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Volume 21, Number 6 Vision for a Sustainable World November/December 2008 Volume 21, Number 6 Vision for a Sustainable World November/December 2008
The Real Meaning
of Columbus Day

Pollination Panic

Ainu Political Revival

Earth Ethics:
Diet and Rituals
The Real Meaning
of Columbus Day

Pollination Panic

Ainu Political Revival

Earth Ethics:
Diet and Rituals
8 World Watch
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November/December 2008 www.worldwatch.org
A year ago I was walking through a shopping mall in north-
ern Virginia when I passed by a tobacco shop. A life-sized
wooden Indian, clutching a handful of cigars, was guarding the
door. Someone had taped a sign to its chest that read: Happy
Columbus Day.
Shortly after, I came upon a statement made by President
George H.W. Bush in 1989, on the eve of the 500th anniver-
sary of Christopher Columbuss arrival in the Americas. He
called the Admirals landfall one of the greatest achievements
of human endeavor, and added, I strongly encourage every
American to support the Quincentennary, and to discover
the significance that this milestone in history has in his or her
own life.
But just what significance does Columbus Day have, or
should it have, in our lives? It celebrates the day, 516 years ago,
when three small boats carrying Spanish sailors discovered
the Western Hemisphere. This Encounter of Two Worlds, as
it is often called, was the first step in a process that led, in
short order, to the conquest and European subjugation of the
native peoples of this newly found continent. It determined
the direction the Americas were to take fromthat point on, and
when we contemplate the significance of Columbus Day in our
lives we need to take into consideration the whole package,
from discovery through conquest to domination.
All of us were taught the history of the Spanish Discovery
and Conquest of the Americas early on in school. Many bits
and pieces of this history remain firmly lodged in our heads
these many years later, yet strangely, for most of us they are
scattered images that, if we inspect them carefully, dont fit
together to forma very a coherent picture. They are, quite sim-
ply, inadequate as explanations. This is in large part because
our school lessons were based on historical accounts that were
often incomplete and confused, and they were one-sided,
often flagrantly so, with a strong pro-
European bias.
This was the state of historical
interpretation of the Spanish Discov-
ery and Conquest of the Americas up
through the 1960s, and it was this way
across the hemisphere, from north to
south. Since then, some of the drum-
beating for European superiority has
subsidedwe are less likely to be told,
for example, that the appearance of
the Spaniards in Mexico was the van-
guard of the great European Advance
toward the broader knowledge of man
and of this planet, or that the Aztecs
were mentally deranged and in the same league with the
Nazis*but many of the old biases and stereotypes have held
on tenaciously and still inhabit the pages of popular as well as
scholarly histories for adults and children.
My subject here is the way historians have characterized
this pivotal period in our history, and the consequences these
characterizations have had on our thinking about the events
themselves, the peoples who took part in them, and their suc-
cessors, including all of us who currently live in this part of
the world. I will draw primarily on the historical record from
Central Mexico, where the Spaniards took on the powerful
Mexica (Aztec) Empire, but the same characterizations, in
roughly similar form, hold for the Spanish invasion of the
Inca Empire to the south.
*Sources for all quotes, as well as additional information and sugges-
tions for further reading, can be found at www.worldwatch.org/ww/
columbusday.
The Meaning of
Columbus Day
by Mac Chapin
Discovery and Conquest
On the evening of October 11, 1492, a fleet of three Spanish
shipsthe Nia, the Pinta, and the Santa Marawas near-
ing the end of a five-week voyage across the Atlantic. Their cap-
tain, a Genoese navigator named Christopher Columbus, was
standing on the deck of the Santa Mara when what appeared
to be a light was spotted in the distance. Land was sighted sev-
eral hours later, illuminated by the moon, and the following
morning Columbus and a handful of his men took a small
boat ashore on an island (no one is certain today which one
it was) somewhere on the rim of the Caribbean Sea. The
natives who came to meet them were peaceful, generous, and
accommodating. Columbus wrote in his diary that they
invite you to share anything that they possess, and show as
much love as if their hearts went with it. He went on to
observehoweasy it would be to convert these peopleand
to make them work for us.
Columbus made three more journeys to the New World,
and in his wake came an ever-increasing procession of Span-
ish ships. The Spaniards made their way past the Caribbean
islands to the mainland, traveled along the coast of Mexico and
Central America, and eventually trekked across the Pana-
manian isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. Their primary quest
was after riches, especially gold. During these journeys they
learned of vast stores of wealth inland in the highlands of
central Mexico.
Here the narrative is transformed into a story that is, as the
historian William H. Prescott noted, too startling for the
probabilities demanded by fiction, and without a parallel in
the pages of history. In 1519, Hernn Corts led a handful
of resolute men, as one historian puts it, into the heart of the
formidable and highly militaristic Mexica Empire. Two years
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World Watch 9
Christopher Columbus landing in the Caribbean, 1492, as painted by John
Vanderlyn. Vanderlyn and assistants worked on the 3.7 5.5-meter canvas for
10 years in Paris. It was placed in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in 1847.
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later they laid siege to the imperial city of Tenochtitlan and
after just under three months of fighting emerged victorious,
leaving it in ruins and the majority of its inhabitants dead. Ten
years later, Francisco Pizarro marched straight into the jaws
of the equally fierce Inca Kingdom in the Andean highlands.
He had no more than 168 men under his command, yet in
short order he brought the Incas to their knees and gained con-
trol of the region.
