Up to Four Thesis Title Lines, in All Caps
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PLACE-NAMES, CONQUEST, AND EMPIRE: SPANISH AND AMERINDIAN CONCEPTIONS OF PLACE IN THE NEW WORLD by GENE RHEA TUCKER Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2011 Copyright © by Gene Rhea Tucker 2011 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first thank you is to Dr. Richard V. Francaviglia, who helped me hatch the idea that would lead to this dissertation. Ideas and sources were suggested by Drs. Dennis P. Reinhartz and David Buisseret. These three gentlemen, great cartographic scholars all, unfortunately all retired from UTA before the completion of my project. Thanks should, of course, be extended to the fine scholars of my current committee. They have aided me in ways they will never know: Drs. Douglas Richmond, John Garrigus, Imre Demhardt, and Kimberly Breuer. Without them, this dissertation would not exist. Other professors at UTA were instrumental in the long process of earning a doctorate, and it is necessary for me to thank these fine scholars: Drs. Thomas Adam, Steven G. Reinhardt, Robert Fairbanks, Christopher Morris, Sam W. Haynes, David Narrett, Stanley Palmer, and Joseph Bastien. All were an immense help at some point. Further thanks are due to the UTA history department staff, especially Robin Deeslie and Ami Keller. Kudos to the innumerable librarians, archivists, and student workers who do the grunt work of dealing with researchers. Special thanks to Ben Huseman, UTA‘s cartographic archivist, in this regard. Thanks also to my colleagues in the same Ph.D. boat: Jefferson Dillman (who has suffered the indignity of sharing an office with me for five years), David Watry, Mylynka Cardona, Greg Kosc, and Justin Dellinger. April 6, 2011 iii ABSTRACT PLACE-NAMES, CONQUEST, AND EMPIRE: SPANISH AND AMERINDIAN CONCEPTIONS OF PLACE IN THE NEW WORLD Gene Rhea Tucker, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2011 Supervising Professor: Douglas Richmond This research corrects the one-sided historiography of toponyms in the New World, which focus only on the European imposition of place-names, viewed by many postmodernist scholars as a way to oppress and suppress the native Indians. Instead this transatlantic dissertation recognizes that the Spanish brought patterns of place-naming created in the Old World over to the New World. The naming of the New World was not a unilateral Spanish undertaking. The Spanish did create new toponyms in the Americas. They described the land, honored their Catholic faith and their nobility, and they transferred Old World place-names to the New World—but this only accounts for a portion of the toponyms used in the Spanish New World. Amerindians continued using their own place-names and contributed many of them to the Spanish, who adopted and iv adapted them. A number of the toponyms in the New World, as demonstrated both by contemporary Spanish chronicles and maps, were in fact syncretized place-names. For every Spanish ―Vera Cruz‖ there was an Indian ―Oaxaca‖ and a creolized ―San Juan Evangelista Culhuacan.‖ The syncretized toponyms of the Spanish New World are best understood in the wider context of the transtlantic encounter. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................... viii Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION: PLACE-NAMES, MAPS, AND SPANISH AMERICA……………………………..………..….. .1 2. PLACE-NAMES IN RECONQUISTA SPAIN .................................................29 3. EXPLORERS, CONQUERORS, AND PLACE-NAMING IN THE EASTERN ATLANTIC......................................................................70 4. THE COLUMBIAN ENCOUNTER AND PLACE-NAMES IN THE NEW WORLD .......................................................95 5. OF MAPS AND MEN: MAPPING AND NAMING THE NEW DISCOVERIES ..........................................................133 6. THE CONQUEST AND NAMING OF ―NEW SPAIN‖ ...............................179 7. AN EMPIRE OF PLACE-NAMES ................................................................217 8. CONCLUSIONS: THE SPANISH COLONIAL NAMING PATTERN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY...........................................265 APPENDIX 1. PLACE-NAMES OF COLUMBUS IN THE NEW WORLD .......................299 2. PLACE-NAMES IN THE SECOND LETTER OF CORTÉS .......................306 3. SETTLEMENTS FOUNDED BY JOSÉ DE ESCANDÓN IN NUEVO SANTANDER, 1748-1755 .........................................................309 vi BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................311 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ...............................................................................374 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 2.1 Languages in Iberia, 13th Century AD ........................................................................32 2.2 Spain in 910 ................................................................................................................ 39 2.3 Arabic toponyms ..........................................................................................................40 2.4 Arabicized toponyms ...................................................................................................41 2.5 Mozarabic toponyms ....................................................................................................42 2.6 Spain in 1037 ...............................................................................................................43 2.7 Alfonso VI of León and Castilla ..................................................................................44 2.8 Reconquista toponyms .................................................................................................47 2.9 Reconquista toponyms .................................................................................................48 2.10 Spain in 1150 .............................................................................................................49 2.11 Spain 1212-1492 ........................................................................................................55 2.12 Santiago Matamoros ..................................................................................................60 2.13 The Saint-Sever Beatus mappa mundi from ca. 1050 ................................................62 2.14 Toponyms of the Saint-Sever Beatus map .................................................................63 2.15 Beatus map detail, 1050 .............................................................................................65 2.16 Beatus map detail, ca. 1248 .......................................................................................66 3.1 The eastern Atlantic on the Catalan Atlas....................................................................75 3.2 The Guanche ................................................................................................................78 viii 3.3 Guanche toponyms.......................................................................................................80 3.4 T-O map with a western antipodean continent ............................................................82 3.5 The 1424 Pizzigano Chart ............................................................................................85 3.6 Western Africa on the Cantino map .............................................................................92 4.1 Toscanelli‘s map of the Atlantic ................................................................................103 4.2 Behaim‘s globe ..........................................................................................................104 4.3 The West Indies and Central America, 1492-1525 ....................................................111 4.4 Columbus taking possession of San Salvador ...........................................................114 4.5 A Columbus cross on Española .................................................................................124 5.1 The Cantino planisphere of 1502 ...............................................................................143 5.2 The newly discovered lands on the Cantino map of 1502 .........................................144 5.3 The Caverio map of 1506 ..........................................................................................146 5.4 Polo title page, 1503 ..................................................................................................149 5.5 One of the Zorzi sketch maps ....................................................................................151 5.6 The famed Waldseemüller map of 1507 ....................................................................158 5.7 Detail from the Waldseemüller map ..........................................................................159 5.8 America is named ......................................................................................................160 5.9 The Caspar Vopell map of 1545 ................................................................................167 5.10 The Jerónimo Girava map of 1570 ..........................................................................168 5.11 Cuba from Alonso de Santa