"Por Andarmos Todos Casy Mesturados": The Politics of Intermingling in Caminha's Carta and Colonial American Anthologies
According to the chronicler of Pedro Álvares Cabral’s arrival on the coast of what is now Brazil in April of 1500, less than a week after their first contact with the Portuguese crew, the natives ‘‘poucos a poucos mesturaranse cõ nosco, e abracauãnos e folgauam’’ (96) [‘‘little by little mingled with us. And they embraced us and had a good time’’] (24). The scribe later portrays the Portuguese as equally engaged in the ‘‘mingling,’’ while also suggesting that their motivation extends beyond ‘‘having a good time’’: ‘‘este dia os uimos de mais perto e mais aanosa vontade por andarmos todos casy mesturados’’ (96, my emphasis) [‘‘On that day we saw them closer and more as we wished, for all of us were almost intermingled’’] (24).1 Such scenes of peaceful intermingling and ‘‘merrymaking’’ (96; 24) between Europeans and Amerindians have earned Pero Vaz deCaminha’s letter toKingManuel a foundational position in the Brazilian literary canon and contributed to notions of the distinctive benevolence of Portuguese colonization. Historians and literary critics alike have interpreted the letter as not only the nation’s ‘‘birth certificate’’ but one that attests to a painless delivery.2 The Carta [Letter] may also earn a place in the early ‘‘American’’ canon, if the trend toward more expansive and inclusive anthologies of colonial American literatures prevails. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer’s The Literatures of Colonial America (2001) includes an extract of Caminha’s letter, along with selections from both North and South America that are translated from Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and various Native American languages. The preface to Carla Mulford’s Early AmericanWritings (2002) claims a similar comprehensiveness, stating that ‘‘texts included represent the cultures of Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, and English speakers’’ (xviii), although no Portuguese-language texts are in
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
Here is an intriguing exploration of the ways in which the history of the Spanish Conquest has been misread and passed down to become popular knowledge of these events. The book offers a fresh account of the activities of the best-known conquistadors and explorers, including Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro. Using a wide array of sources, historian Matthew Restall highlights seven key myths, uncovering the source of the inaccuracies and exploding the fallacies and misconceptions behind each myth. This vividly written and authoritative book shows, for instance, that native Americans did not take the conquistadors for gods and that small numbers of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. We discover that Columbus was correctly seen in his lifetime-and for decades after-as a briefly fortunate but unexceptional participant in efforts involving many southern Europeans. It was only much later that Columbus was portrayed as a great man who fought against the ignorance of his age to discover the new world. Restall also shows that the Spanish Conquest relied heavily on black and native allies, who provided many thousands of fighters, vastly outnumbering the conquistadors. In fact, the native perception of the Conquest differed sharply from the Spanish version-they saw it as a native civil war in which the Spaniards played an important but secondary role. The Conquest, Restall shows, was more complex-and more fascinating-than conventional histories have portrayed it. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest offers a richer and more nuanced account of a key event in the history of the Americas.
Early American Literature: A Comparatist Approach
A. Owen Aldridge shows that early American literature is not an isolated phenomenon, but one affected by the same influences which operated upon other literatures of the period.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.