And these two civilizations were not only defeated. They
disintegrated and disappeared and were never able to recon-
stitute themselves. They left behind little more than a scattering
of temples, pyramids, stone sculptures, and fragmentary his-
tories of their former glory and achievements. And this hap-
pened everywhere the Europeans went. Their victories over the
NewWorld kingdoms were swift and decisive, and within the
space of a few decades they had taken the core areas of the
hemisphere from top to bottom. Those native people who
managed to survive had become either slaves or fugitives in
their own land, and the history of the New World had been
altered drastically and irrevocably.
How did this happen?
The traditional narrative of the Conquest weaves together
several causal threads. First, the story goes, in Mesoamerica the
Mexica thought the Spaniards were gods and were paralyzed
with fear and unable to think or act rationally. Montezuma,
the Mexica emperor, believed Corts to be the god Quetzal-
coatl, the Plumed Serpent, who was returning from the east
to reclaim his throne, as had been foretold, and he was seized
with panic. He felt his empire melting away like a morning
mist, in the words of Prescott.
Another ingredient revolves around the nature of the
New World empires: while they appeared to be mighty and
substantial, they were in fact very fragile, for they depended
on relentless exploitation of their subjects. The Mexica, we
are told, enslaved their neighbors, exacted onerous tribute
from them, and took them captive for ritual sacrifice. In
short, they were brutal tyrants who were hated throughout
the region. Corts quickly picked up on these divisions and
skillfully exploited them. He enlisted the Mexicas disaf-
fected neighbors as allies, and the combined Spanish-Indian
force overwhelmed the already panic-stricken Mexica. His
advisor and interpreter (and mistress) in much of this ven-
ture was the Indian maiden Malinali (generally referred to
as La Malinche in Mexico, where the word malinchista has
come to mean traitor).
Athird element of the traditional story paints the Spaniards
as hardened, pragmatic soldiers experienced in the art of war-
fare, while the Indians viewed warfare as a ritual to be fought
according to strict, and greatly limiting, rules of engagement.
The Spaniards, in the Indians eyes, broke all the rules and
dove in relentlessly for the kill. Beyond this, the Spaniards
greatly outclassed the Indians with their superior military
technology: steel swords versus obsidian-edged clubs; muskets
and cannon against arrows and spears; metal helmets and
bucklers in contrast to feath-
ered headdresses and shields,
according to one historian. And
of course they came with
horses and savage armored
dogs, while their opponents
had no animals to assist them.
In short, the Indians were com-
pletely outclassed militarily.
A final ingredient is the
European diseases against
which the native peoples had
no immunological defenses.
But this was a late entry into
the historical record and it
played no important role in
the traditional narrative as it
developed initially. Lethal epi-
demics of Old World diseases
were described in contempo-
rary accounts, often in great
detail, yet historians had paid
them little attention until sev-
eral scholars dredged themout
of obscurity in the 1960s. This
revelation, which included
claims of a catastrophic demo-
graphic collapse among the
native peoples, was at first met
with skepticism, and although
it has now gained general
acceptance as a rightful piece
of the puzzle, it rests uneasily
amid the other features of the
Conquest narrative. Many his-
torians have been uncertain
about how to handle it.
Evolving History
The historical record of the Conquest begins with the first-
hand accounts of the conquistadors themselves. In Mexico, the
most prominent of these were Corts and Bernal Daz del
Castillo, whose True History of the Conquest of New Spain is
generally considered to be the most accurate record of the
armed conflict. These accounts are supplemented by docu-
ments produced by a succession of Catholic priests, chroni-
clers of different stripes, and assorted bureaucrats within the
Spanish imperial system during the early sixteenth century.
A large portion of this material was brought together and
synthesized in the 1840s by the Boston historian William
Hickling Prescott, who wrote the first systematic and com-
prehensive histories of the Conquest. Prescott published His-
tory of the Conquest of Mexico in 1843 and History of the
Conquest of Peru in 1847. Both books by any measure are
remarkable achievementsall the more so because Prescott
was legally blind and was never able to set foot in either Mex-
ico or Peru.
He also only had the Spanish side of the story. While the
Indians had incipient writing systems involving pictographs
in Mesoamerica and knotted strings (quipu) in the Andes,
these were rudimentary in comparison to the European alpha-
bets and were effectively obliterated by Spanish priests in the
first years after the Conquest. And even if they had possessed
more sophisticated writing systems, its likely that they would
have been too confused and distressed to record their thoughts
as they were being sucked into the chaotic maelstrom of the
Spanish invasion. Some decades later, Catholic priests trained
a select group of surviving Mexica to transcribe accounts of
their vanished society in Nahuatl, their native language. But
these codices contain no first-hand glimpses into the military
campaign. Records exist of what the Spaniards thought the
Indians were thinking, or wanted their readers to think they
were thinking, but these are poor substitutes for hearing
directly from the Indians, and the Spanish accounts are fre-
quently self-serving and misleading.
Moreover, Prescott was writing during the infancy of his-
toriography, and his works are best seen as fusions of litera-
ture and the first tentative steps towardscientific history. In
his day, he was often compared to the historical novelists Sir
Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, and over the years
analysis of his work has been the province of literary critics as
www.worldwatch.org November/December 2008
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World Watch 11
From a series of eight paintings on the conquest of Mexico painted in the
second half of the seventeeth century by unknown artists, this canvasin
key respects pure fantasydepicts Corts attack on Tenochtitlan.
