Viewing One Another

One way diverse peoples of the Atlantic World tried to make sense of one another and their new surroundings was by literally viewing one another: representing them artistically in drawings or other artwork. Most of the images here were created by Europeans who either ventured overseas themselves or relied on the accounts of others.

As you look through the images, think about how the idea of "other" is portrayed. What are people supposed to think to feel when they see the images? How are interactions portrayed and why might they be portrayed in that way? What might be the consequences of these portrayals of "others" (especially inaccurate or exaggerated portrayals)?

"New World Scene," Johann Froschauer, 1505

Like most other early sixteenth century observers, Froschauer fell back on pre-existing European scientific and literary ideas to describe the descriptions and images of America coming back to Europe. He was a printmaker who never visited the Americas and instead relied on descriptions from Amerigo Vespucci, who described natives as h as "lawless, lustful, and cannibalistic.”

The description reads: “The people are thus naked, handsome, brown, well shaped in body, their heads, necks, arms, private parts, feet of men and women are a little covered with feathers. The men also have many precious stones in their faces and breasts.. No one has anything of his own, but all things are common [shared communally, as opposed to private property]. And the men who have wives are pleased to make no distinction whether it is their mother or sister or friend...They also eat one another and they hang and smoke the flesh of those killed. They live to 150 and have no government.”

Allegory of America

A century after the publication of Amerigo Vespucci’s widely read travelogue New World (Mundus Novus, 1503), Stradanus designed a print series to celebrate the scientific, military, and commercial gains of European exploration and conquest. In this engraving—the most famous of the series—Vespucci holds a Christian banner in one hand and a navigational device in the other. The Italian explorer awakens America, personified as a Native woman wearing only a feather cap, belt, and jeweled anklets, his "discovery" presented as a sexualized encounter. In the distance, nude figures engage in an act of cannibalism—a sensational event written about but never witnessed by Vespucci. Printed images such as this one disseminated misconceptions about Native peoples of the Americas and worked to justify European desires for conquest and colonization.

Allegory of the Continents

Series representing the "four continents" were popular during the European "Age of Exploration," when atlases and other materials about the ever-expanding world were in high demand. New World themes from other prints—cannibalism, conquest, and female representatives of nature—repeat here. Think about what the artist wanted Europeans to think and feel when they saw these images of the "new worlds."

Europe

a three-quarter-length woman with crown and sceptre, holding the Bible in her hand

America

a naked, seated woman holding a bow and a severed human leg

Africa

a seated woman with bare breasts, girdle and armillary (celestial sphere)

"Black Sailors in the Atlantic"

This drawing from c. 1800 depicts black sailors operating a small vessel off the coast of the Caribbean. Although, by the late eighteenth century, many sailors in the Americas were slaves who were ordered to work at sea by their masters, black seamen--both slave and free--had been an integral part of Iberia's trans-oceanic exploration during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of the most scientifically skilled navigators in both Spain and Portugal were Moors, a people integral to transmitting classical knowledge about astronomy and advanced instruments to Iberia. It was also common to find black men among the crews of sailing ships.

The Natural History of the West Indies, 1585

Naturalists and historians accompanied many of the first expeditions and took great interest in chronicling the natural environments they encounters, especially plants and animals. This book with over 100 drawings of plants, animals, and native inhabitants, is the source of some of Europe’s first descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Americas. The images below come from this book.

Description of Tobacco

A special herb which the Indians use for food as well as an extremely beneficial medicine; when they are sick, they breathe in the smoke by mouth with a straw; soon the ill humour escapes by vomiting. They often pulverize it and, putting it in their noses, it distills several drops of water from the brain to discharge it. It also is found very helpful for toothache; laying its leaves on the teeth, the pain disappears; it is also beneficial for alleviating eye problems.

Description of a Shark

This fish is very vicious in the sea so that when a sailor throws himself in the water for some reason this fish turns on his back and tears out a leg or an arm and eats it.

Description of a Cacique (ruler)

This type of man is called Cacique. He is very much like a king to whom is paid honor and obedience and, to be recognized, they wear a ring hanging from their nose and a band on the forehead as you see it here on the picture, band and ring of gold, not tolerating he as well as his subjects, as is their custom any hair on their face or on their private parts, keeping only the hair on their head which they grow long to protect themselves from the heat of the sun.

Description of The INDIANs OF LORANBEC

These Indians [perhaps the Cusabo Indians of South Carolina] dressed in skins are extremely skillful in battle on account of their strength, as the English could tell fighting under Sir Francis Drake in 1586 when they attempted to conquer this land, but were forced to weigh anchor and retreat because of the resistance they encountered.

Description of THE CANOE WITH WHICH THE INDIANS GO FISHING AND HOW THEY CATCH FISH

They go to the sea with their canoe and fishing-line, attaching the line to one side of the canoe. This done, they take their fishing lines and place one over their ears and the other in their mouth. Then, feeling that the fish is caught, they quickly pull in their fishing line and the fish with their hands.

