The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction With Other Animals, 1492-1826 (Human-Animal Studies)

The Animals of Spain

Human-Animal Studies Editor

Kenneth Shapiro Animals & Society Institute

Editorial Board

Ralph Acampora Hofstra University

Clifton Flynn University of South Carolina

Hilda Kean Ruskin College, Oxford

Randy Malamud Georgia State University

Gail Melson Purdue University

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/has

The Animals of Spain An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492-1826

By

Abel A. Alves

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

Cover illustrations: Illustration of the Spanish Landing from the Florentine Codex. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 1105. Courtesy of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Royal Library, Copenhagen. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alves, Abel A. â•… The animals of Spain : an introduction to imperial perceptions and human interaction with other animals, 1492-1826 / by Abel A. Alves. â•…â•… p. cm. — (Human-animal studies) â•… Includes index. â•… ISBN 978-90-04-19389-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ╇ 1. Human-animal relationships—Spain—History. 2. Human-animal relationships--Latin America—History. 3. Spain—Colonies—America—History. I. Title. â•… QL85.A46 2011 â•… 508.46’09—dc23

2011022128

ISSN 1573-4226 ISBN 978 90 04 19389 5 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

preface

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Contents Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . vii Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . ix List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . xi I. Animals in the Atlantic World: Perceptions and Associations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . .

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II. Through the Prism of Human Perception: Spanish Intellectuals Write about Other Sentient Beings. . . . . . . . . . 31 III. Valued Animals and Animal Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . 71 I V. Spirit Guides to Hell? Shape-Shifting and the Power of Animals Inverted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ 113 V. San Martín’s Companion Animals: Nature Domesticated and Blessed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . 149 VI. The Animals of Spain: Continuity and Change. . . . . . . . . . . 185 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .å°“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

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Foreword Fulfilling the mission of human-animal studies of bringing nonhuman animals and our relationships with them from the margin to the center of the page, Alves describes the impact of the introduction and proliferation of novel fauna and domesticated animals from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America over the course of three centuries. The breadth of the influence of this “invasion of aliens” shows the scope of the field of human-animal studies as the author examines the uses of nonhuman animals for food, work, amusement, war and, as importantly, for thinking about ourselves and our relationships to them and the natural world. Although Alves argues that these relationships with and thoughts about nonhuman animals anticipate the complexity and particularity of contemporary findings, some readers may be more impressed by the differences than the similarities. Both the conquered inhabitants of the New World and the conquerors had a blurred rather than categorically discrete view of the distinction between humans and other animals. For example, the theology of the colonialists provided animals with souls, although mortal souls and that allowed some animals to transform their beastliness into a kind of saintliness. The thirteenth volume in this series is a major contribution to the historiography of human-animal studies in Latin America. Kenneth Shapiro, Series Editor Animals and Society Institute, Inc., Washington Grove MD

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many institutions and individuals have contributed to the shaping of The Animals of Spain. In chapter three, the Florentine Codex’s illustration of the Spanish landing is reproduced with the permission of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. The Museo del Prado in Madrid was kind enough to allow reproduction of La Familia de Felipe IV, o Las Meninas by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez and Sagrada Familia del Pajarito by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Infante Felipe Próspero by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was graciously provided by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Through electronic correspondence, Concepción Ocampos Fuentes was especially helpful at the Prado, while Christa Hummel played the very same role at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Ivan Boserup, Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Royal Library, Copenhagen and Rolena Adorno of Yale University were extremely helpful, providing access to the Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala manuscript by means of El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002). The Royal Library at Copenhagen has done a great service through this electronic reproduction, and the drawing of Guaman Poma, his son and their animals appearing in chapter five is reproduced with permission from this electronic source. The University of Illinois Press, Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita were kind enough to permit reproduction of citations from Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). Finally, my accessibility to resources was increased exponentially by the professionalism and skills of the Interlibrary Loan Department of Ball State University’s Bracken Library—especially Sandy Duncan, Lisa Johnson, Karin Kwiatkowski and Kerri McClellan. Intellectually, my efforts at interdisciplinary work have benefited greatly from scholars who are willing to transcend academic boundaries. At cross-disciplinary symposia held by UCLA’s Center for

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acknowledgements

Governance from 2001 to 2003, the director, Susanne Lohmann, provided me with just the sort of academic environment I needed to test my ideas regarding the application of ethological categories to human behavior. There I met William Grassie of the innovative Metanexus Institute. His support will always be appreciated. I also, for the first time, interacted with Robert McElvaine. His knowledgeable and supportive criticism of my work has only improved it. At the “Animals: Past, Present, and Future” conference, held in 2009 by Michigan State University’s Program in Animal Studies, I benefited from the comments and questions of individuals like Linda Kalof and Georgina Montgomery. Their conference introduced me to a disciplinary home that dares to be as inclusive as possible. May their efforts at uniting disparate research agendas in the field of animal studies only continue to flourish. I am also very thankful for mid-career reviews of my work by Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Gregory Hanlon. The time and effort they so generously volunteered helped me to redirect and refocus, while I continued to draw on my earlier work. Likewise, The Animals of Spain benefited from comments made by individuals who saw a portion of the manuscript (or nearly the whole thing) as it was being written. I am especially grateful to Christina Blanch, Colleen Boyd, Katherine Craig, Robert Hall, Javier IrigoyenGarcía, Carolyn Malone and Dina Rabadi. Martha Few, Joel Kaye, Sabine MacCormack and Zeb Tortorici were all kind enough to respond in detail to particular queries. Then, as the drafting of the manuscript progressed, the two anonymous reviewers were truly critical, insightful and interested. Their assistance, and that of Brill Human-Animal Studies series editor Kenneth Shapiro, proved invaluable. In turn, Brill acquisitions editor Liesbeth Hugenholtz and production coordinator Peter Buschman were also extremely helpful. Finally, at a crucial point in this manuscript’s development, Bruce Geelhoed, then chairperson of the Ball State History Department, Associate Dean Kecia McBride and my history department colleague Scott Stephan all collaborated in providing the gift of time. Upon becoming chairperson of the history department in 2010, Kevin Smith proved to be equally as gracious. As institutions seemingly become more mechanical, I have benefitted from knowing humane academics, just as I have found support since youth in the animal companions I have known. This book would not have been written without my knowing those animals.

list of illustrations

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Illustration of the Spanish Landing from the Florentine Codex. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence . ...................................................................................

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2. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, La Familia de Felipe IV, o Las Meninas, 1656. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid ................................................... 159 3. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Sagrada Familia del Pajarito, c. 1645-1650. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid . ..................................................................................... 160 4. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, Don Felipe Próspero, 1659. Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 161 5.

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 1105. Courtesy of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Royal Library, Copenhagen ............................................................... 164

animals in the atlantic world

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CHAPTER ONE

ANIMALS IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD: PERCEPTIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS In 1492 aliens invaded the western hemisphere. Conquerors from the Iberian Peninsula would dominate vast territories from that time until the Latin American independence movements of the early nineteenth century, giving them more than three centuries to modify everything from landscapes to gene pools. As already demonstrated by Alfred W. Crosby in books like The Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism, the alien invaders were not only Spanish and Portuguese primates. They also included microbes like smallpox, plants like wheat, and nonhuman animals like cattle, horses and sheep. The biological and cultural shock and synthesis experienced over the course of the three centuries between 1492 and the 1820s in many ways can only be compared to the first contact experiences described by science fiction authors. Since Thomas More, in his Utopia, first wrote of a fictional alien culture in a land new to Europeans, first contact in the Americas has influenced speculative fiction, but, unlike H. G. Wells’ Martian invasion in The War of the Worlds, the invasion of the Americas was real.1 The changes effected on conquered Amerindians attest to the reality of the reshaping of the western hemisphere, but it also has been more than adequately demonstrated that Amerindians were simultaneously agents of transformation who ╇ More’s fictional explorer of Utopia, Raphael Hythlodaeus, traveled with Amerigo Vespucci, namesake of the Americas. Thomas More, Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz, S.J. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), Bk. 1: 12-13. Uncaring and savage in their slaughter of humans, yet ultimately defeated by bacteria, the Martians in The War of the Worlds are simultaneously ciphers for European conquerors and the Amerindians, Tasmanians and others defeated by them (and sometimes by their microbes as well). It is ambiguous as to whether Wells wrote his fiction as post-Columbian indictment or praise of European imperialism. H. G. Wells, A Critical Edition of the War of the Worlds: H. G. Wells’s Scientific Romance, ed. David Y. Hughes and Harry M. Geduld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 184; W. Warren Wagar, H. G. Wells: Traversing Time (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 56-58 1

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struggled against European imposition, both resisting and compromising, even as the Europeans were sometimes capable of compromise themselves. What is still often forgotten is that all animals are animate beings, sentient and mobile in ways that plants are not. Horses and pigs escaped at times, going feral and carving out their own independent existences. Where animate life is concerned, there is always conflict and compromise. In evolutionary terms, there is adaptation and extinction. With humans, there is also a real capacity for questions and reflection regarding the interactions of human and nonhuman animals alike. This has led humans to ask if they differ in degree or kind from other forms of animate life. While the Portuguese failed to establish universities, printing presses and communities of natural philosophers in their American territory, the Spaniards started establishing universities and printing presses in the sixteenth century. As demonstrated by Cristóvâo da Costa’s sixteenth-century account of elephants, animals are certainly there in Portuguese documentation, but Spanish imperial documents by accident and design are bursting with information on nonhuman animals.2 This work will pursue the Spanish case study, leaving the Portuguese case study aside for later exploration. In reviewing Spanish thought and interaction with nonhuman animals, The Animals of Spain will approach Spaniards as animal actors themselves, always asking the extent to which the inhabitants of the Spanish empire could see this, and the extent to 2 ╇ A. J. R. Russell-Wood writes, “For Portuguese America, ironically, it is to the scientists who came to Dutch Brazil during the administration of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen that we owe major botanical and zoological studies….” Though individual Portuguese, like Cristóvâo da Costa, José de Anchieta and Cristóvâo de Lisboa, took an active interest in animals, it was “only with the Enlightenment” that the Portuguese Crown commissioned natural philosophers “to study the flora, fauna, ethnography, and geology in the tropics.” By contrast, in 1570, Philip II sent the first natural history expedition to Spanish America under the auspices of Dr. Francisco Hernández, and President Juan de Ovando of the Council of Indies systematized the collection of information, including information on nature and animals in the Americas, with the relaciones geográficas of the 1570s. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 149-50, 196-97, 84; Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 121, 94-96; Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 52; Cristóvâo da Costa, “Tratado do elefante e das suas qualidades,” in Tratado das drogas e medicinas das índias orientais, trans. and ed. Jaime Walter (Lisbon: Junta de Investigaçôes do Ultramar, 1964), 281-96.

animals in the atlantic world

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which they saw themselves as all too special and transcending the other animals around them. As noted by Peter Singer, Keith Thomas and James Serpell, a fundamental problem in the course of human history has been the degree to which dominant human groups have identified themselves as the “true humans,” relegating conquered human communities to the status of “lesser” human or “nonhuman.”3 In imperialism, the assertion of differences is used to establish domination. Spaniards did this every time one of them saw himself as “highly civilized,” as transcending the animal, while invidiously comparing Amerindians to animals. This was not true of all Spaniards, as we shall see. What was essentially true, however, was that the Spanish imperial project constantly forced its human inhabitants to confront new human customs and new nonhuman animals. Literate elites of diverse ethnicities on both sides of the Atlantic then spilled much ink on interpreting these new humans and animals, even while they also asked just how animal all humans are. Thinking with Animals What it means to be human has often been contested. In the twentyfirst century, mechanical heart and cochlear implants, genetic engineering and constant interfacing with computer technology have led some scholars to argue that the age of the “transhuman” is upon us—that all species are transitional beings and that we currently are evolving to a new way of being that, among other things, grafts our own mechanical creations to our animal bodies.4 Given the admission of an animal body, any sense of the transhuman is tied intrinsi3 ╇ Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Harper Collins Ecco, 2002), 83-84; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 15001800 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 41-50; James Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 226-36. 4 ╇ James J. Hughes, “The Politics of Transhumanism,” unpublished paper originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Cambridge, MA: November 1-4, 2001). Revised version (March 2002). Available from http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/1385/; accessed May 30, 2008. Also see Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-81; Josh Fischman, “A Better Life with Bionics,” National Geographic 217: 1 (January 2010): 34-53. For a historian’s review of the “inescapable continuities between humans and other animals” and the impact that cyborgs may have on “our concept of humankind,” see Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 37-54, 141-70.

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cally to human self-perception in relation to other animals, and to how we might transcend our animal state. Likewise, historically, we frequently have asked how much we are only another unique species of animal and a part of nature, and how much we may supersede nature as something set apart from the animal kingdom. According to Tim Ingold, the transition from hunting to herding itself may have involved a shift in perception. Kept and herded animals came to be seen as possessions, while foragers and hunters perceive prey and predatory animals as fellow beings engaged in a mutual dialogue of life and death with people, who are also part of nature. 5 Whether seen as inferiors to be dominated, or as equals and sometimes even superiors to be emulated, nonhuman animals, long before today’s computers and robots, have been persistent cultural touchstones for humanity. In the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, animals are not only “good to eat,” they are “good to think,” as “perceptible reality permits the embodiment of ideas and relations conceived by speculative thought on the basis of empirical observations.”6 When human speculative thought about animals occurs within a far-flung empire, the diversity and richness of that speculation should not surprise. What may surprise is that some flexible general tendencies also appear. After 1492, Europeans, starting with the Spanish and Portuguese, built trans-global empires that laid the foundations of what we now call globalization. In the process of these territorial expansions, nonhuman animals served as allies, possessions, and subjects of speculation.7 Even as European attitudes regarding animals were taken abroad, information from abroad engaged those attitudes. As with human perceptions of other animals in England and France, 5 ╇ Tim Ingold, “From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of HumanAnimal Relations,” in Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives, ed. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell (London: Routledge, 1994), 11-17. 6 ╇ Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 89. 7 ╇ Some standard methods and categories have now taken root in the historical study of human association with nonhuman animals. Joyce Salisbury, in her study of animals in the Middle Ages, writes of nonhuman animals as property, food and touchstones for self-reflection on the human condition. Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 1-11, 13, 45-59, 103, 137-38, 167-78. Of the animals of Victorian England, Harriet Ritvo succinctly writes that they provided food and clothing and were “also transportation, the power to run machinery, and even entertainment.” Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: the English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 125.

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the animals of the Spanish empire were seen primarily as food, labor, entertainment and battlefield weapons.8 They were also subject to a range of human emotions. They could be hated enemies, destroyers of crops, like the locusts of Guatemala, rediscovered in colonial documents and re-centered in history by Martha Few. 9 As did other Europeans, Spaniards feared, denigrated, admired and even loved animals as they used them metaphorically, and as they sometimes befriended them as solace in a harsh world. By exploring Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as cultural interactions with the people they subordinated, there is an opportunity to detect some constants in the interaction between humans and other animals, even as some individuals might emphasize one perceptual perspective or another among those constants. In European intellectual circles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, use of animals for human benefit was permitted by either an Aristotelian/Biblical perspective or a mechanical worldview embraced by Cartesianism and the new experimental natural philosophy. In Catholic Spain, the Bible and Aristotle, often as interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), served as the central authorities in arguments woven by Spain’s most influential academic thinkers: men like Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1486-1546) and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Called Scholasticism, this position relied on the internal consistency of an almost mathematically precise logical argument and generally worried about debasing human nature since 8 ╇ For the use of animals as food, labor and means to altering the environment to make it more amenable to Europeans in the Americas, see Alfred W. Crosby’s classic The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 3-31, 64-113; and his Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 172-94. For dogs as battlefield weapons in the Spanish conquest of the Americas, see John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, Dogs of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983). For horses, see R. B. Cunninghame Graham, The Horses of the Conquest, ed. Robert Moorman Denhardt (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). For European perceptions of animals native to the Americas, see Miguel de Asúa and Roger French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005); Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), esp.€3-11, 15-20, 32-33, 119, 278-79. 9 ╇ Martha Few, “Killing Locusts in Colonial Guatemala,” in Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming). The volume will do much to introduce the methods and objectives of animal studies to Latin American history.

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it did see humans as created in God’s own image. A number of leading Scholastics taught that all animals feel pleasure and pain. Humans could debase themselves by being unnecessarily cruel to sensitive and feeling animals, even as animals were still to be used as labor and food. Anticipating twenty-first century psychologists and sociologists who have argued that cruelty to animals is an indicator of eventual violence against humans, Aquinas obversely wrote that a “pitiful affection for animals” increases the disposition to pity humans.10 Before the rise of the new experimental philosophy and CarÂ�teÂ� sianism in the seventeenth century, Scholasticism was challenged and in some instances modified by Renaissance Humanism. Figures like Francisco de Vitoria occasionally blended aspects of both ScholasÂ� ticism and Humanism, which taught that the acquisition and maintenance of knowledge was broader than the Scholastic manipulation of syllogisms and philosophical debates based on intuitive axioms, postulates and definitions. Humanism embraced learning cathartically through literature and historical case studies, and even promoted the acquisition of some new knowledge through the senses in order to bring about practical results in the world. Still, the Humanists placed a premium on reading ancient Greek and Latin texts in the original, rather than launching experiments. When Humanists like Erasmus (1466-1536) expanded their mission to include the Bible and the early Church fathers in their original languages, the Spanish Inquisition began to censor and ban Humanist texts, fearing a causal relation between them and the rise of Protestantism. This move muted Humanist methodology rather than completely eradicating it. Studia humanitas remained as a literary and historically based apÂ�proach that continued to blend with Scholasticism, while simultaneously positing an alternative. It also sometimes combined with a 10 ╇ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947-48), 1:1080, first part of the second part, Q. 102 Art. 6 Pt. 1-2. Also 1: 351-52, first part, Q. 72 Pt. 1; Frank R. Ascione, “Animal Abuse and Youth Violence,” (Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2001); Catherine A. Faver and Elizabeth B. Strand, “Domestic Violence and Animal Cruelty: Untangling the Web of Abuse,” Journal of Social Work Education 39: 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 237-53; Piers Beirne, “From Animal Abuse to Interhuman Violence? A Critical Review of the Progression Thesis,” Society & Animals 12: 1 (2004): 39-65. Also see Thomas, 33-36; Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 147-59.

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much more mechanical vision of nonhuman animals than that accepted by Scholasticism.11 From peasants to the elite, Spanish discourse and interpretation regarding nonhuman animals was dominated by discussions of their sensitivity and just how much they might understand. But dominant themes do not silence other human perspectives completely. In 1534, the Humanist-inspired physician Gómez Pereira published his Antoniana Margarita, a work which challenged Scholastic authority by denying nonhuman animals feelings and emotional awareness in the human sense. If nonhuman animals moved, occult forces in external objects moved them. If they learned, habit impressed human voice commands on their nerves and brains. In turn, their animating principles, their animae or souls, were dispersed throughout the organs of their material bodies. Interestingly, Gómez Pereira proposed that human memory also was based on images stored in the physical brain. If nonhuman animals functioned like machines, so too proportionally did humans, who were distinguished only by their rational intellect. Spanish mechanist and anti-Aristotelian that he was; Gómez Pereira was attacked during his life and only rarely cited after his death. When Marin Mersenne mentioned similarities between René Descartes’ thought and the ideas found in the Antoniana Margarita, Descartes dismissed Pereira’s book as a work he had no knowledge of and no desire to read.12 Gómez Pereira was 11 ╇Ottavio Di Camillo, “Humanism: Spain,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, et al., 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), 3: 21820; William A. Wallace, “Scholasticism,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, 5: 42225; E. J. Ashworth, “The Eclipse of Medieval Logic,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 787-96; Lisa Jardine, “Humanism and the Teaching of Logic,” in Later Medieval Philosophy, 797-807; Ottavio Di Camillo, “Humanism in Spain,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr., 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 2: 55-108; Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation: the Intellectual Genesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 86-92. 12 ╇ Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, “La ‘Antoniana Margarita’ de Gómez Pereira. Carta al Sr. D. Juan Valera, de la Academia Española,” in La Ciencia española, ed. Enrique Sánchez Reyes, 3 vols. (Santander: Aldus, S. A. de Artes Gráficas, 19531954), 2: 280-307; Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: an Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 271. Comparing animals to machines was not new with Descartes, or entirely avoided by Scholastics. It is only that references to the emotional souls of animals dominated Scholastic and early modern Spanish intellectual discussion. See Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 13.

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the isolated precursor of a tradition that was capable of comparing humans to other animals, while denying those other animals sensiÂ� tivity, emotions and feelings. The clinical severity of this position Â�leveled human self-aggrandizement, even as it denied true feeling to “beasts.” Outside Spain, elsewhere on the European continent, Scholasticism was being challenged more successfully by new philosophical traÂ� ditions which argued that the experience and reasoning of contemÂ� poraries should take precedent over the authority of the ancients. Among these thinkers was René Descartes (1596-1650). Though Descartes himself lovingly cared for a pet dog and was rather agnostic in a 1649 letter to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More regarding the sensitivity and consciousness of nonhuman animals, an extreme Cartesian view, as held by Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), posited that animals feel no pleasure or pain. Even when the sensitivity of animals was admitted—as by the English natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627-1691)—vivisection and other animal experimentation could be permitted when it improved the human condition and revealed hidden aspects of God’s creation. Just as early modern animals were tortured to death by some among the masses for sport, so natural philosophers among the elites cut into living animals to learn and increase practical knowledge and the power over nature it granted.13 Whether in Spain or elsewhere in Europe, the justice of human dominion was not seriously challenged, but there were those who saw humans as embedded in the animal world and somewhat responsible for the animals they dominated. From the witches among the common folk who were accused of keeping demonic familiars, or of becoming animals, to those among the elite who admitted that they listened to their companion animals’ desires or that highly sensitive ╇ Malebranche wrote, “Ainsi dans les animaux il n’y a ni intelligence ni ame, comme on l’entend ordinairement. Ils mangent sans plaisir, ils crient sans douleur.” (“Thus, among the animals, there is no intelligence or soul, as one ordinarily understands. They eat without pleasure, they cry out without pain.”) Nicolas Malebranche, Recherche de la vérité, Vol. 3, Bk. 6, Pt. 2, chap.€7, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, 20 vols. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958-78), 2: 394. Also see Peter Harrison, “Descartes on Animals,” The Philosophical Quarterly 42: 167 (April 1992): 219-27; Anita Guerrini, “The Ethics of Animal Experimentation in Seventeenth-Century England,“ Journal of the History of Ideas 50: 3 (July-September 1989): 391-407, esp.€397-98; René Descartes, “Letter to Henry More, 5 February 1649,” in Descartes: Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 244. For bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting and other cruel amusements in England, see Thomas, 109-10, 143-50. 13

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animals understood, or even engaged in processes akin to human reason, there was an alternative vision. As already noted by George Boas, Keith Thomas, Erica Fudge and others, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe had its share of individuals who embraced the animal as human and animals as closer to humans than not.14 Some individuals of the Spanish empire adopted a cross-species perspective that emphasized semblance between humans and other animals, even showing the loving care that Descartes showed his dog, and approaching a level of concern for nonhuman animals usually epitomized in our contemporary interpretations by the sixteenth-century FrenchÂ� man Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). In his Apology for Raymond Sebond, Montaigne wrote, “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?”15 In On Cruelty, he could not accept animals as supernatural or superior to humans in any way, but he could allow for comparisons between humans and animals that humbled him and challenged “that imaginary kingship over other creatures which is attributed to us.”16 A noble of his time and culture, Montaigne still accepted the use of war horses and hunted, though he claimed to release exhausted, collapsed animals rather than slaying them as they lay defeated. He also readily admitted to submitting to his cat’s desire to play. He took a stand in favor of what he saw as the humane and respectful slaughter and use of animals, and he drew the distinction between “pet” and other animals noted by James Serpell.17 The pet, as a member of the household, was given special status on the estate of the Seigneur de Montaigne. Other animals could be killed and eaten, but with thought, consideration, care and mercy. Human dominion persisted in the midst of befriending some privileged nonhuman individuals. ╇ In the scholarly pursuit of historical human perceptions of other animals, both Thomas and Fudge were preceded by George Boas. See George Boas, The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933; reprinted New York: Octagon Books, 1966), 6-7, 52, 64, 14243. 15 ╇ Michel de Montaigne, An Apology for Raymond Sebond, in The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 505. For the French, see Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat (Bruges: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1962), 430. 16 ╇ Montaigne, “On Cruelty,” in Complete Essays, 487; Oeuvres complètes, 413-14. 17 ╇ Serpell, 3-20. For more on Montaigne, see Fudge, 76-79; Montaigne, “On Cruelty” and “On War-Horses,” in Complete Essays, 484-85, 481, 321-30; Oeuvres complètes, 412, 408, 276-84. 14

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The Spanish cultural vision of animals was diverse and complex, just as the general European vision was, and it included perceptions that ranged from those comparable to Malebranche’s to those approaching Montaigne’s. Still, the treatment of animals in the early modern Spanish empire often is reduced to the dominance display and violence of the bullfight, and many Spaniards, like other early modern Europeans predominantly did see animals as sources of labor, food and entertainment.18 Spanish imperial surveys taken in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, relaciones geográficas, gathered information on “conquered” nature in the Americas so as to “discover” what might be of “use.” As early as Cortés’ letters to Charles V, written during the actual conquest of central Mexico (1519-1521), there was intense interest in whether European livestock like cows could adapt to the Americas, and the later relaciones would focus on whether European chickens and other animals were being raised in a given region.19 In 1576, the South American province of Quito proudly reported that large quantities of cows, sheep and goats, as well as some pigs, were being raised, and the Amerindian town of Otavalo was already raising its own European cows, sheep, goats and pigs in 1582.20 This was animal wealth that Spaniards understood, and as with Cortés in the north, South American attitudes were set by the conquistadores themselves. In his 1550 relación of the conquest of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia wrote that Chile was a healthy and fertile land rich in gold, but lacking in Spaniards and horses: “y en ella no hay otra falta sino es de españoles y caballos.”21 18 ╇ Though bullfighting on foot coexisted with bullfighting from horseback in the sixteenth-century, the epitome of sixteenth-century bullfighting was an aristocratic display of prowess from horseback before a general audience. By the seventeenth century, the footmen who accompanied caballeros increasingly took center stage, transforming an aristocratic display into a more plebian display of human male dominance over other animals. Garry Marvin, Bullfight (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 54-57, 61; Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4-9, 92-96. 19 ╇ Hernán Cortés, “Second Letter,” Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 75; Barrera-Osorio, 8-12, 14, 23-24. For more on the relaciones geográficas, see chapter three. 20 ╇ “Relación de la provincia de Quito y distrito de su Audiencia, por los oficiales de la Real Hacienda.—1576,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 184: Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 2, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 170; “Relación y descripción de los pueblos del partido de Otavalo (1).—1582,” in Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 2, 239. 21 ╇ “Relación hecha por Pedro de Valdivia al Emperador, dándole cuenta de lo sucedido en el descubrimiento, conquista y población de Chile y en su viaje al Perú,”

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As noted by Alfred Crosby and James Lockhart, the horse was the premiere animal ally of the Spanish conquest, of immense strategic and shock value on the battlefield and recipient of a full human share in the 1533 distribution of Inca treasure at Cajamarca in Peru.22 There is no doubt that early modern Spaniards saw animals as food, horses and dogs to be used in battle, and objects to be used for cruel amusement. Of course, the British of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had their bear and bull baiting, even as the Spaniards had their bullfight. And if Spaniards set their dogs loose on unarmed Amerindians, Bernabé Cobo (d. 1657) recorded that the PreColumbian Incas confined prisoners of war overnight with jaguars and other carnivorous animals. The buhios, or thatched huts, filled with jaguars, mountain lions and serpents were considered huacas— extraordinary spaces and things in nature that brought humanity closer to the supernatural power of the deities themselves. Prisoners eaten by the animals were justly sacrificed to the sacred, while any survivors were judged pure enough to now serve the Inca, the divine emperor himself.23 Cross-cultural displays of violence and aggression abounded toward all sorts of animals, including humans, even as they do today, but aggression and dominance displays are rarely the only expressions of human emotion. In The Guinea Pig: Healing, Food, and Ritual in the Andes, socioÂ� logist Edmundo Morales writes that today’s Andeans treat “big work in Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, 42 vols. (Madrid: Manuel G. Hernández, 1864-84; reprinted Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1964-69), 4: 54. 22 ╇ Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 80-85; James Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 79, 47. 23 ╇ Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 92: Obras del P. Bernabé Cobo de la Compañía de Jesús, Tomo 2, ed. Francisco Mateos, 2 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1956), Bk. 13, chap.€13:€173; Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 59. For a definition of “huaca,” see Brian S. Bauer, The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: the Cusco Ceque System (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 4-5. For Amerindians fed to Spanish dogs, see Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, trans. and ed. Nigel Griffin (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 16-17, 73-74, 113, 125. Also Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias, in Tratados de Bartolomé de las Casas, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Agustín Millares Carlo and Rafael Moreno, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Biblioteca Americana, 1965), 1: 26-27, 104-105, 168-69, 190-91.

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animals like pets and often name them after plants, flowers, natural forces, and mountains. Chickens and cuys, however, are rarely named.”24 Andeans who still speak Quechua, the language of the Inca empire, distinguish between food—chickens and cuys (i.e., guinea pigs)—and working animals with whom they develop emotional ties. Such sentiments are preeminently human. The Warao Amerindians of Venezuela and the Barasana of eastern Colombia keep pets for pleasure, while consuming other animals as food.25 Pets were there in the old Spanish empire as they are still there among the descendents of that empire today. Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca (1539-1616) was the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. In his Royal Commentaries of the Incas, he not only took time to write about the price of cattle and pigs, he also wrote of parrots kept for their beauty and speaking ability on both sides of the Atlantic.26 Spanish pedigree dogs and lap dogs are mentioned in the Royal Commentaries, and much space is dedicated to quoting the Jesuit priest José de Acosta’s observations regarding a trained pet monkey he became acquainted with in Cartagena.27 Garcilaso de la Vega wrote that the priest’s account coincided with “what I have heard the Indians say and in part with what I have seen.”28 This son of the Inca nobility and Spanish conquerors then went on to summarize his own appreciation of monkeys: They use their skill and resources in emergencies like seasoned soldiers. As they understand one another’s cries (as I believe all animals and 24 ╇Edmundo Morales, The Guinea Pig: Healing, Food, and Ritual in the Andes (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1995), 11. 25 ╇ Serpell, 63-64. 26 ╇ See Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Comentarios reales de los Incas, Part 1, Book 9, chapter 17 for cows and oxen; Part 1, Book 9, chapter 19 for pigs; Part 1, Book 8, chapter 21 for parrots. Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Primera Parte de los comentarios reales de los Incas, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 133: Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Tomo 2, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963), 358, 360, 322-23. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Â�Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, trans. Harold V. Livermore, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 1: 583, 585, 525-26. 27 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 9, chapter 16 for “perrillos de falda” or lap dogs; Part 1, Book 8, chapter 18 for his citing José de Acosta on monkeys. For the English, see the Livermore translation, 1: 579, 519-20. For the Spanish see the Biblioteca de autores españoles edition, Vol. 133: 356 for lap dogs and 133: 318-19 for Â�monkeys. 28 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 8, chapter 18. For the English translation above, see the Livermore edition, 1: 519. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 318.

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birds do after their own kind), the Indians say that they can talk and that they keep their language a secret from the Spaniards lest the latter should make them dig for gold and silver. They also say that monkeys carry their children on their backs in mockery of the Indian women, and they tell a great many jokes about them, but this must suffice for monkeys.29

In Garcilaso de la Vega’s world, animals could be admired and eaten, loved and used as resources. Like Michel de Montaigne, he observed pets as well as work animals and meat. Born in Peru to die in AnÂ�Â� dalusia, Garcilaso introduces us to the multiplicity of views and Â�interactions with other animals that existed in the Spanish empire. As evidenced by his citing José de Acosta (1540-1600), he was not alone in such matters. Montaigne and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), whose Don Quixote actually decries the physical abuse of animals, might have engaged in their own colloquy regarding humans and other animals.30 Attitudes toward animals in the Spanish empire were certainly not summarized by the bullfight alone. Arguing from their relationships with other animals, the Incas and Garcilaso de la Vega also were not alone in positing some form of animal communication. In Scholasticism, still so prevalent in Spain, Aristotle held much sway, and Aristotle argued that animals feel pleasure and pain, voice their sentiments, and are capable of some communicative interaction with others, though incapable of the rational communication of abstract principles. For Aristotle, humans are the most social of the social animals due to their spoken discussion of abstractions like justice and equity, but he also argued that there is a human soul possessing vegetative and animal aspects, as well as human rationality. He saw degrees of difference between humans and beasts, but human mental superiority justified human domination, even as he allowed for some humans being “natural

29 ╇ For the translation above, see Livermore, 1: 520. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 319. 30 ╇ Jorge Checa certainly argues that they were both writing in the skeptical tradition. Jorge Checa, “Cervantes y la cuestión de los orígenes: escepticismo y lenguaje en El Coloquio de los perros,“ Hispanic Review 68: 3 (Summer, 2000): 298, 300-301. Also see Cervantes’ pity for “poor animals” who have furze placed under their tails by two boys. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 913; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Salvador Fajardo and James A. Parr (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998), Pt. 2, chap.€61: 841

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slaves” and women being “by nature” subordinate to men. 31 Erica Fudge reminds us that Cartesianism was not the only way to “think with animals” in the early modern period, and that some individuals even went beyond Aristotle in attributing human-like qualities to other animals. King James I of England (r. 1603-1625) used his own observations of his dogs to argue for a breakdown of boundaries between so-called instinct and reason. He saw humans and dogs on a continuum, arguing that he had one hunting dog, who when alone in picking up the scent of the prey, returned to the pack and convinced his fellows to follow him by means of “yelling arguments” that could not be “carried on without an exercise of understanding.”32 In 1660 René Bary even insisted that animals perceive abstract universals in their dreams, and earlier, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscan Roger Bacon argued for an overlap between human and animal mental powers, with animals distinguishing “universal classes from one another” and distinguishing “individuals from universals and from each other.”33 Inhabitants of the Spanish empire were part of an early modern discussion that made room for nonhuman animals and did not always reduce them to Cartesian and Skinnerian stimulus-response machines.34 Association with Other Animals and the Blurring of Boundaries In a Spanish culture that often distinguished dualistically between the Godly and the Satanic, it should come as no surprise that human 31 ╇ Aristotle, Politics, in Aristotle’s Politics and the Athenian Constitution, trans. and ed. John Warrington (London: Dent and Dutton, Everyman’s Library, 1976), 1252a-b, 1253a, 1260a; Aristotle, De Anima, Books II and III (with Passages from Book I), trans. D. W. Hamlyn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 413a25-413b32. 32 ╇ Cited in Fudge, 102-103. 33 ╇ Boas, 137; Peter G. Sobol, “The Shadow of Reason: Explanations of Intelligent Animal Behavior in the Thirteenth Century” in The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays, ed. Joyce E. Salisbury (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), 116. 34 ╇René Descartes, Discours de la méthode/ Discourse on the Method: a Bilingual Edition and an Interpretation of René Descartes’ Philosophy of Method, trans. and ed. George Heffernan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), Part 5:╇ 78-83; John Cottingham, “Cartesian Dualism: Theology, Metaphysics, and Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (CamÂ� bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 247; Des Chene, 2-4, 108-11. For twentieth-Â�century Behaviorism and B. F. Skinner, see James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, The Animal Mind (New York: Scientific American Library, 1994), 44-67.

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association with other animals could be either blessed by God or sinful. What is interesting and complex is the fact that wholesome relationships between humans and other animals were not merely reduced to human dominance over other animals. It is true that those deemed witches were seen as transgressing all sorts of species boundaries in their transmutations into animal form and their use of animal familiars. The animal here was guilty by association with a human who challenged what was seen as God’s divinely appointed Spanish hierarchy on earth. But in submission to God and Spanish Catholic authority, saintly behavior might be allowed to cross boundaries between humans and other animals, just as intellectuals might admit vegetative, animal and spiritual faculties to the human soul. In seventeenth-century Catalonia, a Dominican noted that of 182 Marian shrines that he visited, 62 foundational legends involved animals discovering an image of the Virgin Mary to be placed in a shrine.35 By association with divine order, individual oxen and bulls might be blessed and thereby special. Thus, respect for animal uniqueness and individuality was permitted, but only within certain guidelines. The Spanish imperial witch and saint show us what those guidelines were, and the demonology of Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón reviewed in chapter four and the life of San Martín de Porres and his companion animals in chapter five help to illustrate that point. More appropriately than lions, humans, created in God’s image, served as kings over their fellow animals, but appropriate kingly dominion was not meant to be cruel, and, just as kings were often called to focus on the humanity that they shared with their subjects, so too humans in general could separate themselves from other animals while simultaneously seeing commonalities with the beasts.36 As late as 1714, the philosopher Leibniz wrote: There is a connection in the perceptions of animals which bears some resemblance to reason; but it is only founded in the memory of facts or effects, and not at all in the knowledge of causes. Thus a dog shuns the stick with which it has been beaten, because memory represents to 35 ╇ William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 15-19. 36 ╇ Alfonso de Valdés was secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who as grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella was also ruler of the Spanish empire from 1516 to 1556. Valdés wrote, “The tyrant seeks his own profit, while the king seeks the good of the republic.” Alfonso de Valdés, Dialogue of Mercury and Charon, trans. Joseph V. Ricapito (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 130.

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chapter one it the pain which the stick has caused it. And men, in so far as they are empirics, that is to say, in three-fourths of their actions, act simply as brutes do…. But true reasoning depends upon necessary or eternal truths, such as those of logic, of numbers, of geometry, which establish an indubitable connection of ideas and unfailing inferences. The animals in whom these inferences are not noticed, are called brutes; but those which know these necessary truths are properly those which are called rational animals, and their souls are called spirits.37

Influenced by late Scholasticism as well as by Descartes, Leibniz wrote of a dog’s potential to feel pain and develop the emotion of fear, through memory, as a result.38 Indeed, his human animal functioned like other animals “three-fourths” of the time, but then could go on to abstract beyond the capacity of other animals. In these notions, the German thinker was not very far removed from Spanish intellectuals who came before him, and who will be studied in the next chapter. Likewise, Amerindians of the Aztec and Inca empires, imperial peoples like the Spaniards, saw animals as tools to be used, even as they also emphasized, often more than Spaniards, the active agency of other animals. In an evolving cosmos, as the transhumanists remind us, all is a matter of degree, but difference in degrees does produce difference. The Spanish empire necessarily blended a multiplicity of views regarding nonhuman animals, even as animals from different parts of the globe were brought together. As noted by Virginia DeJohn Anderson, human and animal relationships must be understood in terms of their impact on the “hearts and minds and behaviors of the peoples” who interacted with animals like livestock as well as what “changes in the land” the introduction of non-native animals wrought in places like the Americas. 39 Just as she, in Creatures of Empire, reviews Native American and European attitudes toward animals, and then proceeds to further distinguish between the views of European authorities and more popular folkloric beliefs in the New 37 ╇ Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz, “The Principles of Nature and of Grace, Based on Reason,” in Leibniz: Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 525-26. 38 ╇ For Leibniz’s engagement with Scholasticism and critical approach to Descartes, see Stuart Brown, “The Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Background,” in The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, ed. Nicholas Jolley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 43-66. 39 ╇ Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5.