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much as historians. He noted in his diary that with History of
the Conquest of Mexico he was setting out to create an epic in
prose, a romance of chivalry.
He succeeded brilliantly. First, he produced a riveting
adventure tale in the best romantic tradition. History of the Con-
quest of Mexico is an exhilarating read, replete with tense con-
frontations and negotiations, ambushes, hairs-breadth escapes,
daring battle maneuvers, blood-soaked massacres, treacherous
duplicity, and ferocious hand-to-hand combat. Prescott used
a variety of literary techniques, one being to place Corts and
his men in impossibly perilous situations and then have them
miraculously and heroically break free at the last possible
moment, ending his chapters with cliffhangers. To make this
work, he frequently embellished and even restructured the
factual record. It made for electrifying reading, and it is no won-
der that his books have become the primary sources for vir-
tually every movie ever filmed about the Conquest.
But Prescott was also crafting a morality drama that show-
cased the inevitable collapse of a morally depraved and
despotic barbarian empire at the hand of a highly civilized and
vastly superior European kingdom. In Prescotts eyes, the
Mexica were savages of the most degenerate sort: they prac-
ticed cannibalism, human sacrifice, sodomy, and various other
crimes against nature, and they sadistically preyed on their
neighbors. The Conquest was the work of Providence, an idea
first put forward by Corts and the others; it was a triumph
of civilization over barbarity and of Christianity over pagan
superstition.
And indeed this came to pass amid extreme carnage and the
razing of Tenochtitlan. Between 100,000 and 250,000 of the
citys inhabitants died inthe assault. Prescott informs us that the
Mexica were doomed from the very start, and their empire
fell by the hands of its own subjects, under the direction of
European sagacity and science. The Mexica crumbled from
within and their fate serves as a striking proof, that a gov-
ernment, which does not rest on the sympathies of its subjects,
cannot long abide; that human institutions, when not con-
nected with human prosperity and progress, must fall. He
acknowledges that the Spaniards have been accused of excessive
brutality, and he laments the loss of life. Yet we cannot regret
the fall of an empire,he reflects, which did so little to promote
the happiness of its subjects, or the real interests of humanity.
Prescott personified this struggle in the contrasting figures
of Corts and Montezuma. Corts is pictured as courageous,
steadfast, self-reliant, a brilliant strategist and tactician, a skill-
ful politician, and an unsurpassed leader of men. We see him
leading his men fearlessly into the thick of battle, rousing his
followers with impassioned speeches, and destroying pagan
idols. By contrast, his Mexica counterpart is portrayed as dim-
witted, vacillating, cowardly, and effeminate, a pathetic figure
who, when he first receives word of the arrival of the White
Gods in Mexico (it is in Prescott that Montezuma believes
Corts to be Quetzalcoatl), is racked with paroxysms of
despair.To be sure, Corts has his defectsPrescott describes
him as avaricious and lax in his notions of moralitybut
on balance he is an exceptional human figure: a knight-
errant, in the literal sense of the word.
Prescotts Legacy
Prescotts vision of the Conquest has had incalculable influ-
ence on both historians and the general public throughout the
world. His books have been popular in Europe, North Amer-
ica, and Latin America since they were published. They can
be found in virtually every library of any size in the United
States and purchased off the shelves at Borders and Barnes &
Noble. He is cited as a major influence by later historians,
including Hugh Thomas, whose massive Conquest: Mon-
tezuma, Corts, and the Fall of Old Mexico (1993) pays trib-
ute to the man he dubs the great Bostonian. Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman used Prescott as
her primary source for a short description of the Conquest
of Mexico in her last book, The March of Folly (1984). Even
The Rough Guide to Mexico (2007 edition) cites Prescott for
its brief account of the Conquest.
One aspect stressed by the Spanish chroniclers was that the
American continent was inhabited by heathen savages, and the
Spaniards were involved in a project to civilize it, especially
through the imposition of Christianity. This was, they argued,
a just war and regime change was in order. Later historians
picked up this notion and carried it forward, not only in Spain
but also in Mexico, although here there was some ambivalence
(were the Indians really to be seen as the true Mexicans? or
were the Spaniards their root stock?).
Following their independence from Spain in the 1820s,
Mexican scholars began searching for positive, heroic images
of the pre-Hispanic peoples to burnish their national identity,
but they could find little of value beyond some artwork and
astronomy. The school textbooks they eventually produced
A Mexica priest offers a human heart to the god Huitzilopochtli in this illus-
tration from the Codex Magliabecchi. The archaeologist who discovered the
manuscript estimated it was completed around 1529.
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ended up highlighting cannibalism and
human sacrifice, and native society in general
(not just the Mexica) was depicted as cruel,
twisted, and generally abominable. In the
late nineteenth century, the educator and
historian Justo Sierra, minister of education
under President Porfirio Daz, effused: Ah!
Mother Spain, your great shadow is present
in all of our history; to you we owe civiliza-
tion. And in Breve Historia de Mxico
(1937), Mexican historian/philosopher Jos
Vasconcelos wrote that Spain destroyed
nothing, for nothing worth preserving
existed when she arrived in these territories,
unless one sees as sacred all of those weeds
of the soul that are the cannibalism of the
Caribes [Indians of the Caribbean], the
human sacrifices of the Aztecs, the brutaliz-
ing despotism of the Incas.
Similar arguments flowed fromthe pens
of North American historians such as
Hubert Herring and Henry Bamford Parkes,
both writing in the 1960s.
