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 Introduction: the spanish renaissance

When the European Renaissance captures the attention of historians of anthropology, it is usually justified by the rapid accumulation of proto-ethnographic materials during the so-called Age of Discovery (Malefijt, 1974). Many historians are skeptical about where anything recognizably anthropological or ethnographic is really evident in this period. But others disagree, and they usually point to the research of Catholic friars (Dominican, Jesuit, and Franciscan) in New Spain.  We can thus speak of a Spanish Renaissance, and date its beginning to 1492.

1492 is of widely recognized as the year that Christopher Columbus reached the Indies, inadvertently joining the histories of the Western and eastern hemispheres. But in the Spanish context it is marked by additional developments. In addition to being the year of Columbus’s first voyage, 1492 was also the year when the armies of the unified Spanish monarchy – the court of Ferdinand and Isabella – successfully recaptured Granada. This marked the end of the Reconquista. For eight centuries prior,  Christian Kings and Muslim Caliphs had battled over the Iberian peninsula – known to Muslims as Al-Andalus. The Reconquista concluded their wars.

In addition, 1492 was the year when the Spanish monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree, which required Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave Spain, creating a large population of new converts – or conversos. This added new intensity to the Spanish Inquisition, which focused on whether conversions were genuine. Expulsions of Muslims began shortly after, in 1500. We might also note that 1492 was the year when the first Spanish language dictionary was printed, signaling a rise in national identity that would eventually give rise to the nation states in Europe.

Our final note takes the form of a question: Does 1492 mark the beginning of anthropology, or at least the Americanist tradition (i.e., the study of indigenous peoples in the Western hemisphere by anthropologists)? If so, what kinds of ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology were produced?

Vignette: Columbus as Ethnographer?

Christopher Columbus kept a journal of his first voyage to the islands that he christened the Indies (Markham, 1893). He started the journal months prior to his departure, before he had even gained sufficient support. His first entry congratulates King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella for “defeating the Moors … by force of arms” – and for “having turned out all the Jews from all your kingdoms.” Columbus journal notes that he personally witnessed the surrender of “the Moorish King” at Granada on January 2, and that he decided to remain in Granada until May. Belatedly winning the support of the Spanish monarchs that summer, he set sail to the west in August.

After detailing a stopover in the Canary Islands, his journal entries get short – they consist mostly of brief entries about the weather, and the progress of the voyage. The comes the fateful day – Thursday, October 11, 1492 on a Julian calendar – when Columbus goes ashore on the first island sighted. His first act was to plant a flag, thereby taking “possession of the island for the King and for the Queen” – an act duly witnessed and recorded in writing by his captains (Markham, 1893).

That sounds like something an invader might do, certainly, but not an anthropologist. Discussing Columbus as an ethnographer seems a little absurd.

Nonetheless, some contemporary commentators (Sider, 1987; Todorov, 1999) have noted the fine detail with which Columbus described his first encounter with the inhabitants of the island. His first day notes the exchange of gifts, the nudity and bodily adornment of the islanders, the absence of iron, and much else. Columbus seems to be a careful observer.

But scholars also note that – in addition to his careful documentation – Columbus shares his hidden agendas. He doesn’t just describe, he evaluates, and his compliments (“they are all … fairly tall, good looking, and well proportioned”) are interwoven with dismissals (“they were a people very deficient in everything”). Just so, his expressions of good will (“I knew … they were a people to be … converted to our holy faith rather by love than by force”)  alternate with plans for treachery (“they should be good servants”). He concludes the entry by promising “to bring back six of them to Your Highnesses” (Sider, 1987: 4). Which he did (he actually kidnapped more than six women and children, but deaths on the return crossing reduced their number to the six people he originally promised to capture). Evaluating the capacity of the people you observe to work as slaves, and kidnapping some of them, is not acceptable among later anthropologists.

In some writings Columbus seems rational. For example, he is quick to correct the notion that he found a route to India, and by his second voyage he was well aware that he had landed on “a massive continent” previously unknown to Europeans. On the other hand, he continued to search for Paradise, and he continued to expect to find the monsters described by Pliny the Elder. But most of all, he expected to find great quantities of gold. His obsession with gold reflects greed, but his letters and journal make clear that he had a greater calling that, to him, justified his avarice: financing a new Crusade to retake Jerusalem – which had been held by Muslim armies for almost three centuries. His life’s ambition was to lead two armies consisting of 5,000 horsemen and 50,000 foot soldiers to Jerusalem (Todorov, 1999: 12).

