Through Their Eyes: Depictions of Human-Nature Relationships in the Americas

The European colonial urge to document and comprehend the Americas would inevitably extend to the natural world and the people that lived within it. Their characterization of these human-nature relationships is particularly revealing of European motivations and colonial understandings of the time. In discussing several colonial texts, including Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590), Francesco Clavigero’s La storia antica del Messico (1780) (published in English as The History of Mexico, 1787) and the Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia by Francisco Hernandez (1651), these depictions of nature and their meanings come to light.

It must also be acknowledged that all the works presented today were published by European Christian authors with a European readership in mind. These are forms of knowledge that inherently disprivilege and oftentimes disregard altogether the agency of Indigenous communities. What is presented, therefore, is filtered through a European lens. The information that has been gathered and preserved in these archives are the product of violent colonial acts, ones that have sought to erase Indigenous communities and identities from history. Acknowledging this historical reality is critical to understanding these artifacts and their depictions of Indigenous people within their ideological context.

An integral part of the European colonial project was an effort to understand and catalog the natural world of the Americas. The late 16th century saw a conscious effort made by colonial powers to collect and publish knowledge of the Americas for a variety of purposes, including commodification of natural resources as well as scientific curiosity. The resulting outpour of literature presented the Americas in a way legible to European readership, often sacrificing accuracy and feeding into European social and political narratives in the process.

The lavishly-illustrated Nova plantarum, first published in 1651, classified American plants and animals into a western catalog of knowledge. Each species was extracted from its environment, depicted largely independent from its natural context, and paired with its Nahuatl and Latin names followed by a description of the species with particular emphasis on its relevant medicinal uses. These descriptions often included comparisons to similar European species in order to contextualize unfamiliar species for European readership. Organized by taxonomic group, the Nova plantarum presented a conceptualization of American nature designed by and for European scholarship. Even as some Nahuatl was included, Nahuatl names were recorded in the Roman alphabet and were meant to supplement the use of Latin names. While much of the information made its way to publication from Indigenous sources, the Nova plantarum as a whole was not concerned with preserving Indigenous ways of knowing. Rather, it curated Indigenous knowledge for inclusion into Western structures.

Similarly, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, published in 1590, consistently referenced European plants and animals to aid in describing American species. While not as extensive or methodical as the encyclopedic Nova plantarum, its presentation of the natural world is written from a distinctly European perspective for a distinctly European audience. In contrast to the Nova plantarum, A Briefe and True Report includes more explicit mention of Indigenous communities and their ways of interacting with nature. However, even these practices were presented in contrast to European standards and thus European and Indigenous cultures were conceptualized in opposition to one another.

While European literature on the Americas was driven in part by genuine curiosity and the quest for scientific knowledge, the information gathered by European scholars was also informed by the colonial conquest and exploitation of American resources. Francisco Hernández, whose extensive notes and research of American flora and fauna formed the foundation of the Nova plantarum, was ordered by King Philip II of Spain to find plants of medicinal and economic value. These direct orders from King Philip II formed the basis for knowledge collection and reveal the Nova plantarum's role in the colonial project and its exploitative relationship with Indigenous peoples of Mexico and the natural world. While intellectual curiosity may have driven the creation and publication of the Nova plantarum, the information gathered and eventually published was necessarily informed by this colonial motive.

Similarly, the authorship of A Briefe and True Report and the context of its creation place it within the framework of conquest and exploitation. The book largely concerns itself with selling the adventure of colonialism, advising the reader directly that learning of the natural world of the Americas “may returne you profit and gaine, bee it either by inhabiting & planting or otherwise.” This explicitly establishes colonization as the aim of the book, presenting the natural world as a resource to be exploited for personal economic gain.

The History of Mexico was created under different circumstances. In contrast to the Nova plantarum and A Briefe and True Report, the author of The History of Mexico, Francesco Saverio Clavigero, was born and raised in Mexico, learning Nahuatl at a young age and later teaching Indigenous youth at the Colegio de San Gregorio. These experiences with Indigenous Mexican culture coupled with close study of Aztec codices informed Clavigero’s depiction of the Americas in The History of Mexico, often describing Indigenous people more sympathetically and with greater cultural awareness. Clavigero’s text also includes maps of the Americas using Nahua names and iconography, perhaps indicating a greater understanding and respect for Indigenous peoples. That being said, Clavigero’s role as a Jesuit missionary and scholar situates him within the colonial context. His depictions of the natural world are therefore written with the assumption of European claims to American land and the utilization of American resources by European powers.

As Europeans envisioned their ideal forms of interaction with nature, they also made note of how Indigenous populations interacted with the natural world around them – although this acknowledgment came in various forms, and with different motivations.

A Briefe and True Report made note of these interactions as a part of the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people. Illustrations and writings alike were devoted to describing the various tools that were used in hunting, fishing, cooking and farming, many times in a tone of amazement and interest.

In the Nova plantarum, the text often uses the blanket terms “Indians” or “natives" when referring to Native individuals or communities, removing their identities and agency in the process – all of which was done with the aim of presenting the purely ‘scientific’ knowledge compiled in the volume. When it does identify specific Native practices, they are almost always in reference to the medicinal uses of the nature depicted in order to emphasize the economic viability of his project. Moreover, the flora and fauna were presented using what Janice Neri has termed "specimen logic," or entirely out of their environmental contexts to highlight the perceived artistic/scientific accuracy of the depiction. Meanwhile, the text provides only occasional and brief mentions of each species’ significance to Mexico's Indigenous communities.

