Did Cristobal de Colon (Christopher Columbus) Carry a Passport: Legitimacies of the New World

Premise and Background:  Documents and credientials, we carry them everyday and for most of us, rarely think about the implication of having them or not having them.  Of course, during a traffic stop or if you are an unlucky New Yorker who encounters Stop-and-Frisk, documents and credientials become a significant factor in how that encounter will be resolved.  On a more fundamental level, the question of Christopher Columbus' first voyage and subsequent travels as legitimate or illegitimate is of extreme importance to archaeological recovery and possession.  So, we ask, did the future Almirante del Mar Oceano carry a passport? 

January 2, not October 12, is the important date of 1492.  It was the day the combined armies from Aragon and Castile defeated the last of the Muslim forces in Spain at Granada and for the first time, in seven centuries, freed Iberia from Muslim influence and presence.  It allowed the Spanish Crown to breathe and focus-in on other matters, including the money that had been borrowed for exploration, redirected to the Granada battlefield, and the investors who were seeking action, let alone return on their investment.

Enter Cristobal de Colon to the royal court with a new introduction and new proposal.  We hear so often how timing is everything and for Columbus his timing was finally, after numerous attempt at more than one court, on-point.  He was in an unique situation this time, Ferdinand and Isabella needed him.  The Crown had investors to satisfy and through the ages we have seen how unhappy shareholder and investors can change the corporate (in this case, political) landscape.  As a result, Christopher Columbus' Great Enterprise was sanctioned and funded. 

By now, Cristobal de Colon was a smart man; wise in the ways of Sovereign politics and his need to secure the appropriate paperwork.  During April of 1492, he secured 7 documents: the Capitulations or what is more commonly known today as Articles of Agreement dated April 17; and five documents dated April 30th, the Title (Titulo) also called the Commission, the Letter of Credence to be given to foreign rulers and three Orders of the Sovereigns which outlined the acquiring and provisioning of the fleet.  Columbus' Passport was also one of these seven documents, although it was undated.

The Capitulations is defined by five articles.  A surviving preamble from the 1495 copy describes the document as "the things supplicated and which your highnesses give and grant to Don Cristobal de Colon ..."  As you can imagine, this document became extremely important when riches beyond the dreams of Europe were found and "confiscated" in the following decades and centuries.  But, written prior to the first voyage departure, these articles and the seven documents as a whole formed the basis for a legal claim by Spain both for territory and the "unjustly oppressed people" under the domain of the Carib, Aztec, Inca and all other ethnic and political leaders/rulers found in the West Indies land.

Follow up documents secured by the Spanish Sovereigns were just as important to the legal possession of the Western Hemisphere territory and completed the premise that Spain's actions in the New World were legal, justified and ethical as understood by European law of the day (and days to come).  The first set of these, issued by the Holy See Alexander VI (the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia), as four edicts dated May 3 and 4, 1493, and referred to as the bull Inter Caetera 1493, confirmed that every island and country discovered and not previously in the possession of any Christian prince be of the Sovereigns of Castile and their successors.  This was further supplemented by a fifth papal proclamation, the Dudem Siquidem of September 26, 1493.  Although still debated by legal scholars today, the Treaty of Tordesillas, dated June 7, 1494, for the most part, settled the issue with Portugal eventually receiving due territory on the eastern "bump-out" of South America, known today as Brasil.

It would be easy to think that the Spanish Crown, that is the Sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, had great foresight in providing documents to Columbus in case he found something when in actuality they were laying the foundation for the biggest "cover your a**" in world history.  They were responding to papal bulls issued between 1452 (Dum Diversas) through 1484, especially the bull Aeterni Regis of 1481.

(I find great irony in the naming of His Holiness' edicts as papal bulls.)

Therefore as the Spanish Sovereigns acted according to known and recognized law both before the 1492-1493 voyage and immediately after, there is legal justification for their claim of territory and hence, riches, from the New World.  The domain of Espana in the Western Hemisphere would continue until July 3, 1898, when off the coast of Cuba, Admiral Cervera cruiser, Cristobal Colon (again the irony is rich), would surrender to the upstart United States of America

Slavery, as we in the United States know it, ended with the Emancipation Proclaimation of 1863 and the subsequent cease of hostilities in 1865 of the Great Rebellion, the War between the States or the War of Northern Aggression, depending on your family roots.  Yet, today, some 28 million people around the global are held in economic slavery.  I enter this into the topic only as an example of the US perspective - slavery ended 150 years ago when in reality, it is stronger and more encompassing than ever before.

My question, Did Cristobal de Colon carry a Passport, is intended to stir our understanding of anthropology and archaeology, especially as to how it relates to Peru and the heritage of those lands on the western coast of South America.  So the fundamental question here is:  Are the Old World claims on the New World legitimate?