As many scholars have noted, it can be difficult to get a firm reading on Columbus, because his perspective, actions, and beliefs contain a welter of contradictions. It is not inaccurate to describe him as a thief, slave trader, and murderer, as indigenous intellectuals have recently noted (Tinker and Freeland, 2008). By current lights, he committed all of these crimes. And while it can be argued that theft, enslavement, and murder are not transcultural acts, it is very much the case that Columbus’ arrival marks the beginning of centuries of disaster for indigenous peoples in the Americas. Presumably, very few anthropologists today would consider him a model.

Still, anthropologists are apologists. We might ask: “Were his acts his own – can any of our acts be our own? – or was he acting out a cultural script?” Consider the act of “claiming” inhabited lands that you just “discovered.” Certainly that requires knowledge of and belief in a theological and legal construct. The idea that any lands belonging to non-Christians had no rightful owner and could be expropriated is a mythical charter that Columbus enacted, but did not invent (Paul, 2014). And the centuries of genocide that followed his few brief years in the America’s were the work of many hands. By 1890, some 50 million Europeans would immigrate to the Americas – North, South, and Central – and millions of Native people would perish. It is unlikely that Columbus could have prevented this. That said, in his own time and place he did nothing to stop violence, and in fact he started several destructive practices, including the reverse slave trade from New Spain to the Spanish homeland, and a much more destructive intra-American slave trade from one island to another (Reséndez, 2016).

Columbus at times appears familiar, at others otherworldly. For example, Columbus seems a surprisingly modern model entrepreneur, who wooed numerous sponsors before gaining support from the Spanish court. He then successfully negotiated a cut of 10% from any wealth that might ensue from all later trade to places or using routes he had discovered (Satava, 2007; cf. Reséndez, 2016). Had Columbus succeeded in obtaining his 10% cut, he and his heirs would have become incredibly wealthy. But in fact Columbus gained little wealth. Even his initially successful efforts failed, partly because he fell afoul of both enemies and supporters. He was occasionally imprisoned and punished for – among other things – trying to substitute a trade in human beings for missing gold. But his efforts to develop a “reverse” slave trade ultimately delivered only some 2,500 people, mostly women and girls, from the Indies to Spain. Too many, to be sure. But nothing comparable to the later trade from Africa to the Americas.

Half a century ago, the journalist John Wilford partially captured the legacy of Columbus:

Every generation creates the Columbus it needs. As the Quincentenary of his 1492 voyage approaches, observers are torn between celebrating a brave visionary and condemning the first representative of an age of imperial exploitation (Wilford, 1976).

I think this is correct, but incomplete: different perspectives reflect more than generational differences, and they probably always have. They reflect the clashing perspectives of the descendants of Native peoples, settlers, and conquistadors, as well as varied views across current and past scholars, including anthropologists. We all create the Columbus that we need, including the Columbus we completely ignore.

This raises a fundamental question: Does a history of anthropology need to mention Columbus? Or can an we set Columbus aside, as someone who was neither an anthropologist nor an ethnographer? Can we say his acts were regrettable but disconnected from the emergence of anthropology? Or do we see in some of his actions and worldview something that speaks to recurrent features of the anthropological enterprise?  Does ignoring Columbus risk ending discussion of profound ethical issues that surround the  beginnings of modern ethnography?

Forgetting is as much a part of history as remembering. Being forgotten can occur for many reasons. For example, Columbus presented the diary of his first voyage to the Spanish monarchs on his return to Spain. And then it went missing. Twice. The original diary disappeared and was never recovered. But as luck would have it, before it disappeared, it came into possession of a young Dominican friar who made a copy. Did the friar copy Columbus’ notebook, in full or in summary? Who can be sure? The friar makes his presence known by replacing a first person account – “I saw the sun” – with a third person account, as if he witnessed the Admiral’s acts: “The Admiral saw the sun”. This copy of the diary was also lost for centuries, before it was rediscovered late in the 19th century.

The Hearing at Valladolid (1550 – 1551)

Intermittently, in 1550 and continuing into 1551, a remarkable, lengthy, and rather famous court hearing was conducted in Valladolid, in the  territory of the Kingdom of Castile. Founded some five centuries earlier, Valladolid was then a thriving mercantile city of 25,000, sparkling with the new wealth of the Indies. It is appropriate that Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid in 1506. Appropriate, because the events that followed Columbus’s “discovery” of a “new world” was the ultimate cause of the debate that made Valladolid famous.

