1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

  Perhaps paradoxically, some works were so important to this book that my notes give short shrift to them; they are in the background everywhere, but rarely summoned to make a specific point. For the first section, these would include Terence d’Altroy’s The Incas; William Cronon’s Changes in the Land; Alfred W. Crosby’s Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism; John Hemming’s Conquest of the Incas; Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s Indians and English; María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco’s History of the Inca Realm; and Neal Salisbury’s Manitou and Providence.

  As I stitched together the second section, books that kept my keyboard constant company included Ignacio Bernal’s The Olmec World; Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel; Brian Fagan’s Ancient North America; Stuart Fiedel’s Prehistory of the Americas; Nina Jablonski’s edited collection, The First Americans; the special issue of the Boletín de Arqueología PUCP edited by Peter Kaulicke and William Isbell; Alan Kolata’s The Tiwanaku; Mike Moseley’s marvelous Incas and Their Ancestors; and the historical writings of David Meltzer, which in 2009 he wove together to produce First Peoples in the New World, a fascinating survey of archaeological thought on this question.

  The third section sometimes seems like an extended riff on the three Cultural Landscapes books assembled by William Denevan and written by Denevan; Thomas M. Whitmore and B. L. Turner II; and William E. Doolittle. But I depended also on the special September 1992 issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers edited by Karl Butzer; the essays in The Great New Wilderness Debate, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson; Michael Coe’s sturdy sourcebook, The Maya; Melvin Fowler’s Cahokia Atlas; Shepard Krech’s Ecological Indian; the amazing Chronicles of the Maya Kings and Queens, by Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube; and two books on terra preta (and much else besides), Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time, edited by Bruno Glaser and William Woods, and Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management, edited by Johannes Lehmann et al. (Full citations are in the Bibliography.)

  Even a book of this length must leave out many things, given the magnitude of the subject matter. Thus I ignored the inhabitants of the Americas’ northern and southern extremes and barely touched on the Northwest Coast. The most painful decision, though, was to omit, after it had been written, a section on the North American West. My qualms were soothed by the recent appearance of Colin Calloway’s One Vast Winter Count, a magnificent synthesis of practically everything known about the subject.

  1 / A View from Above

  1 Erickson and scope of Beni earthworks: Erickson 2005, 2001, 2000b, 1995; see also Denevan 2001: chap. 12.

  2 Old view of Indians: Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, mockingly summed the paradigm: “How many Indians were there?—One million; Where did they come from?—Across the Bering Strait land bridge; When did they come?—15,000 years ago (plus or minus 15 minutes); How did they live?—They were squalid Stone Age hunter-gatherers wandering nomadically about the landscape at the bare margins of subsistence, waiting hopefully, millennium after millennium, for Europeans to show up and improve their quality of life” (Churchill 2003:44).

  3 Smithsonian-backed archaeologists: Dougherty and Calandra 1984 (small numbers needed for causeways, 180; natural origins of mounds, 182–85). Their discussion has been dismissed as “improbably interpreted” (Myers et al. 1992:87). Roughly similar conclusions appear in Langstroth 1996.

  4 Snow’s critiques: Interviews, Snow.

  5 Pristine myth: Denevan 1992a, 1996b.

  6 Wilderness Act: P.L. 88–577, 3 Sept. 1964 (“untrammeled,” section 2c); Callicott 1998:349–50 (act embodies “the conventional understanding of wilderness”).

  7 Obligation to restore natural state: Cronon 1995a:36.

  8 Fish weirs: Erickson 2000a.

  9 Acre: Author’s interviews, Alceu Ranzi, Denise Schaan; author’s visits to Acre; Schaan et al. 2007; Mann 2008; Pärssinen et al. 2009; Franca et al. 2010. Earthworks have been found in the small part of Pando that has been investigated (Saunaluoma 2010).

  10 Future options for Beni: Interviews, Erickson, Balée, CIDDEBENI. By leasing their land to loggers and miners, the Kayapó in the southeast Amazon basin demonstrated how Indians can disappoint environmentalists (Epstein 1993; the article is reproduced and discussed in Slater 1995:121–24). Some environmentalists propose tucking the eastern Beni into a nearby UNESCO biopreserve, one of the 350 such preserves the agency sponsors worldwide. 7 Devil tree: Interviews and email, Balée. I found no published work on this specific form of obligate mutualism, but see, generally, Huxley and Cutler eds. 1991.

  11 Ibibate and pottery: Interviews, Balée, Erickson; Erickson and Balée 2005; Balée 2000; Erickson 1995; Langstroth 1996.

