On Myth-Making and Other Concerns

Cristobal Colon atop a neo-Gothic column, Madrid, Spain

Much of history, especially the bits that have transpired in the past two thousand years or so, have their own life in the present: the events and people of the past are points around which great edifices and counter-edifices are erected and invested with all manner of importance, emotional charge, and value-laden judgments. The images of the past become explanations and justifications for the actions of the present, and with every use of history- for life or otherwise- these images become more deeply ingrained, more invested with emotional weight and ideological baggage.  The Spanish ‘Conquest’ of the Americas is, even more than many other periods and events of the past, a deeply contested one, a period around which various people have built images and myths that they have in turn used to construct and support all manner of ideologies and programs of action. From indigenous protesters decrying Columbus Day celebrations to the late nineteenth century founders of those celebrations,  the people and events of the ‘Conquest’ are surrounded with layers and layers of image and ideas that have precious little to do with the past as it probably was, and very much to do with the concerns of subsequent generations. Any attempt at uncovering some semblance of historical truth regarding this period is fraught with difficulties, even if one does not hope to describe the Conquest wie es eigentlich gewesen.

Matthew Restall’s Seven Myths tackles, conveniently enough, seven such myths as promised in the title- seven conceptions, shaped in both ‘popular culture’ and the academy, about the Conquest that often times have their roots in the self-projections and image-shapings of the Conquerors themselves, though some of the myths are much later inventions (such as the apotheosis of Christopher Columbus). As Restall notes in the introduction, all historians are subject to similar problems of limited perspective and their own preconceptions and ideologies that shape how they reconstruct history. Not an earth-shattering proposition, but always worth holding in mind. Even- perhaps as much so, or more so- twenty-first century historians have their own grid of values and ideologies upon which to build their reckoning of the past. Restall still contends for utility in history, and the possibility of some grasp of truth, contingent though it may be.

In unspinning each of the myths and then presenting a different construction of the aspect of the Conquest the myth deals with, we see not simply the period under consideration in a better light, but the ideological needs of the people who spun the myths in the first place, and those who continued to find them useful. Some of them- such as the desolation of the indigenous- has experienced life under very divergent ideologies, being used to herald the superiority of Western civilization, and to decry the same civilization for its genocidal brutality. The rather more complicated reality is decidedly less useful for ideology, as it reveals that the indigenous were perhaps not quite so noble (at least not in the way modern liberals or others might wish), nor Europeans quite so superior.

Indeed, one of the ironies Restall reveals throughout the book is that the very complexity of indigenous society in the Americas was one of the great assets of the Spanish. The existence of large empires and their disaffected subjects and peripheral polities- features not at all foreign to the European invaders- made the Conquest possible in many ways. Had the Spanish been forced to fight decentralized societies without pre-existing elites and pre-established patterns of taxation, levy, and deference to authority, their task would have been vastly more difficult (as it was in those parts of the nascent empire where indigenous peoples were semi-sedentary or nomadic and hence much harder to control). The fact of indigenous societal complexity, if not widespread political unity, meant not only pre-existing patterns of control, but the interstices into which the Spanish could insert themselves to manipulate a wide range of indigenous polities for Spanish ends. And as Restall continually points out, this process was interpreted by indigenous, not as Spanish conquest, but as essentially indigenous and hence ‘normal’ patterns- power struggles, civil wars- that happened to include the new power of the Spanish. That they could not foresee the eventual result of Spanish intervention is quite understandable. And after all, it could have gone otherwise. Nonetheless, in the end the Spanish were successful and often quite perspicacious  in their political and military wrangling among advanced, sophisticated polities. Yet at the same time the indigenous actors, thanks in part to their sophistication, were not helpless, but worked the process as well, seeking their advantages (or at least, as was usually the case here as elsewhere in the world, the advantages of the elite) in the midst of Spanish intrigues and politics.  We can hardly fault indigenous elites for not seeing the Spanish as a threat to the native peoples of the Americas- they had no reason to imagine themselves as any sort of cohesive whole with other peoples in the Americas, nor did they have reason to be especially concerned with those other polities. Just as good, maybe better, to be under a Spanish administrator as a Mexica one. Sometimes the devil you don’t know can be preferable to the one you do, or so it might seem at the time…

But the reality of indigenous sophistication, their advanced polities and structured hierarchies of  educated elites, does not lend itself to many post-Conquest ideologies. For the Spanish conquistadors, their image was greatly magnified if they could lead people- perhaps themselves included- to imagine a tiny band of incredibly Spanish men creating a massive empire, single-handedly (other than the invisible hand of Providence, perhaps). For many later observers who see the Conquest as an evil, an instance of genocide even, the image of indigenous societies, looking much like European societies, and participating in the Conquest, is not a useful image either. The indigenous as victim, and as morally superior to the conquering European, is perhaps a more comfortable image, and certainly more useful ideologically.

I also found myself wondering: perhaps the reality that it was as much the indigenous’ sophistication, their advanced and well-structured polities, that so often enabled the Spanish conquest- perhaps that reality gives us some pause. It’s a little disconcerting when you realize that the indigenous peoples weren’t some how just exceptionally unlucky or the Spanish exceptionally superior (though the unluckiness was pretty pronounced at least in terms of disease)- the collaboration of indigenous elites and the Spanish manipulation of their advanced polities is not at all exceptional, and makes perfect sense to anyone who has ever participated in similar polities. Our own advanced civilizations and complex polities can be the very tools that cut us down, whether we live in sixteenth century South America or the twenty-first century US.