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Cross-Cultural
Encounters in Modern
World History,
1453–Present
One of the hallmarks of world history is the ever-increasing ability of humans

to cross cultural boundaries. Taking an encounters approach that opens up
history to different perspectives and experiences, Cross-Cultural Encounters
in Modern World History, 1453–Present examines cultural contact between
people from across the globe between 1453 and the present.
The book examines the historical record of these contacts, distilling
from those processes patterns of interaction, different peoples’ perspectives,
and the ways these encounters tended to subvert the commonly accepted
assumptions about differences between peoples in terms of race, ethnicity,
nationhood, or empire. This new edition has been updated to employ current
scholarship and address recent developments, as well as increasing the treat-
ment of indigenous agency, including the major role played by Polynesians
in the spread of Christianity in Oceania. The final chapter has been updated
to reflect the refugee crisis and the evolving political situation in Europe
concerning its immigrant population.
Supported by engaging discussion questions and enlivened with the
voices and views of those who were and remain directly engaged in the process
of cross-cultural exchange, this highly accessible volume remains a valuable
resource for all students of world history.
Jon Thares Davidann, Ph.D., is professor of history at Hawai’i Pacific

University. He has published many books, including The Limits of Westerniza-
tion (2018). Davidann has given invited lectures internationally and he recently
founded History Lens, a history video podcast on ThinkTech Hawaii.
Marc Jason Gilbert is the holder of an endowed Chair in World History

at Hawai’i Pacific University. He is a past president of the World History Asso-
ciation, co-author of World Civilizations: The Global Experience, author of
South Asia in World History, and editor of the e-journal, World History
Connected.
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http:/taylorandfrancis.com
Cross-Cultural
Encounters in Modern
World History,
1453–Present
Second edition
Jon Thares Davidann

and Marc Jason Gilbert
Routledge
ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Second edition published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of John Thares Davidann and Marc Jason Gilbert to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized 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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
[First edition published by Pearson Education, Inc. 2013]
[First edition reprint published by Routledge 2016]
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-30309-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-30310-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42585-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of figures viii

List of maps x
Preface to the Second Edition xi
PART A
Introduction: cross-cultural encounters and hybrid culture 1
PART B
Encounters in the age of exploration 11
1 Power and unpredictability, conquistadors, and native peoples:

conquest of the Americas 13
“Indios” 14
European and Native American perceptions 14
Columbus and the route to Asia 17
Columbus and the Taino 19
Cortés, Aztecs, and Conquest of Mexico 25
The Aztecs 26
Native American responses 30
Fighting for the Native Americans: Las Casas 31
Conclusion 33
Questions for discussion 34
2 Europeans on the margin: missionaries and indigenous response

in East Asia 35
Cultural conversion in China: Matteo Ricci 38
Chinese-Jesuit dialog 43
Japan and the Jesuits 45
Conclusion 53
3 Empires of difference: the Ottoman model of a multicultural state 55

Outsiders in the Ottoman Empire 57
The aman 57
The millet system 58
Trade and commerce 59
Imperial power, imperial diversity 60
Obstacles to toleration 61
Trade 62
Prisoners and slaves 63
Pilgrims and missionaries 63
Cosmopolitan ports of call: Salonica and Algiers 64
The Ottoman encounter with “Orientalism” 68
Conclusion 70
v
vi Contents
PART C
Encounters—middle ground successes and failures 73
4 Cultures in competition: Native American encounters with Europeans 75

European and Native American perceptions 77
New England Native Americans and land 79
Impact of the fur trade 82
The middle ground 83
The Catawba 86
Native Americans and the U.S. government 89
Conclusion 90
5 From first contact to entanglement: Polynesian encounters with

Euro-Americans 92
Polynesia at the time of its contact with the West 94
The West at the time of the first contact with Polynesia 97
Castaways 104
Local agency and the spread of Christianity 106
Self-strengthening 107
Conclusion 111
6 On the frontiers of central Asia: Russia, China and steppe empires

in Eurasia 114
The Mongols 116
The Russian Empire and the peoples of the steppe 117
Raiding and slaves 120
Diplomacy and conquest 121
Missionary activity 126
China, Russia, and Mongolia 127
Conclusion 131
PART D
Imperialism and nationalism in the modern world 133
7 Altered states: British imperialism and the rise of Indian nationalism 135
Britain discovers India 135
The Orientalists 138
The Bengal renaissance 141
Remaking a civilization 143
The war of 1857 and its aftermath 147
Racism and the rise of Indian nationalism 149
Conclusion 153
8 The Japanese in East Asia: a non-western empire and nationalist

reactions 156
Acquiring an empire 157
Japanese policy in Taiwan 158
Contents vii
Japanese encounter with indigenous peoples 162

Japan in Korea 164
Japan in Manchuria and China 168
Far Eastern games 170
The Sino-Japanese war and the rape of Nanjing 171
Conclusion 173
9 Mapping Africa: European perceptions and African realities 175

Impact of the colonial encounter 178
European perceptions 182
Christianity in Africa 183
African perceptions 183
Christianity and conquest 186
Islam in Africa 188
Rise of nationalism and decolonization 190
Conclusion 192
PART E
Twentieth century challenges 195
10 Testing the limits of multiculturalism: immigration into Europe in

the twentieth and twenty-first century 197
Conflicts 202
Law and sex 204
Extremes: Islamophobia and anti-Semitism 206
Non-Muslim immigrant experiences 209
Conclusion 210
Index 213
FIGURES
1.1 The great Aztec city-state of Tenochtitlan was established on an

island in the midst of a large lake 29
1.2 This sixteenth-century print portrays Aztecs suffering from
smallpox during the Cortés invasion (1518–1519) 31
1.3 The contact between Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans
eventually produced large numbers of castas, people considered
to be of mixed racial origin 32
2.1 Jesuits in Chinese dress at the emperor’s court 40
2.2 In this late sixteenth-century portrait, Hideyoshi (1536–1598)
grasps the sword that catapulted him to power and exudes the
discipline and self-confidence that made possible his campaigns
to unify Japan 51
3.1 Interior of a Turkish Caffinet in Constantinople 58
3.2 View of Istanbul from the Galata Bridge, c. 1890s 59
3.3 Salonica in 1913 during Greek Occupation 69
4.1 English Presbyterian missionary John Eliot addresses a gathering
of Algonquians 78
4.2 Father Saint Jean de Brebeuf (1593–1649) 87
5.1 This European painting shows Captain Cook and his officers
participating in a Hawaiian ceremony 100
5.2 Image of King Kalākaua, who brought back the Hula and other
traditional Hawaiian practices in the 1880s 108
5.3 Queen Lili‘uokalani in later life 109
6.1 This sketch shows a Mongol household on the move 118
7.1 Sir Thomas Roe was just one of many supplicants for the favor
of Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1615 137
7.2 A “sati” portrayed by an Indian artist as a mark of honor rather
than a horror, as usually portrayed by British illustrators 145
7.3 Indian soldiers, or sepoys, made up a large portion of the rank
and file troops in the armies of British India 146
7.4 In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi returned to Great Britain for the first
time since his student days in 1915 152
8.1 This Japanese woodblock demonstrates their awareness of the
transforming modernization taking place in Japanese society at
the end of the nineteenth century 158
8.2 This photo and its caption reflect Japan’s belief that its aboriginal
Taiwanese subjects were primitive and in need of its civilizing
influence 161
8.3 Japanese Machine-gunners in front of Chosen Bank in Korea
during Korean rebellion 167
viii
Figures ix
8.4 As Chinese resistance to Japanese invasion in 1937 and 1938

stiffened, the invading armies resorted to random, mass
executions to cow Chinese soldiers and civilians into submission 172
9.1 The size of African cities and the power of African rulers often
impressed European observers 176
9.2 As this political cartoon of a vicious snake with Leopold II’s
head squeezing the life out of a defenseless African villager
illustrates, an international campaign developed in the 1890s in
opposition to the brutal forced-labor regime in what had
become the Belgian king’s personal fiefdom in the Congo
after 1885 179
9.3 Like the missionaries, the ruling classes of Europe believed that
the Christianization of Africans would make them easier to
rule over 182
9.4 Kwame Nkrumah became an important nationalist leader in
Africa but brought significant ideas about Pan-Africanism from his
education in the United States 192
10.1 Two girls, Irish and Bengali, stop for a rest during playtime at
Kingsmead School 198
10.2 Young German skinhead gives a Nazi salute at a right-wing
demonstration 200
MAPS
1.1 Columbus’s conception of Atlantic Ocean and Asia 20

1.2 Columbus’s voyages to the Americas 21
1.3 Map of Cortés’s route to Tenochtitlan 24
2.1 Ming China, 1368–1644 37
2.2 Japan in the time of Hideyoshi 47
3.1 Map of Ottoman Empire—Constantinople is Istanbul 56
4.1 Native Americans at the time of European Colonization 76
5.1 Map of Polynesia 93
6.1 Map of the Mongol Empire 115
6.2 Map of steppe empires 119
6.3 Map of Zunghar Empire 130
7.1 Map of British Empire in India 139
8.1 Map of Japanese Empire to World War II 159
9.1 Map of European Imperialism in Africa 177
10.1 Estimated % of Muslims among total population in each
country 203
x
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The second edition of Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History,

1453–Present is designed to expand on the first edition’s insight into the
dynamics of cross-cultural encounters presented in an accessible, student-
oriented narrative format. The new edition employs current scholarship
on the subject, while addressing recent developments. The treatment of
indigenous agency has been expanded throughout, including the major
role played by Polynesians in the spread of Christianity in Oceania that has
often been under-represented in historical surveys, which focus on western
missionary societies and the activities of their missionaries. Chapter 10 on
immigration to Europe after World War II has been updated to reflect the
refugee crisis and the evolving political situation in Europe concerning its
immigrant population. The discussion questions at the end of each chapter,
which provide an excellent way to get the students into group discussions,
have been updated. Readers of the first edition have valued the manner in
which its chapters are enlivened with the voices and views of those who were
and remain directly engaged in the process of cross-cultural exchange. This
edition is designed to build upon that achievement.
xi
Taylor & Francis
P A R T
A
Introduction
Cross-cultural encounters
and hybrid cultures
Taylor & Francis
Introduction
Cross-cultural encounters
and hybrid culture
One of the hallmarks of world history is the ever-increasing ability of humans

to cross cultural boundaries. Yet, despite the growing frequency of these
encounters over time, our understanding of these connections historically
and in the contemporary world is rather limited. This volume is designed to
address this key facet of the meeting of peoples around the globe from 1453
to the present. It examines the historical record of such contacts, distilling
from those processes patterns of interaction, different peoples’ perspectives,
and the ways these encounters tended to subvert the commonly accepted
assumptions about differences between peoples in terms of race, ethnicity,
nationhood, or empire. A short review of the tools used to examine that
record will demonstrate the need for and intended value of the present volume
in modern world history.
The publication of Jerry H. Bentley’s Old World Encounters: Cross-
Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (1993) marked a
watershed in the study of world history. Bentley was not the first to illustrate
the primacy of cultural contact and exchange as an agent of historical change,
nor was he the first to suggest that some of the more significant and lasting
contacts between even antagonistic civilizations generated mutual respect.
Old World Encounters was, however, the first to study the dynamics of
encounter in a manner accessible to students by enhancing the traditional
historical narrative through the use of brief but effective references to ground-
breaking scholarship and applying throughout the text the illustrative power
of the testimony of those involved in these encounters and exchanges, from
Popes and Emperors to Christian Crusaders and Buddhist scholars.
3
4 Part A • Introduction: cross-cultural encounters and hybrid culture
However, instructors and students seeking to continue that discussion

