12, 489–506. Carrillo, Jesús (2000), ‘Taming the Visible: Word and Image in Oviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias’, Viator 31, 399–431. Carus, Julius V. (1880), Histoire de la zoologie, trans. P.-O. Hagenmuller, Paris: J.-B. Baillière. Cermenati, Mario (1906), ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi e l’America’, Annali di Botanica 4 (4), 313–66. Chiappelli, Fredi, Michael Allen and Robert Benson (eds) (1976), First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press. Cline, Howard (1964), ‘The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577–1586’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 44, 341–74. Cole, F. J. (1944), A History of Comparative Anatomy, London: Macmillan. Crosby, Alfred W. (1972), The Columbian Exchange. Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. —— (1986), Ecological Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, Natalie Z. (1995), Women on the margins, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Delaunay, Paul (1997), La zoologie au XVIe siècle, Paris: Hermann. De Renzi, Silvia (2000), ‘Writing and Talking of exotic animals’, in Franca-Spada, Marina and Nick Jardine (eds), Books and the Sciences in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 151–67. Didier, Hughes (1976), Vida y pensamiento de Juan E. Nieremberg, trans. M. Navarro Carnicer, Madrid: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca-Fundación Universitaria Española. Duhr, Bernhard, S. J. (1921), Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge in den zweiten Hälfte des XVII. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3, Munich, Regensburg: G. J. Manz. Eerde, Katherine S. van (1976), John Ogilby and the Taste of his Times, Folkestone, Kent: Dawson. Elliott, J. H. (1970), The Old World and the New, 1492–1650, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1984), ‘The Spanish Conquest and Settlment in America’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. I, pp. 149–206. —— (1989), ‘The mental world of Hernán Cortés’, in idem, Spain and its World, 1500–1700. Selected Essays, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp. 27–41. Engstrand, Iris H. W. (1981), Spanish Scientists in the New World: The Eighteenth-Century Expeditions, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Evans, R. J. W. (1979), The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700. An Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feest, Christian (1985), ‘Mexico and South America in the European Wunderkammer’, in Impey, O. and A. MacGregor (eds), The Origins of Museums, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 237–44. Findlen, Paula (1994), Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Fletcher, John (1988), ‘Athanasius Kircher: a man under pressure’, in idem (ed.), Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen zum gelehrten Europa seiner Zeit, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, pp. 1–15. Flint, Valerie I. J. (1992), The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. French, Roger (1989), ‘Harvey in Holland: Circulation and the Calvinists’, in idem and Andrew Wear (eds), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 46–86.

244

A New World of Animals

—— (1994), Ancient Natural History. Histories of Nature, London and New York: Routledge. —— (1999), Dissection and Vivisection in the European Renaissance, Aldershot: Ashgate. Friederici, Georg (1973), El carácter del descubrimiento y de la conquista de América, trans. W. Roces, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Frye, John (1992), Los otros. Columbus and the three who made his enterprise of the Indies succeed. Lewiston, Queenstown and Lampeter: The Edwin Meller Press. Gabrielli, Giuseppe (1933), ‘Un contributo dei missionari cattolici alla prima conoscenza naturalistica del Messico’, Il pensiero missionario 5 (3), 263–74 —— (1935), ‘Un libro linceo di zoologia esotica specchio storico-letterario di vita romana nel primo seicento’, in Atti del III Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani, ed. Galassi Paluzzi, vol. 4, pp. 429–42. —— (1938–42), ‘Il carteggio Linceo della vecchia Accademia di Federico Cesi (1603–1630)’, Memorie della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 6th series, 7, (1–4), 1–1446. —— (1939), ‘Il cosidetto Tesoro messicano edito dai primi Lincei’, in Atti della Reale Accademia d’Italia. Rendicontti della classe di scienze morali e storiche, 7th series, 1 (1–5), 110–21. Gándara, Guillermo (1921), ‘La obra de Fray Francisco Ximénez comparada con la del doctor Francisco Hernández, recompuesta por el Dr. Nardo Antonno Recco’, Memorias de la Sociedad Antonio Alzate 39, 99–120. Gandía, Enrique de (1951), ‘Exploraciones geográficas y conquista del Nuevo Mundo’, in Levene, Ricardo ( ed.), Historia de América, 4th edn, Buenos Aires: W. M. Jackson, vol. IV, pp. 99–182. George, Wilma (1969), Animals and Maps, London: Secker and Warburg. —— (1980), ‘Sources and background to discoveries of new animals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, History of Science, 18, 79–104. —— (1985), ‘Alive or dead: zoological collections in the seventeenth century’, in Impey, O. and A. Macgregor (eds), The Origins of Museums, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 179–87. —— (1988), ‘Thomas Harriot and the fauna of North America’, The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar, occasional paper no. 5. Gerbi, Antonello (1973), The Dispute of the New World. The History of a Polemic, 1750–1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. —— (1978), La naturaleza de las indias nuevas. De Cristóbal Colón a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, trans. Antonio Alatorre, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Gillispie, Charles Coulton (ed.) (1980), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vols in 8, New York: Scribner’s. Gilmore, Raymond M. (1950), ‘Fauna and Ethnozoology of South America’, in Steward, Julian H. (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 6, Washington: Government Printing Office, pp. 345–464. Glick, Thomas (1971), ‘On the influence of Kircher in Spain’, Isis 62, 379–81. Gliozzi, Mario (1976), ‘Cardano, Girolamo’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Roma, vol. 19, pp. 758–63. Godwin, Joscelyn (1979), Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Knowledge, London: Thames and Hudson. Goodman, David (1988), Power and Penury. Government, Technology and Science in Philip II’s Spain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Edward J. (1972), The Explorers of South America, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan. Grafton, Anthony (1987), ‘Julius Caesar Scaliger’, in Bietenholz, Peter G. and Thomas Deutscher (eds), Contemporaries of Erasmus, 3 vols, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, vol. 3, pp. 212–14.

