American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches

Notes

Notes P R E F A C E 1 The version of Chief Seattle’s remarks quoted here appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on October 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith. For more on this speech, including criticism of its authorship, see note 53 in the notes to chapter 9. 2 Squanto was Pawtuxet; after his return from England, he was, like Malinche, living with a different tribe, Wampanoag. 3 The Plimouth Plantation organization has a wonderful Web site that provides a history of the holiday and an excellent account of its importance as a twentieth-century holiday about the colonial past at http://www.plimoth.org/library/thanksgiving/ firstt.htm. The Plimouth Plantation organization notes that Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to connect Thanksgiving Day to the colonists in 1905, and the Pilgrims were not mentioned until Herbert Hoover’s 1931 proclamation. I N T R O D U C T I O N 1 The Zapatistas describe their opponent as “the power of money . . . [with] a new mask over its criminal face” and its goal as the “struggle for human values.” Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y Contra el Neoliberalismo, Zapatista Encuentro: Documents from the 1996 Encounter for Humanity and against Neoliberalism (New York, 1998), 11, 14. Pro-indigenous human rights nongovernmental organizations in the United Nations, such as the Consejo Indio de Sudamerica, are predominantly from Spanish-speaking America. 2 Writes historian William Cronon, “There was one European perception that was undoubtedly accurate, and about it all visitors were agreed—the incredible abundance of New England plant and animal life, an abundance which, when compared with Europe, left more than one visitor dumbfounded.” William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983), 22. 3 Widely read versions of the “pursuit of knowledge” interpretation include Anthony ≈ 197 ≈ Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1984). 4 The chronicler of King João III wrote that the king was preoccupied with India, but “he dealt less with Brazil because profits [were not expected] . . . from trade with the people who were barbaric, changeable, and poor.” Francisco d’Andrada, Chronica de el-rei João III (Coimbra, Portugal, 1796), pt. 4, p. 130. See also Luís de Sousa, Anais de D. João III, 2 vols., ed. M. Rodrigues Lapa (Lisbon, 1938), 1:405. 5 George McClelland Foster, Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage (New York, 1960). 6 Emile Chénon, Histoire générale du droit français public et privé des origines à 1815, 2 vols. (Paris, 1926–29), 1:417. Jacques Bouineau provides comparative information on France and Scandinavia in his Histoire des institutions Ier-XVe siècles (Paris, 1994), 383–97. 7 Michel de Juglart and Benjamin Ippolito, Traité de droit commerciale, vol. 1, Actes de commerce , commerçants, fonds de commerce, 4th ed., ed. Emmanuel du Pontavice and Jacques Pupichot (Paris, 1988), 17ff., on the historical impact of maritime commerce and regulation of fairs. 8 Swedish laws were united in a general code under Eric (1319–65). In Norway there were four groups of customs, the North, West, Center, and Southeast. In the twelfth century these laws were reformulated by the lagmadr, and King Magnus Haakonsson (1263–89) produced a compilation of the laws. Iceland was a country of written law from the beginning, since writing was introduced in 1117. Scandinavia began the process in the twelfth century roughly the same time as did France. Ludovic Beauchet, La loi d’Upland (Paris, 1908), 398; Bouineau, Histoire des institutions, 398; Ludovic Beauchet, Histoire de la propriété foncière en Suède (Paris, 1904); Annette Hoff, Lov og landskab ca. 900–1250 (Law and landscape, ca. 900–1250) (Odense, Denmark, 1998). 9 Law codes in medieval Europe were customarily composed in vernacular languages, not Latin. Many of them dealt principally with transfer and transmission of goods. See the Fuero Viejo de Castilla (twelfth century). The reintroduction of Roman law in some instances followed the revival of Roman law at Bologne University and began to be adopted irregularly in France during the thirteenth century. Jean-Louis Mestre, Introduction historique au droit administratif français (Paris, 1985), 111; Paul Ourliac and Jean-Louis Gazzaniga, Histoire du droit privé français de l’an mil au code civil...