into more recent centuries have until now had to choose between using
anthologies offering a host of primary sources, or employing collections of
essays by scholars. While useful, the primary sources approach usually asks
beginning students to analyze documents produced by societies of which they
then have only minimal knowledge, while edited scholarly collections, such
as the otherwise excellent Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and
Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the
Early Modern Era (1994), edited by Stuart Schwartz, require graduate-level
knowledge and reading comprehension.
Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History seeks to provide a
means to explore this subject that is suitable not only for more advanced
students of world history, but also for students at the secondary school as well
as community college and the introductory undergraduate level. To do so, it
employs very accessible language and closely connects scholarly discussion
with expanded references to the voices of the participants.
The authors believe a user-friendly approach is necessary because of
the complexities of encounters in the modern world. Studying encounters
tends to be overly informed by the rise of world empires eventually dominated
by the West, and thus casts modern history as a political struggle between
dominant and subordinate cultures, of western imperialists against non-
western indigenous peoples doomed to subordination, and inevitably lays
stress on winners or losers. There is some value in this approach in that it can
demonstrate, for example, that the rise of nationalism and imperialism often
leads to limits on social tolerance and forces encounters into more narrow
categories of citizenship or noncitizen.
However, pursuit of that view to the exclusion of others can obscure
the cross-cultural encounters that transformed both the supposed victor
and the vanquished. Only an “encounters model” can begin to explain why
for centuries Christians fought in the armies of the Muslim Ottoman Empire,
why there are mosques on virtually every American military base today, even
those in the Middle East, and why so many peoples in conflict seek a “middle
ground,” as was so often the case among American Indians and European
settlers in North America. Narratives that stress a single dominant culture
obscure those aspects of encounter that suggest hybridity, syncretism, or
cultural blending. Even modern colonial populations assumed to be strictly
divided by race interacted in ways which altered the culture of the colonizer
as well as the colonized, such as in the rise of chicken curry masala as the
national dish of Britain, whose people once sought to impose their own culture
on the people of India. The costs of ignoring such hybridity were recently
revealed in an interview with British historian Niall Ferguson, who has been
tasked with reforming history education in his country. When asked if he
intended to promote knowledge of the world’s civilizations in British schools,
he replied that he would be happy to promote discussion of what western
civilization got right and what non-western civilization got wrong, without
conceding that what the non-West got right and shared with the West helped
create the West as we know it—from its science to its music and, yes, even its
foodways!
The encounters approach thus has the potential to open up history to a
variety of different perspectives and experiences, and reveal key patterns and
transformations that are the chief subjects of world history. This approach
often focuses on first encounters, and does so here, but these encounters are
addressed so as to suggest their long term and often contemporary significance.
These developments are as subtle yet as transformative as the rise of a belief
in the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe (the Brown Virgin Mary) that
followed the Spanish conquest of Latin America in the sixteenth century and
the taking up of the wearing of the veil by Muslim women in post-colonial
France in the twenty-first century. This work intends to illuminate both the
large-scale (the “macro-historical”) and the most intimate impacts of global
encounters in the modern era. That dual goal is achieved through a focus on
evidence and major themes together.
CONTENTS
The encounters studied in the first section of this volume include those
associated with the Spanish conquest of the New World, the activities of Jesuit
missionaries in East Asia, and the role of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire.
These chapters focus on differences based upon religion and civilization. In
Chapter 1, the expanding Spanish empire, which invaded the Caribbean
and Mexico, brought with it the notion that the religion of Christianity and
European civilization was superior to the religion and civilization of the Native
Americans of the New World. This attitude was used to justify the Spanish
conquest and also the virtual enslavement of Native Americans. Europeans,
however, were not the only group to believe in the superiority of their own
civilization. East Asians considered their civilization superior to the barbarism
of Europeans, and therefore the Catholic missionaries of the Jesuit order sent
to Asia from Europe were looked down upon and at times distrusted. Both
Chinese and Japanese leaders severely circumscribed the interactions of
their people with European missionaries, which included restrictions on their
movement in the interior of their countries. By contrast, the Turkish Ottoman
Empire, while it maintained that Islam was superior to other religions,
interpreted Islam to allow Christians and Jews to live and work in its lands.
All empires discussed in this section, both western and non-western,
possessed more military power than the other side in these encounters. At
times, this disparity of power led these empires to force their will upon the
other; violence thus often characterized these encounters. The Spaniards used
the pretext of indigenous rebellion—the resistance of Native Americans to
Spanish domination—to declare war on the peoples of Central America,
conquer them, and enslave them. In addition, the Spaniards maintained that
Native Americans possessed no civilization or religion (neither of which is
true) and believed that this gave them the right to force them to convert to
Catholic Christianity. In sixteenth-century Japan, the political leadership
allowed Jesuit missionaries to operate within severe constraints, but in a clash

of cultural systems, the missionaries produced converts whose first loyalty was
to the Christian god, not to their Japanese lords, and so these new Christians
and by extension the missionaries became objects of suspicion. By 1640, the
Japanese executed or banished all the missionaries and closed their borders
to the West. In China, foreigners were generally banned from travel into the
interior of the country, but Jesuits were eventually allowed to do so because
they were considered useful for their knowledge of astronomy, map-making
skills, and peculiar inventions, such as mechanical clocks. Even though the
missionaries adopted Confucian ideas and dress to facilitate conversion to
Christianity, the Chinese, who interpreted this as acknowledgment of the
superiority of their civilization, embraced the missionaries not as one of their
own but as ingenious westerners. Although some of the missionaries, such as
Mateo Ricci, became well known and were respected in China for their writings,
the missionary effort failed to produce a significant number of converts.
However, the Ottoman Empire represents a significant departure from these
scenarios. The Ottomans had tolerance built into their civilization and their
interpretation of Islam. Ottoman laws provided protection for foreigners
and sanction for people of different religions; for example, they encouraged
communities of Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain by Christians to settle in
their cities. Native Americans in the Caribbean also had a degree of toler-
ance of the “outsider” built into many of their cultures, but the power
differential between them and the Spaniard conquistadors, who were exceed-
ingly intolerant of others, was too great for them to successfully maintain their
values and civilization in the face of military conquest and depopulation by
disease.
In these cases, the outsiders, whether they were Spanish conquistadors,
Jesuit missionaries, or Jewish merchants, impacted the societies they entered
in important ways, although in East Asia the influence of outsiders was delib-
erately constrained by regimes that limited their movements. Spaniards
imposed their religion and culture and today Catholicism and Spanish-
influenced cultural patterns are dominant in Latin America, and Jews from
Spain brought their language, religion, and trades to the Ottomans and helped
the empire to flourish. A Castilian version of Spanish brought by the Jews
became the language of business in parts of the Ottoman Empire.
However, the influence of outsiders must not be overstated since new
evidence indicates that host societies treated outsiders as people useful to
them, not as gods to be worshipped. They were perceived by the host cultures
within the hosts’ cultural context, which should not surprise us, but changes
how we interpret these encounters, not just as stories of conquest or
domination, but as interactions where the perspective of the host was as
important as that of the outsider. For instance, Chapter 1 sheds new light on
the traditional historical narrative of the Aztecs falling down in awe of the
Spaniards or prophesying their own doom; instead the evidence in this case
shows the Aztecs saw the Spaniards as outsiders who needed to be overawed
by Aztec greatness and eventually placed into subjection. Likewise, the power
and influence of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci upon China, once exaggerated,
is likely to have been much overstated. From the Chinese perspective, Ricci
was not a true Chinese Confucian scholar, but rather an ingenious outsider
whose ideas were intriguing but did not fundamentally change Confucianism
in China.
Perhaps as important, the outsiders were changed as well through their
encounters. So the changes were mutual, transforming both “insiders” and
“outsiders” in the encounter. Some Jews in Ottoman lands converted to Islam
and Jewish cultural habits fused with Muslim and Greek culture to form a
common culture in many places. Jesuit missionaries were converted to East
Asian culture and came to see China and Japan as their true homeland. And
while Catholicism dominates in Latin America, it has become indigenized in
significant ways. The celebration of the European Catholic “All Saints Day” as
the indigenous-themed “Day of the Dead” is just one example.
Chapters 4–6 study a succeeding period when encounters were
characterized by an openness which allowed the creation of middle ground
alliances and moments of cultural hybridity between different tribes and
nations in the Great Lakes region of North America between French and
Native American tribes and sporadically in encounters between Europeans
and Pacific Islanders in the Pacific and among Russians and steppe peoples
on the Eurasian steppe. These middle ground encounters were mostly frontier
encounters where territories and boundaries were not well defined and a
relative parity of military and political power allowed for shifting alliances that
were innovative and practical in nature. In these middle ground situations,
both groups attempted to use the others’ cultural frameworks in an appeal
for peace and collaboration.
In Chapter 4, Native Americans in the Great Lakes region were particularly
adept at negotiating the middle ground. Their traditional openness to outsiders
allowed them to learn outsiders’ cultural frameworks and in turn make appeals
to these frameworks when needed. Threatened by the powerful Iroquois
Confederacy, Algonquian peoples and French missionaries and military
leaders in the region—who were small in number and militarily very weak—
explored the middle ground, which was a metaphorical place where disparate
cultures found common ground. Diplomatic alliances were negotiated, con-
flicts resolved, and cultural compromises made. In the Pacific Ocean, castaways
from European ships in the Pacific were offered new identities and some
were adopted into Polynesian society, as seen in Chapter 5. In addition, the
British explorers who found peoples new to them were also presented with
middle ground offers of sex and other gifts to welcome these newcomers into
Polynesian society. However, the British officers sometimes refused these gifts
and treated the islanders brusquely, in which case the attempt to build a
middle ground failed; at times these explorers so enraged the Polynesians that
they were attacked and killed as in the case of Captain Cook in Hawaii. In
Chapter 6, on the Eurasian steppe, a region located south of Russia and north
of India, steppe khanates and Russian diplomats attempted to build a middle
ground with mixed success. As in the other cases, neither side possessed a
monopoly of power. In the early period of the encounter, the Russians were
weaker and feared invasion and enslavement by the khanates. The Russians
and Steppe peoples signed “sherts” or treaties of peace and cooperation. Even
the word “shert” is significant because it was not a Russian term but Turko-
Mongol term. This middle ground was less successful because the two sides
interpreted the treaties and the roles of the Russian leader differently, the
steppe peoples arguing that the Russian Tsar was just one among many princes
and the treaties were simple alliances that could be broken at will, and the
Russians arguing that the sherts were pledges of loyalty to the Tsar and gave
them suzerainty over the steppe peoples who had signed. On the border
between Russia and China, attempts at building a middle ground with Mongol
factions there had purely diplomatic goals and created temporary stability that
gave the Chinese the upper hand in the conquest of Mongols that followed.
These middle ground arrangements were easily broken and as Europeans
in North America and the Pacific became more powerful and indigenous cul-
tures transformed by their encounter with Europeans, indigenous dependency
on Europeans resulted. In North America, as Europeans and then Americans
in the new United States increasingly encroached upon Native American land
and the viability of beaver-trading was destroyed, Native Americans became
more and more dependent upon them to provide the basic necessities of life.
In the Pacific, Polynesian cultural practices were banned by puritanical
missionaries and they were reduced to poverty as Euro-Americans took control
of their land and sovereignty through colonization. On the Eurasian steppe,
Russian and Chinese domination produced similar results with poverty and
dependence common among the steppe peoples.
Although these middle ground developments proved to be tenuous and
temporary, they continued to influence events and identities long after their
practical usefulness had disappeared. The encounter of Native Americans
and the French produced Native American Christian converts among the
Huron peoples and to this day, the Huron sing a Christmas carol called
the “Huron Carol,” which reflects their dual identity as Huron and French.
In the Pacific Ocean, the encounter of Europeans and Polynesians and its
impact on Europeans live on in Paul Gauguin’s nostalgic and unfettered
paintings of Polynesian women in their “natural state.” In addition, Native
Hawaiians, Europeans, and other immigrants in Hawaii developed a new
language in the nineteenth century referred to as “pidgin” and its continuing
use today is reminder of the encounter of westerners and Polynesians. This,
along with the renewal of the Hawaiian language and the Hawaiian cultural
renaissance, indicates strong cultural persistence. Finally, the continuing
resistance of Caucasus Muslims to Russian rule in Chechnya and Ingushetia is
a reminder of encounters past on the Eurasian steppe.
In the time period from the late eighteenth century, encounters were
powerfully influenced by the growth of European empire and the rise of
modern nationalism with its claims on identity and its definition of insiders
and outsiders. The encounters in Chapters 7–9 focus attention on questions
of resistance/acquiescence to dominant imperial powers in India, the Japanese
Empire, and Africa. Although religion and civilization still played a role in the
encounters, these issues were either overshadowed by or linked to nationalism
in the march to build European empires. As much as nationalist ideologies in
modern empires restricted the play and flexibility in these encounters, there
was also room, especially early in each encounter, to redefine nation, religion,
or civilization into moments where imperial overlords and subject peoples
found common ground in the form of shared interest in indigenous civil-
izational roots, interracial marriage, and/or practical issues of power and
governance. In addition, indigenous peoples who were being colonized
cleverly used the encounters to gain knowledge of European political ideals
of freedom and liberty, and then turned these ideas upon the colonizers to
spark independence movements.
The British expansion into India stimulated a reexamination of Indian
values and practices through the work of British Orientalists (students of
eastern culture), who saw some of the values and products of ancient Indian
culture as superior to their own. This started an incipient cultural renaissance
in India led by both Indian and British intellectuals who found universals
applicable to all societies in Indian ideas. This atmosphere was squelched only
when the British approach shifted to forced westernization in education and
an increasing clampdown in the political arena. The British in India believed
they were inculcating British national characteristics into the Indian elites but
in fact they laid the groundwork for the independence movement in which
Mohandas Gandhi took British and western ideas, fused them with Indian
concepts, such as Satyagraha, and used them against the British in his campaign
for Indian independence.
In Africa, in spite of the European goals of hegemony, there arose
considerable space for Africans to resist European imperialism in the process.
In the southern part of Africa, the rise of indigenous Christianity and African-
led churches that came from the initial encounter of missionaries and Africans
expressed African independence in a time of European domination. Later, in
Sudan, the encounter of Sudanese subjects and British overlords produced
resistance to British rule. Sudan’s independence movement, like India’s,
reversed the ideological flow of knowledge and embraced a modern western
identity of the yet to be founded Sudanese nation as a unifying force against
the British.
Finally the Japanese Empire, in a moment when modern nationalism
reached its peak before World War II, ruthlessly stamped out resistance and
forced its subject peoples in much of Asia to become Japanized in language,
education, and religious and cultural practice. But even in Japan’s rigidly
controlled empire, there were examples of more open encounters with others
such as interethnic marriages between Aboriginal Taiwanese and Japanese
merchants in Taiwan’s highlands that sealed economic alliances.
In the post-World War II period there is some evidence to suggest that
nationalist ideologies which defined differences in encounters so strongly
in the modern period have begun to weaken. Religion and civilization have
reemerged in complicated ways to define differences while the middle ground
space in which encounters can be redefined has expanded dramatically