  12 Holmberg’s view of Sirionó: Holmberg 1969:17 (“brand,” “culturally backward”), 37 (“sleepless night”), 38–39 (clothing), 110 (lack of musical instruments), 116 (“universe,” “uncrystallized”), 121 (count to three), 261 (“quintessence,” “raw state”). After Holmberg’s death, Lauriston Sharp introduced Nomads as a study of “lowly but instructive” “survivors” who “retained a variety of man’s earliest culture.” The book, he said, “discovered, described, and thus introduced into history a new and in many respects extraordinary Paleolithic experience” (Sharp 1969:xii–xiii). Nomads was a widely used undergraduate text for decades (Erickson, pers. comm.).

  13 Holmberg’s work and career: Interviews, Henry Dobyns; Doughty 1987; Stearman 1987 (account of his blind walk, Chap. 4).

  14 Lack of study of Beni and Langstroth: Interviews, Erickson, Langstroth; Langstroth 1996.

  15 Sirionó epidemics: The chronology is uncertain. Holmberg (1969:12) describes smallpox and influenza epidemics that forced the “decimated” Sirionó into mission life in 1927. Citing other sources, Swedish anthropologist Stig Rydén, who visited the Sirionó briefly ten years after Holmberg, reports epidemics in 1920 and 1925, which he interprets as episodes in a single big flu epidemic (Rydén 1941:25). But such heavy casualties are less likely from a single source.

  16 Sirionó population: Holmberg 1969:12 (fewer than 150 during his fieldwork). Rydén (1941:21) estimated 6,000–10,000 in the late 1920s, presumably a pre-epidemic count. Today there are 600–2,000 (Balée 1999; Townsend 1996:22). Stearman (1986:8) estimated 3,000–6,000.

  17 Stearman returns, bottleneck, abuse by army and ranchers, Holmberg’s failure to grasp: Stearman 1984; Stearman 1987; author’s interviews, Balée, Erickson, Langstroth. Holmberg (1969:8–9) noted the incidence of clubfoot and ear marks, but made little of it.

  18 Migration of Sirionó: Interviews, Balée; Barry 1977; Priest 1980; Pärssinen 2003. A Spanish account from 1636 suggests that they had arrived only a few decades before (Métraux 1942:97), but this is not widely accepted.

  19 First Beni research and Denevan thesis: Nordenskiöld 1979a; Denevan 1966.

  20 Bauré culture and Erickson’s perspective: Interviews, Erickson; Erickson 1995, 2000b, 2005; Anon. 1743.

  21 Las Casas ethnography: Casas 1992a; Wagner 1967:287–89 (publication history).

  22 “lyve in that goulden”: Arber ed. 1885:71 (letter, Martire, P., to Charles V, 30 Sept. 1516).

  23 “Indian wisdom”: “[W]e cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom” (Thoreau 1906 [vol. 5]:131).

  24 Crying Indian campaign: Krech 1999:14–16.

  25 Indians without history: “In North America, whites are the bearers of environmental original sin, because whites alone are recognized as laboring. But whites are thus also, by the same token, the only real bearers of history. This is why our flattery … of ‘simpler’ peoples is an act of such immense condescension. For in a modern world defined by change, whites are portrayed as the only beings who make a difference” (White 1995:175). The phrase “pe
ople without history” was popularized in an ironic sense in Wolf 1997.

  26 “unproductive waste”: Bancroft 1834–76 [vol. 1]:3–4.

  27 Kroeber on warfare and agriculture: Kroeber 1934:10–12 (all quotes).

  28 Conrad on Indian dyspepsia: Conrad 1923:vi.

  29 “pagans expecting”: Morison 1974:737.

  30 “chief function”: Trevor-Roper 1965:9. To be fair, the baron was dismissing all indigenous peoples around the world, not singling out Indians.

  31 Fitzgerald survey: Fitzgerald 1980:89–93 (“resolutely backward,” 90; “lazy,” 91; “few paragraphs,” 93). See also, Axtell 1992.