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England and Chesapeake colonies of the early modern British emÂ�pire, so too this study will review the perspective of Spanish intelÂ�lectuals regarding animals, the Spanish empire’s use of animals as labor and food, and the more popular beliefs and behaviors vis-àvis nonÂ�human animals. The Animals of Spain also will argue that many Spaniards recognized animal agency in a way similar to the Amerindians whom they conquered, thereby allowing for dialogue.40 There were blurry boundaries in Spanish folklore and Amerindian traditions where humans and other animals were concerned. These boundaries were also often fuzzy to Spanish intellectuals and authorities of the Church, whose duty it was to patrol the borders of appropriate and inappropriate thought and behavior. Though some members of the authoritative elite tried to build solid walls between humans and the animal “other,” there were also those who allowed boundaries to be far more porous as long as God’s authority and Spanish imperial authority were respected. The Spanish empire was not a Cartesian empire (or more appropriately, a “Malebranchean” empire) that always saw animals as mere machines. Such a view was present in the Spanish empire, but so too was the love and appreciation of animals, arguments for the restrained use of animals, and beliefs that animals could be blessed messengers of God as well as demonic associates of rebellious Spanish and Amerindian witches. There was a diversity of views, reflective of our own today. The difÂ� ference that historians should therefore explore is the difference in taught emphasis within diverse cultural traditions. Of all our species-specific attitudes toward other animals that have been exhibited through the ages, which dominate at a particular time and why? A deeper history must respect human continuity, which allows us to understand something of the past, even as it readily recognizes that there would be no historical process without change.41 ╇ In her study of British Colonial America, DeJohn Anderson writes, “The steady advance of Protestant orthodoxy over folk beliefs during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sharply diminished the chances that colonists would acknowledge any convergence between their own animal lore and Indian ways of thinking about other creatures.” DeJohn Anderson, 57. The pagan and Catholic influences on British folklore were marginalized with the coming of the Protestant Reformation according to DeJohn Anderson, 45-57. 41 ╇ “Deep history… necessarily denies the existence of any rupture separating a slow, biological, Darwin-driven Paleolithic era from an accelerating, cultural, Lamarck-driven Postlithic era.” Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 81. 40

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It is axiomatic to say that history is a function of continuity and change. If there were absolutely no continuity in human experience over time, then history would be as meaningless as Shakespeare’s tale told by an idiot.42 The study of history would be a futile endeavor without any basis for comparison or means of mutual understanding. Likewise, without cultural change over time, nothing new could be discovered about the past. Our present and their past would be intuitively known as uniform common experience, yet Descartes wrote that traveling in the past resembled traveling in foreign lands, thereby broadening our experience and teaching us that humans need not do things exactly the same way at all times.43 For him, history taught tolerance of other human choices and other human ways, but somehow we might still grasp a common humanity beneath it all. In this light, The Animals of Spain will argue that the recognition of continuity and difference regarding ourselves and other animals has existed over time and is not something newly arrived at through the DarÂ� winian synthesis. The historian Richard W. Bulliet argues that the recognition of continuity with the other animals existed in a predomestic foraging past (when hunted animals demonstrated human-like agency in their competition for survival and resources with human hunters), only to be resuscitated with nuances in contemporary postdomestic cultural trends that present ethical arguments against killing other animals for meat and promote legal protection and rights for nonhuman animals. The dialectic between what it means to be human and what it means to be animal is constant in these two stages posited by Bulliet. In between predomesticity and postdomesticity stands Bulliet’s domestic stage in which individuals directly engaged in herding and agriculture “take for granted the killing of animals and experience few moral qualms in consuming animal products.”44 He argues that both Christian doctrine concerning animals and Cartesian views “did not differ significantly,” even though some Christians like St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) taught reverence for “God’s animate creations.”45 ╇ Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, lines 24-28. ╇ Cited in R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 59; Descartes, Discours de la méthode/Â� Discourse on the Method, 18-19. 44 ╇Richard W. Bulliet, Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3. 45 ╇ Ibid., 45. 42 43

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In Bulliet’s model, “Predomestic residues dominated attitudes toward animals in early domestic times,” but owned domestic animals fulfilled the role of property more than that of independent agents to be emulated or respected.46 The Animals of Spain will explore the reverence for other animal life that did exist in the midst of animals treated as property and machines. This study will argue that although some cultural trends may dominate, other positions do not necessarily go silently into the shadows, and seemingly contradictory stances are sometimes reconciled in the same individual. Bulliet allows for overlap where his categories are concerned, and this study posits that such overlap is to be expected since we are dealing with the same human animal over time—as “modulated” by differing environmental and cultural trends.47 Humans Are Animals Like the record of human history, evolution by means of natural selection deposits a record of continuity and change through the ages. Homo sapiens, our species, is unique, but that uniqueness is a mosaic of genetic information interacting with the environment over time. We are our genome as activated or not activated biochemically. Overweight children are more likely to develop cardiovascular risk factors, type two diabetes, menstrual abnormalities and breathing difficulties. They are more likely to face social stigmatization from their peers. Children deprived of hugs and loving physical contact show higher levels of emotional anxiety, detachment and inÂ�Â�discriminate friendliness later in life.48 Given the way nature, the ╇ Ibid., 42, 38. ╇ Drawing on neuroscience, historian Daniel Lord Smail presents this modulation argument in an effort to root the study of memory, so central to history, in evolutionary biology. Smail, 116-18. 48 ╇ Aviva Must and Sarah E. Anderson, “Effects of Obesity on Morbidity in Â�Children and Adolescents,” Nutrition in Clinical Care 6:1 (Jan-Apr 2003): 4-12. Also Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “Childhood Overweight and Â�Obesity,” available from http://www.cdc.gov/NCCDPHP/DNPA/obesity/childhood/ index.htm; accessed January 24, 2009. For attachment, Charles H. Zeanah, et al., “Attachment in Institutionalized and Community Children in Romania,” Child Development 76: 5 (October 2005): 1015-28; Margaret Talbot, “The Disconnected; Attachment Theory: The Ultimate Experiment,” The New York Times (May 24, 1998), available from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE1DF1639F93 7A15756C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print; accessed January 24, 2009. For a review of attachment theory, including Harry Harlow’s experiment with 46 47

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Â� environment around us, shapes and selects, we are an amalgam of nature and nurture, biology and culture—and culture itself is a preeminent biological adaptation of highly adaptable and learning-oriented social animals. We have often survived and flourished as a result of what we have learned and passed on to generations after us, even as chimpanzees, elephants and other social animals have. Today we possess an evidence-rich, cross-species accumulation of data that argues for degrees of difference between humans and other animals, not utter difference in kind. In the Spanish empire, with less physical evidence, there were already those who saw this—to a degree. As members of our own species, a species who can write, their thoughts reach out to us, and as a species who can reflect on observed behaviors and archaeological evidence, we can see the commonalities that we share with other animals evolutionarily. Sometimes those commonalities may be the result of a shared genetic heritage, and sometimes they may be the result of far less related species adapting in similar ways to similar environmental challenges, but if birds and mammalian bats both fly, and are less closely related genetically than chimpanzees and humans, it behooves us to remember that in simply sharing the four nucleobases of DNA (adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine), birds and bats are genetically related, as are all animals and plants. Transgenic manipulations that cross the boundaries of biological kingdoms—like placing a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis in a corn plant to create Bt Corn—function because of the evolutionary inter-relatedness of life.49 If we can arrive at some understanding of people as they write about themselves and other animals in the past, it is because neurotransmitters shared across time by a Homo sapiens species that evolved some 200,000 to 150,000 years ago allow for this.50 Our biology clearly determines who we are rhesus macaques and terry-cloth surrogate “mothers,” see Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 394-407 49 ╇Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 11415. 50 ╇ The 200,000 to 150,000 range for the evolution of modern Homo sapiens in Africa is a standard textbook figure derived from fossil evidence and rates of mutation in mitochondrial DNA. Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution, using mutation rate calculations, arrives at a “confidence interval” of 260,000 to 111,000 years ago. Bernard Wood, Human Evolution: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 104-106; Michael Alan Park, Biological Anthropology, 5th ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008), 324; Linda Stone and Paul F. Lurquin, with L. Luca

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and what we know. To ignore it—its needs and its interrelatedness to other life forms—is at least to flirt with extinction. We are members of the biological order “primates,” and primates are animals who learn, even developing different cultural traditions in some instances. Observable shared behaviors demonstrate this to be so. In various parts of Africa, many chimpanzees modify blades of grass and strip twigs of protuberances to make wands that are then moistened and inserted into termite mounds and anthills for protein on a stick. Chimpanzees make and acquire tool kits, and different chimpanzee cultures use different tools. Only in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast do chimpanzees crack nuts, employing thick branches and occasionally stones in a hammer-and-anvil method. In the Taï Forrest of the Ivory Coast, with thickly canopied evergreen forests, groups of chimpanzees hunt cooperatively and share their acquired colobus monkey meat, while in Gombe, Tanzania, where fleeing monkeys can be seen more readily in a broken tree canopy, hunting is a more individualistic free-for-all.51 While males are predominantly the hunters and reserve political power as displaying alphas, often battering females into submission, assertive females, like Gigi of Gombe (d. 1994), have arisen. Gigi hunted with success and joined males in border patrols and attacks on chimpanzees from a neighboring community.52 But chimpanzees are not all brutality. They will sometimes share food with beggars who hold their hands outstretched, and so will we.53 Chimpanzees exhibit a rich diversity of behaviors and learn different tool kits and methods of social interaction. There are different chimpanzee cultures all over Africa, but tendencies like tool use, food sharing and the construction of dominance hierarchies remain constant. Nature intertwines with nurture in a seamless tapestry. If patterns of behavior arise across human cultures and are also found in the cultures of our closest primate relatives, it would be a denial of the evidence to argue Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: a Synthesis (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 173. 51 ╇ William C. McGrew, The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 111-14, 125-27, 116-17. 52 ╇ Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 66-67, 305-311, 506-507, 511; Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 143-46. 53 ╇ Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: a Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 195-98.

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against the naturalness and essential quality of the behavior. It makes sense to study human history in the context of what used to be called natural history, and, increasingly, historians like Walter Burkert, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Gregory Hanlon, Robert McElvaine, Glenda Riley, Daniel Lord Smail, Richard Trexler and Theodore Zeldin are doing just that.54 This is not to say that culture matters little in who we humans are. Indeed, primatologists show us that it matters a great deal in who apes like chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans are. In fact, cultural analysis is being applied increasingly to monkeys like baboons and capuchins as well.55 Primates are social animals who rely on experience and adaptations to particular environmental circumstances that have proven to work over the course of time. The capacity to learn culture is already seeded among our primate relatives, and written and archaeological evidence points to it being a part of our human 54 ╇ See Fernández-Armesto’s Humankind and Smail’s On Deep History and the Brain. Also see Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Gregory Hanlon, Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: an Early Modern History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Robert S. McElvaine, Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001); Glenda Riley, Taking Land, Breaking Land: Women Colonizing the American West and Kenya, 1840-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003); and my own Brutality and Benevolence: Human Ethology, Culture, and the Birth of Mexico (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996). For early, but much briefer, applications of evolutionary biology and comparative primatology to history, see Richard C. Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 197-98, n. 112; Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 139-41. 55 ╇ Christophe Boesch, “Behavioural Diversity in Pan,” in Behavioural Diversity in Chimpanzees and Bonobos, ed. Christophe Boesch, Gottfried Hohmann and Linda F. Marchant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1-8. Also Richard W. Wrangham et al., ed., Chimpanzee Cultures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Pär Segerdahl, William Fields and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi’s Primal Language: the Cultural Initiation of Primates into Language (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1-3, 100-109, 124-35; Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 42-43; ; Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 148, 178-80; de Waal, Our Inner Ape, 196, 204-209; Carel P. van Shaik et al., “Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture,” Science 299: 5603 (January 3, 2003): 102-105; Robert M. Â�Sapolsky and Lisa J. Share, “A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission,” PLoS Biology 2: 4 (April 2004): 534-41; available from http:// biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal. pbio.0020106&ct=1; accessed January 23, 2009.

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nature.56 Through teaching and learning, experience is shared, and particular cultural traditions within unique environmental cirÂ� cumstances are generated. Cultures are variations on our shared humanity, and in their expression different human tendencies may be emphasized or restrained, though not entirely eliminated. InterÂ� pretations regarding other animals found in Spanish human culture would also be found among conquered Amerindians, but they were not necessarily emphasized in the same way by individuals raised in different traditions. Reprise: Thinking with Animals as a Human Universal Just as Spaniards themselves represented different local traditions of the Iberian Peninsula, from León-Castile to Catalonia, so too Amerindians over the vast expanse of the Spanish empire in the Americas were of a number of different cultures. In the islands of the Caribbean, Spaniards encountered the Tainos, who farmed cassava and sweet potatoes, built houses of wood and thatch, and made pottery. From a Spanish perspective, such things were not enough to deem them civilized, or indios con policía, since monumental stone buildings and tribute arrangements like forced labor were needed to resemble the Spanish and European cultural traditions that were the prejudicial Spanish template used to judge all “civilizations.” Cortés found civilization among the Nahuas of the Aztec empire because there were beggars in the street, as “in Spain and in other civilized places.” If the Tainos were decimated by Spanish brutality as they were, one factor that came into play was their inability to accept the forced labor that was Spanish encomienda. Spanish demands oppressed their cultural self-definition, their sense of human dignity. They attempted to flee, rebelled and committed suicide before being decimated by the major smallpox epidemic of 1518-1519.57 On the other hand, Nahuas and other ethnic groups in the Aztec empire paid tribute, had a much more pronounced hierarchy than the Tainos, and built monumental temples and palaces that Cortés and 56 ╇ Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 8-10. 57 ╇ Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People who Greeted Columbus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 9-17, 150-58; Cortés, “Second Letter,” in Letters from Mexico, 75; Suzanne Austin Alchon, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 63-64.

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other conquistadores could admire. Their human sacrifice to deities, whom the Spanish identified as demons, justified conquest, but it did not deny them “civilization.” That the core of Spain’s empire in the Americas came to be built on the ruins of the Aztec empire in Mesoamerica and the Inca empire in South America is extremely significant; though both Amerindian empires lacked iron metallurgy, they possessed advanced farming techniques and large, settled agrarian populations. The Nahuatl-speaking Amerindians of Mexico and the Quechua-speaking Amerindians of the Andes had domesticated animals other than dogs. They seemingly could and did identify some other animals as property, even as the Spaniards did. They also used animals as food. In the account of Pre-Columbian Nahua life compiled by the Franciscan priest Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) the turkey is described as “a dweller in one’s home, which can be raised in one’s home, which lives near and by one.”58 If the people of the Andes ate domesticated guinea pigs, the people of Mesoamerica ate domesticated turkeys and dogs.59 As with their Spanish conquerors, the Aztecs and Incas thought of animals as useful property, but they also viewed them as repositories of supernatural power. In Spain, animals might be blessed by God so that they might find a holy site or relic, but they also could be preternatural links to Satan’s order-challenging power. Subjects of dominion in either case, they were never truly equals. In the Aztec and Inca empires, humans were also seen as dominant on earth, but within a natural and supernatural context that allowed for a great deal of acceptable comparison between humans and other animals. In the Aztec empire, sacrificial captives, ascending to the fertility-granting sun in their deaths, became coauhteca (“eagle men”), being compared to an honored bird of prey in their demise, just as respected warriors among the Aztecs were identified as jaguars or eagles in life. And if precious humans were sacrificed, a valued and tasty food item like the quail was frequently sacrificed as well.60 Though there was a hierarchy of being, 58 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 11: Earthly Things, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, 1963), chap.€2:€53. 59 ╇ Sophie D. Coe, America’s First Cuisines (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 95-99. 60 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 2: The Ceremonies, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Mono-

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humans and other animals found common ground in the cycles of life and death. Likewise, in the Inca empire, the valuable domesticated pack animals and providers of wool, llamas, were also sometimes sacrificed, and the Andean noble Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, who flourished around 1613, tells us of the llamas of the sun god Inti, divine property who provided for the Inca’s aclla priestesses, while also serving as a link on earth to the sun god. This postChristian Amerindian also wrote derogatorily of indigenous sorceries that employed animal means to power in the form of snake venom and toads, and in reading the songs of owls and cries of foxes. Animals emanated their own special preternatural power, and they could be used in this capacity too by people.61 However, they were not ridden into battle, and there seemed to be greater willingness than among the Spaniards to accept that animal behaviors resembling those of the human animal are the result of thought processes and emotions equivalent to those found in humanity. Overarching strains in Aztec and Inca cultures accepted that other animals thought and felt as humans do. Among Spaniards, that position was discussed and debated, but in the Florentine Codex, primarily compiled by Nahua informants and scribes “within the boundaries drawn by Sahagún,” the coyote “is grateful and appreciative.” After a coyote was rescued from a snake by a warrior, he returned to the warrior in two hours with two turkey cocks. On two other occasions, the grateful coyote again gave two turkeys to the warrior.62 The prographs of the School of American Research , 1951), chap.€21:€46-48, 51 and chap.€24:€70-71. For the tastiness of the quail as an item of food, see Florentine Codex, Book 11: Earthly Things, chap.€2: 49. As for human identification with other animals, Inga Clendinnen writes, “Some of the borrowings were simple and direct. Sahagún’s informants noted that ‘conjurers’ performed their great deeds through the power of the jaguar hide—entire with claws and head and fangs—they carried with them. Eagle or jaguar warriors found powerful models for conduct, for battle styles, even for moral codes, in the behaviour of animals whose appearances they facsimilated.” Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: an Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 229. 61 ╇ In Guaman Poma’s text, these generic llamas of the sun (intip llaman) are identified more precisely as guanacos and vicuñas. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 288, 277, 284; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. and ed. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 94, 85, 90. Also see Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, in Obras, Bk. 13, chap.€21 in vol. 2: 201-202; Cobo, Inca Religion, 113; Bauer, 27. 62 ╇Exhibiting a full range of behaviors, the Florentine Codex’s coyote could be vengeful and a terrifying, “diabolical” hunter, as well as grateful. See Florentine

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gression between the behaviors, thoughts and emotions of humans and other animals is transparent. The mourning dove “is lazy” because “Its nest is only sticks which it places together; it piles a little grass on the surface.”63 Monkeys in turn, described by the Quiché Maya book of creation, the Popol Vuh, as failed people, the remnants of a creation prior to this fourth one, are described in the Florentine Codex as having “human hands, human feet, nails, real nails” and “a face which is a little human.”64 The agrarian, imperial Amerindians conquered by Spaniards did not see themselves as being exactly the same as nonhuman animals, but like some trends found in European cultural constructions of the time, their dominant cultural traditions saw nonhuman animals as related exemplars and conduits to the supernatural world—even as they were sources of food and labor too. Conclusion Informed by contemporary concerns drawn from evolutionary biology and our present-day cultural interactions with other animals, this book will explore the use and treatment of animals in the Spanish Codex, Book 11: Earthly Things, chap.€1: 7. For Sahagún and his Nahua cultural informants, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, “Sahagún and the Birth of Modern Ethnography: Representing, Confessing, and Inscribing the Native Other,” in The Work of Â�Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, ed. J. Jorge Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicolson and Eloise Quiñones Keber (Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, State University of New York, 1988), 46. 63 ╇ Florentine Codex, Book 11: Earthly Things, chap.€2:€51. According to the Peterson field guide of birds’ nests, a mourning dove nest is usually found in trees, shrubs, or vines. On rare occasion, it is found on the ground. Might a Nahua observer justifiably interpret the bird’s nesting behavior as a sign of laziness? The guide goes on to say, “Platform of sticks, surprisingly strong for frail appearance; little if any lining of grass, weeds, rootlets. Eggs often visible from ground through loosely placed twigs.” The paucity of grass lining and primary reliance on sticks is noted by both the Florentine Codex and the Peterson guide. See Hal H. Harrison, A Field Guide to the Birds’ Nests, United States East of the Mississippi River (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), 91. Mexico’s mourning dove, Zenaida (Zenaidura) macroura, is of the same species as that found in the eastern United States. See Roger Tory Peterson and Edward L. Chalif, A Field Guide to Â�Mexican Birds: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), 68. 64 ╇ Florentine Codex, Book 11: Earthly Things, chap.€1:€14. For the Quiché Maya view: “So this is why monkeys look like people: they are a sign of a previous human work, human design—mere manikins, mere woodcarvings.” Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, revised ed., trans. Dennis Tedlock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 73.

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empire. Animals will be looked at as food, laborers, warriors and entertainers. The interpretations given to other animals by humans of different ranks and educational backgrounds will be studied, and this will include what was considered good and bad behavior toward animals, as well as the extent to which humans saw themselves as animals. Using classic sources like Cervantes’ “Colloquy of the Dogs” and Oliva Sabuco’s medical treatise, with its multiple comparisons between humans and animals, the next chapter will explore animals as they were used metaphorically and appreciated as fellow sentient beings by Spanish intellectuals. The official approach to animals will also be explored through the works of Spanish Scholasticism. Chapter three then will present the culturally ascribed value placed upon animals as resources. Questions concerning livestock in the relaciones geográficas and other sources will be juxtaposed to the ideal of the good shepherd and shepherdess found in Spain’s rich pastoral literary tradition. Socially approved treatment of tame animals will be contrasted to negative observations concerning the abuse of animals and servants by King Philip II’s son don Carlos. Chapter four will explore folk traditions regarding animals that were considered inappropriate and subversive by Spanish authority. Cultural conflict will be studied on both sides of the Atlantic through official attitudes toward witches and their use of animals, from the alleged transformations of Basque peasants to those of Nahua peasants in central Mexico. Before evolutionary transmutation challenged the religious notions of some in the nineteenth century, magical transmutation was seen as inversion of God’s order. To think independently about animals could be seen as “wildness” and a challenge to authority. Witch-hunting manuals, from Martín del Rio’s to Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón’s, as well as some trial proceedings, will be used to arrive at some popular attitudes regarding animals that challenged the intellectual limitations Spanish authorities tried to impose. The definition of acceptable human interaction with other animals in the Spanish empire will be the organizing theme of chapter five. How could animals be kept as pets and even be seen as blessed by God? Appropriate association with other animals will be explored through the conquistadores’ respected warrior dogs and accounts of animals finding holy relics. A process of “approved domestication” that might even include humans will be juxtaposed to authorities’ definitions of freedom and “wildness.” Submission to hierarchy and charitable altruism will be illustrated through seventeenth-century eye-witness accounts of San

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Martín de Porres and his animal companions. The beatification process of this child of a Spaniard and an African woman, with its references to his care for animals and his vegetarianism, will be explored as an acceptable challenge to the status quo and as an Afro-Peruvian contribution to the overarching cultural conversation between Europeans and Amerindians. Chapter six will then conclude this work by explaining attitudes in the Spanish empire during the eighteenth-century age of Enlightenment, just before the early nineteenth-century wars for independence. In conclusion, The Animals of Spain will pose that debates similar to our own regarding animals existed in the early modern Spanish empire. Though dog-fighting is now generally denounced and illegal in the United States, and the bullfight is illegal in Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Uruguay, and contested in Spain itself, there are still those who find amusement in brutal spectacles involving animals.65 Likewise, though vegetarianism may have been less common in the early modern Spanish world than today in the United States, there 65 ╇ “Dogfighting is now a felony in all 50 states.” The Humane Society of the United States, “Taking Down Dogfighting,” (July 27, 2009); available from http:// www.hsus.org/acf/fighting/dogfight/taking_down_dogfighting.html; accessed May 19, 2010. Where bullfighting is concerned, Spain’s Canary Islands have banned the practice, and in July 2010, the regional Catalan legislature prohibited professional arena bullfighting by a vote of 68 to 55, with 9 abstentions. The Catalan ban will take effect in 2012, and will lead to the closing of Catalonia’s one functioning bullring in Barcelona, which has recently seldom sold out the fifteen fights it stages a year. However, the same legislature then voted in September to allow amateurs to continue to run with the bulls, including bulls with flaming wax attached to their horns, as long as the bulls are not killed. One bull breeder, Pere Fumador, defended this cruelty as a freedom that could not be denied the people of Catalonia. Thus, the use of bulls for violent entertainment remains contested in the region, and Spanish conservatives in other regions, like Castile, embrace bullfighting as a “national pastime.” For Latin America’s bans, see Bulliet, 182. For Spain in general, Michael Kimmelman, “Bullfighting Is Dead! Long Live the Bullfight!” The New York Times (June 1, 2008); Â�available from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/sports/playmagazine/601bull fight.html; accessed January 30, 2009. For Catalonia, “Catalonia Bans Bullfighting,” The Guardian (July 28, 2010); available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ 2010/jul/28/catalonia-vote-on-bullfighting-ban/print; accessed September 6, 2010; Raphael Minder, “Looking for Wedge from Spain, Catalonia Bans Bullfighting,” The New York Times (July 28, 2010); available from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/ 07/29/world/europe/29spain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print; accessed September 6, 2010; Ciaran Giles and the Associated Press, “Spaniards who Banned Bullfights OK Flaming Horns,” CBS News (September 22, 2010); available from http://www. cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/22/ap/world/main6890237.shtml; accessed September 28, 2010.

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were individuals deemed saintly who adopted some form of vegetarianism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Polar behaviors existed then as now, and there were a number of positions in between. As there are cherished pets and confined animals raised for meat in industrial agriculture today, there were revered oxen associated with saintly relics and toros bravos for the arena then.

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CHAPTER TWO

THROUGH THE PRISM OF HUMAN PERCEPTION: SPANISH INTELLECTUALS WRITE ABOUT OTHER SENTIENT BEINGS In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote that love, like “that of a mother for her infant,” is one of the strongest emotions “of which the mind is capable.” We humans “long to clasp in our arms those whom we tenderly love.” Yet, love, for Darwin, also lacked “any proper or peculiar means of expression” or “any special line of action.”1 A “longing” or “desire” for pleasurable sensation leads humans to seek the company of the beloved in various ways, not deterministically in one set pattern. Some might see a mind’s choices involved. Darwin definitely saw the evolutionary origins of human love in the behaviors of other animals: With the lower animals we see the same principle of pleasure derived from contact in association with love. Dogs and cats manifestly take pleasure in rubbing against their masters and mistresses, and in being rubbed or patted by them. Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, delight in fondling and being fondled by each other, and by persons to whom they are attached. Mr Bartlett has described the behaviour of two chimpanzees, rather older animals than those generally imported into this country, when they were first brought together. They sat opposite, touching each other with their much protruded lips; and one put his hand on the shoulder of the other. They then mutually folded each other in their arms. Afterwards they stood up, each with one arm on the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads, opened their mouths, and yelled with delight.2

Unlike Malebranche’s animal automata, Darwin’s animals—and, as we shall see, the animals observed and loved by many in the Spanish empire—felt pleasure, pain, and so much more. In the tradition of Darwin, today’s ethologists take note of the touching and kissing involved in chimpanzee consolation and recon1 ╇ Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, ed. Paul Ekman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 212. 2 ╇ Ibid., 213.

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ciliation.3 In Love and Hate: the Natural History of Behavior Patterns, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt argues that much of social bonding in higher vertebrates can be traced back to elements found in the motherinfant relationship. If humans kiss for pleasurable sensation, and more abstractly to console and reconcile, it is because “Mouth-tomouth feeding between mother and infant is practiced in widely differing cultures.” Likewise, before observing adult chimpanzees kissing to reconcile, “We can observe mouth-to-mouth feeding among the anthropoid apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan), and among animals generally, as parental care behavior.”4 It is well known that wolves, jackals and other canids feed their young through regurgitation or mouth-to-mouth transference, and in The Intelligence of Dogs, Stanley Coren writes, “When dogs lick people’s faces, as most domestic dogs will, they are actually mimicking the behavior of puppies, who will lick their mother’s face to get her to regurgitate food for them.”5 Darwin wrote that if dogs lick the hands and faces of their masters, it is a sign of affection in emulation of canine mothers “Â�carefully licking their puppies—the dearest object of their love—for the sake of cleansing them.”6 For Darwin, as for ethologists like Marc Bekoff and Paul Sherman today, there clearly is a continuum between humans and other animals—one demarcated and evidenced by 3 ╇ “Consolations involve more embraces than kisses, whereas the opposite holds true for reconciliations. In other words, when you see two chimpanzees engaged in a protracted kiss, chances are that they confronted each other not long before. When they only hug each other, it is more likely that the tension was caused by a third party…. Unfortunately, science is virtually ignorant of reconciliation behavior in private human relationships…. Most people will agree, however, that kissing as a form of peacemaking is a characteristic that we share with the chimpanzee. This is even reflected in symbolic ceremonies such as the one in 1982 when the Argentine and British prelates of the Catholic Church exchanged a kiss of peace during a papal mass that coincided with the British invasion of the Falkland Islands.” Frans de Waal, Peacemaking among Primates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 43. 4 ╇ “On the other hand, kissing with lips and tongue by human beings is certainly a modification of feeding movements. Mouth-to-mouth feeding between mother and infant is practiced in widely differing cultures. Bushmen and Papuans feed their children with premasticated food, and this used to be customary even in Central Europe in some country districts. It is reported, for example, of mothers in Schleswig-Holstein and in the Black Forest.” Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 135. 5 ╇Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 113; Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs: Canine Consciousness and Capabilities (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 39. 6 ╇ Darwin, Emotions, 119.

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Â� similar behaviors.7 On the complicated, multi-branched tree of evolution, touching and kissing behaviors in social animals, as well as parental care and food-sharing, exist to varying degrees. Human love is descended from these behaviors. 8 In the early modern Spanish empire, there were individuals who saw this as well, but free inquiry along these lines was restrained by the desire to see humans as qualitatively different—as especially chosen by God and set apart. Authority often trumped experience, but, ironically, one of the authorities was Aristotle, and he, like Darwin, saw degrees of difference between humans and other animals. 9 Early modern Spanish intellectuals were left torn at times, but this did not prevent the construction of some interesting culturally specific syntheses from universally shared human methods of observation and reflection. Do animals love? Though it was commonly accepted by early modern Spanish intellectuals that animals feel pleasure and pain—that they feel and respond to what they feel—a debate muted by religious dogma and inquisitorial censorship arose over whether animals possess some degree of agency or feelings similar to human love. While a modern ethologist may side-step the usefulness of the term “rational choice” and focus on behavioral responses and innovations in different environmental circumstances, early modern Spanish intellectuals were wedded to debates regarding free will and determinism as they looked at behaviors that both they and we might call “love.” 7 ╇ It should be recognized, as it is by Bekoff and Sherman, that there are those today, like Marc Hauser of Harvard, who still argue for a qualitative difference between the human mind and animal minds. Marc Bekoff and Paul W. Sherman, “Reflections on Animal Selves” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 4 (April 2004): 176-80. 8 ╇ In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, “Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind,” and that “the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, &c., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in From So Simple a Beginning: the Four Great Books of Charles Darwin, ed. Edward O. Wilson (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006), 837. 9 ╇ Larry Arnhart, “The Darwinian Biology of Aristotle’s Political Animals,” American Journal of Political Science 38: 2 (May 1994): 464-85. Psychologist Stanley Coren, with great precision, writes that Aristotle “felt that there were several different qualities of life and that different creatures displayed more or less of each of these qualities.” Coren also notes that this reasoning impacted western Christendom through Thomas Aquinas, Christian Aristotelian and premiere Scholastic that he was. Coren, 46-47. Also see 43-44 for Coren’s use of The Descent of Man and an argument similar to that presented by Bekoff and Sherman.

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Scholastics like Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez emphasized what they themselves saw as fundamental species-specific differences between humans and other animals, while some intellectuals, like Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, focused on behavioral similarities between humans and other animals. Obviously enough, both parties involved accepted at least some animality inherent in humanity. They differed on whether nonhuman animals are worthy of lengthy study so as to learn more about human behavior, and because they might be interesting in their own right, with their own stories to be told. Given Scholasticism’s influence in early modern Spain, and its reliance on arguments from authority, the extent to which Spanish intellectuals’ actual interaction with animals informed their arguments is not clear, but attraction or aversion to other animals and behaviors deemed “animal” is. Despite their differences, intellectuals of the Spanish Empire did generally agree that humans and other animals share sentience. The question for debate was whether this shared sentience might foreshadow species-specific “rationality” and “choice” in people. Might animals other than humans distinguish between individuals and choose to perform specific acts of restraint, gratitude, and love? Human Nature, Animal Nature Authoritative influences on the early modern Spanish conversation regarding animals were multiple and filtered through modes of interpretation dating back to ancient Greece. From Plato and Aristotle, Spanish intellectuals derived the notion of a human soul with three faculties. This rational, feeling and appetitive soul was something that could be agreed upon by those who differed on the agency of nonhuman animals.10 It was summarized succinctly by Mexico City’s great

10 ╇ While Aristotle presented the three faculties of the soul as human, animal and vegetative, Plato wrote of the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul in the Republic. Plato, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), Bk. 4. 435b-443a; Aristotle, De Anima, Books II and III (with Passages from Book I), trans. D. W. Hamlyn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 413a25-413b32. Also see Matthew Senior, “The Souls of Men and Beasts, 1630-1764,” in A Cultural Â�History of Animals, ed. Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl, Vol. 4: A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Matthew Senior (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 26-31.

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poet and playwright, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. 1648-1695), when she wrote: Man, in sum, the greatest marvel posed to human comprehension, a synthesis composed of qualities of angel, plant, and beast, whose elevated baseness shows traits of each of these.11

Approximately one hundred years before Sor Juana, in the Castilian heartland of the Spanish empire, the Humanist-inspired medical writer who published New Philosophy of Human Nature in 1587— most likely Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera—summarized this standard interpretation by writing that humans “share the sensitive with animals, the biological with plants, [and] the intellectual with angels in order to perceive and understand the evils and harms that derive from the emotions of the soul.”12 While humans possessed animal and even vegetative aspects, their heightened capacity for reflection, and choice based upon that reflection, set them apart. Many Spaniards accepted human nature as a multifaceted thing. As stated by Sabuco, it needed to be guided in an appropriate fashion, whether to maintain health or pursue metaphysical knowledge. As demonstrated through her examples of loving and loyal animals, Sabuco posited that humans 11 ╇ Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “El Sueño,” in Poems, Protest, and a Dream, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (London: Penguin Books, 1997),€114-15, lines 690-95. Also Obras completas de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte and Alberto G. Salceda, 4 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951-57), 1: 352. 12 ╇ Though published under his daughter’s name in 1587, Miguel Sabuco, in his last will and testament, presented himself as the author of New Philosophy. Based on extensive research and analysis, Mary Ellen Waithe and Maria Vintró have argued otherwise in recent years, returning to the position accepted by the Spanish Crown during Oliva’s lifetime that she was the author. See Mary Ellen Waithe and Maria Elena Vintro, “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco: An Appeal to Cataloguing Librarians,” Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly 35: 3-4 (March, 2003): 525-40. For the citation, see Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), chap.€1, pt. 2:€49; Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Coloquio del conocimiento de sí mismo en el cual hablan tres pastores filósofos en vida solitaria nombrados Antonio, Veronio y Rodonio, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 65: Obras escogidas de filósofos, ed. Adolfo de Castro (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1953), título 2:€333. Aristotle, De Anima, Books II and III, 413a25-413b32.

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might learn a great deal from other animals, and she explicitly wrote that “humans should learn how to be compassionate from certain animals.”13 Willing to explore common emotional behaviors shared by humans and other animals, Sabuco followed Humanist methodology in generally using ancient texts for her evidence, rather than using her own observations. This clearly demonstrates a difference between her approach and that of the experimental and experiential philosophy of the seventeenth century. Sabuco’s evidence may have been literary, but it was sometimes gathered by ancients, and even the occasional contemporary, who had some experience with the animals in question. As a result, her claims strike parallels to those made by today’s ethologists, who rely on observable accounts as Darwin did. Sabuco’s animals exhibited phenotypical behaviors resembling those that we interpret in ourselves as emotional. Though accounts may have been cited from the same source over and over again, some of these sources reported behaviors that have been observed by our scientists. Thus, ancient and early modern interpretations of feeling and caring animals at least sometimes had their basis in an observable reality that transcends specific eras, and Oliva Sabuco gravitated to these tales of the “expression of emotions” in people and other animals. Citing the ancient Roman author Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79), Sabuco wrote of a dolphin who died of grief after a boy who fed him died, and of sensitive elephants who demonstrated loving concern for particular humans.14 Citing Aristotle, she wrote that elephants learn what they are taught and understand the commands they are given in human languages.15 Her dolphins can be “quite fond of communication with humans,” just like the twentieth-century dolphins “fed 13 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 15, p.€61; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 15:€340. 14 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 2:€48 and chap.€1, pt. 27: 70; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 2:€332-33, título 27: 345. For the original descriptions in Pliny, see Pliny, Natural History, with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, Vol. 3: Libri VIII-XI, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1956), Bk. 9, chap.€8:€178-81 and Bk. 8, chap.€5: 12-13. For more about the Humanist reliance on replicating Pliny’s accounts without seeking observed corroboration among their own contemporaries or their own experiences, see Juan Pimentel, El Rinoceronte y el megaterio: un ensayo de morfología histórica (Madrid: ABADA Editores, 2010), 56-63. 15 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 59:€94; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 59:€358. In his History of Animals, Aristotle wrote that the elephant “is quickly tamed and obeys orders.” The elephant “both learns and understands.” Aristotle,

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and petted by people at a beach in Shark Bay, Western Australia” and the dolphins who help fishermen and are rewarded with food off the coasts of Mauritania and Australia.16 Sensitive animals, like dolphins, are still observed seeking mutually rewarding company with humans. In Sabuco’s work, the drive for companionship is so powerful that the emotion of love can kill some sensitive animals: This emotion of love comes from the sensitive soul and also kills some animals that have the love instinct. Pliny says that when King Nicomedes died, his horse never ate another bite and died…. We can see every day with the pigeons or doves that couple that if the female partner is killed, the male keeps calling for her and cooing for a day or two. When she does not come back, he goes into a dark corner, and even if he is taken out to the light, he does not eat. Eventually he is found dead in that dark corner. We can see this every day, even though it is not written of by the naturalists….”17

Sabuco’s level of conviction regarding sensitive animals dying of grief may tell us more about her than the actual behavior of the animals themselves. In When Elephants Weep: the Emotional Lives of Animals, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy write, “It would be the end of most species if every bereaved animal died of grief. Such cases must be extreme and unusual.”18 Still, Sabuco’s position is not entirely without foundation in reality. Pigeons and doves are monogamous, and there are occasional stories that do seem to point to animals who have died of grief, as when a circus horse named Alle wasted away over the course of two months after the death of her mate Ackman. Alle was examined during this period and given special attention and new companions, but she “whinnied continually” and refused to eat or sleep.19 Did she die of grief? Ethologist Marc History of Animals, Books VII-X, ed. and trans. D. M. Balme (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 610a24-34, 630b18-30. 16 ╇ Susan H. Shane, “Comparison of Bottlenose Dolphin Behavior in Texas and Florida, with a Critique of Methods for Studying Dolphin Behavior,” in The Bottlenose Dolphin, ed. Stephen Leatherwood and Randall Reeves (San Diego: Academic Press, 1990), 544. 17 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 9:€57; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 9:€338. For the dolphin’s fondness of communication with humans, see Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 2:€48; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 2:€332. 18 ╇ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, When Elephants Weep: the Emotional Lives of Animals (New York: Delacorte Press, 1995), 95. 19 ╇ For dove and pigeon monogamy and behavior, see National Audubon Society, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, illustrated by David Allen Sibley (New

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Bekoff asks the same question of a miniature schnauzer named Pepsi, who became “weak and withdrawn,” slowly dying after the suicide of his beloved master. The man’s son, a veterinarian, “was convinced that Pepsi had indeed died of a broken heart.”20 Sabuco may have blended literary sources and some real observation by contemporaries with a desire to present models for human moral behavior in nature, but her highly sympathetic animal exemplars, who differ in degree from us, are observed today, with accounts of gorillas and baboons mourning the loss of conspecifics and tales of dolphins lifting visibly weak conspecifics to the surface to breathe and altruistically protecting people from sharks.21 Free dolphins continue to seek human companionship, and in the town of Opononi, New Zealand, a young female dolphin, later named Opo, swam and played with children and some “favourites among the adults as well.” This continued from June 1955 until March 1956 when she was found dead “in a crevice between rocks.”22 While Sabuco’s sentient animals clearly developed special relationships with each other and with humans, even understanding human voice commands, the leading professors of Spanish Scholasticism were biased toward seeking more rigidly defined boundaries between humans and other animals. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish Scholastics were university professors of theology who often found themselves called into governmental service. As Scholastics, their philosophical and theological perspectives were heavily influenced by the methods and arguments of Aristotle, as interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas. For them, logos, reason expressed through ordered speech, distinguished York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 321. For Alle, see J. Y. Henderson, with Richard Taplinger, Circus Doctor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951), 78; Masson and McCarthy, 94.. 20 ╇ Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: a Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2007), 66. 21 ╇ Donald R. Griffin, Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 231-32; Bekoff, Emotional Lives of Animals, 64-65; “Dolphins Save Swimmers from Shark,” CBC News (November 24, 2004); available from http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/11/24/dolphin_newzealand0411 24.html; accessed February 2, 2009. Also Mike Celizic, “Dolphins Save Surfer from Becoming Shark’s Bait,” Today Show.com (last updated November 8, 2007); available from http://www.msnbc.com/id/21689083/; accessed February 9, 2009. 22 ╇ Gerard Hutching, “Dolphins: the Story of Opo,” Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (updated 22 October 2008); available from http://www.teara.govt.nz/ en/dolphins/5/5/1; accessed June 4, 2010.

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humans from other animals, and knowledge of categorical boundaries reflected a natural order. However, these Scholastics who helped formulate Spanish imperial policy in the early modern period were confronted with a series of new and intriguing problems concerning the natural order of things as Spain expanded territorially into the western hemisphere. Among these challenges was whether Amerindians were fully rational humans, or whether they were an inferior, less capable form of humanity, closer to the other animals, and therefore natural slaves (to use Aristotle’s terminology). For priest-professors like Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, intellectual distinctions between humanity and generic animality were constantly informed by their main concerns: questions of cosmic order, just war, conquest, and just rule. While the Spanish Crown never ceased to see its conquests in the Americas as justified by Papal dispensation to spread Christianity and thereby save souls, Scholastic arguments in favor of the natural legitimacy of non-Christians to own property and rule themselves contributed to Spanish legislation. These arguments were the theoretical underpinnings to regulations regarding the distribution of Amerindians in forced labor and, in Mexico City, the creation of the General Indian Court with its agents pledged to “provide legal services at reduced fees, or none at all, to their Indian clients.”23 Scholastics discussed nonhuman animals in the context of developing their arguments concerning human behavior and justice. Primarily known for his defense of Amerindian rationality and their full-fledged status as human beings, Francisco de Vitoria drew a sharp line between humans and other animals in order to present arguments against imperial abuse in the Americas. Born before 1492, Vitoria was a Dominican professor at the University of Salamanca whose lectures were popular enough to circulate widely in manuscript. After his death in 1546, a number of his lectures were colÂ�lected and published, including De indis, in which he argued that 23 ╇ Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: the General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 309. Also see 27-48. For the form of forced labor that was the encomienda, and its regulation, see Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World 1492-1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 157-66; Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World: the Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 7; J. H. Elliott, EmÂ�Â� pires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 131.

