Acosta and the Incas

Reading Jose de Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies for a deep chronicle of the Inca Empire is bound to disappoint. Acosta's work, which focuses on the Americas in general (though Acosta had traveled to other parts of the Americas like Santo Domingo), largely synthesized older accounts of the Inca past, particularly the works of Polo de Ondegardo. Consequently, his account of the Inca past is rather derivative and, besides references to the flora, fauna, and superstitions of Indians in Peru, adds little. In some respects his coverage of the Inca and Aztec Empires emphasizes how these peoples, deceived by Satan from Acosta's Jesuit perspective, built impressive civilizations that paved the way for Christianity to spread. Thus, unlike the indigenous peoples of Brazil or other parts of the Americas which lacked large kingdoms or polities, the Incas and Aztecs promoted religious cults that, like ancient Rome, facilitated the spread of Christianity through the state's institutions and influence across a vast territory. Acosta's perspective also reminded us of Edward Blyden's views on Islam in West Africa, which he similarly praised while also expressing the belief that Islam will prepare the path for the Christianization of black Africans. But to return to Acosta as a chronicler of the Incas, this does not offer much. Acosta shifts between condemnation of the Incas and admiration, and there are interesting moments of comparative ethnology of the various peoples of the America (and East Asia). But we hope to read another cronista with a more substantial narrative of the Inca past. And really, 1000 people sacrificed to accompany the dead Huayna Capac?

23andme Update

Our Haitian relative shared their updated ancestry composition report from 23andme recently. As we expected, little changed for their sub-Saharan African ancestry. The "Broadly West African" category disappeared, but merely boosted their "Nigerian" estimate to 43.2%. They also retained the close Igbo match. As for their other African regions, everything is largely the same. Country matches with Liberia, Sierra Leone ad Ghana, but no specific ethnic groups or regions. Their Congolese and Southern East African results are also similar, with the 0.4% Southern East African estimate minor. Again, hardly anything new. In fact, it confirms their overwhelmingly West African ancestry that appears most rooted in Lower Guinea. From the slave trade data to Saint-Domingue, this suggests almost half of her ancestry is rooted in areas that fed the Slave Coast and Bight of Biafra. 

For Europe, however, some changes can be seen. France is finally severed from Germany, and clearly makes up most of her European ancestry. This is hardly surprising for Haitians. The Belgian, Rhinelander, and Southern Dutch is new, but also not too surprising as Belgium neighbors France. We also noticed that our parent and I had distant DNA matches with users from Belgium and the Netherlands on MyHeritage, too. Perhaps 23andme is confirming distant ancestry from that region for both of us. As for the Iberian Peninsula, 23andme's update assigned it to Andalusian, Asturian & Castilian with 0.2% Basque. Very small but there is some overlap with France in the Iberian Peninsula. Haiti, of course, also had people of Spanish origin during the colonial era. Lastly, the Irish ancestry at 0.2% was unexpected. But perhaps to be explained in the overlap of Irish populations with other groups in western Europe?

Fortunately, there is some more precision in the update for our Haitian parent's minor Amerindian ancestry. Like Ancestry DNA, 23andme assigns it to a vaguely South American origin. We would like to think this Central Andean/Amazonian estimate is misreading indigenous Taino ancestry, but our parent does not have any Historical Matches from the indigenous Caribbean. Therefore, if it's not from the indigenous peoples of Haiti or the Greater Antilles, it may be indigenous people who came to Saint Domingue under French rule. Baptismal records indicate Indians from Aruba, today's Colombia, and other regions were in the colony. Perhaps that's the origin of this allegedly South American indigenous ancestry? 

As for trace ancestry, it is now reflected as North African and Northern Indian & Pakistani. The latter appears at all confidence levels, too, while North Africa disappears at 80% confidence level. The North African may be via the minor Spanish ancestry or perhaps West Africa. It is difficult to say with certainty, but North African ancestry is not indicated by this relative's Ancestry DNA results at all. Even for myself, with far more substantial ancestry from the Iberian Peninsula, my North African estimate was only 1% on Ancestry DNA. Thus, is it possible the trace North African ancestry in our Haitian parent is via West Africa? Their South Asian trace ancestry is similarly ambiguous. It is no longer Malayali South Indian but remains an enigma.