Bibliography

245

Grote, Andreas (ed.) (1994), Macrocosmo in microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns, 1450 bis 1800, Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Gudger, E. W. (1919), ‘On the use of the sucking-fish for catching fish and turtles: studies in Echeneis or remora, II’, The American Naturalist 53, 289–311, 446–67 and 515–26. —— (1934), ‘The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century: Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: a chapter in the history of Ichthyology’, Isis 22, 21–40. Guerra, Francisco (1961), Nicolás Bautista Monardes. Su vida y su obra, México: Compañía Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey. —— (1966), ‘Drugs from the Indies and the Political Economy of the Sixteenth Century’, in Florkin, M. (ed.), Materia Medica in the XVIth Century, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 29–54. —— (1979), ‘Medicine in Dutch Brazil, 1624–1654’, in Boogaart, E. van den (ed.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: The Johan Maurits van Nassau Stifting, pp. 472–93. —— (ed.) (1982), El Tesoro de Medicinas de Gregorio López, 1542–1596, Madrid. —— (1986), ‘La leyenda del Tesoro Messicano’, in Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Atti dei Convegni Lincei 78, pp. 307–31. Hagen, Victor W. von (1944), ‘Francisco Hernández: naturalist, 1515–1578’, Scientific Monthly 58, 383–5. Hahn, Roger (1971), The Anatomy of an Institution. The Paris Academy of Sciences (1666–1803), Berkeley: University of California Press. Hamilton, Earl J. (1976), ‘What the New World Gave the Economy of the Old’, in Chiappelli, F. et al. (eds), First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 2, pp. 853–83. Hanke, Lewis (1959), Aristotle and the American Indians, Chicago: Henry Regnery. Heikamp, Detlef (1976), ‘American Objects in Italian Collections of the Renaissance and Baroque: A Survey’, in Chiappelli, F. et al. (eds), First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 1, pp. 455–82. Honour, Hugh (1975), The New Golden Land. European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time, London: Allen Lane. Hornberger, Theodore (1939), ‘Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las indias. A Guide to the source and the growth of the American Scientific Tradition’, Studies in English (Austin: University of Texas), pp. 138–62. Hunger, F. W. T. (1927–43), Charles de l’Ecluse (Carolus Clusius), Nederlandsch kruidkundige 1526–1609, 2 vols, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hunter, Michael (1981), Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1989), ‘Between cabinet of curiosities and research collection: the history of the Royal Society’s “Repository’’ ’, in idem, Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Royal Society, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, pp. 123–55. Impey, Oliver and Arthur Macgregor (eds) (1985), The Origins of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ingegno, Alfonso (1980), Saggio sulla filosofia di Cardano, Firenze: La nuova Italia. Irvins, William M. (1953), Prints and Visual Communication, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Jarcho, Saul (1959), ‘Origin of the American Indians as suggested by Fray Joseph de Acosta (1589)’, Isis 50, 430–38. Johnson, H. B. (1984), ‘The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. I, pp. 249–86. Joppien, R. (1979), ‘The Dutch Vision of Brazil. Johan Maurits and his artists’, in Boogaart, E. van