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Amerindians “were in peaceable possession of their goods, both publicly and privately” before the arrival of the Spaniards. Vitoria even argued that dominion over goods cannot truly be lost due to “the sin of unbelief.”24 Citing Aquinas and the Bible, the Salamanca professor stated that the scriptures recognize many kings, like the Egyptian pharaoh, as legitimate rulers holding legitimate dominion. In the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, Joseph “made all the land of Egypt tributary to Pharaoh, who was an unbeliever,” and “Also, Tobias ordered that a kid which had been taken from the Gentiles should be restored as having been stolen (Tobias, chap. 2): now this would not be the case, if the Gentiles had no ownership.”25 Thus, while unbelievers may hold dominion, the kid exemplifies that “brute” animals may be owned and dominated. According to Vitoria, “only rational creatures have dominion over their acts, the test of a man’s being master of his acts being (as St. Thomas says, Prima Pars, qu. 82, art. 1, on obj. 3) that he has the power of choice.”26 Vitoria’s “brutes” lack any semblance of agency and move by necessity, having no dominion over themselves, and, by extension, no dominion over other things: “Also, wild beasts themselves and all irrational animals are more fully within the ownership of man than slaves are.” They can be killed for pleasure and with impunity.27 Amerindians, on the other hand: … are not barred on this ground from the exercise of true dominion. This is proved from the fact that the true state of the case is that they are not of unsound mind, but have, according to their kind, the use of reason. This is clear, because there is a certain method in their affairs, for they have polities which are orderly arranged and they have definite marriage and magistrates, overlords, laws, and workshops, and a kind of religion. Further, they make no error in matters which are selfevident to others; this is witness to their use of reason.28 24 ╇ Franciscus de Victoria, De Indis et de ivre belli relectiones, being parts of Relectiones theologicae XII, ed. Ernest Nys, trans. John Pawley Bate (New York and London: Oceana Publications and Wildy & Sons, 1917), 120, 125. For the original Latin, see pp.€316 and 328 in the same edition, part of the Classics of International Law, edited by James Brown Scott. For background on Vitoria, see Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 59-60, 65-66. 25 ╇ De Indis, 123. For the Latin, 226. 26 ╇ Ibid., 126. For the Latin, 330. 27 ╇ Ibid. 28 ╇ Ibid., 127. For the Latin, 333. Here Vitoria also argues that children and the unsound of mind are superior to brutes, existing for their own sake and not for the

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In his laudable effort to debate the most prejudicial positions in his society—to present arguments for Amerindian rationality and humanity—Vitoria created an alien “other” fully deserving of use and domination. Vitoria’s irrational animals were things and property like the kid in the Book of Tobias. Focused as he was on people, he ignored Scholastic arguments for the sentience of nonhuman animals in De indis. He even said that nonhuman animals can be killed with impunity for pleasure, as during a hunt, without raising Thomas Aquinas’ view that compassion to animals might enhance compassion to one’s fellow human being. Anthony Pagden has indeed noted that while Aquinas suggested that vegetarianism might be humanity’s natural dietary state, Vitoria rejected this outright.29 Incapable of choice, Vitoria’s animals remained food and sources of labor and amusement. While Amerindians and European peasants both might be “overcome by their passions” and periodically require the guidance of superiors prejudicially deemed more self-restrained, they could not be hunted down like wild animals.30 Vitoria’s Spaniards could rule Amerindians in order to save them from tyrannies ordered by their rulers, such as “the sacrifice of innocent people or the killing in other ways of uncondemned people for cannibalistic purposes,” but the Amerindians remained fully human like European peasants.31 Nonhuman animals were used as foils in service to Vitoria’s dedication to a brotherhood of humanity. Vitoria saw Amerindians as humans who, by being exposed to “good customs,” might rival Spaniards and other Europeans in their achievements. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (d. 1573) took a position that benefited the Crown and its conquistadores more directly. His Amerindians were Aristotle’s natural slaves who could never truly be full-fledged human subjects or citizens. He conceded that they might become more like Spaniards through guidance and rule, but they would never be exactly like Spaniards or other Europeans. They were not only occasionally overcome by passions and bereft of reason. According to Sepúlveda, they were lacking intrinsically in rationality, sake of others. He argues “boys” can be heirs and the mentally “unsound” can be wronged. 29 ╇ Pagden, 88; Francisco de Vitoria, De la Templanza, in Obras de Francisco de Vitoria: relecciones teologicas, trans. and ed. Teofilo Urdanoz, O. P. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1960), 1018-23. 30 ╇ Pagden, 97-98. 31 ╇ Victoria, De Indis, 159. For the Latin, 265.

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as evidenced by cannibalism, abortions, incest and human sacrifice.32 Sepúlveda’s Amerindians were dominated by their irrational and appetitive animal souls, and if they produced art and constructed cities, this only proved they were capable of artifice like some beasts, birds and spiders who cannot be imitated fully by human industriousness.33 Sepúlveda’s emphases were quite different from those of Vitoria, and if, in his arguments, Amerindians were not “beasts,” their mental faculties, as noted by Anthony Pagden, were portrayed as “still only mechanical ones much like those of bees and spiders.”34 Anthony Pagden has also argued that Sepúlveda’s constant reference to animal metaphor reduced the Amerindian to “a half-man creature whose world was the very reverse of the ‘human’ world of those who by their ‘magnanimity, temperance, humanity and religion’ were the Indians’ natural masters.”35 Thus, while arguing that his fellow Spaniards could invidiously and brutally use their fellow human beings as almost mechanical Malebranchean “things” somewhat less than fully human, Sepúlveda also used other animals to serve his ends. Sepúlveda prejudicially only allowed for a blurring of categories where Amerindians and animals were concerned; his Spaniards were “fully human,” a people set apart.36 In his appeal to mechanical metaphor, there was some foreshadowing of a Malebranchean worldview, but there was also marked agreement with the perspective held by his sixteenth-century contemporary, Gómez Pereira, the author of Antoniana Margarita (1554). Though bereft of human reason, other animals possessed their own feelings and volitional desires as far as Aristotle was concerned. Gómez Pereira, on the other hand, only saw condition-response machines when he looked at nonhuman animals. The smell and movement of a mouse compelled a cat to pounce, and if a lion failed to eat a potential human victim, it was due to the lion’s not being 32 ╇ Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Tratado sobre las justas causas de la guerra contra los indios, ed. Manuel García-Pelayo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1941), 85, 99, 113, 129. 33 ╇ Ibid., 83, 109. 34 ╇ Pagden, 116. 35 ╇ Ibid., 118. 36 ╇ As noted by Harriet Ritvo, an imperialist’s comparison of excluded or conquered human groups to animals is fairly standard stuff. See Harriet Ritvo, The Â�Animal Estate: the English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 21-30.

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hungry, not to any expression of mercy.37 A proto-empiricist, Gómez Pereira argued that humans and other animals both experience the material world through the impressions made by color, sound, shape, smell, taste and texture on the senses. 38 These impressions then caused species-specific responses in different animal-machines preprogrammed by God.39 Humanity differed in that the rational soul’s imagination and memory created abstract combinations and extrapolations beyond the capacity of Gómez Pereira’s beast-machines. Humans chose to act or not act on the phantasms imprinted in their memories, even creating fabulous future projects beyond the ken of nonhuman animals.40 In other animals, phantasms only necessarily guided them to where a food source had been experienced previously, whether it was likely to be there or not.41 Like Sepúlveda’s birds and spiders, Gómez Pereira’s nonhuman animals were subject to “natural instinct” and devoid of planning and choice. Only humans truly deliberated.42 More often attacked and forgotten than defended, Gómez Pereira’s perspective was muted under the weight of Scholasticism’s reliance on arguments from abstract general principles and ancient authorities.43 More reliant on finely honed definitions and the weight of authoritative agreement than observable examples of cats and other animals in action, the Scholastics dominated Spanish intellectual discourse, with the Jesuit Scholastic Francisco Suárez preeminent among them. Suárez, like Vitoria, is known for his work in the development of modern international law. Unlike Vitoria, he wrestled a great deal with the problem of animal sentience, and he was willing to admit that “… ‘humanity’ is really a certain sensitive nature and has in this fact some agreement and similarity with the nature of ‘horse’ and of ‘lion’, taken in the abstract; for all are the integral principle of ‘being

╇ Gómez Pereira, Antoniana Margarita: reproducción facsimilar de la edición de 1749, trans. José Luis Barreiro Barreiro and Concepción Souto García, ed. José Luis Barreiro Barreiro (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de ComÂ� postela, Fundación Gustavo Bueno, 2000), 47, 49. 38 ╇ Ibid., 2-3, 18, 24, 27, 36-37. 39 ╇ Ibid., 51. 40 ╇ Ibid., 6, 10, 27, 53, 67, 96-97, 196, 208. 41 ╇ Ibid., 20, 199. 42 ╇ Ibid., 12, 53. 43 ╇ José Luis Barreiro Barreiro, “Estudio preliminar,” in Antoniana Margarita, §18-§20. 37

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sentient’….”44 According to Suárez, there is “a certain analogy of proportionality” whereby “animal” can be applied equivocally to humans and horses in that both integrate sentience and sensitivity into their very natures. They are alike in genus, though essentially different in species.45 Humanity is “rational animality.”46 The generic relationship between humans and other animals was not denied by Suárez, but humanity’s species-specific rationality certainly was emphasized. Teaching at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Suárez’s world was one in which the Spanish empire had been a fact for some one hundred years. He even ended his career teaching at Coimbra in a Portugal under Spanish rule from 1580 to 1640. With stints at the Jesuit College in Rome and the Universities of Alcalá and Salamanca before Coimbra, Suárez, like many Jesuits, was an internationally traveled figure. He lived in a world where the Spanish empire was assessing its interaction with Amerindians through the local reports known as the relaciones geográficas, and Spaniards increasingly had to recognize the very independent agency of Protestant states in a divided western Christendom. A prime focus of his work unsurprisingly became the extent to which a common law might be applied to all peoples despite their differences. This law was the mutable ius gentium recognized by the ancient Romans. In that “the ius gentium is not observed always, and by all nations, but [only] as a general rule, and by almost all,” it is to be distinguished from immutable natural law and its ability to bind both rational and irrational animals.47 Natural law is “common to all animate creatures,” but in human beings, who are seen by Suárez as sharing a sensitive nature with other animals, natural law is always perceived and applied through “a rational mode,” which directs 44 ╇ See the following translation from the Latin of a portion of Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations. Francis Suarez, On Formal and Universal Unity (De Unitate formali et universali), trans. J. F. Ross (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1964), 117. 45 ╇ Ibid., 101. 46 ╇ Ibid., 118. 47 ╇ Francisco Suárez, S. J., A Treatise on Laws and God the Lawgiver, in Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suárez, trans. Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown and John Waldron, 2 vols. (Oxford and London: Clarendon Press and Humphrey Â�Milford, 1944), 2: 342. For the Latin, see Tractatvs de legibvs ac Deo legislatore in the same edition, vol. 1: 188. This too is part of the Classics of International Law series edited by James Brown Scott.

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humans to certain formal expressions of material drives, like marriage to engender the natural, animal drive to procreate.48 While the sentient soul, which humans share with other animals, is subject to appetite and necessarily responds to positive and adverse external circumstances, “the use of reason is the adequate root of freedom.”49 Though humans may act metaphorically out of “necessity of precept,” physical punishment or restraint fails to alter human willfulness. 50 God, a free agent, created humans in his image of freedom, and: … it is evident to us from experience that it is within our power to do a given thing or to refrain from doing it; and we use reason, discourse, and deliberation in order to incline ourselves toward the one rather than the other. That is why choice is posited in our faculty of judgment.51

By another route, Suárez ultimately arrived at some conclusions not all that different from Gómez Pereira. While Suárez’s animals are fully sentient and beings full of feelings, they are also creatures of necessity, predetermined in their responses and actions by God, and bereft of true agency and choice. Choice was preeminently human for this Jesuit, as it was for Vitoria, Gómez Pereira and even Sepúlveda, but other Spanish thinkers in his era, shifting emphasis in their arguments, wrote as though choice and reason were embedded in the broader natural world. To belabor a vegetative metaphor which they themselves sometimes used, the seeds of reason, and choices like friendship and compassion, were present in other animals, only coming to fullest fruition in humanity. Humans remained a unique species, but not so utterly set apart from nature. A contemporary of Francisco Suárez, Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera embodied this stance. Sabuco’s World of Feeling In her New Philosophy of Human Nature, Oliva Sabuco wrote that love is a natural emotion that produces health and joy, while ╇ Ibid., 2: 329-30. For the Latin, 1: 182. ╇ Francisco Suarez, S. J., On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19, trans. Alfred Freddoso (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 280. Also see 277, 292-93. 50 ╇ Ibid., 287, 293. 51 ╇ Ibid., 291. Also see 287, 294. 48 49

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Â� loneÂ�Â�Â�Â�Â� liness causes melancholy, torment and anguish.52 With Suárez, Sabuco willingly admitted a certain determinism where sentience and emotions are concerned. Emotions “operate in animals due to their instinct and sensitive memory,” even killing an animal when its Â�sensitive soul is overwrought. Writing her medical treatise as a dialogue between three shepherds, she illustrated this point by having a Â�partridge die of fright at the shepherds’ feet after being pursued by a goshawk. Before this occurs, the shepherd Veronio notes that the partridge was coming toward the shepherds because “it is common for all animals to run to take refuge with humans when in need.”53 Rather than a dominion over other animals that focused on killing for pleasure, use and abuse, Sabuco’s world was permeated with sympathy, emotion and compassion. The sensitive animal soul is first determined to experience emotion, and this necessarily leads to love as well as anger and loneliness. As love and friendship exist between humans: This love and friendship also exist between many animals, as the bird trochilus, which has them with the crocodile, as we have already explained…. Pliny tells of the elephant, which because of its sensitive memory, has love and friendship toward its master…. He tells of another elephant that loved a lady who sold unguents, visited her, gave her big, soft caresses, and saved the donations that the public offered him and took them to her, throwing them on her skirt.54

In Sabuco’s world, the animal soul languished if it has nowhere to direct its natural love. Animal love only may be the function of “sensitive memory,” but that love and desire both were distinguished from lust, or the mere “venereal act.” Animals’ social quest for companionship transcended a base pursuit of sexual encounters in Sabuco’s writings, and their friends even can be found in other species. Animals apparently “want” and “choose” to give gifts to special humans, thereby creating multi-species communities.55 52 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 27:€69 and chap.€1, pt. 29:€71; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 27: 344-45, título 29: 346. 53 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 2:€48; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 2:€332. 54 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 27:€70; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 27:€345. 55 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 9:€56-57; chap.€1, pt. 18:€62; and chap.€1, pt. 27: 70; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 9:€337-38; título 18: 341; título 27: 345. For contemporary examples of animals helping inÂ�dividuals from another

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Still, for Sabuco, like Suárez, human rationality and restraint continue to distinguish humans as a unique species, akin to angels as well as plants and animals, and reason, functioning as temperance, can protect against the excesses of emotion and passion: Only humans have this great virtue, temperance. Only humans can enjoy its great benefits, because the understanding, a God-given temporal aspect of the immortal soul, deliberates, and temperance acts upon the will. Other animals cannot do this, for they follow what their sensitive drive tells them to, and they cannot hesitate, go against it, or consider anything else.56

In this passage, Sabuco denied nonhuman animals “choice” and “restraint.” In another passage, she explicitly denied them the ability to choose between virtue and vice by performing “acts of the understanding”57 No heretic, Sabuco’s work was officially approved by the Crown, and she demonstrated significant levels of agreement with the professorial authority of her day, arguing that she wished to know how humans “differ from brute animals.”58 Yet, whereas Suárez failed to explore all the fine points of the sensitive soul, Sabuco was fascinated by particular feelings and their affects on animal bodies and health due to “instinct and sensitive memory.” 59 Like the Englishman Robert Burton (1577-1640), author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, she wrote an early modern psychological text, and though humans alone were given full-fledged rational choice by orthodox Europeans in her day, her perspective on that world also allowed for the foreshadowing and seeds of choice in other animals, despite her denials. Pliny’s elephant gave coins only to one particular woman, and Sabuco herself wrote, “Animals that avoid solitude do so because they [have the capacity to] experience [solitude]. Desiring and loving company, they hang together in flocks, as do the species, see Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, Wild Justice: the Moral Lives of Animals (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 107-109. 56 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 26:€69; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 26:€344. 57 ╇ Sabuco, “Things That Will Improve This World and Its Nations,” in New Philosophy, 153. Also Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Coloquio de las cosas que mejoran este mundo y sus repúblicas, in de Castro, ed., Obras escogidas de filósofos, título 5: 375. 58 ╇ “Front Material to the 1587 and 1588 Editions,” in Sabuco, New Philosophy, 41-42; Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 1:€47; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 1: 332. 59 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 2:€48; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 2:€333.

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birds in the air and other animals on the ground.”60 While she did state that nonhuman animals may not be able to go against the emotion-driven will, or even hesitate, some of her examples inadvertently posed challenges to an animal kingdom driven by pre-programmed, species-specific instinct alone. The projected and, most likely, invented “friendship” of the bird trochilus with the crocodile crossed species boundaries as a flock of sheep did not. 61 Francisco de Victoria cited Ecclesiasticus 13:15 “every animal loveth its kind,” to argue that friendship among men is natural.62 Sabuco cited the pagan Pliny to argue that cross-species friendship happens, and that dolphins, for example, could be “quite fond of communication with humans.”63 While prudence, “born of reason,” was found only in humans according to Sabuco, her nonhuman animals demonstrated “some cunning or skills that hunger, danger of death and fear, or natural hate, teaches them.”64 Conversely, “Thoughtless humans make quick decisions, not considering the ends and what might follow.”65 Humans do not necessarily employ full-fledged reason at all times, and drawing on an example from Pliny, Sabuco wrote of female monkeys playing chess, and of one monkey who “distinguished the good nuts by sight, disregarding the bad ones and not touching them.”66 Are these the seeds of rational choice embedded in animal sensation of the world around us? It appears that Sabuco wished to allude very carefully to such a possibility, and immediately following 60 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 29:€71; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 29: 346. 61 ╇ There are some modern anecdotes of the Egyptian plover’s “removing parasites and debris from the crocodile’s mouth,” but this symbiotic friendship remains questionable. Other than superimposed images generated in Photoshop, there is incredibly (in this day and age) no actual recorded visual evidence of this mutually beneficial “friendship.” Egyptian plovers, however, do live beside crocodiles on river banks, eating insects and pieces of dead fish that may be found near basking crocodiles. Peter C. Alden et al., National Audubon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 727-28; Griffin, 121-23. For modern anecdotal accounts of the plover’s ridding the crocodile’s mouth of parasites and debris, see C. A. W. Guggisberg, Crocodiles: Their Natural History, Folklore and Conservation (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1972), 75-79. 62 ╇ Victoria, De Indis, 152. For the original Latin, see 258. 63 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 2:€48; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 2:€332. 64 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 59: 94; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 59:€358. 65 ╇ Ibid. 66 ╇ Ibid. For the ancient source of Sabuco’s tale, see Pliny, Natural History, vol. 3: Libri VIII-XI, Bk. 8, chap.€80:€150-51.

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her apes from Pliny, she presented another fabulous example from a classical authority: “Elephants bow to the sun at dusk; they adore the crescent moon and offer to it bouquets, as Aelian recounts in his treatise about elephants.”67 Francisco Vitoria, among other things, wrote that pre-conquest Amerindians were humans because they possessed “a kind of religion” and that this was “witness to their use of reason.” Sabuco’s elephants were seemingly inching along toward religion and reason with their adoration of the crescent moon. Sabuco recognized degrees of difference between the behaviors of humans and other animals. Though she explicitly denied temperance and restraint to nonhuman animals at one point in her treatise, taking her very close to a Vitoria-like position, she later contradicted herself by writing of an elephant—apparently a male in musth—who restrained himself when confronted with a helpless human child: Cristobal Acosta, a modern writer, tells… of the gratitude of this animal that he himself witnessed in Portuguese India at the city of Goa (where the viceroys reside). Because of a certain disease that they contract each year, an elephant got loose from its chains, greatly endangering everybody alive. While going up a street, the elephant met a slave who had a child in her arms. Upon seeing the furious elephant coming, the slave crazily dropped the child on the street and entered her house, closing the door behind her. The elephant took the child with its trunk and, without doing it any harm, placed her on a low roof that was over there. Having let the child go, it checked to see if she was safe and afterward continued on his way in a fury. The animal did this out of gratitude and acknowledgment, because it realized that the child belonged to a female vendor who lived in that house, who used to sell at the door bread and fruits and other things to eat. This woman customarily gave that elephant bread or some fruit each time it passed by her door, and therefore at that time it thanked her for her good deeds. St. Thomas says of the elephants that they have such cunning on account of the goodness of the natural instinct and tenacious memory of the sensitive soul…. 68 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 59:€94; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 59:€358. This myth of elephant religion was also mentioned by Cristóvâo da Costa, “Tratado do elefante e das suas qualidades,” in Tratado das drogas e medicinas das índias orientais, trans. and ed. Jaime Walter (Lisbon: Junta de Investigaçôes do Ultramar, 1964), 285. Da Costa explicitly called it “religiâo.” Their Roman source (c. 200 CE) was Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1958-1959), 1: 225 (Book 4: 10). 68 ╇ Sabuco, New Philosophy, chap.€1, pt. 59:€94-95; Sabuco, Coloquio del conocimiento, título 59:€358. For the original version of the elephant and the child, see Cristóvâo da Costa, 288. 67

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When then do instinct and memory morph into rational choice? In an academic world that officially desired fixed categories separating reason and choice from feeling and instinct, even Thomas Aquinas sometimes joined Oliva Sabuco in blurring the boundaries, and Suárez wondered, “whether necessity and determinism to one effect” in humanity might also sometimes be “intermingled” with “volÂ� untariness.”69 Though Sabuco argued from authority and the experience of others on the matter of elephants, there is observable evidence today that supports her claims that elephants learn to develop complex behaviors; distinguish, apparently “make choices” and show restraint; and demonstrate behaviors that in humans would be interpreted as signs of compassion and concern. Historical elephants include the Asian elephant, the African savannah or bush elephant and the smaller African forest elephant.70 While the African savannah elephant is the most studied in a natural setting today, Sabuco’s references would have been to Asian elephants and African forest elephants. Obviously, da Costa encountered Asian elephants in India, while Pliny’s Roman world had experience with “Musth” in pachyderm males is “a hormonal condition that, like rut in deer, occurs annually and is characterized by aggressive and sexual competition.” Katy Payne, “Sources of Social Complexity in the Three Elephant Species,” in Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies, ed. Frans B. M. de Waal and Peter L. Tyack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 70. For more on musth in male Asian elephants, see Raman Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights: Ten Years with the Indian Elephant (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 37-39, 81. 69 ╇ Suarez, On Efficient Causality, 288. Glossing the text of Job 40:10, Aquinas wrote that land animals and Adam were created together on the sixth day to show a similarity “with respect to intellectual nature.” However, the elephant learns tricks “not because he has understanding but because of the goodness of his natural judgment.” Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: a Scriptural Commentary concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 44950. 70 ╇ While classified traditionally as the subspecies Loxodonta africana africana (the savannah elephant) and Loxodonta africana cyclotis (the forest elephant), genetic evidence points to the two African elephants being “more divergent” than “mammoths and Asian elephants, which are considered to be distinct genera.” Classified as two separate species, the African elephants are respectively Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotis. The Asian elephant is classified as Elephas maximus. Nadin Rohland et al., “Genomic DNA Sequences from Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth Reveal Deep Speciation of Forest and Savanna Elephants,” PLoS Biology 8: 12 (December 2010): 1-10; available from http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi% 2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000564; accessed March 17, 2011. Also see Alfred L. Roca et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Species of Elephant in Africa,” Science 293: 5534 (24 August 2001): 1473-77; Alden et al., 519-20.

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both trained Asian and African forest elephants. Today, Sabuco’s claim that elephants respond to complex verbal commands is evidenced by contemporary ethologists, as well as by Aristotle. In Asia, elephants are used to give rides to tourists, and occasionally to clear forest as in past centuries.71 They learn complex behaviors, and S. K. Eltringham writes: The driver of the elephants, mahout in India, or oozie in Burma, sits on the animal’s neck with his feet behind its ears. Most of the commands are given verbally but they can be reinforced by kicks and pressure behind the ears from the mahout’s bare feet or knees. Sometimes a driving hook is used to goad the elephant but this is frowned upon by good drivers.72

In 2006, Joshua Plotnik, Frans de Waal and Diana Reiss demonstrated that Asian elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, like chimpanzees and dolphins. Capable of distinguishing between themselves and others, and of responding to learned commands, Asian elephants prove themselves to be highly intelligent social animals. Indeed, ethologists like Plotnik, de Waal and Reiss argue for correlation between mirror self-recognition and “higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior.” 73 Demonstrating complex levels of awareness and cooperation, can elephants show restraint or demonstrate compassion? Are they as capable of blurring the categories of “human volition” and “animal necessity” today as they were in the writings of Sabcuo? Cynthia Moss, an ethologist who has studied savannah elephants for decades in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, writes that elephants, drawn to tourist lodges with feeding stations, show restraint in the midst of irritation with the tourists:

71 ╇ S. K. Eltringham, Elephants (Poole and Dorset: Blandford Press, 1982), 2-3, 187-97; Juliet Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 144, 148-50; Lynette A. Hart, “The Elephant-Mahout Relationship in India and Nepal: a Tourist Attraction,” in Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies, ed. John Knight (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 163-66. 72 ╇Eltringham,, 195; Clutton-Brock, 144, 149. 73 ╇ Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss, “Self-recognition in an Asian elephant,” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 45 (November 7, 2006): 17053-57. Also see Diana Reiss and Lori Marino, “Mirror selfrecognition in the bottlenose dolphin: A case of cognitive convergence,” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 10 (May 8, 2001): 5937-42.

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chapter two … Tania showed definite signs that she disapproved of the people standing there shouting and laughing. She would often give a sharp toss of her head or a short charge, which would send the tourists running and screaming toward the lodge…. â•…One day Tania lost her temper and came charging at a hapless woman tourist who ran back toward the lodge, but fell halfway across the lawn. Tania, only a few feet behind her, skidded to a halt and towered above her. She backed up, turned, and ambled across the rocks and rejoined her family. She could have easily killed the woman, but for whatever reason she did not want to and had to use a substantial amount of energy to avoid doing so. (She left deep skid marks in the ground.)74

Like da Costa’s Asian elephant cited by Sabuco, Tania the African elephant showed restraint, and mahouts in India and Nepal recognize their elephants as real individuals who demonstrate greater or lesser restraint among mahouts and tourists. While a female elephant named Bahadur Kali is reputed to have carried a drunken assistant mahout home with her trunk, a Nepalese elephant was sold by a tourist lodge after killing an assistant mahout. Rather than machines whose behaviors are stereotypical, elephants seem to choose in response to a particular situation—like Sabuco’s elephant.75 Thus, in Cynthia Moss’ studies, elephant migratory patterns in Amboseli apparently are selected in response to multiple variables, even as human behavior responds to multiple variables and therefore often is referred to as “choice.” Moss writes, “I personally feel that the change in the migratory patterns of the elephants was influenced less by the availability of vegetation than by the new distribution of the Maasai people.”76 This is a seemingly logical choice by the elephants since Maasai herders will attack and kill them to protect their livestock and provide their animals with increased feeding ranges. In Kenya, elephants in one study exhibited greater alarm when they detected the scent of garments worn by Maasai herders than those worn by Kamba agriculturalists, who do not hunt elephants like the 74 ╇ Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988), 187. 75 ╇ Hart, 169-84. Asian elephant expert Raman Sukumar writes, “Between 30 and 50 people are killed by elephants every year in southern India,” but he also writes, “There is no doubt that many of the deaths occurring inside the forest are due to the carelessness of people.” See Raman Sukumar, The Asian Elephant: Ecology and Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 135; Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, 81. 76 ╇ Moss, 222.

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Maasai.77 Just as Sabuco, using the Portuguese da Costa and others, wrote of elephants distinguishing humans, the evidence exists today that elephants distinguish humans. Of course, she wrote of an Asian elephant in her example of the child who was spared after being dropped by a slave, and the Kenya studies are of African elephants, but it is equally social Asian elephants who can still be observed to respond to their individual mahouts in different ways.78 As a species, we experience, learn and adapt, but so do elephants. In African and Asian elephant society, family units of females with their immature offspring bond together across the generations under the ultimate authority of a matriarch who may be in her forties, fifties or sixties. These lead matriarchs are repositories of ecological and social knowledge, leading their daughters and their daughters’ offspring; teaching them and enhancing their collective survivability. Among other things, they know where the waterholes are and maintain social order.79 Elephants learn through social interaction, and greeting behaviors at Amboseli are elaborate when a family group reunites after having spread out during feeding: “The greeters would first raise their heads, lift their ears and spread them, tuck their chins in, and then rumble loudly and throatily while flapping their ears. Sometimes greetings were more excited and intense and they gave us an idea of the degree of attachment between individuals and eventually between family units.”80 Using such evidence, Cynthia Moss boldly writes that she has “no doubt… that the elephants are experiencing joy when they find each other again.”81 77 ╇ Lucy A. Bates, et al., “Elephants Classify Human Ethnic Groups by Odor and Garment Color,” Current Biology 17: 22 (November 20, 2007): 1938-42. 78 ╇ In a natural foraging state, Asian elephants, like African savannah elephants, can be observed traveling in herds of adult females and offspring, accompanied at the periphery by singular and small groups of males. The males join the female herds when females are in estrus. See George M. McKay, “Behavior and Ecology of the Asiatic Elephant in Southeastern Ceylon,” in Asian Elephants, ed. John F. Eisenberg, George M. McKay and John Seidensticker (Washington DC: Friends of the National Zoo and the National Zoological Park, 1990), 69-81; Sukumar, The Asian Elephant, 50-51; Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, 90-92. 79 ╇ During a 1981 drought in Namibia, none of the desert elephants under observation died as their matriarchs led them to seldom used water sources, but more than 85% of the other desert-adapted herbivores died. Payne, 63. For Asian elephants, see Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, 90-92. Also see Bekoff and Pierce, 106. 80 ╇ Moss, 35. 81 ╇ Ibid., 125.

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The interest in discussing animal emotions is not new, and it is still here with us today, as it was present in early modern times with Sabuco and Suárez. Today, we have increasingly verifiable accounts of elephant families who try to maintain orphans as best they can, even when there is no extra milk to be given them.82 The roots of altruism and compassion, of deep feeling, are out there among “sensitive animal souls” if one is willing to perceive them in illustrative cases like Oliva Sabuco or Cynthia Moss. Despite her claims for the uniqueness of rational and temperate human nature, Sabuco weakened her own barriers between people and other animals when she wrote about elephants who showed restraint, monogamous birds and loving dolphins. Whether her examples, usually given by others, were fabricated or actual observations, she wrote of nonhuman animals as capable of behaviors comparable to human choice, of a type of animal proto-rationality. For her, it was also difficult to separate discernment from feeling. Perhaps reflecting the complexities of real life, her categories and boundaries were far more permeable than those of Vitoria and Suárez. The Use of Animal Metaphor and the Quest for the Real Animal Blurring the boundaries between humans and other animals came in two general forms: through reporting observations; and through constructing metaphors, easily acceptable fictions, referencing other animals. With experience in the Americas, the Jesuit José de Acosta wrote of God’s order as including nearly rational monkeys who imitate human behavior for our edification and entertainment. 83 Acosta’s God created a richly diverse nature, filled with overlapping variations to aid in the edification of humanity, the epitome of creation. This traveled Jesuit charted an acceptable middle course between humans entirely isolated from nature and humans learning from the selfreflective capacity, dominion and embodied relationship to nature given them. In order to learn, humans would have to take an interest ╇ Ibid., 86-87. ╇ José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Frances LópezMorillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 240-42; José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 73: Obras del P. José de Acosta de la Compañia de Jesús, ed. P. Francisco Mateos (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1954), Bk. 4, chap.€39: 134. 82 83

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in collecting natural data, thereby clearly identifying Acosta as a natural philosopher who, in the process of interpretation, at least tried to circumvent purely fictional representations of nonhuman animals.84 Other writers were dominated by their quest for metaphors. Acosta’s fellow Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658), confessor to European aristocrats, used comparison to animals to edify those members of the human elite that he wished to guide through his writings, stereotypically identifying cunning and deception with a vixen and a twenty-year-old man’s behavior with that of a peacock.85 Whole debates regarding the behavior of princes could be couched quickly and succinctly in customarily accepted animal metaphor with very little interest being shown the actual behavior of the animals themselves. Gracián, like Machiavelli, allowed his princes to emulate the fox as well as the lion: “If you can’t wear the skin of a lion, wear the skin of a vixen.”86 However, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, a Spanish diplomat during the Thirty Years’ War and a member of the Council of Indies from 1643 until his death in 1648, only used the lion, emphasizing behaviors traditionally ascribed the “king of the beasts” by European writers with very little or no experience of lions. The philosophical point being made was more important than the writing of a natural history trying to grasp observable interactions and animal behaviors in the world around us. While Sabuco and Acosta, like the half-Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, attempted to learn something about nonhuman animals as they strove to help humans to “know themselves,” animals were merely metaphor for many authors of the Spanish literary golden age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Saavedra Fajardo wrote that the lion stands as an example of vigilance for any prince since he sleeps little, and when he does, he keeps his eyes open.87 Through actual observation of leonine behavior ╇ Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 24-26. 85 ╇ Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: a Pocket Oracle, trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1992), no. 220: 124 and no. 276:€156; Baltasar Gracián, Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 65: Obras escogidas de filósofos, ed. Adolfo de Castro (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1953), 592, 597. 86 ╇ Gracián, Pocket Oracle, no. 220:€124; Gracián, Oráculo manual, 592. 87 ╇ Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Idea de un príncipe politico-cristiano representada en cien empresas, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 25: Obras de don Diego de 84

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in Africa, we know that lions rest a great deal, with eyes closed, to conserve energy between hunts.88 Saavedra’s lion was a fiction used to embellish a dogmatic maxim, but, as evidenced by Garcilaso de la Vega, Sabuco and Acosta, this cavalier use of animals was not universally true of all Spanish literati of the imperial era. Mistakes were made, but in the midst of efforts to know the animal at hand, as well as to learn more about humanity. In this spirit, Miguel de Cervantes was seemingly quite capable of blending a Humanist’s use of other animals to edify people with a real interest in the behavior and needs of nonhuman animals. Cervantes both used and appreciated the animals whom he wrote into his interpretation of Spain. The animals of Cervantes remain more than metaphor. Cervantes on Animals: More than Metaphor While Miguel de Cervantes’ Colloquy of the Dogs primarily afforded the author an opportunity to critique human behavior through the observations of the dogs Cipión and Berganza, even as the servant Lázaro offered the same vantage point in the anonymously authored sixteenth-century picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes’ work does offer some indications of what might be expected in an early modern Spanish dog’s life.89 Berganza relates how one of his masters chained him by a door to guard his house, and how food thrown beyond the reach of his chain was taken from him by two light-footed cats.90 In his dialogue with Cipión, Berganza also reveals how a witch named Cañizares grew convinced that he, an extremely Saavedra Fajardo, ed. Pedro Fernández Navarrete (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1947), empresa 45:€113. 88 ╇On average, free-ranging lions are mostly inactive for about twenty to twentyone hours during a twenty-four-hour day, while zoo lions have been reported to sleep ten to fifteen hours in a given day. “It is difficult to determine how long a free lion actually sleeps each day. The animal often lies with its eyes closed, yet the movements of the ears suggest that it is awake.” Their alertness may not be abandoned entirely while resting. George B. Schaller, The Serengeti Lion: a Study of PredatorPrey Relations (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972), 121-22, 124-25. 89 ╇Roberto González Echevarría, “The Life and Adventures of Cipión: Cervantes and the Picaresque,” Diacritics 10: 3 (Autumn 1980): 15-26. 90 ╇ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Coloquio que pasó entre “Cipión” y “Berganza,” perros del Hospital de la Resurrección, in Obras completas, ed. Ángel Valbuena Prat, 2 vols. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1975), 2: 271. Also Miguel de Cervantes, The Colloquy of the Dogs, in Three Exemplary Novels, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: The Viking Press, 1950), 155.

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intelligent dog, was indeed a human in the guise of a dog. According to Cañizares, Berganza was the son of a witch named Montiela, who had been cursed by her spiteful mentor Camacha to have twins born with human reason in the bodies of puppies.91 Cervantes’ tale reflects much about his Castilian Spanish culture, and its empirical observations regarding dogs. There is an admission of just how clever, teachable and responsive dogs are as herders, guardians and performers.92 There is also a willingness thereby to admit similarities in human and canine behavior which led Cervantes to anthropomorphize his dogs in order to present a literary anthropology of his society. The tale of the witches summarizes the extent to which distinctions between the human and canine have grown difficult to make as Berganza relates his adventures.93 Just as there are ethologists today who argue that what appears to function like a human behavior in other animals should be discussed in human-like terms—that even in describing the behavior of another human we are assuming motivations and causality based upon our own personal experiences—Cervantes wrote of the quest for resources, a position in life and companionship as things common to both humans and dogs as social animals.94 Though talking dogs are clearly anthropomorphic fantasy, Berganza’s story sympathetically breaks down species boundaries by cataloguing behavioral similarities, even as the bullfight visually displayed cross-species male aggression and violence in man and bull.95 As exemplified by Cervantes, early modern ╇ Obras completas, 2: 281-83; Putnam translation, 180-85. Leonor Rodríguez, “la Camacha,” was a real woman convicted of witchcraft in Cordoba. “Auto de la fe en Córdoba (8 diciembre 1572),” in Autos de fe y causas de la Inquisición de Córdoba, ed. Rafael Gracia Boix (Córdoba: Colección Textos para la Historia de Córdoba, Publicaciones de la Excma. Diputación Provincial, 1983), 94-96; Joseph Pérez, The Spanish Inquisition: a History, trans. Janet Lloyd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 83. 92 ╇ For Berganza’s stint as a herding dog, see Obras completas, 2: 267-68; Putnam translation, 141-45. For his dancing and performing talents, see Obras completas, 2: 279-80; Putnam translation, 176-77. 93 ╇ Likewise, Cervantes also used the witch, discredited as she is by Berganza’s companion Cipión, to blur the distinctions between appearance and reality. See Jorge Checa, “Cervantes y la cuestión de los orígenes: escepticismo y lenguaje en El Coloquio de los perros,“ Hispanic Review 68: 3 (Summer, 2000): 305-306; Ruth S. El Saffar, Novel to Romance: a Study of Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 74-79. 94 ╇ James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, The Animal Mind (New York: Scientific American Library, 1994), 3-5; Griffin, 270-85; Coren, 73-74. 95 ╇ In Bullfight, Garry Marvin writes, “In Andalusian culture, masculine willfulness and assertiveness become elaborated in another context, that of men contesting 91

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Spaniards, like the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne, could see similarities between themselves and other animals. In a world that was seen as created by God and cursed by sin, the question then arose as to just how appropriate these perceptions were, and how one was to develop permissible cross-species associations. If the symbiotic friendship of don Quixote and Sancho Panza is reflective of the intertwining idealism and materialism of the Spanish empire, human friendship itself is modeled in the relationship of don Quixote’s horse Rocinante and Sancho’s donkey. Don Quixote’s multiple references to Rocinante and Sancho’s rucio, or “gray,” makes them important characters in the story, and they are not the only animal references in Cervantes’ masterpiece. While animals are valued in-and-of themselves as agents through the horse and the donkey, they also appear as property by which to measure wealth, as food on the hoof subject to slaughter, and as magical beings worthy of pause. Don Quixote’s animals are the animals of Spain in literary microcosm. On multiple occasions, Cervantes’ novel demonstrates a sympathy and sense of compassion akin to that found in Michel de Montaigne. Alvaro Fernández Suárez noted that Cervantes’ animals are vastly different from Descartes’ machines. Cervantes’ beasts understand, feel and love, even as don Quixote and Sancho share physical embodiment with Rocinante and el rucio.96 Throughout this novel published in two parts (1605 and 1615), don Quixote himself refers to his weak Rocinante as a poor animal subjected to misfortunes because of his master’s commitment to knight errantry.97 During one of their innuverbally against others in the daily rituals of masculinity in bars and other public places, and it is this which is the driving force behind the torero’s performance as he contends with another assertive male in the arena.” Garry Marvin, Bullfight (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 144. One should also note however that the violent dominance display of the bullfight has long included women: “Initially woman fought on horseback, not on foot. The first woman to fight bulls professionally appears to have been Francisca García….” She fought in the eighteenth century. Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: a History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 97. 96 ╇ Alvaro Fernández Suárez, Los Mitos del Quijote (Madrid: Aguilar, 1953), 14950, 174. 97 ╇ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 113, 943; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Salvador Fajardo and James A. Parr (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998), Pt. 1, chap.€15: 106 and Pt. 2, chap.€66:€870. Though Putnam has don Quixote pity his “poor beast” in his

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merable misadventures, two boys, generically described by Cervantes as worse than the devil himself (“y los muchachos, que son más malos que el malo”), decide to torment both Sancho’s donkey and Rocinante: … (A) pair of impudent and prankish urchins lifted up the tails of Rocinante and the gray and inserted a bunch of furze under each of them. When they felt these unaccustomed spurs, the poor animals pressed their tails tightly against their bodies, thereby increasing the pain, and as a result they began leaping and rearing in such a manner that they tossed their riders to the ground. Very much embarrassed by what had happened, Don Quixote ran up to relieve the nag of his plume, and Sancho did the same for his donkey.98

As with so many other events in the mythic tale, the adventure of the furze lends itself to multiple interpretive responses. First of all, it is transparently evident that Don Quixote’s readers could envision such cruelties committed to animals, even chuckling over them, but only as they also chuckled over the misfortunes suffered by the knight errant and his squire. After all, if Rocinante and Sancho’s gray donkey suffer in this incident, so too do their masters, and if there is humor in this scene, there is also guilt. The boys are clearly identified as demonic, and the “poor animals” (“pobres animales”) as undeserving of their evil deed. As already noted by literary scholars like Montserrat Ordóñez Vila and Erna Berndt-Kelley, Rocinante and the gray donkey share in the misfortunes of don Quixote and Sancho Panza, becoming full-fledged partners in Cervantes’ satire of chivalric romance.99 There is a leveling of human and nonhuman animal actors, and the behavior of all four characters exhibits a literary crossing of boundaries where humans and other animals are concerned. In fiction, Cervantes continued the work of Oliva Sabuco. translation of Part 1, chapter 15, the original Spanish reads: “… y veamos cómo está Rocinante; que, a lo que me parece, no le ha cabido al pobre la menor parte desta desgracia.” Rocinante is a “pobre” to be pitied, even as a person might be such a “poor thing.” “Bestia” is not there in this sympathetic blurring of boundaries between humans and another animal. 98 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 2, chap.€61. Fajardo and Parr edition, 841. Putnam translation, 913. The name “Rocinante” is derived from “rocín,” Spanish for nag, workhorse or hack. 99 ╇ Montserrat Ordóñez Vila, “Rocinante y el asno: personajes cervantinos,” Razón y fábula, 8 (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 1968): 57-75; Erna BerndtKelley, “En Torno a sus bestias y a ser bestias,” Actos del X congreso de la asociación internacional de hispanistas, Barcelona 21-26 de agosto de 1989, ed. Antonio Vilanova (Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1992), 1: 589-96; available from Centro Virtual Cervantes, http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/aih/pdf/10/aih_10_1 _066.pdf; accessed February 18, 2009.

