Coveted Knowledge: Indigenous Practice and Production in the Americas as Portrayed by Early Modern European Print

Drawing upon first-hand accounts of various European explorers in the Americas during the Early Modern Period, and their documentation of the knowledge forms of the Indigenous populations they encountered, this project aims to explore author biases and other influences to equip readers to differentiate between honest and exploitative materials. Such documentation ranges from descriptions of both pre-and post-conquest Indigenous practices and rituals to depictions of how the Indigenous populations engaged with the natural world and practiced certain crafts. More particularly, the works drawn from include travel diaries, ethnographic descriptions, and religious accounts. Though all such works are the product of different motivations, they are alike in their roots – they served to educate European audiences on the knowledge, practices, and production of the Early Modern Americas.

Despite any efforts to objectively depict and display knowledge systems and subsequent exchanges of knowledge between the Indigenous Americans and the European colonizing forces, the power dynamics of coloniality subjectively shaped the means by which Indigenous knowledge was codified. The produced documentation of encountered civilizations and knowledge systems was often shaped by the inherent biases of European authors preemptively assuming Indigenous Americans to be either savages or, at best, raw versions of the “refined” Europeans. The purity of the documentation was also tainted by pressures on the authors to satisfy patrons sponsoring their travels. Indeed, authors often tailored their writing with the self-serving aim of convincing their patrons of the inherent worth of the peoples examined, whether as a spiritual, economic, or power-based return on investment, and/or to satisfy other market expectations related to introducing the Americas and its peoples to European audiences.

Many Early Modern European publications claimed to accurately document Indigenous life in the Americas, both pre and post-conquest. However, more often than not, European authors categorized Indigenous knowledge forms and cultural production by what was useful to the colonizing force, what was deemed interesting regardless of utility, and what was deemed harmful and necessary to eradicate in the name of “morality.” This perspective must be acknowledged when it comes to discussing the documentation of Indigenous practice and production.

The knowledge coveted and categorized by European colonists and “explorers” is written in a wide variety of Early Modern volumes (those of Frézier, Harriot, de Bry, Lafitau, Clavijero, and Hernández to name a few). For example, the ways Amédée-François Frézier chose to depict the Indigenous practices and knowledge forms he encountered in his travel journal A Voyage to the South-Sea, and Along the Coasts of Chile and Peru, in the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714, reveals how he valued them. Frézier was a French military engineer, mathematician, spy, and explorer under the French King Louis XIV. While his travel journal aims to be informative and honest in its portrayals, Frézier’s documentation of Indigenous peoples and practices is inherently tainted by both his own biases and viceregal opinion and treatment of Indigenous knowledge and production following the conquests of Chile and Peru.

Frézier was sent on a royal mission to collect information and spy on Spanish ports and fortifications along the Pacific coastline of South America, as far North as Callao, the port of Lima. King Louis XIV commissioned the travel journal to identify the land and Indigenous forms of knowledge coveted by the Spaniards in the Americas. The mission was inspired both by Louis XIV’s grandson now sitting on the throne of Spain and allowing long sought out access of the Americas to the French, and by the threat that Spanish dissent towards their new king may cause an overthrow of power and lead to a conflict between the two European nations. Louis XIV appreciated that Frézier, given his background (especially, his knowledge of fortresses and other military structures), would be most capable of making valuable hydrographical observations of the region.

To further satisfy King Louis XIV’s appetite for intelligence with possible military application, Frézier's journal also provided insight into the practices of Indigenous tribes both within and outside of viceregal society. Frézier made special note of indicated dissent towards Spanish rule that could be leveraged by the French should they invade the Viceroyalties. He noted the forms of oppression imposed by the Spanish from which the French could offer to free the Indigenous peoples in exchange for their support in a potential conflict. Frézier also commented on the loyalty, intelligence, and military prowess of the Indigenous Americans.