A closely associated, if somewhat less
strident, assertion is that with the Conquest
the Spaniards simply decapitated the indige-
nous leadership of the two empires and took
its place, leaving the body (the masses) more
or less intact. In Central Mexico, writes John
Edwin Fagg in Latin America: AGeneral His-
tory (1963), those who accepted Corts in
place of Montezuma paid tribute and permitted Christian
missionary activities and lived very much as before. He adds,
If anything, the new regime was more agreeable than the
Aztec despotism. This concept, which I remember clearly
frommy school days, has had considerable staying power and
is still a strong feature in history books. Within these Indian
kingdoms and communities,writes EdwinWilliamson in The
Penguin History of Latin America (1992), traditional life went
on much as before, and, having accepted their new masters, it
made sense also to accept their religion.The top of the pyra-
mid had been lopped off, writes Marshall Eaken in The His-
tory of Latin America: Collision of Cultures (2007), and the
Spanish replaced the Aztecs as the rulers of the Mexicans.
The Diseases
As already noted, until the 1960s historians made no more
than passing mention of disease epidemics in their accounts of
the Conquest. Prescott injects but one brief description of a
terrible epidemic, the small-pox, which was nowsweeping
over the land like fire over the prairies, smiting down prince and
peasant, and adding another to the long train of woes that
followed the march of the white men. This occurs as the
Spaniards are heading for the final assault on the Mexica cap-
ital, and it sounds like a major development, one that would
have a profound impact on the entire Spanish enterprise.
Yet Prescott suddenly drops it, leaving it behind like a
tiny, inconsequential island in the middle of his onrushing nar-
rative of military and diplomatic adventures. When the
Spaniards enter Tenochtitlan and come upon buildings whose
floors are covered with prostate forms of the miserable
inmates, some in the agonies of death, others festering with
corruption; men, women, and children, inhaling the poison-
ous atmosphere, Prescott sees the cause of this appalling
spectacle as starvation and dysentery, not smallpox. Later
historians similarly mentioned epidemic outbreaks, especially
of smallpox, but assigned them little importance.
It is generally accepted today that 5080 million people
were living in the Americas in 1492, and that shortly after
this time they suffered a precipitous demographic collapse. The
collapse radiated throughout the hemisphere, hitting hardest
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World Watch 13
The Equestrian, likely the worlds largest equestrian bronze, erected in 2007
at the El Paso, Texas, airport. Pictured with it are the sculptor, John Sherrill
Houser, and the associate sculptor, his son, Ethan Taliesin Houser. The origi-
nal title of the monument was Don Juan de Oate, icon for The Period of
Spanish Settlement of the Southwest (1598 to 1680). The title and site were
changed after controversy developed about honoring a conquistador. It is one
of 12 monuments planned to commemorate 400 years of El Paso history.
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in the tropical lowlands and areas of dense settlement. Few
regions escaped its reach, including remote corners where
Europeans had never set foot. A number of scholars estimate
that 9095 percent of the native population died during the
first century after contact. Others are more restrained, but all
agree that the death toll was immensethe most catastrophic
population disaster in human history.
What caused this massive die-off?
When the Spaniards laid anchor in the Caribbean they
brought with them a cargo of virulent and utterly foreign
pathogens: smallpox, measles, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid,
influenza, whooping cough, bubonic plague, malaria, yellow
fever, and others. The peoples of the Americas had been iso-
lated from Eurasia for more than 20,000 years, had had no
exposure to these diseases, and were without immunological
defenses against them. Diseases that were generally mild in
the Old World, such as smallpox and measles, became lethal
in the New World ecosystem. Soon after they came ashore
they morphed into what epidemiologists call virgin soil epi-
demics and began to make the rounds, with disastrous effect.
Community death tolls of 5070 percent in a single pass
were common.
The depopulating of the Caribbean islands was well
under way by the end of the first decade of the sixteenth
century, and the Indians there were virtually extinct by mid-
century. An array of different illnesses was most certainly
involved. Smallpox, the most murderous of the lot, reached
the Yucatn Peninsula by 1518 and the Mexica capital in
1519, just before Cortss final assault, and the Inca Empire
by 1526, fully five years before Pizarro and his 168 men
showed up. The rulers of both kingdoms died and were
replaced; lesser political and military leaders were also
stricken, along with a sizeable portion of the general fight-
ing force, and in the Andes civil war had broken out between
the followers of the two remaining sons of the royal family.
Both regions were in a state of turmoil, and the ground was
well prepared for the Spanish invasion.
And the epidemics did not stop with the Conquest. They
continued to rage unfettered, passing through in waves, some-
times arriving in tandem. Before communities were able to
recover fromone attack, they were pummeled again, and again.
Between 1520 and 1600, at least 14 distinct major epidemics
of various illnesses were recorded in central Mexico, and no
fewer than 17 passed through the Andes. Add to these all of the
unreported minor epidemics and assorted Old World
scourges making the rounds, and we can begin to understand
the unrelenting ferocity of the microbial onslaught.
When they struck, the epidemics immobilized entire com-
munities and regions. With the majority of the people infected
and many dying or dead, there was no one to care for the
sick. Children and the elderly were utterly defenseless. Tradi-
tional social mechanisms broke down, work in the fields came
to a halt, and crops were left unharvested; trade networks and
food distribution systems were cut. And then came famine,
not because of want of bread, but of meal, for the women do
nothing but grind maize between two stones and bake it. The
women, then, fell sick of the smallpox, bread failed, and many
died of hunger. And, of course, there were not enough liv-
ing people to dig graves for the dead, so that death itself
assumed the role of gravedigger.Great was the stench of the
dead, recorded the Cakchiquel Mayas. After our fathers and
grandfathers succumbed, half of the people fled to the fields.
The dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. The mortality
was terrible.
AnUneasy Fit
The evidence we nowhave for epidemics and the demographic
collapse of the first century after contact is substantial. Much
of the new information has been mined from the chronicles
of Catholic priestsBartolom de las Casas, Bernardino de
Sahagn, Motolina, and othersand the reports of bureau-
crats and Spanish landholders complaining about the disap-
pearance of their labor force. The conquistadors, by contrast,
barely mention epidemics (Corts, for example, has just two
brief mentions of smallpox, in his third letter to Carlos V) and
this may at least partially explain their absence in the works
of later historians, for history has traditionally been seen as a
chronology of armed conflict and political intrigue, not the
actions of microbes. Some historians have suggested that the
conquistadors, with their attention quite understandably
focused elsewhere, simply failed to pick up on the implications
of the epidemics.
The result of the new information is that virtually every
history dealing with the European Conquest and domina-
tion of the New Worlds peoples now includes something
about the epidemics and the population decline. Even chil-
drens histories and elementary school texts contain short dis-
cussions of these matters. Yet there is considerable variance
regarding the role given disease in the drama that unfolded,
A Mexica illustration showing the effects of smallpox, from Book XII of the
Florentine Codex, created between approximately 1540 and 1585.
and figuring out how to deal with this has proved difficult.
At one end we have William McNeill and Alfred Crosby,
along with a small but well armed band of scholars, who argue
that the epidemics, especially those of smallpox, played a
major if not decisive part in the Spanish Conquest. Absent the
epidemics, neither Corts nor Pizarro would have prevailed
and it is likely, Crosby suggests, that Corts would have ended
his days spread-eagled on the sacrificial altar of Huitzil-
opochtli, the Mexica Sun God. There would have been no
catastrophic population disaster, and if the Spaniards had
succeeded in colonizing the New World, it would have been
similar to European colonization in
Asia and Africa, with the eventual
withdrawal of the colonizers.
Hugh Thomas positions himself
at the other extreme, calling the
claims of Crosby and McNeill
extravagant. For him, the Spanish
achieved victory over the Mexica
because of their military and diplo-
matic superiority, aided by allies
recruited from among disgruntled
neighbors of the Mexica. He esti-
mates roughly 100,000 Mexica killed
in the final battle for the city, with
perhaps 100 Spanish soldiers dead.
He concludes, The difference be-
tween the numbers of conquistadors
and Mexica dead may be held to indi-
cate the superior fighting skill of the
former. He makes no mention of
smallpox, which was raging through
the city at the time, and while his
800-page book contains several
descriptions of epidemics, they are
slim and walled off from the main
narrative. A similar approach is evident in the works of a
number of other prominent scholars who deal with the Con-
quest; they mention the epidemics but assign them little
importance in their narratives, which are dominated by bat-
tleground heroics and the political skills of the Spaniards.
Now, one might consider it reasonable to assume that an
army stricken by a disease that kills half its soldiers and sick-
ens most of the rest would be seriously impaired in its ability
to fight. One might also reasonably assume that wholesale
death among the native peoples, where they were dying in
heaps, like bedbugs, as the Franciscan priest Motolina put it,
while the Spaniards remained healthy, would have some
impact on the course of events. Might not the decision of the
Tlascalans and their neighbors to join forces with the bearded
white men whose language was unintelligible to them have
been influenced by the hope that such an alliance would pro-
vide themwith some measure of protection against the unseen
and thoroughly mysterious plagues?
We know that the Black Death in fourteenth-century
Europe, which left a death toll roughly one-third as devastat-
ing as the epidemics of the NewWorld and had a much shorter
duration, filled the residents with paralyzing feelings of despair,
anxiety, and flat-out terror. The apparition of Antichrist was
announced many times and in many places, writes Philip
Ziegler. Floods, famines, fire from heaven were perpetually
around the corner. The Turks and Saracens planned a descent
on Italy; the English on France; the Scots on England. The
major difference, of course, was that while it was only the
Europeans imaginations that were running riot, the Ameri-
cans actually were being invaded. Would not all of thisthe
phantom, deadly diseases; the breakdown in traditional social
order; famine; and armed conflict by a handful of resolute
men armed with steel swords and mounted on four-legged
beastshave had a profound influence on the collective psy-
che of the native Americans?
The impact of the epidemics was of course huge, but
how might one go about explaining what it was? We have no
solid evidence to argue a case one way or another. The Indi-
ans left us no testimony; none of the Spaniards was system-
atically monitoring this particular angle at the time; and in
any event, neither the Indians nor the Spaniards understood
where the diseases had come from or how they were trans-
mitted. Yet beyond these considerations, historians have tra-
ditionally ignored the effects of epidemics, largely because
they feel uncomfortable with them. The epidemics are as
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Equestrian statue of Francisco Pizarro, in the central plaza of his birthplace,
Trujillo, Spain.
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vaporous as mist; they work quietly behind the scenes and out
of sight, and pinning down and describing their impact is
essentially impossible. How, for example, would events
have unfolded if no diseases had made their appearance?
We cant begin to answer this question without diving head-
long into pure speculation.
