American Monsters: Images of Brazilian Nature from Early Modern Europe

"The most disgusting and nauseating thing which man ever saw." 
-Spanish chronicler Andres Bernaldez on Christopher Columbus' first impression of Caribbean iguanas, 1513.

IN HIS BOOK Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Harvard literature professor Stephen Greenblatt argues that "the production of a sense of the marvelous in the New World is at the very center of virtually all of Columbus's writings about his discoveries, though the meaning of that sense shifts over the years." Greenblatt thinks that Columbus emphasized wonders and marvels "because marvels are inseparably bound up in rhetorical and pictorial tradition with voyages to the Indies. To affirm the 'marvelous' nature of the discoveries is, even without the lucrative shipments yet on board, to make good on the claim to have reached the fabled realms of gold and spices." Yet Greenblatt doesn't devote much space in his book to the flip side of the "marvelous": the monstrous.

As Iberian voyages of "discovery" segued into expeditions of conquest and settlement over the course of the sixteenth century, Europeans increasingly visualized the New World as a land of bizarre torments, freakish monsters and outlandish civilizations in thrall to the devil.

Map of Brasil, Dieppe School, 1547. Click to see
much larger version.

Spanish interpretations of the religious practices they encountered in the lands of the Aztec Triple Alliance have attracted the majority of historians interested in how Europeans expressed fear, apprehension and disgust -- as well as wonder -- toward the Americas (see below for some recommendations). The pictures below show that monsters and the monstrous were also depicted in the context of Portuguese Brazil. I'm particularly interested in how the incredible biodiversity of Amazonia was initially interpreted by European observers who had seen nothing to rival it in their temperate homelands. Although comparisons to the Garden of Eden were frequent, these images also reveal a profound anxiety about the abundance of nature in the Neotropics. 

The Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry's vision of Brazil mingles outlandish sea creatures with
flying devils who torment the Tupí Indian villagers at lower right. Theodor de Bry, Americae 
tertia pars (Frankfurt, 1592)

Birds of paradise feature in this detail from the 1547 Dieppe map of Brazil linked above.

Tupí Indians hunt leonine creatures, probably reflecting early accounts of jaguars. Another detail.

In the same pictorial field, villagers lounge while two tortoises amble by.

During the Dutch occupation of parts of Brazil in the 1640-60 period, a number of highly
skilled painters visited the new colony to record their impressions of its flora and fauna.
In this 1665 painting by Albert Eckhout, two dueling tortoises recall the pair in the detail
from the Dieppe map above.

Despite their skill in visual representation, however, Dutch artists were often at least as fanciful in their depictions of South American monsters as their French and Iberian peers. The engravings below, selected from the Dutch author Arnoldus Montanus' 1671 De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (The New and Unknown World), offer a positively bizarre take on American animals and peoples. 

The "draco" (dragon) in this one bears a passing resemblance to the "Jenny Hanivers" and
"Sea Monks" of early modern sailors' lore.

Europeans were also fascinated and fearful of the "monstrous" forms of indigenous Brazilians themselves. Although most accounts remarked upon the good health, longevity and physique of Tupí Indians and other indigenous societies in Brazil (probably a reflection more of the poor health and diet of the European mariners than anything else), others focused on their tendency toward body-modification. The most entertaining and strange European take on piercing and tattooing I have been able to find is John Bulwer's fantastically titled Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or the Artificial Changeling. Historically presented, in the mad and cruel Gallantry, foolish Bravery, ridiculous Beauty, filthy Fineness, and loathesome Loveliness of most Nations, fashioning & altering their Bodies from the Mould intended by Nature. With a Vindication of the Regular Beauty and Honesty of Nature, and an Appendix of the Pedigree of the English Gallant. (London: J. Hardesty, 1650). (I wrote about this a bit in an earlier post). Below he describes how "the Brasileans... are pricked within the flesh" with paint.

Bulwer's title page takes this a step further, showing an Amerindian figure sporting some truly remarkable tattoos! The European woman with facial tattoos to the figure's left highlights Bulwer's concern that this "barbarous" custom would become fashionable with his own countrymen (he was right, but it would take another three hundred years or so to really catch on, and the whole "face on a butt" tattoo fad seems to still lie in the future).

