Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

52. There was also a theory that the precious metals of the world were collected in a fabulous region near the equator, and that the American natives knew where this region was. Padre José de Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Madrid, 1954, pages 88–89, quoted in Bodmer, Op. cit., page 155.

53. Elliott, Op. cit., pages 49–50.

54. Ibid., page 51.

55. Ibid., page 52.

56. Alvin M. Josephy Jr (editor), America in 1492, New York: Vintage, 1991/1993, page 6.

57. William McLeish, The Day Before America, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994, page 168.

58. Moreover, the Sioux and many other tribes that became famous as Plains warriors were not yet living on the plains in 1492. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 8.

59. Ibid., page 34.

60. J. C. Furnas, The Americas: A Social History of the United States, 1587–1914, London: Longman, 1970, which includes details of the things Europeans tried to learn from the Indians.

61. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 76.

62. Ibid., pages 170–171.

63. McLeish, Op. cit., page 131.

64. Ibid., page 195.

65. Ibid., page 196.

66. Ibid., page 194.

67. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 251. See Coe, Op. cit., page 48, for a chart on the classification and time-depth of thirty-one Mayan languages.

68. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 253.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., page 254.

71. The central Alaskan Yupik Indians became famous for their many words for snow, distinguishing ‘snow on the ground’, ‘light snow’, ‘deep, soft snow’, ‘snow about to avalanche’, ‘drifting snow’ and ‘snow blocks’. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 255.

72. Ibid., page 262.

73. Ibid., page 263.

74. Furnas, Op. cit., page 366, says the Apaches were the least amenable to conversion by the Jesuits.

75. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 278.

76. Ibid., page 291. See Coe, Op. cit., page 136, for the relation between Hopi grammar and their view of the world.

77. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 294.

78. McLeish, Op. cit., page 233.

79. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 309.

80. The grave of a former shaman would be disinterred after a few years and the remains burned and turned into a special magic potion, consumed at a special ceremony, so that the men who came after him could acquire some of his wisdom. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 312.

81. Ibid., page 326.

82. Ibid., page 329.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid., page 330.

85. Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents: The ‘New World’ Through Indian Eyes, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992, examines five New World civilizations – Aztec, Inca, Maya, Cherokee and Iroquois – and their reactions to invasion. Wright describes, for example, the Incas’ vast storage systems, their complex irrigation networks, their synthesis of earlier civilisations. It is a fascinating attempt to get inside the mind of the Indians and then goes on to explore their reactions, in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the takeover of their land. (See this chapter, pages 454–455.)

86. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 343. But see Coe, Op. cit., pages 59–60, for Aztec/Inca chronology.

87. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 343.

88. Ibid., page 367.

89. Ibid., page 372.

90. Ibid.

91. Coe, Op. cit., page 118, for a diagram of how Aztec writing could be built up.

92. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 375.

93. Ibid., page 375–376.

94. Ibid., page 377.

95. Ibid., page 381.

96. Furnas, Op. cit., page 166, notes some instructive parallels between Aztec religion and Christianity, including the equivalent of Eve, the serpent and the Flood.

97. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 389.

98. Ibid., page 392.

99. Ibid.

100. Coe, Op. cit., page 58, for Mayan attitudes to wildlife.

101. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., pages 402–403.

102. Ibid., pages 408–409.

103. Ibid., page 409.

104. Ibid., page 412.

105. Furnas, Op. cit., pages 179ff, for the ‘engineering marvels’ of the Incas, gold-covered stones and weaving skills.

106. Ibid., page 413.

107. Ibid., See Coe, Op. cit., pages 242–243, for a discussion of gods.

108. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 413–414.

109. Other aspects of divinity lay in the fact that a creator of likenesses was believed to have some control over the person represented, and in the fact that the objects created were more important – more divine – than their creator. Josephy (editor), Op. cit., page 416.

110. Ibid., page 417.

111. Ibid., page 419.