John White's Description of Secoton Village

John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. The key that accompanies the engraving identifies (A) a charnel house "wherin are the tombes of their kings and princes"; (B) a place for prayers; (C) a dance ground; a place to meet after celebrations; (E) two fields of tobacco; (F) a hut where guards are posted to keep birds and animals away from the corn; (G) a field of ripe maize and (H) a field of newly planted maize; (I) a garden of pumpkins; (K) a place for a fire during "solemne feasts"; and (L) a nearby river that supplied water to the village.

Indians Dancing around a Post, John White

The Catawba Deerskin Map, gifted to colonial Governor Francis Nicholson (South Carolina), 1721 *an example of Indigenous Americans "viewing" Europeans

The Catawba Deerskin Map was a map drawn on deerskin and presented to Francis Nicholson, the colonial governor of South Carolina, around 1721. Native Americans have a long history in producing cartographic depictions of their environments, and the geographic knowledge of Native Americans proved to be invaluable in educating newly arriving Europeans. This map is a representation of the Indigenous American nations between Charlestown (Charleston, South Carolina) and the colony of Virginia. The map is oriented so that southerly features are on the left side, while northerly features are on the right. European settlements are depicted in squares and straight lines, while Indian nations appear in circles. The “Nasaw” is shown as the most central community of the Catawba Nation, appearing in the center of the map as the largest circle. Furthermore, the translated text written in English in the copied map labels “The English Path to Nasaw.” Peripheral to Nasaw are various other Indian communities. Rather than emphasizing geographic accuracy and scale, the map focuses on the network of relationships between the Indian nations and the English, so it served a diplomatic rather than cartographic (relating to the science of mapmaking) purpose.

De bry, indians pouring gold into the mouth of a spaniard

De Bry was an engraver who made a 27 volume series called Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies that was based on John White’s watercolors and on accounts from explorers. De Bry essentially “invented” (or put a picture to) the concept of America for Europeans despite the fact that he never set foot across the Atlantic. His engravings were among the first images of the Americas that Europeans saw. His engravings depict both European actions toward natives and native responses to Europeans.

Theodore de Bry, Christopher Columbus arrives in America, 1594

In the center of this image we see a finely-dressed Christopher Columbus with two soldiers. Columbus stands confidently, his left foot forward with his pike planted firmly in the ground, signaling his claim over the land. Behind him to the left, three Spaniards raise a cross in the landscape, symbolizing a declaration of the land for both the Spanish monarchs and for the Christian God. Unclothes Taino Indians present gifts of necklaces and other precious objects. In the background, other Taínos flee in fear from the Spanish ships anchored offshore.

Manikongo of the Kingdom of Kongo

João I Nzinga a Nkuwu was Manikongo when the Portuguese reached his kingdom on the coast of southwest Africa in 1483. The Portuguese took several Kongo emissaries with them back to Portugal, where they were baptized. In 1491, King Joao was also baptized with the royal family, helping solidify a relationship with the Portuguese. Kongo was a powerful state in the region that enjoyed a lucrative trade, and the Portuguese represented a new trade partner.

An image depicting Portuguese encounter with Kongo royal family

In this image, a Portuguese envoy to the Kingdom of Kongo appears to be bowing before the Manikongo.

After the arrival of the Portuguese, artisans in Benin, known for their Benin Bronzes, focused on a new subject in addition to their Obos (kings): Europeans. Merchants and explorers from Portugal first made contact with the kingdom of Benin in 1486, initiating an economic relationship that ultimately had a profound impact upon the art and politics of this West African state. Benin's oral histories relate how Oba Esigie, who ruled Benin in the early sixteenth century, skillfully utilized these new trading partners to augment and consolidate his personal power and expand his kingdom's military and economic strength within the Guinea Coast region of Africa. From this period onward, images of Portuguese traders were widely incorporated into royal Benin art forms. Benin artists often exaggerated those generic aspects of the European face he found distinctive and representative, such their noses, beards, clothing, and hair.

*an example of Africans "viewing" Europeans.

Portuguese Soldier

Seated Portuguese Man

Decorative map of West Africa, used to illustrate the Dutch translations of the account of a voyage to West Africa

This comes from a detail of a Dutch Map seen below, created by Dutch artist Pieter van der Aa, showing a group of West Africans attacking Dutch explorers.

A Dancing "Moor"

In 1480 Erasmus Grasser delivered a series of sixteen “moresca dancers” to his patron Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. The Duke sought to enhance his family’s prestige by adorning a grand new ballroom with symbols of his global reach. The moresca dance was a popular Renaissance dance in which performers would dress in fanciful costumes, often including blackface, and perform comic and acrobatic dance feats. It originated as a stylized adaptation–and often parody–of dance and musical styles among the “moors” in Muslim Spain and among the African slaves around the Mediterranean. T

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