246

A New World of Animals

den (ed.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: The Johan Maurits van Nassau Stifting, pp. 297–376. Julien, Jean-Claude (1947), Les débuts de l’expansion et de la colonisation françaises (XVe-XVIe siècles), Paris: PUF. Katz, Friedrich (1969), The Ancient American Civilizations, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Keen, Benjamin (1979), ‘The vision of America in the Writings of Urbain Chauventon’, in Chiappelli, F. et al. (eds) First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 1, pp. 107–20. Kirkpatrick, F. A. (1938), Latin America. A Brief History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klooster, Wim (1977), The Dutch in America, 1600–1800, Providence, Rhode Island: The John Carter Brown Library. Kouskoff, Georges (1986), ‘La querelle entre Jérôme Cardano et Jules-César Scaliger: le De subtilitate ad Hieronymum Cardanum’, in Cubalier de Beynac, J. and M. Magnien (eds), Acta Scaligeriana, Agen, pp. 207–20 Kusukawa, Sachiko (2000), ‘Illustrating nature’, in Franca-Spada, Marina and Nick Jardine (eds) Books and the Sciences in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 90–113. —— (2000), ‘The Historia piscium (1686)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 54, 179–97. Larder, David F. (1968), ‘The editions of Cardanus’ De rerum varietate’, Isis 59, 74–7. Leinkauf, Thomas (1993), Mundus combinatus. Studien zur Struktur der barocken Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602–1680), Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Leite, Serafim (1938), História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 2 vols, Lisboa: Livraria Portugalia; Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. —— (1965), Suma histórica da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (assistência de Portugal), 1549–1760, Lisboa: Junta de Investigaçoês do ultramar. Lemos, William (1998), ‘Ojeda, Alonso de’, in Bedini, Silvio A. (ed.), Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration. An Encyclopedia, New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 523–4. —— (1998), ‘Pinzón, Vicente Yañez’, in Bedini, Silvio (ed.), Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration. An Encyclopedia, New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 548–9. Lenoble, Robert (1969), Histoire de l’idée de nature, Paris: Albin Michel. Lestringant, Frank (1984), ‘L’escursion brésilienne: note sur les trois premières éditions de l’Histoire d’un voyage de Jean de Léry’, in Mélanges sur la littérature de la Renaissance à la mémoire de V.-L. Saulnier, Geneva: Droz, pp. 53–72. —— (1991), André Thevet. Cosmographe des derniers Valois, Geneva: Droz. —— (1994), Mapping the Renaissance World. The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lichtenstein, M. H. K. (1818–29), ‘Die Werke von Markgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte Brasiliens erlautert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Originalzeichnungen’, Abhandlungen der physikalische Klasse der königlich-preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1818, pp. 201–22; 1819, pp. 155–78; 1822, pp. 237–54 and 267–88; 1829, pp. 49–65. López Piñero, José María (1979), Ciencia y técnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII, Barcelona: Labor. —— (1992), ‘The Pomar Codex (ca. 1590): Plants and animals of the Old World and from the Hernández expedition to America’, Nuncius 7, 35–52. —— (1992), ‘Nicolás Monardes: el estudio de la materia médica americana en Sevilla’, in idem et al. (eds), Medicinas, drogas y alimentos vegetales del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Comercio, pp. 111–25. —— (1992), ‘Las nuevas medicinas’, in idem at al. (eds), Medicinas, drogas y alimentos vegetales del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Comercio, pp. 127–46.

Bibliography

247

——,José Luis Fresquet Febrer, María Luz López Terrada, José Pardo Tomás (1992), Medicinas, drogas y alimentos vegetales del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Comercio. Lunsingh Scheuleer, Th. D. (1985), ‘Early Dutch Cabinets of Curiosities’, in Impey, O. and A. Macgregor (eds), The Origins of Museums, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 115–20. McAlister, Lyle N. (1984), Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKinney, Loren (1946), ‘Animal Substances in Materia Medica. A Study in the persistence of the primitive’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1, 149–70. Maclean, Ian (1984), ‘The interpretation of natural signs: Cardano’s De subtilitate versus Scaliger’s Exercitationes’, in Vickers, Brian (ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 231–52. MacLeod, Murdo J. (1984), ‘Spain and America: the Atlantic trade 1492–1720’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. I, pp. 341–88. Magnaghi, Alberto (1924), A. Vespucci, Rome. Marini Bettolo, Giovanni B. (1993), La colaborazone scientifica tra Italia e Spagna per la cognoscenza delle risorse naturali del Nuovo Mondo, Naples: Bibliopolis. Martín, Luis (1968), The Intellectual Conquest of Peru. The Jesuit College of San Pablo, 1568–1767, New York: Fordham University Press. Martínez Carreras, José U. (1965), ‘Las “relaciones” histórico-geográficas del siglo XVI’, in Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos, Relaciones geográficas de Indias. Perú, 3 vols, Madrid: Atlas (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 183–5), vol. 1, pp. xli–lxiv. Mattirolo, Oreste (1904), ‘Le lettere di Ulisse Aldrovandi a Francesco I e Ferdinando I Granduchi di Toscana e a Francesco II Duca di Urbino’, in Memorie della reale Academia di Torino, 2nd series, 54, 355–401. Memming, John (1984), ‘The Indians of Brazil in 1500’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. I, pp. 119–43. Mignolo, Walter (1995), The Darker Side of the Renaissance, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Montalenti, G. (1960), ‘Aldrovandi, Ulisse’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Roma, vol. 2, pp. 118–24. Morison, Samuel E. (1963), Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, New York: The Limited Edition Club. —— (1974), The European Discovery of America. The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492–1616, New York: Oxford University Press. Morren, Édouard (1876), ‘L’Écluse, Charles’, in Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Biographie nationale, Bruxelles, vol. 5, cols 383–403. Morton, A. G. (1981), History of Botanical Science, London and New York: Academic Press. Mullaney, Steven (1988), ‘Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs: The Rehearsal of Cultures in the Late Renaissance’, in Greenblatt, Stephen (ed.), Representing the English Renaissance, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 65–92. Nicolau d’Olwer, Luis (1952), Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1599), Mexico, DF: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Nissen, Claus (1978), Die zoologische Buchillustration. Band II: Geschichte, Stuttgart: Hierseman. O’Gorman, Edmundo (1972), Cuatro historiadores de Indias, México: Alianza Editorial Mexicana. Olmi, Giuseppe (1972), Ulisse Aldrovandi. Scienza e natura nel secondo Cinquecento, Trento: Libera Universita. —— (1977), ‘Osservazioni e raffigurazioni della natura in Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605)’, Annali dell’Istituto Germanico in Trento 3,105–81.