Similar to A Voyage to the South-Sea, Joseph-François Lafitau’s ethnographic study of the Haudenosaunee — or Iroquois — peoples of Eastern Canada, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, is corrupted by a European ambition for power and ownership over the “New World.” While Frézier’s travel journal documents Indigenous knowledge and local land in terms of its potential for European economic prosperity, Lafitau’s perspective is oriented more around faith and spirituality. Commissioned by the French state as part of a Jesuit expedition, Lafitau’s analysis centers chiefly around the ceremonial practices of the Haudenosaunee. However, like most all colonial accounts of the early Americas, his documentation is not a straightforward transmission of knowledge, but instead focuses, at times subversively and at others explicitly, on how the Indigenous populations may be of benefit to the French throughout their exploits in a new, foreign, and trying landscape. Lafitau’s interpretation of the Indigenous people contrasts with that of previous explorers. In writings from original travelers like Oviedo, Columbus, and Cabeza de Vaca, the people of the southeast Americas are defined by qualities totally and innately different from those of Europeans. Columbus included in his journal that the Taino people of Hispaniola bore no resemblance to any specimen before identified by Pliny or Marco Polo, and therefore, were compared to creatures of a new and mythic world (Jane, 40). Hence, the narrative of “monstrous man” came to be attached to the Indigenous of the Americas, peoples unlike any previously known. Lafitau also quotes ancient European scholars in his analysis of the Indigenous, but does so in order to make a contrasting argument. According to an analysis of the book by David Harvey, Lafitau’s central argument is that all members of the human species are of the same holy seed (Harvey, 77) . Referencing classic canonical texts from Greece, Lafitau asserts that the Haudenosaunee were similar, in appearance and spiritual tradition, to ancient Europeans and some Asian societies (see pages 125, 277, and 305). By comparing the Indigenous peoples of America to his European ancestors, Lafitau suggests that the Haudenosaunee exist on the same linear evolution of humanity, only thousands of years behind Europeans. Conveniently, his argument acts to support the greater European ambition of conversion in the Americas. Because they are of the same seed, Lafitau insists, it would be the moral responsibility of European settlers to ‘enlighten’ the Haudenosaunee, who were expected to be susceptible to the Jesuit faith. In most all European accounts of the Indigenous, interpretation is affected by ulterior interests, however, in the case of Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, Lafitau’s affected interpretation is non-conventional.

Similarly, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia was also part of a mission to inspire potential English investors and settlers. The author Thomas Harriot was a mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and philosopher. He and the book’s illustrator John White both participated in an English expedition to the Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina in June 1585. In 1588, Thomas Harriot published in England a small octavo edition of A Briefe and True Report that served as propaganda for Raleigh’s colony. Harriot presented Virginia as a land abundant of commercially viable and edible plants and animals, and enlightened his English audience with practical information necessary for their survival. He divided his catalog of a variety of the flora and fauna into three parts: “merchantable commodities,” which included silk, wine, and copper; “commodities to yield for victual and sustenance of man’s life,” which included maize, fruits, and fish; and finally “other things that would be useful for those which shall plant and inhabit to know of,” such as timber and lime. It is obvious that all three sections of Harriot detailed catalog were speaking to the English audience about the New World as a land of wealth that they could explore and exploit. It is worth noting that the pioneers of English colonization of the New World were not paid wages but were promised shares in the colony's profits and grants of land as well as a voice in their own civil government (Sistrom). Therefore, for Harriot and White, who later returned to Roanoke in 1587 as governor, their goal was to bring in more European support and investment—and they successfully did so, by crafting a coherent argument in favor of colonization and describing the means by which colonies would benefit their sponsors, settlers, and the nation, which arguably lead to the landing at Jamestown as England's first permanent settlement in America in 1607. We can now better understand A Briefe and True Report, keeping in mind the historical context and the author’s biases.

Comparable to the other volumes in also being influenced by the desires of their patrons to control and exploit the Americas was Francisco Hernández’s Nova Plantarum, Animalium et Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia. The naturalist guide to the Americas had been commissioned from Hernández by King Philip II of Spain to survey the power and quantity of medicines in his new territories. With its origins, it is evident that the Spanish Empire’s obvious desire to further dominate trade markets in both knowledge and in economic output prompted the volume and its contents, however objective, was occluded by this. Despite Hernández’s interactions with Indigenous knowledge keepers in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, or present-day Mexico, guiding the production of the work, its use was inherently violent due to the patron's intent to exploit it. By lending this information to the Spanish crown, European imperial powers gained a better understanding of the workings of American agricultural and medicinal cultivation practices, encouraging further exploration and exploitation of American resources. This expansion of viceregal power would only add to the erasure of Indigenous peoples, practices, and ways of knowing.

La Storia Antica del Messico, published by Mexican historian and Jesuit friar Francisco Javier Clavijero Echegaray, is but another publication that took advantage of the European intellectual market that came to surround the Americas. Clavijero was a historian of Mexico both pre- and post- conquest and composed his work with the goal of dispelling the insular and polarized accounts of the region he encountered. Though he had set about composing his own history of Mexico due to restore truth to the false accounts that permeated the market, Clavijero wrote for an audience that he knew would value and legitimize his knowledge. However, despite his enterprise having the seemingly noble, objective goal of de-stigmatizing the Americas, Clavijero, like his contemporary counterparts, was not always truthful to his sources. The volume was yet another text that utilized racial stereotypes and false accounts of Indigenous pre-conquest religious practice to encourage further conversion to Christianity. To further this goal of encouraging evangelization in the Americas, Clavijero also drew extensively from exaggerated accounts of Mexica ritual sacrifice to further stimulate the moral and religious justifications of colonial enterprise.