Fifth Sun

Camilla Townsend's Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs is not exactly what we were looking for. Our own interests are mainly in the preconquest period, but that comprises less than half of the book. Instead, Townsend, partly due to her use of Nahuatl annals and sources penned by Nahua or part-Nahua authors of the 1500s and 1600s, extends her history of the Mexica into the 1600s. This is admirable since the Mexica and other Nahuas did not disappear overnight with the Spanish conquest. Instead, their culture survived in many ways, despite the destruction, epidemics, and loss of political power in a highly unequal colonial society. Some, like Chimalpahin, became historians adept with adapting the Roman script for writing detailed annals or histories of the central valley of Mexico in Nahuatl. 

Townsend also tries to emphasize the voices of women, elucidate the experience of Malinche, and humanize the Aztec state (Triple Alliance and empire are problematic labels for reasons we shall not delve into here). Indeed, their complex civilization was often reduced to ugly caricatures of obscene human sacrifice or even belittled as irrational cowards (Moctezuma) in the face of the Spaniards, mistakenly believed to have been perceived as gods by the Mexica in bad, questionable histories first produced by Spaniards. In truth, relying as much as possible on Nahua sources to highlight their own memories, experiences, language, and worldview.

However, Townsend believes the Nahuatl annals and sources of the colonial era are most useful for only a century of the region's history before the colonial conquest. Thus, a reader eager for a more detailed examination of Aztec history before the conquest may be somewhat disappointed. Nonetheless, the narrative does encompass the shadowy origins of the Mexica from the distant north, as well as an outline of the history of Mesoamerica and the context in which the early Mexica entered as newcomers to the central valley. Townsend even draws on Diamond and others to help readers understand why, despite the advances made by the Aztecs and other indigenous cultures before 1492, they were "behind" when it came to metallurgy, writing, firearms, domesticated animals, and exposure to deadly diseases. The consequences of these aforementioned factors gave the Spanish a tremendous edge in their colonial expansion. 

What was most interesting for us, however, is the degree of similarity with the Incas. Like their famous Andean counterparts, the Aztecs appear to have only been one of many players in their region in the 1200s and 1300s. Only in the 1400s did their rapid expansion into an imperial power take place, often relying on both military expansion and marriage alliances with other altepetls in the central valley. Moreover, like Pachacuti, whose reign appears to have included a standardization of historical narratives on the Inca past, the Mexica under Itzcoatl had books burned when he took power, presumably leading to him being able to reshape what was later produced under his reign and that of his successors. Moreover, like Pachacuti, Itzcoatl's rise to the throne was not uncontested due him being the son of a slave woman. Pachacuti, of course, had to contend with a brother and their father who favored his sibling, according to the standard narrative of Inca imperial expansion in the 1400s. Furthermore, like the successors of Pachacuti, the Aztec rulers after Itzcoatl continued the expansion of the state (Moctezuma I, Axyacatl) and created a more centralized administration (Moctezuma II). The Aztecs, who did not use khipu to record information, must have relied on their pictures and glyph system to record information on borders, gather tribute information, and standardize calendars across the region, and use the labor and goods from tribute for public works and monuments. Nonetheless, the Inca state appears to have been far more bureaucratic and invested in infrastructure across a huge swathe of land. Intriguingly, like the Incas, the Aztecs appear to have also been unsure how to respond to the Spanish threat, although Townsend is emphatic on the Spaniards NOT being perceived as gods by the Aztecs.

The tale of Mexica expansion here is one in which the Mexica went from underdogs who had to lend their warriors to more powerful altepetls to being the dominant, hegemonic one in the 1400s and early 1500s. In addition, this entailed the growth of their capital, Tenochtitlan, into a metropolis with causeways, canals, chinampas for agriculture, and tribute imposed on conquered people to fully supply the capital and its elite. Through the practice of polygyny, the Mexica elites used their marriages to women from multiple altepetls and lineages to cement alliances and intervene in the affairs of other altepetls. Since primogeniture was not the principle on which royal succession was based, marriages to multiple women were usual within the large royal Mexican clan to determine succession, often alternating it between different branches. Most of the book focuses on the cataclysmic shock of Spanish conquest and the Mexica under colonial rule. 