As context, it is important to know that controversies concerning the Spanish conquest of the Indies ensued almost as soon as Columbus provided the journal of his first voyage to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. These controversies grew progressively more contentious. Lively debates swirled around the legality of the Spanish conquest: could  Ferdinand and Isabella really claim sovereignty over lands unseen and unknown? Was the organized, political violence in New Spain aligned with doctrines defining the criteria for Just Wars that the church could endorse?

Controversies also arose about the enslavement of the peoples of the Indies by Spanish colonists and gold seekers. Slavery was supposed to be mitigated by a protective, reciprocal relationship known as the encomienda. Control over the labor of indigenous communities was transferred to a new class of encomenderos. In return for their labor, these Spanish, men of reason, were supposed to tutor their Indio dependents in Christian beliefs and virtues. Eternal salvation was the reward for the small price of heavy, unfree, physical labor. Was this just? Communication was slow and information limited, but some on the ground observers were reporting that the encomienda was not having its intended effect. Expectations of reciprocal benefits through an exchange of labor for salvation did not capture what was happening in practice: people were being brutally used, worked to death, and violently subdued. Witnesses reported that not only had the serial conquest of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru been a brutal affair on a scale rarely witnessed – millions perished as Indigenous peoples endured unimaginable violence and disruption during the conquest – but the post-conquest situation was not improving (for a recent account of these issues see Reséndez, 2016).

The tradition of hearings in renaissance spain

Importantly, from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella forward, Spanish monarchs would invite university faculty and men of letters to write opinions on the issues that arose (Pagden, 1993). But sharing opinions on these issues were not confined to the royal court. Opinions could enter literate society through books licensed for printing by the crown.

Introducing Las Casas and Sepúlveda

Awareness of atrocities in New Spain – at the time, and down to the present – was largely driven by the testimony and writings of a single Dominican friar: Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566). As it happens, Las Casas was the friar who made the copy of the journal of Columbus’ first voyage. He had a very definite interest in learning about Columbus’ first voyage. Expectedly, many others who were involved in the conquest, whether from the vantage of Spain or on the ground in the colonies, disagreed with Las Casas. Great wealth was being created, and ambitious Spaniards were successfully advancing their interests. Enter Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490 – 1573).

Las Casas and Sepúlveda are celebrated down to the present for their famous “debate” over Spanish practices in the new colonies at Valladolid in 1550.  It is important to note that the word debate is misleading: for one thing, they never met in the same room at the same time – they did not even have full access to the written work or oral testimony shared by the other (Pagden, 1982). Most of Las Casas work remained incomplete, and was never published in his lifetime. For his part, Las Casas was never able to read Sepúlveda’s petition. Nonetheless, their debate is significant to us for many reasons.

Sepúlveda’s Petition: Naturalizing Slavery

Sepúlveda was among the most prominent defenders of the Spanish conquest. At the urging of his supporters, in 1548 he composed a treatise contending that the actions Spanish colonists and conquistadors had taken since 1492 were justified (Pagden, 1986: 109-118).

Sepúlveda was in many ways a child of the Renaissance. He studied philosophy in Italy, before emerging as a leader in the revival of Greco-Roman thought in Spain, where he worked as the King’s personal historian. He was an expert on the philosophy of Aristotle who translated Aristotle’s Politics from Greek into Latin, and composed the tract at issue – Democrates Alter (in English: Just Causes for War Against the Indians) – in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Democrates, whose views echoed his own, and a timid German visitor named Leopold.

Sepúlveda built his brief on a combination of Aristotelian concepts of natural law and Just War arguments (which had been very important during the Reconquista). Sepúlveda’s tract was reviewed first by the Council of the Indies – dominated by allies of Las Casas – who recommended it not be licensed nor printed. The Court of King Charles agreed. Infuriated, Sepúlveda requested his argument be heard before a different panel, in Valladolid. Charles agreed.

Las Casas, who had recently returned from New Spain, hurried to Valladolid to present an opposing argument.

The presentation of arguments that followed has been described many times, by historians, philosophers, and educators. Often it is reported that Las Casas’ defended the humanity of the indigenous peoples of New Spain, and maligned their Spanish conquerors, while Sepúlveda declared Native people to be less than human, and found nothing to question in the Spanish conquest (Clayton, 2010). That is true enough, but it is also too simple.

It matters that Las Casas and Sepúlveda were well known to one another, and had been contesting these issues for decades. It is important to know that the case was not just about the fate of the original inhabitants of New Spain. The decisions taken had implications for the distribution of power between the King, the Domincans and other missionaries, and colonial governor’s and colonists. In addition, by embracing Aristotle as an ultimate authority it threatened to broaden legal reasoning beyond relying on the Church Fathers and Christian dogma, to accepting ancient Greek philosophy – which Las Casas noted was the work of pagans rather than Christians.