Readers wanting to learn more about the role of the devil and the monstrous in European interpretations of Amerindian societies might want to start with Fernando Cervantes' The Devil in the New World and Jorge Canizares-Esguerra's Puritan Conquistadors. Greenblatt's Marvelous Possessions, quoted above, is a great study of how the fantastical and marvelous figured into colonization, while Joyce Chaplin's Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, revises and critiques his claims in various interesting ways. Those interested in New World nature and particularly animals should check out A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America Miguel de Asua and Roger French, a fun, learned and highly-entertaining book (from which I stole the quote on iguanas that opens this post). 

Giolo, the Painted Prince

Prince Giolo, Son of ye King of Moangis or Gilolo: lying under the Equator in the Long[itude] of 152 Deg[rees] 30 Min[utes], a fruitful Island abounding with rich spices and other valuable Commodities. This famous Painted Prince is the just Wonder of ye Age. His whole Body (except Face, Hands and Feet) is curiously and most exquisitely Painted or Stained full of Variety and Invention with prodigious Art and Skill perform'd. In so much of the ancient and noble Mistery of Painting or Staining upon Human Bodies seems to be comprised in this one stately Piece. The more admirable Back-parts afford us a Representation of one quarter part of the Sphere upon & betwixt his shoulders where ye Arctick & Tropick Circles center in ye North Pole of his Neck... The Paint itself is so durable, which nothing can wash it off or deface ye beauty of it. It is prepared from ye Juice of a certaine Herb or Plant, peculiar to that Country, w[h]ich they esteem infallible to preserve Human Bodies from ye deadly poison or hurt of any venomous Creature whatsoever, & none but those of ye Royal Family are permitted to be thus painted with it. This admirable Person is about ye Age of 30, graceful and well proportioned in all his Limbs, extreamly modest & civil, neat & cleanly; but his Language is not understood, neither can he speak English. (1697)

In 1691, the buccaneer and naturalist William Dampier returned to England after a daunting circumnavigation of the Earth, his first of what would be three round the world journeys. When he returned to London, Dampier was accompanied by a slave from the island of Miangas he had acquired in the course of this journey -- a man he called 'Prince Giolo.' 

As Dampier recollected in his published account of his travels, "[Giolo] was painted all down the breast, between his shoulders behind; on his thighs before; and in the form of several broad rings, or bracelets, round his arms and legs. I cannot liken the drawings to any figure of animals, or the like, but they were very curious, full of great variety of lines, flourishes, checkered work, etc. keeping a very graceful proportion, and appearing very artificial, even to wonder, especially that upon and between his shoulder blades... He told me that most of the men and women of the island were thus painted." (William Dampier, A New Voyage Round The World, 1697)

Dampier was blunt about his reasons for taking Giolo back to London: "I proposed no small advantage to myself from my painted prince... [that] might be gained by shewing him in England" (Voyage, 347). A manuscript by Dampier curently housed in the British Library is even more blunt: "I only brought with me this Journall & my painted prince which I might haue made a great deal of money by but I lep out of the frying pan into the fire in leaueing gouernour Senden to come home with Captain heath." For more on this see Geraldine Barnes, "Curiosity, Wonder and William Dampier's Painted Prince," in the Journal for Early Modern Studies. Giolo is also discussed in a recent book on Dampier called A Pirate of Exquisite Mind. I hope to consult Dampier's manuscripts when I do research in London this July, so perhaps I'll be able to write about Giolo in much more detail in a month or two.

At the moment, the best account of Dampier and Giolo that is freely available online seems to be this blog entry. Although usually mentioned as an interesting anecdote, Giolo's story was quite tragic. Exhibited for money in London, Giolo was later taken to the University of Oxford to be examined, where he died from smallpox. Apparently, samples of Giolo's tattooed flesh were preserved in the library of St. Johns College, Oxford under the macabre entry, "a bit of an Indian prince's skin," but they appear not to have survived.

Pintados, 'the Painted Ones,' in an early Spanish record of the Philippines, the Boxer Codex, c. 1595.