Indigenous Americans, from animist hunter gatherers to polytheistic farmers, understood the land in a multitude of distinct ways that contrasted with European Christian understandings. Colonization saw the imposition of European land tenure practices on conquered or otherwise acquired territory. At the same time, having some working knowledge of Indigenous relationships with the land was sought after by Europeans who wanted to make the land legible and monetize it on their own terms. These interpretations of Indigenous land-human relationships, widely published and read in Europe, both served to discredit their legitimacy in the Christian worldview and interpret them for future knowledge production. In The History of Mexico, Clavigero both praises and demeans the native Nahuatl-speakers for their perceived closeness with nature, describing them as heartier and healthier than European-descended creoles like himself. He writes, “they meet dangers with intrepidity when they proceed from natural causes, but they are easily terrified by the stern look of a Spaniard.” Perhaps most indicative, the section on the people of Mexico is the final few pages of the chapter dedicated to flora and fauna. And while the latter volumes deal extensively with Indigenous history and culture, and the author declares his respect for Nahua peoples on numerous occasions, they are nonetheless contextualized first as a native species.

Indigenous populations and their relationships with nature were also associated with notions of ‘savagery,’ as Thomas Hariot continuously emphasized in A Briefe and True Report. Their practices and beliefs were viewed as lesser counterparts to ‘superior’ European technology, and any form of relation with nature was looked down upon and disregarded. Very little attempt was made to document Indigenous conceptualizations of nature and its meanings; this fact can be attributed at least partly to European ignorance and difficulties in communication, particularly upon first encounter.

Implicit to the colonial project was the establishment of European ownership of the Americas. European knowledge production played a critical role in this endeavor, as information about the Americas was readily weaponized for colonial aims. Through depictions of the natural world, European publications often contributed to the erasure of Indigenous claims to land and resources while also establishing European authority over the natural world and the way it was utilized.

One of the most visible ways European powers established ownership of the Americas can be seen in their naming and categorization of American nature. While sources like the Nova plantarum and A Briefe and True Report used Indigenous names to refer to flora and fauna, they appear as supplements to newly-assigned Latin and English names, rather than words to be used independently. In addition, the limited use of Indigenous language is overshadowed by the ways in which European authors worked to fit American flora and fauna into a larger system of categorization compatible with Western forms of knowledge. In this way, the imposition of European names and forms of knowing extend an ownership claim to the Americas that furthered the colonial project.

Similarly, the emphasis on plants considered useful to the European enterprise assigned value to American nature based on its ability to be monetized and exploited by colonial powers. Descriptions of rich mineral resources in A Briefe and True Report as well as an intense focus on the uses of plants like tobacco, corn, cacao, chili, and tomatoes in the Nova plantarum created a narrative of the immense potential of American natural resources that propelled European expansion and participated in subjecting Indigenous peoples and the natural world to exploitation and commodification.

As we come to think more critically about these texts, we must also acknowledge the process by which all of this information was gathered and obtained. Earlier European authors, like Thomas Hariot in A Briefe and True Report, had grasped a rudimentary understanding of local languages and used this to their advantage as they interacted with Indigenous communities. They drew information from their voyages and interactions throughout America, documenting their findings within their works. But this understanding did not come without the significant contribution of Indigenous translators, interpreters, and informants. These texts would not have been possible without Indigenous knowledge and contributions, the specifics of which are difficult, and at times impossible, to recover.

Indigenous people have been excluded from receiving due credit for their contributions, despite the pivotal role they played in European documentation of the American natural world. Under the colonial era, several Indigenous individuals were brought to England and were sponsored as 'diplomatic delegates'; they were taught English for exploration and exploitative purposes. These 'delegates' were used to further the colonial effort, their training and employment all part of the indoctrination necessary to ensure obedience; though, of course, these Native individuals rarely succumbed willingly or completely to colonial will. Either way, these individuals served as cultural intermediaries between Indigenous communities and Europeans, allowing the extraction and exchange of information.

Even the Nova plantarum, widely renowned as a feat of Western science, could not have been accomplished without the significant contributions of the Nahua people of Mexico. The illustrations within the book were based on Nahua paintings commissioned by Hernández and incorporated Nahuatl names and knowledge all throughout (with a Nahuatl-Latin dictionary at the end of the book).

While the exact extent of Indigenous contribution is hard to quantify given the biases of the written archive, it is clear that none of these European ventures could have been achieved without the deep knowledge of Indigenous peoples. Their knowledge was appropriated and altered to fit European conventions – a practice that prompts us to think about what has been lost. Many texts published later in the colonial era, including the History of Mexico, drew upon earlier colonial texts in obtaining their information, taking their word as fact. This proves problematic as we reflect on these forms of knowledge today.

The question of what has been lost must be necessarily confronted when examining archives that deal with the Indigenous Americas, where European-printed Indigenous subjects are rarely depicted on their own terms or endowed with their own cultural voice. Every ethnography, catalog, or history of the Indigenous Americas is a kind of translation. And due to the absence of Indigenous voices in these European publications, the destruction of Indigenous lifeways, and the bias of the authors, much is lost in that translation. What is considered “lost” today, however, only reflects modern historical perspective. During the time of publication, some of this information might have been deemed too confusing, extraneous, or subversive to the publication, so it was sometimes omitted by European authors. Even works that sought to establish themselves as legitimate histories and ethnographies nonetheless stand inside continued conceptions of how Indigenous knowledge fits inside the colonial project.

Edited and Adapted for Americana by Michal Loren.

This essay and the related annotations belong to the student-led project Illustrating Knowledge of the Americas in European Print, 1590–1781. Learn more at the project homepage: https://americana.jcblibrary.org/Illustrating_Knowledge/