Additionally, we should know that in the middle of the 16th century Spanish nationalism was ascendant, powered by multiple developments, including the unification of formerly separate kingdoms; the success of the Reconquista and the end of the wars with Muslims; the expanding power of the Inquisition and concerted efforts to push Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain; the unexpected conquest of New Spain, and flood of gold and silver into Spanish coffers that followed; recognition by the Pope of the preeminence of the King of Spain as the new Holy Roman Emperor and the official defender of the Christian faith; and a growing interest in the Italian Renaissance.

This historical context helps make the positions taken by Sepúlveda and Las Casas more intelligible.

Sepúlveda’s case was built on an argument Aristotle developed in his Politics around 300 BCE on the existence of natural slaves, combined with the Roman concept of natural law. Let’s start with the Romans.

Natural law, or jus Naturale,  applied to all peoples and all nations, because it had a universal basis in the natural order of things. But the Roman empire was multinational, and so the Romans recognized that different peoples had their own customs. The local or particular laws of peoples were known as jus Gentium. They applied to affairs not covered by natural law. For example, Jewish communities had their own beliefs and practices, and were not governed by Roman civil law, but they had to obey natural law, as did Romans.

Sepúlveda used this distinction to resolve contradictions between the New Testament and the conquest. There were passages in the New Testament, for example, that argued one should turn the other cheek. Sepúlveda argued that turning the other cheek was an example of jus Gentium, a principle that could be practiced in a spiritually advanced, apostolic community. But it was not a principle that accorded with human nature. The law of nature requires that force be met with force. Thus, while it was true that the conquistadors violated principles of Christian dogma, they did so in contexts where natural law provided guidance. The Conquistador Hernán Cortés, Sepúlveda argued, had not enslaved free people. He had rather offered enslaved people a gentler servitude, and the chance to receive the blessings of Christianity as well.

In defending economic servitude in New Spain, specifically the encomienda, Sepúlveda’s argument buttressed Roman natural law with Aristotle’s older concept of natural slavery. The idea of natural slavery was based on the existence of innate inequalities: “those who surpass the rest in prudence and talent, although not in physical strength, are by nature masters” (Sepúlveda, no date). Because they lacked reason, slaves were inherently weaker than, and thus dependent on, their masters. Because they were not  gente de razón (“men of reason”) slaves could not act autonomously.

Sepúlveda argued that Innate inequalities made hierarchy necessary. It was natural that adults command children, who are their dependents, and that men command women, who as daughters or wives are their dependents. Just so, some men must command other men. The position of the Spaniards relative to the peoples of New Spain paralleled that of a father to the members of a Roman familia (the household, which included servants and slaves, as well as kin). The senior male held unquestionable power – the patria potestas – and could punish, command, and make use of all members of the household as he saw fit. Thus the familia  was based on relationships of unequal, reciprocal dependence that were identical to the encomienda.

Sepúlveda also noted that the dependence of the weak on the strong reached its apogee in communities defeated in warfare. Defeated peoples owed their lives to the mercy of their captors. Equality with the victors could not be expected. In the case of New Spain, that mercy included the opportunity for Christian salvation. Thus, if it was agreed that the Spaniards who entered New Spain were innately superior to the peoples of the Americas, the Spaniards had not just a right, but an obligation to enslave the Indios.

In support of his claims, Sepúlveda – who had never traveled to the New World – presented evidence of the irrationality and barbarism of its original inhabitants, drawing on an extensive disparaging literature that had grown over the prior decades. His central exhibits focused on cannibalism and human sacrifice.

THE REBUTTAL OF Las Casas: Christian Universalism

Bartolomé de las Casas initially arrived in the Caribbean in 1502 as a settler. Given command of Indian workers through the encomienda system, his revulsion at the brutality of Spanish practices led to a series of writings and campaigns to bring change, beginning with a pamphlet printed in 1516 that proposed remedies. He also led efforts to launch alternative communities that he considered to be authentically Christian. All failed. Ordained in the Dominican order in 1523, for the next forty years Las Casas campaigned for fundamental change in the economy and government of New Spain. His influence was considerable, and he was appointed Bishop of Chiapas with the title Protector of the Indians, an appointment that concluded in 1550. Among other things, he issued an (ineffectual) edict ordering that slaves could not be inherited, but had to be freed on the death of their master.

