Preliminary Essay on the Origin of the Americans
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Preliminary Essay on the Origin of the Americans After having read almost everything that has been written on the manner in which America could have been populated, it seems to me that we are as little far along as we were able to be before this great question had been discussed. And yet, one could write a full volume, if one wished, just to report the various opinions of the learned on this subject. But most have fallen so far into illusion. Almost all of them have based their conjectures on foundations so ruinous— or have had recourse to certain resemblances of names, habits, customs, re- ligion, and languages that are so frivolous—that it seems to me as useless to refute them as impossible to reconcile them. It is perhaps not surprising that the first who treated this subject lost their way on an uncleared path, where they were walking without a guide. My sur- prise is that those who went into the most depth, and who had help doing so that those who preceded them in this work did not have, fell into even greater oddities. They could have avoided doing so, however, if they had applied a small number of certain principles that some people have established quite well. The simple and natural consequences that must be drawn from them would have sufficed, in my opinion, to satisfy and settle the public’s curiosity, which the great display of misplaced and often baseless erudition only throws back into its initial uncertainty. I flatter myself that I make this manifest by the little of it that I am going to relate. It was doubtless very surprising in our hemisphere when it was learned that a New World had been discovered in the other, where until then we had imag- ined only a vast sea on which it was not thought prudent to put ourselves at risk. Nevertheless, Christopher Columbus had scarcely reconnoitered some islands—and especially the one he named the Spanish Island, where he found some gold mines—when he convinced himself that this island was sometimes Solomon’s Ophir, and sometimes Zipangri, or the Venetian Marco Polo’s Ci- pango.1 Vatable and Robert Estienne also believed that it was to America that 1 Christopher Columbus (c.1451–1506), the famous navigator from Genoa who explored the New World on behalf of Spain. William D. Phillips Jr., “Columbus, Christopher,” ocwe. The “Spanish Island” is Hispaniola, presently occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The biblical books of 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles recount a journey to Ophir—the location of which is today unknown—by King Solomon and King Hiram I of Ezion-Geber, the fruits of which were gold, wood, and precious stones. See 1 Kings 9:28 and 10:11, and 2 Chronicles, 8:18 and 9:10. All references to the Bible are drawn from Holy Bible with the Apocryphal/Deutero canonical Books, New Revised Standard Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1989). Zipangri, Cipango, and variants of both such as Chipangu and Zipangu were used for Japan © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/9789004408647_003 <UN> 36 Preliminary Essay On The Origin Of The Americans Solomon sent his fleets to search for gold, and Columbus believed that he saw some remains of his furnaces in the mines of Cibao, the finest and most abun- dant of the Spanish Island, and perhaps of the entire New World.2 Arias Montano not only placed Ophir and Parvaim in the New World but gives Joktan, son of Eber, as the founder of Juktan, an imaginary city in Peru, and to the empire of Peru itself—and to that of Mexico, which he claims is Ophir—one of the sons of Joktan who bore that name.3 He adds that anoth- er son of the same patriarch, named Jobab in scripture, was the father of the peoples on the coast of Paria, and that the eastern mountain Sephar, to which Moses says the children of Joktan moved upon departing from Mesha, is the famous chain of the Andes that extends from north to south the length of Peru and Chile. The authority of this learned interpreter of scripture has led Postel, Becanus, Possevin, Génébrard, and many others to the same opinion.4 Finally, by early travelers starting with Marco Polo (c.1254–1324) in the thirteenth century and con- tinuing until the early sixteenth century. Ronald H. Fritze, “Cipangu,” ocwe; jas, 104–5n4. 2 François Vatable (c.1495–1547) was the founding chair of Hebrew at the Collège de France. Notes from his lectures—disavowed by Vatable and condemned by the Sorbonne—fell into the hands of the printer Robert Estienne (1503–59), who published them. See “Vatable, Fran- çois,” and “Estienne, Robert the Elder,” odr. Berthiaume has located Vatable’s association of Ophir and the West Indies in his annotations to the Bible, and reports that Estienne made no such claim. jas, 105n5. Cibao was the name given to Hispaniola by its native inhabitants. Based in part on the resemblance of this name to Cipangu and its variants, Columbus ini- tially believed them to be one and the same. Ronald H. Fritze, “Cipangu,” ocwe. 3 Benito Arias Montano (1527–98) was editor of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568–73) and par- ticipated as a theologian in the Council of Trent (1545–63). “Arias Montano, Benito,” odr. Parvaim was the source of the gold used to adorn King Solomon’s temple. 2 Chronicles 3:6. The family tree of Eber and movements of his descendants—including the place names Seph- ar and Mesha—are described in Genesis 10:25–31. I have not been able to locate any other references to an imaginary city named Juktan, but it is worth mentioning, as Berthiaume has done, that the name is not without resemblance to the Mexican toponym Yucatán. Paria appears to refer to the Paria Peninsula in what is now Venezuela. According to Berthiaume, Montano also saw a resemblance between the name of Ophir, one of Joktan’s sons, and Peru. jas, 105n6. 4 Guillaume Postel (1510–81) was a French orientalist and diplomat sent to Constantinople by King François I (1494–1547, r.1515–47). See “Postel, Guillaume,” odr. Berthiaume notes that he places Ophir in Peru in his Cosmographicae disciplinae compendium (1651), but elsewhere in two other texts. jas, 106n7. Johannes Goropius Becanus, also known as Jan van Gorp (1519–72), was a Dutch humanist, linguist, and physician best known for his audacious ef- fort in Origines Antwerpianae (1569) to “derive all languages from his native Dutch.” W. Keith Percival, “History of Linguistics: Western Traditions: The Renaissance,” International Encyclo pedia of Linguistics, ed. William J. Frawley, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Berthiaume has located Becanus’s engagement with Montano’s thesis in another, later work, also written in Latin and not available in English: Opera Ioan. Goropii Becani, hactenus in lucem non edita: Nempe Hermathena, Hieroglyphica, Vertumnus, Gallica, Francica, Hispanica <UN>.