through intermarriage, economic exchanges, and flows of people across
borders through global migration and travel. Chapter 10, which studies postwar
immigration into Europe in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has
challenged Europeans’ sense of identity and threatened their sense of security
while creating a fierce debate about the meaning of immigration and its impact
on European society. But immigrants themselves have described and defined
a much more complicated process of cultural adaptation and change. Here
there is ample evidence of new cultural forms and shared interests and vision
arising from the encounter of Europeans and immigrants, from the coercive
Danish marriage law, which has forced Muslims in Denmark to consider
marrying non-Muslim citizens rather than selecting a Muslim partner who
then immigrates into Denmark, to the rich multi-ethnic collage of cultures in
today’s Amsterdam, where for example Surinamese cultural forms from Latin
America have influenced mainstream Dutch culture.
Conclusion
It has long been commonplace to argue that the more one learns about other
cultures, the more one knows of one’s own. Today, however, we live in a
globalizing culture, which blurs the difference between “us” and the “other”
each time we put on a shirt (most likely made in Southeast Asia), read an
illustrated book (in most cases inspired by Japanese anime) or buy flowers for
a loved one (in the United States, the flowers are most likely cultivated in Latin
America). In such an interlinked world, it becomes of the first importance
to master those processes that transcend human differences and enable us to
negotiate the spaces in between cultures. The rising challenges posed by
ecological degradation, population growth, commodity shortages, the spread
of diseases, and the impact of mass migration across continents and from
the countryside to the cities seem to be leaving humanity little choice but to
do so. This volume is intended to serve to aid in that task by illuminating
humanity’s past successes, as well as its failures, in building such a future.
P A R T
B
Encounters in the
age of exploration
Taylor & Francis
C H A P T E R
1
Power and unpredictability,
conquistadors, and native
peoples
Conquest of the Americas
Generations of students know that the first encounter between Europeans

and Native Americans took place when Christopher Columbus “set sail on the
ocean blue” for the first of his voyages to what came in Europe to be called
the New World in 1492. Few students, however, are aware of the significance
of the early years of the Euro-American encounter or how controversial these
early cross-cultural meetings proved to be.
The importance of these early encounters is suggested by the racial
mixing of Spaniards and Native Americans that occurred during its initial
stages. Hernán Cortés, a conquistador who came after Columbus and over-
threw the Aztec Empire, had a male child with a Native American princess
the Spaniards called Donna Marina. His birth marked the beginning of cen-
turies of racial blending that gave shape to the largely mixed race (mestizo)
population of Latin America today.
The early decades of the Euro-American encounter are controversial
because people today debate whether Columbus was a hero or villain.
Traditionally, Europeans and Euro-Americans celebrated Columbus’s so-called
discovery of the New World with a special day, Columbus Day. But Native
Americans and others then and now see Columbus and his fellow conquis-
tadors in a different light, as an evil force responsible for the enslavement and
murder of their peoples. (In Native American history, Cortés’s wife is called
La Malinche, “the evil one.”) The 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage in
13
14 Part B • Encounters in the age of exploration
1993 became an opportunity for those who took the latter view to make their
voices known by protesting the celebrations. Even the use of the term
“discovery” in Columbus’s arrival in the New World has been called into
question. What does it mean to discover a place that already has millions of
people living there?
Studying the actual face-to-face encounters between Columbus (and
those that followed in his footsteps) and Native Americans can provide us with
a more complete history of the Columbian encounter, while also providing
us with a more complete picture of the making of the modern Americas. The
Columbian encounter was characterized by an imbalance of political and
military power. But because cultural power is less predictable and more
ambiguous than military and political power, Euro-American cultural encounters
often produced unexpected results. The Spaniards dominated the Native
Americans politically and militarily. But the Spaniards themselves were changed
by the encounter, as they mixed culturally as well as racially with the indigenous
population. Similarly, Native Americans, who were once portrayed as going to
their deaths in defense of their ancient cultures, now appear to have been more
pragmatic in their relations with the Spaniards. The lines drawn between the
roles of the colonizer and the colonized were thus complex: fraught with many
moments of cross-cultural misunderstanding and role reversals.
“INDIOS”
Native Americans were labeled by Columbus as “Indios” because he believed
he had arrived in Asia at an area referred to by Europeans as the Indies
because of its proximity to India. However, the word and its cognate “Indian”
do a poor job of representing Native Americans then and now, describing
neither their home nor ethnicity. It is only because Europeans conquered the
New World that the label stuck. The term “Native American” is much more
descriptive of the place and origins of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Columbus’s encounter set in motion a long-term decimation of the
Native American population through warfare, virtual slavery, and disease.
However, we must be careful in approaching the encounter in this way because
the story of the depopulation of the New World and domination by Europeans
suggests a tragic account of decline and disappearance. Native Americans did
not disappear from the stage of history. Rather, their populations, after a
dramatic decline, recovered and mixed with Spaniards and others. Their
cultures survived, fused with Spanish culture to make a new hybrid culture
that thrived in many parts of the Americas. Thus, Columbus’s encounter with
Native Americans is just the beginning of the story of New World encounters
that continues today.
EUROPEAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN PERCEPTIONS

For several centuries before Columbus, Europeans knew little of the world
beyond the Mediterranean. The book Marco Polo’s Travels, published around
1300, the story of Marco Polo’s travels from Europe to the seat of the Mongol
Chapter 1 • Power and unpredictability, conquistadors, and native peoples 15
Empire in Mongolia and China and back to Europe via India, became for many
Europeans the sole source of information about what to them was the “outside
world.” The book was well known and widely read, and included assess-
ments of the grandeur of Asian empires and the great value of the region’s
spices, but also included fantastic tales that much later raised questions as to
whether Polo actually made the trip. In any event, Europeans saw a wealthy,
if also strange and alien, world through Marco Polo’s writing. These fantastical
ideas of what lay beyond Europe included sea monsters and the mythical
islands of Atlantis in the Atlantic, while to the east of Europe were great riches
but also the dangers of the Mongols, the greatly feared warriors from Mongolia
who conquered central Asia in the thirteenth century and threatened Europe.
The Mongols were seen by some Europeans as a mythical race of human
monsters—the Gog and Magog.
Few Europeans traveled outside of Europe because overland travel was
very slow and arduous. It took European emissaries of the Pope more than a
year to reach the seat of the Mongol Empire in Karakorum, Mongolia, from
Italy, and Marco Polo’s trip to China took 3 years. The earth was known to be
round (almost no Europeans actually then believed that the world was flat)
but much smaller than it really was. Because the world was actually larger than
thought, estimates of sailing times to reach Asia were inaccurate. When
Columbus proposed sailing west to reach the Far East, he believed it would
take a few weeks. Of course, Columbus did not know that there was an entire
continent in the way.
Europeans categorized some peoples from outside of Europe as
barbarians. According to European thought, barbarians lacked an ordered
existence, possessed no manufacturing, had no technological advancements,
did not have agriculture, had no religion, and lived in forests, and therefore
were fit only for conquest. While Europeans believed themselves more
“civilized” and thus superior to these outsiders, many of their technological
advances (such as gunpowder) and their most valuable trade came from China.
Moreover, Europeans were rarely in a position of military or political superiority
over any society in the post-classical world (500–1500 BCE). For instance, it
was well recognized that if the “barbarian” Mongols chose to conquer all of
Europe, they could easily destroy any European army, hence the great fear
Europeans had of the Mongol “hordes.”
Christianity marked another distinction between Europeans and
outsiders. Christianity was an aggressive expansionist religion. The Crusades
(1100–1300) inaugurated a campaign to convert outsiders to Christianity and
conquer foreign lands for Christianity, especially Jerusalem, which was
considered the home of Christianity. In addition, the reconquest of the Muslim
kingdoms (Moors) in southern Spain, which took place shortly before
Columbus sailed, created an entire class of warriors (conquistadors) looking
for employment and primed to slaughter foes with non-Christian religious
beliefs—which they were then already engaged in doing to heretical com-
munities and Jews in Europe. European Christians believed that their religion
was the one true faith. Christianity in Europe distinguished between infidels
and pagans—infidels possessed false religion, but pagans had no religion.

According to Catholic doctrine, conversion must be voluntary, unless the
peoples were warlike, in which case forced conversion at the point of a sword
was allowed.
Native American perceptions are more difficult to uncover. Most Native
American cultures were oral cultures without written language. Thus, written
descriptions of their ideas or their world are rare. The exception to this is
the Mayan and the Aztec (Nahua) peoples, who both had writing systems. But
the Spaniards destroyed much of their writing during conquest as their know-
ledge was considered pagan and thus dangerous. So we have precious little
information on which to base such an assessment. Studies of Native American
cultural practices can give us insights into their perceptions.
The Taino, sometimes referred to as Arawaks, were the first people
Columbus met on the island of Hispaniola, home of Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic today. The Taino practiced extensive irrigation systems and used
raised mound agriculture. They raised cassava and sweet potatoes, and also
corn, but this was less important. The Taino violated European norms by their
nakedness. The men were naked except for an occasional loincloth and women
wore skirts only. Europeans considered nakedness a sign of barbarism and
primitivity, so Columbus and other explorers concluded that the Taino had
no civilization at all. The Taino also developed a ball game played in a public
square similar to a game played in other areas of Central America. This evidence
suggests long-range communication or migration of individuals who brought
the game to the Taino. The Taino had extensive trade networks, though on
a small scale, with other islands in the Caribbean. But they lacked the organiza-
tional structure to provide profitable long-range trade with Europeans.
The Taino were very welcoming of Columbus and his men until they
saw or experienced the abuses arising from domination by the Spaniards.
The Taino perspective on outsiders was framed by their religion, their family
system, and their economic relations. The Taino religion had deities and
icons for worship and small household shrines; their shamans or religious
leaders were also the healers. The Taino religion was nonexclusive, unlike
the Spaniards’ Christianity. They were tolerant of others’ concept of god, in
part because their own religion had more than one god. They never attempted
to impose their religion on the Spaniards. Of course, there was little chance of
this once the Spaniards began to conquer them and control them through
slavery and forced labor. Their family or kinship system also encouraged an
open attitude toward outsiders. Because trade, wealth, and economic activity
were shared and distributed via families, finding outsiders who could be added
to the family network as fictive kin would provide more resources and the
potential for more trade for the clan, as in the case of a war captive who might
be adopted by a family as in North America or Polynesia (Chapters 4 and 5).
So outsiders represented a potential new source of wealth for the Taino. Thus
it is quite understandable that the Europeans would have been welcomed.
That the Taino had no experience with Europeans, however, proved
to be a grave disadvantage. They did not understand Europeans’ exclusivist
religious views, diplomatic methods, or warfare. They did have some experi-
ence with hostile outsiders. The Caribs, as the Spaniards labeled them, were
a warlike rival people who would kidnap war brides from the Taino. So the
idea that the Taino were a naïve innocent people can be discarded, but they
and other Native Americans were unfamiliar with the Europeans’ ease in
resorting to violence and their implements of war. Their surprise at the use
of the latter is documented in what accounts we do have of their responses
when they witnessed Spaniard weapons being used:
A thing like a ball of stone comes out of its entrails: it comes out shooting
sparks and raining fire. The smoke that comes out with it has a pestilent
odor, like that of rotten mud. If the cannon is aimed against a mountain,
the mountain splits and cracks open. If it is aimed against a tree, it
shatters the tree into splinters. This is a most unnatural sight, as if the
tree had exploded from within.1
Native Americans were amazed at the sight of Spanish soldiers sheathed
in metal. According to them, Spaniard horses, an animal not then present in
the Americas, were magnificent, and seen as crushing the earth under their
hooves. Native Americans described the Spaniard conquistadors and their war
dogs in their own words:
Their dogs are enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The
color of their eyes is a burning yellow; their eyes flash fire and throw off
sparks. Their bellies are hollow, their flanks long and narrow. They are
tireless and very powerful. They bound here and there, panting with
their tongues hanging out.
The stranger bodies are completely covered, so that only their faces
can be seen. Their skin is white as if made of lime. They have yellow hair
though some of them have black. Their beards are long and yellow, and
their moustaches are also yellow. Their hair is curly, with fine very thin
strands . . .2
Their surprise at Spaniards’ weapons and appearance allowed Spaniards
a significant advantage in battle because they could employ these weapons
before Native Americans had much time to adjust and develop a successful
strategy to confront these newcomers. Thus, though wary of foreign visitors
in general the peaceful Taino were no match for the aggressive warlike Spanish.
COLUMBUS AND THE ROUTE TO ASIA