Peruvian Indigenous Match

Although our shared DNA segments with Peruvians and South American Indians are usually rather small, one of the larger, more reliable ones with with a Peruvian (judging by the Quechua surname and their other matches, although Bolivian origin is also possible, perhaps). Moreover, this person's shared segment with us is actually along a segment identified as "Indigenous Puerto Rico" by Ancestry, not Indigenous Bolivia and Peru. Although only 6.8 cM, we suspect it is picking up on the deeper, shared ancestry between the indigenous people who populated the Caribbean and their South American mainland cousins found in parts of Andean and lowland tropical South America. Our other matches above 6 cM with South American indigenous people had lower SNP counts and densities, so we suspect this Peruvian match is somewhat more reliable. Checking the matched segment on Gedmatch's chromosome compare features and DNA painter also points to the shared segment falling along our "Indigenous Puerto Rico" segment on part of Chromosome 14.

Cieza de Leon and the Incas

Completing The Incas, Harriet de Onis's translation of Pedro de Cieza de Leon was a time-consuming endeavor. Translating parts of different books of Cieza de Leon's history of Peru, the text is somewhat disjointed and a jarring. Nonetheless, it is a major source as one of the early chronicles on the Incas written by someone who traveled widely across South America. Moreover, he also had access to some of the early conquistadors and Spaniards who came to Peru with Pizarro or during the 1540s. This means that Cieza de Leon had access to some reliable informants, as well as indigenous informants or ruins he saw throughout his travels. Even more intriguing is the degree to which the author admired the achievements of Inca civilization in terms of its roads, architecture, administrative efficiency and economic organization. The Spaniards, particularly during the course of the civil wars after the conquest, were seen as the major ruin of the Indians, particularly in many coastal areas and valleys where the indigenous population was decimated by the Spaniards. 

As a major source on the Inca Empire, much of the text is spent describing the various provinces and regions under the control of Tawantinsuyu. The northernmost area of conquest, Pasto, was seen by the Incas sent there as a way of time. But Ecuador and much of the modern-day areas of Peru and Bolivia are described in great detail. Of course, some of Cieza de Leon's sources were muddled or confused, but he alluded to various provinces and under which Inca they were added to the empire. Some areas were remembered for the defeat of the Incas, such as Huayna Capac's failure to conquer the natives fo Bracamoros. According to Cieza de Leon, one Inca ruler, Yahuar Huacac Inca, was killed or assassinated by Cuntisuyu captains to prevent him from making further conquests. Inca Urco, the son of Viracocha Inca and thus a brother of Pachacuti, is described as a corrupt, ineffective ruler who was later replaced by Pachacuti. Strangely, however, the story of Pachacuti's victory against the Chancas did not feature stones turning into soldiers. Intriguingly, our chronicler also alluded to moments of revolts and coups by Cuzco elites, such as one crushed by Huayna Capac and another. One also finds a few more references to unrest in the provinces, such as a revolt by the Colla Indians against Pachacuti while the latter was in the East. 

Surprisingly, despite his detailed account of the regions of Ecuador under Inca rule, one does not find any reference to the Pacific Islands visited by Topa Inca. Instead, islanders bringing gold were said to have visited the southern coast of Peru at Acari. The Puna Islanders, however, were described as traders and pirate. As for the eastern lands, or Amazonian regions, Cieza de Leon makes an interesting reference to Orejones disguised as traders to the East. Paititi, the mysterious land somewhere in the East is also mentioned. One cannot escape reading this chronicle without noting Cieza de Leon's admiration for the Incas and even his respect for indigenous peoples (despite his constant lamentation of their demons and superstitions). His ability to note the deeper antiquity of the pre-Inca civilizations is also noteworthy. 

Creole Sauvage for Sale

Whilst perusing digitized copies of Saint-Domingue's colonial newspaper, Affiches américaines, we encountered a reference to the sale of what may have been a Native American person from North America. Up for sale by a wood seller, Gaignard, in what is now Cap-Haitien, the unnamed "sauvage" was described as a Creole of New Orleans. Assuming that "sauvage" in 1770s Saint-Domingue was still a reference to Amerindian peoples or indigenous peoples of the Americas, we suspect this enslaved person was of indigenous origin, probably from a group in today's United States, but born in New Orleans. Reference to small numbers of Native American people from Louisiana or the Midwest sold into slavery in the Caribbean can be found in a variety of sources, so it is plausible that someone of Native American origin ended up in Au Cap via New Orleans. 