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Loyalty and affection actually abound in the four central characters. Affiliable by nature as herd animals, horses are quite capable of forming strong attachments with animals of other species: “… whether it is a chicken, goat, dog, human being, or other organism.”100 They are actual embodiments of Sabuco’s cross-species animal friendships, and the fictional Rocinante is no exception here. Steadfast like King Nicomedes’ horse in Pliny and Sabuco, “loyal and well trained” Rocinante is described early on as refusing to stir from his master’s side during one of the many occasions that don Quixote falls from his steed.101 As the tale nears its completion, Sancho Panza, for his part, gives el rucio the kiss of peace (beso de paz) on his forehead since the donkey is his “compañero” and “amigo” in “hardships and calamities.”102 Sancho addresses the donkey as his respected friend and companion, but he also regrets his own lofty ambitions and longs for the peasant labor he once shared with his donkey in harness. If Rocinante is named and the donkey is not, untitled Sancho Panza, likewise, follows his noble master as a servitor in search of wealth. Human and nonhuman animals alike learn and are trained to fulfill hierarchical roles in the novel. Order remains in the midst of appropriate, boundary-blurring friendships. Respect is shown, and BerndtKelley argues that Rocinante and el rucio are both idealized, but boundaries between humans of differing ranks and animals of different species are not entirely eliminated.103 Don Quixote is still a “don,” and the gray donkey must still pull the plow for his peasant master. Likewise, both don Quixote and Rocinante exhibit sexual desires, but don Quixote reflects on these desires and strives to live chastely. Mad

╇ George H. Waring, Horse Behavior: the Behavioral Traits and Adaptations of Domestic and Wild Horses, Including Ponies (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Publications, 1983), 158. Also Marthe Kiley-Worthington, The Behaviour of Horses: In Relation to Management and Training (London: J. A. Allen, 1987), 139-46. 101 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€18. Fajardo and Parr edition, 130. Putnam translation, 136. Also Fernández Suárez, 173. 102 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 2, chap.€53. Fajardo and Parr edition, 787. Putnam translation, 858. Don Quixote himself also recognizes Rocinante as his eternal companion (“compañero eterno”) in part 1, chapter 2 (Fajardo and Parr edition, 25. Putnam translation, 31). Fernández Suárez, 182-83, 192; Ordóñez Vila, 62, 71. 103 ╇ Berndt-Kelley, 589-91; Fernández Suárez, 157, 177-78. Ordóñez Vila approached this hierarchical question from a metaphorical perspective, but the metaphor is intertwined with the realities of human animal-relations, as well as with those concerning nobles and commoners. Ordóñez Vila, 71. 100

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human that he is, he still tries to exhibit a species-specific propensity toward pronounced rational reflection.104 Perhaps torn as an intellectual between separating rational animals from those animals solely identified as sentient and daring to see the seeds of reason and choice in nonhuman animals, Cervantes wrote of a potential lack of propriety in his choice of animal characters, but he chose them and showed them great affection and sympathy nonetheless: The close friendship that existed between the two animals was a most unusual one, so remarkable indeed that it has become a tradition handed down from father to son, and the author of this veracious chronicle even wrote a number of special chapters on the subject, although, in order to preserve the decency and decorum that are fitting in so heroic an account, he chose to omit them in the final version. But he forgets himself once in a while and goes on to tell us how the two beasts when they were together would hasten to scratch each other, and how, when they were tired and their bellies were full, Rocinante would lay his long neck over that of the ass... and the pair would then stand there gazing pensively at the ground for as much as three whole days at a time, or at least until someone came for them or hunger compelled them to seek nourishment.105

Always an interpreter of what it meant to be Spanish around 1600, Cervantes wrote of animals who acted with their masters, and who were loving and loved—the seeds of choice and rationality joining with the sensitive soul already perceived as shared by humans and other denizens of the animal kingdom. Thus, a goatherd is shown using customary language (palabras a su uso) to call and berate a wandering she-goat descriptively named Manchada, or Spotty, as if she were “capable of reason and understanding” (si fuera capaz de 104 ╇ Don Quixote’s great sexual temptation occurs when he transforms the serving girl Maritornes into a princess overcome by love for him. He tries to use words to convince himself to release Maritornes from his arms, but he is punched in the mouth by a muleteer before we discover just how successful his discourse will be. Foreshadowing this misadventure, Rocinante is bitten and kicked by two mares that he approaches amorously. Their owners then beat him as well. Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€16 for the Maritornes incident (Fajardo and Parr edition, 112-13. Putnam translation, 118-119.) ; Pt. 1, chap.€15 for Rocinante and the mares (Fajardo and Parr edition, 102. Putnam translation, 108-109. For Rocinante as symbol of don Quixote’s intended or unintended failure to fulfill sexual desire, see John T. Cull, “The ‘Knight of the Broken Lance’ and His ‘Trusty Steed’: On Don Quixote and Rocinante,” Â�Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 10: 2 (Fall 1990): 37-53. 105 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 2, chap.€12. Fajardo and Parr edition, 525-26. Putnam translation, 581.

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discurso y entendimiento).106 When Rocinante is permitted to choose the road they should follow, the don dropping his horse’s reins, Rocinante starts to go to his stable and the food and rest to be found there. Whether it is the comfort of the stable that necessarily draws Rocinante or whether it is his “intention” that leads him to the stable is left to the reader to decide, but Cervantes did write of the well trained horse’s “intento,” showing an ambiguity in language that is telling in itself.107 Indeed, that ambiguity was extended, and Cervantes, midway through the second part of Don Quixote, referred to the bestial existence of don Quixote and Sancho themselves, as they “returned to their beasts and the life of beasts that they led.” (“Volvieron a sus bestias, y a ser bestias, don Quijote y Sancho, y este fin tuvo la aventura del encantado barco.”)108 Cervantes’ poor animals included don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who served his readers as catalysts to reflection. Like Rocinante and the gray donkey, they remain animals and metaphors, laboring in multiple capacities, even as the animals of real Spain did outside Cervantes’ world of virtual reality. Animals could be loved and respected, but they also worked. Among the working animals of Spain, the novel presents a simian entertainer, “sheep to the slaughter” and beasts of burden. While the thief and scoundrel Ginés de Pasamonte’s Barbary macaque cannot truly divine information about the individuals gathered for his master’s puppet and magic show, the monkey was taught to jump on the escaped convict’s shoulder and appear to mutter in his ear on a certain signal.109 Of course, one of the most famous scenes early on in Part One of the Quixote occurs when the don charges a herd of sheep, imagining them to be a vast army. He slaughters a number of sheep, even as many of these creatures would be slaughtered for food if they were not to be kept alive for their wool.110 Rocinante and Sancho’s 106 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€50. Fajardo and Parr edition, 414. Putnam translation, 445-46. Also Fernández Suárez, 149-50. 107 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€4. Fajardo and Parr edition, 36, 39. Putnam translation, 41, 45. 108 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 2, chap.€29. Fajardo and Parr edition, 639. Putnam translation, 703. Also Berndt-Kelley, 589. 109 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 2, chap.€27. Fajardo and Parr edition, 624-25. Putnam translation, 688. Ginés de Pasamonte bought the animal from some Christians who had been imprisoned in Barbary, so most likely the “mono” in the text was a Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus). 110 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€18. Fajardo and Parr edition, 123-29. Putnam translation, 131-35.

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rucio are ridden by their masters, and the wealth of the muleteers of Arévalo is measured by their sleek and well-fed mules, even as a trucker today might be judged by the state of his rig.111 Animals in Cervantes’ Spain were entertainers, food and laboring property, just as they sometimes could be objects of affection. The Predatory Human Animal Spanish sheep were used for their meat and wool, but, with the exception of don Quixote, they were not lanced to display the valor of the Spanish nobility. Fought from horseback in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish bullfight provided nobles with an opportunity to demonstrate their prowess with the lance even as they used an aggressive male of another species to prepare for battle. So too did the hunt provide training for battle, and when Juan Mateos published his Origin and Dignity of the Chase in 1634, he tried to prove his case by arguing that hunting is the sport of kings, teaching monarchs the military arts—with wild animals as their enemies and the woods as their schools.112 Like King Alfonso XI of Castile (r. 1312-1350) before him, Juan Mateos, royal huntsman to Philip IV (r. 1621-1665), saw wild animals as useful practice in the art of war.113 Both the violent actions and the strategy needed to subdue an opponent on the battlefield were taught, and the proficient royal hunter could display dominance and build confidence among his men. Thus, Philip IV’s father was praised for hunting boars from horseback: “And it is very notable that King Philip III was the first King in Castile who lanced boars from horseback in the wilds, by which he showed well the courage in his heart…,” making the hunting party with him recognize that he would be “very spirited” on the battlefield,” just as he was “merciful in peace.”114 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€16. Fajardo and Parr edition, 111. Putnam translation, 117. 112 ╇ Juan Mateos, Origen y dignidad de la caza, ed. Amalio Huarte y Echenique (Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1928), 9-10. 113 ╇ Alfonso XI was the author of his own hunting manual, Libro de la montería. John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: the Art of Medieval Hunting (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 4. For more on kings and hunting, this time in early modern France, see Amy Warthesen, “The War against Animals: the Culture of the Hunt in Early Modern France,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment, 47-71. 114 ╇ Mateos, 103. 111

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In the spirit of his father, Philip IV put his own courage on display against a particularly valiant boar, charging his non-human opponent on horseback for more than two hundred paces before engaging in battle. In this struggle with a boar who sold his life dearly (“vendió bien su vida”), the king was joined by high ranking nobles like the Marqués de Velada and the Marqués del Carpio. They became witnesses to the fact that their King fought bravely against a valiant opponent and that he “was much amused” with a hunt that would remain among the most celebrated of his entire life.115 The king was literally filled with pride by all this male violence and camaraderie at a kill where most of the horses left severely wounded, and the boar who sold his life dearly was included as the necessary worthy opponent. In fact, throughout his hunting manual, Mateos revisited these themes again and again, with cautious and crafty boars always the most respected foes.116 John Cummins, in his study of Medieval European hunting writes, “The boar was hunted with varying degrees of dedication over most of Europe, but to judge by the surviving manuals and by its role in imaginative literature it was most valued in the Iberian peninsula and in Germany.”117 And just as the boar was respected as an opponent, brave nobles, like the knight who killed a boar with dagger alone, were praiseworthy for their predatory skill.118 Graphically focused as he was on the dominance displays and violence of human males, Mateos also found deception necessary and appropriate training for battle. He advised his hunters to kill boars and deer while they were distracted at their bathing pools (bañiles).119 Upon finding a patch of ripe, fallen acorns, the hunter was told to hide and await the boars who would come to feed.120 Indeed, according to Mateos, the very best time to hunt wild boars was when they were bloated with food and when the females were pregnant or foraging in groups with their offspring.121 ╇ Ibid., 90-91. Philip IV also used firearms, but the lance remained the epitome of hunting valor in his day. See Olivia Nicole Miller, The Spanish Royal Hunting Portrait from Velázquez to Goya (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009), 1, 7-9, 50; Dawson W. Carr, et al., Velázquez (London: National Gallery Â�Company, 2006), 193, 200-205. 116 ╇ Ibid., 53, 68, 73-74. 117 ╇ Cummins, 97. 118 ╇ Mateos read about this knight in a book. Mateos, 93. 119 ╇ Ibid., 57, 178. 120 ╇ Ibid., 60. 121 ╇ Ibid., 62, 65. 115

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Though Mateos’ tone towards wolves was contemptuous, his human hunters resembled these predatory social animals in their employment of stealth as well as outright force: On the nights of great tempests of wind and rain neither the deer, nor the boar, nor any other game, leave the thickets to run, except for the wolf, who then more effectively captures its prey, for the livestock that then finds itself outside the sheep-cote is killed in greater secrecy in the severe weather, since neither the mastiff nor the shepherd hears it; and these are the nights during which they commit their greatest evils….122

If wolves seek livestock at their most vulnerable, human hunters resemble them in using cunning and exploiting the wolves’ own vulnerabilities. Capable of great damage to livestock, the lupine competitor was described as having very acute and keen eyesight. Therefore, he was to be hunted stealthily from trees or with nets.123 Better yet, hunters should trap wolves at their most vulnerable—after a female has given birth.124 Though his noble hunters earned prestige for killing the strongest and most aggressive animals, Mateos definitely assumed that most hunting would involve killing the weak and vulnerable. His Castilian hunting dogs are praised as the very best in Europe for their ability to distinguish wounded animals from healthy ones.125 On one level, Origin and Dignity of the Chase presents human behavior as really no different from the behavior of other animals. If hunting was meant to be preparation for war, then war apparently would involve the killing of enemies caught unawares, with bravery being proven on the battlefield only if an easy slaughter of the weak could not first be arranged. Mateos’ world was one dominated by a struggle for survival. Regarding deer and boars, he explicitly stated, “The instinct of these ╇ Ibid., 166. “Living near people requires caution about where and when to travel. Behavioral adaptations to humans are most evident in parts of Europe where wolves survived in heavily populated areas. For example, wolves in Italy and Spain avoid activity during daylight (except during foggy or hazy weather) to minimize contact with people.” Steven H. Fritts et al., “Wolves and Humans,” in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 300. 123 ╇ Mateos, 201, 208. Though vision is important to a wolf, Mateos fails to take the “sensitivity and discriminatory powers of the canid olfactory system” and its “use in hunting” into account. Fred H. Harrington and Cheryl S. Asa, “Wolf Communication,” in Wolves, ed. Mech and Boitani, 89. 124 ╇ Mateos, 203-204. 125 ╇ Ibid., 44. 122

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animals is so great that they do things to defend life that cannot be believed….”126 Throughout the text the reader is then left to wonder whether at least some of Mateos’ “brute beasts” possess some special sagacity all their own, and whether their natural gifts are really that different from “knowledge” considered exclusively human. Since his language is quite fluid in this respect, it remains difficult to judge his final assessment. When describing the slaughter of some fifteen to twenty boar sows and their offspring, Mateos noted that the decimation of this nursery group began with the killing of the lead sow. This was necessary since her abilities seemed preternatural: “… and their leader appeared to possess reason and understanding, for she did things that shocked us all as being contrary to her nature; and many months passed, and even years, without our being able to kill even one of them….”127 When she finally was killed, however, it was discovered that she had been shot beforehand, and Mateos postulated that she had learned caution from this experience.128 The royal huntsman Mateos simply may not have given the possibility of animal proto-rationality much thought. He certainly gave little thought to how his reference to a male wolf’s regurgitation of food for his mate could be written about as “love” or as a food-sharing behavior that indicated the interdependence of social animals.129 Instead, he focused on the immobility and vulnerability of pregnant and nursing females and the males who helped care for them and their pups. While Aristotle and Pliny might have taken interest in the ╇ Ibid., 129. ╇ Ibid. 68. 128 ╇ Ibid., 69. 129 ╇ Ibid., 203. Mateos presented the she-wolf as incapacitated and dependent on her mate while pregnant and for fifteen days after giving birth. Accordingly, the male brought the pregnant female meat and regurgitated for her. In a nine-year study (1988-1996) of a free-ranging wolf pack inhabiting Canada’s Ellesmere Island, regurgitations were observed 168 times in 114 bouts. Where all adult pack hunters were concerned, pups were the main recipients of regurgitation (81%), with the breeding female receiving 14% of the regurgitations. The breeding male, who was never observed to solicit regurgitation, regurgitated 57% of the time for the pups, 32% of the time for the breeding female, 5% of the time to auxiliary pack members and 5% of the time into a cache. In this detailed study, regurgitation is pack behavior, not only the behavior of mates, and pups are the main recipients. A skilled enough observer to report wolf regurgitation, Mateos failed to note a number of the significant details. L. David Mech, Paul C. Wolf and Jane M. Packard, “Regurgitative Food Transfer among Wild Wolves,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 77: 8 (August 1, 1999): 1192-95; Jane M. Packard, “Wolf Behavior: Reproductive, Social, and Intelligent,” in Wolves, ed. Mech and Boitani, 50. 126 127

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social life of bees and wolves, Mateos wrote of wolves, boars, deer and foxes as objects to be killed in order to benefit human males. Likewise, particular dogs were praised for their capacity to seek out wounded prey, but dogs were generally presented as implements of the hunt, fed on bread for the most part, and only given bread soaked in boar’s blood after a successful hunt.130 The bloodlines (castas) of the best hunting dogs were to be kept pure, without any trace of hound or greyhound, for Mateos considered these dogs to be too dainty and very susceptible to cold.131 Promoting a limpieza de sangre for dogs that reflected a debate in the early modern Spanish empire regarding the “purity” of human bloodlines, Mateos sided with the maintenance of a strictly hierarchal world in service to his hunters, and especially to the kings and nobles who needed the hunt to prepare for battle. In fact, the hierarchy of the Castilian royal hunting party itself reflected a divinely appointed universe, with an officially commissioned chaplain to say mass, as well as “a Principal Huntsman, who would always be a great lord, with his lieutenant, four mounted huntsmen…” and other individuals.132 The hunt for Mateos was natural and naturally reflective of the most competitive human social relations. As a result, given the intended outcome of hunting, it behooved him to distance himself and the readers of his manual from the animals who were to be killed, while simultaneously trying to describe their behaviors as accurately as possible in order to benefit the hunter. Nonhuman animals were the sacrificial pawns on his chessboard and never subjected to the sort of pity given them by Michel de Montaigne or Miguel de Cervantes. If Mateos sometimes praised a boar who appeared rational or was particularly aggressive in combat, it was instrumental to the case he was making. If hunting was the royal school of war, then worthier opponents made the activity all the more valuable. Similarly, when writing his sovereign about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, Hernán Cortés actually spent a great deal of time enumerating the achievements of the people he defeated, from the great quantity of goods in their markets to their “beautiful houses.”133 In verbal braggadocio elaborating the defeat of great adversaries the early ╇ Mateos, 18-19, 24, 29. ╇ Ibid., 16. 132 ╇ Ibid., 39. 133 ╇ Hernán Cortés, “The Second Letter,” in Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 102-112. 130 131

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modern Spanish male displayed prowess, even as other animals display in their own unique ways.134 In aggression transformed into the violence of the hunt and battlefield, these human males only did what other primate males do. Just as groups of chimpanzees will hunt red colobus monkeys for meat, and chimpanzee stragglers from a neighboring community will be hunted as territorial rivals and enemies, the Spanish animal hunted.135 As we will see in chapter five, it was an individual of mixed ancestry who fed animals and refused to feed on them who, through his actions, broke down barriers between species in the Spanish empire— and received praise for it. San Martín de Porres demonstrated another approach to the animals of Spain, and to just being an animal. Juan Mateos’ vision was not the only one to be had in the Spanish empire. Intellectual of the hunt that he was, Mateos refused to focus on more peaceful attributes that humans might share with other animals. In their inclusion of animals in a world of love and compassion, Cervantes and Sabuco show us intellectuals in Spain who took a stand against placing furze under a horse’s tail and who might have seen a wolf’s regurgitation of food for his nursing mate as an act of love. In turn, the careful Scholastic distinctions made by Suárez show us a perspective that certainly divided things human from the actions of other animals, but also without denying the sensitive aspect of the soul that humans were said to share with animals. If the hunter as intellectual was more given to seeing animals as competitors and instrumental to his purposes, this does not even thoroughly explain early modern hunters, given the regrets and reticence of the Seigneur de Montaigne. Early modern writings that reflected on animals were complicated and even somewhat confused. It was not easy for intellectuals to discern boundaries between humans and other animals. ╇Edward Wilson defines “display” as “A behavior pattern that has been modified in the course of evolution to convey information. A display is a special kind of signal, which in turn is broadly defined as any behavior that conveys information regardless of whether it serves other functions.” Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: the New Synthesis, 25th anniversary ed. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 582. For an argument that human males use words to display prowess, and especially their advantages as a mate, see Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 173-77. 135 ╇ Craig B. Stanford, The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 66; Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 503-534. 134

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Reason, the exaggerated ability to abstract which most clearly demarcates us as a species, failed to determine whether reason makes us different in kind or degree vis-à-vis the other animal beings with whom we share the planet. In the next chapter, the actions of Spaniards, their subject peoples and both groups’ subject animals will be studied. Even in documents that recorded animals primarily as sources of food and labor, a sense of awe and kinship peeked through. We understand these old documents. They can speak to us today because of a shared sentience. In effect, we feel all the same contradictory and complementary attitudes toward other animals that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors did, being all members of the same Homo sapiens species.

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CHAPTER THREE

VALUED ANIMALS AND ANIMAL VALUES When Spaniards arrived in the Americas, they were well accustomed to treating sentient beings as resources and tools of transformation. Over the course of more than three centuries, the nonhuman animals of the early modern Spanish empire were used to provide food, clothing, labor and entertainment. They slaved for Spaniards even as subordinated humans often did, and therein lay the complexity. In daily interaction with other animals, many humans could see similarity and continuity, while others tried to minimize semblance in order to exploit another being with greater ease. Both cattle and human slaves might be tallied numerically in a foreshadowing of today’s “bottom-line” economics, while real partnerships and friendships might also develop between humans and their “beasts of burden.”1 Cervantes obviously enough portrayed Sancho Panza’s deep affection for the donkey who labored with him. In contrast, Juan Mateos, though well versed in the behavior of his prey, constantly returned to nonhuman animals as resources to be used by nobles in their quest for amusement and preparation for war. With a range of opinion regarding the nonhuman animals who labored for them, human inhabitants of the Spanish empire could and did develop notions of appropriate animal husbandry and outright cruelty. In a world full of hunts and bullfights, individuals could still be dismayed by the cruelty that Philip II’s heir, don Carlos, exhibited toward servants and nonhuman animals alike. Spanish imperial tradition lionized a sense of stewardship, and popular chivalric romances were only truly rivaled by pastoral tales of idealized shepherds and shepherdesses.2 1 ╇ For insight into the commodification of human beings, see Carroll B. Johnson, Cervantes and the Material World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), especially 103, 128-33. For nonhuman animals as commodities and “precious objects,” see Juan Pimentel, El Rinoceronte y el megaterio: un ensayo de morfología histórica (Madrid: ABADA Editores, 2010), 22, 36-37. 2 ╇ According to Irving A. Leonard, the groundbreaking pastoral romance, Siete Libros de la Diana (1559) by Portuguese-born Jorge de Montemayor was only second in popularity to the chivalric romance Amadís de Gaula in both Spain and the Americas: “It was reprinted seventeen times during the sixteenth century and at least

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In Spanish culture, there was a vision of the “good shepherd” at the same time that large landed estates measured their wealth in sentient beings reduced to means of production. How the Spaniards Learned to Value Animals in Iberia Spaniards were defined by the nonhuman animals with whom they associated, and by just how they associated with those other animals. Their humanity was intrinsically linked to animality. Just as ants “herd” aphids for their honeydew, the Spanish animal herded other animals—especially sheep.3 Human interpretations and perceptions are intertwined seamlessly with our biological needs in the material world. To understand the attitudes of the Spanish empire to nonhuman animals, elements of the Spanish economy must be understood. The need to eat in order to survive cannot be altered by cultural construction. It is real, and it was in the Spanish imperial economy that human ideas studied in the last chapter interacted with an undeniable physical reality. In turn, Spanish choices concerning the best way to run an economy impacted both the people and nonhuman animals they subjugated as imperialists. In both economic terms and metaphysical flights of fancy, Spaniards valued sheep and herding— first in Europe and then in the Americas as well. eight more editions appeared in the next hundred years…. But despite the unÂ�Â�Â� doubted refinement of language and the charm of its lyric passages, both prose and verse, the enthusiasm of sixteenth-century readers, particularly the heirs of the hardy Conquistador, for the pastoral theme remains a puzzling enigma. The shipping registers and other contemporary lists, however, attest unmistakably to its popularity, for they are sprinkled not only with Montemayor’s masterpiece but with sequels by other writers such as Alonso Pérez (1564), and the more inspired Diana enamorada of Gaspar Gil Polo (1564).” Irving A. Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; originally published 1949), 115-16. 3 ╇ As Spaniards with their dogs provided sheep with protection from predators, then sheering them for their wool, ants protect and feed their “cattle”: “An extreme development of mutualistic symbiosis is represented by the associations between homopterous insects such as aphids and their ant hosts. The ants provide protection from predators and parasites, and the homopterans ‘repay’ them with honeydew expended as excrement….” Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: the New Synthesis, 25th anniversary ed. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 356. Also: “Some species of ants have become wholly dependent on their insect cattle.” Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, Journey of the Ants: a Story of Scientific Exploration (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994), 147, 149.

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Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr. estimate that between 1500 and 1800, European Spain produced some seven million pounds of washed wool annually for export. In turn, the herds of merino sheep that produced this profitable fine wool numbered in the low millions throughout the early modern period.4 The Phillipses appropriately named their study of wool production and the wool trade Spain’s Golden Fleece. In their own words: “Before the discovery and exploitation of the New World, wool exports were probably Spain’s single most important source of foreign exchange. In other words, Spanish herding was not just a source of supplemental income for the rural economy; it was a crucial source of developmental capital for the economy as a whole.”5 Sentient animals were tallied as wealth on the hoof, and this was a choice with deep roots in the Iberian ecosystem itself. Herding sheep and other animals dated back to ancient times since Spain was incapable of maintaining intense cultivation in many of its regions. Marginal Mediterranean scrub lands were thereby given over to the pigs, sheep and goats who might exploit them, with cattle herds in the humid north, and oxen joining mules as beasts of burden throughout the peninsula.6 Spaniards lived and died by the nonhuman animals whose company they kept, and this was only reinforced by the Muslim invasion of 711. As noted by historian David Vassberg, wealth on the hoof had all the mobility requisite for a people who might have to flee Muslim raids, or who were actively engaged in the taking of territory during the centuries of the Reconquista.7 The Spanish word for livestock, “ganado,” itself derives from the verb “to gain,” or “ganar,” since livestock were pillaged or “gained” through Christian raids on Muslim territory during the Reconquista.8 To be a Spanish conqueror was to be on the move with other animals. The nonhuman animals of Spain, as well as the human animals, were intrinsically vital to the construction of Spanish culture and empire. 4 ╇ Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr., Spain’s Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), xi, 287-90. 5 ╇ Ibid., xii. 6 ╇ Ibid., 7-27; Julius Klein, The Mesta: a Study in Spanish Economic History 12731836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920; reprinted Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1964), 3-16. 7 ╇ David E. Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 152. 8 ╇Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 27.

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In the marginally arable lands of early modern Christian Spain, many local farming communities kept animals and rented lands to large migratory flocks to supplement their agricultural production. Farming and pastoralism were always intricately intertwined, though this could also lead to the tensions often found in any close relationship. As human populations grew in the late fifteenth- and sixteenthcenturies, more forests were cleared for agricultural use and more marginal lands converted to farming. This led to a series of legal and political disputes between settled peasant communities and the Mesta sheepherding guild, with its traditional reliance on transhumance. The Mesta annually walked its herds of sheep from the more verdant mountains of the north where they pastured in the summertime to the drier plains of the south where they wintered.9 This was no small thing since the Mesta had some 2.9 million animals in 1516-1520, 1.4 million in 1631-1634, and an average of approximately 5 million sheep from 1740 to 1800.10 Complaints arose as the Mesta desired to expand sheep production, or at least retain traditional sheep walks, or cañadas, against the incursions of farms into marginal lands.11 A growing human population’s need to fill its belly with cereals and other crops threatened the Mesta’s sheep and the Mesta’s wealth. The Spanish Crown attempted to balance the needs of the sheep and farmers in its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century legislation, but by the reign of Charles III (1759-1788), an expanding and impoverished human population had won to the extent that a 1779 law prohibited nonhuman animals from grazing at any time in vineyards and olive groves, either before or after the harvest.12 Charles III, perhaps influenced by eighteenth-century Physiocratic hypotheses that wealth was to be found in farming the land, viewed the herding traditions of Spain as a contributing factor to Spain’s impoverishment in the early modern period.13 Today historians have ╇ Ibid., 7-8, 16-20, 50-59; Vassberg, Land and Society, 79-83; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 1: 85-102. 10 ╇Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 287-89. 11 ╇ In his Land and Society in Golden Age Castile, Vassberg writes, “It is likely that only a minority of Castilian peasant farmers ever had their crops damaged by Mesta flocks…. Nearly all the lawsuits that I have seen between the Mesta and agriculturalists originated because of illegal plowings of cañadas, dehesas boyales, or other areas that traditionally had been reserved for pasture.” Vassberg, Land and Society, 82. 12 ╇Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 81. 13 ╇ Ibid., 77. 9

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suggested that human population growth, complemented by inflation due to the flood of bullion from the Americas, contributed far more to Spain’s inability to grow rich than its herding traditions. 14 According to Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr., the production and trade in wool was not only ecologically sustainable, it remained profitable and generated work for herders, shearers and washers into the era of the Napoleonic invasion. The sheer number of people and their desire to accumulate some of the silver of the Americas when they were employed at needed skilled tasks may have had more to do with the impoverishment of Spain than “sheep devouring human beings.”15 Spaniards and their sheep organically developed a culture of transhumance in the regional ecosystems of Iberia that not only kept Spaniards alive; it defined humans through association with the other animals they herded, dominated, and even sometimes honored and cherished. From the level of the peasant village with its communal pasture lands, or dehesas, to that of the Mesta aristocrat with flocks numbering in the thousands, Spaniards associated with livestock. They were pastores or vaqueros, or they interacted with these shepherds and cattle herders. This does not mean that the human individuals who most directly associated with other animals were always honored or idealized. Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr. take note that “A popular rhyme advised young women, ‘not to marry shepherds, who are brutes and animals. They hear mass outdoors in the corrals and eat from a common pot,’ behavior that was repellent to the sedentary, civilized population.”16 Still, there was value ascribed these human animals who supervised the herds of the wealthy in the Mesta. Drawing on the documentation available for the eighteenth century, the Phillipses note that Mesta shepherds received recompense that covered basic subsistence and thereby provided disposable ╇ Vassberg, Land and Society, 45-47, 82-83, 163-64; Carla Rahn Phillips, “Time and Duration: a Model for the Economy of Early Modern Spain,” The American Â�Historical Review 92: 3 (June 1987): 538-41, 561; Henry Kamen, Spain 1469-1714: a Society of Conflict (London and New York: Longman, 1983), 52, 98. 15 ╇Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 16-17, 193, 202, 274. The image of sheep “devouring human beings” is taken from Thomas More’s critique of English enclosure of land by large landowners so as to raise more profitable wool-producing sheep.€According to More, “those good fellows turn all human habitations and all cultivated land into a wilderness.” See St. Thomas More, Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz, S. J. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 24-25. 16 ╇Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 106. 14

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income. Aside from two pounds of bread daily for himself and another two pounds for his dog, each Mesta shepherd received oil, tallow and a salary according to rank. While assistants earned anywhere from six to eighteen ducats a year, the rabadán, or shepherd in command of subordinate herders, dogs and a rebaño of 1,0001,500 sheep, received the daily allotment of food and twenty ducats a year. The mayoral, or head overseer, kept the accounts and supervised all subordinates and rebaños for the owner of the herd. In the eighteenth century, his salary ranged anywhere from 350 to 500 ducats a year. He received no daily ration of food, but he did receive a horse.17 While peasant villagers deemed shepherds brutes like the animals they tended, members of the elite who employed them 17 ╇ Ibid., 103-105. Four hundred years earlier wages were still substantial, though primarily paid in kind. In The Mesta, Julius Klein wrote, “The legal wage in the middle of the fourteenth century was twelve bushels (fanegas) of grain, one-fifth of the lambs born in the flock during the year, one-seventh of the cheese produced by his charges, and also six maravedis in coin for every hundred sheep in his care. He was allowed to keep without charge a certain number of sheep of his own with the master’s flocks, and was given the fells and carcasses of any animals killed by accident while on the march. These rates of compensation varied greatly, of course, in different times and places, but the general principle of payment in fractions of the produce, always excepting wool, was common until the sixteenth century, when it began to go out of use.” Klein, 58-59. These salaries from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries all refer to the Spanish Mesta. In a discourse generally attributed to the naval officers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, eighteenth-century Amerindian shepherds in Peru were presented as earning less when employed by haciendas. For the care of 800 to 1,000 sheep, roughly a small rebaño, a Peruvian earned eighteen pesos, or 4896 maravedís, annually. No food or dogs were provided, and Jorge and Ulloa noted that eight pesos went to annual tributary payments. A Mesta rabadán received his rations and twenty ducats, or 7500 maravedís. His subordinates, at six to eighteen ducats annually, earned 2250 to 6750 maravedís. Indigenous American shepherds obviously were paid at the lower end of the scale and relied on farms and the work done by family members to supplement their income. Though they earned respectable rural salaries by the standards of the Spanish empire, they prejudicially were ascribed less remuneration than “elite” Mesta shepherds for equivalent amounts of labor. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Noticias secretas de América sobre el estado naval, militar, y político de los reynos del Perú y provincias de Quito, costas de Nueva Granada y Chile: gobierno y régimen particular de los pueblos de indios: cruel opresión y extorsiones de sus corregidores y curas: abusos escandolosos introducidos entre estos habitantes por los misioneros: causas de su origen y motivos de su continuación por el espacio de tres siglos, ed. David Barry (London: R. Taylor, 1826), 273-75; Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru. Their Government, Special Regimen of Their Inhabitants, and Abuses Which Have Been Introduced into One and Another, with Special Information on Why They Grew Up and Some Means to Avoid Them, trans. John J. TePaske and Besse A. Clement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 132-34.

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Â� valued them as they also valued sheep, horses and dogs. To many among the early modern Spanish elite, Spain was not only to be idealized as a land of chivalric Christianity. As demonstrated by the work of Javier Irigoyen-García, it was also the land of Pan—of a halfgoat, half-human god and the animals and pastoral traditions he represented.18 To the one-time Mesta official Miguel Caxa de Leruela, a Spain without sheep, oxen and other livestock would be an impoverished land since nonhuman animals plowed the fields for bread and provided their hides and fleece for clothing. The harmony of civilization itself was dependent on interaction with pastoral animals according to this rather self-interested party, and a Spain without herds would be a place where rural children would be abandoned by impoverished parents because they were no longer needed to tend livestock, each according to age and capacity.19 If the prices of nonhuman animals were well known to a Mesta man like Caxa de Leruela, the valuation of human animals as resources was something he certainly did not obfuscate. Still, even while peasant children were reduced to their labor value in one passage, Caxa de Leruela also demonstrated concern for the poor who owned a few animals, worrying about their being denied pasturage because of the enclosure of pasture lands by wealthier individuals.20 Likewise, he worried about killing valuable oxen and cows before their time. He recommended that Spain adopt prohibitions on slaughtering fertile cows and oxen still capable of 18 ╇ Javier Irigoyen-García, La Arcadia hispánica: los libros de pastores españoles y la exclusión de lo morisco (Unpublished Dissertation, the University of Pennsylvania, 2008), 171-82. 19 ╇ Miguel Caja de Leruela, Restauración de la antigua abundancia de España, ed. Jean Paul Le Flem (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1975), 17-25, 177-78. “Caja” is the contemporary orthography for the early modern “Caxa.” From 1623 to 1625, Miguel Caxa de Leruela was alcalde mayor entregador of the Mesta. In this capacity, he presided over all the Mesta’s alcaldes entregadores. Of the alcaldes entregadores, Julius Klein wrote, “This itinerant judicial and administrative officer formed the means of contact between the Mesta and the outer world.” They enforced Mesta privileges and had the power to fine those they determined were guilty of stealing Mesta animals. Originally appointed from within the royal council, the alcalde mayor entregador became the hereditary office of the Count of Buendía in 1477. The subordinate alcaldes were all appointed by the count as of 1499, but then in 1568, the Mesta purchased the privilege of controlling the office of alcalde mayor entregador from the Count of Buendía, and all alcaldes became internal appointees of the Mesta itself. See Klein, 68, 78; Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 51, 54-55; Caja de Leruela, 49. 20 ╇ Caja de Leruela, 88-90; Vassberg, Land and Society, 172.