In short, the role played by epidemics defies rigorous analy-
sis. Discussions of disease and its impact are now obligatory,
but they are generally framed as little more than add-ons that
exist as capsules, insulated from the body of the narrative,
which for most historians remains largely as Prescott created
it. Thomass Conquest: Montezuma, Corts, and the Fall of Old
Mexico is essentially an update, with additional sources, of the
work of Prescott, and the epidemics have no particular part to
play in it. There have been no more than a fewpartial, and not
entirely successful, attempts to integrate this new dimension
into history books in organic fashion, and many historians
simply ignore it.
Yet just because the ravages of deadly epidemics and the
dramatic population disaster elude historical analysis doesnt
mean that they didnt take place and had no effect, or min-
imal and unstatedeffect. It also doesnt negate the fact
that what happened was a human tragedy of monumental
proportions. Disease, of course, didnt account for the entire
death toll, at least directly, but it made all that followed pos-
sible and even inevitable. The epidemics swept across the
American landscape like shock troops, and in their wake came
starvation, the destruction of traditional institutions, and a
profound sense of demoralization and spiritual confusion.
They most certainly influenced the way the different Indian
groups dealt with the foreigners, howthey weighed the advan-
tages and disadvantages of becoming allies of the Spaniards.
Wouldnt the groups that joined the Spaniards have been
more concerned for their own survival in a world suddenly
turned treacherously lethal than in mounting a full-scale
attack on the Mexica, however resentful they may have been?
There is another problem with any project to reconfigure
the story of the Conquest. The traditional, epidemic-free nar-
rative served us very well for generations. We all grewup with
it, we learned it in school, and most people in academia and
in the general public feel entirely comfortable with it the way
it stands. It explainsthe Discovery and Conquest of the New
World in a manner that is coherent, elegant, and thoroughly
satisfying, and it is exciting to boota true epic in prose, as
Prescott put it. Can anyone imagine howthe story would play
in school texts, or on the silver screen for that matter, if the der-
ring-do and heroism of the battlefield, with Corts and his
armored followers hacking their way through armies of
bronzed warriors with plumed headdresses and obsidian-
tipped war clubs, were to be replaced by communities over-
flowing with dead and dying men, women, and children
covered with suppurating sores and gasping for air?
Indigenous supporters of the government demonstrate against a Santa Cruz
province autonomy referendum declared illegal by Bolivian President Morales.
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Consequences
Yet we must concern ourselves with historical interpretations
of the Conquest. The events themselves are beyond our reach,
but the way we viewthemis not, and it is here that we are con-
fronted with a long tradition of vilification of the native peo-
ples of the Americas.
Beginning with the Spanish chroniclers, historians have
variously described the Mexica and the Inca, and by extension
Indians in general, as defective. They are viewed as weak, irra-
tional, ruled inordinately by superstition, incapable of think-
ing for themselves, degenerate, unreliable, untrustworthy,
passive, and fatalistic. Prescotts characterization of Mon-
tezuma as a simple-minded coward has been recycled time and
again and has been firmly lodged in our heads as symbolic of
all Indians. Cannibalismand human sacrifice are consistently
brought forth as proof of Indian savagery, and both the Mex-
ica and the Inca are portrayed as bloodthirsty and tyrannical,
traits that brought about their downfall. The Indians were
outclassed on the battlefield, outmaneuvered diplomatically,
and lured from their pagan ways with the more enlightened
Christian religion, as evidenced by the mass baptisms that
harvested upward of 10,000 new souls in a matter of hours
(Motolina estimated that he had performed over 400,000
baptisms over the years). Finally, the Indians proved to be
inefficient as laborersso weak that they can only be
employed in tasks requiring little enduranceand had to be
replaced with Negroes, a race robust for labor. In other
words, they didnt even make good slaves.
Yet the native peoples had evolved an impressive variety
of languages and cultures and levels of development, with
two powerful and highly sophisticated empires standing atop
a landscape dotted with towns and villages of all sizes and
configurations. When the Spaniards first descended into the
Valley of Mexico in 1519 they were awestruck. They had never
witnessed anything even remotely similar. And when we saw
all those cities and villages built in the water, wrote Bernal
Daz, and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and
level causeway leading to Mexico [Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco], we
were astounded. Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether
it was not all a dream. By comparison, Madrid at that time
had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants.
All of this intricate diversity began to unravel with the
arrival of three Spanish ships, and events soon grew into a
tragedy too great, and too horrific, to be grasped by the human
imagination. The native peoples today have been reduced to
ethnic minorities mired in chronic poverty. Most of themhave
taken refuge in or been pushed into remote regions, out of
sight, where they lack the most basic social services. They are
without political clout and are now being newly overrun by
multinational oil and mining companies, soybean farmers,
cattle ranchers, and loggers. It is, in effect, the Second Conquest.
But there is some hope this time around. Indian organi-
zations have sprung up to confront the outside threats and they
have begun to assert themselves in national politics in key
areas of LatinAmerica. The age of extreme vulnerability to dis-
ease has passed and, with the exception of a few of the more
isolated tribes, epidemics are no longer a factor. Their increas-
ing involvement in politics has had considerable impact in sev-
eral countries, to the point where non-indigenous elites have
sounded the alarm. The recent election of Evo Morales, an
Aymara, to the presidency of Bolivia is one sign of a resurgence
of indigenous self-confidence and determination.
