[lit-ideas] Re: On surviving plagues and travelling to Yucatan
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 01:11:58 +0200
Lawrence,
I have commented on that already, so you might want to look at my comments.
O.K.
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 1:03 AM, Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Cochran and Harpending write on page 162, “In Mexico, where Hernán
> Cortés and his troops had made the Aztec emperor their puppet, the Aztecs
> rose against them, killing Moctezuma II and two-thirds of the Spanish force
> in the famous “Noche Triste.” The Aztecs probably would have utterly
> destroyed the invaders, were it not for the smallpox epidemic under way at
> the same time. The leader of the Aztec defense died in the epidemic, and
> Cortés and his men conquered the Aztec Empire. * The 10,000 Year
> Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution*. Basic Books.
> Kindle Edition.
>
> How were these Aztecs contaminated? Bernal Diaz Del Castillo in his* The
> Conquest of New Spain* wrote of how 110 of them (Cortez wasn’t with them
> at this point) sailed away from Cuba in 1517 and up the coast of the
> mainland, discovering Yucatan. They needed to go ashore for water from
> time to time, and those activities did not always go well. Here is the
> first foray to get water:
>
> As these Indians approached us in their canoes, we made signs of peace and
> friendship, beckoning at the same time to them with our hands and cloaks to
> come up to us that we might speak with them; for at that time there was
> nobody amongst us who understood the language of Yucatan or Mexico. They
> now came along side of us without evincing the least fear, and more than
> thirty of them climbed on board of our principal ship. We gave them bacon
> and cassave bread to eat, and presented each with a necklace of green glass
> beads. After they had for some time minutely examined the ship, the chief,
> who was a cazique, gave us to understand, by signs, that he wished to get
> down again into his canoe and return home, but that he would come the next
> day with many more canoes in order to take us on shore. Del Castillo,
> Bernal Diaz (2013-11-03).* The Conquest of New Spain* (Kindle Locations
> 400-405). Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.
>
> The Indians ask where they came from and when they admit to coming from
> where the sun rises the Indians decided to kill them. “The cazique had
> no sooner given the signal, than out rushed with terrible fury great
> numbers of armed warriors, greeting us with such a shower of arrows, that
> fifteen of our men were immediately wounded. These Indians were clad in a
> kind of cuirass made of cotton, and armed with lances, shields, bows, and
> slings; with each a tuft of feathers stuck on his head. As soon as they had
> let fly their arrows, they rushed forward and attacked us man to man,
> setting furiously to with their lances, which they held in both hands.
> When, however, they began to feel the sharp edge of our swords, and saw
> what destruction our crossbows and matchlocks made among them, they
> speedily began to give way. Fifteen of their number lay dead on the field.
> [Del Castillo, Bernal Diaz (2013-11-03). The Conquest of New Spain
> (Kindle Locations 422-427). Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.]
>
> Bernal Diaz and his fellows didn’t learn their lesson and later on needing
> more water answered the same question in the same way, that they came from
> the direction in which the sun rises, and met with the same result.
> Eventually so many of them were injured that they couldn’t man all their
> boats. They burned one, and headed back toward Havanah, but they needed
> water and no longer had enough sound men to fight off the Indians long
> enough to get it. But eventually most of them got back to Havana.
>
> But I noticed an interesting anecdote way back at the beginning of Bernal
> Diaz’s narrative: “In the year 1514 I departed from Castile in the suite
> of Pedro Arias de Avila, who had just then been appointed governor of Terra
> Firma. At sea we had sometimes bad and sometimes good weather, until we
> arrived at Nombre Dios, where the plague was raging: of this we lost many
> of our men, and most of us got terrible sores on our legs, and were
> otherwise ill.” [Del Castillo, Bernal Diaz (2013-11-03). The Conquest of
> New Spain (Kindle Locations 347-349). Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.]
>
> What was this plague and what caused the sores that Bernal Diaz and most
> of the others had on their legs? He writes initially of 1514 and it wasn’t
> until 1517 that they had several battles with the Amerindians on the coast
> of Yucatan, but that Diaz and the others were carriers of more than one
> disease doesn’t seem a stretch.
>
> Cochran and Harpending write, “The European advantage in disease
> resistance was particularly important because those early attempts at
> conquest and colonization were marginal. Shipping men and equipment across
> the Atlantic Ocean presented huge logistical difficulties. European
> military expeditions to the New World were tiny and poorly supplied. The
> successes of the conquistadors are reminiscent of ridiculous action movies
> in which one man defeats a small army—and that’s a lot harder to do with an
> arquebus than an Uzi. Early colonization efforts often teetered on the edge
> of disaster, as when half the Pilgrims died in their first winter, or when
> most of the settlers in Jamestown starved to death in the winter of 1609.
> Epidemic disease didn’t just grease the skids for the initial conquests: It
> reduced Amerindian populations and made later revolts far weaker than they
> would have been otherwise. If they had not died of disease, the Amerindians
> would have had time to copy and use many European military innovations in
> the second or third round of fighting. [pp. 164-165. Basic Books. Kindle
> Edition.]
>
> Lawrence
>
>
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