School of the 16th C.

This morning, I came across this blog showing some kids having fun at HFM's Men of Menendez School of the 16th C. that was held yesterday. I wasn't there myself. and haven't heard back from anyone who was as yet.

School...on Saturday??

http://jordanandlace.blogspot.com/2011/01/schoolon-saturday.html

"Archers " or Adventures in Research

I got a recent query regarding the the use of native and clothing by members of the Soto entrada. The clothing aspect was easy as I had scoured and complied, (and most importantly saved the document file through 3 or 4 computer changes) the chronicles for that information a decade ago for the De Soto 2000 event in Parkin, Arkansas. A typical example:

And so you know, reader, what life these Spaniards led, Rodrigo Rangel, as an eyewitness, says that among many other needs of men that were experienced in this enterprise, he saw a nobleman named Don Antonio Osorio, brother of the Lord Marquis of Astorga, with a doublet of blankets of that land, torn on the sides, his flesh exposed, without a hat, bare-headed, bare-footed, without hose or shoes, a shield at his back, a sword without a scabbard, the snows and cold very great;...¹

As they passed all the nights formed in squadrons and had such little clothing to wear—for the best equipped among them had only breeches and jackets of deerskin, and almost all were barefooted, without shoes or sandals...²

Clayton, Lawrence A., Vernon James Knight Jr. and Edward C. More. De Soto Chronicles Vol. I &II (The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa: 1993.)

1 Clayton. Vol. I. p.296.

2 Clayton. Vol. II. p.375

I also recalled that two members of the expedition had used Indian bows, one an Englishman, the other a Spaniard raised in England. It was noted that the Native bows were too heavily strung for a regular Castilian to draw. By way of explanation, the English who had used the longbow to such devastating effect during the Hundred Years War had kept the longbow and the years of training required to use it, in their arsenal well into the sixteenth century. In fact the greatest trove of English bows and arrows comes form the Mary Rose which sank in 1545 just after the Soto expedition had ended. Garcilaso describes the Indian weapons:

The Indians make use of all sorts of arms except the crossbow and the musket. They believe that the bow and arrow give them a particular grace, and for that reason they always carry them to the chase and to the war. But as they have a very convenient height, their bows are very long and large in proportion. They are of oak ordinarily, or of some other wood of this sort; it is for this reason that they are difficult to bend, and there is no Spaniard who can draw the cord to his face, whereas the Indians draw it even behind the ear, and make astonishing allots. The cord of their bow is of the skin of the stag, and this is how they make it: from the skin of the stag they cut from the tail to the head a thong two fingers in breadth. Then they take the hair from this thong, soak it, twist it, and attach one end of it to the branch of a tree, and the other to a weight of one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds, and leave this skin until it becomes in the form of a large catgut. Finally, in order not to wound the left arm with the cord when it is discharged, they make use of a half armlet of large feathers, which covers it from the wrist to the elbow. and which is secured with a leather strap, with which they make several turns around the arm, and thus they discharge the cord with a force altogether remarkable.11.

http://mith2.umd.edu/eada/html/display.php?docs=garcilaso_florida.xml

I was pretty sure that, like most of the good stuff, I had likewise found the story of the two conquistadors using bows in Garcilaso's Florida of the Inca. But I'm a footnote kind of guy when it comes to passing along information. The oral tradition is great but sometimes I think gets relied on too often in reenactment. One rarely gets challenged when talking to the public but I really like being able to tell where some tidbit of information comes from. So I did term search (bow, longbow, Englishmen, England) on the electronic version of Garcilaso referenced above. No luck, which wasn't too surprising since that e-version of Florida of the Inca has numerous OCR scan faults and is abridged too. I checked the indices of both my hardbound copies of the Garcilaso translations, the above mentioned Vol.II of The De Soto Chronicles and the Varner and Varner edition. Again I couldn't find it. I term searched the other three Soto narratives that I've got in html format and still nothing, likewise the index to Vol.I of the Chronicles was a dead end.

