Cortes greets the envoys
of Montezuma at Veracruz.
|
Who
Is the
Alien?
Abductions
Transform
Greetings
into Attack.
Dr. Ronald Fritze
"Come, let us go down,
and there confuse their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech."
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there
over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:7
Alien abduction is a big topic in popular culture and has been for some time. Most of us are only familiar with alien abduction vicariously. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) brought alien abduction out of the fringe of popular culture and into the mainstream. Interest was reinvigorated by the appearance in 1993 of the X-Files television program, where FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully followed a trail of alien abductions along with numerous and sundry other paranormal phenomena - and were even abducted themselves. Taken and other movies and TV series have joined the fray.
Why do the aliens abduct us? Hard to say. Scully ended up with her own embedded IPC code and a baby! Some alien abductors are apparently motivated by evil intentions such as conquest of the earth. Other aliens are just curious and humans are their latest science project. Of course, there is always the ancient reason, saucily proclaimed by a cheesy science fiction movie from 1967, Mars Needs Women.
Initial Contact Included Kidnapping.
If alien abduction is a modern fantasy, in the Age of Discovery it was an early modern reality. European explorers regularly kidnapped native peoples they encountered in the course of their voyages. These abductions should not be confused with the massive forced transportation of people to work as slaves in plantations and in the households of the well-to-do. These small-scale abductions were a phenomenon of the period of initial contact. Slaving would soon follow, but it was done for a different purpose.
In the world of Hollywood movies and TV, people from different countries and even different worlds generally are able to communicate with each other with very little difficulty. In the various manifestations of Star Trek, a computerized device known as the universal translator accomplished interpretations between alien tongues. Otherwise, filmmakers shamelessly employ a convention of the craft, which allows the plot to flow without being impeded by the need for cumbersome translation.
The reality of contact between cultures speaking different languages is quite another thing.
How Much Real Communication?
As you will learn from reading Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, Cortes initially had to communicate with the Aztecs by having Geronimo Aguilar translate from Spanish to Maya, which the Indian interpreter Dona Marina would translate into the Nahuatl of the Aztecs. In other cases there was no translator available and it is doubtful that much real communication took place. Columbus may have thought he was communicating with the natives of San Salvador, but there is good reason to believe that he was wrong.
Europeans realized at the start of the Age of Discovery that accurate and trustworthy translators would be needed. Early on the kings of Portugal issued instructions that their explorers should procure natives and bring them back to Portugal. There they would be taught Portuguese and then sent back with future voyagers as translators.
How were these translators to be recruited? By force. If the Portuguese saw a chance to grab a likely native youth to serve as a translator, they took it. No please. No thank you. It was a behavior that did not tend to promote good relations with native peoples.
Volunteers, Yes — But Still Dead.
Interestingly, some natives appear to have joined the Europeans voluntarily. Columbus took six Indians back with him when he returned to Spain at the end of his first voyage. Prolonged exposure to European diseases along with a harsher climate and strange food resulted in the death of all of the Indians. Their demise might have been somewhat embarrassing to explain to their fellows back home, but the destruction of the settlement of Navidad created an even greater cause for suspicion between the two peoples.
When Magellan visited Patagonia on his way to the Straits of Magellan, he picked up two Patagonian giants. (In the late 16th century engraving by de Bry, reproduced above, the figure on the right is a Patagonian giant munching on an arrow. Magellan is the captain.) The account of Antonio Pigafetta explains how it was done.
|
"Fifteen days later we saw four other giants. . . . The captain [Magellan] kept the two youngest to bring them to Spain on his return. But this by a cunning trick, for otherwise they would have troubled some of our men. The means by which he kept them was that he gave them many knives, scissors, mirrors, bells, and glass, all which things they held in their hands. And meanwhile the captain sent for large iron fetters, such as are put on the feet of malefactors. Whereat these giants took great pleasure in seeing these fetters, and did not know where they had to be put, and they were grieved that they could not take them in their hands, because they were prevented by the other things aforesaid. . . . [Magellan] made signs to the two whom he wished to keep that the fetters would be put on their feet, [and] then they would go away. Whereat they made a sign with their heads that they were content with this. Forthwith the captain had the fetters put on the feet of both of them. And when they saw the bolt across the fetters being struck with a hammer to rivet it and prevent them from being opened, these giants were afraid. But the captain made signs to them that they should suspect nothing. Nevertheless, perceiving the trick that had been played on them, they began to blow and foam at the mouth like bulls, loudly calling on Setebos (that is, the great devil) to help them."
|
Neither of the giants made it to Spain. One sickened and died before the Spanish cleared the Straits of Magellan while the other succumbed to malnutrition and scurvy along with many other members of the crew during the terrible crossing of the western Pacific Ocean.
Imaginations Ran Wild.
By taking people back with them and failing to return them quickly, Europeans explorers aroused the suspicions of the native peoples. The slave trade further aggravated the situation. When fellow members of the tribe failed to return with the Europeans, imaginations ran wild and it was human nature to think the worst.
In 1455 Alvise Cadamosto, an Italian in the service of Portugal, captained an expedition to the Gambia River for the purpose of establishing trade with the local Mandinkas. The Africans had no interest in trade and instead attacked the Portuguese unremittingly. When the interpreters of the Portuguese assured the Mandinkas that the Europeans only wanted to exchange gifts and to trade as they did with the peoples of Senegal, they received this curious reply.
|
"They [the Mandinka] replied that they already had news of us and of our dealings with the blacks of Senegal, who must be bad men if they sought our friendship, for it was their firm belief that we Christians ate human flesh, and that we only sought to buy black people in order to eat them. For that reason nothing in the world would make them wish to be friends with us. On the contrary they hoped to kill us all and then to present everything we had to their lord."
|
In the annals of cannibalism, it is a common occurrence that the cannibals are always other people from far away about whom little is known. For the Mandinka of the Gambia River, the others were the Portuguese. Many African people had entered their ships. Few returned.
One lesson that history should teach us, but often fails to do, is that everyone has a point of view. It can be a jarring but highly educational experience to look at the world through the eyes of another person. That is exactly the experience the observant and highly empathetic Cadamosto had in 1455. His attitude toward non-Europeans was one of curiosity and good will. It was an approach that was all too rare among the explorers and the conquistadors of the Age of Discovery, who blithely kidnapped native peoples for interpreters and slaves with little or no thought about the feelings of their captives. No wonder the standard response of native peoples to the arrival of Europeans quickly shifted from greeting to attack.
PLANET CLIO is ruled by Dr. Ronald Fritze,
Professor of History at the University of Central Arkansas.
An independent entity in the CornDancer consortium of planets,
Planet Clio is dedicated to the study and exploration of history.
CORNDANCER
is a privately owned, non-commercial developmental website
for the mind and spirit
maintained by webmistress Freddie A. Bowles of the Planet Earth.
Submissions are invited.
|