The reason Columbus sailed west from Spain and encountered the Taino was
the wealth of Asia. Asia was perceived as a place of great riches by Europeans,
who traded for coveted luxury items from that region, such as silk, porcelains,
tea, and spices for cooking and medicine. Of these, spices were most valued.
One shipload of cloves or cinnamon could bring up to 400 percent profit to
the merchant who sold it in Europe.
The Silk Road, which went through Mongolia across the central Eurasian
steppe, had been established as the main trade route that brought spices and
other goods to Europe from China through central Asia in ancient times.
Though it had fallen into disuse with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the
penetration of the Mongol Empire into central Asia in the 1200s revived
the Silk Road and reconnected Europe and Asia to the profit of both the
Mongols and Europeans. European traders from Venice, Florence, Genoa, and
other cities picked up the goods on the Black Sea and brought them into
Europe; the Venetians even had a trading post on the Black Sea. But the Silk
Road was again disrupted by Ottoman conquests in central Asia in the 1400s.
The Ottoman Empire was a Turkish Islamic empire that began a rapid
expansion by force in the 1300s to 1400s. The loss in 1453 of the capital
of the long-lived and remaining eastern segment of the Roman Empire,
Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), to the Ottomans was a devastating
blow for Europeans who traded with Asia. It was also a blow to European
Christians, as not only was Constantinople important for trade, but it was also
the last major outpost of Christianity in the East. Muslim traders assumed
control over a large portion of the Silk Road trade, but their rates were high
and they squeezed out European traders. As a result, Europeans began to look
elsewhere for trade opportunities.
After the Ottoman conquest, some Italian merchants relocated to Spain
and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, seeking to replace the loss of the Silk
Route by trading with Africa. West Africa, long connected to the Mediterranean
world, had quantities of gold and slaves to exchange with Europeans. An
Africa–Europe gold and slave trade already existed by 1492, but like the Silk
Road, it was controlled by Muslim middlemen, which made it very expensive
for European merchants. Both Portugal and Spain sought to trade directly
with African kingdoms for gold, and Portugal began exploration of Africa.
Prince Henry of Portugal, who had a strong interest in exploration and became
known as Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), sponsored expeditions down
the coast of Africa, where Columbus later made a name for himself as a slave
trader financed by merchants in Genoa. Those merchants, frustrated with
Muslim and Portuguese control of much of Europe’s trade, eventually bank-
rolled Columbus’s successful appeal at the court of Castile to further fund his
voyages to the West.
The House of Castile, which then ruled Spain, believed that by finding
a new route to Asia, the competition with Portugal for African trade in gold
would be overcome and the profits could be used to reenergize the expansion
of Christianity at the expense of their economic and religious Muslim rivals,
who had effectively come to monopolize the trade with Asia. A further moti-
vation for such exploration came from the Renaissance inquiry into humankind
and curiosity about the world outside of Europe. Columbus’s own views even
came into play. He was a millenarian who believed that the end of the world
was approaching soon. Therefore, he wanted as much of the world as possible
to be converted to Christianity before the end-time came.
Given all the obstacles to the riches of the East, it is not surprising that
Europeans thought of attempting to sail west to find the Far East and its
wealth. Columbus was not actually the first to think of it, but he was the first
to find the route. The Portuguese had even dispatched ships eastward, but
they had not found any evidence of land, such as land birds over the ocean.
This deterred them, but not Columbus. He, like many Europeans interested
in exploration, had attempted to calculate the size of the earth to better
ascertain distances, estimating that the circumference of the earth was 17,000
miles (actual circumference is 25,000 miles). Columbus read books that gave
this estimate and this boosted his confidence. He also studied maps, such as
Toscanelli’s map on next page. He used these data in support of his calculation
that the Indies could be reached in a matter of a few weeks. But the Americas
were unknown to Europeans at the time and this explains the inaccuracy of
Columbus’s estimates.
COLUMBUS AND THE TAINO

When Columbus reached the island of Hispaniola, he was filled with
anticipation that he would see gold-roofed buildings and the silk gowns of the
Mongol ruler called the Great Khan, and also those of his people as described
by Marco Polo. Upon encountering the Taino and Caribs, it became clear to
Columbus that the peoples he encountered were not from the realm of the
Great Khan. Columbus had not yet found Asia by going west. After a few
months of exploration, the realization sunk in. He revised his plan for trade
with Asia concluding that he might be able to trade with the Native Americans
he met like Portugal did with Africa. But Native American trade networks were
small and local, so he was not able to use the African model. Therefore,
Columbus decided upon another model of expansion known in Spain from
the clashes with the Moors and on the Canary islands as well: conquest.
The Moors, as the Spanish called them, were Muslims from North Africa
who had come north across the straits of Gibraltar and conquered large
stretches of southern Spain by 800 BCE. They brought with them Islamic
culture and learning and greatly enriched the lands of Spain with irrigated
agriculture, great centers of learning, and grand architectural achievements.
In an interesting coincidence, at the very same time that Columbus set sail in
1492, the Spanish had just succeeded in their reconquest of the Moorish
lands, pushing the Moors back to North Africa. This became a potent example
for the House of Castile and Columbus. The reconquest expanded the reach
of Christianity and gave Columbus and the Spanish Crown the drive to convert
areas of the world outside of Europe to Christianity. It also enriched the
Spanish conquerors. Many conquistadors who fought against the Moors were
given some of the newly conquered lands and the use of local labor for their
service to the Crown. Others had not, and they were eager to seize the
property and labor of non-Christian peoples.
Columbus continued to publicly state and write that he had discovered
the route to Asia long after it was clear he had not. He knew he had raised
expectations of discovery of a new route to the Far East and failure to find
that route might damage his reputation. Columbus was a stubborn person and
he refused to admit defeat or failure. He began a series of greatly exaggerated
I R L A N D A
London
C A T H A Y
Lisbona
O c e a n u s
Quinsay O c c i d e n t a l i s
M A N G I
Canariae
Zaiton Antillia
C I P P A N G U
Senega
G U I N E A
Cabo Verde
Equator
MAP 1.1 Columbus’s conception of Atlantic Ocean and Asia. Cippangu is Japan, Cathay is China
Source: Public Domain Map, found on Wikicommons
Newfoundland First voyage
Second voyage
N o r t h Third voyage
Nova Scotia
Fourth voyage
A t l a n t i c
SPAIN
O c e a n PORTUGAL
N O R T H Lisbon
Palos
Azores S. Lucar
A M E R I C A
Cadiz
Madeira
Canary Islands
The Bahamas
Habana
Santo
Domingo
YUCATAN C U B A Guadeloupe A F R I C A
Jamaica
Martinique Cape Verde Islands
CENTRAL
AMERICA Coro
Maracaibo Caracas Cumana
Colon
Panama
S o u t h
S O U T H A t l a n t i c
A M E R I C A O c e a n
MAP 1.2 Columbus’s voyages to the Americas

Source: GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribute
accounts about the New World that eventually destroyed his reputation.
Columbus was also a poor administrator and his administrative failures
combined with his exaggerations and unwillingness to admit that he had
failed to find the riches of the Far East eventually forced the Crown to strip
him of authority over the lands he found. It is a noteworthy comment on
Spanish motivations in the New World that Columbus’s poor treatment of
Native Americans played very little role in his perceived failure, even though
Queen Isabella knew of the abuses and disapproved of them. The Spanish
were after wealth and power and the fate of the Native Americans they
encountered was initially of relatively small concern.
The Native Americans (Taino) Columbus encountered were, according
to his own description, friendly, and innocent. Columbus saw them as noble
savages—noble in their innocence and lack of malicious intentions, and
savage in their supposed primitive way of life. Columbus believed they were
completely pliable and submissive and claimed that 50 Europeans could
dominate the whole island of Hispaniola, which he claimed for Spain.
Columbus here illustrates the naïve and inaccurate concepts of superiority the
Europeans maintained about themselves. His first words were:
I, he says, in order that they would be friendly to us—because I recognized
that they were people who would be better freed [from error] and
converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force—to some of them I
gave red caps, and glass beads which they put on their chests, and many
other things of small value, in which they took so much pleasure and
became so much our friends, it was a marvel . . . They should be good
and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything
that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very
easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion.3
Columbus took with him to the New World European perceptions about
others who Europeans regarded as having no religion or ordered way of life.
He saw Native Americans as inferior and stated that they were “fit to be
ordered about and made to work.” Columbus’s statement conforms to the
European view that some people were natural slaves whose lot in life was to
be under the control of others either as slaves or laboring in the equivalent of
a modern-day labor gang, what the Spaniards called encomienda. In his public
statements he continued to state that the Taino had no religion, likely because
this allowed them to be defined as pagan and made their conquest easier
to rationalize. However, on his second voyage, he commissioned a scholar to
study the religion of the Taino, which indicated he had become convinced that
they possessed religion and therefore needed to establish that theirs’ was a
false religion. A report by a religious scholar would accomplish this.
When Columbus explored the coasts of the island closest to Hispaniola,
he took seven islanders captive to train them as interpreters. Eventually these
seven and a few others were taken back to Castile. They were shown to the
Crown as evidence of Columbus’s discovery. Bartolome de Las Casas, who
later became a powerful advocate for the Native Americans, witnessed these
New World peoples among Columbus’s assemblage in the Castilian city of

Seville as a young man. Columbus had no qualms about taking these natives
captive, since according to European thinking and the laws of the Catholic
Church, they were barbarians, possessed no religion, and could therefore
be compelled to do whatever Columbus wanted of them. This included his
right to enslave them. One Native American stayed at the court of Castile and
died soon after. Several others made their way back to the Caribbean. Another,
named Diego Colon, became a loyal interpreter for Columbus. The Spanish
Crown, needing the support of the Catholic Church and wary of conquistadors
seizing people and lands without royal authority, took steps to protect the
natives by issuing instructions to treat them well, and also to convert them to
Christianity, although the first of these commands was largely ignored by
Columbus and his men.
Though Columbus saw the Taino as innocents, he did not treat them
with the same kind of tolerance they showed him. Columbus returned for
three other trips to the New World. He still hoped to find Asia and the Great
Khan of China. But he had to make the islands he had found pay. Trade hadn’t
worked out. So he proposed rounding up the natives and selling them as
slaves. Columbus’s soldiers eventually captured 1,600 Taino and made 500 of
them into slaves. They forced 650 of them to serve Spanish settlers as forced
laborers. The rest were freed. Soon, however, all Native Americans were forced
to labor for the Spanish settlers.
Columbus also had to deal with increasing unrest among his soldiers
and the rest of the Spanish settlers. Columbus was a poor administrator and
shipments of supplies sometimes didn’t arrive on time. Conditions were poor
in the settlement and a rebellion resulted. Columbus quelled the rebellion by
giving the settlers control of the labor of Native Americans. The House of
Castile disapproved of enslaving of Native Americans. Isabelle even freed a
cargo of enslaved Indians after she discovered they had been enslaved against
her wishes. But because slavery was profitable, most Spaniards looked the
other way or openly participated. A gold tribute system was also forced onto
the Taino. They were forced to collect as much gold as they could from the
rivers to deliver to Columbus and his men. Even the Crown could not resist
the promise of more gold and though they offered protection to the Taino,
they supported Columbus’s gold tribute system.
By 1500, the relationship between Columbus and Native Americans—
the gold tribute system, slavery, and the forced labor system—was codified.
The labor and lives of the natives were controlled by the will of the Spaniards.
This set in motion a pattern of abuse and control that continued well into the
twentieth century under the Latin American hacienda system. Haciendas were
huge privately owned plantations where Native American and mestizo (mixed
race) peasants lived and worked. The owner of the hacienda believed he
had the right to control the labor and the lives of the peasants who lived on
his lands.
Once the Taino started to resist this abuse, Columbus changed his
mind about their innocence and declared them to be warlike and dangerous.
H I D A L G O
Texiuhuitlan
Tiatlauhquitepec
Xallatzinco
Altotonga
Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz

M É X I C O
Quiahuiztian
Ixtacamaxtitlan
Xallapan
Atotonilco
Zempoala
Mexico-Tenochtitlan Coatepec
T L A X C A L A
Ile de San Juan
Itztapallapan Tzompantzinco de Ulua
Mexicaltzinco Xicochimalco
Chalco-Alenco Tizatlan
Cuitlahuac Arnaquemacan
Mixquic Chalchiuhcueyecan
Ayotzinco
Rio Jamapa
Tollan-Chollollan
Huexotzinco
Ixhuatlan Isla de Sacrificios
P U E B L A V E R A C R U Z
M O R E L O S
MAP 1.3 Map of Cortés’s route to Tenochtitlan

Source: GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribute
This declaration gave him the right to conquer them under the Catholic
doctrine of “just war.” Whenever they resisted, the Spanish could claim that
the Taino were making war on them and therefore they had the right to
conquer the natives and forcibly convert them to Christianity.
There was much cross-cultural confusion in the encounter between
Columbus and the Taino. Columbus and his men, who were unprincipled
adventurers, made significant mistakes in understanding the Taino and other
tribes. In addition to the mistaken assumption that they had no religion or
civilization, his men became convinced that the Caribs, a rival tribe, participated
in full-scale cannibalism, while there was little truth in this. Also, when
Europeans saw the Caribs take females from the Taino, they assumed that the
Caribs were taking them as slaves as Europeans might have done. In truth they
were bride captives from the Taino, not slaves. While Europeans might have
been appalled at bride capture, the Taino and the Caribs were more appalled
at the European practice of slavery, forced labor, and forced conversion.
Columbus and others used indigenous peoples hostile to the Taino to
help conquer them. They also moved to destroy the power of the Taino chiefs
by making alliances with them and then turning against them. In 1503, the
Spaniards convinced one of the chiefs to order a gathering of all the chiefs at
his house. When the chiefs were duly gathered, the Spaniards barred the door
and burned the house down, massacring the chiefs and eventually making the
Native Americans submit. The forced labor system started by Columbus was
institutionalized as the so-called encomienda system, which consisted of royal
grants of land and labor and the Taino died in great numbers because of it.
Bartolome de Las Casas believed that up to 90 percent of the natives died in
the gold fields after only 3 months.
The Spanish Crown, embarrassed by the open and great abuses to
the encomienda labor system and by the widespread practice of taking the
natives as slaves, asked a Spanish lawyer to evaluate whether the natives
were being abused and deserved clemency. The lawyer determined that there
had been abuse and only the peoples referred to as the Caribs could be made
into slaves because they had made war against the Spaniards and were
supposedly cannibals. But this ruling was too late to save the Taino from
extinction. By 1524, there were more African slaves than Taino slaves on
Hispaniola. In addition to Spanish abuses, European diseases killed up to
90 percent of Taino. By 1540, there were no Taino slaves left and by 1550
the Taino virtually disappeared. Today there are only a few mixed blood Taino
who continue to practice Taino culture on the islands of Hispaniola and
Puerto Rico.
CORTÉS, AZTECS, AND CONQUEST OF MEXICO

