SPAN 3302
Monday, January 29, 2007
I'm a soul man.....
Two men had a ferocious debate on the status of Natives: the Jesuist Juan Guines de Sepulveda and the Dominican Bartholome De Las Casas. Las Casas was the proverbial “good guy” in this debate. He argued that Indians were as much men as Spaniards when his opponent claimed just the opposite. For Sepulveda, Indians were slaves by nature according to the natural law. Both based their arguments on Catholics beliefs.
De Las Casas was a humanist and denounced the status of enslaved natives as they were treated by Conquistadores. In 1537, the Pope Paul III argued that they were humans with a rational and a soul with the Sublimus Dei bull. Las Casas had the support of the Pope and also of the King of Spain. While Sepulveda referred to Aristotle in his definition of a barbarous people, Las Casas refuted him with success. For him, the whole Aristotelian theory of slavery was totally out of context in this particular debate. Both debaters claimed to have won the debate, and the condition of natives did not really improve after the debate. Economics had the final word.
The “Requerimiento” document (1510) considered natives as humans descending from Adam and Eve as long as they understood English and were willing to accept the Spaniard’s religion. At the same time, their nation was a “barbarous” one.
in reverse
His “thirst was increasing and the water killing us” (76). They came for Gold but the real gold is water.
The hope of finding a port and a way to escape was mixed with a profound religious feeling. The constant reference to God and the word “Christians” used to designate the other Spaniards can be seen as an attempt by Cabeza de Vaca to maintain a cultural bond with the Spaniard culture, even though he is dressed like the natives and “always went about naked as they did” (121). The religion that they were supposed to use in their conquest soon became a bizarre syncretism mixing Native American religion with Christianity. The Conquistadores are supposed to conquer the natives by force after the brief speech required by the “Requerimiento,” but everything is turned upside down. They try to conquer a village but only women and children are there! In some cases they “beseech” the natives to take them to their houses, which they accepted promptly and gladly. Some of natives even had great sorrow and pain for them.
Also that story shows us that the whole concept of slavery (96) is not necessarily something that Europeans created and imported into the rest of the world, but rather something tied to human nature. Moral values among Natives are different among the tribes. Some seem to be cruel (128). Others don’t love their children as much as the others (107), and some have practically no love toward the elderly. The different attitudes of tribes reveal that the so called “barbarous” natives, as stated by the “Requerimiento,” are more complex than they seem.
Through the story, God becomes the prominent character to whom Cabeza de Vaca constantly refers. Some sicknesses are defined according to the Bible just as “the sickness of Saint Lazarus” (109). Does Cabeza de Vaca give himself a messianic role through his kind of healing ministry (93/94, 117/120)? Cabeza de Vaca writes that “we gave them to understand that, if they believed in God our Lord and were Christians like us” (121). This passage seems irrelevant to us today, but according to the “Requerimiento, it would have been a mistake not to include it into the narrative. In any case, the narrative is interesting for its cultural approach, and in the way that in the midst of such hardships Cabeza de Vaca always tries to fit his mission into the requirements of the “Requerimiento.”
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The road to Croatan...
In the summer of 1587, 100 men, women, and children sailed from England to Roanoke Island with the intention of starting a colony. Indian tribes were so threatening to the colony that Governor John White decided to go back to England in order to reinforce the colony and avoid the massacre of the settlers. Before he left, he made them promise to leave a mark in some particular prominent spot to name their destination if they were forced to move, and to inscribe crosses as signals of distress. When John White arrived in his homeland, in 1588, England was awaiting a Spanish invasion from the Spanish “Invincible Armada,” which was the strongest navy in the world at that time. Eventually, the same year, Sir Francis Drake defeated Philip II’s alleged Invincible Armada with his small English fleet. This war delayed John White’s return for more than two years.
Finally, when John White returned to Roanoke, he saw a column of smoke, fire in the woods, and footprints in the sand, but no sign of life. The colony was rebuilt in the form of a single fortress enclosure, but it was empty. On one of the entrance posts was carved the enigmatic word “Croatan,” but without any cross of marks of distress. Did the colony move to the Croatan Islands where tribes were far friendlier than the ones in Roanoke? At Croatan, there was no sign of life either—no colonists and no Indians. The harsh weather conditions soon forced Governor White to go back to England. John White concluded that the colonists were probably dead. Some say that the colonists of Roanoke may have survived by going native.
100 years later, gray-eyed Hatteras Indians told stories of grandparents who could “talk in a book” (meaning they could read books) and referred constantly to a ghost ship called “Sir Walter Raleigh’s ship” (the ship that landed on the Roanoke coast in 1588). Stories and legends entered the American folkore regarding the fate of Governor’s John White daughter, Virgina Dare, but no single written account has been found about the fate of the Ronoake colonists. Historians have the writings of John White but do not know if the colonist went native. Many blame the fact that the colony needed supplies and did not receive the necessary support from the British crown. Also, the leader of the expedition and Governor John White were military men aiming more at creating a fortress rather than a real self-sufficient colony.
The story of Cabeza de Vaca is the main account that could lead to the understanding of the process of going native. I did not know that we had such account, and I found the story of the Ronoake colonists intriguing. The fascination does not stop here. A series of 3 movies about an English aristocrat turning native were completed in the 1960s and 1970s with Richard Harris in the main role. These three movies—“A man called Horse” in 1968, “The Return of a Man Called Horse” in 1976, and “Triumphs of a Man Called Horse” in 1983—were very popular among the hippy generation of that time and were based on the fascination of anglo-saxons turning natives.
To conclude, one could say that the story of Cabeza de Vaca will be answering a lot of questions left unanswered by American Folklore and the way it treated the story of the Ronoake colony.