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pulling plows and carts, saying that some ten years of life seemed reasonable for these animals. He argued that Naples had laws similar to the ones he proposed, and, in Mesoamerica, New Spain forbade the killing of hembras, or females, among cattle.21 Before being punished for damaging crops, livestock were to be judged, with substantial evidence necessary to convict a particular animal culprit or culprits. Quite literally, Caxa de Leruela argued that each herd animal was to be proven guilty: “And it is better to absolve the guilty than condemn the innocent in case of doubt.”22 Harmony in Caxa de Leruela’s Spain required a certain level of unequal reciprocity between human elites and the humans and other animals who labored for them. All this was idealized by Pan, who blurred the boundaries between humans and other animals, being declared Spain’s classical patron. While goats and Pan, the Greco-Roman lord of the wild, were sometimes identified by medieval and early modern Christian authors with Satan, Caxa de Leruela and some other intellectuals among his Spanish compatriots identified Pan with Christ, revealing symbolically that material nature and the “animal” could be blessed and elevated as well as cursed. With Christ as both the “good shepherd” and the “lamb of God,” things animal could not be universally denigrated in symbols and metaphors. St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) may have spoken metaphorically of serpents who threatened the soul, but she also used the imagery of soaring birds and floating butterflies to describe the holy ecstasies experienced by her soul.23 In seventeenth-century Mexican convents three nuns seemingly wrestled with sinfulness and physical temptation as Satan and the demonic 21 ╇ Caja de Leruela, 109. Caxa de Leruela generally worried that replacing oxen with mules led to a diminution of pasture lands, which affected other livestock like sheep.€See Vassberg, Land and Society, 160, 162. 22 ╇ Caja de Leruela, 130-31. 23 ╇ Santa Teresa de Jesús, Castillo interior, o las moradas, Third Dwelling, chapter 2 and Fifth Dwelling, chapter 2. For the Spanish, see Obras completas, ed. Luis Santullano (Madrid: Aguilar, 1951), 390, 391, 409-410. For the English translation, Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, trans. Mirabai Starr (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), 79, 83, 129-30. Also Santa Teresa de Jesús, Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús, chapters 13 and 20. For the Spanish, see Obras Completas, 75, 105. For the English, see Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1957), 88, 136. For more background on Teresa, see Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

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Â� tormented their bodies in the shape of dog, bull, horse and a number of other animals, but not as a goat or Pan.24 Satan was not universally associated with goats and Pan, and if he could be associated with dogs, it must be noted that Spaniards generally found dogs both valuable and admirable, as we will see in this chapter and in chapter five. To many Spanish authors Pan was not necessarily Satan, and he could be used symbolically and ideologically to improve the Spanish empire, even as herds of cows, pigs, sheep and goats added to Spanish material wealth on earth. Pan, who incorporated attributes of both humans and goats, symbolized natural harmony and civilized community itself since nonhuman animals, living wealth, were the God-given source of the food that we eat and the clothes that we wear according to Caxa de Leruela. They allowed the restoration of some order after the Fall, and Christ the redeemer of the natural order was “el gran Pan,” whom the demons identified as dead on the same day that Christ was crucified.25 In a synthesis of pagan and Christian religiosity, Pan, as lord of the material universe, had taught the ancients to revere nature prior to the coming of Christ. Rather than the originator of confusion and panic, Pan, according to Caxa de Leruela, was seen by the ancients, as both the inventor of music and of harmony of purpose in the material universe. He was lord of both the material and formal spheres of nature, “and because of this they asserted that all things were contained in him.” (“… y significaron en esto, que la materia universal, de quien era Señor, no era ruda ni indigesta, sino compuesta, y perfectamente ordenada, y con lo uno y lo otro atribuyeron a su dominio la material, y forma, y por eso decían que lo contenía todo.”)26 ╇Rosalva Loreto López, “The Devil, Women, and the Body in Seventeenth-Century Puebla Convents,” The Americas 59: 2 (October 2002): 189. For the many different animal forms that Satan might take, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 112. 25 ╇ Caja de Leruela, 17, 20-23, 34. Here Caxa de Leruela is drawing from a tale found in Plutarch in which a merchant ship off the island of Paxi heard a loud voice cry out that “Great Pan is dead.” The story so disturbed Tiberius Caesar that he commissioned a scholarly inquiry into Pan’s death. See Plutarch, “The Obsolescence of Oracles,” trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, in Plutarch’s Moralia, 15 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1927-1969), 5: 400403. 26 ╇ Caja de Leruela, 21-22. 24

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Pan, as the embodiment of physical nature and pastoralism, was the idealized allegory of the dominion of noble Spanish lords over people and other animals alike. With his enchanting pipes, he was the good shepherd before Christ and an adumbration of Christ’s sovereignty over a well-ordered nature. Though enthralled by ancient pagan imagery, Caxa de Leruela did not forget to remind his readers that Abel and Jacob, who found favor in the eyes of God, herded sheep.27 Divinely ordained harmony in Spain, and on the entire earth itself, was intrinsically tied to the herding of animals and a sort of economic pantheism associated directly with Pan. While Caxa de Leruela failed to generate the spurious etymology that the historian and linguist Bernardo de Aldrete did when he argued in his 1606 Del Origen y principio de la lengua castellana that España was named after Pan, Caxa de Leruela did portray Pan as a pagan means to the Christian God’s plan for humanity on earth.28 With Pan, goats and sheep so elevated, it should come as no surprise that after chivalric romances the literate Spanish elite favored pastoral novels as their escapist, yet also didactic, literature. Dominick Finello has written, “In Spain, Renaissance courtiers and religious and secular writers adopt the shepherd figure in various guises, exhibiting partiality to his way of life.”29 As we have seen, Oliva Sabuco readily used fictional shepherds to discuss her cosmological, medical and proto-ethological notions. Only second to chivalric novels of adventure, pastoral novels that discussed the intricacies of human love and social relationships through fictional shepherds and shepherdesses were bestsellers in sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury Spain. Jorge de Montemayor’s Seven Books of Diana was published some thirty times between 1559 and 1622 in Spain alone, while Gaspar Gil Polo’s Diana Enamorada saw seven reprints ╇ Ibid., 18-19, 133. ╇ Irigoyen-García, 171-74; Bernardo José de Aldrete, Del Origen y principio de la lengua castellana ò romance que oi se usa en España, ed. Lidio Nieto Jiménez (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972), 274-75. Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, knew and admired Aldrete. See Sabine MacCormack, On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 59, 189-93, 224-25. 29 ╇ Dominick Finello, Pastoral Themes and Forms in Cervantes’s Fiction (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press and Associated University Presses, 1994), 22. The structures of pastoral romances and Spanish scholars’ literary academies closely paralleled each other. See Willard King, Prosa novelística y academias literarias en el siglo XVII, Anejos del boletín de la Real Academia Española 10 (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1963), 113-14. Also Finello, 129, 161. 27 28

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between 1563 and 1624.30 As was noted by Miguel de Cervantes, these novels had very little to say about the actual raising of sheep and no real interest in their behavior or sentience, but as demonstrated by Javier Irigoyen-García, pastoral fictions and pastoralism in general were used by many in literary circles to define what they perceived as the core of Spanish imperial values.31 According to Irigoyen-García, Muslims and moriscos of the Iberian Peninsula, who herded and used livestock just like Old Christians, were marginalized by a pastoral literature that blithely ignored the influence of Muslim herding traditions on the Iberian Peninsula and used Pan as a direct mythic ancestral link to the classical past. Only Old Christian Spaniards and their pagan ancestors were seen as the quintessential herders and pastoralists—brief references to Jacob and Abel notwithstanding. IrigoyenGarcía emphasizes that Muslims and moriscos, Jews and conversos, were being written out of a Spanish imperial discourse that embraced pastoralism as the occupational foundation of Old Spanish Christian values.32 However, the Spanish cultural tapestry was woven out of multi-hued threads, and Irigoyen-García does also note that there was a slightly more inclusive imperial perspective, exemplified by Lope de Vega’s Shepherds of Bethlehem in 1612. For Lope, as long as Jewish shepherds and morisco-like gypsies became “sheep” and bowed before Christ as their shepherd, then they became part of the well-ordered universe.33 Obviously, the same act of submission was the means by which Amerindians and Africans gained entry to the Spanish imperial hierarchy and avoided exclusion and even outright destruction. Pastoralism—and Pan as the adumbration of Christ—were central elements in Spanish imperial self-definition, so that sheep, pigs and the larger ganado mayor, or cattle, were intrinsically part of the Spanish empire and its vision. In that sense, Spaniards were quite representative of Richard Bulliet’s generic pastoralists who “apÂ�preciate ╇ Irigoyen-García, 120-21. ╇ For Cervantes, see Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Coloquio que pasó entre “Cipión” y “Berganza,” perros del Hospital de la Resurrección, in Obras completas, ed. Ángel Valbuena Prat, 2 vols. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1975), 2: 265-68. Also Miguel de Cervantes, The Colloquy of the Dogs, in Three Exemplary Novels, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: The Viking Press, 1950), 134-45. 32 ╇ Irigoyen-García, 1-2, 20, 83-84, 124, 161, 171-82. 33 ╇ Ibid., 231-46; Lope de Vega, Pastores de Belén, in Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, Obras escogidas, ed. Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles, 3 vols. (Madrid: Aguilar, 19531958), 2: 1189-1340. 30 31

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living animals as objects of tangible value” in such a way that these nonhuman animals “do not need to be rendered into salable products for their value to be realized.”34 Bulliet, of course, recognizes that these pastoral animals are eaten by their human lords, but they are also valuable alive as currency and a display of wealth. For pastoralists, animals need not be reduced to “raw materials whose value can only be realized through the sale of their products.”35 While continuing to appear on a balance sheet, herd animals were also somewhat honored while they breathed. Therefore, in the popular pastoral literature of the early modern Spanish empire, the guardian shepherd became an ideal for members of an elite with a sense of divine imperial mission, and nonhuman animals were sometimes, though not always, included as fellow soldiers of God who helped to define that mission. In Jardín de María (1657), the Dominican priest Narciso Camós recorded numerous accounts of images of the Virgin Mary found in Catalonia. As will be explored further in chapter five, these images were generally located by animals, and usually by domestic animals and the herders who accompanied them. There was a solid sampling of young boys and girls fulfilling this herding task for their local communities. Both the image of Nuestra Señora de Bellver and that of Nuestra Señora del Hom were discovered by wandering oxen pursued by a dutiful pastorcilla.36 In the latter case, the little shepherdess was mute, but the image magically granted her the power of speech. In turn, this account resembles the tale of Nuestra Señora de Baldós appearing to a shepherdess and curing her crippled arm; the restoration of a hand to a pastorcilla by Nuestra Señora de la Pallaroa; and Mary’s also appearing at la Fuente de la Salud to restore hearing and speech to a shepherd.37 Described as a fruit-bearing tree by Camós, Mary played earth goddess to her son’s Pan in Caxa de Leruela’s work. Spanish Christianity of the early modern period was indeed complex enough to incorporate both a sense of humans being a part of a supernaturally ordered nature and a sense of humans being set 34 ╇Richard W. Bulliet, Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 177, 176. 35 ╇ Ibid., 177. 36 ╇ Narciso Camós, Jardín de María plantado en el principado de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1657; reprinted Barcelona: Editorial Orbis, 1949), 144, 174. 37 ╇ Ibid., 312, 242, 201.

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apart as the stewards of that nature. Both shepherds and shepherdesses embodied this. These caretakers of local herds were quite Â�literally blessed as they interacted with their well-ordered and subordinated animals. It should come as no surprise that the shepherd who found the image of Nuestra Señora de la Fuente Calda was described by Camós as “el buen pastor.”38 Good shepherds and shepherdesses were perceived as doing the work of God and Mary, just as their sheep and oxen provided clothing, labor and food. Indeed, the countryside portrayed by the priest Camós is one that Caxa de Leruela would have found pleasing. Blessed local peasants tended the oxen who pulled their plows and the sheep who clothed them, and the children who worked with nonhuman animals were not abandoned by their parents. Though he wrote the pastoral novel Galatea, Miguel de Cervantes was among the first to recognize that these idealized shepherds and shepherdesses of Spanish legend and hagiography were not attempts at accurately representing Spain’s pastoral workers. In the Colloquy of the Dogs, Berganza, having been a herder’s dog at one point in his life, states as much. While the shepherds of romance sang well-composed tunes to the accompaniment of pipes and flutes, Berganza’s masters sang in hoarse voices and made music with their crooks and the rattling of tiles in their hands. They hunted fleas on their own bodies and were quite capable of illicitly killing one of the lambs in their charge and then blaming the wolf. Still, they provided Berganza with the standard studded collar for protection against wolf bites and fed him a going ration of bread soaked in milk.39 Unlike these rural laborers, the shepherds and shepherdesses of pastoral novels were tropes: courtiers and their ladies dressed in immaculate peasant clothing and used to explore friendship, love, joy and the emotional state of humanity in general terms. However, it was significant that intellectuals like Cervantes in Galatea, Jorge de Montemayor in the Seven Books of Diana, and Gaspar Gil Polo in Diana Enamorada chose herders to advance their courtly themes. Shepherds and shepherdesses, hardworking foundations of Spain’s economy, could be idealized, even as noble warriors were made grander in chivalric romances. As twenty-first-century American politicians are given to ╇ Ibid., 208. ╇ Cervantes, Coloquio que pasó entre “Cipión” y “Berganza,” in Obras completas, 2: 265-68. Also Putnam translation, 134-45. 38 39

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sports analogies to describe the ins and outs of life, early modern Spanish intellectuals turned to allegories in the fields and pastures of Pan’s country. Order itself was to be learned in the fields, and in the appropriate interaction of humans with other animals. Sheep and other livestock were about wealth. They were resources. But they were also so much more, contributing to a political theory, and practice, based on notions of husbandry, stewardship and dominance. The Politics of Animal Husbandry Defined: Dominance and Stewardship in Spain’s Empire Nonhuman animals were means of production, distribution and exchange in early modern Spain, and they were valuable in this capacity, leading to concern over their loss—and to definitions of appropriate care and good husbandry. Spaniards, in the midst of using other animals as resources, were also sometimes capable of considering their welfare. David E. Vassberg in his study of early modern Castilian communal ideals and practices has demonstrated that there seems to have been some concern about the harassment and mistreatment of livestock, and guards hired by municipalities were expected to exhibit at least a modicum of husbandry skills and responsibility. Vassberg reports that charges were levied against municipal guards who caused the death of a cow when they neglected to provide food and water for cattle temporarily under their care.40 Fines also were exacted from those who committed injuries against one of the Mesta’s sheepdogs, and those fines could be as onerous as five sheep or more.41 In effect, the dogs of the Mesta were employees who were to be respected in the carrying out of their duties. They did, after all, receive the same basic food allotment as a human shepherd: two pounds of bread a day. On one level, in their guarding of the sheep against wolves and other threats, they were as valuable as the human shepherds who were expected to do the actual herding, and Cervantes accurately had his Berganza tell us that the owner of the flock under his guardianship instructed his shepherds to give Berganza “‘the same rations you give the others, and treat him well so that he will take a liking to the flock and stay with it.’”42 ╇ Vassberg, Land and Society, 75. ╇ Klein, 25. 42 ╇ Cervantes, Coloquio, in Obras completas, 2:265 ; Colloquy, Putnam translation, 137. 40 41

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In his 1828 account of the sheepherding traditions of Spain, Manuel del Río nicely summarized the value ascribed the shepherd’s dog when he emphasized that loyalty, obedience and responsiveness to vocal commands were to be taught through the abundant praise of tasks well done. If the dogs successfully drove a wolf away from the herd, they were to receive positive reinforcement since most dogs are “infinitely thankful” for the praises they receive.43 Discipline and harshness were to be reserved for infractions of training. If a dog tried to enter a corral with newborn lambs, then the dog was to be prevented and punished so as to protect the lambs from being eaten.44 Dogs were to know their roles, even as human shepherds were responsible for theirs in order to be paid. But praise preceded punishment in training. Sheepdogs were valuable, valued and valorized in mutually supportive relationships with their shepherds. Universally identified as mastines, or mastiffs, Castilian sheepdogs were trained defenders of the flocks, “employees” who sometimes partnered with sheep as well as humans in their herding tasks. The flocks followed the bellwether, or encencerrado, a castrated ram with a bell literally tied around his neck. At the end of the eighteenth century, the French observer C. P. Lasteyrie noted that these mansos, the tame bellwethers, responded to signals given to them by the shepherds, and, in turn, the entire herd would follow them—or sometimes a goat serving in the same capacity. All this relied on a level of trust and mutual reliance between shepherds and bellwethers, with the shepherds stroking and hand-feeding the bellwethers grass, foliage and bread in order to train them to be responsive to their voices and commands—to social interaction and communication with an animal of a different species.45 When Lasteyrie asked one Spanish shepherd why the dogs did no directional herding, the shepherd responded that a division of labor that left the herding to shepherds and bellwethers and protection from wolves to dogs ensured that the sheep were not bitten or harassed by the dogs.46 Shepherds, bellwethers and dogs all had their roles in a multispecies herd community, and appropriate care of highly valued sheep was well defined. 43 ╇ Manuel del Río, Vida pastoril, facsimile of the 1828 edition (Madrid: Ediciones El Museo Universal, 1985), 3-4. Also see Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 105. 44 ╇ Del Río, 63. 45 ╇ C. P. Lasteyrie, Traité sur les bêtes à laine d’Espagne (Paris: A.-J. Marchant, 1796), 34-35. 46 ╇ Ibid., 41; Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 105.

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Customary notions of appropriate animal husbandry and respect for someone else’s property do not demonstrate appreciation for the independent existence of another sentient being, but here Miguel de Cervantes once again may help to elucidate the feelings embedded in early modern Spanish perceptions. When the goatherd in the first part of Don Quixote finds his wandering lead goat “Spotty,” he not only speaks to the she-goat as though she were human and capable of understanding, he uses terms of accusatory anger blended with concern and endearment, and then demonstrates a patriarchal gender bias that crossed species boundaries: “Ah, Spotty! Spotty!” he cried, “what a wild one you are! ...What wolves have frightened you, my daughter? Won’t you tell me what it is, my beauty? What else can it be than that you are a female and hence naturally restless? What ails you, anyway, and all those that you take after? Come back, come back, my dear; you may not be quite so happy there, but at least you’ll be safer in the fold, along with your companions. For if you, who ought to watch over and lead them, go wandering off so aimlessly, what is to become of them?”47

The goatherd is concerned that don Quixote, Sancho and the canon to whom Spotty runs should consider him a simpleton for speaking so to a goat, but he then continues to address her as another sentient being, telling her to lie down and wait while he tells a story to his new companions. She in turn appears to understand and looks up at his face to show her attentiveness. (“Parece que lo entendió la cabra, porque en sentándose su dueño, se tendió ella junto a él con mucho sosiego, y mirándole al rostro daba a entender que estaba atenta a lo que el cabrero iba diciendo….”)48 While Samuel Putnam in a twentieth-century English translation wrote of the goat as “it,” Cervantes’ prose actually utilized the common Spanish means of address for any gendered and sentient being. The goat was “ella,” a “she” to Cervantes. Seemingly capable of her own choices, the fictional goatherd was frustrated and worried by the disappearance of his lead nanny goat, his “cabra,” who was also his “hija,” or daughter. A wandering and 47 ╇ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 445-46; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Salvador Fajardo and James A. Parr (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998), Pt. 1, chap.€50: 41415. 48 ╇ Don Quixote, Pt. 1, chap.€50. Fajardo and Parr edition, 416. Putnam transÂ� lation, 447.

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loose female, the gadabout nanny goat in Don Quixote may only be a cipher for the prejudicial attitudes of some Spanish males toward women, but the goatherd was written so that he applied a biased stereotype regarding women’s propensity to wander to a goat, as well as the goat’s restless nature to women.49 “Female” (“hembra”) is used generically for both women and nanny goats in this passage. Category distinctions and species boundaries blur here, and this is not the only way in which roles ascribed to humans and livestock would meet in the Spanish empire. Africans forcibly brought from their homeland across the Atlantic were tallied as goods rather than being considered sentient beings. On slave ships, a pieza de India measured labor done by the Africans. It was the work done by a young, healthy male adult. African children, women and the old were horrifically counted up as fractions of one pieza.50 Literally a “piece” or material article, the “pieza” also referred to game animals and, on occasion, Amerindian captives.51 In turn, when either a human slave or a nonhuman animal like a cow or pig escaped Spanish subjugation, they were both called “cimarrón,” wild and renegade.52 Likewise, Spaniards were concerned about the casta, “or lineage,” of both livestock and humans. Prejudicial Â�concerns 49 ╇ “Wandering women free from enclosure in marriage or convent worried many who saw them as the most potent symbol of disorder. One response, fired by impatience with women who did not conform to prescriptions for enclosure, called for establishing a workhouse to confine the many ‘lost’ and vagabond women who wandered about Seville. Another response appeared in the proliferating books that prescribed enclosure and shame in socializing young girls, calling upon parents to guard “as dragons” the purity of their daughters.” Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 69. 50 ╇ Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 22. 51 ╇ David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 235. 52 ╇ For cows and pigs, see “Relación y descripción de la ciudad de Loxa,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 184: Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 2, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 296; Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, facsimile ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1963-1964), 1: 350. The Diccionario de autoridades was published originally in 1726. For the origins of the sixteenth-century application of the term to Amerindians and escaped black slaves, see José Arrom, “Cimarrón: apuntes sobre sus primeras documentaciones y su probable origen,” Revista española de antropología americana 13 (Madrid: Editorial Universidad Complutense, 1983): 47-57; available from http:// revistas.ucm.es/ghi/05566533/articulos/REAA8383110047A.PDF; accessed June 4, 2010.

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about racial mixtures arose along these lines, even as breeders of merino sheep judged the wool of newly born lambs to determine whether they were to be culled or not. Only the finest lambs were to live and join the herds for relatively long lives of wool production.53 The sad truth was that Spaniards, in ascribing value to sentient beings, whether members of their very own species or other animals, leveled the difference between humans and other animals in ways we may not be comfortable with today. To be an animal or a resource was to be inferior in the construction of empire, and while some documents like the 1582 relación for Otavalo reported “indios de razonable entendimiento” (“Indians of reasonable intellect”), other Spanish imperial reports demonstrated a readiness to cast the human and nonhuman objects of imperial subjugation in a comparable and all too inferior light.54 In a 1530 letter concerning his experiences in Michoacan, Nuño de Guzman compared Amerindian “idolaters” to “insensible animals, and worse” (“animales insensibles y peores”).55 Thus Africans could be cimarrones like livestock, and children of mixed ethnicity might be judged by their lineage or casta. However it is interesting to note that casta was also used to discuss the noble lineage of knights.56 Many Spaniards admitted their animality, but they insisted on a superior, more rational grade of being for those Spaniards in positions of authority. The dominion of Spaniards involved its verbal dominance displays and outright brutal acts, even as dominance is put on display by other highly ranked individuals in the animal kingdom.

53 ╇On the culling of lambs, see del Río, Vida Pastoril, 67-70; Rahn Phillips and Phillips, 116. 54 ╇ “Relación y descripción de los pueblos del partido de Otavalo—1582,” in Â�Relaciones geográficas—Perú, 2: 235. 55 ╇ “Carta á Su Magestad del Presidente de la Audiencia de Méjico, Nuño de Â�Guzman, en que refiere la jornada que hizo á Mechuacan (8 de Julio de 1530),” in Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, 42 vols. (Madrid: Manuel G. Hernández, 1864-84; reprinted Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1964-69), 13: 368-69. Henceforth CDIR. 56 ╇ The 1726 Diccionario de autoridades illustrated “casta” through horse lineages and a reference to a “caballero de tan gran casta,” among other things. Generically meaning lineage, “casta” was much more commonly applied to horses and biracial individuals than knights (caballeros) and other nobles however. Diccionario de autoridades, 1: 219-20.

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When a Spaniard confronted a bull, he made a statement, through visual display, of his culture’s assumptions concerning human Â�dominance and animality. An interspecies competition, the Spanish bullfight was constructed to end in the death of one of the particiÂ� pants—usually the bull. While the papal hierarchy in Rome—and even a few elements in the early modern Spanish church—denounced the bullfight as opposed to piety, large numbers of Spaniards, both clerical and lay, reveled in the spectacle. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this bloody test of human and bovine male endurance and aggression occurred at the village and town level where plebians ran from bulls as people still do in Pamplona or slaughtered exhausted animals on foot like today’s matadores. The dominance display also was central to members of the elite, and nobles fought bulls from horseback with lances.57 By doing so, they practiced the skills needed on the battlefield, even as they did on the hunt according to Juan Mateos. The public spectacle of slaughtering bulls was just as “Spanish” in the early modern period as the care and guidance given to herding sheep. Spanish imperialists identified themselves culturally in acts of benevolence and brutality, even as a male chimpanzee can be a foodsharer and supporter of subordinates about to lose in a conflict, while also being capable of occasionally brutalizing and even killing a rival for alpha status.58 If sheep represented submissive subjects in need of care and guidance from monarchs, nobles and clergymen serving as “good shepherds,” bulls were worthy opponents, who might sometimes be admired, but nevertheless “needed” to be destroyed. The fighting bulls of Spain were selected from carefully chosen lineages of toros bravos. Not just your average bull; a toro bravo was descended from a long line of males known for their savagery.59 Therefore, as noted by Garry Marvin in Bullfight, the Spanish human male was ╇ Adrian Shubert, Death in the Afternoon: a History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 8-9; Garry Marvin, Bullfight (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 52-59. For a succinct and compelling approach to the bullfight, see Linda Kalof, Looking at Animals in Human History (London: Â�Reaktion Books, 2007), 157-60. 58 ╇ Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes, 25th anniversary ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). On food-sharing behavior and supporting losers, see 197, 145-46. On controlled use of violence among male chimpanzees, see 103-104. On the death of the alpha male Luit, as caused by severe injuries received in a fight with two former alpha males, see 211. 59 ╇ Marvin, 88-89. 57

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being trained to show a calculated and “restrained” cruelty selected at the appropriate moment for the appropriate individual. In the present-day Andalusian context, even while a man is constructed as an individual who is aggressively assertive, human males are thought to be able to control their physical aggression and sexuality, while other male animals are stereotyped as incapable of restraint.60 A difference in kind is very carefully selected over a difference in degree, thereby justifying the sentient bull’s slaughter and reinforcing in participants and spectators alike a sense of imperial superiority over other animals and the use of violence and even brutality as a legitimate means to an end. This glorification of violent solutions did not go unnoticed, and, in the 1540s, Archbishop Tomás de Villanueva of Valencia attacked bullfighting as “bestial and diabolical.”61 Elements within the institutional church attacked the corrida for the harm it did humanity, not for its abuse of other animals. To these ecclesiastical critics, the bullfight was wrong in its reduction of human male behavior to animal behavior, and that “bestial” behavior was then monochromatically stereotyped as violently aggressive and unchristian by these churchmen. When Pope Pius V unsuccessfully attempted to ban the bullfight in 1567 and Pope Sixtus V tried to prevent ecclesiastics from attending, the primary concerns were the unnecessary mutilations and deaths of human beings and that the brutal excitement of the arena incited the proliferation of vices in the stands. In 1586, Sixtus specifically noted that churchmen abandoned their clerical garb to go see corridas, and that they pursued other “unsuitable and scandalous” activities as a result.62 The suffering of bulls and horses failed to be mentioned. 60 ╇ Ibid., 144. Primatologist Frans de Waal has noted the extent to which fights between male chimpanzees are “too controlled” and subject to “inhibitions and rules governing male-male confrontations” in a “species with multi-male societies.” Yet male chimpanzees also have been observed to kill, like human males. Restraint and abandon, despite Andalusian cultural assumptions, do not appear to be the exclusive domain of human males—or of primates in general, when chapter two’s elephants are taken into account. See de Waal, 103-104. For elephant restraint, see Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988), 187. 61 ╇ When Tomás de Villanueva was made a saint in 1685, many towns ironically celebrated his canonization with bullfights. Shubert, 148. 62 ╇ “Breve de nuestro muy Santo Padre Sixto Papa V,” in La Iglesia y los toros: antigüos documentos religiosos taurinos, ed. Francisco R. de Uhagón (Madrid: 1888), 9. Also Shubert 147-48

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King Philip II—a Spanish monarch who actually avoided attending bullfights when he could, though he did hunt—failed to enforce the papal prohibitions on bullfights, and both laity and clergy continued to attend in droves. Though Philip II often did his paperwork rather than go to the corrida, this king still submitted to the popularity of the bullfight in his culture. The historian Henry Kamen writes, “Like his great-grandmother Isabella of Castile, he disliked bullruns…. He prohibited the sport when asked to do so by specific communities (for example the citizens of Ocaña in 1561). On the other hand, when in 1566 the Cortes of Madrid asked him to prohibit Â�bull-runs generally, he refused to do so on the grounds that it was a traditional custom.” 63 Called “El gran rabadán,” or “the Great Shepherd,” by the poet Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, Philip II, like other Spanish monarchs was cast in the role of the “good shepherd.”64 In this instance, a shepherd who was not as enthusiastic about bullfighting as his flock, Philip bowed before his subjects like any alpha male primate showing restraint before a needed individual or coalition.65 He played the role of responsible and responsive steward. Though he may have demonstrated ambivalence to the bullfight, Philip II was the Spanish monarch at the time of the rebellion of Spain’s moriscos in 1569, the 1572 Battle of Lepanto with the Ottoman ╇ Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 226. ╇ Irigoyen-García, 43, n. 20; Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, “Romance a la prisión de un caballero,” in Manojuelo de romances, ed. Eugenio Mele and Angel González Palencia (Madrid: Editorial SAETA, 1942), 345. In his contemporary biography of Philip II, the courtier Luis Cabrera de Córdoba (1559-1623) made note of a good education serving as the “pastor,” or shepherd, of princes. Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, Historia de Felipe II, Rey de España, ed. José Martínez Millán and Carlos Javier de Carlos Morales, 4 vols. (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1998), 1: Libro iv, cap.€2:€126. The image was powerful enough that Philip II’s critics could refer to his failure to live up to the ideal of the good shepherd, taxing and oppressing the poor, “rather than caring for them.” See Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 81. 65 ╇ In discussing the chimpanzees of the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, Frans de Waal writes, “For example, when the alpha male places a car tire on one of the drums in the indoor hall with the intention of lying down on it, one of the females may push him away and sit down herself. Females also remove objects, sometimes even food, from the hands of the males without meeting with any resistance…. They (females) have things to offer that cannot be taken by force, such as sexual and political favors, and their silent diplomacy, which helps to calm tempers. This provides the females with a good deal of leverage: if being popular among the females is critical for the stability of a male’s leadership, he had better be lenient and accommodating toward them.” De Waal, 179-80. 63 64

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Turks, the ongoing rebellion of the Spanish Netherlands, and the Spanish Armada fiasco of 1588. He frequently employed the stick as well as the carrot, and he seemingly had an early modern Spanish— and a primate alpha’s—sense of the balanced use of violence and more benevolent means.66 From this perspective, he also literally confronted imbalance in the actions of his son and heir don Carlos. The cruelties of don Carlos challenged Spanish imperial values. Abusive to both servants and nonhuman animals, Philip II’s sadistic son failed to justify the hierarchy that placed Spanish noblemen in their elevated positions. He did this by failing to be a paragon of benevolent and caring stewardship where dutiful inferiors were concerned. This failure to be a good shepherd to his flock ultimately contributed to his fall from grace, and it proved to be a serious test of his own father’s commitment to Spanish values and his role as the realm’s chivalric champion and good shepherd. In the dead of night on January 19, 1568, don Carlos was awakened by his father Philip II, five noblemen of the court and twelve guards. His papers and weapons were confiscated, while he was confined to quarters under an armed guard. On July 24, 1568, the prince was dead at the age of twenty-three, having slept on an ice-covered bed, alternatively starved and gorged himself and otherwise voluntarily engaged in strange and suicidal behavior. Romanticized in opera by Verdi, the historical don Carlos was a monster. While the final transgression seems to have been a plot against his own father’s life and an attempted flight to the Netherlands where Dutch rebels were struggling for their independence from Spain and might be tempted to use don Carlos as a legitimizing figurehead, the prince’s abnormalities had concerned Philip for years.67 In 1565, the Venetian ambassador Giovanni Soranzo noted that don Carlos was “full of strange whims,” and uninterested in books, horsemanship or generosity to his subordinates. Soranzo noted that the heir to the Spanish empire was not married at twenty when Philip 66 ╇Of Philip II, Henry Kamen states, “As a dispenser of justice he appears to have been rock-hard: there is no record of him ever issuing a pardon after condemnations. But he restrained the severity of his officials on numberless occasions.” Kamen also writes, “Philip’s concern for the poor was to remain one of the recurring themes in his correspondence.” However, he was also inflexibly severe when it came to rebellion. Kamen, Philip, 226, 24, 294, 233. 67 ╇ Louis-Prosper Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, trans. Augusto Escarpizo (Madrid: Editorial Swan, 1984), 332-41, 378; Charles Petrie, Philip II of Spain (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1963), 155-60; Kamen, Philip,120-22.

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had been married at seventeen. He wrote, “For several reasons, then, the king is very disturbed about his son, and cannot make up his mind to have him marry. This is the private reason why he keeps stalling about completing the betrothal with the emperor’s daughter.”68 Though in April 1561, don Carlos fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head severely, evidence exists that his cruel and erratic behavior preceded the accident.69 The “several reasons” cited by the Venetian ambassador Soranzo had accumulated over the course of many years. When the young prince was only twelve, the Venetian ambassador Federico Badoero was far more explicit about some of don Carlos’ problems than his successor Soranzo. While hunting hares and other game, the twelve-year-old prince’s greatest pleasure was roasting them alive after capture. When a large snake or turtle was given to him and bit his finger, he decapitated the reptile with his own bite.70 Indeed, some accounts also spoke of occasional moments of charm and charity, thereby presenting evidence that don Carlos’ behavior could be unpredictable and horrifically erratic. According to these accounts, the prince did occasionally give gifts, even supporting and educating some abandoned children.71 He also was quite taken with the attention given to him by his stepmother, Isabel de Valois—an association which led to the composition of a fictional romance 68 ╇ “The Unhappy and Unfortunate Prince of Spain: from a Report by Giovanni Soranzo, 1565,” in Pursuit of Power: Venetian Ambassadors’ Reports on Spain, Turkey, and France in the Age of Philip II, 1560-1600, ed. and trans. James C. Davis (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 89. Also 88. “Relazione de Giovanni Soranzo, 1565. De copia contemporanea contenuta nel Codice 788 della Libreria Manin, stato già di Amedeo Svajer,” in Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al senato durante il secolo decimosesto, ed. Eugenio Albèri, Series 1 vol. 5 (Florence: A Spese dell’ Editore, 1861), 119-20. 69 ╇ L. J. Andrew Villalon, “Putting Don Carlos Together Again: Treatment of a Head Injury in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 26: 2 (Summer 1995): 347-65; Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 77; Kamen, Philip, 91-92. 70 ╇ “Relazione delle persone, governo e stati de Carlo V e di Filippo II. Letta in senato da Federico Badoero nel 1557,” in Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al senato durante il secolo decimosesto, ed. Eugenio Albèri, Series 1 vol. 3 (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1853), 250; Louis-Prosper Gachard, ed., Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens sur Charles-Quint et Philippe II (Brussels: H. Hayez, 1856), 63-64; Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II,51. 71 ╇ Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 281. Don Carlos’ 1564 will demonstrated some generosity toward servants. See “Copia del testamento cerrado original del Príncipe D. Carlos (Alcalá 19 de mayo de 1564),” in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, ed. Martín Fernández de Navarrete et al., 113 vols. (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1842-1895; reprinted Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1964-1975), 24: 522, 527-28.

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between the two by Schiller and Verdi.72 However, despite some momentary graciousness, the general tenor of Carlos’ behavior was frightening to his father, who was known to be uniformly patient with servants, but was seen constantly reprimanding his son, and sometimes with great severity. Philip became preoccupied with how the prince’s behavior affected his Spanish subjects and how it was viewed by foreign rulers. Among other things, don Carlos was known to denigrate and accost women in the streets. He once tried to have a house burned to the ground and all the house’s inhabitants stabbed to death because some water had dropped on his head from the roof. When his shoemaker made a pair of boots that were too tight for him, he had the man eat the boots stewed.73 Servants were constantly being mistreated by him, and it is very significant that observers of the prince would often also cite his cruelty to animals in the same breath. While it appears that as a boy he once enjoyed playing with a little elephant given to him by the king of Portugal, this stands as an isolated instance among all the other accounts where sadism toward nonhuman animals is emphasized.74 Aside from roasting live animals, he was notorious for his cruelty to horses. On one occasion don Carlos literally rode his father’s favorite horse to death, after “swearing on the life of his father” to don Antonio de Toledo, the Royal Master of the Horse, that he would do this privileged horse no harm. The courtier and chronicler Luis Cabrera de Córdoba (1559-1623) wrote that don Carlos “offended the King with the little reverence given to his name and the disregard given his chattel.”75 Though the king’s horse known as “el Privado” remained an object and property in this account, it also remained certain that this property was not to be harmed in such a fashion. Far from being a “good shepherd,” who 72 ╇ Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 179; Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, in Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, trans. Hillary Collier Sy-Quia and Peter Oswald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1-202; Giuseppe Verdi, Don Carlos/ Don Carlo, ed. Jennifer Batchelor (London and New York: Calder Publications and Riverrrun Press, 1992). 73 ╇ Cabrera de Córdoba, 1: Libro vii, cap.€xxii:€405; Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 113, 115, 125, 127, 130-31, 179, 280-81, 332; Kamen, Philip, 91, 120; Petrie, 15560; Patrick Williams, Philip II (Houndsmills, England and New York: Palgrave, 2001), 51-52; Geoffrey Parker, Philip II, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 88. 74 ╇ Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 76. 75 ╇ Cabrera de Córdoba, 1: Libro vii, cap.€xxii: 406. On another occasion don Carlos secluded himself in the stables with twenty horses for five hours, and when the horses no longer interested him, it is reported that they were found in a deplorable state due to maltreatment. Gachard, Don Carlos y Felipe II, 280.

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knew the value ascribed the lives of servants and animals, don Carlos was an aberration—even when judged by the ideals set for humans in the bull arena. With servants and animal subordinates, Carlos failed to exhibit restrained dominion and the ability to control his use of violence. This necessarily concerned the king as Spain’s shepherd. The sixteenth-century Spanish empire was a place where “heretics” might be burned alive at the stake and bulls tormented to death in the arena, but some nonhuman animals received their privileges even as they had their duties. While heretics were seen as guilty of crimes against God and the social order on earth, and toros bravos were seen as ferocious opponents to be vanquished on the field of valor like human enemies, the horses of the nobility, like the sheep and dogs of the Mesta, were to receive a modicum of respect for services rendered, and roasting an inoffensive hare alive was likewise not seen as the best of form. To many in the Spanish empire and throughout Europe, don Carlos’ final maltreatment of himself and eventual death during imprisonment proved to be a relief. He was a failure at reading circumstances so as to balance aggressive display with acts of benevolence, but he also remains an example of just how cruel his culture could be. In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas remarked that cruelty to nonhuman animals was linked to a lack of compassion for human beings.76 Don Carlos was the living embodiment of St. Thomas’ fear. He used humans and other animals to satisfy his whims and interests. They always appear to have been means to ends for him, and never, ever ends-in-themselves. An Empire Built by Valuable Animals The ability to recognize nonhuman animals as both means to an end and ends-in-themselves is captured in a very telling Amerindian drawing that precedes the text to Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex—the book dealing with the conquest of the Aztec empire by Spaniards and their Mesoamerican allies. Just as the Nahuatl text of Sahagún’s General History of the Things of New Spain gives us a unique perspective on the arrival of Spaniards in Mexico, the territory they called the viceroyalty of New Spain, the very first drawing 76 ╇ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947-48), 1:1080, first part of the second part, Q. 102 Art. 6 Pt. 1-2. Also 1: 351-52, first part, Q. 72 Pt. 1.

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for Book Twelve portrays all the conquering animals involved in the invasion of the Americas. In the illustration (See figure 1), Spaniards are joined by the other animals who accompanied them. Horses, dogs, cattle, sheep and pigs are all at least represented by one individual. And the labor required to transform entire continents is also portrayed. Spaniards are shown unloading parcels and chests from their ships, while three horses are saddled and ready to be ridden. The one dog is wearing a collar. Long before Alfred Crosby recognized that animals other than humans played a central role in European conquests after 1492, Nahuas drew this fact. They also clearly appreciated the truly animate nature of animals other than humans. One of the three horses appears to be neighing, while another is caught in the act of stomping the ground with a hoof. While a firearm lies on the ground beside two chests, an inanimate object, animals are animate. Under the dominion of their Spanish overlords, they also would proliferate over the course of the next three centuries, and conquered Amerindians would participate in this project.77 By 1600, not yet one hundred years after the initial conquest of central Mexico, the Amerindian population had plummeted from a pre-contact figure of approximately 16 to 18 million people to a postconquest population of 1.1 to 3.5 million individuals. Diseases like smallpox, measles, mumps, and new strains of typhus and influenza did their devastating work.78 In contrast to the human demographic 77 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research, 1975), Illustration 1, “Landing of the Spaniards,” following 45. Also James Lockhart, ed. and trans., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Illustration 1:€48. 78 ╇ These estimates are taken from the thoughtful analysis of Suzanne Austin Alchon. Her work reviews all the estimates that were given throughout the twentieth century, ultimately favoring those estimates most closely related to primary source documents, archaeological evidence and now computer modeling (16 million). Still, the figures on pre-contact population have varied wildly and could easily fall between some 11.4 million, based on archaeological, ecological and documentary evidence and 21.4 to 25.2 million, based on colonial documents and depopulation ratios. A high-end guess of over 58 million has even been given for Mexico. In all this, the most important point to be made is that human depopulation due to disease was significant and noticeable. See Suzanne Austin Alchon, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 68-70, 160-63.

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Figure 1. Illustration of the Spanish Landing from the Florentine Codex. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.

disaster, 1620 saw some six to eight million sheep grazing about 50,000 square kilometers of New Spain. Approximately 70,000 square kilometers—mostly in the western Bajío, the gulf area, Toluca, and the Jalisco Lake region—were utilized by 1.5 to 2 million cattle. Beef was inexpensive compared to old Spain. As early as 1542, an arrelde of beef (1.84 kg) cost only one-eighth of a real in Mexico City. It was priced at a full real that year in Andalusia.79 In 1690, New 79 ╇ John F. Richards, The Unfolding Frontier: an Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 345-46; François Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: the Great Hacienda, trans. Alvin Eustis, ed. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 92.

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Galicia, the Mexican region under the jurisdiction of the city of Guadalajara, exported some 22,000 cows to Mexico City and central Mexico. Historian Eric Van Young writes that such cattle exports reached a high point in 1729, with over 35,000 cows sent to central Mexico. However, economic troubles led to a drop in cattle transfer to central Mexico, and “Between 1760 and 1800, the number of live cattle shipped stabilized at levels considerably lower than the 20,000 per year of the late seventeenth century, and at about half the levels of the boom years of the late 1720s and early 1730s.”80 By the end of the eighteenth century, the price of meat was on the rise in a cattleproducing region like Guadalajara and its surrounding countryside, but even then, 1780-81 saw the slaughter of 4,080 cattle and 8,129 sheep.81 According to Van Young, price increases led to poorer urban inhabitants consuming less meat, and in 1788-89, only 2,447 cattle and 2,477 sheep were killed in Guadalajara for their meat.82 If European animals were part of the invasion of the Americas, and if they came in significant numbers that could alter entire countrysides and cultures, they also often came as objects of consumption for Spaniards, and they were consumed by Amerindians as well. Nonhuman animals were considered resources, and thereby were thought of as “good to eat.”83 New Galicia, with its provincial capital of Guadalajara, was home to the silver mines of Nuestra Señora de Zacatecas, and all sorts of natural resources were required to feed the needs of the mines. In a 1608 relación geográfica for Zacatecas, not only are the pines and cedars of the surrounding countryside described as depleted in mas80 ╇Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: the Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 195-96. 81 ╇ Ibid., 46-47. 82 ╇ Ibid., 46. 83 ╇ In the sixteenth century, arguments for the benefit of European meats were couched in the humoral terminology of early modern medicine. The human body was seen as porous enough to be “in active dialogue with its environment.” “Good European food,” from wheaten bread and wine to lamb, chicken and beef would help Spaniards to maintain their health and keep them from turning into Amerindians. Bernardino de Sahagún believed that if Amerindians raised and ate sheep, pigs and cattle, they would become “strong and pure and wise” like Castilians. The culture of the conquerors definitely aided and abetted the expansion of European livestock in the Americas from an early date. See Rebecca Earle, “‘If You Eat Their Food…’: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America,” The American Historical Review 115: 3 (June 2010): 690, 693, 699, 708.

