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X AFRICANS IN 1533 Francisco Pizarro. still encamped at Cajamarca after capturing the Inca emperor. sent an advance party on to Cuzco. the first Old World inhabitants to see the Inca capital. One of the four men to go was black.· It is typical of the mythmaking process that this group of two Andalusian seamen. a Basque notary. and a black should have been transformed in the later chronicles into two captains from Extremadura. As it turned out. the black. whose name is not recorded. did not get to Cuzco; he returned alone from Jauja. in charge of a train of Indians with a fortune in precious metals.1 Among the almost limitless variety of people who helped to conquer Peru. there were always black slaves. They were present as servants and auxiliaries on all the early discovery expeditions. from 1524 on; some Spaniards took a black slave or two along as a speculation. hoping to sell them at great·Although I have chosen to use the broad. stable. neutral. and familiar term -African" in the title of this chapter in the present edition. it will hardly do as the primruy term of reference In the text itself. given my insistence on retaining categories close to those current at the time. for In the sixteenth centwy neither the Spaniards nor the Africans themselves had much concept of an entity "Africa." and no term related to that word or idea was In frequent use. The overwhelmingly current term in Sixteenth-century Spanish was negro. When I first drafted this section. in 1966. I employed as an English equivalent "Negro." at that time a normal and scholarly term; shortly afterward. however. it acquired new connotations. and before many years it virtually went out of use. At present the same thing is threatening to happen to its successor. "black." I am using that word. however. intended as entirely neutral in connotation. as an exact translation of the original negro and as the term current in the United States for the last twenty years. to which at this writing there is still no viable alternative. particularly in a Spanish American context. 193 Copyrighted Material 194 SPANISH PERU profit if the expedition should strike it rich.2 In the period before the capture of the Inca. blacks were not numerous. because the money to buy them was not available. but after the spoils of Cajamarca were distributed. they flooded into the country. They were on the coast. in the highlands. in Chile. on all the subsequent expeditions sent into peripheral areas. In the very early days their prime function was to serve as valuable military auxiliaries. Whenever the Spaniards prepared for an expedition against Indians. they bought three things: anns. horses. and blacks.3 With the founding of cities. the blacks' functions expanded rapidly. until they were performing a whole range of tasks essential to building. providing. and maintaining the Spanish settlements. Basic to an understanding of the role of blacks in conquest Peru is an appreciation of their intermediate position between the Spaniards and the Indians; they are not to be thought of as the lowest ranking of the three. They assimilated Spanish skills much more rapidly and thoroughly than did the Indians. Militarily. blacks were almost as superior to the Indians as the Spaniards were. A small band of them could terrorize a whole indigenous countryside; a single black could dominate an Indian settlement. Even as slaves. blacks showed a tendency in the early period to accumulate servant staffs of Indians. Though some lived with or married Indian women. and in the cities there was a certain rapprochement between the two poles of the servant sector, the relationship between blacks and Indians was, in the main. one of strong mutual hostility. with the blacks occupying a position of much greater power.4 On the other hand, blacks were not, under the obtaining conditions. the full equals of Spaniards. Leaving aside the obvious subordination contained in slave status, the Spaniards retained military superiority. When Spaniards fought Indians, blacks fought along; when the Spaniards went to the civil wars, blacks normally went as pages and stayed in the tents at battle time. It is true that the presence of so many potential fighting men tempted Spanish commanders more than once, and fmally in 1554 the rebel Francisco Hernandez Giron organized a company of three or four hundred black slaves, promising them freedom, but the results were inconCopyrighted Material [3.145.119.199] Project MUSE (2024...

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