What do these writers see as the central differences between “Indians” and the “Spanish”? How are these differences imagined through sexual and other social practices? How would you characterize the ideas of European masculinity in some of these writings?
8 thoughts on “Cannibals and Amazons in the New World”
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What struck me was the separation between the Indians and the women as described by Carvajal and Cortes. In both accounts, the explorers are amazed at the fact that the women and men are separated, with the underlying assumption that both groups are unfit for each other or that the men are too beastly to inhabit the same space. As we look back through time, the irony in the way that Europeans treated women becomes apparent. For a group of writers who were so judgmental about the way the Indians separated themselves from women, they didn’t treat their women back home with an respect themselves, and probably should have kept them inland.
All three explorers’ descriptions of their voyages underline the exotic, foreign nature of this new land, particularly harping on abnormal gender roles and cannibalism to emphasize how alien this culture was in comparison to Europe. Hernán Cortés’ account of the Amazon, for example, is a very bizarre description of an island inhabited by only women. Men and women live separately from one another, thus leaving the Amazon devoid of the nuclear family structure and values—a stark contrast to the European way of life. Similarly, Gaspar de Carvajal’s account highlights how different child-rearing practices are in the Amazon; women actively seek to bear their captives’ children only to slaughter any boys they may have. It is interesting to note that both of these explorers only describe what they have encountered, refraining from actual judgment and letting the readers form their own horrified conclusions. Vespucci, however, writes a more critical account of the women he encounters. Like Cortés and Carvajal, Vespucci contrasts gender norms by describing the women he encounters as unruly and commanding. They lack any maternal instinct, killing children out of spite, and marriage is nonexistent in their society. The women even tear one of Vespucci’s men—described as “our Christian”—“to pieces.” Vespucci explains how women even go so far as to manipulate men’s penises and render them eunuchs, hereby robbing them of their manhood (an essential part of a European man’s identity and pride). Moreover, their practice of cannibalism horrifies Vespucci the most. Indians eat the dead, as “human flesh is an ordinary article of food among them.” Such shockingly deviant behavior therefore makes them “like beasts” and “wild as can be imagined.” Nonetheless, all three explorers make these women out to be sexually alluring, be it by their fine garb, as Carvajal describes, or their “comely” bodies, which Vespucci notes. Indeed, later paintings based off these letters, such as Theodor de Bry’s “Columbus Landing at Guanahani,” illustrate these women as primitive but alluring and inviting creatures. The depiction of Indians in the Atlantic thus successfully stirred curiosity amongst Europeans at the time, for all three explorers managed to exhibit these societies as alien, barbaric, and somehow simultaneously tempting.
The writings of Vespucci, Cortes, and Carvajal seem to be a “parody” on sexuality, masculinity, and European social structure. Vespucci tells of women who attacked the “agile and valiant youth” and eventually “roasted him before our eyes, showing us many pieces, and they eating them” (Vespucci Third Voyage). These women will even abort their own fetus and destroy their child for petty anger towards their husbands. In Vespucci’s descriptions, the men are the civilized members of society and the women are out of control and cannibals. Vespucci himself claims to be modest and upset by their violent and indecent behavior. He will protect his reader as he will “not further refer to their contrivances” so that he will “not offend against modest” (Vespucci First Voyage). Carvajal reports of similar Indian women who “consort with Indian men at times, and, when that desire came to them,” capturing men during war and bringing them home to impregnate them. Eventually, these women would kill off their male children and just raise their daughters. Carvajal’s reports are according to “the Indian” and not observed first hand. Similarly, Cortez writes to the King of Spain that he has “heard” of a land inhabited by only women where the men are sent away when not needed for breeding. He has not seen this first hand either. Thus, it is only Vespucci who claims to have seen this female dominated society that is the antithesis of European society and almost makes fun of male domination in Europe and historically. These writing suggest that the reader should be dismayed by the thought of women being in charge. They reflect European society’s emphasis on male dominance. Thus, a society ruled by women and their desires as described by Vespucci, Cortes, and Carvajal is to be thought of being outlandish. An additional irony is some of these behaviors have been seen throughout history during times of war in male dominated societies with the women of the fallen cities are ravaged and the children murdered. Therefore, I am suspicious that these writings are truly just a parody on society and not true descriptions of any actual society found in the New World. This conclusion stems from the question as to the validity of Vespucci’s letters as well as the improbability of what is being described by him and the other authors. Vespucci talks of women that live 150 years as if they have found the “Fountain of Youth” (Vespucci Third Voyage, 2nd paragraph). He claims to have known a man who ate “300 human bodies” and saw human flesh nonchalantly hung up near their homes (Vespucci, Mundus Novus). The surprising lack of shock or emotion in their descriptions suggest these writings to be a parody, a hoax, or even sensationalizing in order to gain fame and attention.
When reading and understanding what the central “differences” are that separate the natives from essentially the rest of civilization, what stood out to be the most is the sheer savagery of these people. As Vespucci describes these Indians in his passages, he makes them seem as cruel and as barbaric and just overall as inhumane as they come. Reading about the poor young Christian boy getting beat to death with a club then absolutely ravaged and eaten by these freak-show women made me sick to my stomach. WHAT kind of people are these and WHO actually does something like that. A place where people eat their own family members, while it may let the imagination run wild, is just a place I want nothing to be a part of. Furthermore, as Hernan Cortes writes in his letter to Charles V, a place that is strictly inhabited by women, where male children and murdered and sent back to their fathers, is probably the most cruel and lawless type of place I can think of. However, the importance of these documents is that it painted a picture to the rest of the world, and although it might be a cold-blooded, cutthroat civilization, the idea of something crazy like this existing without a doubt sparked the movement for people to see it for themselves.