248

A New World of Animals

—— (1985), ‘Science–Honour–Metaphor: Italian Cabinets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ in Impey, O. and A. Macgregor (eds), The Origins of Museums, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 5–16. —— (1992), ‘“Magnus campus”: i naturalisti italiani di fronte all’America nel secolo XVI’, in idem, L’inventario del mondo. Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 211–52. Olmo Pintado, Margarita del (1992), ‘La histora natural en la “Historia del nuevo mundo” del P. Cobo’, Revista de Indias 52 (195/96), 795–823. Oppenheimer, Jane M. (1936), ‘Guillaume Rondelet’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 4, 817–34. Osorio Romero, Ignacio (1993), La luz imaginaria. Epistolario de Atanasio Kircher con los novohispanos, México: UNAM. Pagden, Anthony (1982), The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1993), European Encounters with the New World. From Renaissance to Romanticism, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. —— (1995), Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c.1800, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Papavero, Nelson (2000), ‘Os 500 anos da zoologia no Brasil’, Ciência Hoje 28, 30–35. Parker, John (1965), Books to Build an Empire, Amsterdam: N. Israel. Parry, J. H. (1940), The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1966), Europe and a Wider World, 1415–1715, 3rd edn, London: Hutchinson University Library. —— (1966), The Spanish Seaborne Empire. London: Hutchinson. Pennington, L. E. (ed.) (1997), The Purchas Handbook. Studies of the life, times and writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–1626, 2 vols, London: Hakluyt Society. Perfetti, Stefano (2000), Aristotle’s Zoology and its Renaissance Commentators (1521–1601), Leuven: Leuven University Press. Phelam, John L. (1970), The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2nd edn rev., Berkeley: University of California Press. Phillips, William D., Jr and Carla Rahn Phillips (1992), The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pluchon, Pierre (1991), Histoire de la colonisation française, 2 vols, Paris: Fayard. Pohl, Frederick (1944), Amerigo Vespucci. Pilot Major, New York: Columbia University Press. Prescott, William H. (1908), History of the Conquest of Peru, London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton. Quinn, D. B. (ed.) (1974), The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols, London: Hakluyt Society. Raven, Charles E. (1950), John Ray Naturalist. His Life and Works, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reilly, Conor, S. J. (1974), Athanasius Kircher S. J., Master of a hundred Arts, 1602–1680, Wiesbaden and Rome: Edizioni del mondo. Roulez, J. (1876), ‘Laet, Jean de’, in Académie Royale de Belgique, Biographie nationale, vol. 5, cols 273–7. Salas, Alberto (1968), Para un bestiario de Indias. Buenos Aires: Losada. —— (1986), Tres Cronistas de Indias, 2nd edn, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Salomon-Bayet, Claire (1978), L’institution de la science et l’expérience du vivant. Méthode et expérience à l’Académie royale des sciences (1666–1793), Paris: Flammarion. Sauer, Jonathan D. (1976), ‘Changing Perception and Exploitation of New World Plants in Europe,