Las Casas found Sepúlveda’s argument, as he had prior works in a similar vein, to be contrary to Christian principles, as well as empirically inaccurate. Las Casas argued that Sepúlveda presented a portrait of the peoples of New Spain which was grotesque and untrue, particularly because it ignored the abusive actions of the Spaniards – actions that he considered, in some cases, worse than the atrocities of the Moors during the Reconquista, and as reprehensible as the worst sins of the native peoples of New Spain – which he agreed included cannibalism and human sacrifice. Just as the Indios had an opportunity for atonement and salvation, so did the Spaniards, and if they failed to seek forgiveness and reform their behavior, Las Casas warned, the Spanish crown and all its people would be destroyed by God.

At Valladolid, Las Casas presented testimony to the panel for five solid weeks, based upon his own long experience in the colonies. He had been working for decades on two massive multi-volume books: The History of the Indies (Historia de las Indias) which documented the history of Spanish colonialism, including the abuses and atrocities that had accompanied the Spanish conquest, and the Historia apologética (Apologetic History) a more “ethnographic” work that documented the “manners and customs” of the original peoples of New Spain, asserted their equality with the Greeks and Romans, and defended their equal standing as converts to Christianity and subjects of the Spanish crown. For Las Casas, Spaniards and Indios were equals (however, this meant both must abandon ways that were unholy). Las Casas thus dismissed Sepúlveda’s Aristotelian division of the world into slave and master. He did not question the need for conversion, and he was not interested in preserving pre-conquest ways of life. But he insisted that conversion must be voluntary to be authentic rather than through force of arms. Converts should join Christian communities freely, and achieve conversion through love and forgiveness.

In the end, Las Casas’ most influential work was a precis of the History of the Indies, usually translated as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. The Short Account was first published in 1552, in the aftermath of the Hearing at Valladolid, and remains in print in multiple editions today.

Because the hearing is referred to as a debate, questions arise about who won. The answer accepted by most historians is that no one won, because the panel of jurists who patiently listened to Las Casas and Sepúlveda present their arguments day after day never reached a decision. They retired to consider the testimony offered, and then dispersed. No ruling followed. Nothing was concluded at Valladolid. How could it be? But the issues that were raised there continued to be contested for decades, and indeed centuries, to come (Hanke, 1970: 74-95).

Las Casas AS ANTHROPOLOGIST?

Today Las Casas is usually memorialized as The Father of Anti-Imperialism – pun intended (more padres will be introduced in later chapters!). More rarely, he is discussed as a founder of modern ethnography, and occasionally as an anthropologist. Lewis Hanke notes that Las Casas “was an anthropologist only incidentally, for he was primarily a man of action” (Hanke, 1951: 61). While Las Casas addressed the “manners and customs” of the peoples of the Indies and New Spain in his apologetic history, there is little indication that he learned an indigenous language or visited Native communities for any length of time (Las Casas and Poole, 1992). His interests were primarily political, and his worldview concordant with the Dominican Order.

Earlier, we briefly assessed Columbus as an ethnographer. While he might have been an astute observer, documenting and communicating the way life was lived in particular communities was not his forte. And much the same can be said of Las Casas. Perhaps both might be considered predecessors to applied anthropology, because they were engaged in action to change the world. But to call their work applied anthropology one must consider whether there was an intent to advance anthropological knowledge, as well as whether the applied objective is aligned with anthropological work generally.

As for Sepúlveda, he never visited the Indies, nor attempted serious study of descriptive materials produced by others. His sole contribution was articulating a neo-Aristotelian philosophy of human nature that later grounded defenses of racial inequality. Like Las Casas, his contribution was primarily political, and his political vision continues to haunt the 21st century.

Sahagún: The First Ethnographer?

But there are other possible ancestors to consider. Restricting our search to the Viceroyalty of Mexico, the best candidate for “Father of Ethnography” is a Franciscan missionary named Bernardino de Sahagún (1499 – 1590). Sahagún arrived in Mexico in 1529, less than a decade after Hernán Cortés destroyed the Mexica (or Aztec) empire. Sahagún was part of the second wave of Franciscan missionaries, who followed the “original twelve” (the first wave of Franciscans filled the roles of the twelve apostles). For the Franciscans, the “discovery” of the Indies heralded the return of Christ and the end of the world. Their missionary zeal was driven by the belief that the Second Coming could not happen until all peoples in the world had to be given the opportunity to convert to Christianity. The discovery of new peoples in a New World helped explain why Christ had not returned as expected – at the millennium, in the year one thousand. But as they worked in Mexico, the Francisans became concerned that the practice of “mass conversion” – ceremonies where thousands would convert in a single day – would defeat their efforts.