After Columbus, the islands of the Caribbean were quickly settled and the
Spaniards began to scout and explore sections of the mainland of Mesoamerica.
Hernán Cortés was a young impetuous Spaniard when he came to the
Caribbean. Born into an aristocratic family in Castile, he rose in leadership in
the New World and served as mayor of the capital of New Spain (Cuba) for
several years. He became an encomendero (awarded an encomienda by the

Crown) but was above all an adventurer and had become a strong leader when
he was chosen to be captain of an expedition to explore the mainland in 1518.
Cortés first explored the fringes of the Yucatan Peninsula. Here he
met the Mayans, a more powerful and sophisticated civilization than the
Taino. The Mayans sent warriors and priests to meet them. They greatly out-
numbered the Spaniards, and the Spaniards fled back to their ships. Later
they attacked and decimated the Spaniard soldiers. Because the balance of
power was against the Spaniards they were at least temporarily in a position
of inferiority and it haunted them.
After this incident, the Spaniards sent reinforcements and the Mayans
allowed them to peacefully enter their cities. There was much gold which
attracted the Spaniards. During this expedition, the Spaniards were rejoined
by Geronimo de Aguilar, a Spaniard who had survived a shipwreck and was
spared by the Mayans, perhaps because of his skill with language. He had
learned Mayan and when he joined the expedition, he became one of Cortés’s
most important interpreters.
A second Spaniard from the shipwreck, Gonzalo Guerrero, had a cultural
conversion. He married a Mayan woman, had children with her, wore the
tattoos and earplugs of a warrior, and became a war captain organizing attacks
on Spanish ships. For some unknown reason he had turned violently against
the Spanish. Possibly he felt betrayed when no one rescued him, or he
saw the abuses the Spaniards inflicted upon the Native Americans. Whatever
the reason, he became a sworn enemy of the Spaniards. He continued to
fight the Spanish and actually volunteered for a mission against them that was
far from the Yucatan, in Honduras, where he was finally killed by the Spanish
in 1534. Guerrero remained in the Spaniard consciousness, raising questions
as to why he had turned against them and joined what they thought to be an
inferior civilization. It struck “at the heart of their sense of self.”4
During this expedition, Cortés, after winning a battle at Tabasco, was
given several young native maidens including one known to the Spanish as
La Malinche or by her later Spanish name, Donna Marina. Donna Marina
became the mistress of Cortés and bore him a child, but most importantly for
the future of Mexico, she also became his interpreter. She was from a tribe
under the control of the Aztecs and knew their language, but also knew the
Mayan language. She became Cortés’s link to the subject tribes of the Aztecs.
In the role of interpreter, she helped Cortés make crucial alliances with these
tribes that resulted in the defeat of the Aztecs.
THE AZTECS
The Aztec Empire came into full form shortly before the arrival of the
Spanish. The Aztec people, who were relative newcomers to the central valley
of Mexico, came from the North American desert and were looked down upon
by the other tribes. But they brought a powerful army and successfully
conquered all of central Mexico. Outlying tribes conquered by the Aztec were
then forced to pay tribute in the form of labor and humans for sacrifice in
Aztec religious ceremonies.
The Aztecs have been portrayed traditionally by historians as a people
steeped in ritual and mysticism. This view asserts that the Aztecs believed
their conquest by the Spaniards was the work of one of the Aztec gods, the
Aztec destroyer god Huitzilopochtli. This narrative of Spanish conquest
tells a story of a submissive, fate-oriented people. However, James Lockhart,
an anthropologist, rejects the premise that the Aztecs were primitives over-
whelmed by Europeans and were paralyzed by long-held prophecies of their
own doom. Rather, Lockhart sees them as self-interested and pragmatic people
and he uses their own writings to bear this out.
The coming of the Spanish with their unknown ways and powerful
weapons was an important event for the Aztecs and they recorded what they
saw as the important moments of it. However, the overall impression given
by the Aztec codices (books) written after their conquest is that the Aztecs
were functioning much as they were before the arrival of the Spaniards. They
recorded Spanish actions only when they impacted them in some way. In
much of Mexico, the conquest did not impact native lives at all.
The codices demonstrate that the Aztecs interpreted Spanish actions
through their own frame of reference. They read facial features and gestures
and they assumed that these outward signs were enough to interpret the
Spaniards’ thoughts and actions. The description of their defeat by the Span-
iards, described through dialogue, is an example of Aztec self-interest and
pragmatism. The focus is also on internal rivalry among the various tribes
ruled by the Aztecs, putting the Spaniards in the background. Primary interest
focused on one’s group and how the group fared. In the Aztec empire, the
fundamental form of identity was the ethnically based set of villages or
towns. Everyone else was an “other” including different towns or tribes and
the Spanish, whom they considered to be just one more group of outsiders.
The first massacre by the Spanish at a Toxcatl festival was a surprise
attack and this stuck in the minds of the Aztecs. But the Aztecs met the
situation not with doom that their world would end, but with the pragmatic
calculation that these outsiders had betrayed them and could not be trusted.
Therefore, they decided to wage war against them. They acted in their self-
interest, not out of some preordained myth that they were being punished or
were to be destroyed. The Aztecs recounted the surprise attack at the ceremony
and their response this way:
When this had been done, the celebrants began to sing their songs. That
is how they celebrated the first day of the fiesta. On the second day they
began to sing again, but without warning they were all put to death . . .
They [the Spanish soldiers] ran in among the dancers, forcing their way
to the place where the drums were played. Then they cut off his head,
and it rolled across the floor.
They attacked the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them striking
them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind. And
these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out . . .
Others they beheaded, they cut off their heads, or split their heads to
pieces . . . The Sun [Don Pedro de Alvarado] treacherously murdered
our people on the twentieth day after the Captain [Cortés] left for the
coast. We allowed the Captain to return to the city in peace. But on
the following day we attacked him with all our might and that was the
beginning of the war . . .5
This new way of interpreting Aztec perceptions can help us reconsider
other parts of the traditional narrative. It has been argued that the Aztecs saw
Cortés with his helmet and feathered plume as the return of the Aztec creator
god Quetzalcoatl and therefore treated him with the greatest adoration.
Originally stated in Aztec codices, this story was taken up by historians because
it fit with their view that the Aztecs were fate-oriented people. However,
Lockhart suggests the argument that the Aztecs fawned over Cortés is a
misleading interpretation of events. He argues that the custom of treating
the newcomer royally was a matter of routine within Aztec culture and was
intended to overawe the outsider with the generosity of the Aztec ruler and
people. Lockhart thinks the claim that Cortés was a god was created to explain
the downfall of the city and empire after the fact. The original Spanish account
of the conquest contains no mention of Moctezuma treating Cortés like a
god. In fact, it states that there were warnings told to the Spaniards in the
towns along the way to the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan that Moctezuma had
invited them into the capital city to trap them and kill them. It is unlikely that
Moctezuma would have planned this if he believed Cortés to be a god. The
portrayal of Moctezuma as weak and fawning in the Aztec codices, which were
written many years after Spanish conquest, makes it easier to explain why the
conquest happened, and it also created a scapegoat in Moctezuma himself
among the Aztecs. This account of Moctezuma was written by rival peoples
who wanted to blame Moctezuma for the Aztec downfall; they portrayed him
as weak in contrast to their leader Itzquauhtzin, who was portrayed as virtuous
and heroic.
Other evidence supports this version of the conquest. Moctezuma and
the Aztecs strove to understand the Spaniards and so he sent out skilled
painters to record what they saw when Cortés landed at the beach at Veracruz
to learn more about these new outsiders. Later, the Spanish were allowed into
the capital, Tenochtitlan, so that they could appreciate the greatness of
Moctezuma. The Spanish were given a lavish welcome. Food and housing
were made available to them. Moctezuma gave gold and silver objects to show
his generosity and the magnificence of the Aztecs. It was also a chance for
Moctezuma to observe the Spanish directly and to discern their weaknesses.
None of these actions were those of a ruler who is resigned to his peoples’
destruction.
When Cortés and his soldiers entered Tenochtitlan, they were amazed
by what they saw. The city was larger and more populous than most European
cities of that time. Tenochtitlan had beautiful gardens and baths maintained
by dozens of gardeners. The water for the gardens and baths was brought
FIGURE 1.1 The great Aztec city-state of Tenochtitlan was established on an island in the
midst of a large lake. Connected to the shores by causeways, supplied with fresh water
by an aqueduct, it housed a population estimated to be over 150,000. Early Spanish
observes compared its canals to Venice and were fascinated by its markets and gardens.
To the Aztecs it was the center of political and spiritual power, or as they called it,
“the foundation of heaven.”
Source: M. Sobreira/Alamy Stock Photo
to Tenochtitlan through complex irrigation canals. Remarking on the canals,

Cortés stated that they were greater than in Venice. And it held riches that
the Spaniards had only dreamed of, with great rooms filled with gold objects
inlaid with precious stones. They were impressed by the skill of the craftsmen
and the massive buildings made of stone. The female weavers and seamstresses
created beautiful cloth garments made from cotton and feathers that were
worn by the royalty.
But the Aztec plan to overawe the Spaniards did not work. Shortly after
their entrance into Tenochtitlan, Cortés turned the tables on the Aztecs and
had Moctezuma kidnapped. Spanish actions here make sense if they believed
a trap was being laid for them since they could use Moctezuma as a hostage
to bargain their way out of the city or attempt to intimidate the Aztecs
with this bold action. The new leaders who rose in his place made war on the
Spaniards and were able to expel them from the city. Once expelled, according
to Aztec rules of war, the Spaniards could no longer enter the city and the
Aztecs believed the threat of further attack was over.
But the Spaniards had a number of advantages in the coming war with
the Aztecs. The Aztec use of conquered peoples in their empire as sacrificial
victims created deep hostility against them. Cortés exploited this antagonism,
forging alliances with the Tlaxcalans, Totonacs, and the other outlying tribes,
against the Aztecs, which expanded his army from a few hundred to many
thousands. His relationship with Donna Marina and her abilities as an inter-
preter were crucial to Cortés’s success in rallying these tribes against the
Aztecs.
The Aztec approach to war itself favored the Spaniards. The Aztecs had
heard rumors that Spanish warriors did not fight fairly, at least according to
the Aztec definition of fair. Aztec warriors observed a highly ritualized form
of warfare in which the taking of or being made captive could become an
entrance to glory and the afterlife. Captor and captive were thus expected to
cooperate in this ritual. It was therefore an honor to become a captive and
to die properly. The Spaniards resisted capture and so time and again they
were captured in battle and then released. This frustrated the Aztecs, who had
no way to gain the spiritual power of the Spaniard if they did not cooperate.
In the midst of the war, there was an outbreak of smallpox. Smallpox
was a European disease that was brought to the Aztecs by the conquistadors.
It created open sores or pustules, which were hideous to sight and left
the sufferer racked with pain. Sometimes the pustules burst in the mouth of
the victim or on his lips and led to bleeding. Well over 50 percent of Aztec
sufferers died and it was indeed a very gruesome death. This very contagious
disease spread rapidly and decimated Aztec warriors and the rest of the
population. Later, it would reduce the Native American population in the New
World by as much as 80–90 percent.
The Spaniards gained the upper hand in the war by shutting off trade
and contact with the city. Then they joined with their allies to lay siege to the
city and the allies of the Aztecs abandoned them. The Aztec leadership refused
to negotiate with the Spaniards and the Spanish-led forces destroyed the city
and its inhabitants. Then, the Spaniards took the Aztec leadership captive and
later had them killed.
NATIVE AMERICAN RESPONSES

Columbus and Cortés’s conquests initiated an encounter in which the power
imbalance placed limits on the Native American response. Nonetheless they
reacted in a variety of ways to Spanish intrusion. They openly rebelled against
Spanish conquest, but rebellion eventually failed in almost every case, in part
because European diseases spread so quickly that warriors fell from disease
more often than from Spanish swords. The Spanish also possessed firearms,
which intimidated Native Americans and were more effective than arrows and
spears. Perhaps most important were the alliances between the Spaniards
and the tributary tribes. These alliances allowed the Spaniards to increase the
numbers of soldiers and warriors fighting on their side dramatically.
Accommodation was perhaps the most widespread response to the
Spanish. Many Native Americans eventually accepted Spanish rule and tried
to make the best of it. For instance, the Spanish forced Native Americans to
convert to Christianity. Instead of openly resisting Christianity, many Native
FIGURE 1.2 This sixteenth-century print portrays Aztecs suffering from smallpox during
the Cortés invasion (1518–1519).
Source: Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
Americans practiced syncretism, a method of combining aspects of Christianity

with their own religious practices. They identified the Catholic saints with their
native gods in some cases. The Mayans combined prayers to the Christian god
with rituals to their agricultural deities. The Christian cross was sometimes
covered with traditional religious cloth, the huipil, which allowed Mayans to
practice both Christianity and their traditional religion.
The Christian religious holiday “All Saints’ Day” or “All Hallows’ Eve”
(today the western Halloween) became very important to Native Americans
because they could celebrate the Catholic saints while also worshipping their
ancestors by placing food offerings at their tombs. All Saints’ Day is still cele-
brated following Mayan custom through the building of altars of remembrance
in their homes and bringing food and/or flowers to the cemeteries where
loved ones are buried, accompanied by parades in which celebrants often
wear costumes ranging from traditional skeletons to SpongeBob SquarePants.
FIGHTING FOR THE NATIVE AMERICANS: LAS CASAS