Bibliography

249

1492–1800’, in Chiappelli, F. et al. (eds), First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 2, pp. 813–31. Schlesinger, Roger and Arthur P. Stabler (1986), André Thevet’s North America. A SixteenthCentury View, Kingston and Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press. Serrai, Alfredo (1990), Conrad Gesner, ed. Maria Cochetti, Rome: Bulzoni. Shumaker, Wayne (1972), The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. A Study in Intellectual Patterns, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. —— (1989), ‘Gaspar Schott, Magia universalis’, in idem, Natural Magic and Modern Science. Four Treatises 1590–1657, Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Siraisi, Nancy (1997), The Clock and the Mirror. Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sloan, Phillip R. (1972), ‘John Locke, John Ray, and the Problem of the Natural System’, Journal of the History of Biology 5, 1–53. Somolinos d’Ardois, Germán (1954), ‘Sobre la iconografía botánica original de las obras de Hernández y su sustitución en las ediciones europeas’, Revista de la sociedad mexicana de historia natural 15, 73–86. —— (1970), ‘Vida y obras de Francisco Hernández’, in Hernández, Obras Completas, vol. 1, pp. 95–373. Steele, Colin R. (1975), English Interpreters of the Iberian World from Purchas to Stevens. A bibliographical study, 1603–1726, Oxford: Dolphin Books. —— (1997), ‘Latin America’, in Pennington, L. (ed.), The Purchas Handbook, London: Hakluyt Society, vol. 1, pp. 301–11. Tagliaferri, Maria Cristina, Stefano Tommasini and Sandra Tugnoli Pataro (1994), ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi als Sammler. Das Sammeln als Gelehrsamkeit oder als Methode wissenschaftlichen Forschens?’, in Grote, Andreas (ed.), Macrocosmo in microcosmo, Opladen: Leske and Budrich, pp. 265–81. Talbot, Charles (1976), ‘America and the European Drug Trade’, in Chiappelli, F. (ed.), First Images of America, 2 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 2, pp. 833–44. Teixeira, Daniel M. (ed.) (1993–2000), Brasil Holandês, Rio de Janeiro: Index. Tugnoli Pataro, Sandra (1981), Metodo e sistema delle scienze nel pensiero di Ulisse Aldrovandi, Bologna: CLUEB. Turner, Daymond (1983), ‘The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies’, The Huntington Library Quarterly 46, 105–25. —— (1985), ‘Forgotten Treasures from the Indies: The Illustrations and Drawings of Fernández de Oviedo’, Huntington Library Quarterly 48, 1–46. Ubrizsy in Savoia, Andrea (1978), ‘I rapporti tra Carolus Clusius ed i naturalisti italiani del suo tempo’, Physis 20, 49–69. Valiant, Sharon (1993), ‘Maria Sibylla Merian: Recovering an Eighteen-Century Legend’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, 467–79. Varey, Simón and Rafael Chabrán (1994), ‘Medical Natural History in the Renaissance: The Strange Case of Francisco Hernández’, Huntington Library Quarterly 57, 125–51. Wachtel, Nathan (1984), ‘The Indians and the Spanish Conquest’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 1, pp. 207–48. Wagner, Henry R. (1946), ‘Peter Martyr and his Decades’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s., 56, 238–88. —— (1948), ‘Francisco López de Gómara and his Works’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s., 58 (2), 262–82. Weckman, Luis (1956), ‘The Middle Ages in the Conquest of America’, Speculum 26, 139–41.

250

A New World of Animals

Welch, Mary A. (1972), ‘Francis Willughby, F.R.S. (1635–1672)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 6, 71–85. Wellisch, Hans (1975), ‘Conrad Gessner: a bio-bibliography’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 7, 151–247. Whitehead, P. J. P. (1976), ‘The original drawings for the Histora naturalis Brasiliae of Piso and Marcgrave (1648)’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 7, 409–22. —— (1979), ‘Georg Markgraf and Brazilian Zoology,’ in van den Boogaart, E. van den (ed.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: The Johan Maurits van Nassau Stifting, pp. 426–71 and 446–54. —— and M. Boeseman (1989), A portrait of Dutch 17th century Brazil. Animals, Plants and People by the Artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau, Amsterdam: North-Holland. Williamson, James A. (1965), A Short History of British Expansion. Vol. I. The Old Colonial Empire. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press. Zapata Gollán, Agustín (1963), Mito y superstición en la conquista de América. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA.

Index References to illustrations are in bold Académie des sciences 209, 217, 220, 226, 228 Accademia dei Lincei 95 Acosta, José de animal descriptions 81–4 life 77 Natural and Moral History of the Indies 53, 77–85, 127, 136, 147, 232 Aristotle parallels 78, 79 epistemology 80 missionary bias 89 publishing history 77–8 purpose 79–80 summary 78–9 Torrid Zone 80–81 Albertus Magnus 71 Alcazaba, Simón de 23 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 184 life 197 works 197 De piscibus 201–2 illustration 201 Historia animalium 198–9 sources 198 Ornithologia 197, 199–200 Alexander VI 124 Almagro, Diego de 34 alpacas 49, 83, 188 Alva, Duke of 113, 138 ‘America’, naming 9 see also South America; Spanish America anacondas 145 animal descriptions 18, 32–3, 35–7, 40–42, 43–6, 47–51, 57–62, 65–74, 75–6, 81–4, 98–104, 111–14, 118, 121–2, 145–7, 150–52, 154–5, 159–61, 165–7, 173–4, 180–81 see also individual animals, eg armadillos animals descriptive method 13–14, 18, 24, 33, 44–5, 100–101, 157 dissection 209–10, 220–28

divination 45 drugs 108–9 from Spain 25, 41, 59 illustrations 127–30 Spanish America 135 magneticism 177–8 medicinal use 46, 83, 103 New World, knowledge about 136–9 Patagonia 21–4 in Royal Society museum 219–20 trade in 15, 127 ants 44, 45 anteaters 66, 118, 151 Antilles 20, 26 Antonio Váz island 116 Arawaks 26 Aristotle, Historia animalium 54, 118 armadillos 18, 42, 103, 112, 118, 169, 173, 188, 193, 219–20 illustrations 38, 168 Asunción 19, 31 Atahualpa, capture 34 Aurea Chersonese 1 autopsia 84, 151, 179, 228, 232, 234 Aztecs, conquest 27 Bacon, Francis Instauratio Magna 221 New Atlantis 221 Bahia 115, 124, 144, 145 Balboa, Vasco Núñez de 16, 21 Barlow, Roger 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 138 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 71, 73 Batavia 118 bats 32–3 Belon, Pierre Histoire des oyseaux 189–90 Observations 111, 112 Benzoni, Girolamo, History of the New World 126

