On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

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Dodds C (2007) Female Dismemberment and Decapitation: Gendered Understandings of Power in Aztec Ritual In Carroll S (Ed.), Cultures of Violence: Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective (pp. 47-63). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. View this article in WRRO I was so excited to dive deep into this book. The synopsis was so tantalizing....what did Native Caribbean, Native Americans, Native South Americans think of Europe when they were brought there against their wills? A new publication aims to challenge the accepted narrative that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New'; when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America in 1492. With romanticism, scant evidence, and verbosity in her heart, the author decides to destroy the subject. Her own work in the book does not prove this. Over and over again the scant evidence in the records were that of the Natives begging the Crown for their OWN FREEDOM! Their inheritance, begging for alms, etc.

History Today put me ‘ On The Spot’ with their probing questions in July 2017. In January 2018, I responded to media reports of the possible discovery of cocoliztli: the germ responsible for killing 15 million Aztecs. As well as writing for The Conversation, I was interviewed by both Inside Science and Making History on Radio 4. You can also hear me talking about the Aztecs on the BBC Civilisations podcast, shedding light on the history featured in the TV series, and on the acclaimed BBC podcast, You’re Dead to Me, which brings together historians and comedians to learn and laugh about the past Save yourself the trouble, read the synopsis, then don't read the book. Think about what Native peoples might have felt going to a strange land.....and you would save yourself HOURS of your life by NOT reading this poorly written book.A new book from a University of Sheffield academic flips the script on the accepted narrative that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New' The book needs a good editor in which to cut out 2/3 of the content and to get the author to stop TALKING ABOUT HERSELF ALL THE TIME! Having started out as an Aztec-Mexica historian, the scope of my work has broadened in recent years, and I have just published a book about the thousands of Indigenous Americans who travelled to Europe before the founding of Jamestown in 1607. When we think of the early modern period, we imagine Christopher Columbus ‘discovering’ America. But, at the same instant, the great civilisations of the Americas discovered Europe. Tens of thousands of Native Americans made the journey across the Atlantic from the very moment of that first encounter, and these Indigenous pioneers forged the course of European civilisation, just as surely as Europe changed America. Some of the findings from this research were recently published in American Historical Review (free access through this link). For the Indigenous travelers in my work, Europe was the 'savage shore'; a land of incomprehensible inequality and poverty that defied pre-invasion values and logics, where resources were hoarded, children ruled great kingdoms, and common people were meant meekly to accept injustices without dissent."

And yet, the Spanish legal system was remarkably fair. With the right prominent lawyer, a western slave could obtain freedom. Queen Isabella set the stage by first of all being disgusted, and then by declaring that all indigenous people from the new lands were free subjects of the Spanish Crown, her vassals, and therefore could not be enslaved. When Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies in October 1492, he laid claim to the islands in the name of his patrons, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, even though he was aware that the islands were already occupied. The next month, his men captured some 25 of these native islanders. Columbus planned to bring them to Spain, where they could be converted to Christianity and learn Spanish, becoming bilingual interpreters to help advance Spain’s imperial agenda. Only six or seven of the captives survived the journey, yet Columbus nevertheless boasted of his actions. In his mind, he hauled the indigenous away from a savage culture and into civilization. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. You can see me talking about early modern Dutch map-making in the BBC's The Beauty of Maps [at c.0.58 and 2.24] or hear me talking about the Valladolid Debate and the siege of Tenochtitlan on In Our Time. I have also appeared repeatedly on BBC History For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and qualityof life, and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a story of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse—a story that has largely been absent from our collective imagination of the times.Most Americans transported against their will never returned to their native lands and lived typically short lives of alienation and desolation. Pocahontas died in Gravesend as she prepared to depart and is buried beneath the chancel of St George’s Church. According to the parish register she was ‘A virginia Lady borne’ as well as John Rolfe’s wife, Rebecca. (In 1635 their son, Thomas, raised in England, returned to Virginia where he became a successful tobacco planter.) Sometimes the ancestral homes of native visitors were destroyed by fire and farming, their countryfolk put to the sword or wiped out by pestilence. Perhaps a third of Spanish men in the Americas were married to Indigenous women, who were often forced into the arrangement. The Genoese voyager Michele da Cuneo left a brazen account of how he raped, in his words, ‘a gorgeous Cannibal woman’, who fought him tooth and nail before he overpowered her. Deftly weaves diverse and fascinating tales of the exciting adventures, complex diplomatic missions, voyages of discovery, triumphant incursions, and heartbreaking exploitations – of the many thousands of Indigenous travellers to new lands. Essential reading for anyone interested in how the events of the “Age of Exploration” shaped the modern world”— JENNIFER RAFF, author of ORIGIN Have scientists really found the germ responsible for killing 15m Aztecs?’, The Conversation (January 2018)