Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

4. The Fardle of Façions: or, the Cabinet of Curios

CHAPTER IV The Fardle ofFafions: or the Cabinet ofCurios "We are much beholden to Machiavelli and other writers of that class who openly and unfeignedly declare or describe what men do and not what they ought to do."-FRANCIS BACON. WHEN CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS dropped anchor in the Tagus River at the port of Lisbon on that fateful day of his return to the Old World, he brought with him seven kidnapped Indians of the so-called Taino culture of the Arawack linguistic group. The Admiral and his charges were received with great interest by King John. His caravel "became the Mecca for the idle and curious who flocked to see the Indians and the popinjays." Nevertheless, astonishment was expressed that these aborigines were not Negroes such as the Portuguese mariners had been wont to import into Europe for upwards of forty years. Their hair, it was remarked, was not kinky but loose and coarse like horsehair.1 Later, on Palm Sunday, the sailors and their captives made another sensational entry into Seville: The citizens of Barcelona were also treated to a triumphal procession led by Red Men decked out in headdresses of bright feathers, with their faces painted and their arms covered with gold bracelets: During the years which followed, Indians captured by other explorers were exhibited in other capitals of Europe. In 1494 six hundred were sent home a'S slaves; in 1496, thirty; in 1499, two-hundred and thirty-two; while Vespucci's first voyage netted two hundred and twenty-two. 111 112 Early Anthropology in the 16th and 17th Centuries In England, Sebastian Cabot appears to have been the pioneer showman. Stow records that in 1502 three natives from "an Iland founde by merchaunts from Bristoll farre beyong Ireland" were brought before Henry VII clad in beasts' skins, eating raw meat, and speaking an unintelligible language: The first Indians to appear in France were brought by Thomas Aubert in 1506. Taken to Rouen, they were described in a Paris chronicle as sooty in color, black-haired, possessing speech but no religion: In 1550, the citizens of the same city, desiring to surpass all others in the splendor of a royal visitation, presented Henry III with "un spectacle magnifique," in which a contingent of natives from Brazil were given a leading role. Four years later, in 1554, they were exhibited again when Charles IX made entry into the town of Troyes. In 1565, during a festival in Bordeaux, 300 men at arms conducted a showing of captives from twelve nations, including Greece, Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, America, Taprobane , the Canaries, and Ethiopia. Outside the city wall, in the midst of an imitation Brazilian landscape, a veritable savage village was erected with several hundred residents, many of whom had been freshly abducted from South America." With so many opportunities to examine these representatives of the population of the New World, it is no wonder that Indian characters almost immediately found their way into sixteenth-century English drama;' or that Montaigne made it his business to study the savage. To add to this body of knowledge available to the citizens of many European cities, John White's magnificent drawings of Indian life were printed in 1590 and became a notable publishing success. Copies of the book were soon issued in four languages-Latin, English, French, and German; and from 1590 to 1620, the year the Pilgrims made their landing in Massachusetts, it went through at least seventeen reissues." But despite all these more or less isolated instances of The Fardle of Fafions 113 publicity and showmanship, despite the exploration before 1502 of more than three thousand miles of coastal South America, the discovery of the New World made relatively little impression on Europe. Though the news of the new lands traveled everywhere, the rate of its transmission was slow. Moreover, the unlearned, if they heard at all, were loath to believe; while readers, if they knew their Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, and Mandeville, were hard to surprise. Neither Africa nor America was considered any more remarkable than the Cathay of the medieval travelers; and both were too far away, in miles and experience, to command sustained attention. Even the voyagers were something less than profoundly interested in the peoples of the New World; and if they described alien manners, their reports were seldom "scientific" in the sense that they were consciously organized to give readers at home systematic expositions of...