Though beginning to wonder if I was falling prey to the above mentioned errors of the oral tradition it was time for, in the terminology of Itunes, "deeper cuts". Recalling that the 1939 Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission by John R. Swanton had a breakdown of the members of the expedition by origin. There on p.83 confirmation that I had remembered the story correctly.

Garcilaso tells of one Englishman who insisted on keeping his longbow instead of adopting a crossbow, in which he was accompanied by a Spaniard who had lived in England until he was twenty.

The footnote attached to this sentence referenced a long out of print edition of Florida of the Inca, but just the kind of public domain obscurity that Google Books is meant for. Of course I couldn't find it either. But they had scanned Varner & Varner. "Englishman" turned up one result on page 596. "Archer" was the term I should have looked for! So here it is; in context this incident is during the final days of the entrada as the survivors make their way down the Mississippi river in barges.

One archer was a Spaniard who from childhood to the age of twenty had been reared in England, another was an Englishman by birth; therefore as men experienced in the arms of England and skillful with the bow and arrow, they would use no weapons but those throughout the whole expedition, and for this reason were carrying them at present.

The King Site Sword

One of few large relics of the conquistadors found in the US is the King Site Sword, thought to have come from the De Soto expedition.

A Spanish Sword from the King Site

Demonic Possession

Last year I posted a period ghost story about Columbus' colony of La Isabella.

http://calderonscompany.blogspot.com/2009/10/ghost-story.html

This Halloween I have one on demonic possession courtesy Garcilasco de la Vega, the least reliable and most most readable chronicler of the De Soto expedition.

from Garcilaso's Florida of the Inca:

"THE night before the Spaniards left for Cofaciqui, their guide, who was one of the Indians they had taken in Apalache, and whom they named Pedro, without, however, having baptized him, began to cry for help, and that they were killing him. The troops immediately seized their arms in the fear of some treason, and put themselves in order of battle. But not seeing anything, and having inquired the cause of alarm, they learned that it was their guide, whom they found quite frightened, and almost half dead. When the general demanded of him what had made him utter such loud cries, he replied that the devil, with a frightful visage, accompanied by many little demons, had appeared to him ; that he had threatened to kill him if fee led the Christians to Cofaciqui; that, thereupon, he had trodden upon his belly; had dragged him through the room, and had given him so many blows that he could not move ; that if he lead not been succored by two Spaniards the devil would have killed him ; but that the moment he perceived them he fled away with all his attendants; that, therefore, since the demons feared the Christians, he begged that they would baptize him immediately, it) order that the devil might not come any more to maltreat him. The general and his officers, who judged of the truth of the adventure by the wounds, sent for the, priests ; who, after leaving interrogated this poor Indian, baptized him, and (lid not abandon him the rest of the night nor the following day. He was in such a pitiable condition that it was necessary to restore him, and the army could not decamp until the next day; yet it was necessary that this Indian should mount on horseback."

I should note that, Garliasco's relation, earlier in the expedition soldiers explain the escape of an Indian Chief on a demon:

"The Indians immediately entered the forest with this order. In the mean time, the Spaniards placed sentinels everywhere; they reposed during the night, satisfied with the conduct of Capasi, and in the expectation of returning with honor to the camp. But when the day appeared they experienced that the most flattering hope is often disappointed. They no longer found the cacique nor one of the savages who had accompanied him. Surprised at this extraordinary event, they inquired of each other how the thing lead happened ; and, as they replied that it was impossible that be had fled, because the sentinels asserted that they had watched all the night, they believed that Capasi had implored the succor of some demon, and that he had been carried away by him. What is certain is, that the Spaniards being fatigued fell asleep, and that the savage, who saw a good opportunity to escape, dragged himself, without noise, on all fours ; that whilst he fled, he found in ambush some of his subjects who carried him off. Heaven, without doubt, favored on this occasion the Spaniards; for if, at the time they slept, the Indians had come to attack them, they would have slaughtered them. But, all transported with joy, they thought only of putting their chief in safety. As they concealed him very well, the Spaniards searched in vain for him all the day. Besides the Indians contented themselves with ridiculing the Spaniards and insulting them. So that they returned to the camp, without jeopardy, but in the greatest confusion in the world for having let their prisoner escape. They excused themselves, because in the night in which he had escaped they had heard in extraordinary noise; and that, leaving been guarded with so much care, the devil must have carried him off.
The general, who saw that the error was irreparable, would blame no one. He feigned to give faith to all that they told him ; that the Indians were great sorcerers, and that they did very wonderful things. Nevertheless, however good a face he put upon it, he was sensibly touched at the negligence of his officers."