252

Index

Bernáldez, Andres 4–5 History of the Catholic Kings 3 bezoar stones 41, 84, 92, 106, 108, 151 Incas 51, 106 bird descriptions 22, 27–8, 45, 50, 102, 113, 121, 150, 173–4, 175, 181, 189–90, 199–200, 213–15 see also individual birds, eg hummingbirds bison 76, 97 boas 145 Bontius, Jakob 118 boobies 2 Brazil 14, 20, 22, 37, 92 chroniclers 143 Dutch colony 92, 115–16 French colony 152–6 Jesuits 141, 144–5 brazilwood 92, 106 Browne, Thomas, Religio Medici 222 buffalo 100 butterflies 4, 44 Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez 29 animal descriptions 32–3 Relaciones y Comentarios... 31–2, 33 ‘cabinets of curiosities’ 109–10 Cabot, John 19 Cabot, Sebastian 19, 29, 55 Cabral, Pedro Álvares , voyages 14–15 Cadiz 65 Cajamarca 34 Calicut 14 Cape Verde Islands 14 capybaras 38, 39, 118 Cardano, Girolamo 183, 189 De rerum varietate 187–8 De subtilitate 185 works 184 Cardim, Fernão animal descriptions 145–7 on fish 147 on Indians 146–7 life 145 Treatise on … Brazil 144–7 Caribs 26 Carpaccio, Vittore 2 Castillo, Bernal Díaz del, True History of the Conquest of New Spain 27, 53 caterpillars 122

Cathay 1 Cauca River 34 caudillo, desirable qualities 40, 41 caymans 18, 30, 106 Chanca, Diego Álvarez 7, 8 Charles I, King of Spain (later Charles V) 16–17, 55, 63, 124 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 18, 19, 21, 27, 29, 55, 64, 74, 89 Chile 24 Cieza de León, Pedro animal descriptions 35–7 Chronicle 34–5, 36 Clusius animal descriptions 111–14 Exotica 111, 113, 125, 167 life 110–11 coatis 118, 151, 157, 206 illustration 227 Cobo, Bernabé, History of the New World 181–2 cochineal 92 collecting, exotic animals 109–10 Columbus, Christopher 1, 55 reading 5–6 voyages 1–7, 9, 11 Columbus, Fernando 5 History of the Admiral 1 conquistadores xv, 25, 40, 47, 55, 92 coots 102 Cortés, Hernán 27, 74 Cosa, Juan de la 9, 10, 16 Council of the Indies 40, 54, 55, 86, 87, 233 creation 85 coyotes 44 crocodiles 70–71, 220 Cuba 5 Cubagua 3 Cuzco 34 d’Abbeville, Claude History of the Mission 148–52 animal descriptions 150–52 d’Ailly, Pierre, Imago Mundi 5 Darien 15, 16 animals 17–18 de Bry, Théodore 11–12 animal illustrations 127–30 life 126

Index works Great Voyages (America) 126 Small Voyages 126 de Laet, Johannes 117, 119, 120 Novus orbis 123–5 sources 124–5 de Léry, Jean animal descriptions 159–61 History of a Voyage 76, 138, 158–62 sources 161 de Morais, Emanuel 122 de Vries, Simon, Curious remarks 135 illustrations 134 de Weert, Sebastian 127 deer 44 Dias, Bartolomeu 14 dissection, animals 209–10, 220–8 Domínguez, Francisco 94 dorado fish 33 drugs trade 104 Durand, Nicholas 153 Dutch East India Company 118, 138 Dutch Republic 115 see also Netherlands Dutch West India Company 92, 115, 122, 145, 233 eagles 45 Eckhout, Albert 117 Eden, Richard 130 Elcano, Sebastián 22 Enciso, Fernández de 15–16, 21 animal descriptions 18 Suma de Geografía 16–17, 18, 20, 55 Eusebius 72 De temporibus 71 Faber, Johann 98 Favian, Alexander 176 Federmann, Nicolaus, Historia Indianisch 30 Ferdinand and Isabella 2, 18, 55 Fernandina (Long Island) 7 fire beetles 59 flamingos 38, 39, 220 flying fish 83 Frampton, John 130 France, colony, Brazil 152–6 Fuggers 29, 86, 104, 105, 111, 191

253 Gama, Vasco da 14 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca animal descriptions 47–51 bird descriptions 50 Royal Commentaries 46–51, 132 Gesner, Konrad life 190–91 works Bibliotheca universalis 191 Historia animalium 183–4, 191–4, 196, 197, 208 sources 192–3 Icones animalium 191, 194–6, 208 giraffes 194 Glanvill, Joseph, Plus Ultra 221–2 Gómara, López de animal descriptions 75–6 General History of the Indies 54, 74–6 Gregory XIII 105 Grew, Nehemiah 219 griffin 73, 180–81 Guadeloupe 2 guaiac trade 92, 105 guanacos 19, 23, 24, 37, 83, 188 illustration 129 Guanahaní (San Salvador) 1 guano 84 Guaraní Indians 31, 32 Haiti 8 Hakluyt, Richard 76, 126, 130–31 Principall Navigations 131 Harriot, Thomas, A Brief and True Report 127 Henri II 152, 153, 157 Hernández, Francisco 92, 108 animal descriptions 98–104 botanical expedition 94–5 History of the Animals of New Spain 93, 98–104 life 94 Herrera, Antonio de 54 General History of the Deeds of the Castilians (Decades) 86–8, 124 sources 87–8 Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) 3, 4, 7, 8, 48, 57, 59–60, 67, 124 see also Santo Domingo House of Trade 85 Huaxtepec 108