In the interest of achieving deep, authentic conversion, Sahagún joined other Franciscans to found a college in Tlatelolco in 1533. The goal was to produce a cohort of priests drawn from the sons of the Mexica nobility. Graduates would possess knowledge of both Christian and Mexica religious beliefs and practices, as well as fluency in three languages: Nahuatl, Latin, and Spanish. Missionaries trained at Tlatelolco would make deep conversion a reality. Unable to maintain the physical infrastructure, the Franciscans turned the property over to the Crown in 1536, renaming it the Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. Facing opposition from the Dominicans and others, the college struggled to stay open, and finally closed in 1555.

But while it was open, instruction at Tlatelolco – at least in Sahagún’s Latin class – achieved a reciprocal quality. As his students read Plutarch and Augustine and mastered Latin, they taught him Nahuatl, and over the years he became quite proficient.

Sahagún’s life work

Although the Colegio did not survive, and did not achieve its goal of ordaining indigenous priests (the very possibility would soon be banned), its graduates and their teacher nonetheless managed to achieve an impact very much aligned with the original vision. Assisted by students from Tlatelolco, Sahagún launched an unprecedented effort to create an encyclopedic description of indigenous Mexica concepts and practices by combining pictorial illustrations with textual entries in two languages: Nahuatl and Spanish. Ostensibly a tool for missionization, the project became Sahagún’s passion, and undoubtedly his students as well. Between 1558 and 1575,  Sahagún and his students conducted what can only be described as field research with Mexica elders. Their methods foreshadowed ethnographic methods that matured in the 20th century, but in many ways they were more thorough.

Sahagún first developed a questionnaire, which, as several scholars have noted, was organized by European concepts. But the questionnaire was then utilized to ask the same questions of 12 different monolingual Mexica elders, renowned for their knowledge. Their Nahuatl responses were taken down by four students, who developed illustrations to accompany the entries. The results were then reviewed by 12 different elders, equally respected, from a different community. At that point, Sahagún and his students refined the entries and made corrections, over the course of an entire year.

After the illustrations and the Nahuatl entries had been carefully reviewed, Sahagún added a Spanish text. As Todorov notes, by this point, Sahagún, who was facing both political resistance and loss of support to complete the project. He began finalizing the book in 1575. In 1577, his funds were cut off, and his work was halted.

The final copy was 2,400 pages, organized into 12 volumes, each page having two columns. There were 2,468 illustrations, and entries in Nahuatl and Spanish. It was indeed a multi-lingual, illustrated ethnography of pre-conquest life and beliefs, which he titled the Universal History of the Things of New Spain (Historia general de las cosas de nueva España). In adding the Spanish text, Sahagún did not produce literal translations. It has been argued that he considered his audience of missionaries and jurists in Mexico and Spain, and censored controversial content (this tactic would continue to be used by ethnographers in the 19th century). His fears were not misplaced.

In 1577, the final version – the product of over 30 years of careful labor and a work of rare collaboration – was requested by Governor Luis de Velasco, and sent to Spain. Sahagún never saw the manuscript again. It is quite possible that he assumed it had been destroyed. Sahagún died twelve years later, in 1599. His massive work turned up, two centuries later, in Florence, Italy, before disappearing and reappearing again, in the 19th century. It is now known as The Florentine Codex and you can view it remotely through the United States Library of Congress. In 2002, after 30 years of effort, an English translation of all twelve volumes was completed. It is now available in paperback as well (Anderson and Dibble, 2002). On Amazon.

The Mexican anthropologist Miguel Leon-Portilla argues that Sahagún was the first anthropologist (Leon-Portilla, 2012). It is difficult to dispute that claim, if we identify anthropology with ethnography. Tzevtan Todorov suggests, instead, that while he was neither an anthropologist nor an ethnologist (i.e., a scholar who seeks insights through cross-cultural comparisons) Sahagún was indubitably not only  an ethnographer, but an ethnographer without peer in New Spain (Todorov, 1999). There is a kind of rigor that is rare. Very few contemporary ethnographers achieved a similar level of collaboration and confirmation. Additionally, Todorov notes that Sahagún avoided not only comparison, but also commentary and engagement. While he viewed ethnography as a means to achieving cross-cultural understanding, he did not act to work to produce change in the manner of Las Casas.