Blacks, Indians and Casta in Colonial Peru

Guaman Poma had "interesting" views on blacks in colonial Peru.

The main theme of O’Toole’s Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru is the construction of casta in northern colonial Peru, emphasizing the 17th and 18th centuries. Her study seeks to understand exclusion and exchange to illuminate how coastal Andeans (“Indians”) and people of African origin or descent understood casta in their quotidian existence (O’Toole 2). It also destabilizes notions of casta to distinguish it from modern ideas of race. The text additionally calls into question the framework of conflict to understand relations between Andeans and Africans, demonstrating how their interactions and behaviors shaped constructions, categories, and expectations of property and vassalage (4). The body of the text uses examples from notarized records, judicial cases, petitions, criminal and civil trials, sales, wills, and inventories to support its argument, which illustrates performative strategies as an example of agency (12). Her microhistorical and ethnohistorical techniques aid our understanding of how Africans and Andeans engaged with casta as well.

The initial chapter demonstrates the malleable nature of casta categories during the 17th century. According to the author, “By locating official articulations of black and Indian within colonizers’ anxieties about labor, this chapter demonstrates how the discussions of casta categorization were rooted in shifting material realities and the contradictory discourses of a crown checked by colonizers’ labor demands” (20). The chapter endeavors to illustrate this material dimension of casta by pointing to the labor shortage caused by the temporary end of the official Spanish trans-Atlantic slave trade, an era when the demand for labor on the wheat, sugar and other haciendas in the northern coastal region required more labor. This is occurring just as the rights of Andeans to communal land and water resources were challenged or revoked by white landholder elites. This chapter persuasively shows that material, economic conditions requiring labor, as well as the dispossession of Andeans, led to a destabilizing definition of assigned casta categories for “Indians” who engaged in the private market, worked for wages on estates or cities, and left their assigned “reducciones” (30). The following chapter shifts the focus to slavery, attempting to show how slaves engaged in acts that made them into property in the courtroom or marketplace, or performed their commodification, to influence outcomes in their favor (36). O’Toole uses the example of kinship and its elasticity, too. The extended period of time it took for Africans to reach the Pacific coasts of Peru created multiple opportunities for them to learn market conditions, laws, and form bonds among themselves (44). For instance, she cites the example of a slave named Maria, who, knowing her market value, threatened and attempted suicide and self-mutilitation to affect it and change masters (54). Examples of extended or new forms of kinships among Africans could be found in their marriages and baptisms, as Africans married criollas and people of other categories or included Andeans as godparents of their children (56). For O’Toole, “kinships were not merely familial or strategic, but articulations of identities and collectivities only superficially detected in civil and criminal cases, property sales, and personal wills" (62). 

The third chapter uses judicial records to show how Andeans assumed the role of “Indian” as performative acts in their own interests. Appeals against their dispossession, for instance, employ the rhetoric of Indians as vassals in need of the protection of the Spanish crown (86). The fourth chapter continues the focus on Andeans, looking at market exchanges and indigenous engagement with labor and urban spaces. In short, indigenous peoples engaged in regional marketeering, land markets, and the purchase of colonial goods. The example of Pedro Esteban Penaran, who participated in land markets and purchased colonial goods also serves to exemplify an “Indian” who continued to hold communal land but acted in ways unexpected for the “Indian” caste (107). In urban spaces like Trujillo and rural markets, blacks and Indians also interacted, selling each other goods. While her evidence does not prove it conclusively, O’Toole suggests that lower-status people may have ignored casta when it was not useful or profitable (119). Thus, blacks and Andeans may have interacted in ways that did not reinforce the social hierarchy when it was not in their interest. Undoubtedly, evidence of the two groups working together to subvert casta or promote their own interests is the sale by blacks of stolen goods to Andean middlemen (112). In addition, the chapter explores legal consciousness among slaves who attempted to use the Catholic Church and their ecclesiastical rights against demands of owners who made them work on Sundays or holidays (124). Attempts by slaves to regulate their labor or work schedule also contributed to black subjectivity. They exploited their relatively free mobility in northern Peru to search for new owners, or at least that was their excuse to engage in itinerant labor (135). The work culture among the enslaved suggest they were asserting their right to control their labor and time, an assertion of their agency on the plantation. One example cited by the author is of a conflict between an enslaved foreman, Sebastian, and a white overseer who criticized his management. The altercation ended with Sebastian fleeing the plantation, suggesting the importance African slaves attached to controlling their work schedules (128). 