Conquistador Clothing

As sometimes happens, a recent query leads to a serendipitous finding. In dispelling the ubiquitous image of the conquistador as arrayed in a combed morion helmet, peascod breastplate, a ruff , pumpkin pants and thigh-high boots there is a distinct lack of contemporary images to prove the point. Even most of the Aztec and Mayan codices about the conquest date from the second half of the sixteenth century.

David Rickman directed me to this page:
http://www.smith.edu/vistas/vistas_web/gallery/detail/tlaxcala_det.htm

Of fragments of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala at the university of Texas, Austin. I'd seen this image before, though only in black and white, its used in the endpapers of Hammond Innes' The Conquistadors. Interestingly enough the Cortés figure in the codex is dressed very similar to that of Cortés in the Christoph Weidtiz image of him in the Trachetenbuch c.1529

http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/72/Hernando-Cortes.png

Years ago I can across one of the few European images of conquistadors done in the first half of the 16th C. of the Welser entrada [Long story short: German bankers financed an expedition from Spain to S. America c. 1534], in John Hemming's The Search for El Dorado p.57.

I was looking for a clearer and color version of this image to illustrate my point. No luck finding this one but I did find another that appears to be from the same artist depicting the same event.

Welser entrada mustering at San Lucar de Barrameda, Spain:




http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musterung-Welser-Armada.png

Historians still search for mysterious Mabila

In the News: Historians still search for mysterious Mabila

Historians still search for mysterious Mabila
Montgomery Advertiser
The Spanish conquistador's 1540 exploration began to unravel at a south Alabama village where his well-armed troops had the advantage and slaughtered ...

Columbus Day

Columbus Day, October 12, the "real" Columbus Day, on the anniversary of landfall during his 1492 voyage, not the Monday observed holiday. Though other than no mail and the banks being closed I didn't see much observance. I seem to recall that we got the day off school when I was growing up. My daughter's school was in session yesterday and the subject of Columbus did up in her second grade classroom. Quizzing her on the ride home from school the three ships were the Nina (she doesn't remember visiting the Nina replica when she was a toddler - does remember being chased by a turkey at Yorktown Victory Center-go figure), the Pinta and "something else." She did learn were the term "Indians" came from and the story of Columbus fall off a ship, finding a paddle and "swimming six miles to shore"-though her timeline is mixed up thinking that it happened during the first voyage of discovery and not much earlier in his career.

In my lifetime the reputation of Christopher Columbus has gone from the visionary explorer and Admiral of the Ocean Sea as he titled himself to that of a slave trading , genocidal manic in some of the most extreme diatribes that I've read. I think the truth lies somewhere in between. He was a man of his time, where slavery was an excepted practice. He was clearly a master navigator, if a bit obsessive, and if he'd stuck to exploration, I dare say his reputation would would have remained intact. Alas, he was an incompetent colonial administrator, and both unable to control his settlements, nor able to fulfill his over-reaching promises to his sovereigns. He is also as far as I can tell, and neglected as the originator of the mystery meat phrase, "it tastes like chicken."

"While going around on of the lagoons I saw a serpent which we killed with lances, and I am bringing Your Highness the skin. When it saw us, it went into the lagoon, and we followed it in because the water is not very deep. This serpent is about 6 feet long. I think there are many such serpents in these lagoons. The people here eat them and the meat is white and tastes like chicken."

-Christopher Columbus

The Log of Christopher Columbus, Trans. by Robert H. Fuson (International Marine Publishing Co., Camden Maine, 1987) p.89.