Re: Amerindian navigators

[agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu (Domingo Martinez)]

In article <01bc9dec$d68f75e0$486700cf@ljelmore>, "Larry J. Elmore" 
<ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net> wrote:

Me:
>> What is not clear here is the word "cañas", which in Spanish is used to 
>> name bamboo-like stems
<snip me>

Larry:
>A heavily-loaded balsa would have the logs nearly submerged and awash,
>leaving the "bamboo" and "rattan" or "wicker" (I _know_ those aren't the
>precisely accurate terms, but they are the most descriptive terms that will
>be most widely understood) superstructure by far the most visible portion.

I am sorry I did not translate, but the chronicler is talking also about the 
"quilla", or "keel", being made of "cañas"  which as far as I know it is 
always underwater.  I thought you knew it all the way, because in your long 
post of 22 Jul 97 you quote the same segment of the chronicle, albeit 
likelytranslated from Spanish into Norwegian into English, I suppose, as your 
only source seems to be Heyedrahl's books. That is why I quoted from the 
Spanish source itself. (I may have wrongly assumed you know Spanish).   "Your" 
translation gives "cañas" as "logs"  which I find curious.  That may be a 
common translation, though, as Murra himself uses it.  

>The Spanish chroniclers of this period are hardly the most attentive to
>detail except when it comes to gold and royalty.
>

Larry, I am now  confused about your value judgment of the Spanish 
chroniclers.  First, in July, you typed several pages worth of second-hand 
chroniclers' passages to support Yuri's, Heyerdahl's (the provider of said 
posting) and, I suppose, your own points of view.  And now you dismiss them 
handily.  I may suspect you do not know too much about them, except perhaps 
what you have read in Heyerdahl's book. (We may be tempted to believe that you 
are following not only Yuri's beliefs, but also his valuable scholarly 
methods.  I really hope not.)  I do not intend, as you did, to throw a value 
judgment on the chroniclers as a whole, but for whatever it is worth, they are 
it!  Independently of how much we like or hate  them, we have to use them.  
And of course they are not all the same: Cieza is basically a naturalist and 
polymath, and respected by Tyrians and Trojans, and his contribution to our 
knowledge is beyond any doubt.  Like him, there are many others that have 
given us a lot of information.  Of course, it is not smart at all to take them 
verbatim.


>
>Nor did the Spanish care very much about them one way or the other, so
>they're hardly going to waste much effort describing things of no
>consequence to them. I don't think the early chroniclers mentioned them at
>all except at the very earliest contacts and early Spanish uses of them
>when their own watercraft were noticeably inferior for the purpose at hand.
>Once they were hot on the trail of gold and empire, they pretty much forgot
>about everything else.
>

Again: this is pure value judgment, and it suggests --I am sorry to say-- some 
lack of familiarity with Spanish chroniclers.  Of course they were interested 
in gold and such, but that does not mean they did not write about anything 
else.  I would also believe that besides the common phrase "there was xxx of 
gold and yyy of silver in this place" most chroniclers just go about 
describing *other* things, from natural to cultural, from aesthetic to 
religious.  And of course they had prejudices, biases, and such; otherwise 
many historians would be out of a job.

..
Me:.
>> 3. Chincha traders
...
>> The main trade object was the
>> "mullu" shell (mainly Spondylus), trade that goes way before Inca times.
>In 
>> any case, she states that the trade was made with the Huancavilcas of
>today'
>> Ecuador.  The Chincha traders took mainly copper. They would go as far
>> as Mantas and Puerto Viejo, in Ecuador, where they would get the shells.
>> It seems that the trade to areas North of Ecuador was in the hands of
>> the "mindalá" traders of that area.  I do not have information on trade 
>> with the Pacific coast of today's Colombia and further north.
>
>This is pretty much what is stated in "Pyramids of Tucume".
>

Meaning....?  No Amazing Yuri's Amazing Maritime Chincha Civilization?  Never 
mind...

My basic point is that the trade route by Andean traders stopped at the 
latitude of today's Ecuador, and from there the mindalá trade took charge of 
going further North.  The Cuná people you mentioned previously never referred 
to meeting regularly with Andean traders, but of course knew about them from 
word of other traders.  This does not discard that Andean navigators * could* 
(as in having the capacity or the curiosity) reach further North: only that 
the evidence so far does not support that regular trade occured.

Bye,

Domingo


Domingo Martinez-Castilla
agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu