The Great Encounter

Native Peoples and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492-1800

Jayme A. Sokolow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315498676
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Traditional histories of North and South America often leave the impression that Native American peoples had little impact on the colonies and empires established by Europeans after 1492. This groundbreaking study, which spans more than 300 years, demonstrates the agency of indigenous peoples in forging their own history and that of the Western Hemisphere. By putting the story of the indigenous peoples and their encounters with Europeans at the center, a new history of the "New World" emerges in which the Native Americans become vibrant and vitally important components of the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires. In fact, their presence was the single most important factor in the development of the colonial world. By discussing the "great encounter" of peoples and cultures, this book provides a valuable, new perspective on the history of the Americas.

1

Before the Wig and the Dress Coat

In the words of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

Before the wig and the dress coat

there were rivers, arterial rivers;

there were cordilleras, jagged waves where

the condor and the snow seemed immutable:

there was dampness and dense growth, the thunder

as yet untamed, the planetary pampas.

Man was dust, earthen vase, an eyelid

of tremulous loam, the shape of clay—

he was a Carib jug, Chibcha stone,

imperial cup or Araucanian silica.

Tender and bloody was he, but on the grip

of his weapon of moist flint,

the initials of the earth were

written.¹

Despite the passage of time, native peoples did remember when they were merely dust, and they handed down from generation to generation thousands of stories about their origins and emergence. Their sacred narratives explained how an orderly and balanced world developed out of chaos, confusion, and disharmony. In the beginning the world was undifferentiated and intact; later the sky and earth separated so that humans could emerge. These events occurred in primordial time, the fabled time of the beginning. They describe nothing less than something momentous and miraculous—the breakthrough of the sacred into the world.

Amid the incredible variety and inventiveness of native sacred narratives and stories, amid the many deeds of the gods, spirits, tricksters, and transformers, a recurring theme emerges: all things are related. There is an old and deep kinship between humans and the rest of creation, which includes plants, animals, the heavenly bodies, and such geographic forms as mountains and stones. The past is a living part of the present, time and space are not separate dimensions, and the entire cosmos acts as a living, unified whole. Our world is a benevolent place that will nurture us if we can find our proper places in it, and only within this rootedness can we ever become complete and fulfilled.

Indigenous peoples lived in a universe where everything was inseparably connected to the spiritual because it was imbued with a sacredness established long ago when the gods created the universe. For them, the entire creation was continually involved in an elaborate spiritual exchange begun by the “Ancient Ones” or the founders. Whether they believed in life after death or in reincarnation, native societies had a deep conviction that all forms of life were indelibly and fundamentally interrelated, and they acted as if this association could be used beneficially to control the dynamic, creative forces that governed the world.

Because timelessness was a fundamental part of their world, native peoples never needed to dream of a paradise at the end of time. In their cyclical cultures, the natural and social orders replicated themselves with each new season, sacred ritual, or birth. Life was infinitely renewable because its sacred sources were so abundant and incapable of being exhausted. Diversity was built into the very structure of the cosmos.

Although everyday life was framed by ancient times, indigenous peoples knew that their existence was not predetermined by the past but shaped by their own circumstances and decisions. Since their appearance on earth, they had undergone migrations, fought other peoples, developed languages and political systems, domesticated animals and plants, modified the landscape, and learned to live in an incredibly wide variety of environments. In native societies, people understood that their lives were dynamic, not static.

Throughout the hemisphere, there were thousands of different cultures that ranged from small, highly mobile, and relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies such as the Onas at the southern tip of the Americas to sedentary, highly stratified states like the Inca empire. Despite their different political and social structures, all native societies shared similar spiritual foundations. For them, subsistence was more than a means of production. It was a system for distribution and exchange that bound generations and families over time as partners with important obligations to each other. Over shared joys and hardships lasting thousands of years, indigenous peoples developed highly adaptive ways of living in varied environments throughout the hemisphere. This accomplishment stemmed from their vision of wholeness, a recognition that everything was interconnected and had meaning.²

South America

The Inca’s Heavenly Empire

In the central Andes, indigenous peoples have always considered Lake Titicaca the center of the universe. Over 1,000 years ago, they built a temple to their supreme deity, Wiraqocha, on one of Tititaca’s islands. According to the people who lived around the lake, once only darkness and chaos reigned. Then Wiraqocha appeared nearby, creating humans and all living things. But when people disobeyed Wiraqocha’s moral commands, a flood destroyed the world. Wiraqocha went to Lake Titicaca again where he created the sun, moon, and stars along with the many peoples who lived in the region. Once he had finished creating the present world, Wiraqocha departed and vanished into the ocean.