  32 Academic beliefs: Examples, listed alphabetically by author, include Bailey et al. 1983:9 (the “vast and virgin continent … was so sparsely populated by Indians that they could be eliminated or shouldered aside. Such a magnificent opportunity for a great democratic experiment would never come again”), quoted in Axtell 1992:203; Bailyn et al. 1977:34 (“But the Indians’ hold upon the land was light.… Nowhere was more than one percent of the land available for horticulture actually under cultivation”; editions of this textbook appeared, essentially unaltered, into the 1990s); Berliner 2003 (“Prior to 1492, what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused, and undeveloped.… There was virtually no change, no growth for thousands of years”); Billard 1975:20 (“To a virgin continent where prairie grass waved tall as a man and vast forests perfumed the air for miles offshore came Spanish adventurer, French trapper, Dutch sailor, and doughty Englishman”); Fernández-Armesto 2001:154 (many Amazonian Indians’ lives were “unchanged for millennia” and the rainforest was “still a laboratory of specimen peoples apparently suspended by nature in a state of so-called underdevelopment”—the key word here being “suspended,” as in fixed in place, motionless); McKibben 1989:53 (Wilderness Society founder Robert Marshall concluding a currently unpopulated part of the United States was “as it existed outside human history”); Sale 1990:315–16 (“the land of North America was still by every account a lush and fertile wilderness … [which] gave off the aspect of an untouched world”); Shabecoff 1993:23 (Lewis and Clark traveling through land “unchanged by humans”); Shetler 1991:226 (“Pre-Columbian America was still the First Eden, a pristine natural kingdom. The native people were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus, was a world of barely perceptible human disturbance”). Such statements are often due less to prejudice than to European and American historians’ continuing uncertainty about how to think about non-European and non-American societies. Thus on the next page Current, Williams, and Brinkley (1987:1) describe Indians both as establishing some of “the world’s most dazzling cultures” and “lack[ing] some of mankind’s most basic tools and technologies” (2)—the latter state assuming, ethnocentrically, that European technologies are “basic” whereas indigenous technologies are inessential. See Chaps. 2 and 3.

  33 New perspectives and techniques: Crosby 1994 (“faint smudges,” 7).

  34 “replaced”: Vale 1998:231.

  35 Growth of Bering Strait theory and fight over Chilean site: See Chap. 5.

  36 Deloria index entries: Deloria 1995:284.

  37 Neolithic Revolution, invention of agriculture: See, e.g., Lev-Yadun, Gopher, and Abbo 2000; Mithen 2004. To simplify, humans seem to have collected into small, semi-permanent villages in Palestine around 12,500 B.C., collecting and tending plants. For reasons that are still disputed, true agriculture arrived a couple millennia later, probably in southern Turkey. Around 4000 B.C. the villages became hierarchically organized towns or cities. Early forms of writing date to at least 3000 B.C. Five centuries later, the writing had become a unified system and the city of Uruk had a population of forty thousand.

  38 “The human career”: Wright 2005:45. The Fertile Crescent was the first to develop agriculture, laying the foundation for later civilizations in Egypt, Greece, India, and Mesopotamia. China apparently invented farming on its own, but borrowed mathematics, writing, art, and much else from The Fertile Crescent. This last claim is fiercely debated, though, and some believe China to have been as independent of Sumer as Peru and Mesoamerica.

  39 Maize and early American domestications, Olmec accomplishments: See Chaps. 6, 7.

  40 “one of the greatest”: Dantzig 1967:35. I am grateful to Dick Teresi for introducing me to this terrific book.

  41 History of zero: Kaplan 1999:11–57; Teresi 2002:22–25, 86–87, 379–82.

  42 “bleak, frigid land”: von Hagen, V., commentary, in Cieza de León 1959:272.

  43 Tiwanaku: See chap. 7.

  44 Populations of Tiwanaku and Paris: Kolata 1993:204–05; Bairoch, Batou, and Chévre 1988:28. Metropolitan Paris reached a quarter million in about 1400.

  45 Wari: See chap. 7.

  46 Glacial evidence of dust storms: Thompson, Davis, and Mosley-Thompson 1994. More than a few archaeologists are skeptical of this evidence (Erickson, pers. comm.).

  47 Mega-Niños: Schimmelmann, Lange, and Meggers 2003; Meggers 1994.

  48 Climate and Tiwanaku, Wari decline: Kolata 2000; Binford et al. 1997; Thompson, Davis, and Mosley-Thompson 1994.

  49 Little Ice Age: Lamb 1995: Chaps. 12, 13; Fagan 2001.

  50 Maya: See Chap. 8.

  51 Toltecs and Yucatán: Diehl 1983 (basic history); Coe 1999:165–80 (favoring invasion scenario); Schele and Mathews 1998:198–201, esp. fn. 13 (arguing against). The Schele-Mathews arguments center on disputed radiocarbon dates and interpretations of artworks’ styles that to my mind seem all but to ignore their content.