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sive quantity so as to feed the mining operations; cows, sheep, hares, rabbits and deer are listed as sources of meat.84 A hardworking mixed population of Spaniards and Amerindians was being provided with animal protein, and the use of nonhuman animals in that capacity was as much an Amerindian project as it was a Spanish one. Though the government official Rodrigo de Albornoz flattered himself and his fellow Spaniards by arguing that their introduction of livestock helped to combat a Mexican cannibalism based on a lack of meat, the pre-conquest Amerindians of Mexico consumed animal protein in quantities ascribed them according to rank, even as Europeans did.85 They raised turkeys, quails and dogs, and they took advantage of fish, frogs, snakes and deer found in and around Lake Texcoco. 86 Cannibalism was limited to small quantities of flesh distributed after a human sacrifice, while most of the sacrificial victim’s meat may have gone to the animals of the Aztec emperor’s menagerie.87 Still Albornoz made an interesting point in 1525 when he wrote that Amerindians were eating Castilian birds, pigs, mutton, cows “and other meats that (they) see the Christians eat.”88 As noted by historian Elinor Melville, the Amerindians of central Mexico lacked large herds of domesticated grazing animals and a pastoral tradition that Spaniards and Andeans had.89 While the use of domesticated animals for meat in Mesoamerica was not a new thing and Pre-Columbian cannibalism was not a substitute for a lack of nonhuman meat, the 84 ╇ “Relacion de Nuestra Señora de los Çacatecas, sacada de la informacion que, por mandado del Consejo, en ella se hizo en el año de 1608,” in CDIR 9: 181. 85 ╇ “Carta del contador Rodrigo de Albornoz á S. M. dando cuenta de los últimos sucesos ocurridos en Nueva España, segun las noticias recibidas relativamente á Hernan Cortés y á Cristóbal de Olid, y avisando de muchas cosas importantes para el gobierno y prosecucion de los descubrimientos en aquellas regions.—(15 de Diciembre de 1525),” in CDIR, 13: 51. 86 ╇ For more on the Aztec diet, see Sophie D. Coe, America’s First Cuisines (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 66-119. 87 ╇ Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, ed. Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1944), 1: 347-49; Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 228-30. For a scholarly argument that the Aztecs relied on cannibalism to acquire protein, see Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: the Origins of Cultures (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 162-66; Michael Harner, “The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice,” American Ethnologist 4: 1 (February 1977): 117-35. For a critique that focuses on the consumption of human flesh as limited to meager intake in community-building ceremonies, see Coe, 97-99. 88 ╇ “Carta del contador Rodrigo de Albornoz,” in CDIR 13: 51. 89 ╇Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 120. Also see

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arrival of European animals in massive quantities became a veritable bonanza for the dwindling populations of Amerindians. With their numbers decimated by eastern hemisphere microbes like smallpox, the ever-growing populations of cows, sheep, pigs and especially chickens fed those Mesoamericans who survived. In the royal survey records that are the relaciones geográficas, a formulaic response fixes the reader’s attention. The relaciones for the Diocese of Mexico City written between 1579 and 1582 are laden with references to chickens and turkeys. Castilian chickens and “native chickens,” or turkeys, were reported by six towns in the district of Ueipuchtla (aka Gueypuchtla). They were also being raised in Yscateupa (aka Izcateupa, Iscateupa) and ten other towns assoÂ� ciated with this administrative seat. Chickens and turkeys were also present in the Diocese’s relaciones for Tepuztlan, Tepepulco and Cuauhquilpan, and for the mines of Zimapan, Tasco and Zumpango del Río.90 Castilian chickens were increasing in numbers, as were Eugene Hunn, “Did the Aztecs Lack Potential Animal Domesticates?” American Ethnologist 9:3 (August 1982): 578-79. Terry G. Jordan writes, “The cowboys of sixteenth-century central Mexico were most often blacks or mixed-bloods with some measure of African ancestry, although the chief herdsman, or caporal, was usually a Spaniard…. Since some Mexican blacks at the middle of the sixteenth century were back-country Senegambian Sudanese by origin, knowledge of African herding techniques probably reached the Gulf lowlands…. Initially African herders in Mexico probably lived in slavery, although they were reportedly well treated and given considerable freedom of movement. After about mid-century, however, they and the various mixed-bloods evolved into fiercely independent wage laborers, who even dared to threaten a cowboy strike for higher pay in 1576. Such boldness suggests that acculturated Iberian blacks of Andalusian origin may have played a role.” See Terry G. Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 92. 90 ╇ For the towns in the district of Ueipuchtla, see Papeles de Nueva España, ed. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, 7 vols. (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1905), vol. 6: “Axocupan (Axocopan),” 18; “Yetecomac,” 23; “Tornacustla (Tulnacuchtla),” 25; “Gueypuchtla,” 30; “Tezcatepec,” 33; “Tecpatepec,” 37. Henceforth PNE. For the corregimiento of Yscateupa, see PNE 6: “Yscateupa,” 92; “Tzicaputzalco,” 98; “Alaustlan,” 104; “Ostuma,” 112; “Quatepeque,” 121; “Tlacotepeque,” 126; “Utatlan,” 130; “Tetela,” 136; “Cuetzala (Cueçala),” 143; “Teloloapa,” 148; “Tutultepeque,” 151. Also see “Tepuztlan,” PNE 6: 249; “Tepepulco,” PNE 6: 301; “Cuauhquilpan (Quauhquilpan),” PNE 6: 307; “Las Minas de Zimapan (Çimapan),” PNE 6: 4; “Las Minas de Tasco,” PNE 6: 280; and “Las Minas de Zumpango (Çunpango),” PNE 6: 320. The relación for Gueypuchtla actually reads “aves de Castilla y de la tierra” (PNE 6: 30). I am interpreting this as the more standard “gallinas de Castilla y de la tierra” found in the other relaciones. “Gallinas de la tierra” also may be contested. Sophie Coe wrote that there were many candidates for “Indian fowl,” but in the Nahuatl sources of central Mexico, “we can be sure that we are talking about turkeys.” Coe, 95-96.

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equally easily cared-for European pigs in Totolapa, Axocopan, Yetecomac, Gueypuchtla, Tezcatepec, Tepuztlan and Tasco.91 Far from being isolated to Mexico City, the invasion of Spanish chickens spread elsewhere, and it seems to have been welcomed by Amerindians.92 Between 1580 and 1582 in the Nahua-populated Diocese of Tlaxcala, the relación for Tlacotalpan reported that native and Spanish chickens were both to be found, and the relación for San Francisco Çuçumba elaborated that Castilian chickens were multiplying at a faster rate than native birds.93 Tlaculula reported, “There are native chickens called turkeys and there are Castilian chickens in abundance.” (“Ay gallinas de la tierra que se llaman gallipauos y ay gallinas de Castilla en abundancia.”)94 In the diocese of Oaxaca between 1579 and 1581, the relaciones also listed chickens and turkeys for Iztepexi, Chinantla, Macuilsúchil, Teutitlan del Valle, Tetícpac, Tlacolula, Mitla, Taliztaca, Nochiztlan, Pochutla, and Puerto de Guatulco.95 Amerindians had already been using domesticated birds to acquire protein, and eastern hemisphere chickens were adopted as one more resource. In Texupa, Macuilsúchil Tetícpac, Mitla and Nochiztlan, European pigs were raised.96 Indeed, 91 ╇ PNE 6: 10, 18, 23, 30, 33, 249, 280. For more on pigs, see David E. Vassberg, “Concerning Pigs, the Pizarros, and the Agro-Pastoral Background of the Conquerors of Peru,” Latin American Research Review 13: 3 (1978): 47-61; Benjamin Joseph Zadik, The Iberian Pig in Spain and the Americas at the Time of Columbus (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 2005). 92 ╇ Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: a History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 344. Concerning Amerindians and the chicken, Gibson wrote, “The most popular of the new animals was the chicken. One may speculate that its small size, dependable egg production, ease of rearing, and similarity to the turkey were all factors encouraging its use. Chickens multiplied rapidly in the early post-conquest years, suffered a loss in an epidemic in 1539-40, and then gradually regained their position of importance.” 93 ╇ PNE 5: 3, 167. 94 ╇ PNE 5: 109. 95 ╇ PNE 4: 20, 67, 103, 107, 112, 147, 150, 180, 210, 241, 246. Chinantla reported “Crian sus aves de la tierra e gallinas de Castilla….” (PNE 4: 67). In the Oaxaca relaciones, the generic “aves” was actually used quite frequently, and some variant of “aves de la tierra e de Castilla” appears in the relaciones for Tetícpac, Mitla, Taliztaca, and Puerto de Guatulco (PNE 4: 112, 147, 180, 246). The relación for Nochiztlan combined “aues de Castilla” with “gallinas de la tierra que son mayores que las de Castilla.” Here the larger turkey received the “chicken” appellation, while the smaller Castilian domesticated bird was identified more generically (PNE 4:210). Iztepexi, Macuilsúchil, Teutitlan del Valle, and Guatulco all reported some variant of “gallinas de Castilla” and “gallinas de la tierra” for the domesticated birds being raised (PNE 4: 20, 103, 107, 241). 96 ╇ PNE 4: 56, 103, 113, 147, 210.

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Amerindian beef consumption was even mentioned in reports for the Oaxacan towns of Tilantongo, Mitlantongo, and Tamazola. 97 Spaniards were certainly not alone in using other animals for meat, but this sort of reductionism also often, though not always, limited human ability to appreciate the range of behaviors exhibited by nonhuman sentients. The Florentine Codex’s initial wonder at the arrival of alien animals was modified by the exploitation of these animals as resources. Just as the hunter Juan Mateos was capable of reducing nonhuman animals to object status alone, Spaniards and Amerindians in central Mexico could become possessed by a quest to acquire resource wealth through their use of other animals. Though evidence points to total land use in New Spain dropping after 1519 due to precipitous decline in the Amerindian population, literally millions of grazing animals were introduced to the region for the first time.98 While Sherburne Cook’s and Woodrow Borah’s review of documents placed the 1646 Amerindian population at 1,293,420, and total human numbers at 1,498,068, the population of invading nonhuman animals was larger.99 According to Karl and Elizabeth Butzer, between 1526 and 1643, Spaniards in central and eastern Mexico received well over two thousand land grants for sheep estancias and over one thousand for cattle estancias. By 1640, over four million sheep and one- to two-million cattle populated the heartland of New Spain.100 In her research for the Valle del Mezquital, Elinor Melville demonstrated that around Tula, Amerindians received 78.9 percent of the sheepherding grants between 1560 and 1565, and they received license twice as often as Spaniards in the 1590s.101 Mexico’s indigenous people actively joined Spaniards in expanding livestock herds as new sources of wealth and protein. ╇ PNE 4: 75, 79, 84 ╇ Karl W. Butzer and Elizabeth K. Butzer, “Transfer of the Mediterranean Livestock Economy to New Spain: Adaptation and Ecological Consequence,” in Global Land Use Change: a Perspective from the Columbian Encounter, ed. B. L Turner II et al. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1995), 174. 99 ╇ Archaeological and paleoecological evidence points to an annual human population growth rate of 1.0% for the 150 years prior to the Spanish conquest. Butzer and Butzer, 174. Also Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, “Racial Groups in the Mexican Population since 1519,” in Essays in Population History, 3 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971-1979), 2: 197. 100 ╇ Butzer and Butzer, 161-62. 101 ╇ Melville, 137, 149. 97 98

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At present, it is hotly contested whether Pre-Columbian regional overpopulation and the concomitant demand for agricultural food resources started a cycle of soil degradation in places like the Valle del Mezquital, or whether the introduction of close-cropping, grazing Spanish sheep did so. Elinor Melville noted that the Valle del Mezquital only came to be associated with aridity and the mesquite cactus, instead of dense agricultural usage and at least some forest lands, in the late seventeenth century, and that this environmental degradation was due to “… unexpected consequences, because nobody could predict the outcome of changing land use on the basis of past experience: neither the Spaniards, who did not know the land, nor the Indians, who did not know sheep.”102 If the raising of sheep beyond carrying capacity contributed to the desertification of the Valle del Mezquital, then Amerindians played their part with their herds. And while the intensive work done by the Butzers on the Bajío, to the northwest of Mexico City, points to it having been more forested in colonial times than in the nineteenth century, the Butzers still found ample evidence for Amerindian adoption of all sorts of eastern hemisphere livestock throughout New Spain.103 Spanish sheep and cows were fruitful, and they multiplied, just as chickens and pigs did. The land of New Spain was not pristine either before or after the conquest. It was used to sustain human and nonhuman animals alike. Whether livestock did vast damage to the land or not they certainly 102 ╇ Melville, 162. Also 17-20, 86, 110. Andrew Sluyter has argued that early Spanish references to the fertility of central Mexico by Cortés and other Extremadurans may only reflect the fact that they came from “one of the dustiest corners of Spain” and used it “as their measure of what was prime rangeland and what was not.” And Carla Rahn Phillips has noted that 68% of Spain can be classified as dry, “receiving less than 500 millimeters of rain a year—in most areas far less.” See Andrew Sluyter, “Material-Conceptual Landscape Transformation and the Emergence of the Pristine Myth in Early Colonial Mexico,” in Political Ecology: an Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies, ed. Karl S. Zimmerer and Thomas J. Bassett (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003), 227; Rahn Phillips, “Time and Duration,” 533. More recently, Richard Hunter has argued that the differences between Melville and the Butzers may reflect different points of emphasis in interpretation, and the Butzers themselves wrote, “We do not contend that open-range grazing was without negative consequences…. But… damages were contained.” See Richard Hunter, “Positionality, Perception, and Possibility in Mexico’s Valle del Mezquital,” Journal of Latin American Geography 8: 2 (2009): 49-69. 103 ╇ Dense riparian forests seemingly existed in the Bajío until the 1830s. Butzer and Butzer, 179, 170-71.

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proliferated.104 In the midst of the Spanish empire’s exploitation of Amerindian and African labor, all the human animals of the empire were also shaped and defined by the exploitation of other animals as resources. Sheep and cattle provided woolen clothing and leather goods as well as food, and Spaniards on the ground throughout the Americas constantly noted the way Amerindians made use of other animals. In the late sixteenth-century viceroyalty of Peru, which stretched from Panama and Colombia in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south, Spaniards encountered people already accustomed to extensive pastoralism. The Incas were not the first Andean people to use the labor, wool and meat of domesticated llamas. The traÂ�diÂ�tion was long established, and the significance of llamas was reinforced by their sacred dimension.105 Guman Poma wrote that the Pre-Columbian supplicants who ritualistically begged the deities for rain during the month Uma Raimi (our October) included human children, dogs and a black llama. Though llamas were sacrificed regularly to the gods in Pre-Columbian times, it should be remembered that humans could be sacrificed too. A fellow sentient inhabitant of this world, the llama was also different from humans in being a source of meat, wool, transport, thongs and sandals.106 Just as the livestock of Narciso Camós’ Jardín de María (1657) became a meta╇ Already in 1964, the historian Charles Gibson noted, “In native society caciques and principales adopted sheepherding in imitation of wealthy Spaniards.” They then turned profit through the sale of wool and meat. Gibson, 345. 105 ╇ Smaller than llamas, domesticated alpacas provided wool and meat, but were not used as beasts of burden. The two related species of camelids were often herded together, and colonial sources do not distinguish very well between the two, especially with Spaniards commonly referring to both camelids as “carneros” and “ovejas de la tierra.” See Tom McGreevy, “Prehispanic Pastoralism in Northern Peru,” in The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation, ed. J. Clutton-Brock (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 231-39; Gordon Brotherston, “Andean Pastoralism and Inca Ideology,” in Walking Larder, 240-55; David L. Browman, “Origins and Development of Andean Pastoralism: an Overview of the Past 6000 Years,” in Walking Larder, 256-68. 106 ╇ Brotherston, 244, 249-52; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 256-57, 242-43. Guaman Poma used the Spanish “carnero,” or “sheep,” for “llama.” For more on Inca human sacrifice, see Constanza Ceruti, “Human Bodies as Objects of Dedication at Inca Mountain Shrines (North-Western Argentina),” World Archaeology 36: 1 (March 2004): 103-122; Andrew S. Wilson et al., “Stable Isotope and DNA Evidence for Ritual Sequences in Inca Child Sacrifice,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 42 (October 16, 2007): 1645661. 104

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phorical and metaphysical conduit to Mary as a type of earth goddess, Inca llamas helped humans to maintain ties with the sacred embedded in nature. Llamas helped the Incas to think about the world around them, as European animals and visions of Pan assisted Spaniards, but they still remained, both before and after the Spanish conquest, resources to be used. And they clearly were understood in this capacity by indigenous Andeans and Europeans alike. Native Andean pastoralism was therefore not ignored in the Spanish relaciones for the vast region that once had been the Inca empire. In the heart of what is now the country of Peru, the 1586 relación for the province of Vilcas Guaman identified llamas as indigenous “sheep” and “native livestock.” They were described as being beasts of burden like camels, but unlike camels, Andean camelids also provided wool used for clothing, and good-tasting meat.107 While the relaciones for New Spain reported the presence of both native and Castilian “chickens” in Amerindian communities, late sixteenth-century relaciones for Quito and San Juan de Pasto reported native and Castilian “sheep” (ovejas de Castilla y de la tierra).108 Cows and goats were also to be found in both places, while the officials responsible for the 1576 Quito relación waxed poetic about the prosperity of 30,000 married Amerindian men and their families. Aside from the common usage of coins from the silver mines of Potosí as a measure of wealth, the 1576 Quito relación took note of the local Amerindians’ use of many oxen, horses and mares, as well as large numbers of cattle, sheep and goats. A few pigs were also noted.109 Domesticated 107 ╇ “Descripción de Vilcas Guaman por el ilustre señor don Pedro de Carabajal, corregidor y justicia mayor della, en el año de 1586,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 183: Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 1, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 206. 108 ╇ “La Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito.—1573,” in Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 2, 213; “Sant Juan de Pasto, distrito de la Audiencia Real de San Francisco del Quito,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 189. 109 ╇ “Relación de la provincia de Quito y distrito de su Audiencia, por los oficiales de la Real Hacienda.—1576,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 170. For the cows and goats found in both Quito and Sant Juan de Pasto, also see “La Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito.—1573,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 213; “Sant Juan de Pasto, distrito de la Audiencia Real de San Francisco del Quito,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 189. Of course, adoption of these animals was encouraged by Spanish tributary demands, which included payment in livestock and the forced sale of chickens, eggs and rabbits at low fixed prices. Low meat prices helped to attract immigrants to Quito, a city that experienced high demographic turnover in colonial times. See Linda A. Newson, Life and Death in Early Colonial Ecuador (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 178, 180-83, 191, 196.

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animals, especially large pastoral animals, made those in authority feel prosperous, providing them with tributary payments on the hoof, and that feeling of prosperity was transcribed unto the pages of the relaciones geográficas. The Amerindians of Ecuador’s present-day capital of Quito were reported to be well dressed in wool and cotton, with access to large quantities of wheat, maize, garbanzos, peaches, quinces, oranges and limes, as well as the labor and meat of animals.110 Though nature apart from humanity appeared as a tally of resources, the 1576 Quito relación also transparently assumed that humanity, with its physical and biological needs, could only survive and indeed thrive with adequate amounts of resources taken from nature— including other animals reduced to resource status. Humans were both a part of nature and somewhat set apart from nature by being given dominion over it. In the viceroyalty of Peru, the pastoral tradition associated with the herding of domesticated llamas was now expanded to include the herding of Spanish cows and sheep. Cows and sheep were reported for the administrative districts of Xauxa, Vilcas Guaman, Tucumán, Quito and Otavalo, and for the cities of La Paz and Loxa. They were also reported for the towns and missionary settlements of San Francisco Pueleusi del Azogue, Canaribamba, Santo Domingo de Chunchi and Alusi in the province administered by Cuenca.111 The relaciones for the provinces of Collaguas and Pacaxes only mentioned sheep, while in the settlements under Cuenca’s jurisdiction Cuenca itself raised cattle and the town of San Luis de Paute raised Castilian sheep.112 The sheer number of Spanish livestock seems to have increased significantly over the course of the sixteenth century, just as their populations increased to the north in New Spain. The 1573 Quito relación stated that the first cows brought there were valued at 110 ╇ “Relación de la provincia de Quito y distrito de su Audiencia, por los oficiales de la Real Hacienda.—1576,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 170. 111 ╇ In the Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1: “Provincia de Xauxa,” 171; “Ciudad de Guamanga y sus terminos,” 193; “Provincia de Vilcas Guaman,” 208; “Ciudad de la Paz,” 349; “Provincias de Tucumán,” 391. Also Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2: “Provincia de Quito,” 170, 178; “Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito,” 213; “Distrito de la Audiencia Real en la Cibdad de Quito,” 189; “Partido de Otavalo,” 239; “Ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia,” 277, 284, 287, 289; “Ciudad de Loxa,” 296. 112 ╇ “Provincia de los Collaguas,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1, 331; “Provincia de los Pacajes,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1, 340; “Ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo2, 268, 273.

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80-100 pesos and the first sheep at 50 pesos. In 1573, cows were being sold at 4 pesos and sheep at 2 tomines, or less than half a peso.113 Loxa, on the camino real leading from Cuzco to Quito, reported the same four pesos for an mature cow, while the cost of a young bull or ox was a bit more at five or six pesos. The price of sheep in Loxa was half-a-peso, with rams costing a little more.114 As in Quito’s 1573 relación, significant price drops were also noted by Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca. He wrote that in 1554 a Spanish gentleman bought ten cows for a thousand pesos. The price dropped to less than seventeen pesos a cow by 1559. In 1556 in Cuzco, sheep sold for forty pesos each when purchased as a flock, with fifty pesos the price of select individuals, but at the very end of the sixteenth century the price of sheep dropped to “four ducats or less.”115 In Peru, just as in New Spain, European animals proved fruitful and multiplied, and their 113 ╇ “La Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito.—1573,” in Relaciones geográficas— Perú, Tomo 2, 213. The relación reported that cows, goats, mares, sheep and pigs were brought to Quito from New Spain. The basic unit of account in sixteenth-century Spain was the maravedí. The real was worth 34 maravedís. The peso, consisting of eight reales, was equivalent to 272 maravedís, while the ducat equaled 375 maravedís. So the Cuzco price for sheep actually dropped from 10,880-13,600 maravedís (40-50 pesos) in 1556 to 1,500 maravedís or less (4 ducats or less) at the end of the sixteenth century. Akira Motomura, “The Best and Worst of Currencies: Seigniorage and Currency Policy in Spain, 15971650” The Journal of Economic History 54: 1 (March 1994): 106-107. Spanish currency values did rise and fall throughout the early modern era, and sometimes coins were valued differently in Europe and the Americas, with the real, for example, being valued at 44 maravedís on the island of Hispaniola in 1505 and 34 in Europe. Still, there is no disputing that the price of meat dropped over the course of the sixteenth century, even if the particular values ascribed the plethora of coins and units of account are not always certain. See Martin L. Seeger, “Media of Exchange in Sixteenth-Century New Spain and the Spanish Response,” The Americas 35: 2 (October 1978): 174. For the use of tomines by Amerindians in the central Mexican city of Â�Tlaxcala, see The Tlaxcalan Actas: a Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Â�Tlaxcala (15451627), ed. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 70, 154. 114 ╇ “Relación y descripción de la ciudad de Loxa,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 296. 115 ╇ See Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, Part 1, Book 9, Â�chapter 17 for cows; Part 1, Book 9, chapter 20 for sheep.€Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Primera Parte de los Comentarios reales de los Incas, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 133: Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Tomo 2, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963), 358, 360. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, trans. Harold V. Livermore, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 1: 583, 586.

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abundance decreased their costliness. To the Spanish conquerors, this was the “bottom-line” indicator of the success of their invasion. Spanish conquest was meant to be transformative—from the introduction of a new spirituality to the propagation of newly introduced species. In the sixteenth century, European pigs, omnivorous and capable of consuming much human refuse, made their appearance in the regions administered by Xauxa, Pacaxes, Tucumán, Quito, Otavalo and Cuenca, and in the city of Loxa, eighty leagues from Quito.116 Chickens were found in the city of Puerto Viejo and the administrative districts of Xauxa, Guamanga (present-day Ayacucho in Huamanga Province, Peru), Vilcas Guaman, San Francisco de Atunrucana, Chunbibilcas, Collaguas, Otavalo and Cuenca.117 In Puerto Viejo, Castilian chickens were priced at one real each, or one-eighth of a peso.118 Amerindians joined Spaniards in raising and using these animals, building on their own cultural traditions regarding the exploitation of animals as resources. The 1586 relación for La Paz mentioned how chickens were being cared for inside Amerindian houses, even as guinea pigs, or cuys, continued to be cared for in this traditional fashion.119 Whatever the cultural differences, the general parameters were agreed to by Spaniards and 116 ╇ Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1: “Provincia de Xauxa,” 171; “Provincia de los Pacajes,” 340; “Provincias de Tucumán,” 391; and Tomo 2: “Provincia de Quito,” 170, 178; “Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito,” 213; “Partido de Otavalo,” 239; “Ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia,” 277, 284, 287, 289; “Ciudad de Loxa,” 296. One league is about 3.5 miles, so the distance from Quito to Loxa was estimated at 280 miles. 117 ╇ “Gallinas” were mentioned explicitly in the relaciones for Puerto Viejo, Guamanga, Vilcas Guaman, San Francisco de Atunrucana, Chunbibilcas, Collaguas, Otavalo, Cuenca and San Luis de Paute, an Amerindian town under Cuenca’s jurisdiction that paid some of its tribute in chickens. See Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1: “Ciudad de Puerto Viejo,” 136; “Ciudad de Guamanga y sus terminos,” 193; “Provincia de Vilcas Guaman,” 208; “Tierra del repartimiento de San Francisco de Atunrucana,” 234; “Partido de los Chunbibilcas,” 312; “Provincia de los Collaguas,” 331; and Tomo 2: “Partido de Otavalo,” 239; “Ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia,” 268, 274. The category “Aves de Castilla” was used in the relaciones for Xauxa and Cuenca’s subject mission of Canaribamba and town of Santo Domingo de Chunchi. See Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1: “Provincia de Xauxa,” 170; and Tomo 2: “Ciudad de Cuenca y Toda su Provincia,” 284, 287. 118 ╇ “Relación general del las poblaciones españolas del Perú hecha por el licenciado Salazar de Villasante—Puerto Viejo,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1, 136. 119 ╇ “Descripción y relación de la ciudad de La Paz,” in Relaciones geográficas— Perú, Tomo 1, 349-50. Likewise a relación for Otavalo reported that cuys continued

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their newly conquered peoples alike. At least one appropriate method of associating with other animals was their use as providers of labor, clothing and food. Though Amerindians adapted to the invasion of Spanish animals and new cultural definitions of prosperity—with the Navajos, for example, classically becoming a sheepherding people—the invasion was obviously not always neutral or beneficial.120 On February 3, 1552, testimony was taken in which the inhabitants of the Mexican to be raised for food. “Relación y descripción de los pueblos del partido de Otavalo—1582,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 2, 239. Just as Andean Amerindians, after the conquest, did not abandon their guinea pig meat, Amerindians of central Mexico continued to eat dog meat, much to the chagrin of the Dominican friar Diego Durán. Showing no interest in dogs as traditional European companion animals, he merely objected to the association of “unclean” dog meat with Pre-Columbian religious festivals and practices—with “idolatry.” He was also offended that Amerindians persisted in buying dog meat when one might buy more beef than the meat of two dogs for one real. On the other hand, the 1579 relación for Nexapa in Oaxaca reported “perrillos pelados… para comer y para ofreçer en sus sacrifiçios” in a much more blasé fashion. Not traditionally eaten by Spaniards, dogs could be assigned different “use value” as resources by different cultural traditions within the Spanish empire. Some Amerindians might consider them food, while they might be companions in labor and warfare to Spaniards and acculturated Amerindians. Likewise, though dogs were not customarily eaten by Spaniards, it should be noted that Hernán Cortés found dog meat tasty, and, in times of crisis, Spaniards, like other modern Europeans, have resorted to dog meat. See Diego Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme, ed. Ángel Ma. Garibay K., 2 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1967), Bk. 1, chap.€20:€180-81; Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, trans. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 27879. For Nexapa, see “Relación de Nexapa,” in PNE 4: 41. Also see Gibson, 566-67, n. 87. For Spaniards and the consumption of dog meat, see Coe, 96; Hernán Cortés, “Fifth Letter,” Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 398; Julián López García, Carne y sangre animal en crisis alimentarias y rituales (Salamanca: Centro de Cultura Popular Ángel Carril, Diputación de Salamanca, 2005); available from Grupo de Estudios de Etnología Americana, www.etnologiamericana.org/view/download/Sem%20Los%20Animales .Julian.pdf; accessed March 7, 2011. 120 ╇ The Navajos probably began keeping Iberian churro sheep before the establishment of peaceful relations with Spaniards in the early to mid- eighteenth century. The churro is a hardy, long legged sheep who had evolved in Middle Eastern deserts and was well adapted to the arid and semi-arid lands where the Navajos lived. Churro wool was less fine than merino wool, so that while merino sheep were carefully guarded by Spaniards, churros were more easily acquired by the Navajos and other Europeans alike. In 1743, one Spaniard said that he personally saw about 700 sheep when he traveled among the Navajos, and the total number of Navajo sheep easily stood in the thousands. See Lynn R. Bailey, If You Take My Sheep… The Â�Evolution and Conflicts of Navajo Pastoralism, 1630-1868 (Pasadena, CA: Westernlore Publications, 1980), 44-45, 67, 75-77, 106, 112. Also James F. Downs, Animal

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town of Tecama complained that the Spanish encomendero to whom they paid tribute allowed his livestock to wander at will in their planted fields. This encomendero, Juan Ponce de León, not only let livestock like horses into the fields of Amerindian peasants, he made unreasonable tributary demands for pasturage and animal fodder. According to the testimony given to Diego Ramírez, a royal official, or visitador, sent from Spain to review conditions in New Spain, peasants were fleeing Tecama to avoid tribute payments and physical abuse. The abuse was demonstrated at the hearing by scars remaining from dog bites suffered by the peasants Constantino and Pedro.121 While the decision in this case does not remain, and may not have been given, in other instances, Spaniards sometimes recognized that their animal allies could be an imposition on conquered Amerindians. On January 23, 1592, the governing viceroy of New Spain, don Luis de Velasco, ordered the local royal magistrate, or corregidor, Juan de Vallende to stop livestock from the estancias of Juan Gutiérrez and Francisco Verrano from devastating Amerindian maize and vegetable fields in Chichicapa in south central Oaxaca.122 In 1603, the Spaniard Diego de Torres Maldonaldo was ordered to vacate a ranch he had established in the Mexican Gulf Coastal Plain region known as the Huasteca. In expanding the foraging fields for his mares, donkeys and cows, Amerindian banana groves and fruit-bearing trees had been destroyed. Captain Pedro Martínez de Loyasa, a lieutenant of the viceroy, personally supervised at a 1605 ceremony that returned

Â� Husbandry in Navajo Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). 121 ╇ “Testimonio de ciertas querellas que tenían presentadas en la Audiencia de México los Indios del Pueblo de Tecama contra su encomendero Juan Ponce de León (3 febrero 1552),” in Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505-1818, ed. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, 16 vols. (Mexico City: José Porrúa e Hijos, 1939-1940), 6:133-37. 122 ╇ Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Indios, vol. 6, 1a parte, exp.€56, f. 13a. This type of case was far from unique. On March 4, 1616, a solicitor of the General Indian Court named Joseph de Sali presented the complaints of the Amerindian towns of Jecalpa, Huauchinantla, Mitepec and Tamzula. Spanish ranchers were allowing their cattle to invade agricultural and horticultural lands where they ate Amerindian crops and produce. The court’s decision was that damages be paid to the towns, which were also now given the privilege of killing any invading cattle in the future. Any future offenders were to pay the expenses of the court, and the local alcalde mayor was to ensure compliance within twenty days of the decision. Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Indios, vol. 7, exp.€30, f. 14a-b. Also see Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: the General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 121-226.

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the usurped lands to the Amerindians involved.123 There was absolutely no question that the animals of Spain would remain in the Americas, but Amerindians were not entirely forgotten. Nonhuman animals were to remain confined by a Spanish definition of justice and just positioning vis-à-vis the needs of humans also found under Spanish dominion. Spanish laws and customs that had developed over the course of centuries of interaction with other animals defined as livestock played their significant role here, as Spaniards defined themselves through dominance displays and benevolent stewardÂ�ship alike. They painted themselves “good shepherds” as well as “Â�matadores.” In Conclusion In the early modern Spanish empire, both humans and other animals were used as resources. They satisfied the early modern “bottom line.” Thus, the Jesuit José de Acosta noted that the 1587 fleet from Santo Domingo brought 35,444 cattle hides to Seville, while 64,350 hides worth 96,532 pesos were transported from New Spain.124 The fascinating and very animate animals of the Florentine Codex could be reduced to product—even by a priest who took great pleasure in the behavior of live monkeys. Nonhuman animals were sources of entertainment, food and clothing, but, as we will see in chapter five, they also reflected the wonders of God’s creation for someone like Acosta. In that sense, they possessed a value beyond human use value alone. They resembled the sacred llamas of Peru. To early modern inhabitants of the Spanish empire, nonhuman animals were God’s before they were placed under human dominion. They possessed a metaphorical and metaphysical dimension that complicated attitudes and contributed to definitions of appropriate and inappropriate use. As late as 1647, when René Descartes and Robert Boyle walked the earth, Spanish policy failed to reduce nonhuman animals to the 123 ╇ Miguel Aguilar-Robledo, “Formation of the Miraflores Hacienda: Lands, Indians, and Livestock in Eastern New Spain at the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Latin American Geography 2: 1 (2003): 100. 124 ╇ José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Frances LópezMorillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 231; José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 73: Obras del P. José de Acosta de la Compañia de Jesús, ed. P. Francisco Mateos (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1954), Bk. 4, chap.€33:€128.

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status of unfeeling automata—even while making use of them. Upon learning that horses being sent to the battlefields of the Catalan rebellion were being mistreated by their commissaries, King Philip IV ordered that they should be treated well, and that commissaries found guilty of malfeasance should be punished as an example.125 Just as free Castilian men marching to possible death on the battlefield were to receive their rations and not be abused, horses serving as warriors were to receive their due according to station. Both people and other animals might be sacrificed, but their animate and sentient natures were never entirely ignored, whether by Spanish authorities or their conquered subjects. Spanish culture had its own sense of the appropriate and inappropriate, of fair use and abuse. Their sense of appropriateness might not have been ours, but their quest resembled our own, even as their partnerships with other animals for all sorts of reasons did. Ten years after Philip IV demonstrated his concern for war horses, the Dominican Narciso Camós wrote about good shepherds and shepherdesses, with their blessed domesticated animals, finding miraculous expressions of the divine order in a nature especially sanctified by Mary the Mother of God serving as a kind of nature goddess. As people might be used by the divine, other animals could be used by sacred beings in such a way that humanity’s using them up without restraint would be seen as an affront to God. Indeed, seventeenth-century Spaniards could readily see linkages between the use and abuse of humans and other animals, even as Philip II worried about the abusive don Carlos. There were transgressions as well as appropriate behaviors in human interaction with the animal and the rest of the natural world. First and foremost among the transgressions was the usurping of elite authority by subordinate humans who too often could be derogatorily compared to other animals, while the elites saw themselves as closer to God. As we will see in the next chapter, witchcraft was perceived as the animal in rebellion.

╇ “Del Rey al Marqués de Aytona, fecha en Madrid á 30 de Junio de 1647,” in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, 96: 456-57. 125

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CHAPTER FOUR

SPIRIT GUIDES TO HELL? SHAPE-SHIFTING AND THE POWER OF ANIMALS INVERTED Early modern European authority viewed witchcraft as transgression, and those who held power in the Spanish empire were no exception. Even when judged superstition, witchcraft was never seen as harmless in that those accused of witchcraft generally showed a very poor understanding of Christian authority’s interpretation of nature and reality. In the early modern Spanish empire, authorities were never uniform in their agreement that witchcraft involved a pact with the Devil, but maleficia, harmful magical acts, were often feared as rebellious and subversive efforts. While elites, including professorial priests, might learn from other animals to be more effective and benevolent masters under God, peasants and other commoners sometimes were considered witches when they sought power beyond their station, including the use of animal “tricks” to challenge the alpha status of their “betters.”1 Unlike the elites who used other animals as educative models, witches were said to transform on occasion into nonhuman animals. When this was done among the indigenous people of the Americas, Spaniards in power were confronted by yet another conundrum. Among Amerindians, dominant and elite cultural voices had once lionized animal transmutation and the use of animal spirits for guidance. What was inversion and transgression to Spanish authorities had been appropriate in the Americas. From an Amerindian frame of reference, it was the Spaniards who were guilty of inverting the order of nature itself. In turn, Amerindian and European shape-shifters challenged the notion, dear to individuals 1 ╇Of course, the witch might also be a woman who sought to subvert male patriarchal control, or a neighbor who attacked another individual out of jealousy. In one form or another, witches challenged what was considered the appropriate social order. See Ruth Behar, “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 179, 201.

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like Suárez and Descartes, that reason was an insurmountable divide between humans and other animals.2 Witches even forced a few members of the elite in authority to wonder just how rational and disinterested they were as they tortured witches to force them into submission. While a Jesuit priest like Suárez or Acosta would never consider becoming an irrational animal, witches, in ways far more explicit than Sabuco or Cervantes, blurred the boundary between all sentient animals and that special human subset of “rational” animals. Between 1609 and 1614, the Inquisitorial tribunal of Logroño tried 102 Basque witches.3 Accused of attacking and killing people and domesticated livestock, these witches were also accused of transmuting into pigs and dogs, and of being taught their craft by a supernatural cat.4 Subordinating humankind’s special status apparently opened the portal to every chaotic transgression imaginable. At their reputed countercultural feasts, witches ate human flesh as though it were pork (“asi de carne humana como de tocino”).5 Such unlikely acts of cannibalism may have been interpolated or elicited by the inquisitors themselves, but the body’s animal needs were referenced on a number of occasions in the testimony. According to Maria Gonçalez, she renounced God’s authority and joined Satan’s rebellion for two ducats and two hanegas of wheat.6 Sixty-six-year-old Ynes de Corres was able to convince María Mezquia, a poor widow who lived with her, 2 ╇ For medieval concerns “with animals that violated clear categories of difÂ� ferences,” see Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 138-39. 3 ╇ Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609-1614) (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 396-404. 4 ╇ Un Documento de la Inquisición sobre brujería en Navarra, ed. Florencio Idoate (Pamplona: Editorial Aranzadi, 1972), 126, 131, 66, 81, 154, 168. 5 ╇ Ibid., 138, 134. 6 ╇ Ibid., 109. Early modern Spanish weights and measures were not completely uniform and subject to local variations, while the purchasing power of currency fluctuated a great deal over time. The hanega or fanega was usually equal to 1.5 English bushels. The Spanish gold ducat was equivalent to 375 maravedís. Akira Motomura writes, “For perspective, common prices in maravedis around 1600 were 15 to 17 maravedis for a kilo of bread, 18 to 25 for a liter of wine or milk, and 68 to 136 for a laborer’s daily wage.” Maria Gonçalez sold her soul for about three bushels of wheat and what a day laborer might earn in approximately 5 ½ to 11 days. For weights, see Colonial Spanish America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), x. For currency, see Akira Motomura, “The Best and Worst of Currencies: Seigniorage and Currency Policy in Spain, 1597-1650,” The Journal of Economic History 54: 1 (March 1994): 106.