In the fifteenth century, the great Inca military emperor Pachakuti Inca Yupanki (“he who overturns time and space”) reorganized his state’s administration and calendar and established the state worship of Wiraqocha, the celestial, androgynous creator god. According to the Incas, Wiraqocha, “lord fountainhead of the sun” and “tilted plane of the celestial sea,” emerged from Lake Titicaca, created humans, made the sun rise, and then went northward to Cuzco to establish the Inca empire.

In one Inca hymn, Wiraqocha was called “Cam cuzco capaca” [the king of Cuzco] and “the one who measures the navel of the earth by palms.” As the creator of the celestial heavens and the social order on earth, Wiraqocha was portrayed as an elderly man with a beard who wore a long robe and supported himself with a staff.

Wiraqocha had eternally ruled over the universe and created a number of benevolent gods to assist him. In the Inca’s great “Temple of the Sun” at Cuzco, he was represented as a solid gold figure raising his right arm to command the heavens. Pachakuti used Wiraqocha to create a new imperial cosmology that justified Inca rule by linking the Incas to the numinous past of Lake Titicaca.

Supporting Wiraqocha were other sky and earth gods. The “Sun,” a male progenitor of the Inca royal dynasty, protected crops and was the venerated object of temple devotion throughout the empire. Special stars and constellations watched over agricultural activities as did the gods of the earth. The two most important were “Pachamama,” or Mother Earth, and “Mamacocha,” or the Mother of Lakes and Water.

In the cities, Inca temples housed priests, oracles, and sacred objects. The most magnificent one was the Temple of the Sun, which also accommodated consecrated virgins who created ceremonial objects and beer for official festivals. Priests were powerful men in the Inca empire. They officiated over special ceremonies, interpreted oracles, performed animal and human sacrifices on important occasions, cured diseases, and heard confessions.

Wiraqocha was the official god of the Inca empire, but countless ancestor gods commanded great veneration. Throughout the Andes, people worshipped objects called huacas [a person or a part of the landscape associated with the sacred], which usually marked fountains, springs, hills, rocks, mountains, houses, and special viewpoints.

Huacas were also stone representations of departed Inca nobility whose mummified cadavers were attended by servants in Cuzco. The emperor and his family even had their own portable huacas as personal guardians. Cuzco probably contained 328 huacas connected by forty-one imaginary ceques [crooked lines] emanating from the Temple of the Sun in center of the city toward points on the horizon. The huacas along these ceques were cared for by priests representing all the different ethnic groups in the Inca empire. Ceques were probably drawn to correspond to the rising of certain stars, for Andean peoples have always believed that the celestial realm controlled their destiny.

The Incas also incorporated local shrines and huacas into the worship of Wiraqocha, whom they considered far more powerful and important than any rival community’s gods. In fact, after the Incas conquered neighboring peoples, their huacas were chained by the feet to the statue of the Sun in his temple.

Throughout the Andes, space and time were part of a moral order maintained by the gods. Supernatural beings might bring good fortune, but they could not determine a person’s life after death. The Incas believed that after good people died, they lived with the Sun under very comfortable circumstances. Bad people went to the earth’s interior where they were perpetually cold and ate only stones. The Inca nobility were more fortunate, for they automatically traveled to the Sun god despite any bad deeds they might have performed.

The peoples of the Andes believed that the natural and supernatural realms were composed of complementary and cooperative halves. Whether they lived in cities or small communities, their universe was a giant web of kinship relations based on the concept of ayni [balance and reciprocity].