Although the authors of the books in our project embarked on different missions, they invariably put great effort into describing the Indigenous people’s production practices to their European audiences. A Brief and True Report is one of the earliest English accounts of North America’s physical and material practices. Following a long list of “merchantable commodities” mentioned above, the second chapter of the book is dedicated to “The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in that Part of America now Called Virginia, Discovered by Englishmen,” where twenty-three subsections include marvelous engravings by Theodor de Bry based on John White’s watercolor portraits of Virginia Indians and scenes of everyday life he had seen first-hand.

While Lafitau’s analysis in Mœurs des Sauvages focusses principally on religious belief, he also touches upon material practice and tradition, at least when the two disciplines intersect. Lafitau’s illustrator frequently highlights the material tools of the Haudenosaunee, placing particular emphasis on the use of turtle shells in the construction of tools (see page 258). As with most all of the book’s illustrations, Lafitau’s depiction of the Indigenous people is tremendously more dignified (at least by European metrics) than what was stereotyped at the time. However, the unconventional representation of the Indigenous people may have also been done for divisive intentions, to compare the Iroquois to the Europeans in order to prove the validity and necessity for Jesuit conversion.

Abundant notes on Indigenous Andean cultural production reflect Frézier’s aforementioned interest in accumulating information regarding life in the Viceroyalties. Though the exploitation of natural resources is a common thread seen throughout all of the focus objects, Frézier’s attentions span output of gold and silver and other practice or production that would benefit European powers. Frézier’s volume documents certain Indigenous practices that he finds of interest or that, in some way, relate to information he knows of a European past and present. The book, in its sections on Indigenous communities, focuses on the acquiring and production of food and drink, crop cultivation, games, and boat and pottery making.

Documentation of immaterial Indigenous American practice, particularly religion, was common in European print. Authors would use written and illustrated depictions to encourage further evangelization in the Americas or changes in already existing power structures, frequently utilizing racial stereotypes and false accounts of Indigenous pre-conquest practice.

Lafitau’s 5-year ethnographic study of the Haudenosaunee people of Eastern Canada focused on religion. He drew on Western classic canonical texts to compare his Indigenous subjects to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Through his comparison, Lafitau makes the argument that the Indigenous (and all humans) are of the same seed, only thousands of years behind on a linear scale of progress and cultural evolution. Therefore, Lafitau asserts, the Haudenosaunee are not only capable of adopting the Christian Faith, but the European colonists have a moral and holy obligation to convert peoples on a mass scale. What spiritual practices are mentioned are likened to a European past.

Religion is an important theme that runs throughout A Briefe and True Report, although the majority of the images and text document physical production. The authors were constantly forging connections between European religions and the spiritual practices of the Indigenous people. The book began with a frontispiece of Adam and Eve, forcefully juxtaposed alongside images of Virginian people and their idols. As de Bry said in his letter “To the gentle Reader,” these biblical figures were banished from Paradise because of their “disobedience.” Like the people of “savage nations,” with which de Bry referred to the Virginian people, they showed great self-sufficiency in providing for their own needs. Harriot went on to discuss details about the native people’s religious, ritual, and burial practices. He introduced the Indigenous belief system to the audience: “they believe that there are many Gods which they call Mantóac; ... they think that all the gods are of human shape; ... they believe also the immortality of the soul,” but he failed to recognize the deep culture and traditions of native Virginians and portrayed them as people who were yet to be enlightened by the knowledge of “the true and only GOD,” while himself was on the mission to “make declaration of the contents of the Bible.”

Frézier’s account, similar to his documentation of Indigenous American craft knowledge and material practice, surveys the immaterial (and scant spiritual, unlike the other volumes) practice of the tribes he meets while sailing along the Pacific coast. His account never truly departs from his mission, recording notes of discord in interactions between Indigenous populations and Spanish colonists that may be profitable if France decides to attack the viceroyalties. Frézier’s book addresses an Indigenous population under colonial rule, attempting to preserve their cultural practices and memories of a pre-conquest past. Of course, the volume is tainted in terms of reciting cultural and spiritual practices — the Spanish had been in Chile and Peru for over a century at the time of his voyage, and most of the Indigenous Americans he encounters had already been converted to Christianity and, in many ways, assimilated into a hybridized cultural mindset. Nonetheless, Frézier attempts to uncover aspects of Indigenous knowledge and practice that have survived under the hegemony of Spanish Catholicism, despite his own objectives and perspectives obstructing his account from being unbiased.