  52 Mississippians: See Chap. 8.

  53 Plains Indians rock rings: Teresi 2002:107–09.

  54 Lake Superior copper: S. R. Martin 1999.

  55 Newly discovered Acre sites: Pärssinen et al. 2003. See also Erickson 2002.

  56 Amazon: See Chap. 9.

  57 Early world histories: E.g., Otto I 1966; Dinawari 1986.

  2 / Why Billington Survived

  1 Massasoit, Samoset, and Tisquantum: Bradford 1981:87–88; Winslow 1963b:37, 43–59 (“tall proper men,” 53); Deetz and Deetz 2000:61–62. In quotations I have modernized the use of “f” and “v.”

  2 Negotiations: Bradford 1981:87–89; Winslow 1963b:50–59 (“very lusty,” 57); Deetz and Deetz 2000:61–62; Kupperman 2000:7.

  3 “A friendly Indian”: Wood et al. 1971:73.

  4 Tisquantum’s life: I have relied greatly on Salisbury 1989. See also Adams 1892–93 (vol. 1): 22–44; Foreman 1943:20–21; Humins 1987; Kinnicutt 1914; Shuffelton 1976.

  5 Tisquantum, and fish fertilizer: Accounts of Squanto and fish fertilizer include Winslow 1963a:81–82 (“increase,” 82); Bradford 1981:94–95; Morton 1632:89. Skepticism about the aboriginality of fish fertilization dates back to 1939, but the question was first raised forcefully in Rostlund 1957a and then still more strongly in Ceci 1975a, 1975b, 1990b. Ceci’s conclusions were disputed (Nanepashemet 1991; Russell 1975, 1980:166–67; Warden 1975), but much of the critique boiled down to refuting the charge that the Indians were too stupid to figure out the use of fertilizer, an argument Ceci did not make. Instead Ceci suggested that the added productivity would not have been worth the added trouble, given the alternative of fallowing. Because Europeans had much less land per person and less mobility, they had to resort to fertilization. In the early 1990s Stephen A. Mrozowski, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, unearthed evidence on Cape Cod suggesting that fish were used there as fertilizer a few decades before the Mayflower, but he has not yet published it (interview, Mrozowski). The fish may have been ordinary household waste, though. Incidentally, fish fertilizer was common in Peru (Denevan 2001:35–36).

  6 Pilgrims’ lack of curiosity about Indian motives: The early chroniclers did explore Tisquantum’s motives, especially when they accused him of scheming to better his station. But they did not, in modern terms, try to put themselves in his place, which is what is at issue here. Nor di
d the colonists puzzle over why they never suffered a sustained attack, to judge by the lack of discussion by Bradford, Winslow et al. Here one cannot charge the colonists with special insensitivity. Compared to later historians, Pilgrim writers were more likely to see Indians as independent actors with their own beliefs and goals (Kupperman 2000:2–4).

  7 “Divine providence”: Gookin 1792:148.

  8 Dissatisfied historians: For a survey of ethnohistory’s origins, see Axtell 1978.

  9 Explosion of research: Author’s interviews, Axtell, Neal Salisbury; Chaplin 2003:esp. 1445–55 (“No other field,” 1431).

  10 Squanto as devil: Shuffelton 1976. Tisquantum, according to a Massachusett dictionary, is a variant of musquantum, “he is angry.” When Indians had accidents, according to Roger Williams, the minister and linguist who founded Rhode Island, “they will say, God was angry and did it; musquantum manit, God is angry” (cited in Shuffelton 1976:110).

  11 Norumbega: D’Abate 1994; Parkman 1983 (vol. 1):155. The term referred vaguely to a mythical city, the river that supposedly reached it, and the region around the river, all somewhere in the Northeast.

  12 Patuxet population: A vexing question. Tisquantum is said to have claimed it had two thousand souls (James ed. 1963:29). According to the most widely cited colonial observer, Daniel Gookin, the Wampanoag federation, of which Patuxet was a member, “could raise, as the most credible and ancient Indians affirm, about three thousand men” (Gookin 1792:148). If the federation were able to muster three thousand adult males, then typical population estimates for the whole would be on the order of twelve to fifteen thousand. The Wampanoag had about a dozen settlements, which would suggest that Patuxet may have had a thousand inhabitants, or maybe a few more. Countering this, anthropologist Kathleen Bragdon argues the available archaeological evidence suggests that individual coastal settlements like Patuxet held “probably no more than two hundred people” (Bragdon 1996:58). I have accepted Gookin’s figure because it was apparently derived from contemporaneous Indians themselves, and because the archaeological traces, as Bragdon herself notes, are difficult to interpret.