The short, simple answer to this is, YES, in the Old World!  I am confident that most educated, informed individuals today would not bulk at the perspective of so many indigenous people who would out and out dismiss the legitimacy of the Espana claim.  Yet, many of these same people would question the reaction of Native People who wish to curtail the archaeological exploitation of their heritage.   Plunder is plunder, whether it is gold dust and nuggets OR gold masks and disks, natural resources OR cultural resources.  So as you read my subsequent blogs you will need to recognize this duality in my own writings.  I both admire the work that has been, is and will be done in the name of scientific research for the advancement of the understanding of human culture and human achievement as well as deplore the plunder completed in the name of archaeological exploration.  And plunder not just in the sense of bad archaeology as some of the most devasting excavations were and are those with tight, thorough vertical and horizontal control.  They got it all and that is the problem.

A few years ago I read an article discussing the Sun and how it is a dying star with a remaining life span of approximately 6 billion years.  The author pointed out that we are arrogant enough as a species to believe that we will be around in 6 billion years to suffer this event.  AND we are arrogant enough as a discipline to believe our excavations are better than they were in the past.  I have to wonder just how much we miss.

So, Christophorus Colonus, as Peter Martyr referred to this ethnic Genoese, I think you did one hell of a job!

A Question of Parenthood: Who is the real Father of Peruvian Archaeology?

Premise and background:  Lineage and Legitimacy; two questions we should always ask ourselves any time we dissect history and comment on the past activities of historians and archaeologists.  For without understanding the lineage and assessing the legitimacy, we flail about in the quagmire of alien technology, trans-oceanic voyages and other pop culture reporting.  Peru, one of the most diverse countries of the world, has attracted it all; from cracked pots and the mystical to genuine scholarship with the questionable agendas of "legitimate" funding sources.  Most of us have only a surface collection of this heritage.

Many scholars would argue for Frederich Max Uhle, a German national who worked in Peru in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Others would attest it is John Howland Rowe of the University of California, Berkeley.

Still others would suggest, in keeping within an anthropological framework of relativism is good, that it should be a Peruvian and Julio Cesar Tello is nominated for Father of the Five Centuries!  Tello, after all, studied under Franz Boas for a few years and it does not get much more Dawn of the Anthropological Age than Boas!  Arguments could also be forwarded for the nomination of Pedro E Villar Cordova, Luis E Valcarcel, Luis G Lumbraras,  and from more of a museum point of view Manuel Chavez Ballon or Rafael Larco Hoyle.

Julio C Tello

Nominees could also include Alfred Louis Kroeber and William Duncan Strong for their 1920s work on the Uhle collection; other legendary names like Junius Bird, Gordon R. Willey, James A. Ford, Julian H. Steward and John Murra; more contemporary names like Michael Moseley, Alan Kolata, Donald Lathrop, Thomas Patterson, William Denevan (a geographer - gasp!), and E. Craig Morris for a variety of prolific reasons.

From a strictly chronological point of view, Uhle was the first to employ some assemblance of modern archaeological methods.  While some of his excavations were more "pot-hunter" like than vertically- or stratigraphically-controlled test units, he brought a scientific awareness to field research in Peru and to the new discipline of archaeology as a whole that has left a legacy of legitimate, research-minded and research-focused excavations and expeditions in Peru.

Although "glory and fame" would still motive explorer-archaeologists of Peru into the 20th century, Uhle's work marked a significant change as to the methodology and long-term objectives.  There is, perhaps, no greater glory than Machu Picchu.  However, Hiram Bingham is not a nominee nor is the National Geographical Society that brought this wonder to the fore-front of our knowledge.  And I am not even going to mention Nasca.

John Rowe, however, must be considered for his both his progeny as well as his scholarship. Simply and directly put, Rowe "created" more researchers in the field of Peruvian history and archaeology than any other professor.  And his students have students who have inspired and mentored students who continue to work in Peru and contribute to the "known record" of that geographical unit's past.

Although Peruvian, German and Japanese nationals may differ, I would also argue that the University of California at Berkeley is the Center of Creation or Garden of Eden for Peruvian archaeological studies.  Uhle's initial collection resides here in the womb and tomb that now bears his benefactor's name - Pheobe A. Hearst.  Toss in a little Kroeber, some Strong, and the nurturing departments of Anthropology AND Geography (under Carl Sauer with his own lineage of prolific academic progeny), incubate for 90 plus years and this is indeed the cradle of civilized archaeology as we want to know it.

And that is the rub because it simply should not be.  It should be Peruvian in country and in origin.  The father should be Tello or even better, a person of either Quechua or Aymara descendent and with a Quechua or Aymara name.   A central coast valley would make a wonderful cradle, sort of a hilly flanks environment with fresh seviche served daily.  Imagine the colors, the textures and the tastes; instead we have centuries of sterile white.