Certainly, huge economic, political, and economic obsta-
cles still stand in their way. Although Indian peoples are mak-
ing progress, the going is rough and they must still contend
with the powerful prejudices and scurrilous stereotypes of
Indians that have accumulated on Latin Americas collective
consciousness like barnacles on the underbelly of an old ship.
These prejudices are ever-present in daily life, manifesting
themselves in expressions such as Dont behave like an
Indian! when someone behaves stupidly or obnoxiously.
They are also laced throughout the seemingly innocuous his-
tory books our children read in school. Just cast a glance
around and you will see them, everywhere.
Visualizing Columbus Day
The traditional image of Columbuss discovery of the New
World shows the Admiral stepping onto land with a flag in one
hand and a sword in the other. He is surrounded by his fellow
sailors, some of whom are carrying guns and swords. A friar
strides next to Columbus holding a cross on high. The three
Spanish caravels are behind them, bobbing in the sun-drenched
Caribbean. Observing this triumphal scene are several diminu-
tive, semi-naked Indians hiding in the bushes off to the side.
I would like to suggest an alternative image, one that bet-
ter represents what really occurred when the two halves of
the world came together on the morning of October 12, 1492:
Four horsemen spur their steeds off the Spanish ships and
make their way up the beach to high ground. The first horseman
is Pestilence, and he is the most formidable of the lot. His com-
panions are Famine, War, and Death. They pause briefly to sur-
vey the landscape stretching out before them, then set off in the
direction of the nearest community. The natives come out, ten-
tatively at first, to greet them. They are healthy and well formed,
and they invite the strangers to share their food and whatever else
they might desire.
And that was the beginning of their long and terrifying
journey through the heartland of the New World
Mac Chapin is an anthropologist who has worked with
indigenous peoples in Latin America for over four decades.
He is the co-founder and director of the Center for the
Support of Native Lands, a non-profit organization based
in Arlington, Virginia.
www.worldwatch.org November/December 2008
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World Watch 17
For more information about issues raised in this story, visit
www.worldwatch.org/ww/columbusday.
The Meaning of Columbus Day
General reading
Books for general audiences dealing with disease epidemics and population in the Americas in 1492 are Guns,
Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997, W.W. Norton & Co.); 1491: New Revelations of the Americas
Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (2005, Alfred A. Knopf); and Stolen Continents: The New World
Through Indian Eyes by Ronald Wright (1992, Houghton Mifflin Co.).
Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill (1976, Anchor Press/Doubleday) deals with the role of disease
epidemics in affecting the course of world history; and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of
Europe, 900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby (Cambridge University Press, 1986) shows the biological basis for the
spread of European colonialism, with a focus on the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. An earlier book
by Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (originally published in
1972, second edition 2003, Praeger), is a classic and contains a revised version of his 1967 seminal article
Conquistador y Pestilencia: The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great Indian Empires, which
originally appeared in The Hispanic American Historical Review.
Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 14921650 by Noble David Cook (1998, Cambridge Univer-
sity Press) is a comprehensive run-down of the various diseases that flourished in the Americas after European
contact; and Secret Judgments of God: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America, ed. by Noble
David Cook and W. George Lovell (1992, University of Oklahoma Press) contains a useful selection of
articles dealing with epidemics and their effects in colonial Latin America.
The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, edited by William M. Denevan (second edition 1992,
University of Wisconsin Press), and Denevans article The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Ameri-
cas in 1492 (1992, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82:369-85) contain population
estimates of the native peoples at the time of European contact. Numbers from Nowhere: The American
Indian Contact Population Debate by David Henige (1998, University of Oklahoma Press) provides a
detailed, and highly critical, assessment of attempts to estimate pre-Hispanic populations.
Endnote sources
Page 8
He called the Admirals landfall.
Message from President George Bush in Christopher Columbus and the Great Voyage of Discovery,
JoAnne B. Weisman and Kenneth M. Deitch (Lowell, Mass.: Discovery Enterprises, Ltd., 1990).
the vanguard of the great European Advance
Salvador de Madariaga, Hernn Corts (1941) ), quoted in John A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 82.
...Aztecs were mentally deranged...
Maurice Collis, Corts and Montezuma (London: Faber & Faber, 1954), p. 137.
...in the same league with the Nazis....
Miguel Leon-Portilla, La Filosofia Nahuatl (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, 1956), p.
177.
Page 9
Then he went on to observe: how easy it would be to convert these people.
Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner (New York: New American Library, 1942), p.
43.
Here the narrative is transformed into a story that is too startling for the probabilities demanded by
ction.
William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Bantam Books, 1964 edition), p.
610.
Page 10
Beyond this, the Spaniards greatly outclassed the Indians with their superior military technology.
Robert Ryal Miller, Mexico: A History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), p. 92.
Page 12
Prescott informs us that the Mexica were doomed.
William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Bantam Books, 1964 edition), p.
606.
Yet we cannot regret the fall of an empire,
Prescott, p. 610.
By contrast, his Mexica counterpart is portrayed as dim-witted, vacillating, cowardly, and effeminate, a
pathetic gure.
Prescott, p. 675.
Even The Rough Guide to Mexico.
As an additional example, a recent obituary for the anthropologist William T. Sanders, who specialized
in early Mesoamerican civilizations, contains the following comment: In part inspired by reading
William H. Prescotts classic book History of the Conquest of Mexico, he earned his doctorate in
anthropology from Harvard in 1957 (New York Times, July 16, 2008).