EXCLUDED ANCESTORS IN NEW SPAIN

In this chapter we have examined the writings of Columbus, Sepúlveda, Las Casas, and Sahagún on the peoples who had long occupied the “New World” – specifically the Indies and New Spain. Temporally, our discussion spans a little over a century, from the first voyage of Columbus in 1492 to the death of Las Casas in 1599. Most histories of anthropology do not given much attention to these individuals, but their work was impactful, anticipating many of the core features of future studies of colonized peoples. Our discussion raises several observations of general importance to the history of anthropology.

1. The work of European anthropologists in the colonial possessions of European powers was always conducted in highly unequal settings, even after colonialism had been long established or superficially ended. Levels of organized violence and social turmoil varied over time and place, but domination was a constant. There were basically three responses: supporting the colonial project, opposing it, and ignoring it. This remains the case today.

2. Anthropologists from early on tended to see themselves as separate from agents of colonialism, but in the early years their work was part of a colonizing mission – indeed, many were missionaries. Most anthropologists would reject the notion that Columbus was an ethnographer, but many accept the description of Sahagún as the first ethnographer of New Spain.

3. There were always disputes and divisions over what colonial rule should involve, and the earliest proto-ethnographers often became involved in these debates – notably Las Casas in his dispute with Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda certainly was not an ethnographer, but both Sepúlveda and Las Casas articulated philosophical anthropologies – concepts about the nature of humanity – and in that sense they were both proto-anthropologists.

4. The positions Sepúlveda and Las Casas supported ere fundamentally opposed, but they anticipated later divisions among anthropologists in the centuries yet to come.

Las Casas worked from an assumption of human equality and human unity. “All mankind is one” is perhaps the statement most widely attributed to him (Hanke, 1974). This reflected the universalism of Roman Christian theology, and anticipated the monogenist position of the 18th and 19th centuries. Las Casas did not deny the existence of barbarism, but he believed all human individuals and communities could either descend into barbarous behavior or transcend it. Spaniards were as capable of barbarism as Indios, and redemption was as open to Indios as Spaniards. Barbarism thus was not innate or inherent.

In sharp contrast, Sepúlveda’s anthropology was based on an assumption of  human inequality that was innate and inherent. Spaniards and Indios could never be the same, and Indios were permanently inferior to Spaniards. Reason and thus genuine faith were beyond the reach of Indios, and never alienated from Spaniards. Although both Indios and Spaniards were human, they were different kinds of humans, and they could never participate in the same social order in an equal manner. Sepúlveda’s position anticipates racial essentialism and the polygenist theology of multiple, separate creations that would grow in influence into the 19th century.

5. In the dispute between Sepúlveda and Las Casas, the voices of the peoples whose fate was being determined were curiously absent. It might seem unlikely that representatives of colonized peoples could have participated in these debates, but that is probably not true. Of the several thousand people native to New Spain who had been taken to Spain – beginning with the six taken by Columbus on his first voyage – many had won their freedom through legal action, and gained fluency in Spanish. And in the mid 16th century, proximal to the time of the Hearing at Valladolid, there was a university for the children of the Mexica elite at Tlatelolco in Mexico City.

6. Sahagún’s work is different: it develops careful, massive ethnographic documentation of life before the conquest – a work of collective memory including elders who were eye-witnesses to the conquest – and it accomplishes this in a collaborative manner. There is even a kind of joint authorship in producing the massive codex. Yet at the same time, Sahagún, like Las Casas (and, in different ways, Columbus and Sepúlveda) had a different agenda. If they were in some sense anthropologists, the efforts of Sahagún and Las Casas were still aligned with the project of cultural and spiritual conversation.

Additional Resources ON ANTHROPOLOGY AND NEW SPAIN

The readings and resources below are provided as optional sources if you have an interest in following up some of the content discussed.

Anderson, Arthur J. O., and Charles Dibble. Translators. 2002. The Florentine Codex : General History of the Things of New Spain. University of Utah Press.

Calle, Simon. No date. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (and related works). Web page, Columbia College. Last accessed 7.24.2023.

Library of Congress, 2023. “General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: The Florentine Codex.” Compressed data. Washington, D.C. Web Page. Accessed July 25, 2023.

Markham, Clements R. Editor / Translator. 1893. Christopher Columbus “Journal of the First Voyage of Columbus” in Journal of Christopher Columbus (during his first voyage, 1492-93), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. London: Hakluyt Society, p. 15-193.

Sepulveda. 1548. “Democrates Alter.” Web Page. Columbia University Press.  Accessed July 24, 2023.

References Cited IN CHAPTER 3 – New spain

Anderson, Arthur J. O., and Charles Dibble. Translators. 2002. The Florentine Codex : General History of the Things of New Spain. University of Utah Press.