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to renounce God and his mother Mary for money and wheat given to them at the witches’ sabbath (aquelarre) by a rich man who was obviously the Devil.7 Other witches pathetically sold their souls for a daily allotment of millet flour.8 Satan did not have to pay a great deal to acquire the services of such downtrodden people, who when put to the question by inquisitors could dream of nothing grander than a regular meal. The animal nature of humanity is indeed never more graphically apparent than when people are hungry. We have bodies and material needs quite related to those of cats and pigs. For better or worse, only our capacity for interpretation and reflection supersedes that of other animals, and it was through that capacity that Spanish inquisitors and other early modern authority figures built their fantastic world of witches, demons and animal transmutation. Inversion: Animals Striving Beyond Their Station The historian of witchcraft Stuart Clark has argued convincingly that early modern European elites generally envisioned a divinely ordered universe constructed along binary lines of good and evil, the permissible and the impermissible. By definition in a world that allowed for wrongdoing, there were those who wished to invert cosmic order.9 Clark has argued that it really is unsurprising that a number of individuals interested in promoting the power of the early modern state also took an interest in writing about witchcraft. King James I of England (r. 1603-1625) and the French political thinker Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596) both wrote demonologies to aid in the struggle against demonically inspired rebellion.10 Even before fifteenth-century theologians began describing witches as heretics who rebelled against God by seeking demonic pacts, witches were popularly seen as ╇ Documento de la Inquisición sobre brujería en Navarra, 50. “Aquelarre” or “Akelarre” is literally “the meadow of the he-goat (‘akerra’)” in Basque. As at other European witches’ sabbaths, Satan might take many forms, but the he-goat was an extremely common avatar, perhaps recalling the old Mediterranean deity Pan. Henningsen, 71; Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches, trans. Nigel Glendinning (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), 147. 8 ╇ Documento de la Inquisición sobre brujería en Navarra, 103. 9 ╇ Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 13, 31-42 10 ╇ Ibid., 668-69. James wrote his in 1597 when he was still only James VI of Scotland, soon to inherit the English throne from the childless Elizabeth I in 1603. 7

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Â� evil-doers who worked maleficia against their enemies.11 According to Robin Briggs, they were neighbors who disrupted peaceful community in their jealousy and pursuit of vengeance.12 In reality, they were projections of fears of chaos: from the local peasant level, as studied by Robin Briggs, to the elevated heights of kingly and clerical authority, as studied by Stuart Clark. They represented inversion and transgression on multiple fronts in a Europe still new to the Protestant Reformation and multiple public expressions of Christianity.13 As religious wars flourished between Catholics and Protestants and the Holy Office of the Spanish Inquisition brutally hunted down forcibly converted Jews and Muslims who tried to hold on to some remnants of their traditions, frightened elites also envisioned enemies who were attempting to invert the natural order of the entire cosmos—and not all those enemies were humans and demons.14 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nonhuman animals were put on trial for homicide, among other crimes. As noted by Darren Oldridge, these trials proceeded from the Christian understanding that, in accordance with Genesis 1: 28, “God placed the brute creation under the control of men and women.”15 If humans were thereby given dominion over nonhuman animals, “For an animal to harm a human was a violation of this natural order.”16 Thus, in France in 1567, a sow who ate a four-month-old baby girl was hanged for murder.17 ╇ Ibid., 87-88. Also H. C. Erik Midelfort, “Witchcraft,” in Reformation and Early Modern Europe: a Guide to Research, ed. David. M. Whitford, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 79 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008), 363-64. 12 ╇Robin Briggs, Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (London: Penguin Books, 1996), 12, 93-95. 13 ╇ See Chapter 4, “The Impact of the Reformation,” in Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2006), 109-133. 14 ╇ Martha Few shows us that locusts became such enemies when they inappropriately ate grain meant for humans. Martha Few, “Killing Locusts in Colonial Guatemala,” in Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming). 15 ╇ Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds (London: Routledge, 2005), 45. Also Esther Cohen, “Law, Folklore and Animal Lore,” Past and Present 110 (February 1986), 21, 30-31. For the early classic on this topic, first published in 1906, see E. P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals: the Lost History of Europe’s Animal Trials (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). 16 ╇Oldridge, 45. Also see Oldridge, 41-44; Cohen, 20-21, 31. 17 ╇Oldridge, 51; Evans, 308-309. 11

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Influenced by Scholastic authority, early modern European judicial officials may not have ascribed reason to animals, but Esther Cohen notes that “country folk, far from denying animals any human characteristics, consistently attributed to them both reason and will.”18 Categories were further blurred by popular beliefs such as the belief in hybrid beasts like werewolves. If we can believe inquisitorial and other trial sources, many in the countryside, including the Spanish countryside, thought that humans could magically become preternatural dogs, pigs and wolves, and James Serpell, among others, has suggested that a shamanistic tradition may have survived in parts of Europe into the early modern period, even as shamanistic transformations were prevalent in Amerindian cultural traditions.19 Still, the sources accumulated in witch trials must always be suspect, with the trials’ reliance on intimidation, coercion and torture. Lyndal Roper and others have argued that testimony gathered at such trials was a synthesis of the views that witnesses and the accused brought with them and those views imposed by interrogators.20 Therefore, it is legitimate to ask whether tales of shape-shifting and demonic animal companions on both sides of the Atlantic were organically developed in popular culture or the results of elite fantasy forced on terrified victims. Indications are that elements of both trends existed in witch trials, and it is certainly sometimes extremely difficult to disentangle the two, but it is not always impossible. PreColumbian Mesoamerican art, from the time of Olmec civilization (c. 1200-400 B.C.E.) to that of the Aztecs, illustrates human-jaguar hybrids and the identification of warriors and priests with animals such as jaguars, eagles and coyotes.21 Nahua popular belief in animal transmutation and the magical power of nonhuman animals becomes ╇ Cohen, 21, 35. ╇ James A. Serpell, “Guardian Spirits or Demonic Pets: the Concept of the Witch’s Familiar in Early Modern England, 1530-1712,” in The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives, ed. Angela N. H. Creager and William Chester Jordan (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 179-80, 183-84. Also see Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), 153-204. 20 ╇ Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 50; Marko Nenonen, “Culture Wars: State, Religion and Popular Culture in Europe, 1400-1800,” in Witchcraft Historiography, ed. Jonathan Barry and Owen Davies (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 11114. 21 ╇ Manuel Aguilar-Moreno, Handbook to Life in the Aztec World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 10, 90, 104-106, 180, 202-203. 18 19

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transparent when evidence is gathered for the popular survival of these beliefs into the present-day, as has been done by the anthropologist Timothy Knab.22 If tales were only told to submit to an interrogator’s world view, they would not have been taken home. Likewise, Julio Caro Baroja, between 1935 and 1950, could find a number of Basques who related tales of witches transformed into “rats, cats and asses.”23 Inquisitors, who wished to eliminate such deviltry or superstition, failed. In the mess that is inquisitorial coercion, they may have even reinforced such beliefs as a form of cultural resistance. It truly is impossible to say in many particular documents what was the imposed inquisitorial perspective and what was the world view of frightened people with less power. Whether coerced or not, Iberian and Amerindian witnesses both presented testimony that transmutations occurred and animals were associated with witchcraft. Such public discussion was expected and acceptable, and witnesses often brought such testimony to authorities before any coercion or intimidation. What is most significant is that in the early modern Spanish empire there was a real discussion of nonhuman animals involved in witchcraft, and intellectuals responsible for the sedimentary documents left behind present us with evidence of their own credence and skepticism. Outside of the Spanish empire, some European intellectuals, like the Cambridge professor Henry More (1614-1687), accepted animal transmutation, but, as demonstrated by Darren Oldridge, many more intellectuals, including a number of Spaniards, simply could not accept a rational human soul encased in the body of a sensitive, but irrational, animal. If such a thing were ever to happen, it could only be God who was responsible, not Satan, and most intellectuals saw God as running a tighter ship than that. For those intellectuals who did not merely write off animal transmutation as superstition, witches’ transformations into nonhuman animals were illusory, the result of “glamour” provided by that rebellious deceiver Satan.24 Humans were related to other animals in a general sense, but specific differences also set them apart. Witches, their animal familiars and magical shape-shifters were the ultimate rebellious practitioners of inversion, whether through erroneous interpretation or actual 22 ╇ Timothy J. Knab, A War of Witches: a Journey into the Underworld of the Â�Contemporary Aztecs (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). 23 ╇ Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 235. 24 ╇Oldridge, 99-104.

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Â�practices. In one way or another, witches and shape-shifters had to be suppressed. Just imagine then the predicament that faced Spanish officials who ruled over entire Amerindian communities that readily accepted transmutation across species lines. Through their experience in bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, Spaniards feared that interpretive differences would lead to chaos. Spaniards asked themselves again and again just how uniform their culture had to be, and exactly what the status of human and nonhuman animals was to be within that culture. The historian Zeb Tortorici’s research has rediscovered Mexican inquisitorial cases, as late as 1770 and 1780, in which individuals were severely reprimanded and promised future punishment if they persisted in mock ceremonies administering baptismal, matrimonial and funerary rites to dogs. In 1770, the wedding of two dogs occurred in the midst of jests, drinking and dancing, but the ritual was performed by an actual priest. Though inquisitors recognized elements of carnivalesque social satire that were permitted before Lent, they worried, as argued by Tortorici, that participants at these rituals were veering dangerously close to heresy and inversion of the divinely ordained natural and social order.25 Thus, even late into the colonial period, and with the language of witchcraft absent, the Inquisition sought out tales of bad animals who assisted humans in breaking down divinely ordained natural barriers. Inquisitors, as guardians who policed challenges to the social order, emphasized a difference between the rational and immortal human soul and other animate life, but this was not the case for all individuals in the Spanish empire. That Oliva Sabuco and Miguel de Cervantes sometimes presented degrees of difference, rather than insurmountable difference in kind between humans and other animals, demonstrates that there were differences in perception 25 ╇ Tortorici’s research is very important for the methodological integration of animal studies into Latin American history. See Zeb Tortorici, “‘In the Name of the Father and the Mother of All Dogs’: Canine Baptisms, Weddings, and Funerals in Bourbon Mexico,” in Centering Animals. Of Carnival before Lent, Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán has written, “For a brief moment, the oppressed impose their rules. At the same time, carnivals define the limits of social order. Although mockery, liberty, and pleasure rule in these days, not all acts are sanctioned…. (I)nversion of the social order has its principles and limits. During carnivals, men dress as women and the poor as the rich, but the opposite is indeed a rare occurrence.” Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Pemissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, trans. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1999), 104-105.

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even among members of the intellectual elite. Indeed, precedent for emphasizing the inter-relatedness of animal life could be found in the work of an early medieval Spanish theologian who was still cited with some frequency in early modern times. Isidore of Seville and Transmutation In 1599, Juan de Grial wrote his scholarly notes to an edition of the Etymologies of St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). The work was published in Madrid and remained a standard edition until the Jesuit scholar Faustino Arévalo published his edited opera omnia of Isidore in Rome between 1797 and 1803.26 Written by a seventh-century Iberian bishop who went on to become a saint, the Etymologies perceived greater flux and permeability in the animal kingdom than the works of Francisco Suárez, who still cited Isidore to distinguish natural law and the ius gentium.27 Early seventeenth-century students of Isidore might read: There are accounts of certain monstrous metamorphoses and changes of humans into beasts, as in the case of that most notorious sorceress Circe, who is said to have transformed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and the case of the Arcadians who, when their lot was drawn, would swim across a certain pond and would there be converted into wolves. That the companions of Diomede were transformed into birds is not a lie from story-telling, but people assert this with historical confirmation. Some people claim that witches (Striga) were transformed from humans. With regard to many types of crimes, the appearance of miscreants is changed and they wholly metamorphose into wild animals, by means of either magic charms or poisonous herbs. Indeed, many creatures naturally undergo mutation and, when they decay, are transformed into different species—for instance bees, out of the rotted flesh of calves, or beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.28 26 ╇ “Editions of the Etymologies and this Translation,” in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. and ed. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 27. 27 ╇ Francisco Suárez, S. J., A Treatise on Laws and God the Lawgiver, in Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suárez, trans. Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown and John Waldron, 2 vols. (Oxford and London: Clarendon Press and Humphrey Milford, 1944), 2: 40, 42, 334, 337, 342. For the Latin, see Tractatvs de legibvs ac Deo legislatore in the same edition, vol. 1: 15, 16, 184, 185, 188. 28 ╇ Isidore, Etymologies, 246. For the English translation of Book 11, chap.€4 and Book 12, chaps. 1-2, I have used the Barney edition as cited in note 20. For the Latin,

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The world of the Etymologies allowed for both inappropriate and divinely ordained transmutations and hybridizations. While Isidore saw humans’ forced mating of animals of different species as an “unnatural combination” (“adulterina commixtione”) leading to such hybrids as mules, he confused carrion’s attractiveness as a place to lay eggs with carrion’s supposed ability to generate another species spontaneously.29 His mind was open to God’s allowing transmutation as a natural process of spontaneous generation. Species boundaries were somewhat permeable and not entirely fixed. He only wondered whether it was permissible for humans to cross those boundaries, associating such crossings with witchcraft and unnatural hybridiÂ� zations. Not so far removed from those today who challenge the cross-species transference of genetic information to create biopharmaceuticals in the milk of transgenic cows and hearts in pigs for xenotransplantation, Isidore saw the proximate causes of his own version of “selection under God” as a process not to be tampered with lightly by human beings.30 There is a complexity in his early medieval thought, and, like Oliva Sabuco, there is also a great deal Isidore of Seville, The Etymologiarum sive Originum, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911); available from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/ Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Isidore/home.html; accessed June 26, 2009. 29 ╇ Isidore, Etymologies, 250, for the mule as “unnatural combination.” Joyce E. Salisbury notes that though Isidore recorded ancient fables of hybrid monsters rather matter-of-factly, he showed a great deal of interest in barnyard hybridization as well. Salisbury, Beast Within, 139-40. 30 ╇ Naturally occurring in human milk, recombinant human lactoferrin, a protein involved in host defense, has been produced in bovine milk. See Patrick H. C. van Berkel et al. “Large Scale Production of Recombinant Human Lactoferrin in the Milk of Transgenic Cows,” Nature Biotechnology 20: 5 (May 2002): 484-87. Transgenic pig hearts are being prepared for eventual transplantation into humans. See William L. Fodor et al., “Expression of a Functional Human Complement Inhibitor in a Transgenic Pig as a Model for the Prevention of Xenogeneic Hyperacute Organ Rejection,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91 (November 1994): 11153-57. For criticism, see Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), 2-3, 96-103; “Is This Cow a Human-Animal Hybrid?,” SeedMagazine.Com (April 13, 2006); available from http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/is_this_cow_a_human-animal_hybrid/; accessed June 26, 2009. Where Isidore might see hybrids and monsters as threatening, a different emphasis was found at a later time. Harriet Ritvo writes, “The desire to triumph over obstacles mounted by nature may also explain the Victorian fascination with hybrids, which explicitly violated natural categories. Even small-scale breeders might be tempted by the opportunity to cross their pets or chattels with wild animals.” Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: the English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 235.

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of respect demonstrated the sensitivity and intelligence inherent in animal “souls.” “Moved by spirit,” Isidore’s animals were literally “animate” beings, creatures who possessed a soul or “anima.”31 They included those defined as “livestock,” like the horses, with whom he, no doubt, would have had more personal experience than some other animals. Isidore described horses as fully emotional beings who “revel in open country” and grieve when defeated in a race, while exulting if victorious.32 His horses “respond to their own masters, and lose their tameness if their ownership changes. Some will allow no one on their back except their master; many of them shed tears if their master dies or is killed, for only the horse weeps and feels grief over humans.” 33 Believer in the transmutation of humans into wolves and other animals, Isidore still surely observed the horses around him and their very real need for affiliation with others. As noted by comparative psychologist Antonia J. Z. Henderson, “Horses have been evolutionarily selected to travel over large territories to feed and periodically run with sudden bursts of speed to flee actual or perceived threats.”34 They “revel in open country” and are born to run, living in herds and forming strong pair bonds. Henderson points out that when today’s show horses are kept in stalls with little social interaction, stress is exhibited in repetitive behaviors such as wood chewing, head nodding and stall walking. Among other solutions, she recommends allowing a stalled horse time to form an affiliation with a “turnout buddy” or for a human to simply spend more time with the stalled horse since “(a)s social creatures, horses will bond readily with members of other species, particularly when there are no equine alternatives.”35 As noted by Stephen Budiansky in The Nature of Horses, in the absence of other horses, horses will develop affection for a human that is “unquestionably real.”36 Across cultures and

╇ Isidore, Etymologies, 247. ╇ Ibid., 249. 33 ╇ Ibid. 34 ╇ Antonia J. Z. Henderson, “Don’t Fence Me In: Managing Psychological Well Being for Elite Performance Horses,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 10:4 (September 2007): 318. 35 ╇ Ibid., 320. 36 ╇ Cited in Henderson, 321; Stephen Budiansky, The Nature of Horses: Exploring Equine Evolution, Intelligence, and Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 84-85. 31 32

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across the centuries, Isidore’s horses of deep feeling have survived the scrutiny of ethological methodology.37 Saint Isidore was not frightened to see behavioral similarities between humans and other animals. There were permeable gradations in his natural world, and his dog, another common enough animal in seventh-century Seville, produced offspring with “violent” wolves, even as we know this to be true. An animal closely related to the wolf, “No animal is smarter than the dog”: They alone recognize their own names; they love their masters; they defend their master’s home; they lay down their life for their master; they willingly run after game with their master; they do not leave the body of their master even when he has died. Finally, it is part of their nature not to be able to live apart from humans.38

Isidore’s classically loyal dogs were the epitome of animal intelligence and a repository of emotion like the horse. Is it instinct alone for such a creature to identify itself by means of a learned name? Like the brilliant hunting dog owned by King James of England and Scotland in the seventeenth century, Isidore’s dogs were capable of some degree of recognition and understanding. Those who read Juan de Grial’s edition of Isidore’s Etymologies might just wonder about the capacity of animals to make choices and the extent to which we are like them. However, they were also warned against directly violating divinely and naturally ordained species boundaries themselves. If dogs and wolves mated by chance; and if the spontaneous generation of bees and scorpions occurred; that was nature’s and God’s business. Human interference through magic, or otherwise, was questionable at the very least, and an act of rebellious inversion at the very worst. ╇ His interpretations became less accurate when dealing with animals with whom he apparently had less interaction. Therefore, the lynx, whom he thought was a type of wolf rather than a cat, buried precious stones that formed from the hardening of its urine. Lynxes did this “from a sort of natural jealousy lest such excretion should be brought to human use.” Likewise, while today’s ethologists accumulate massive amounts of evidence demonstrating phenotypical and genotypical similarities between humans and other primates, Isidore wove tall tales and hasty conclusions based on an understandable lack of evidence. His apes possessed knowledge of the elements, and ape mothers could choose to love or neglect their offspring. With many seeing a great similarity between apes and humanity, it should come as no surprise that Isidore’s ape category also included satyrs, who, unlike other apes, possessed a “somewhat pleasing appearance”. Isidore, Etymologies, 252-53. 38 ╇ Ibid., 253. 37

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chapter four Perceptions of Brutal Rebellion and Chaos within the Empire

In the words of Sabine MacCormack, Spanish theologians, like their European counterparts north of the Pyrenees, often “described a universe in which divine power, articulated through the beliefs and rituals of the Catholic church, was paralleled and rivaled at every stage by its counterpart, the power of demons.”39 In early sixteenthcentury Spanish witchcraft treatises, Pedro Ciruelo and the Franciscan Martín de Castañega argued that the Devil mocked appropriate Catholic order through idolatrous counter-rituals and subversive pacts which might be explicit or implicit. The universe was divided in a war between good and evil, and much of the imagery in both Spanish works showed the influence of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Institoris.40 Though Ciruelo and Castañega both allowed for more natural causation of illness and disaster than the Malleus, they focused on the inversion of God’s sacraments by the countercultural rituals and spells of witches, and Castañega claimed that witches could transform into birds, cats and foxes.41 Both works had their influence in the Americas, where, as MacCormack writes, the need to differentiate “the works of god from the works of demons” became “explicit.”42 In colonial Mexico, the first work dealing specifically with diabolism, that of the Franciscan Andrés de Olmos, “was inspired almost entirely” by Castañega, according to Fernando Cervantes, while MacCormack notes that Garcilaso de la Vega owned a copy of Pedro Ciruelo’s treatise.43 Empires embrace their specific hierarchies and definitions of order. 39 ╇ Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 43. 40 ╇ Ibid., 39-40. Heinrich Institoris, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. and ed. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007). 41 ╇ MacCormack, 40; Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 149-50. Also see Pedro Ciruelo, A Treatise Reproving All Superstitions and Forms of Witchcraft Very Necessary and Useful for All Good Christians Zealous for Their Salvation, trans. Eugene A. Maio and D’Orsay W. Pearson (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 1977), 65-110, 203-204; Pedro Ciruelo, Reprouación de las supersticiones y hechizerías, ed. Alva V. Ebersole (Valencia: Ediciones Albatros Hispanofila, 1978), 29-47, 80-81; Martín de Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerías, ed. Agustín González de Amezúa y Mayo (Madrid: La Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1946), 17-19, 23-32, 37-40, 47-49, 99-103. 42 ╇ MacCormack, 48. 43 ╇ Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: the Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 25; MacCormack, 39. Also Andrés de Olmos, Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios: edición del texto náhuatl con

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Witchcraft and the animals associated with witchcraft were therefore subject to scrutiny as challenges to that order. Theoretician of empire that he was, Francisco de Vitoria was concerned with rebellion and inversion as well as just rule. The former concerns took center stage in his manuscript on magic, composed in 1540. Laboring under the shadow of St. Augustine of Hippo (354430), the Etymologies and Scholastic systematizing, Vitoria prepared a lecture that distinguished between permissible natural magic and sinful demonic magic. Natural magic was defined as free from the intervention of spirits, quite real, and brought about through properties hidden in material nature, including the influence of astrology’s celestial bodies on earthly ones.44 Through their studies, learned philosophers, the epitome of the intellectual elite, were able to employ natural magic, and Vitoria’s list included Pythagoras, Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas’ teacher St. Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), a Scholastic who took a special interest in the natural world, including nonhuman animals.45 Obviously considered impermissible by Vitoria, demonic magic invoked spirits through an implicit or explicit pact with the Devil.46 It also exerted impact on the material world, but only in a highly constrained and deceptive way. Among other things, demonic magic, as Satan’s deception, failed to induce the transmutation of humans into other animals. Vitoria even opened his lecture with this topic, paralleling the discussion found in Isidore’s Etymologies. In addition to the transmutations of Diomedes’ and Ulysses’ men, those of the Arcadians into wolves after crossing a lake and Medea’s transformative witchcraft, Vitoria mentioned that the ancient Roman chronologist and naturalist Varro, as well as ancient poets, gave credence to such matters.47 But Varro was contested by St. Augustine who, in the eighteenth book of The City of God, argued “that those

traducción y notas en francés, trans. Georges Baudot (Mexico: Estudios Mesoamericanos, Misión Arqueológica y Etnológica Francesa en México, 1979), 56-84. 44 ╇ Francisco de Vitoria, De la Magia, in Obras de Francisco de Vitoria: Relecciones teologicas, trans. and ed. Teofilo Urdanoz (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1960), 1237, 1239, 1241, 1243-44, 1256. 45 ╇ Ibid., 1243. For some of Albertus Magnus’ observations and opinions regarding non-human animals, see Albert the Great, Man and the Beasts: De Animalibus (Books 22-26), trans. James J. Scanlan (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987). 46 ╇ Vitoria, De la Magia, 1274. 47 ╇ Ibid., 1230.

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transformations were not real, but apparent.”48 Though Vitoria conceded that demons might be able to move matter, they could not transform the very essence or substance of matter—something that was reserved for God and the miraculous.49 Where human-animal transmutation was concerned, the Devil could not undermine God’s order and rule by placing a rational soul, the very essence of humanity, in the body of “a brute.”50 According to Vitoria, the Devil killed the companions of Diomedes and Ulysses to replace them with animals, or, through a fantastic illusion, he made it appear as though the men had been transformed into nonhuman animals.51 Focused on issues of social hierarchy as he was, Francisco de Vitoria was forced to deal with nonhuman animals in a magical context, though, as in De Indis, he failed to take interest in the sensitive and animate faculties that they possessed. Any discussion of sensitivity in the animal soul was again avoided here, as it was avoided when discussing the conquest and “just” subordination of Amerindians. Vitoria’s vision of divine order and fear of magical attacks was the Spanish version of what Stuart Clark identifies as “thinking with demons.” European elites may have wanted to avoid cruelty toward their subordinates, but they also feared all sorts of challenges from those subordinates, including real or perceived challenges to the order of nature. In Vitoria’s world, a natural magician might do “marvelous things” by using “herbs unknown to the vulgar,” and even a common healer, or saludador, might possess some natural cure against rabies.52 Study and knowledge seemingly set individuals apart from the vulgar masses more than noble birth or ascribed status. In that sense, Vitoria remained committed to his vision of a common humanity, even while the cunning human saludador had to combat that rebellion against the natural dominion of humanity that was the bite of a rabid dog. As in his work on international law, Vitoria on magic only made reference to nonhuman animals to present, through opposition, his definition of humanity. Humans were 48 ╇ Ibid., 1235. Before Vitoria and St. Isidore, St. Augustine referenced the transmutations of the Arcadians and the men of Diomedes and Ulysses as a standard set of examples dating back to classical Greco-Roman sources. See St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), Bk. 18, chaps. 16-18: 780-84. 49 ╇ Vitoria, De la Magia, 1281, 1255. 50 ╇ Ibid., 1289. 51 ╇ Ibid. 52 ╇ Ibid., 1256, 1260.

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rational and given dominion under God over God’s creation. Animals were irrational subordinates, and if magicians appeared to make them speak at times, it was only that a demon voiced the words that seemed to come from a dog’s or donkey’s mouth.53 As in Aristotle’s work, truly rational speech was necessary and sufficient to define the essence of humanity, but Vitoria demonstrated no Aristotelian concern with the feelings of beasts. While Aristotle allowed for the pleasure and pain of nonhuman animals to be communicated through their cries, Vitoria failed to discuss nonhuman animals’ “voice.” Resemblance to humanity smacked of witchcraft, deviltry, rebellion and inversion. Once again, he proved to be no Sabuco or Cervantes. He was too concerned with divisions between humanity and the rest of nature to see degrees of difference, and popular or “vulgar” witchcraft was dangerous in that it often blurred the divide through claimed transmutation. One of the predictable ironies of history is that Vitoria, defender of Amerindians that he was, failed to touch upon the importance of shape-shifting from human to nonhuman animal form in diverse Amerindian cultural traditions.54 Just like peasants in the Basque lands of the Iberian Peninsula, Amerindians were said to transform into nonhuman animals. Of course, for Spanish authority, this alluded to magical inversion of the natural order and rebellion—a rebellion in which both subordinated humans and nonhumans participated. Subversive power was not to be acquired by those who were meant to be ruled, and Vitoria would have offered no consistent defense of Amerindians as acceptable humans if he had explored the shape-shifting traditions that he deemed cosmically illegitimate. In his 1629 Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions that Today Live among the Indians Native to This New Spain, the priest Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón chose to vilify the Nahua Amerindians of Mexico, then the heartland of the viceroyalty of New Spain, as shape-shifters who engaged in explicit and implicit pacts with Satan.55 Ruiz de Alarcón perceived his Amerindian parishioners as, with the help of ╇ Ibid., 1267. ╇ Vitoria’s work on magic and its allowance for some legitimate natural magic, even among folk healers, was ignored by authoritative elites on the ground in the Americas. Instead, idolatry and diabolism usually were linked by those who wished to evangelize Native Americans. For this argument, see Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 25-35. 55 ╇ Ibid., 35-36. 53 54

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the Devil, transgressing fixed organic categories set by God. In a work that itemized ways in which Nahuas resisted the imposition of Spanish Christian order through multiple “demonic” means, including Pre-Columbian invocations and drugs like ololiuhqui (made from the seeds of a species of morning glory, Rivea corymbosa), this beneficed curate of the Nahua parish of Atenango chose to open his colonial witch-hunter’s manual with the nahualli, his quintessential witch: Trustworthy persons have told me that while they were with an Indian he began to shout, saying, “Oh, they are killing me! They are harassing me! They are killing me!” And when they asked him what he was talking about, he replied, “The cowhands of such-and-such a ranch are killing me!” Going out into the countryside, they went to the commons of the mentioned ranch and found that the cowhands of it had hunted and killed a fox, or vixen. And upon returning to see the Indian, they found him dead. And, if I remember correctly, with the same blows and wounds that the fox had.56

The nahualli described above was seen as a magic user who could project a portion of his animating life force into an animal with whom he was identified at birth. According to Ruiz de Alarcón, nanahualtin (plural of “nahualli”) were “dedicated to the animal that the Devil assigned them….”57 Though Ruiz de Alarcon may have confused the tonalli, or animal day sign of every Nahua born, with projections of power and will into animals only associated with particular magic-users, or nanahualtin, any one-to-one identification of a human with another animal challenged this priest’s rigid, hierarchical world view.58 His God had given humans dominion over the rest of nature in such a way that the “true human” was a soul in the image 56 ╇ Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Tratado de las idolatrías, supersticiones, dioses, ritos, hechicerías y otras costumbres gentílicas de las razas aborígenes de México, ed. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (Mexico City: Navarro, 1953), Tratado primero, preámbulo, capítulo 1:€25. The translation used in the text is from Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions that Today Live among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, trans. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), First Treatise, chap.€1:€45. For ololiuhqui, see “Appendix D: Medicines,” in Treatise, 250-51. 57 ╇Ruiz de Alarcón, Tratado de las idolatrías, 24; Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions, 45. 58 ╇ Alfredo López Austin, Cuerpo humano e ideología, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1980), 1: 416-31; George M. Foster, “Nagualism in Mexico and Guatemala,” Acta Americana, 2: 1-2 (January-June, 1944): 85-103.

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of God, moving and directing an animal body. Any surrender to the animal was seen as illicit, the source of sin, and a tacit pact with Satan. Thus, the whole idea of projection into an animal was a much feared inversion of God’s fixed chain of being, and without reading Descartes or Malebranche, Ruiz de Alarcón conceived of a human being as a “ghost in a machine.” Ruiz de Alarcón belabored this point with testimony given to him by fellow priests and his own personal notary. According to the Dominican Andres Ximenez, two of his fellow friars were confronted by an old woman who said they had almost killed her, when all they could remember was throwing their hats and other objects at a bat that had invaded their cell the night before. Likewise, Ruiz de Alarcón’s notary Antonio Marques and a priest named Andres Giron, who was fluent in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire, both testified about Amerindian women who died as a result of projecting portions of their life force into caimans in order to do Spaniards harm. On both occasions, one near Acapulco and the other near Guatemala City, the women died after the caimans had been killed by Spaniards. Indeed, these women were rebels on multiple fronts. Not only did Ruiz de Alarcón see them as transgressing categorical boundaries set by God in the natural world; he clearly portrayed them as rebels against the Spanish imperial order on earth as well. In the Acapulco case related by Marques, the Amerindian woman dropped dead while spinning and weaving with the wife of the Spaniard Simon Gomez. Until shot by Gomez, the caiman employed by this nahualli had been trying to kill one of Gomez’s sons. In the Guatemala case related by Father Giron, a caiman’s being shot once again led to the death of an indigenous woman, who this time died while at catechism.59 Ruiz de Alarcón’s message was clear, prejudicial and frightening: while Amerindians seemingly lived among Spaniards in obedience and peace, they were still plotting against their overlords and intended to subvert their rule by using demonic witchcraft, a power traditionally associated with those fated to be weak in the biased witch-hunting manuals of the broader European world.60 What is too often overlooked in analyzing these cases, however, is that the weak in rebellion not only included women, poor peasants and conquered 59 60

╇Ruiz de Alarcón, Tratado, 24-28; Treatise, 45-47. ╇ Clark, 74, 79, 106-133.

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people. These rebellious weak and subordinated beings also included nonhuman animals. Bats, caimans and foxes were rebelling with subjugated Amerindians against Spanish rule. In so doing, these animals reflected traditions already embedded in European witch-hunting manuals, perhaps demonstrating the extent to which some members of the male clerical elite identified the lower orders of their society, as well as women, with nature appropriately subjugated to a male dominance perceived as rational.61 If Sabuco and Cervantes sometimes perceived seeds of rationality in non-human animals, many other Spaniards, like Francisco de Vitoria and Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, failed to look. This was not true of Amerindian cultures subordinated to Spanish rule however. While Nahuas, for example, clearly hunted and used non-human animals, the admission of agency, choice and acquired wisdom beyond humanity was prevalent enough to pose problems for the post-conquest Nahuas. Compiled under the auspices of a Franciscan friar who wished to make his fellow religious aware of lingering idolatries, Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex presented a cultural tradition that readily blurred the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman animal world.62 Just as Basque witches were said to learn from a cat, Nahua “guardians of tradition” were expected to learn from the jaguar, or ocelotl, often called “tiger” or “tigre” in the Spanish documents:63 It is a dweller of the forests, of crags, of water; noble, princely, it is said. It is the lord, the ruler of the animals. It is cautious, wise, proud. It is not a scavenger. It is one which detests, which is nauseated by [dirty things]. It is noble, proud.

And:

61 ╇ Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1989), 127, 132-44. On suppressing the “beast within” to maintain order, see Serpell, 181. 62 ╇ Louise M. Burkhart, “Doctrinal Aspects of Sahagún’s Colloquios,” in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, ed. J. Jorge Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicolson and Eloise Quiñones Keber (Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, State University of New York, 1988), 65-82. 63 ╇ In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire, “ocelotl” means “jaguar.” What we call an ocelot in English is the “tlaco-ocelotl.” See Nicholas J. Saunders, “Predators of Culture: Jaguar Symbolism and Mesoamerican Elites,” World Archaeology 26: 1 (June 1994): 105-106.

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The conjurers went about carrying its hide—the hide of its forehead and its chest, and its tail, its nose, and its claws, and its heart, and its fangs, and its snout. It is said that they went about their tasks with them—that with them they did daring deeds, that because of them they were feared; that with them they were daring. Truly they went about restored. The names of these are conjurers, guardians of tradition, debasers of people.64

Once, high-ranking and revered Aztec warriors were called jaguar warriors.65 As the lion was “noble” and “princely” to European elites, the jaguar was this for Aztec elites. “Cautious, wise, proud,” the jaguar exemplified skillful hunting, according to the Florentine Codex, and even provided a transference of power to those “conjurers” who carried a jaguar hide. Interestingly enough, the “conjurers” were described ambivalently as “guardians of tradition” and “debasers of people.” While the traditions they guarded might have been bad ones to Bernardino de Sahagún, were they necessarily bad to the Nahua interlocutors whom he questioned in the compilation of the Codex? Along with the early missionary efforts of Sahagún, the decade of the 1530s in colonial New Spain also saw the establishment of an episcopal inquisition by Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who, as a Franciscan friar, had been an inquisitor in his native Basque lands in the 1520s.66 Though officially removed from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office of the Spanish Inquisition by King Philip II in 1571, Amerindians were still tried earlier by Zumárraga and later by “an institution expressly dedicated to punishing the Indians’ religious 64 ╇ The account of the jaguar also mentions how the cat “sits up like a man” when struck by the arrow of “the skilled hunter.” Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 11: Earthly Things, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, 1963), chap.€1: 1, 3. 65 ╇ Saunders, 108-109. 66 ╇ Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 151. For his severity in dealing with Amerindian idolatry, in particular the 1539 burning of don Carlos Ometochtzin of Texcoco, Zumárraga “was censured from Spain” and “eventually removed as Apostolic Inquisitor.” The historian of the Mexican Inquisition, Richard Greenleaf writes, “Many authorities contended that there was not sufficient evidence against Carlos to merit such a harsh sentence.” See Richard E. Greenleaf, Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition 1536-1543 (Washington DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1961), 14-15. Also see Proceso inquisitorial del cacique de Tetzcoco don Carlos OmeÂ� tochtzin (Chichimecatecotl): Edición facsimilar de la de 1910, ed. La Comisión Reorganizadora del Archivo General y Público de la Nación (Mexico City: Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México, 1980).

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offenses, identified by various names: Office of Provisor of Natives, Tribunal of the Faith of Indians, Secular Inquisition, Vicarage of the Indians, Natives’ Court.”67 The early cases under Zumárraga included Nahua nobles who explicitly blurred the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman in their rebellion. They were nanahualtin, like those still feared by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón nearly a century later in 1629. In 1536, witnesses against the noble Tacatetl reported that he was a drunken “idolator” and polygamist who drew blood from boys as sacrifices to the old gods. He also was a “bad man and sorcerer” (“es mal hombre y hechicero”), who possessed the ability to transform into a “tiger” and all other sorts of animals. 68 Tacatetl’s case was not unique, and the Nahua Martín Ucelo (a Spanish corruption of Martín Ocelotl) was condemned to the loss of his property and perpetual imprisonment in Seville for his idolatry and magical transformations into the jaguar or “ocelotl” whose name he bore: “se hacía gato y tigre.”69 Like Tacatetl, he blurred categories in an unacceptable fashion. After the conquest, Spaniards and Nahuas both might eccentrically refer to the spotted jaguar as a “tiger” or “tigre,” but no rational human was expected by Spanish authority to degrade himself by transforming into a predatory nonhuman animal. This was cosmic rebellion, and it is telling that Martín Ucelo’s brother reported that Martín was making plans to stockpile arrows for a struggle against the Spaniards, or “Christians.”70 The struggle of world views feared ╇Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, “New Spain’s Inquisition for Indians from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in Cultural Encounters: the Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 23. Also see in the same volume, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, “Colonizing Souls: the Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline,” 3-22; Noemí Quezada, “The Inquisition’s Repression of Curanderos,” 37-57. 68 ╇ “Proceso del Santo Oficio contra Tacatetl y Tanixtetl, por idólatras (28 junio 1536),” in Publicaciones del Archivo General de la Nación, vol. 3: Procesos de indios idólatras y hechiceros, ed. Luis González Obregón (Mexico City: Tip.€Guerrero Hermanos, 1912), 5, 7. He also committed incest with his daughter, though the woman involved was unsure whether she was his biological daughter or not. Tacatetl ultimately was sentenced to public flogging and three-years imprisonment in a monastery. His daughter María was sentenced to imprisonment to be instructed in Catholicism. See “Proceso contra Tacatetl,” 13-14. 69 ╇ “Proceso del Santo Oficio contra Martín Ucelo, indio, por idólatra y hechicero (21 noviembre 1536),” in Procesos de indios idólatras y hechiceros, 25, 35. 70 ╇ “Proceso del Santo Oficio contra Mixcoatl y Papalotl, indios, por hechiceros (10 julio 1537),” in Procesos de indios idólatras y hechiceros, 58. Both the Tacatetl and Ucelo cases are reviewed at length in Greenleaf, 50-56. 67

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by Spanish authority was thereby made explicit, and the shape-shifter Martín seems to have had some very practical plans for rebellion. Zumárraga’s episcopal inquisition confirmed a Spanish fear that those who were associated with transmutation were rebels who aspired to nothing less than the destruction of God’s ordered hierarchy in nature and the Spanish imperial enforcers of that hierarchy on earth. To many Spaniards, Amerindians spoke rebelliously in their all too constant references to learning from other animals and “becoming” other animals. Ironically, Laura Lewis notes that Spaniards frequently insulted Nahuas as “dogs” in colonial New Spain. 71 For these metaphorical “dogs” to take on the characteristics of a predatory jaguar, however, was impermissible to Spanish authorities. It was inversion, and the Florentine Codex identified the “possessed one” as one “who assumes the guise of an animal” and is “a hater, a destroyer of people.”72 Still, in the midst of Spanish attacks, shape-shifting traditions persisted as a form of Amerindian cultural resistance. As late as the twentieth century, anthropologist Timothy J. Knab reported of a male “nagualli” who used jaguar teeth to sever the jugulars of enemies in land disputes and village rivalries. Knab’s Nahua instructor, doña Rubia, told Knab of old don Inocente, who “can be lion. He can be tiger. He can be an eater of men, a wolf, a horse, a snake, a dog, a lizard, a vulture, or an eagle. He can show you the ways of all of them.”73 Regardless of the best efforts of Spanish clerical authorities, the transmutations of the nanahualtin persisted. After all, humans do see their animal natures. The question is whether we choose to emphasize that which makes us a unique animal species or that which we obviously share with other animals. This leads to differences in tradition and cultural interpretation. To remove the rational faculty of the human soul from the shadow of animality was often the goal of anthropocentric Spanish authority, but many Spaniards, including 71 ╇ Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Â�Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 103-105. 72 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 10: The People, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, 1961), chap.€9: 31. 73 ╇ Knab, 80, 172. It should be noted that Knab altered personal names and place names so as to protect the privacy of the people he interviewed in the Sierra de Puebla. Also see Serpell, 179-80; Greenleaf, 121.

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members of the priestly elite, still saw something generically “animal” in us. One would have to deny our consumption and digestion of food, our sexuality and other observable aspects of our being to deny any linkage to the animal kingdom. While Nahuas definitely gave priority to humans over other animals, killing threatening jaguars and eating meat, they were more than willing to “become” other animals to learn from them and their apparently thoughtful patterns of behavior. This was not debasing to them, but it was to many Spanish authority figures who saw it as demonic witchcraft. This “deviltry,” this attempt to salvage aspects of Amerindian cultural traditions, existed in Spanish-ruled Peru as it existed in New Spain. In the words of anthropologist Irene Silverblatt, “Idolatry, curing, and witchcraft were blurred” in the practices of Andean Amerindians.74 During her trial for witchcraft, eighty-year-old Francisca Carguachuqui was identified as a healer who also maliciously “damaged crops, decimated herds, and caused illness.”75 She attacked people and animals identified as the property of humans. Accused of killing a priest and a landlord, coerced testimony revealed that she made a pact with the devil in the form of a cat and met another devil who appeared in the guise of a serpent.76 In a trial obviously dominated by the imposed definitions and perceptions of a Spanish clerical elite, she learned to rebel against Spanish authority from a wildness in nature that resisted Spanish male dominion. Likewise, Kenneth Mills has noted that the devil appeared to Hernando Caruachin of the archdiocese of Lima as a number of different animals while he dreamed, including a condor and a fox, who were “popular heroes in Andean myths.” Hernando Caruachin’s seventeenth-century animal guides were both demonic and sacred huacas.77 For many in the post-conquest Andes, animals continued to be huacas, depositories of occult power, and comparable to the manitou animal spirits among the Algonquian of New England. According to Virginia De John Anderson in Creatures of Empire, many English settlers saw manitous as far too similar to “the animal familiars that 74 ╇ Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 175. 75 ╇ Ibid., 190. 76 ╇ Ibid., 191. 77 ╇ Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 240. Also see Andrew Redden, Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008), 121-22.

