Abstract
Despite centuries of scholarship regarding Amerindian warfare, both academic and public narratives that address the European conquest of the Americas privilege the absolute and total conquest and subjugation of the American Indian. As such, the legitimate Amerindian role in the conquest of the New World empires has entered the fray, and this in large part is due to the academy’s failure to consider more fully the role of Indian militias and allies, or indios amigos. In those contexts where Indian militias are discussed, their role is generally treated as cursory, or in the case of Mexican nationalist narratives, as an utter betrayal of Amerindian self determination. In an effort to reassert the role of the Amerindian warrior in assuring self-autonomy and assuming defense against European forces throughout the Americas, this essay will address three primary themes. First, we introduce that pervasive mythology of conquest that reifies the wholesale destruction of the Amerindian past, and one defined solely in terms of its relevance to European triumphalism, and Amerindian subjugation, subordination, and cultural annihilation or extinction. Second, we address the implications of an ascendant body of new and revisionist scholarship that clearly chronicles and privileges the pervasive role of Amerindian militias and allied indigenous kingdoms in the authentic conquest of the Americas. Finally, we review a select sampling of those military engagements in which Amerindian forces won decisive military contests against European belligerents in the Americas. Ultimately, we contend that prevailing public and scholarly narratives that seek to pacify the Amerindian past are in effect predominantly Eurocentric creations that continue to tout an Amerindian past borne of little more than collective martyrology over substance and historical authenticity.
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Notes
- 1.
Cited from Matthew and Oudijk 2007, p. 175.
- 2.
Padden 1957.
- 3.
As such, we find it ironic that Mendoza’s work as an archaeologist of the precolonial Mesoamerican world and his investigations into the indigenous past of the California missions in particular pose persistent challenges borne of a veritable conundrum of contradictory and conflict-ridden interactions with both his heritage and profession. In an attempt to advance the science of archaeology, Mendoza has recurrently had to accommodate many a compromise so as to remain true to his profession, while at the same time maintaining a respectful and honorable relationship with the memory and reality of his ancestors and their descendants. With a lifetime devoted to studying the evidence for why it was that the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica collapsed, and why the polities of the postclassical era in particular sought the dark and foreboding path of internecine warfare and otherwise bellicose ideologies, Mendoza finds it increasingly difficult to accept that Mesoamerica and the Americas more generally were ever the bastions of civility and peaceable kingdoms that today some contend constitute the truth of this most remote past. Despite the evidence, Mendoza continues to find it necessary to respond to critics and detractors who continue to question his motives for addressing the question of Amerindian social violence, particularly as some of those with whom he is most concerned were in effect his ancestors.
- 4.
Wikipedia contributors, “Perspectivism,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Perspectivism&oldid=328935594 (accessed December 1, 2009).
- 5.
UNESCO, “The Criteria for Selection,” UNESCO World Heritage, http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria (accessed December 1, 2009).
- 6.
Bremer, Catherine, “Grisly Aztec Saga Reconstructed: Archaeologists find remains that back up tale of ritual massacre,” MSNBC.com, reported August 23, 2006. Cited from ppiindia Freelists.org at http://www.freelists.org/post/ppi/ppiindia-Archaeologists-find-remains-that-back-up-tale-of-ritual-massacre (accessed December 1, 2009).
- 7.
Blog posts, “Imago: De La Crisalidad Surge El Imago,” Posts of 28 December 2007 through 4 September, 2009. http://arsimago.blogspot.com/2007/12/tecuaque.html (accessed December 1, 2009).
- 8.
Blog post, “New Nation News Reporters Newsroom,” Post of 20 November 2006. http://www.newnation.vg/forums/showthread.php?t=94003 (accessed December 1, 2009).
- 9.
This is mirrored in the period after the autumnal equinox with growing seasons for the Southern Hemisphere spanning November through March in Brazil, for instance.
- 10.
Mendoza (2011) remains an unpublished manuscript as of this writing, and therefore those page numbers noted refer to the unpublished typescript.
- 11.
The Chalca constitute those peoples identified with the southern Basin community of Chalco, which at the time of the “Spanish” conquest had long been a tributary of the Aztec Empire. Soundly defeated by the Aztec under the rule of Moctezuma I, the peoples of Chalco readily allied themselves with the Spanish in order to throw off the oppressive tribute demands of the Aztec.
- 12.
For their part, the Tlaxcala, who are among the best known for the formulation of such a sociopolitical formation, repeatedly scored victories and sustained a long-term pattern of resistance, against the Mexica Aztec who were intent on vanquishing the kingdoms of Tlaxcala. So effective was the Tlaxcalan sociopolitical response in question that in one noteworthy engagement (had just prior to the arrival of the Spanish), Moctezuma suffered one of the most humiliating defeats of his tenure at the hands of the people in question. After decades of conflict with the Mexica, the Tlaxcalan peoples ultimately joined forces with the Spanish in their joint conquest of the Aztec capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and that despite the near total encirclement of the region of Tlaxcala by the Aztec Empire.
- 13.
Timothy Snyder (2010) employs the concept of “negative opportunism” to account for how it is that a people beset by competing enemies are prone to align themselves with what they perceive to be the “lesser of two evils.” Clearly, when faced with the voracious tributary and sacrificial demands of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish alliance likely appeared an optimal choice.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the ongoing editorial support and encouragement of coeditor Richard J. Chacon of Winthrop University. His collegiality and expert advice, particularly with regard to tracking sources pertaining to the Amerindian civilizations of the Amazon Basin, Ecuador, and Chile, have proven invaluable to the completion of this treatment. We are grateful to the staff of the Tanimura & Antle Family Memorial Library of the California State University, Monterey Bay, for their considerable assistance in provisioning access to interlibrary loan materials and related resources. Emily H. Nisbet of the Science Illustration Program at the California State University, Monterey Bay, produced these maps used in this chapter, and did so under the constraints of a host of competing professional and personal deadlines. We are most grateful to her for her willingness to set aside other pressing commitments to see through those diagrams requested by Mendoza. This chapter was in part made possible by way of clerical assistance provided to Mendoza and facilitated by Social and Behavioral Sciences program Chair Dr. Gerald Shenk, and Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Dean Dr. Renee Curry, in the wake of surgery necessitated to treat a carpal tunnel condition and thumb injury. Shari René Harder of the MA Program in Education, and Lilly S. Martinez and Heather M. Wilde of the Social and Behavioral Sciences were invaluable sources of support during Mendoza’s rehabilitation. We, in turn, gratefully acknowledge that modicum of academic and scholarly support made possible through the proactive leadership of CSU Monterey Bay President Dr. Dianne Harrison and Provost Dr. Kathryn Cruz-Uribe. Mendoza and Harder further recognize with utmost gratitude the indispensable support, encouragement, and understanding of each of their respective families: For Mendoza, loving acknowledgment goes to his wife Linda Marie, and daughters Maya Nicole and Natalie Dawn Marie Mendoza. For Harder, her husband Craig Harder, and sons Conrad Nicholas and Brandon Christopher Harder are lovingly acknowledged.
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Mendoza, R.G., Harder, S.R. (2012). Mythologies of Conquest. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1065-2_9
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