The remainder of O’Toole’s text summarizes her aforementioned arguments. According to O’Toole, casta and its hierarchies were powerful because lower-status people employed them (161). There was also a connection between the racialization of Andeans and Africans, which illustrates how Africans played a significant role in the history of Andean South America. Moreover, “Casta articulated a colonial construction of difference and differential power relations” (164). However, scholars cannot assume casta accurately described different types of people who were intended to inhabit the same social plane. Casta categories were not fixed racial categories, despite some common features with the latter.

O’Toole’s study of the northern Peruvian coastal region enriches our understanding of black subjectivity in a number of ways. Moving beyond agency and structural constraints to the humanity and subjectivity of Africans and their descendants, O’Toole attempts to show the reader Africans within their own narratives in a number of ways, from kinship and market forces to commodification and work culture. Particularly evident in chapter two, O’Toole’s central argument asserts slaves acted in ways that made them into property, or performed their commodification, when it was in their own interests. This, of course, is related to the monograph’s larger argument about the power of casta deriving from lower-status people employing it. 

However, here she focuses on enslaved people to show how experiences of markets and kinship created the other. Kinship is not a static category, but forged in the diasporic setting in which Africans were commodified (37). Shipmate bonds among Africans who experienced the harrowing, extended voyages to colonial Peru could exert a significant influence, leading to new affinities beyond the assigned “national” origins to slaves. For example, an Arara or a Mina could forge new relationships to each other that thwarted attempts by slaveholders to use the diversity of the slave population against them. An example of kinship bonds among people of similar African “ethnic” extraction can be found in the criminal case of Juan Negro, among Mina slaves articulating hints of a junior age-set speaking to a senior kinsman  (59). The marriage and godparent choices of Africans also point to the complexity of kinship as articulations of identity beyond or against the expectations of slavery and casta. Take the case of urban Africans in the region, who were more likely to marry. The choice of godparents made by enslaved parents on the Facala and Ascope estates also show examples of expanding kinship networks beyond the “ethnic” labels attached to Africans. Maria Josefa, an Arara, and her Chala husband, chose an indigenous highlander migrant for the godfather of their child (56). Disconnected Andean migrants working on estates or in towns like Trujillo may have been just as interested in expanding their kinship networks as African slaves, who were likewise uprooted and forced to adapt or adopt new kinship practices. 

Besides adapting and adopting new kinship networks and practices, the use of the logic of the market and commodification by enslaved Africans  to subvert their bondage brings us closer to understanding the interior subjectivity of Africans. Not just as an example of agency, but as an attempt to highlight their lives, preoccupations, challenges and goals, O’Toole highlights the use of their commodification by slaves. The example of Maria, who attempted suicide to frighten owners, demonstrates an effort on her part to disrupt her market value (51). Enslaved people knew the costs of their purchase were higher by the time they reached the Pacific, and explicitly capitalized on their value to resist owners and abuse. While still enslaved, some of their goals and preoccupations can be seen historically. In so doing, enslaved people also participated in some of the same behavior as “Indians,” who also employed the rhetoric of their vassalage when convenient to do so.

Black subjectivity can also be gleaned from the participation of blacks in market activity, mobility and their work cultures. For instance, Africans often had to rely on trade with Andeans to supplement their food or clothing (112). In their interactions, Africans had to serve their own interests to clothe themselves and sometimes engaged in the sale or exchange of stolen goods. The 1697 example of Antonio Mina (112) selling wheat to Andeans to have it ground and resold stands out, showing how Africans engaged in the market across racial lines to pursue their own interests, perhaps especially aided by urban markets, networks, access to valuable goods, and the mobility enslaved people claimed for themselves. In other words, “They transformed their enslaved position into profit by strategically tapping into the networks of their free, Andean acquaintances” (113). The general mobility of enslaved people, often on the pretense of working for their masters or searching for new masters, also enabled them to engage in itinerant labor and control their time. This constituted an assertion of their rights to their own time (135-136), helping to reconstruct their preoccupations and subjectivity. Indeed, a simple gathering of enslaved people to drink and exchange news on holidays or Sundays elucidates the values and preoccupations of blacks, in spite of the alleged threat to public order their gatherings posed (129). 