European documentation of Indigenous knowledge and practice were frequently produced without consultation with Indigenous populations beyond basic demonstration or discussion. Instead of providing additional research or requesting the assistance of Indigenous knowledge keepers in their volumes, European authors chose to use their own frameworks to understand and/or present knowledge to their audiences. Because these works were written to educate European audiences on the knowledge, practices, and production of the Early Modern Americas in this manner, the information they present is frequently inaccurate and written to cater to European mindsets and perspectives. This practice reflects a deliberate effort to make the Americas more accessible to Europeans rather than to communicate more complex truths of Indigenous knowledge and practice.

It must also be acknowledged that cross-Atlantic voyages to the “New World” were expensive. European patrons invested fortunes, and therefore, the explorers commissioned were under the intense pressures of making their travels financially satisfying. We must then consider how economic pretenses affect and or adulterate the way that travelers wrote about the early Americas. To what extent are “New World” documents an honest and genuine transmission of new and foreign information and to what extent are explorers presenting to their patrons a brochure for potential economic exploitation in an attempt to prove the financial worth of their travels? Written documents that refrained from an economic focus were often denounced and the authors of blatantly pro-Indigenous texts were, in certain cases, threatened with excommunication from their motherlands. Similar to Francois Lafitau, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote a less alienating and more humanizing account of Indigenous civilizations after traversing the whole of southern North America. In his book, Castaways, Cabeza de Vaca’s tone towards the Indigenous people is celebratory, writing that he felt great camaraderie with the peoples who provided shelter and hospitality on foreign soil. Upon returning to Spain, Cabeza de Vaca was admonished by his patrons, and was later threatened with exile and forced labor in Northern Africa (Nuñez, xix). How would Nuñez’s experience have affected the trend and tones of later “New World” ethnographies? The intentions of Francois Lafitau in Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, are not one-sided. While his stance does serve to usher in the expansion of the Jesuit Catholic missions in the Americas at the expense of Native tradition, Lafitau’s writing does also appear as a genuine interest in non-divisive academics. Lafitau’s 5-year ethnography was heralded by the French historian Pierre-Francios-Xavier, whose outward admiration for the work resulted in its increased sales throughout Europe. Xavier criticized the maltreatment of the Indigenous population during the American conquest and adamantly spoke against “a life of suffering and deprivation for the conversion of Indian souls” (Fenton, 2). While even the validity of Xaviers approach should be questioned and scrutinized for possible subversive rhetoric, Lafitau’s ethnographic work was not exclusively celebrated by those who funded its creation. Although mechanisms of control are inarguably at play in Lafitau’s book, they are not the sole fixture of his writing. While readers of early European accounts of the Americas should remain heavily skeptical of the portrayal of Indigenous knowledge and practice, a critical reading can still yield illuminating information for modern scholars of pre-colonial American life.

The travel diary of Frézier is situated in a similar position as that of Lafitau, baring outside influences that mechanize control over the narrative and information presented. The edition of A Voyage to the South-Sea, and Along the Coasts of Chile and Peru, in the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714, published in 1717 and within the collection of the John Carter Brown Library, is a translation of the original French into English and carries with it additional information surrounding the audiences Frézier’s narrative is meant to serve. A preface details the motivations for the work's translation. Jonah Bowyer had the book printed for sale in his book shop, the Rose, on Ludgate Street, London. In his letter that follows the book’s preface, Edmond Halley commends Jonah Boyer for undertaking the English translation of the book as he believed that English readers would want to acquaint themselves with the seas and the peoples in the Americas and further inquire “what may be of use.” This curiosity is further reflected in the preface, as it describes how so little is known to all of Europe of the Americas aside from what Spain makes public of their colonies. The viceroyalties are considered a land of wonder to a broader European readership, an insight into a land and a people coveted by the Spanish. All information presented by Frézier is what will be accepted as truth by an audience that largely has no experience, only expectations, of a land they do not know.

The book served not only as an account specifically devised for the king and as a travel diary to be marketed towards an inquisitive public, but also as a book to be consumed by other voyagers. Naval narratives were often taken to sea and read by other seafarers, serving as instructional texts for both shipboard authority and scientific observation (Heinsen, Others Sat Murmuring and Idle upon the Deck, 1-2). It is for this reason that most of what the author chooses to depict consists of coastlines and port layouts in addition to the military and economic information for the crown. Not only is Frézier’s account tainted by his mission and his already present biases and categorization of what is useful, but the information he presents itself is also largely objective and devoid of outside perspectives as the work aims to be informational for unfamiliar sailors and a source of wonder for unfamiliar readers. What Frézier believes to be useful or interesting, however objective it may be or however truthful it may be to Indigenous knowledge and practice is presented in a way that is easily digestible and no other information that would not interest his consumers accompanies it.