The life and story of Bartolome de Las Casas runs counter to the misdeeds of
the Spaniards in the Americas. Las Casas, who was born in Seville and saw the
natives Columbus brought back from his first expedition there, knew Columbus
FIGURE 1.3 The contact between Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans eventually
produced large numbers of castas, people considered to be of mixed racial origin. By the
eighteenth century, especially in New Spain, a genre of painting flourished that depicted
a husband and wife of different racial categories and their child who would fit one of
the casta designations. The purpose and public for these paintings is unclear, but they
illustrate domestic relations and material culture as well as racial ideology.
Source: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlan, Mexico. The History Collection/
Alamy Stock Photo
Another random document with
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that was the heart’s desire of that mild and pious man, he could not
well carry it into execution.
I had now entered Bórnu proper, the nucleus of that great Central
African empire in its second stage, after Kánem had been given up.
It is bordered towards the east by the great sea-like komádugu the
Tsád or Tsáde, and towards the west and north-west by the little
komádugu which by the members of the last expedition had been
called Yéou, from the town of that name, or rather Yó, near which
they first made its acquaintance on their way from Fezzán. I had now
left behind me those loosely attached principalities which still
preserve some sort of independence, and henceforth had only to do
with Bórnu officers. Not feeling very well, I remained in my tent
without paying my compliments to the officer here stationed, whose
name is Kashélla Sʿaid, with whom I became acquainted on another
occasion, but the good man being informed by the people that a
stranger from a great distance, who was going to visit his liege lord,
had entered his town, sent his people to welcome me, and regaled
me with several bowls of very good paste, with fresh fish, and a bowl
of milk.
Zurríkulo was once a large town, and at the time of the inroad of
Wadáÿ revolted from the sheikh, but was obliged to surrender to his
brother ʿAbd eʾ Rahmán. Since then it has gradually been decaying,
and is now half deserted. The neighbourhood of the town is full of
wild animals; and great fear was entertained by my companions for
our beasts, as we had no protection in our rear. The roaring of a lion
was heard during the night.
Monday, March 24.—Next morning, when we resumed our march,
the fan-palm for some time continued to be the prevailing tree; but
some kúkas also, or Adonsonia digitata, and other more leafy trees
began to appear, and after a while a thick underwood sprang up.
Then followed a few scattered, I might say forlorn, date-trees, which
looked like strangers in the country, transplanted into this region by
some accident. The sky was clear; and I was leaning carelessly
upon my little nag, musing on the original homes of all the plants
which now adorn different countries, when I saw advancing towards
us a strange-looking person of very fair complexion, richly dressed
and armed, and accompanied by three men on horseback, likewise
armed with musket and pistols. Seeing that he was a person of
consequence, I rode quickly up to him and saluted him, when he,
measuring me with his eyes, halted and asked me whether I was the
Christian who was expected to arrive from Kanó; and on my
answering him in the affirmative, he told me distinctly that my fellow-
traveller Yakúb (Mr. Richardson) had died before reaching Kúkawa,
and that all his property had been seized. Looking him full in the
face, I told him that this, if true, was serious news; and then he
related some particulars, which left but little doubt as to the truth of
his statement. When his name was asked, he called himself Ismʿaíl;
I learned, however, afterwards, from other people, that he was the
Sheríf el Habíb, a native of Morocco, and really of noble blood, a
very learned, but extremely passionate man, who, in consequence of
a dispute with Mʿallem Mohammed had been just driven out of
Kúkawa by the sheikh of Bórnu.
This sad intelligence deeply affected me, as it involved not only
the life of an individual, but the whole fate of the mission; and though
some room was left for doubt, yet in the first moment of excitement, I
resolved to leave my two young men behind with the camels, and to
hurry on alone on horseback. But Mohammed would not hear of this
proposal; and indeed as I certainly could not reach Kúkawa in less
than four days, and as part of the road was greatly infested by the
Tuarek, such an attempt might have exposed me to a great deal of
inconvenience. But we determined to go on as fast as the camels
would allow us. We halted at eleven o’clock, shaded by the trunk of
an immense leafless monkey-bread-tree, a little behind the walled
place Kábi, the southern quarter of which is alone inhabited, and
where our friends the Tébu had encamped. Starting then together
with them at two o’clock in the afternoon, we took the road by
Déffowa, leaving on our right that which passes Donári, the country
now assuming a more hospitable and very peculiar character.
For here begins a zone characterized by sandy downs from one
hundred to one hundred and twenty feet high, and exhibiting on their
summits a level plain of excellent arable soil, but with few trees,
while the dells separating these downs one from the other, and
which often wind about in the most anomalous manner, are in
general richly overgrown with a rank vegetation, among which the
dúm-palm and the dúm-bush are predominant. This curious
formation, I fancy, has some connection with the great lagoon, which
in a former period must have been of much greater extent.
The intercourse on the road this afternoon was exceedingly
animated; and one motley troop followed another,—Háusa fatáki,
Bórnu traders or “tugúrchi,” Kánembú Tébu, Shúwa Arabs, and
others of the roving tribe of the Welád Slimán, all mixed together,—
while their beasts of burden formed a multifarious throng of camels,
oxen, horses, and asses. The Welád Slimán, who were bringing
camels for sale to the market of Kanó, were greatly frightened when I
told them what had happened to their brethren near Kúka mairuá, as
they were conscious that most of the camels now with them were of
the number of those which two years ago had been taken from the
Kél-owí in Bilma. As evening came on, the dells which we had to
traverse were thronged with thousands of wild pigeons, carrying on
their amorous play in the cool twilight of approaching night. All was
silent with the exception of a distant hum, becoming more and more
distinct as we wound along the side of an exuberant meandering
valley. The noise proceeded from the considerable town of Déffowa,
which we reached at a quarter past seven o’clock, and encamped at
a little distance to the north. Lively music never ceased in the town
till a late hour.
Tuesday, March 25.—All was still silent in the place when, early in
the morning, I set out with my little troop to follow the track of our
temporary companions the Tébu. The village was surrounded only
by a light thorny fence; but it seemed to be prosperous and densely
inhabited. The country continued similar in character, but better
cultivated than the tract we had traversed the day before; and the
immense multitude of wild pigeons, which found a secure and
pleasant haunt in the rank vegetation of the hollows, made it
necessary to resort to some expedient to keep them off. High
platforms were therefore erected in the fields, in the shade of some
tree; and ropes drawn from them were fastened to poles and coated
with a peculiar vegetable extract, which caused them, if put into
motion by a person stationed upon the platform, to give forth a loud
sound, which kept the birds at a respectful distance. We saw here
also a small cotton-field. If the country were more densely inhabited
and the people more industrious and better protected by their slave-
hunting governors, all the lowlands and valley-like hollows, which
during the rainy season form so many water-channels, and retain a
great degree of moisture during the whole year, would afford the
most splendid ground for this branch of cultivation.
The repeated ascent and descent along steep slopes of deep
sandy soil more than a hundred feet high was very fatiguing for the
camels. While ascending one of these ridges, we had a very
charming view over the whole of the neat little village of Kálowa,
lying along the slope and in the hollow to our left. It was rather small,
containing about two hundred huts, but every yard was shaded by a
korna or bíto-tree (Balanites); and comfort (according to the wants
felt by the natives) and industry were everywhere manifested. In the
midst was a large open space, where the cattle were collecting
round the wells to be watered, while the people were drawing water
to fill the large round hollows, “kéle nkíbe,” made with little clay walls
to serve as troughs. The blacksmith was seen busy at his simple
work, making new hoes for the approaching season; the weaver was
sitting at his loom; several were making mats of reed; some women
were carrying water from the wells, some spinning or cleaning the
cotton, while others pounded corn for their daily consumption. The
little granaries, in order to preserve the stock of corn from the danger
of conflagration, which every moment threatens these light structures
of straw and reed, were erected on a sandy level near the edge of
the slope. Even the fowls had their little separate abodes, also of
reed, very thrifty and neat, as the accompanying woodcut will show.
Such was the simple but nevertheless cheerful picture which this
little village exhibited. My two boys were a long way ahead of me
when I awoke from my reverie and followed them.
It was shortly before we came to this village that we passed the
enormous skeleton of an elephant,—the first trace of this animal
which I had seen since Gazáwa (I mean the independent pagan
place of that name between Tasáwa and Kátsena). The road was
frequented; early in the morning we
had met a party of tugúrchi with pack-
oxen, who had been travelling a great
part of the night, as they generally do
on account of this beast of burden
bearing the heat of the day very badly.
About an hour’s march beyond
Kálowa we met a party of horsemen
coming from Kúkawa; and as their
head man appeared to be an
intelligent person, I approached him,
and asked him the news of the place. He most probably took me for
an Arab, and told me that all was well, but that the Christian who had
been coming from a far distant country to pay his compliments to the
sheíkh had died more than twenty days ago, in a place called
Ngurútuwa, before reaching Kúkawa. There could now be no more
doubt of the sad event; and with deep emotion I continued my
march, praying to the Merciful to grant me better success than had
fallen to the lot of my companion, and to strengthen me, that I might
carry out the benevolent and humane purposes of our mission.
This district also has a very scanty supply of water; and it took us
more than half an hour to collect, from four wells near another small
village, a sufficient supply for my horse; but as to filling our water-
skins, it was not to be thought of. The wells were ten fathoms deep.
We halted half an hour before noon, not far from another well, at the
foot of a sandy swell upon which the little village “Mʿallem Kerémerí”
is situated. Here, as well as in the village passed in the morning, we
could not obtain beans, though the cultivation of them is in general
carried on to a great extent; but this district seemed to produce millet
or Pennisetum typhoïdeum almost exclusively—at least no sorghum
was to be seen. Keeping generally along a hollow, which however
was not much depressed, and which consisted of arable sandy soil
with a few bushes and trees, we reached the little town or village
Dunú, surrounded with a ditch and earthen wall in decay, so that the
gate had become useless. There was a large open space inside, and
as the inhabitants, who gave us a very cheerful welcome, advised us
not to encamp outside, on account of the number of wild beasts
infesting the neighbourhood, we pitched the tent inside the wall. We
might have passed a very comfortable evening with the natives, who
took great interest in me, had it not been for my faithful old
companion the Bú-Séfi, the best (or rather the only good one) of my
three camels, which, when it was growing dark, and ʿAbdallah went
to bring the animals back from their pasture, could not be found. The
careless boy had neglected to fasten the camel’s legs; and being
very hungry, it had gone in search of better herbage. This was a very
disagreeable accident for me, as I was in the greatest hurry; and my
two young lads, who were well aware of it, went for several hours,
accompanied by the inhabitants of the place, in every direction,
through the whole tract where the camels had been grazing, lighting
the ground with torches, but all in vain.
Wearied and exhausted, they returned about midnight and lay
down to sleep, the music and dance also, which the cheerful natives
had kept up, dying away at the same time. About an hour later, being
too much excited from anxiety to obtain sleep, I went out once more
to see if all was right, when I saw my favourite coming slowly along
towards the tent; and on reaching it he laid down by the side of his
two inferior companions. There was no moonlight; the night was very
dark; evidently only the brightness of the well-known white tent
guided the “stupid” animal. But this was no great proof of stupidity;
and I am rather afraid that Europeans often make camels stupid by
their own foolish treatment of them, whereas I was wont to treat this
noble animal, which had carried myself or the heaviest of my things
all the way from Tripoli, as a sensible companion, giving it in the
beginning the peel of the oranges I was eating, of which it was
particularly fond, or a few of my dates (for which it did not fail to turn
round its beautiful neck), or granting it a little extra feed of Negro
millet which it ate like a horse. Rejoiced at seeing my favourite, the
absence of which had created such anxiety, returning of its own
accord to my tent, and lying down near it, I aroused my servant from
his sleep to tell him the joyful news. I wanted to reward it with some
corn, but it had taken such good care of itself, that it refused its
favourite food.
I was much grieved in consequence of being obliged to part with
my old companion; but camels from the coast will not stand the
effects of a rainy season in Negroland. I hoped it would safely return
to its native country; but the Arab who bought it from me, went first to
Kanó when the rainy season was already setting in, and the poor
animal died not far from the place where Mr. Richardson had
succumbed. Its fidelity will ever remain in my memory as one of the
pleasantest recollections of my journey.
Having thus got back our best carrier, though we had lost a good
night’s rest, we started early next morning over the same sort of
ground we had been traversing the last few days, and in two hours
reached the little town of Wádi, the noise from which, caused by the
pounding of grain, had been heard by us at the distance of almost a
mile. Indeed the pounding of grain has betrayed many a little village
and many a caravan. The town is considerable, but properly consists
of two different quarters walled all round, and separated from each
other by a wide open space where the cattle rest in safety. Approving
very much of this way of building a town in these turbulent regions,
we kept along the open space, but were greatly perplexed from the
number of paths branching off in every direction, and scarcely knew
which road to take. It had been my intention originally to go to
Borzári, in the hope of obtaining from the governor of that town a
horseman to carry the news of my approach to the sheikh of Bórnu;
but being here informed that I should be obliged to make a great
circuit in order to touch at that place, I changed my plan, and took
another and more direct road, which in the beginning seemed a well-
trodden highroad, but soon became a narrow footpath, winding along
from village to village without any leading direction. However, we met
several small caravans as well of Arabs, who were going to Kanó, as
of native traders or tugúrchi with natron. Passing now over open
cultivated ground, then through a bushy thicket, we reached, about
ten o’clock in the morning, the considerable open village Kábowa,
where a well-frequented and very noisy market was being held, and
halted during the heat of the day under a shady tamarind-tree about
five hundred yards to the south, near a “kaudi” or “kabéa
tseggénabé” (a yard for weaving cotton).
We had scarcely unloaded our camels, when one of the weavers
came, and, saluting me most cordially, begged me to accept of a
dish of very well prepared “fúra” or “tiggra,” with curdled milk, which
evidently formed their breakfast. The market was very partially
supplied, and did not furnish what we wanted. Natron, salt, and
túrkedí, or the cloth for female dress made in Kanó, constituted the
three articles which were plentiful; also a good many cattle, or rather
pack-oxen, were there, besides two camels and abundance of the
fruit of the dum-palm; but meat was dear, onions extremely scarce,
and beans not to be got at all, and, what was worse, the people
refused to accept shells (“kúngona” in Kanúri), of which we had still a
small supply, and wanted gábagá, or cotton stripes, of which we had
none. Our camels, therefore, which hereabouts found plenty of their
favourite and nourishing food, the aghúl or Hedysarum Alhaggi,
fared much better than we ourselves. The neighbourhood had rather
a dreary aspect; the east wind was very high and troublesome; the
well was distant, and, with a depth of eight fathoms, did not furnish
the supply necessary for the numerous visitors to the market. Early
in the afternoon we continued our march, first in the company of
some market-people returning to their native village, then left to our
judgment to discriminate, among the numberless footpaths which
intersected the country in every direction, the one which was most
direct or rather least circuitous; for a direct highroad there is none.
We became at length so heartily tired of groping our way alone, that
we attached ourselves to a horseman who invited us to accompany
him to his village, till, becoming aware that it lay too much out of our
way, we ascended the slope of a sandy ridge to our right, on the
summit on which was situated the village Lúshiri, where we pitched
our tent.
Here also the inhabitants behaved hospitably; and I had scarcely
dismounted, when a woman from a neighbouring hut brought me a
bowl of ghussub-water as a refreshment. We succeeded also in
buying here a good supply of beans and sorghum—or ngáberi, as it
is called in Kanúri; for my Kátsena horse refused to eat the millet or
argúm, and sorghum is very scarce in all this part of the country as
well as in many other districts of Bórnu, especially in the district of
Koyám. The women of the village, who were very curious to see the
interior of my tent, were greatly surprised to find that I was a
bachelor, and without a female partner, accustomed, as they were, to
see travellers in this country, at least those tolerably at their ease,
with a train of female slaves. They expressed their astonishment in
much diverting chat with each other. I got also milk and a fowl for my
supper, and the bíllama afterwards brought some “ngáji” (the
favourite Kanúri dish) for my men. As the situation of the village was
elevated, it was most interesting to see in the evening the numerous
fires of the hamlets and small towns all around, giving a favourable
idea of the local population.
Thursday, March 27.—Early in the morning we continued our
march; but we lost a great deal of time through ignorance of the
direct way. Some of the paths appear, at times, like a well-frequented
highroad, when suddenly almost every trace of them is lost. At
length, at the walled town of Gobálgorúm, we learned that we were
on the road to Kashímma; and we determined to keep on as straight
as possible. The country which we traversed early in the morning
consisted of stiff clayey soil, and produced ngáberi; but this was only
a sort of basin of no great extent, and the landscape soon changed
its character. After we had passed Gobálgorúm, the country became
much richer in trees; and this circumstance, as well as the increased
number of waterfowl, indicated plainly that we were approaching a
branch of the wide-spreading net of the komádugu of Bórnu.
First we came to a hollow clothed with a great profusion of
vegetation and the freshest pasturage, but at present dry, with the
exception of a fine pond of clear water on our left; and we marched
full three miles through a dense forest before we came to the real
channel, which here, running south and north, formed an
uninterrupted belt of water as far as the eye could reach, but at
present without any current. It looked just like an artificial canal,
having almost everywhere the same breadth of about fifty yards,
and, at the place where we crossed it, a depth of two feet and a half.
We halted during the heat of the day, on its eastern shore, in the
shade of one of the small gáwo-trees which border it on this side;
and after our dreary and rather uninteresting march from Kanó, I was
greatly delighted with the animated and luxuriant character of the
scene before us. The water of this komádugu, moreover, though it
was fully exposed to the power of the sun’s rays, was delightfully
cool, while that from the wells was disagreeably warm, having a
mean temperature of 77°, and quite unfit to drink until allowed to
cool. The river was full of small fish; and about twenty boys from the
village of Shógo, which lay upon the summit of the rising ground
before us, were plashing about in it in playful exercise, and catching
the fish with a large net of peculiar make, which they dragged
through the water. This komádugu too is called Wáni; and I think it
more probable that this is the continuation of the branch which
passes Katágum, than that the latter joins the branch of Khadéja to
the southward of Zurríkulo. While we were resting here, I was
pestered a little by the curiosity of a company of gipsy-like Jétko,
who, with very little luggage, traverse the country in every direction,
and are the cleverest thieves in the world. A native of the village,
whom we had met on the road, came afterwards, with his wife, and
brought me a dish of well-cooked hasty-pudding; and on my
complaining that, though in great haste, we were losing so much
time, owing to our being unacquainted with the nearest road, he
promised to serve us as a guide: but unfortunately I made him a
present too soon; and as he did not keep his word, we preferred
groping our way onwards as well as possible. Our camels had
meanwhile got a good feed in the cool shade of the trees; for if
exposed to the sun, these animals will not eat during the heat of the
day, but prefer lying down.
With fresh spirit and energy we started, therefore, at half-past two
in the afternoon, ascending the considerable slope of the ridge upon