In summation, O’Toole’s study of the northern coast of Peru uncovers new models for understanding Afro-Peruvians and casta. While it also destabilizes assumptions of casta as a fixed category, it demonstrates the ways enslaved people used both caste and their legal enslavement to, when possible, serve their own interests. By setting their own work schedules, displaying mobility, engaging in markets and trade with Andeans, and expanding or adapting kinship networks in ways that contradicted casta designations and chattel slavery, one can see how enslaved people not only exhibited agency, but asserted a subjectivity. Instead of viewing Africans and their descendants solely through the lens of agency or structural confines, a historical analysis of subjectivity demonstrates the nuanced nature of hierarchical relations in colonial Peru. Africans were “voices aware of their vocality” with regards to an interior understanding of their actions. 

Cahokia

Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy R. Pauketat serves as an adequate introduction to the precolonial metropolis known today as Cahokia. A site we hope to one day visit, Pauketat's book analyzes the history and, to a certain extent, the history of the archaeologists who have worked at the site. With its impressive mounds, or pyramids, (including one of the largest in the Americas) and evidence of complex rituals, social stratification or ranks, long-distance trade and contacts and its legacy in the Mississippian cultures, Cahokia was an impressive civilization. Lamentably, as one might expect, the site has not been respected by 19th and 20th century Euroamericans, whose plows, construction, highways, and subdivisions have destroyed parts of Cahokia and related sites at St. Louis and East St. Louis. 

Nonetheless, the impressive remains that have been salvaged and continue to be an area of study for archaeologists have shown the rise of a city or urban complex at Cahokia beginning around the year 1050. Pauketat proposes a connection with the supernova visible in the sky in the year 1054, an astronomical observation that must have been noticed by indigenous peoples like those who built Cahokia. After all, their Woodhenge was also associated with astronomical alignments and significance related to the cosmos. The supernova and the chronology we have for Cahokia's rise and fall, built on what used to be a smaller village site, suggest its influence spread far and wide in the Plains, Midwest, and South. While not unique for the construction of mounds, the scale of Cahokia's mounds, the large numbers of sacrificial victims found at the site, and vastness with villages peopled by inhabitants from distant areas suggest at least some degree of political centralization. The labor costs for the mounds, plaza, and the food and supplies to feed the area at its zenith, which was at least 10,000 in the urban area, must have also been an additional area the city's elites expressed their power. Religion, the human sacrifices at the mounds, and perhaps Cahokian traders, colonists, and chunkey games seem to have played a prominent role here, too, helping to establish Cahokia's influence across a huge swath of the North American continent and influencing subsequent indigenous cultures.

Ultimately, there is a lot we don't know about the site. The various oral traditions, legends, linguistic data, and finds from other sites in North America are all utilized in this source to construct a possible/plausible history of Cahokia. Was it a powerful kingdom perhaps influenced by Mesoamerica? No irrefutable evidence has been found yet, but common references and symbolism in Native American cultures either descended from Cahokia or influenced by it with Mesoamerican traditions are suggestive. If Cahokia was the center from which Mesoamerican influences may have spread further in North America, then perhaps people from Cahokia really did travel to Mexico in the 11th century (or Mesoamericans traveled north?). Further evidence is required to verify, but this idea of Mesoamerican influences brought to mind the past scholarship on the Taino and possible contacts with Mesoamerica in the precolonial period. The indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles, for instance, had some overlap with Mesoamerican art and religious practices according to Puerto Rican scholars and theorists such as Eugenio Fernandez Mendez. Perhaps there was some sort of "moment" around the 11th century or so that witnessed direct or indirect relations between Mesoamerica and the Caribbean as well as Mesoamerican and what is now the United States?