The Nova Plantarum diverged from many of the publications discussed as, despite its being engineered to satiate the desire of the Spanish Crown to familiarize itself with the plants and animals of Mexico and how they could be cultivated for economic gain, its presentation of information was far more encyclopedic and objective. Philip II did not accept the commissioned volume because of Hernández’s use of Indigenous terms for the plants and animals he encountered and his Native printed images, deeming the work disorganized and too sympathetic towards the Indigenous Americans. It was only when Spain fully consolidated its power over the Viceroyalty of New Spain over 70 years later that the Nova Plantarum could be printed and distributed though a circuitous process via the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. However, despite the view Philip II held regarding the sympathies of the volume, the book nonetheless was crafted for a specific audience that only cared for the usage of the natural resources of Indigenous people and new methods of healing that could be commodified.

Clavijero’s La Storia Antica del Messico, as mentioned prior, served both to rectify false histories and satisfy curious European readers about the happenings of the Americas. Further, the text sought to further argue the case for religious missions in the area, calling upon a falsified cruel Mexica past that could only be solved through the moral teachings of Christianity. To both these ends Clavijero describes the Mexica people he catalogues as a fascinating “other” reminiscent of past European societies, such as that of the Romans. The logic in such a depiction is twofold: (i) to instill in the market he writes for a drive to modernize Indigenous people through the proliferation of religious, colonial institutions, and (ii) to romanize the Indigenous Mexica meant to make the societies of the Americas all the more familiar to a European audience. In this desire to market a pre-colonial past in a way that can be easily understood by European readers and lend itself to further colonial enterprise, Clavijero, like the other authors discussed, corrupts his purportedly genuine account for the purposes of easier understanding and evangelization.

When Indigenous knowledge is organized and presented in print for Early Modern European audiences, the information depicted is inevitably tainted by biases and markets, as well as the overarching purpose of the publication. Despite any efforts to objectively display the Americas by the Europeans who chronicle their encounters and exchanges, the power dynamics of coloniality shape the ways the knowledge they hope to display is structured and shown. Any apparent desires to know the truth of Indigenous practice and knowledge presented in these texts is occluded through the perspectives and powers that document them. However, despite these pitfalls, the documentation provided by European accounts richly displays the politics of Early Modern colonial exchange and the ways in which information is codified. Further, these volumes are frequently the only written sources that contemporary historians and Indigenous communities have of pre-colonial and post-conquest pasts, with the stories of so many Indigenous knowledge keepers being silenced by colonial enterprises as well as time itself. Thus, in exploring the documentation we do have, and utilizing a critical eye, new worlds and histories can often reveal themselves for further analysis.

Fenton, William N. “LAFITAU, JOSEPH-FRANÇOIS,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–.

Frézier, Amédée-François. A Voyage to the South-Sea, and Along the Coasts of Chile and Peru, in the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714: Particularly Describing the Genius and Constitution of the Inhabitants, as Well Indians as Spaniards: Their Customs and Manners; Their Natural History, Mines, Commodities, Traffic with Europe, &c. 1st English ed. London, England: Jonah Bowyer at the Rose on Ludgate Street, 1717.

Harvey, David Allen. “Lafitau's Moeurs Des Sauvages Amériquains and the Religious Roots of the Enlightenment Science of Man.” Living Antiquity, New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL, 2006. Proceedings of the Western Society for French History.

Heinsen, Johan. “'Others sat murmuring and idle upon the deck': The Poetics of English Voyage Narratives from the South Sea c. 1700", E-rea 11(11.2), 2014.

Jane, Cecil. “Third Voyage of Columbus .” The Four Voyages of Columbus, Dover Publications , New York , NY, 1988.

Sistrom, Michael. “Summary of a Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.” Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, docsouth.unc.edu/nc/hariot/summary.html.

Sokol, B.J. “The Problem of Assessing Thomas Harriot's a Briefe and True Report of His Discoveries in North America.” Annals of Science, vol. 51, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–16., doi:10.1080/00033799400200101.

Vaca, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de, and Enrique Pupo-Walker. Castaways: The Narrative of Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca (Latin American Literature and Culture ; 10). University of California Press, 1993.

Edited and Adapted for Americana by Rachel Moss.

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/