254 Hubert, Robert 219 hummingbirds 20, 75, 111, 122, 146 hutia 6, 7 iguanas 3, 11, 17, 70, 71, 132, 188 illustrations 12, 67 Incas 26, 36, 47, 48, 83, 84 bezoar stones 51, 106 conquest of 34 textiles 49 India 14 insects, Surinam, illustrations 136–7 Irala, Domingo Martínez de 29, 31 Isabela (Crooked Island) 2 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 70, 73 jaguars 65, 83 Jardín de la Reina 4 Jesuits Brazil 141, 144–5 Peru 77, 92, 104, 141 João III 144 Jonston, John 181, 184 Historia naturalis 204–9 illustrations 205 sources 204, 206–7 structure 204, 206 life 203–4 Kircher, Athanasius 142, 210, 211 animal descriptions 173–4 on animal magneticism 177–8 life 170–71 museum 174–6 works Magneticum naturae regnum 176–7 Noah’s Ark 171–4 Magnes seu de arte magnetica 177 Ladrillero, Juan Fernández 24 languages, universal 218 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 74 Brevísima relación 39 Brief Apologetic History 53 History of the Indies 53, 142 Leo X 4 Lesser Antilles 2 llama 19, 49, 51, 83, 126, 188

Index macaw 2, 161, 215 Magellan, Ferdinand 21 Magellan, Strait 113, 127 manatee 8, 58–9, 75, 150, 188 illustrations 67, 133 mantis 122 Maranhão 115 French settlement 148 Margarita island 3, 39, 61, 91, 107, 188 Markgraf, Georg animal descriptions 118 Historia naturalis Brasiliae 115, 117, 118–20, 136–7, 138, 204, 218 illustrations 119 Maurits, Johan 92, 115, 116, 117, 122, 132, 138 Medici, Lorenzo Pier Francesco de’ 10 medicinal products, trade 104 Merian, Maria, Dissertatio 135–6 mermen 72 Mexico 92 see also New Spain mice 45 missionaries New Spain 141 New World 141–4, 233 Moluccas 19, 21, 22 Monardes, Nicolás, Medicinal History 104, 105, 106–9 mongooses 133 Montanus, Arnoldus, New and Unknown World 132 Montezuma 27, 28 Nahuatl language 42 native populations, disease 26 natural history experimental approaches 209–12 and the printing press 183 taxonomies 209–10, 213–19, 217–18, 228–9 writing approaches 232–5 and the printing press 183 Netherlands colony, Brazil 92, 115–16 revolt 113 see also Dutch Republic New Granada (Colombia) 34 New Spain (Mexico) xv, 42, 87, 93, 94, 96, 103, 104, 108, 124

Index missionaries 141 New World animals, knowledge about 136–9 histories 53–4 classical models 88 literature about 123–36 missionaries 141–4, 233 Old World, economic exchange 91 vegetables 91 Newfoundland 19 Nicander, De Theriaca 102 Nicholas, Thomas 130 Nicuesa, Diego de 16 Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio animal descriptions 165–6 Historia naturae 96, 142, 162–70, 204 approach 163–5 armadillos 168 sources 167, 169 numerology 68 ocelots 44 Ogilby, John, America 132–3 illustrations 133 Ojeda, Alonso de 9, 10, 16 Ophir 1 opossum 14, 20, 26, 38, 42, 118, 120, 188, 225 illustration 154 medicinal use 46 Orinoco River 11 Orta, Garcia d’, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India 104–5, 111 Ovando, Juan de 85 Oviedo, Francisco Fernández de 16 animal descriptions 65–74 on Indians 68 life 62–3 numerology 68 works General and Natural History of the Indies 53, 62–74, 91, 136, 232 imperial bias 88–9 Pliny parallels 68–72 Summary of the Natural History of the Indies 63, 64–5 Pacific Ocean 16, 19, 21, 23, 99, 177 Panama 5, 15, 16 Paracelsus 106