I believe the characterization of European masculinity as presented in these letters can best be summed up in Gaspar de Carvajel’s account of the Discovery of the Amazon as he relays, “anyone who should take it into his head to go down to the country of these women was destined to go a boy and return an old man” (222). The fantasy of these women would effectively deprive the man of the prime years of his sexual life. These three explorers both explicitly and implicitly draw attention to the insecurity of their masculinity, and the fact that their sense of masculinity is inexplicably tied to a universal dominance of females. The letters show men absolutely obsessed with the consequence of the inversion of conventional gender norms, and who in response painted the women of the Amazon and cannibals in general in as dangerous a light as they possibly could. In contrast to Columbus and Vespucci’s accounts of hospitable Indians bearing gifts and offering very little resistance, these women are dangerous, deadly, and live in surprisingly advanced conditions. Gaspar de Carvajal aims to portray the women as uncivilized and barbaric, but his claims are often undermined by the rules and regulations the women implemented in their societies. He comments on the uncivilized aspects of the Amazon women but also relays that the women had houses built, “out of stone and with regular doors,” the fact that there were social classes in the distinction between the plebeians and “mistresses of rank and distinction,” and that the women had rules and regulations in which they demanded tribute from other Indian Provinces. In three fundamental ways he portrays the women as dangerous and in possession of a social order, and at the same time betrays his own opinions about the women dominating all Indian men around them. Vespucci takes a much different view than Carvajal, but still expresses his vulnerability around such strong women by believing and repeating stories about the female cannibals making “the penis of their husbands swell to such a size as to appear deformed…and by reason of this many lose their virile organ and remain eunuchs.” He maintains foolishly that these cannibals are beast-like, with no commerce or rules in their society, and likens them to animals. He wastes no time describing the men, but lingers on the almost siren-like beauty of the females. These women seem to posses a dangerous sexuality as he writes, “The women, as I have said, go naked, and very libidinous, yet their bodies are comely; but they are as wild as can be.” They are almost otherworldly in their ability to bear children without any pain or permanent marks on their bodies, and it seems his purpose is both to entertain with sensation and frighten the reader enough of these women that force seems justified. Theodor de Bry’s images seem to be the visual counterpart to Vespucci’s letters. The women are the paragon of beauty of the time period, comparable to Aphrodite, but are absolutely dangerous and must be civilized unless we want to live in a world where the male is consumed bit by bit by women and children.
The idea of masculinity in Europe is quite striking in these readings, and none more interesting than in the Amazon. While the Amazon is known as a very violent place, the lack of men making up the population is staggering. As Cortes mentions the island is stricken by women and they become impregnated by men coming from another island. Male babies are immediately sent away while females are kept. From a new-born female to the grown women fighting against new civilians masculinity was famously attached to the females during this discovery of the Amazon. The world that we know, masculinity is often synonymous with the male specie, but over in Europe, it seems to be synonymous with the females.
These writers portray inverted social, economic, and moral structures in “Indian” cultures that serve as a foil to European society. Images of native male submissiveness and the lack of personal property or developed economic structure outside of Amazon society undermine native male power. Descriptions of cannibalism and sexual deviance also suggest a dehumanizing and primitive moral fabric inherent in native cultures. Simultaneously, the highly sexualized and violent Amazons, and a fascination with native sexual practices represent an exotic European imperialist fantasy that intertwines problematic elements of race, gender, and sexuality.
The prevalence and prominence of naked, armed women on late 16th century maps of the Americas suggests that the story of the Amazons was among the most captivating reports from the New World– it makes sense that these images were chosen to indicate the most notable characteristics of the region. As we discussed in class, Vespucci seems to have focused his accounts on the most foreign aspects of the New World, the native practices and local features that most vividly distinguished this new land from Spain. The accounts of Vespucci, Cortes, and Gaspar de Carvajal we read all emphasize the role and power of women in these native communities, which they describe as distinctly at odds with European convention. All three explorers, for example, mention ways in which native men are subject to the women’s needs or desires (women requiring men to pay them tribute, women summoning men for sex). Characterizations of women as sexually wild and insatiable appear frequently, as does the figure of the female warrior. And these descriptions are never far from those of the women’s appearance– of their “comely” bodies and customary nakedness– and often, interestingly, from accounts of the riches those women or their islands possess (“pearls and gold” in Cortes’ account, “gold and silver idols” in Carvajal’s). These associations– of the shocking and dangerous with the beautiful and alluring– seem calculated to present the most enthralling vision of the New World possible, one that would both scandalize and intrigue the European (particularly male) mind. The existence of these communities, in which women defy typical European gender roles and conventions of modesty and behavior, was clearly of overwhelming interest to the explorers and their audience in Europe. The fact that these reports of Amazonian behavior, seemingly designed to have the most sensational impact possible, came to define the European perception of the New World and its inhabitants is not surprising, but it is informative: it seems that European attitudes toward sexuality and gender were central to their definitions of civilization and self.