which the village stands. At this hour the sun was very powerful, and
none of the inhabitants were to be seen, with the exception of an
industrious female who, on a clean open spot near the road, was
weaving the cotton threads into gábagá. Opposite the village to the
north of the path, was a round cluster of light Kánembú cottages
formed in a most simple way, with the long stalks of the native corn
bent so as to meet at the top, and fastened with a few ropes.
Descending immediately from this considerable ridge, we entered a
dale thickly overgrown with trees, where I was greatly astonished to
see a herd of cattle watered, with great trouble, from the wells, while
the river was close at hand; but on addressing the neatherds, I was
informed by them that the stagnant water of the komádugu at this
season is very unwholesome for cattle.
All the trees hereabouts were full of locusts, while the air was
darkened by swarms of hawks (Cenchreis), which, with a singular
instinct, followed our steps as we advanced; for on our approaching
a tree, the locusts, roused from their fatal repose and destructive
revelling, took to flight in thick clouds, when the birds dashed down
to catch them, often not only beating one another with their wings,
but even incommoding us and our animals not a little.
The peculiar character of lofty sandy ridges and thickly overgrown
hollows continued also in this district; no dúm-palm was to be seen,
but only the dúm-bush, called ngílle by the Bórnu people. About two
miles and a half behind Shógo we passed a wide and most beautiful
basin, with rich pasture-grounds enlivened by numbers of well-fed
cattle. Stubble-fields, with small granaries such as I have described
above, were scattered about here and there. Then keeping on
through a more level country with patches of cultivation, we reached
the fields of Bandégo. The village introduced itself to our notice from
afar by the sound of noisy mirth; and I was surprised to hear that it
was occasioned by the celebration, not of a marriage, but of a
circumcision. This was the first and last time during my travels in
Negroland that I saw this ceremony performed with so much noise.
We were quietly pitching our tent on the east side of the village,
and I was about to make myself comfortable when I was not a little
affected by learning that the girls, who had been bringing little
presents to the festival, and who were just returning in procession to
their homes, belonged to Ngurútuwa, the very place where the
Christian (Mr. Richardson) had died. I then determined to
accompany them, though it was late, in order to have at least a short
glimpse of the “white man’s grave,” and to see whether it were taken
care of. If I had known, before we unloaded the camels, how near we
were to the place, I should have gone there at once to spend the
night.
Ngurútuwa,[40] once a large and celebrated place, but at present
somewhat in decay, lies in a wide and extensive plain, with very few
trees, about two miles north-east from Bandégo; but the town itself is
well shaded, and has, besides kórna and bíto, some wide-spreading
umbrageous fig-trees, under one of which Mr. Richardson had been
buried. His grave, well protected with thorn bushes, appeared to
have remained untouched, and was likely to remain so. The natives
were well aware that it was a Christian who had died here; and they
regarded the tomb with reverence. The story of his untimely end had
caused some sensation in the neighbourhood. He arrived in a weak
state in the evening, and early the next morning he died. The people
had taken great interest in the matter, and the report they gave me of
the way in which he was buried agreed in the main circumstances
with that which I afterwards received from his servants, and of which
I forwarded an account from Kúkawa. Unfortunately I had no means
of bestowing gifts on the inhabitants of the place where my
companion had died. I gave, however, a small present to a man who
promised to take especial care of the grave; and I afterwards
persuaded the vizier of Bórnu to have a stronger fence made round
it.
It was late in the evening when I returned to my tent engrossed
with reflections on my own probable fate, and sincerely thankful to
the Almighty Ruler of all things for the excellent health which I still
enjoyed notwithstanding the many fatigues which I had undergone.
My way of looking at things was not quite the same as that of my late
companion, and we had therefore often had little differences; but I
esteemed him highly for the deep sympathy which he felt for the
sufferings of the native African, and deeply lamented his death. Full
of confidence I stretched myself upon my mat, and indulged in my
simple supper, accompanied with a bowl of milk which the
inhabitants of Bandégo had brought me. The people were all
pleased with us; only the cattle, when returning from their pastures,
took offence at my strange-looking tent, which I had pitched just in
the path by which they were accustomed to return to their usual
resting-place.
Friday, March 28.—At an early hour we were again on the march,
conducted a little while by an inhabitant of the village, who undertook
to show us the direct road, which passes on its south side. He
represented the road which we were about to take as much infested
by the Kindín or Tuarek at that moment; and he advised us, as we
went on from one place to another, to make strict inquiries as to the
safety of the road before us. With this well-meant advice he left us to
our own discretion; and I pursued my way with the unsatisfactory
feeling that it might be again my fate to come into too close contact
with my friends the Tuarek, whom I had been so glad to get rid of.
Saddened with these reflections, my two young companions also
seeming a little oppressed, and trudging silently along with the
camels, we reached Aláune, once a considerable town, but now
almost deserted, and surrounded by a clay wall in a state of great
decay. Accosting the people, who were just drawing water from the
well inside the wall, and asking them about the state of the road, we
were told that, as far as Kashímma, it was safe; but beyond that they
pronounced it decidedly dangerous. We therefore continued our
march with more confidence, particularly as we met some market-
people coming from Kashímma.
Aláune is the same place which, by the members of the last
expedition, has been called Kabshári, from the name of the then
governor of the town—Bu-Bakr-Kabshári—after whom the place is
even at present often called “bílla Kabsháribe” (the town of
Kabshári). Keeping on through a country partly cultivated, partly
covered with thick underwood, which was full of locusts, we were
greatly delighted by obtaining at about eight o’clock a view of a fine
sheet of water, in the dale before us, surrounded with a luxuriant
vegetation, and descended cheerfully towards its shore, where two
magnificent tamarind-trees spread their canopy-like foliage over a
carpet of succulent turf. While enjoying this beautiful picture, I was
about to allow my poor horse a little feed of the grass, when a
woman, who had come to fetch water, told me that it was very
unwholesome.
This is the great komádugu of Bórnu, the real name of which is
“komádugu Wáube,” while, just from the same mistake which has
caused Aláune to be called Kabshári, and the river of Zyrmi, Zyrmi, it
has been called Yeou; for though it may be called the river of Yeou,
or rather of Yó, particularly in its lower course, where it passes the
town of this name, it can never be called “the river Yó,” any more
than the Thames, on account of its flowing through London, can be
called the river London.
While ordering ʿAbdallah to follow with the camels along the lower
road, I ascended with Mohammed the steep slope of the sandy
swell, rising to about three hundred feet, on the top of which
Kashímma is situated in a fine healthy situation commanding the
whole valley. It is an open place, consisting entirely of huts made of
cornstalks and reeds, but is of considerable size and well inhabited.
However, I was not disposed to make any halt here; and learning, to
my great satisfaction, that no Kindín had been seen as far as the
Eastern Ngurútuwa, I determined to go on as fast as possible, and
persuaded a netmaker to point out clearly to me the road which we
were to take; for we had now rather difficult ground before us—the
wide bottom of the valley, with its thick forest and its several watery
channels.
The path led us gradually down from the eminence upon which
Kashímma is situated, into the bushy dale with a great quantity of
ngílle, and also a few dúm-palms. Here we saw numerous footprints
of the elephant, and some of enormous size; and truly the wanderer
cannot be surprised that this colossal animal has taken possession
of these beautiful, luxuriant shores of the komádugu, from which the
native in his inborn laziness has despairingly retired, and allowed
them to be converted into an almost impenetrable jungle. The thicket
became for a while very dense, a real jungle, such as I had not yet
seen in Negroland, when a clearer spot followed, overgrown with tall
coarse grass ten feet high, fed by the water which after the rainy
season covers the whole of this low ground, and offering a rich
pasture to the elephant. Then we had to traverse a branch of the real
komádugu, at present very shallow, but at times, to be crossed only
with the aid of a “mákara.” In the thick covert which bordered upon
this channel the dúm-palm was entirely predominant.
Though the thicket was here so dense, the path was well trodden,
but as soon as we reached a place which had been cleared for
cultivation we lost all traces of it, and then turned off to our right,
where we saw a small village and a farm situated in the most retired
spot imaginable. Here we found a cheerful old man, the master of
the farm, who, on hearing that we too were going eastward, begged
us, very urgently, to spend the remainder of the day in his company,
adding that he would treat us well and start early the next morning
with us for Ngurútuwa; but, however delightful it might appear to me
to dream away half a day in this wilderness, my anxiety to reach
Kúkawa compelled me to reject his proposal. However, the thicket
became so dense, that we had the utmost difficulty in getting my
bulky luggage through it.
Having made a short halt about noon to refresh ourselves and our
animals, we continued our march through the forest, which here
consisted principally of dúm-palms, farʿaón, kálgo, tʿalha-trees, and
a little siwák or Capparis sodata. The ground was covered with the
heavy footprints of the elephant, and even at this season it retained
many ponds in the channel-like hollows. A solitary maráya or mohhor
(Antilope Soemmeringii) bounded through the thicket; indeed
antelopes of any species are rare in these quarters, and on the
whole road I had seen but a single gazelle, near the village Díggere-
báre. But it seems remarkable that from the description of the
natives there cannot be the least doubt that that large and majestic
variety of antelope called addax, which is very much like a large
stag, is occasionally found here. A fine open space with rich
pastures and with hurdle-enclosures interrupted the thicket for about
a mile, after which we had to traverse, another thick covert, and
emerging from it were agreeably surprised at beholding a lake of
considerable dimensions on our left, and after a short interval
another still more considerable approaching from the north and
turning eastward, its surface furrowed by the wind and hurrying
along in little billows which dashed upon the shore. On its eastern
side lie the ruins of the celebrated town Ghámbarú, which although
not the official residence of the kings of Bórnu, was nevertheless
their favourite retreat during the flourishing period of the empire; and
those two lakes, although connected with the komádugu and fed by
it, were artificial basins, and seem to have considerable depth; else
they could scarcely have presented such a magnificent sheet of
water at this season of the year. But at present all this district, the
finest land of Bórnu in the proper sense of the word, which once
resounded with the voices and bustle of hundreds of towns and
villages, has become one impenetrable jungle, the domain of the
elephant and the lion, and with no human inhabitants except a few
scattered herdsmen or cattle-breeders, who are exposed every
moment to the predatory inroads of the Tuarek. This condition of the
finest part of the country is a disgrace to its present rulers, who have
nothing to do but to transfer hither a few hundreds of their lazy
slaves, and establish them in a fortified place, whereupon the natives
would immediately gather round them and change this fine country
along the komádugu from an impenetrable jungle into rich fields,
producing not only grain but also immense quantities of cotton and
indigo.
The town of Ghámbarú was taken and destroyed by the Jemáʿa of
the Fúlbe or Felláta at the same time with Ghasréggomo, or Bírni, in
the year of the Hejra 1224, or 1809 of our era, and has not been
since reoccupied, so that the ruins are thickly overgrown and almost
enveloped in the forest. Although I had not leisure to survey
attentively the whole area of the town, I could not help dismounting
and looking with great interest at a tolerably well-preserved building,
evidently part of a mosque, at the south-eastern corner of the wall. I
knew, from the report of the last expedition, that there were here
remains of brick buildings; but I did not expect to find the
workmanship so good. The bricks are certainly not so regularly
shaped as in Europe, but in other respects they seemed quite as
good. It is indeed a source of mournful reflection for the traveller to
compare this solid mode of building practised in former times in this
country, at least by its rulers, with the frail and ephemeral
architecture of the present day; but this impression of retrograding
power and resources is caused also by the history of the country,
which we shall soon lay before our readers. Even in the half-
barbarous country of Bagírmi we may still find the remains of very
extensive brick buildings.
Overtaking the two young companions of my adventurous journey,
I travelled on through an interesting but wild country, when at five
o’clock in the afternoon a branch of the river once more approached
on our left, and soon cut across our path, leaving no trace of it. I felt
sure that the track crossed the river here, but unfortunately allowed
myself to be overruled by my servant (who was in truth an
experienced lad); and accordingly we kept along the sandy border of
the channel, following the traces of cattle till we became assured that
there was no path in this place. Having searched for about two
hours, we were at last compelled, by the darkness which had set in,
to encamp in the midst of this dense forest; and I chose a small
hillock on the border of the river, in order to protect myself, as well as
possible, from the noxious exhalations, and spread my tent over my
luggage, in the midst of which I arranged my bed. I then strewed, in
a circle round our little encampment, dry wood and other fuel, to be
kindled in case of an attack of wild beasts, and, taking out a parcel of
cartridges, prepared for the worst. However, we passed a quiet night,
disturbed only by the roaring of a lion on the other side of the river,
and by a countless multitude of waterfowl of various species, playing
and splashing about in the water the whole night.
Saturday, March 29.—Having convinced myself that the river could
be crossed by the path only at the place where we first came upon it,
I mounted early in the morning, after we had loaded the camels, and
returned to that spot, when, having crossed the stream, I found the
continuation of the path on the other side. At length we were again
en route, having lost altogether about three hours of our precious
time. However, my companions thought that nevertheless we should
not have been able the previous evening, in the twilight, to reach the
next station, the name of which is also Ngurútuwa; so dense was the
forest in some places, and such difficulty had we in getting through
with our luggage, so that we were at times almost reduced to
despair.
Beyond the village mentioned we should not have succeeded in
finding an outlet, had we not met with some shepherds who were
tending numerous flocks of sheep and goats. All was one thorny
covert, where kaña and bírgim, the African plum-tree, were, together
with mimosa, the predominant trees. Near the village, however,
which lies in the midst of the forest, very fine fields of wheat
occupied a considerable open space, the corn standing now about a
foot and a half high, and presented a most charming sight,
particularly when compared with the scanty industry which we had
hitherto observed in this, the finest part of the country.
Keeping then close to the narrow path, we reached, half an hour
before noon, an open place of middle size called Míkibá, and halted
between the village and the well, which, being in a hollow, is only
three fathoms deep. Being obliged to allow the camels a good feed,
as they had got nothing the previous evening, we did not start again
till four o’clock in the afternoon; and it was in vain that I endeavoured
to buy some provisions from the inhabitants with the few indifferent
articles which I had to offer them: the small fancy wares of
Nuremberg manufacture proved too worthless and frail even for
these barbarians. The people, however, endeavoured to frighten us
by their accounts of the roads before us—and indeed, as it
afterwards appeared, they were not quite wrong; but we could not
stay a night with people so inhospitable, and, besides, I had lost
already too much time.
Confiding, therefore, in my good luck, I was again in the saddle by
four o’clock, the country being now clearer of wood, though generally
in a wild, neglected state. After a little more than two miles’ march,
near a patch of cultivated ground I saw a group of three monkeys of
the same species, apparently, as those in Asben. In general,
monkeys seem not to be frequent in the inhabited parts of
Negroland. The day with its brightness was already fading away, and
darkness setting in filled us with anxiety as to where we might pass
the night with some security, when, to our great delight, we observed
in the distance to our right the light of some fires glittering through a
thicket of dúm-palms, tamarinds, and other large trees. We
endeavoured, therefore, to open a path to them, cheered in our effort
by the pleasing sound of dance and song which came from the same
direction.
It proved to be a wandering company of happy herdsmen, who
bade us a hearty welcome after they had recognized us as harmless
travellers; and, well satisfied at seeing our resolution thus rewarded,
we pitched our tent in the midst of their huts and numerous herds.
Entering then into conversation with them, I learnt to my
astonishment that they were neither Kanúri nor Háusa people, but
Felláta, or Fúlbe of the tribe of the Óbore, who, notwithstanding the
enmity existing between their kinsmen and the ruler of Bórnu, are
allowed to pasture their herds here in full security, so far as they are
able to defend themselves against the robberies of the Tuarek, and
without even paying any tribute to the sheikh. However, their
immigration into this country does not date from very ancient times;
and they appear not to have kept their stock pure from intermixture,
so that they have lost almost all the national marks of the Fulfúlde
race.
They seemed to be in easy circumstances, the elder men bringing
me each of them an immense bowl of milk, and a little fresh butter as
cleanly prepared as in any English or Swiss dairy. This was a
substantial proof of their nationality; for all over Bórnu no butter is
prepared except with the dirty and disgusting addition of some cow’s
urine, and it is all in a fluid state. The hospitable donors were greatly
delighted when I gave to each of them a sailor’s knife; but on our
part we were rather perplexed by their bounty, as I and my two boys
might easily have drowned ourselves in such a quantity of milk.
Meanwhile, as I was chatting with the old people, the younger ones
continued their singing and dancing till a late hour with a
perseverance most amusing, though little favourable for our night’s
rest; moreover, we were startled several times by some of the cattle,
which lay close to our tent, starting up occasionally and running
furiously about. There was a lion very near; but the blaze of the fires
kept him off. Our friends did not possess a single dog—but this was
another mark of nationality; they rely entirely upon their own
watchfulness.
In consequence of our disturbed night’s rest, we set out at rather a
late hour, accompanied by two of our friends, in order to show us the
ford of the komádugu, which, they told us, ran close to their
encampment. And it was well that we had their assistance; for
though the water was but three feet deep at the spot where they led
us through, it was much deeper on both sides, and we might easily
have met with an accident. It was here about five and thirty yards
across, and was quite stagnant. It is, doubtless, the same water
which I had crossed at Kashímma, where, with its several branches,
it occupied an immense valley, and again just before I came to the
Eastern Ngurútuwa.
Our hospitable friends did not leave us till they had assisted us
through the extremely dense covert which borders the eastern bank
of the river. They then returned, recommending us very strongly to
be on our guard, as we should have the komádugu always on our
left, where some robbers were generally lurking. We had not
proceeded far when we met an archer on horseback following the
traces of a band of Tuarek, who, as he told us, had last night made
an attack upon another encampment or village of herdsmen, but had
been beaten off. He pursued his way in order to make out whether
the robbers had withdrawn. An archer on horseback is an unheard-of
thing not only in Bórnu, but in almost all Negroland, except with the
Fúlbe; but even among them it is rare. Fortunately the country was
here tolerably open, so that we could not be taken by surprise, and
we were greatly reassured when we met a troop of native travellers,
three of whom were carrying each a pair of bukhsa or ngibú,
immense calabashes joined at the bottom by a piece of strong wood,
but open on the top.
These are the simple ferry-boats of the country, capable of
carrying one or two persons, who have nothing besides their clothes
(which they may deposit inside the calabashes), safely, but certainly
not dryly, across a stream. In order to transport heavier things, three
pairs, joined in the way I shall have an opportunity of describing at
another time, will form a sufficiently buoyant raft. This would form the
most useful expedient for any European traveller who should
undertake to penetrate into the equatorial regions, which abound in
water; but if he has much luggage, he ought to have four pairs of
calabashes, and a strong frame to extend across them.
The great advantage of such a portable boat is, that the parts can
be most easily carried on men’s backs through the most rugged and
mountainous regions, while the raft so formed will be strong enough,