255 Paraguay 19 Paraguay River 29 Paraná River 19, 20, 29, 30 Paria 3, 9, 10 parrots 1–2, 3, 10, 20, 57, 106, 215, 220 symbolism 2 trade in 15 Patagonia, animals 21–4 pearl fisheries 3, 61, 91 pearls 3, 9, 10, 91 peccaries 4, 22, 43, 100, 121, 151 illustrations 170, 224 pelicans 2, 58 penguins 113, 220 illustrations 114, 128 Pernambuco 115 Perrault, Charles 226 Peru, Jesuits 77, 92, 104, 141 Peter Martyr 4 animal descriptions 57–62 Council of the Indies member 55 Decades of the New World 53, 54–62, 69, 133, 186 life 54–5 tree descriptions 60 writing method 88 Philip II 78, 85, 86, 92, 93 and Netherlands revolt 113 scientific promotions 93–4 Philip III 86, 88 Philip IV 39 physicians, letters 7–8 Pigafetta, Antonio, voyages 21, 22–3 Pinzón, Vicente Yañez, voyages 13–14, 20 Piso, Willem animal descriptions 121–2 animal dissections 121 life 116–17 works De Indiae utriusque re naturali... 116, 118, 120–23 De medicina brasiliensi 117 Historia naturalis Brasiliae 115, 138 Pizarro, Francisco 19, 34 plants, Spanish America 92 Plate, River 19, 20, 41 Plateau, Jacob 111, 112 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 5, 54, 60, 62, 94, 97, 104, 118, 183

256

Index

Polo, Marco 11 Travels 5 popinjays 2, 20 Porto Seguro 147 Post, Frans 117 printing press, and natural history writing 183 pumas 50, 83 Purchas, Samuel, Hakluytus Posthumus 131–2 purple gallinule 45 racoons 44, 45, 65, 101 rattlesnakes 41, 44, 46, 146, 188, 233 Ray, John 209 Synopsis methodica 217 taxonomies 217 works 213 Recchi, Nardo Antonio 108 Rerum medicarum 95 Redi, Francesco, experiments 210–12 reverso fish 4, 60, 199 rheas 23, 50, 83, 128 illustration 129 Rondelet, Guillaume 189 Royal Society, museum 209 animals 219–20 Saba 1 Sahagún, Bernardino de animal descriptions 43–6 General History 42, 43 Santa Catarina 19 Santa María la Antigua 16 Santa Marta 18 Santo Domingo 16, 63 see also Hispaniola São Vicente 29, 115 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 184 Exotericae exercitationes 185–7 Schmidl, Ulrich, voyages 29–31, 127, 132 Schott, Gaspar 142, 162 animal descriptions 180–81 Physica curiosa 178–81, 204 sources 179 ‘Scientific Revolution’ 209 Scillacio, Nicolò 7–8 sea lions 23, 70, 128 illustration 129 Sepúlveda, Ginés de, De orbe novo 53 Seville 65, 106

Sextus Placitus, Medicina de animalibus 104 sharks 4, 75, 107, 109, 146, 147, 158, 188, 226 skunks 49, 73, 103 sloths 41, 42, 66, 112, 118, 120, 121, 150, 160, 169, 180, 188, 195, 220 snakes 46, 70, 145, 220 Soderini, Piero 9 South America, map xviii Spanish America animal illustrations 135 plants 92 Spice Islands 21, 113 spice trade 92, 104, 113 Spielbergen, Georg, voyages 127–8 illustration 129 spotted cavy 159 Staden, Hans 127 Brazilian zoo 37–9 History 37–8 subtilitas 185, 186 Surinam, insect illustrations 136–7 tapirs 17–18, 32, 41, 43, 44, 101, 118, 151, 188 Taprobana 1 Tarshish 1 taxonomies, natural history 209–10, 213–19, 217–18, 228–9 Tenochtitlán 99, 156 menagerie 27–8 Thevet, André animal descriptions 154–5 Singularités de la France Antarctique 153–8 illustrations 154 Thorne, Robert 18–19 Tierra del Fuego 24 tigers 17, 28, 32, 33, 35, 37, 49, 57, 65, 66, 81, 83, 106, 116, 130, 133 Tlascala 132 Tlatelolco 42 Toledo, Francisco de 47, 77 Tordesillas, Treatise of (1494) 21, 124 torpedo fish 71, 73, 151, 177 Torres, Antonio de 2 toucans 65, 91, 110, 156, 157, 158, 160, 174, 175, 189, 193, 199, 200, 220 illustration 154 Tucumán 41 Tupi 15 Tupinamba Indians 37, 38, 127, 156, 159

Index turtle doves 20 turtles 4, 58, 118, 175 Tyson, Edward 209–10 animal anatomy 221, 222, 223–5 Udine, Giovanni da 2 Urabá 16 Uruguay River 30 van Kessel, Jan 135 Vargas Machuca, Bernardo de animal descriptions 40–42 Apology and Discourses 39 Militia and description of the Indies 39, 40 vegetables, New World 91 Velasco, Juan López de Geography and universal description of the Indies 85 relaciones de Indias 86 Spanish domains in America, survey 86 Vespucci, Amerigo 55 animals encountered 11 and Terrestrial Paradise 10, 11, 12

257 voyages 9–13 vicuñas 37, 83, 188 Virginia, colony 127, 131 Wagener, Zacharias, Thierbuch 117 Waldseemüller, Martin 9 Welsers 29, 30, 104 West Indies, map xvii Wilkins, John 218, 219 Willughby, Francis 209, 213 Historia piscium 215 Ornithology 104, 213–15 approach 213–14 illustrations 216 wood ibis 45 woodpeckers 45, 102 Ximénez, Francisco 96, 108 on animal drugs 108–9 Four Books … Medicine in New Spain 108, 109 Ytztapalapa 28