Batz, W. G. 1974. The Historical Anthropology of John Locke. Journal of the History of Ideas, 35(4), 663–670.

Clayton, Lawrence A. 2010. Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas. John Wiley & Sons.

Conklin, Beth A. 1995. “‘Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom’: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” American Ethnologist 22 (1): 75–101.

Eiseman, Fred B. 2009. Bali: Sekala & Niskala. Tuttle Publishing.

Gillett, Andrew. 2013. “Barbarians, Barbaroi.” In The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, edited by Roger Bagnall and Kai Brodersen, 1043–45. Blackwell.

Glaser, Linda. 2010. “Expert: Muslims — and Astrology — Saved Civilization, in Cooperation with Jews and Christians.” Cornell Chronicle, April 19.

Goody, Jack. 1996. The East in the West. Cambridge University Press.

Hanke, Lewis. 1951. Bartolomé de Las Casas: Anthropologist. In Bartolomé de Las Casas: An Interpretation of His Life and Writings, pp.61-89. Springer.

Hanke, Lewis. 1970. Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World. Indiana University Press.

Hanke, Lewis. 1974. All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on the Religious and Intellectual Capacity of the American Indians. Northern Illinois University Press.

Hulme, Peter. 1994. “Tales of Distinction: European Ethnography and the Caribbean.” In Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, 157–200. Cambridge University Press.

Pisev, Marko. 2019. “Anthropological Aspects of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah: A Critical Examination. Bérose – Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie. Paris. https://www.berose.fr/article1777.html

Las Casas, Bartolomé de and Nigel Griffin (translator). 1992 [1552]. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Penguin.

Las Casas, Bartolomé de and Stafford Poole (translator). 1992 [1566]. In Defense of the Indians. Northern Illinois University Press.

Leaf, Murray J. 1979. Man, Mind, and Science: A History of Anthropology. Columbia University Press.

Leon-Portilla, Miguel. 2012. Bernardino de Sahagun: First Anthropologist. University of Oklahoma Press.

Linton, Ralph. 1937. “One-Hundred Percent American.” The American Mercury, 1937.

Malefijt, Annemarie de Waal. 1974. Images of Man: A History of Anthropological Thought. Knopf.

Markham, Clements R. Editor / Translator. 1893. Christopher Columbus “Journal of the First Voyage of Columbus” in Journal of Christopher Columbus (during his first voyage, 1492-93), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. London: Hakluyt Society, p. 15-193.

Pagden, Anthony. 1986. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge University Press.

Pagden, Anthony. 1993. European Encounters in the New World. Yale University Press.

Pagden, Anthony. 1995. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France 1500-1800. Yale University Press.

Paine, Robert. 1995. “Columbus and Anthropology and the Unknown.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 1: 47–65.

Pandian, Jacob. 1985. Anthropology and the Western Tradition: Toward an Authentic Anthropology. Waveland Press.

Patterson, Thomas C. 1997. Inventing Western Civilization. NYU Press.

Paul, Heike. (2014). Christopher Columbus and the Myth of ‘Discovery.’ In The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies (pp. 43–88). Transcript Verlag. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxsdq.5

Reséndez, Andrés. 2016. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. HarperCollins.

Library of Congress, 2023. “General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: The Florentine Codex.” Compressed data. Washington, D.C. Web Page. Accessed July 25, 2023.

Satava, David. 2007. Columbus’s First Voyage: Profit or Loss from a Historical Accountants Perspective. The Journal of Applied Business Research 23(4): 1-16.

Sepulveda. 1548. “Democrates Alter.” Web Page. Columbia University Press.  Accessed July 24, 2023.

Schwartz, Stuart B. Editor. 1994. Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge University Press.

Sider, Gerald. 1987. When Parrots Learn to Talk, and Why They Can’t: Domination, Deception, and Self-Deception in Indian-White Relations. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29(1), 3–23.

Solodkow, David M. 2014. “‘The Rhetoric of War and Justice in the Conquest of America: Ethnography, Law, and Humanism in Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas’.” In Coloniality, Religion, and the Law in the Early Iberian World. Santa Arias and Raúl Marrero-Fente, Editors. Vanderbilt University Press.

Tinker, Tink. and Freeland, Mark., 2008. Thief, slave trader, murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean population decline. Wicazo Sa Review, 23(1), pp.25-50.

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1999. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. University of Oklahoma Press.

Wilford, John Noble. 1976.  Columbus and the Labyrinth of History. The Wilson Quarterly 15 (4): 66-86.