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2 4 d i s c o v e r i n g d a n c e i n t h e n e w w o r l d on the areíto One Signs of the New World On December 26, 1492, during his first voyage to the “New World,” Christopher Columbus encountered a cacique (Indian “chief”) named Guacanagari, whom he invited, along with other Indians, aboard his ship the Niña. The Indians allegedly brought pieces of gold to exchange for hawks’ bells; they immediately hung the bells on their bodies and began to dance to the chiming sounds they made.¹ And so we see that one of the first encounters between Europeans and natives in the New World precipitated a dance. In his journal, Columbus mentioned his surprise at learning that Indians had such a fondness for dancing. It may seem curious that such a relatively insignificant detail would have made its way into the admiral’s journal and by extension nearly every history attributed to Columbus about his “discovery.” But to Columbus, dancing was a sign that the Indians could be easily manipulated , excited as they were to exchange precious gold for bells. Moreover, for Columbus, this dance might have served as a sign that he had reached the Far East. Columbus took with him on his travels a heavily annotated copy of Marco Polo’s chronicle Il Milione (ca. 1295), which describes the rituals and traditions of cultures that Marco Polo had encountered on his travels to and around Asia during the late thirteenth century. These included several ritual and court dances, such as a shamanic dance of possession in a Chinese province and a performance by temple dancers in the Indian province of Malabar. Marco Polo also recorded the tales about the king of Ceylon, who filled his palace with dancing maidens . No doubt Marco Polo’s references to these exotic dances figured into Columbus’s expectations of how the Indies would reveal itself to him. The impromptu dance aboard his ship apparently left an enduring impression on Columbus, for years later, during another of his many encounters, he recalled the Indians’ passion for dancing and attempted to use it to his advantage. During his third expedition to the West Indies, in 1498—a journey to explore lands beyond those that he allegedly discovered and mistook for India—he attempted to land his ship along the shores of Trinidad, whereupon he encountered several armed Indians who ventured toward his boat via canoe. He explains how the language barrier forced him to attempt communicating with the natives through signs: “I made signs to them, however, to come nearer to us, and more than two hours were spent in this manner—but if by any chance they moved a little nearer, they soon pushed off again.”² When the signs failed, he tried to lure them closer with “mirrors, clear and shiny bronze vases, bells and similar objects unknown to them.” When he failed to charm them with trinkets, Columbus commanded his sailors to make music and d i s c o v e r i n g d a n c e i n t h e n e w w o r l d 2 5 dance, hoping to attract the attention of the Indians, whom he recalled were passionate about dancing. Instead , the Indians mistook the spectacle as a sign of aggression and began to shoot arrows at Columbus and his men. Amidst that barrage of arrows, Columbus made the shocking realization that dancing can mean different things to different cultures. Dance figures prominently in these two accounts of Columbus’s discoveries. In the former, Columbus expresses a sense of wonder and curiosity. He marvels that the Indians were “very graceful in form” and is astounded that they were “tall, and lithe in their movements.”³ However, in the latter account, Columbus stages a “deceptive dance” in an attempt to capture the Indians’ attention, the same way one might tame a wild animal. In so doing, he conveys his perception of the Indian as inferior, bestial, savage —the mythical “wild man” of the ancient world.⁴ Considered against and alongside one another, these accounts invoke dancing as a sign of both peace and violence, alliance and annihilation, pleasure and fear, humanity and savagery—the constellation of paradoxes associated with the theme of the “noble savage” that runs through early modern writings and images of natives in the New World, wherein Indians...

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