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Ebook Cross Cultural Encounters in Modern World History 1453 Present 2Nd Edition Jon Thares Davidann Online PDF All Chapter

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Available Formats

Cross Cultural Encounters in Modern

World History 1453 Present 2nd Edition

The Middle East in Modern World History 2nd Edition

Encounters The Harrowed Hearts Club Jon Black

Cultural Intelligence in the World of Work Past Present

Technology in Modern German History 1800 to the Present

Walter Benjamin and the Idea of Natural History

American Film: A History 2nd Edition Jon Lewis

Cultural Diversity in Cross Cultural Settings A Global

Translating Nature Cross Cultural Histories of Early

One of the hallmarks of world history is the ever-increasing ability of humans

Jon Thares Davidann, Ph.D., is professor of history at Hawai’i Paciﬁc

Marc Jason Gilbert is the holder of an endowed Chair in World History

Jon Thares Davidann

Taylor & Francis Group

NEW YORK AND LONDON

ISBN: 978-1-138-30309-6 (hbk)

List of ﬁgures viii

1 Power and unpredictability, conquistadors, and native peoples:

2 Europeans on the margin: missionaries and indigenous response

3 Empires of difference: the Ottoman model of a multicultural state 55

4 Cultures in competition: Native American encounters with Europeans 75

5 From ﬁrst contact to entanglement: Polynesian encounters with

6 On the frontiers of central Asia: Russia, China and steppe empires

8 The Japanese in East Asia: a non-western empire and nationalist

Japanese encounter with indigenous peoples 162

9 Mapping Africa: European perceptions and African realities 175

10 Testing the limits of multiculturalism: immigration into Europe in

1.1 The great Aztec city-state of Tenochtitlan was established on an

8.4 As Chinese resistance to Japanese invasion in 1937 and 1938

1.1 Columbus’s conception of Atlantic Ocean and Asia 20

The second edition of Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History,

One of the hallmarks of world history is the ever-increasing ability of humans

However, instructors and students seeking to continue that discussion

allowed Jesuit missionaries to operate within severe constraints, but in a clash

space in which encounters can be redeﬁned has expanded dramatically

Generations of students know that the ﬁrst encounter between Europeans

EUROPEAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN PERCEPTIONS

and pagans—inﬁdels possessed false religion, but pagans had no religion.

COLUMBUS AND THE ROUTE TO ASIA

COLUMBUS AND THE TAINO

MAP 1.2 Columbus’s voyages to the Americas

New World peoples among Columbus’s assemblage in the Castilian city of

Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz

MAP 1.3 Map of Cortés’s route to Tenochtitlan

CORTÉS, AZTECS, AND CONQUEST OF MEXICO

several years. He became an encomendero (awarded an encomienda by the

to Tenochtitlan through complex irrigation canals. Remarking on the canals,

NATIVE AMERICAN RESPONSES

Americans practiced syncretism, a method of combining aspects of Christianity

FIGHTING FOR THE NATIVE AMERICANS: LAS CASAS

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