The Inca empire, with its sacred capital of Cuzco, was divided into four complimentary parts: Antisuyu in the North, Cuntisuyu in the South, Collasuyu in the East, and Chinchaysuyu in the West. Antisuyu and Chinchaysuyu, considered the upper part of the empire, were associated with the sun, masculinity, and dominance. Cuntisuyu and Collasuyu, the lower part of the empire, were associated with the moon, femininity, and subordination. Upper Cuzco was the military and administrative center while lower Cuzco focused on religion and agriculture. The Incas might have alternated rulers from each section or had two kings simultaneously rule. Even the Incas’ highly rectangular buildings were constructed to be bilaterally symmetrical.

The ayllu [family] was the basic political and social unit of Andean society. An ayllu was a community composed of people claiming descent from a common ancestor. Each ayllu, which was ruled by a curaca [male chieftain], controlled such important resources as farmland, pasture, domesticated animals, and water. Heads of households had the right to use but not own land and resources. Although there were differences in wealth and power within ayllus, all members lived by an ethic of sharing and cooperation and were assured access to land and other community assets to meet their basic needs.

Andean ayllus and households were organized along parallel lines of descent based on gender. Men inherited their ayllu affiliation through their father’s family line while women traced ayllu descent from their mother’s family. These lines were considered complementary and entailed traditional obligations and rights that neither gender could violate. Women and their daughters, like men and their sons, had independent rights to community land, water, and other resources.

Ayllu residents probably even treated numbers and arithmetic based on gender. Counting was based on groups of five, and the fingers were organized by gender. The thumb, called the mother finger in Quechua, was the oldest ancestral digit while the last finger represented the youngest. Reproduction provided the metaphors for Quechua numbers. Women may have had their own number symbols, which probably were sexual in nature. The number one in Quechua, for example, also may have meant an erect penis or a man with only one testicle.

Just as ayllus had parallel lines of descent, they also divided labor and even religious ceremonies by gender. After infancy, young boys became hunters and herders while girls helped take care of their households, herded, and learned to weave and make dyes. As they neared the age of twenty, young men herded animals in the high country, joined adult males in warfare, plowed, and acted as messengers.

Young women raised llamas and matured into weavers of cloth. Once married, the ayllu considered both men and women full productive members of the community. Upon marriage, they received property from both sides of their families and resources from the ayllu. Each partner’s kin were now linked together and expected to treat each other as brothers and sisters.

Men and women had their own religious organizations and even managed separate property to support their ceremonies. “Illapa” was a male deity who controlled rain and conquest, and male heads of households built shrines to him in the mountains high above their ayllus. Pachamama, his consort, was the Earth Mother and goddess of fertility. Her shrines were made of long stones placed in the middle of fields. Both men and women worshipped Pachamama, but only women purified themselves in her name before planting seeds. Women felt especially close to “Saramama,” the Corn Mother and the daughter of Pachamama. To worship their deities, women had their own religious organizations, inherited sacred staffs, officiated as priests, and heard confessions from other women.

In Andean society, adult male identity was primarily associated with plowing and warfare. Women supervised households and wove cloth. Even in death the genders were carefully demarcated. Women went to their graves with spindles and rolls of cotton. Men had their hoes and instruments of war.

As the Inca state grew in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries by conquering and absorbing hundreds of ethnic groups, it modified but did not fundamentally change the kinship and gender structure of the ayllus. Inca conquerors could not create a new social order because the ayllu provided the context for Andean conceptions of order and hierarchy. Like the ayllus, the Inca dynasty was organized into parallel lines of male and female descent, as were Inca sacred narratives. The Incas claimed that they were the offspring of the Sun and the Moon. The emperor represented all men while his wife ruled over all women.

The Inca empire, which treated ayllus as inferior imperial kin, reorganized their lands into three parts. The Sun God’s territory helped maintain the Inca religion, the emperor’s property supported the state, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Recovering Lost Worlds
• 1. Before the Wig and the Dress Coat
• 2. Toward a New World Order
• 3. Suffering a Great Misery
• 4. Rage Without Reason
• 5. Black Rainbows and Sinister Hailstorms
• 6. License My Roving Hands
• 7. Unacquainted with the Laws of the Civilized World
• 8. Beware of the Long Knives
• After Columbus: Living in an Age of Missing Information
• Notes
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author