Peter N. Herndon
The controversies over American Indians in Europe began shortly after Christopher Columbus brought back some of his captives to the Spanish court. Initially, Indians were assumed to be simple unsophisticated people. Then, in 1521 Hernando Cortes conquered Mexico and exposed the exotic and complex world of the Aztecs and their capital city, Tenochtitlan.
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The Spaniards wandered through an Indian metropolis of more than 200,000 people, and marveled at a great market that rivaled those of Seveille and Constantinople. The Aztecs, polished warriors and diplomats, people of grace and manners, were a far cry from the Bahamian Indians, even if they did engage in human sacrifice. (Fagan, page 16)
Amazed residents of Spain in the 1520s observed imported cultured Aztec nobles and performing acrobats. Curious citizens of Bristol, England watched some North Americans "clothid in beastys skinnys," ate meat raw and had the manners of "bruyt bestis." (Fagan, page 16) It became obvious to all that there was a world of difference among Indian tribes and civilizations, many of them in competition with one another. Scholars wondered how such lifestyle and cultural differences existed among societies that lived only a few hundred miles apart from each other?
Theories of Origin
Many theories arose to explain where the newly discovered American Indians came from. The Atlantic school argued that voyagers from ancient Carthage had sailed to America 2,000 years before Columbus. This theory was given credibility by the popularization of the legend of the Lost Continent of Atlantis in the 16th century. This mythical continent would have served as a type of "land bridge" from Europe to America and would have allowed the descendants of Noah to colonize it after the Great Flood of Genesis. Another theory, made popular by a Dutch theologian named Lumnius in 1567 was that the exiled ten tribes of Israel mentioned in II Kings 17:6 crossed Asia and eventually populated America, entering the continent from the west. This Lost Tribes theory has been closely tied to religious beliefs since the 16th century and forms an important part of the Book of Mormon, which claims that the American Indians are direct descendants of the Hebrews. (Fagan, page 25)
Theories of the Indian Nature
The early romantic view of idealized Native Americans began with Columbus. In his writings he seemed at times to believe he had found an earthly paradise and spoke of the inhabitants as "very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal." (Bordewich, page 33) As time went on, philosophers such as John Locke described this Noble Savage as innately good, corrupted only by his unfortunate contacts with European settlers and explorers. Rousseau's opinion was that the Indian was a superior animal species, part of the natural world, but easily corrupted by the sophisticated European ways. "In proportion as he becomes sociable and a slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, and mean-spirited." (Bordewich, page 34)
According to one historian, most Europeans thought of all Indians as a heathen, irreligious people in need of Christian teaching. They had come from the Garden of Eden and had not been in the New World for very long. The philosopher Francis Bacon summed up this view in the following quotation:
'Marvel you not at the thin population of America, nor at the rudeness and ignorance of the people, for you must accept your inhabitants of America as a young people: younger a thousand years, at least, than the rest of the world.' (Quoted in Fagan, page 28)
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There was a second early view of the Indian, a more ominous one. Columbus also wrote of the elusive cannibalistic Caribs, "who go to all the islands and eat the people they are able to capture." In Virginia, following the Jamestown colony's war against the Powhatans, a Virginia poet wrote in 1622, that the Indians were
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'Rooted in Evill, and opposed in Good;
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Errors of nature, of inhumane Birth,
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The very dregs, garbage and spanne of Earth.'
In 1711, the Virginia House of Burgesses set aside 20,000 pounds as bounty money for those who would do the colony a favor and "exterpate (sic) all Indians without distinction of Friends or Enemys." (Bordewich, page 35)
Diversity of Lifestyles
It is estimated that at the time of Columbus' arrival in 1492, there were 100 million inhabitants in the New World, including the advanced civilizations of Incas in Peru, Aztecs in Mexico and Mayans in Central America, all of whom built cities, carried out trade, and made accurate astronomical observations. These sophisticated cultures had an agriculture system based on the cultivation of corn (maize), which allowed the Aztecs to feed as many as 25 million people. Corn planting spread from Mexico to the American Southwest in around 1200 B.C. and helped to shape a culture known as the Pueblo, who watered their cornfields with complicated irrigation systems and built towns containing elaborate "apartment houses" built of mud-dried brick.
Except for the Iroquois of the Northeast woodlands, who created a military state to keep away neighboring tribes and Europeans alike, most of the early inhabitants of North America lived in small settlements, scattered throughout the continent. At the time of Columbus "discovery," there were probably fewer than 10 million citizens of North America. Native Americans "had neither the desire nor the means to manipulate nature aggressively…. Yet they did sometimes ignite massive forest fires, deliberately torching thousands of acres of trees to create better hunting habitats, especially for deer." (Bailey, page 7) The fact is that the Indian population was so thinly scattered around North America that huge areas were literally untouched by human beings prior to 1492. This would soon change upon the arrival of the "new immigrants," the Europeans.