Pages 12 and 13
The school textbooks they eventually produced.
Enrique Krauze, La Presencia del Pasado (Mxico: Tusquets Editores, 2005), pp. 86 and 87.
Page 13
In the late nineteenth century, the educator and historian Justo Sierra.
Quoted in Mara del Rosario Peludo Gmez, Enemigos de la Patria y guerras inevitables: El discurso
de la identidad nacional en Mxico y Espaa, Instituto Universitario de Inestigacin Ortgega y Gasset,
Biblioteca Virtual Espaola, 2006, p. 8.
And in Breve Historia de Mxico (1937).
The same year, respected Guatemalan historian and novelist Salom Gil commented in Historia de la
Amrica Central: When the Conquest of America took place Spain was perhaps the strongest and most
advanced nation in the world. It brought to these countries a religion that was more pure and spiritual
than the idolatry and animal worship that ruled in them, with the odious and barbaric practice of human
sacrice and cannibalism. It brought civil law that it had received from the most cultured and great
nation of antiquity; a sonorous and harmonious language, a civilization, in short, that was a reection of
Greece and Rome (Coleccin Juan Chapn Tomo I. Guatemala, Julio de 1937, p. 552).
Similar arguments owed from the pens of North Americas historians
Hubert Herring declares in his A History of Latin America from the Beginnings to the Present that Spain
did not introduce cruelty and war: exploitation was an old story to the Indians. Spain did not destroy
human freedom: it had never been enjoyed by Maya, Aztec, Inca, or Chibcha [Colombian Indians].
Spain did not destroy ancient systems of noble moral standards: the Indians were masters of gluttony,
drunkenness, sexual excesses, and rened torture. Spain brought changes to the Indian world, some for
ill, some for good. It is possible that the Indians of Mexico and Peru had more to eat under Spanish
rule, more protection against each other and against their masters, more security of life and happiness
than they had had under Indian nobles and priests (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961, p. 153).
In his enthusiastic introduction to a 1964 edition of Prescotts history of Mexico, Henry Bamford
Parkes states: it can be agreed that the Spaniards brought to Mexico a higher civilization higher in
its technological development, its intellectual and aesthetic heritage, and its political and religious insti-
tutions (p. 10).
In Central Mexico, writes John Edwin Fagg in Latin America: A General History.
John Edwin Fagg, Latin America: A General History (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 131.
Within these Indian kingdoms and communities, writes Edwin Williamson.
Edwin Williamson, Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 86.
The top of the pyramid had been lopped off, writes Marshall Eakin.
Marshall Eakin, The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), p. 74. Even Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa rolls up his sleeves and steps into the ring with
an essay titled Questions of Conquest, published in Harpers Magazine in 1990. He claims that pre-
Hispanic Indian society in the Andes was ant-like and similar to a beehive; the masses had a follow-
the-leader mentality and lacked the ability to make their own decisions. With the Spanish victory, they
transferred automatically from the Incas to the new masters. (This essay ended up in a collection of
the best essays of the year, compiled by Joyce Carol Oates: The Best American Essays 1991, New York:
Ticknor & Fields.)
Prescott injects but one brief description of a terrible epidemic.
Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 479.
When the Spaniards enter Tenochtitlan.
Ibid., p. 587.
It is generally accepted today that 5080 million people were living in the Americas in 1492.
These gures have been, and still are, debated endlessly by scholars. William Denevan has taken an even
hand in reviewing the conicting estimates and has come up with this gure; see The Pristine Myth:
The Landscape of the Americas in 1492, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1992)
82:369-85; and The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd ed., Madison: University of Wiscon-
sin Press. Also see David Henige Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population
Debate (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press), 1998.
Page 14
Community death tolls of 50 to 70 percent. and Soon after they came ashore they morphed into
what epidemiologists call virgin soil epidemics.
See Readings, above.
And then came famine.
Lpez de Gmara, quoted in Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650,
p. 67.
After our fathers and grandfathers succumbed.
From Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 16, quoted in Crosby 1967, p. 337.
Page 15
If they had not made their appearance when they did, neither Corts nor Pizarro would have
prevailed.
McNeill 1976, Crosby 1967.
Hugh Thomas positions himself at the other extreme of the argument.
Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Corts, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon and Schus-
ter, 1993), pp. 741-2; Footnote 78.
He concludes: The difference between the numbers of conquistadors and Mexica dead.
Ibid., pp. 5289.
A similar approach is evident.
See, for example, J.H. Elliott, The Spanish Conquest and Settlement of America in The Cambridge
History of Latin America, Vol. 1 (Colonial Latin America), ed. by Leslie Bethell (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 149206; Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty: Corts and the Conquest of
Mexico in Representations 33 (1991), pp. 65100; and Ross Hassig The Collision of Two Worlds,
in The Oxford History of Mexico, ed. by Michael C. Meyer & William H. Beezley (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000), pp. 79112.
The apparition of Antichrist was announced many times.
Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Gloucestershire, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1991), p. 223.
Page 17
Finally, the Indians proved to be inefficient as laborers.
Eric Williams, Economics, Not Racism, as the Root of Slavery, in The Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. by David
Northrup (Florence, KY: Wadsworth Publishing, 2001), p. 4. Williams was a prominent politician and histo-
rian from Trinidad-Tobago.
And when we saw all those cities and villages built in the water
Bernal Daz del Castillo (translated and edited by J.M. Cohen), The Conquest of New Spain (New York:
Penguin Books, 1974), p. 214.