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served as witches’ diabolic accomplices” in old England.78 They were the supernatural and animal allies of Amerindian resistance to English rule and customs. They were “wild things” in need of godly domestication like the huacas of the Andes. In the Andes Mountains of the Spanish empire, Quechua-speaking noble Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala noted that there still were sorcerers who went into the wilderness to find toads and snakes to harm their enemies. According to Guaman Poma, some of these magicians claimed that the toad would speak to them and then send venom to harm their foes, while others sewed the mouth and eyes of a toad shut and then buried the bound victim under the seat of a human to whom they intended harm.79 Though imbued with power, the toad was obviously subject to human use and abuse, even as herds of livestock possessed by humans may have been targeted by Francisca Carguachuqui. Identification with nonhuman animal potency did not necessarily mean fraternity to Native American magic-users. 80 Humans were clearly seen as a part of nature, but they retained some perception of their own place and power within it. With some Amerindian sorcerers conversing with toads and others tormenting them, respectful association with nonhuman animals and efforts to dominate and use them were present among Andean Amerindians as they were among Spaniards. Imperial Hierarchy, Imperial Synthesis: Appropriate Interaction with Other Animals Like the nanahualtin of colonial New Spain and Andean magic-users, Europeans of the early modern world were not seen as completely cut off from the rest of the animal world—from the rest of nature. 78 ╇ Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 49, 18-21; Alvin M. Josephy, The Indian Heritage of America, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 25. 79 ╇ Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 277; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. and ed. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 85. 80 ╇ In Creatures of Empire (21), Virginia DeJohn Anderson writes, “Indians certainly recognized differences between people and animals, but could not regard animals as lesser beings, defined from the moment of creation as invariably subordinate to humans.”

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As Esther Cohen has written regarding the later Middle Ages, “animals were undoubtedly inferior to man in the hierarchy of creation,” but “the boundary between the human and the animal was far from absolute.”81 In the early modern Spanish empire, it became the task of theologians to set guidelines for human association with other animals. Before Ruiz de Alarcón wrote his treatise, the Spanish Jesuit Martín del Rio published his views in his Disquisitionum Magicarum (Mainz, 1595; Louvain, 1599-1600). The Disquisitionum Magicarum, or Investigations into Magic, combined Vitoria’s systematic Scholastic approach with Ruiz de Alarcón’s impassioned concern that witchcraft posed a very real threat. All the tensions inherent in the multiplicity of opinions held by Spanish elites regarding witchcraft, animals and transmutation were represented in a set of summary explorations which explicitly drew on the writings of authorities del Rio considered eminent, like Bishop Isidore of Seville and Francisco de Vitoria. Like Vitoria, Martín del Rio differentiated true religion from superstition and natural magic from forbidden demonic magic, with a technological manipulation of nature becoming a permissible artificial magic.82 According to him, there is an allowance for the spontaneous generation of flies, worms and frogs from putrefying matter, and possibly for a type of monstrous hybridization. Del Rio recounted the tale of a Portuguese woman who was raped by a monkey and gave birth to two children on a desert island: Actually, I do not put much faith in these tales because I am sure that a real human being cannot be born from intercourse between a human and an animal. An animal’s semen lacks the perfection which is required to house a noble human soul, so if anything is produced by intercourse of this kind, it will be a monster, not a human…. 83 ╇Esther Cohen, “Animals in Medieval Perceptions: the Image of the Ubiquitous Other,” in Animals in Human Society: Changing Perspectives, ed. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 64, 70. 82 ╇ Martín del Rio, Investigations into Magic, trans. and ed. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester, UK and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), Book 1, chaps. 1-2:€31-32. For the original Latin, see Martín Antoine del Rio, Disqvisitionvm magicarvm libri sex, in tres tomos partiti (Louvain: Gerardi Rivii, 1599), Liber Primvs, capvt 1, in German Baroque Literature: Harold Jantz Collection, Yale University Library, microfilm, 611 reels (New Haven: Research Publications Inc., 1973-1974), Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. 83 ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, question 14:€87-88; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. This same tale was retold later by Francesco Maria Guazzo in 1608. See Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, trans. E. A. Ashwin 81

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For del Rio, morality argued against crossing species boundaries, except where this occurred directly through God’s intervention, “such as a mule which comes from a horse and an ass.”84 Spontaneous generation was God’s to be done, and mules might occur naturally, but humans could not intervene in the processes of nature so as to warp them. The vital question was how humanity’s animal nature, often enough seen by European intellectuals as cohabitating with an angelic and vegetative nature, should be guided and directed in an appropriate and moral fashion. In del Rio’s interpretation of reality, nonhuman animals lacked reason. If they seemingly spoke—with the interesting exceptions of magpies, crows and parrots, whom he admitted spoke “by nature”—it was due to an angel speaking through them on God’s behalf or a “pseudo-miraculous trick” worked by the Devil with God’s permission.85 Though magicians possessed some power to use and harm nonhuman animals, del Rio agreed with Vitoria that any apparent transmutations of humans into animals— like Odysseus’ men or Nicaraguan witches said to become cats, monkeys or pigs—were the workings of demonic illusion.86 Those who think they assume an animal form might be mad, or the Devil might make them dream of their transmutation, while he controlled the body of a wolf or assumed the illusory appearance of a wolf to kill livestock and commit other transgressions.87 Like Vitoria and Suárez, del Rio divided humans from other animals by means of the “rational soul,” though humans might exhibit some relatedness to the natural world: “The soul is immortal and cannot be damaged or wounded by an evil spirit. So those people (New York: Dover, 1988), Bk. 1, chap.€10:€29. For del Rio’s acceptance of the spontaneous generation of flies, worms and frogs from putrefying matter, see Investigations, Book 2, question 14:€86; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. 84 ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, question 14:€88; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. He also erroneously makes reference here to a hyena-wolf hybrid, or “thos.” 85 ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, questions 19-20: 102-103; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. 86 ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, question 13:€86; question 18:€98; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. 87 ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, question 18:€98-99; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. Also see Nicole Jacques-Lefèvre, “Such an Impure, Cruel, and Savage Beast… Images of the Werewolf in Demonological Works,” in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief & Folklore in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kathryn A. Edwards, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 62 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), 184-85.

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who think they have been transformed into something else are laboring under an illusion….”88 The human soul might choose its own damnation through an implicit or explicit pact with Satan, but Satan could never place the immortal soul in an animal body, even if some sensitive birds, like parrots and magpies, apparently spoke. Martín del Rio accepted generic animal nature and some natural changes that hinted at the permeability of boundaries. As a Jesuit priest, he also accepted humanity’s special status, related to both mortal animals and the immortal, spiritual world. As a man of his time and culture, del Rio had to grapple with these questions and challenges, even as we grapple with the morality of genetic engineering and transgenic animals today. For him, spontaneous generation occurred, but did that mean humans should try to enact similar transmutations? Evolution by means of natural selection obviously happens, but should we usurp nature’s role? Should we use our association with the rest of nature in order to shape processes that have heretofore only shaped us? Del Rio’s culture, from the level of the elite to that of the subjugated peasantry, and our own are linked by questions of the appropriateness of human intervention in organic transmutation.89 Among the common folk, as among the elite, Spaniards wrestled with the relatedness and relationships of humans and other animals. In doing so, they were thinking with animals, as Amerindians and other Europeans of the early modern period did. Thus, the early seventeenth-century inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías heard Basque peasant tales very similar to the Amerindian tales told Ruiz de Alarcón. Testimony given regarding witches of Zugarramurdi spoke of women transformed into hares and dogs, of a European peasant nagualismo that often appeared in witchcraft trials.90 Salazar refused ╇ Del Rio, Investigations, Book 2, question 18:€98; Disqvisitionvm magicarvm, Reel 387, no. 1242 v. 1. 89 ╇Early modern alchemy also recognized the transmutation of inorganic materials: “In England, Robert Hooke promised no end of useful outcomes if only the true causal structure of nature was made known and the proper method of discovery was employed: Why not the transmutation of base metals into gold?” Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 140. For more on alchemy and alchemical transmutation, see Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially 174-76, 211-17. 90 ╇ In the early 1960s, Julio Caro Baroja already suggestively alluded to parallels between witchcraft in the Basque lands and magical beliefs among Native Americans. Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 122-23. Also Serpell, 179-80. 88

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to accept these transmutations as real, arguing that his colleagues simply made their cases by reiterating the Devil’s angelic nature as a cause, the opinions of past authorities and the “evidence” of witches’ dreams, rather than any “‘external and objective evidence’.” He sincerely doubted the ability of a witch to become a housefly, raven or any other animal.91 But it appears that Basque peasants thought otherwise. Apparently, there were those in Spain who believed in magic and transmutation. As late as 1934, pioneering historian and anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja encountered twentieth-century Basque acceptance of talking animals and humans transformed into nonhuman animals.92 For the seventeenth-century witches of Zugarramurdi, such subversive traditions meant that on November 7, 1610, six witches were burned in person, while five were burned in effigy.93 Salazar, the skeptical inquisitor was outvoted by the other members of his tribunal, their theological advisors and the judge of confiscations. In fact, witch trials in the Mediterranean world were generally held by secular courts, not clerical inquisitions, and Salazar was among a number of inquisitors who judged witchcraft as more a matter of superstition and misperception than deliberate, or even implicit, submission to Satan as one’s lord and master. He was later commissioned by the Inquisition’s supreme council to investigate further, which resulted in his reports on a region of the Basque lands that he interpreted as wracked by superstition rather than deviltry. The Suprema accepted this conclusion, despite opposition from Salazar’s local colleagues. When Salazar died at seventy-one in 1635, he had himself become a member of the Suprema, and a formulator of policy.94 Tales of shape-shifters were also found elsewhere in Europe, outside of the Iberian Peninsula, and stories of werewolves were prevalent in France, Germany and northern Europe. See Jacques-Lefèvre, 182-83. 91 ╇ Henningsen, 350, 304-305. It should be noted that Salazar did not oppose torture and voted for it in some instances. He only distrusted the accounts that witches gave, with or without torture. See 167. 92 ╇ Like Timothy Knab in Mexico, Julio Caro Baroja found that some Basque interpretations of association with the rest of the animal kingdom were never truly eliminated by the efforts of Spanish authority: “Around 1934, I talked to an elderly man about witches in the town where I carried out most of my investigations…. He used to tell the most extraordinary stories about men flying through the air, changing themselves into animals, talking to animals, and so forth, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.” Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 236. 93 ╇ Henningsen, 172, 185-86. 94 ╇ Ibid., 175-80, 227, 366-86.

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In its brutal suppression of heresy, the Spanish Inquisition failed to engage in massive witch hunts. Joseph Pérez has written, “The Inquisition was relatively lenient to witches.… The Holy Office seldom passed the death sentence on witches.”95 Still, “leniency” may be in the eye of the beholder. In 1572, the Cordoban Inquisition sentenced the notorious Leonor Rodríguez, “La Camacha,” to one hundred lashes in Cordoba, another hundred in her home town of Montilla and ten years of exile from Montilla, including the first two in service in a Cordoban hospital.96 On May 21, 1595, the same Cordoban Inquisition held an auto de fe, a public “expression” of Catholic faith at which some sinners were reconciled to the Church and others were condemned to the flames. At this ceremony meant to resemble the last day of judgment, five witches were punished in a fairly typical fashion.97 Compared to the New Christians who were burned for consciously or unknowingly retaining Jewish and Muslim traditions, the persecution of witches may be perceived as lenient, but the one hundred lashes and two-year exile from Cordoba received by the twenty-six-year-old widow Juana de Almagro on May 21, 1595 probably did not feel like leniency.98 That day, her fellow witches were punished in a similar fashion. Thirty-two-year-old doña 95 ╇ Joseph Pérez, The Spanish Inquisition: a History, trans. Janet Lloyd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 79. 96 ╇ “Auto de la fe en Córdoba (8 diciembre 1572),” in Autos de fe y causas de la Inquisición de Córdoba, ed. Rafael Gracia Boix (Códoba: Colección Textos para la Historia de Córdoba, Publicaciones de la Excma. Diputación Provincial, 1983), 96. 97 ╇ Maureen Flynn, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de fe,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 22: 2 (Summer 1991): 281-97. 98 ╇ The Spanish Inquisition executed most of its victims early on in its history, between 1480 and 1530, while hunting for remnants of Jewish belief among conversos and Islam among moriscos: “… in these years of the high tide of persecution, the tribunal of Saragossa had some one hundred and thirty executions in person, that of Valencia possibly some two hundred and twenty-five, that of Barcelona some thirtyfour…. Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than two thousand people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition.” See Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: an Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 59-60. Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen have written that for the period between 1540 and 1700, the Spanish Inquisition turned its attention increasingly to Old Christian heretics, rather than the forcibly converted Jews and Muslims. In that period, 826 heretics were executed. See Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, “Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540-1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank,” trans. Anne Born, in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods, ed. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi in association with Charles Amiel (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 113.

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Francisca de Luna was also sentenced to a hundred lashes and two years of exile; twenty-three-year-old Ana López to a year’s exile; and thirty-four-year-old Luisa de Leiva and forty-year-old Isabel Díaz were both sentenced to exile from their homes for three years.99 Likewise, in the Americas, Amerindian witches might face floggings or forced exile, often to obrajes where they were compelled to produce textiles for Spaniards.100 In humiliation and degradation, witches, like recalcitrant beasts of burden, were forced to submit, and it may be of some interest that La Camacha, the witch fictionalized and made legendary by Cervantes in The Colloquy of the Dogs, kept dead toads and salamanders for her spells.101 Like Guamam Poma’s Andean witches, she sought out poison and potency among nonhuman animals to subvert authority. Witches associated with dangerous animals and made animals “dangerous” through association with their subversive magic. In the fantasies of a frightened and violent Spanish elite, witches were dangerous animals. Like the authorities who tried them, witches had their own fears and need of solace. When no human help was forthcoming, the dreams of the desperate seemingly resorted to nonhuman animals. In their detailed studies of English witchcraft, C. L’Estrange Ewen and Keith Thomas proposed that the animal familiars condemned with witches may have been pets and the only friends and companions that some poor women had, just as today in the United States, some homeless people continue to seek companionship with nonhuman animals.102 Regardless of the exact context in different lands and at 99 ╇ Not all women accused of witchcraft were poor. Doña Francisca de Luna was the wife of a skilled craftsman who made mail-covered doublets. Her companions, however, did not approach her standing and failed to receive the “doña” honorific. Like Juana de Almagro, Luisa de Leiva and Isabel Díaz were widows. Young Ana López was single (mujer soltera). Though there were individuals like Francisca de Luna, witches included high percentages of poor women and women without husbands, who were often enough one-in-the-same. “Auto de la Fe en Córdoba (21 mayo 1595),” in Autos de fe y causas de la Inquisición de Córdoba, 287-88. 100 ╇ Silverblatt, 196, 208. 101 ╇ “Auto de la fe en Córdoba (8 diciembre 1572),” in Autos de fe y causas de la Inquisición de Córdoba, 94-95. For more on noxious agents contained in the granular skin glands of amphibians, see John W. Daly, “The Chemistry of Poisons in Amphibian Skin,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 92 (January 1995): 9-13. For how witches might have used these secretions in the Basque lands and elsewhere in Europe, see Serpell, 171-73. 102 ╇ Thomas states, “These creatures may have been the only friends these lonely old women possessed, and the names they gave them suggest an affectionate Â�relationship.€Matthew Hopkins’s victims in Essex included Mary Hockett, who was

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different times, the supernatural in witchcraft often enough involved the rebellion of poor humans supposedly assisted by nonhuman animals. Graziana de Barrenechea, the eighty-year-old “queen of the witches” of Zugarramurdi not only confessed that she and her daughters Maria de Yriarte and Estebania de Yriarte were each given a toad dressed in clothing (un sapo bestido) by Satan; every day they received millet flour to assuage their bodily needs.103 Julio Caro Baroja once wrote, “The history of European witchcraft is closely linked to the problem of distinguishing between objective and subjective reality.”104 It matters little whether these women truly believed that they sold their souls for some food and a toad familiar. In a verifiably coercive inquisitorial process, they and their tormentors still “agreed” to a discourse where the material needs and desires of the downtrodden might lead to rebelliousness and inversion. In a world where the people of Seville rose up demanding lower bread prices in 1521 and 1652, and sturdy beggars threatened travelers on Valencian roads, rebellious thoughts no doubt occurred.105 Fantastic projections of those thoughts invoked animal imagery, and toads dressed like people were not the only culprits. A cat, who supposedly associated with one witch named Maria de Miguelena, taught new

accused of entertaining ‘three evil spirits each in the likeness of a mouse, called “Â�Littleman”, “Prettyman”, and “Daynty”, and Bridget Mayers, who entertained ‘an evil spirit in the likeness of a mouse called “Prickeares”’.” Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 525; C. L’Estrange Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism (London: Heath Cranton, 1933), 69; C. L’Estrange Ewen, ed., Witch Hunting and Witch Trials: The Indictments for Witchcraft from the Records of 1373 Assizes held for the Home Circuit A.D. 1559-1736 (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company, 1929), 222-24, 231. For a critique, see Serpell, 159-60. A highly cited study of the homeless and their pets in the United States remains Aline H. Kidd and Robert M. Kidd, “Benefits and Liabilities of Pets for the Homeless,” Psychological Reports 74: 3, pt. 1 (June 1994): 715-22. 103 ╇ Documento de la Inquisición sobre brujería en Navarra, 102-103. 104 ╇ Caro Baroja, World of the Witches, 58. 105 ╇ Mary Elizabeth Perry, Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville (Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England, 1980), 246-62; Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 191-92; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Ryenolds, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 19721973), 2: 740-41. For colonial Mexican uprisings, see William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979) and Jonathan I. Israel, Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 16101670 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).

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witches in his charge under the threat of physical abuse if they proved resistant to demonically inspired conversion.106 In Spain itself, the alliance between witches and a rebellious nature was not just found in the Basque lands. In 1648, Ana María García, la Lobera, appeared before the Inquisition of Toledo for claiming to control seven demonic wolves. As recounted by Caro Baroja, la Lobera was a poor young woman who provided shepherds with sexual services for her material upkeep. Her story comes to us through the filter of María del Cerro, a devout and wealthy woman who took an interest in the young female stranger accompanying shepherds whom she employed with her husband. To her displeasure, she learned that not only was Ana María García a prostitute, she, according to María del Cerro’s own mayoral, had the power to command wolves to attack the sheep of shepherds who had mistreated her. When interrogated by María del Cerro, Ana María García confirmed the tale. Her wolves, whom she claimed to call to avenge wrongs done her, were seemingly projections of her unfulfilled desire to rebel against her harsh reality. They may have even kept the shepherds whom she traveled with somewhat in line. Perhaps not fully seeing all the ramifications of trying to promote this dangerous reputation, la Lobera’s admission led to María del Cerro’s reporting her to the Inquisition. Her punishment was four months of incarceration during which time she was to be catechized.107 Though the Inquisition of Toledo, given the times, was lenient on this occasion, among many in authority, there was real fear that witches and sorcerers transgressed boundaries by using animals, or demons disguised as Â�animals, to gain power beyond their station. Likewise, shamanistic projection of an animal self, whether by nanahualtin or the witches of ZugarÂ� ramurdi, could not be allowed since it broke down boundaries and threatened the established order. The Spanish elite’s fear of inversion in human society, and nature in general, demonstrated recognition of the agency of others and the limits of their own power. There were Spaniards in authority who either wished to balance the stick with the carrot or sought to define their authority primarily through benevolence rather than brutality. As we have seen, some Spaniards, like Cervantes, sympathized with ╇ Documento de la Inquisición sobre brujería en Navarra, 168. ╇ Julio Caro Baroja, Vidas mágicas e inquisición, 2 vols. (Madrid: Taurus, 1967), 2: 129-35. 106 107

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the condition of nonhuman animals, and some Spaniards, like Vitoria, identified Amerindians as fellow humans capable of civilization. Cultures are never monochromatic, though particular human traits may dominate in one culture or another. With witches not often executed in the Spanish empire, a world view that allowed for boundary-crossing interaction with the rest of the animal world persisted. The Spanish power elite never fully imposed its vision of the universe, and that vision itself was divided. Cultural, as well as biological, hybridization occurred, and nowhere did it occur more transparently than in the writing of the mestizo intellectual Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca. Like Francisco de Vitoria in his quest for common tendencies in Spanish and Amerindian cultures, Garcilaso de la Vega sought praiseworthy parallels between the Inca and Spanish empires. Like the Spanish empire, the Inca empire was a unifying source of civilization for this son of an Inca noblewoman and Spanish conqueror. Before the Incas, Andean Amerindians were divided by language, “and waged cruel war and even ate one another as if they were beasts of different kinds.” They had promiscuous sexual intercourse like beasts (“se juntaban al coito como bestias”), and turned to sorcery when desiring supernatural help.108 The world was inverted by sin and Satan, and de la Vega reduced the veneration of power in nature, of huacas, to the superstition of pre-Inca Amerindians “who were little better than tame beasts and others much worse than wild beasts.”109 In their “primitive heathendom,” these Amerindians worshipped nature in the form of grasses, flowers, trees, high hills, caves, streams and emeralds. They also worshipped: … various animals, some for their ferocity, such as the tiger, lion, and bear: and consequently, regarding them as gods, if they chanced to meet them, they did not flee but fell down and worshipped them and let themselves be killed and eaten without escaping or making any defence at all. They also worshipped other animals for their cunning, 108 ╇ See Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, Part 1, Book 1, Â� chapter 14. Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Primera Parte de los Comentarios reales de los Incas, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 133: Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Tomo 2, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963), 24-25; Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, trans. Harold V. Livermore, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 1: 38-39. 109 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 1, chapter 9. For the English translation above, see the Livermore edition, 1: 30. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 19.

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such as the fox and monkeys. They worshipped the dog for its faithfulness and nobility, the wild cat for its quickness, and the bird they call cuntur (i.e., condor) for its size; and some natives worshipped eagles, because they boast of descending from them and also from the cuntur. Other peoples adored hawks for their quickness and ability in winning their food. They adored the owl… the bat…. They also adored many other birds according to their whims. They adored great snakes for their monstrous size and fierceness…. They also considered other smaller snakes… to be gods, and they adored lizards, toads, and frogs. In a word, there was no beast too vile and filthy for them to worship as a god, merely in order to differ from one another in their choice of gods, without adoring any real god or being able to expect any benefit from them. They were very simple in everything, like sheep without a shepherd.110

Garcilaso saw this level of identification with animals as debasing. Like Montaigne, he disapproved of worshipping or venerating sacred animals, but this did not mean that he had no appreciation for association with other animals. The inventory of his household taken upon his death revealed that he had five caged canaries at that time. It already has been demonstrated in the first chapter that he admired the skills and agency of monkeys, but to worship monkeys for their “cunning” (“astucia”) was inappropriate.111 As a man of two ethnicities, Garcilaso de la Vega’s denunciation of huacas made sense. He no doubt struggled with the most prejudicial of Spaniards who valued what they called limpieza de sangre, or “purity of blood.” This “blood” might be “tainted” in the Iberian Peninsula by Jewish or Moorish ancestry, while, in the Americas, it was made “impure” by Amerindian or African heritage. Individuals of mixed ancestry were seen as a challenge to the original Spanish imperial plan in which Spaniards would rule, and perhaps paternalistically guide, their Amerindian charges. There was to be a república 110 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 1, chapter 9. For the English translation above, see the Livermore edition, 1: 31. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 19-20. 111 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 8, chapter 18. For the English, see the Livermore edition, 1: 519-20. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 318-19; John Grier Varner, El Inca: the Life and Times of Garcilaso de la Vega (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 350; Michel de Montaigne, “On Cruelty,” in The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 487. For the French, see Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat (Bruges: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1962), 413-14. The inventory taken at Garcilaso’s death also revealed that he also hunted like Montaigne. Two deer heads and hunting weapons were itemized. See John Grier Varner, 350.

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de los españoles and a república de los indios.112 The blending of ethnicities and cultural traditions perhaps created too many new possibilities for the most rigidly hierarchical among the Spaniards. In this light, it should come as no surprise that Garcilaso de la Vega and Guaman Poma with their somewhat privileged status within the Spanish empire, wanted to distance themselves from identification with huacas, witchcraft and cross-species transmutation. Garcilaso de la Vega presented his imperial Inca ancestors as a unifying and civilizing force like the Spaniards who now dominated in his world. By ordering that all newly conquered people should worship Viracocha as a universal god, the Incas lay the groundwork for the Spaniards’ introduction of the Christian god worshipped by Garcilaso de la Vega as the one true god.113 Empire meant a dominant god, and that god’s defeat of regional identification with local animals and ecosystems. A sense of place as home was thereby defeated by a sense of place as rank within a huge, region-spanning, abstracted hierarchy. For Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca empire started a civilizing process that delineated a special place within nature for Amerindians. In his view, the Incas struggled against traditions in which Andeans saw themselves as honorable for being “descended from a spring, river, or lake—or even from the sea—or from wild animals, such as the bear, lion, or tiger, or from the eagle, or the bird called cuntur, or other birds of prey….”114 Garcilaso de la Vega saw huacas as deceiving Amerindians, whose honor came from the angelic and rational faculty of their souls, and not from animal sensitivity—in his opinion. Local huacas persisted nonetheless, for the Inca and Spanish empires were examples of those massive human constructs that are sometimes difficult for us to grasp in our daily animal routines. The Inca empire hugged the Pacific coast and Andes from roughly the present-day Ecuadorian-Colombian border to northern Chile and Argentina. The Spaniards would abstract things further with a transAtlantic empire. Evolutionary psychologists argue that humans 112 ╇ Lewis, 49-54. Also R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 3-8, 14-17, 22-26, 161-65. 113 ╇ Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 5, chapter 13; Part 1, Book 9, chapter 23. For the English translation above, see the Livermore edition, 1: 267, 592. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 165, 363-64. 114 ╇ Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 1, chapter 18. For the English translation above, see the Livermore edition, 1: 49. Also Biblioteca de autores españoles, 133: 31.

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are seemingly most comfortable in relatively small communities where they can gauge the potential reactions of known associates. Those communities are often no larger than some one-hundred-fifty (i.e., the size of a foraging band or a small church congregation).115 A unifying god, a unifying alpha, provided a semblance of the personal for subjects of both the Inca and Spanish empires to latch unto, and local huacas provided a regional sense of place through identification with nature, including local animals. Viracocha, the Christian god and the huacas all played their roles, and, as we have seen, witches and sorcerers continued to seek power from serpents and toads long after the Spanish conquest. Garcilaso de la Vega was truly a child of that conquest. As a mestizo who sought common ground where his mother’s and his father’s people might meet, he was the natural and cultural “hybrid” whom some Spaniards feared as a transgression against limpieza de sangre. In the context of New Spain, to the north of Spanish Peru, Laura Lewis has remarked that the use of magic was a place where Native American, European and African traditions met, and some Spaniards deliberately sought out Amerindians and people of mixed ethnicity for their reputed magical skills.116 The quest for order inherent in imperial elites, from the Inquisition to Garcilaso de la Vega, ultimately did not defeat a vision of the world as an enchanted place where humans might learn from other animals, and where they might even sometimes fully identify with their animal natures. Garcilaso and the Inquisition both seemingly feared that full-fledged identification with animality would lead to nothing but chaos and transgression, and they identified human “civilization” as the only hope for peace, given humanity’s fallen state. This prism of perception was not true of all elites and authorities within the Spanish empire however, and Oliva Sabuco’s New Philosophy of Human Nature, duly approved by royal authority, alluded subtly to the seeds of human altruism and self-restraint in the larger animal world. Hers was not a dominant voice, but it was a voice in the Spanish imperial chorus, even as those deemed witches contributed their part, and Garcilaso his by simply being a mestizo intellectual. Animal life is never as orderly or unified as imperial dreams would have it, but 115 ╇Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 199-203. 116 ╇ Lewis, 122-27, 152-53.

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neither is it as chaotic as imperial nightmares would fear. It is a balance of tensions and interplay of variable agents. Among those agents were those who saw themselves as a part of nature, sharing traits and characteristics with other animals in their pursuit of power. Those considered witches did not always pursue power to dominate others. They were sometimes hungry, and they were at times oppressed. But their quest for animal power often led to conflict, whether they seemingly sought it like Martín Ucelo and la Lobera, or not. As argued by Oliva Sabuco and demonstrated by today’s ethological studies, elephants, dolphins and other animals are also capable of so much more than conflict and aggression. They are capable of acts of bonding and association that humans call loyalty and friendship. Through companion animals, including animals associated with saints and the saintly, the Spanish empire would perceive a goodness in nature that crossed species boundaries—a goodness associated with the peaceful construction of community rather than with the disruptive lust for power. This vision of nature and the animal world may have helped to ameliorate some of the lust for domination by which the Spanish empire itself was so dominated. As we will see in the next chapter, the nonhuman animals of the Spanish empire might be spirit guides to heaven as well as hell.

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CHAPTER FIVE

SAN MARTÍN’S COMPANION ANIMALS: NATURE DOMESTICATED AND BLESSED The expansion of European empires raised questions regarding the overlapping nature of the categories “human” and “animal,” and how different cultures might reflect on those categories differently. In colonial New Spain, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón took umbrage at tales of Nahua women and men transforming into animals like foxes and caimans. Boundaries blurred in what Ruiz de Alarcón perceived as wild witchcraft and deviltry. But imperial tales also could speak of a cross-species diplomacy blessed by God, as in the stories told about San Martín de Porres (1579-1639) and his ability to foster peace so that “natural enemies” like a dog, cat and mouse might eat from the same bowl.1 In the Americas, there were clerics who dissented from Ruiz de Alarcón’s simple formulae, and even those who, like St. Francis of Assisi, found a way to embrace identification with other animals without committing transgression—to find a place for nonhuman animals in a divinely ordained order that did not identify them solely with demonic inversion or subjugation as beasts of burden and servants to humanity. In the viceroyalty of Peru, the Dominican brother and barber-surgeon Martín de Porres associated with animals in a way considered extraordinary, but not illicit, by those around him. Like a number of other humans deemed saintly, he refrained from eating meat, but he also took the trouble to care for sickly and injured animals, even as he cured humans who were ill. Beatified in 1837, he finally became a saint in 1962. His unwillingness to pursue power, his exiting the game played by both dominant Spanish male authority figures and those called by them “witches,” like the nanahualtin, appears to have been central. He and the 1 ╇ José Antonio del Busto D., San Martín de Porras (Martín de Porras Velásquez) (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1992), 35, 39-42; Celia Langdeau Cussen, Fray Martín de Porres and the Religious Imagination of Creole Lima (Unpublished Dissertation, the University of Pennsylvania, 1996), 138, n. 258; Alex García-Rivera, St. Martín de Porres: The “Little Stories” and the Semiotics of Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 4

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Â�animals he associated with were tame, and in reaching out to other animals as an expression of Christian love and humility, Martín de Porres was able to embody a compassionate interest in nonhuman animals that was there in Spain’s empire.2 Empathy with other animals had to compete with the reduction of animals to their use value alone, but it was never entirely absent from the cultural conversation. A peasant, like the fictional Sancho Panza, might think of the animal he labored with as a companion. And early modern Spanish Christianity recognized a place for animals in the world, so that even hardened conquistadores, who might use their dogs to brutalize Amerindians without mercy, could mourn those dogs sympathetically as fallen comrades when they died. In the midst of imperial expansion and brutality, Spaniards interacted with tame animal familiars and companions. To understand an individual like Martín de Porres, who was lauded for this behavior, one must first understand the place of the acceptable animal companion in everyday Spanish imperial culture, morality and religion. Those Who Are Not Consumed: Nonhuman Companions and Comrades As we have seen, nonhuman animals provided the Spanish empire with labor, entertainment and metaphorical ideals to be emulated. While serving in these capacities, they could also provide companionship. They could be perceived as members of the family, and humans might be perceived as members of the pack. Frequent and familiar association bonded humans to other animals, creating working pets like the dogs of the conquistadores and animal companions who might even live a life of leisure, much like so many pets we see today. Again, as in our own contemporary world, there were levels of affection adopted by humans toward other animals—those levels being constructed around cross-species similarities and differences. Humans are a unique species of animal, naturally set apart by reproductive affinity and heightened levels of abstraction and reflection 2 ╇ Harriet Ritvo has argued that domesticated animals provided nineteenth-Â� century English imperial discourse with metaphors for the appropriate behavior of subordinates, but, like subordinated classes and peoples, “Malice and insubordination were widely suspected among humankind’s animal subjects.” Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: the English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 30.

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that lead to the articulation of stated moral maxims and cultural precepts. We are made to set ourselves apart from the rest of nature, even as we see similarities and differences in degree. As noted by James Serpell, we distinguish between meat and pets, but that does not mean that animals used for their meat or labor are never shown compassion.3 One need only think of Montaigne on the hunt or the fictional Sancho and his donkey. Our association with other animals in nature, and with our own animal nature, is complex. In the early modern Spanish empire, domesticated animals kept for their meat walked side-by-side with tame animals who became full-fledged animal companions. When a contingent of Spanish conquistadores went off to explore and claim new lands, such a group tried to travel on a full stomach, and much of their food supply traveled on the hoof. When, in 1584, Antonio de Espejo proposed to the Crown the details of what was needed to occupy New Mexico, he suggested that the Crown order the jornada to include twenty-four Franciscans, four hundred men, including one hundred married men with their wives and children, four thousand cows and bulls and five thousand rams and ewes.4 On his unauthorized expedition to New Mexico, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, lieutenant to the Captain General of Nuevo León, periodically had to ascertain how many animals were to be slaughtered for the upkeep of his company. On September 14, 1590, he had some oxen killed in order to have a pound-and-a-half of meat distributed daily for a time to the over one hundred-seventy men, women and children of his expedition.5 By November, this expedition found itself in 3 ╇ James Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3-20, 151. 4 ╇ “Expediente y relacion del viaje que hizo Antonio de Espejo con catorce soldados y un religioso de la órden de San Francisco, llamado Fray Agustin Rodriguez; el cual debía de entender en la predicacion de aquella gente (20 Setiembre 1584),” in Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, 42 vols. (Madrid: Manuel G. Hernández, 1864-84; reprinted Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1964-69), 15: 153, 155. Henceforth CDIR. 5 ╇ “Memoria del descubrimiento que Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, hizo en el Nuevo México, siendo teniente de gobernador y capitan general del Nuevo Reino de Leon.—(27 de Julio de 1590.),” in CDIR 15: 200-201. For more on Espejo and Castaño, see David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1992), 79-80. Having marched into Pueblo territory without viceregal permission, Castaño was arrested for invading the lands of peaceful indios. His punishment was exile to the Philippines for six years.

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a region where living off the land helped to supplement dwindling provisions. With maize, wheat and livestock supplies decreasing, Castaño de Sosa ordered ration reductions, plying river waters for the abundance of fish they provided. The account of the expedition reports grumbling and complaints of hunger, even though on November 17, Castaño was providing two pounds of meat per person.6 As the quite visible alpha male on the ground, Castaño de Sosa’s leadership ability was being judged, among other things, by the protein he could provide his people on their arduous trek. When great numbers of deer were encountered on November 28, he must have rested easier. Fish was fasting food, and land animal meat a requisite to sixteenth-century Spaniards outside of religious orders. Throughout the centuries, Catholic fasting has been rather malleable in its methods of observance, but its medieval and early modern rationale, as stated by Tristram Stuart, always remained that “Eating flesh inflamed fleshly passions….”7 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the reforms of the Council of Trent (15451563), meat was forbidden every Friday, during the forty days of Lent, and on all other obligatory holy days. The consumption of fish was permitted however, since fish were seen as cold, sexless animals who did not contain or stir the sanguine humor.8 Drawing on ancient ╇ Ibid, 211-12. ╇ Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: a Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 152. Also see Brian Fagan, Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 16-22. 8 ╇ Stuart, 152. Blood was one of four bodily humors; its qualities being “hot” and “wet” in Greco-Roman, medieval and early modern European medicine. The other three humors were yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Blood’s central role in sexuality was axiomatic in the ancient Greek Hippocratic medicine that still influenced early modern Catholics: “… sperm, a foam much like the froth on the sea, was first refined out of the blood; it passed to the brain; from the brain it made its way back through the spinal marrow, the kidneys, the testicles, and into the penis.” Blood and phlegm, the wet humors, were there in various proportions in all bodily fluids, and though phlegmatic qualities were noted in semen’s clamminess, the heat of blood drove lively sexuality. In Oliva Sabuco, as with many following Greco-Roman medicine, chilo (chyle), a cerebrospinal fluid, linked body and mind essentially and transmuted into red blood and the white blood found in substances like milk and sperm. See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 35; William Bynum, The History of Medicine: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10-18; Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life 6 7

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Greco-Roman medical notions of four bodily humors that influenced behavior, the Church hierarchy was recognizing a closer affinity between land animals than between land animals and aquatic animals—one that impacted people in their daily lives through fasting. Consuming the body of a land animal might drive one to pursue other passions of the flesh, but fish consumption would not. In the strictest observances of some in Catholic religious orders, like Martín de Porres, this led to the avoidance of meat for life, unless meat was seen as required to maintain or restore health. However, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa and his band were not Catholic ascetics. They desired the flesh of land animals as they desired land and mineral wealth. Like herbivores and carnivores, human omnivores have bodies of flesh, requiring carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Meat is an extremely convenient way to acquire protein. Not only do our chimpanzee cousins hunt; males, after a hunt, will share the meat they have captured to solidify alliances and seek sexual favors from females.9 In twentieth-century human foraging societies like the Hadza and Aché, the best big game hunters have no exclusive control over the prey they capture. Within cultures that value food-sharing behavior with foods that are hard to come by, such hunters instead gain prestige and reputations. By “supplying public meat [they] become desirable neighbors and allies” in their communities.10 Meat is imbued with questions of social positioning and politics. While Catholic priests, brothers and nuns—called to celibacy—might refrain from the ways of the flesh, including the eating of terrestrial meat, a worldly Spanish man like Castaño de Sosa was expected to

and Health, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 15-19, 206. 9 ╇ Craig B. Stanford, The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 68-69; Christophe Boesch, “Hunting Strategies,” in Chimpanzee Cultures, ed. Richard W. Wrangham et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 78, 86-87, 89. 10 ╇ Kristen Hawkes, “Is Meat the Hunter’s Property? Big Game, Ownership, and Explanations of Hunting and Sharing,” in Meat-Eating and Human Evolution, ed. Craig B. Stanford and Henry T. Bunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 232; Bruce Winterhalder, “Intragroup Resource Transfers: Comparative Evidence, Models, and Implications for Human Evolution,” in Meat-Eating and Human Evolution, 292-97; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: a History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 268-69, 228-29; Hillard Kaplan and Kim Hill, “Hunting Ability and Reproductive Success among Male Ache Foragers: Preliminary Results,” Current Anthropology 26: 1 (February 1985), 133.

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provide meat to his followers and to consume respectable amounts of flesh himself.11 But animals were never just meat. In the account of the Castaño de Sosa expedition an entry for November 16, 1590 is very striking: “On the sixteenth of the aforesaid [month], we left this spot, and we took a very good route apart from the river… and (while) there, a tame little doe that was being taken along (or carried about) by Catalina de Charles broke a leg” (“El diez y seis del dicho, salimos deste parage, y llevamos muy buen camino, apartados del rio por una gran vuelta que hacía; y se quebró, allí, un pie, á una venadilla mansa, que llevaba Catalina de Charles.”).12 The report is curt, but it raises some very significant questions despite its lack of detail. One of the women in the Spanish company traveled, at least for a time, with a gentle, docile or tame doe. Since the Spanish word “mansa” can be used to signify domestication and/or gentleness, the question is raised as to whether Catalina de Charles had tamed this doe or found a gentle little doe while traveling with the expedition. After breaking a leg, the doe might have been euthanized and perhaps eaten, but this is not stated explicitly. What is evident is that the deer does not appear to have been slaughtered for meat when there was lack thereof in Castaño de Sosa’s company. In the midst of the troubles of November, the doe succumbed to an accident, and the entire event was memorable enough that it became part of the official record of the expedition. If the doe’s injury was recorded in a cursory manner, so too was the death of a daughter of Francisco Lopez de Ricalde on November 10. The party settled down for the night, with its cattle placed on a river islet for safety, and, while there, the little girl died. Indeed, that is all we learn of the girl’s death, and the party went on with its fishing and slaughtering of meat (“… fuimos á dormir á un rincon del dicho rio, y se metió toda la boyada en una Isleta del rio; murióse aquí una niña, hija de Francisco Lopez de Ricalde; matóse mucho pescado, y habia mucho mesquite, tanto que nos escusaba de matar carne algunas veces.”).13 The little girl’s death obviously mattered enough that it was noted, but it was recorded as matter-of-factly as the fate of 11 ╇On male identity and meat eating, see Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: a Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990), 26-38. 12 ╇ “Gaspar Castaño de Sosa,” 212. 13 ╇ Ibid., 211.

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Catalina de Charles’ doe. The party continued about its business in both cases, but the nameless girl and the nameless doe were written about as individuals. Something had happened to members of the company who were both different from livestock. Likewise, when a deer who had been tamed by David Wheeler in Bradford, Massachusetts was shot by the disagreeable Nathan Webster in 1682, the community took pause, and it is noted by the historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson that this deer, sporting a red collar, had wandered freely through town to “feed on whatever leaves and bark it could find.” Until Webster shot the deer, “Most people left the deer alone.” The deer with the red collar had been considered David Wheeler’s property, but this property bore no traditional English ear mark as did cattle or swine. This deer had a red collar.14 Early modern Europeans were capable of individualized interactions with other animals—and of feeling for animals other than humans. Michel de Montaigne and Miguel de Cervantes were not the only Europeans capable of such sentiment. Catalina de Charles and David Wheeler obviously were capable of such attachment too. In Dogs of the Conquest, John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner give accounts of hardened conquistadores who mourned the passing of dogs renowned for their service on the battlefield. Such was the case with Becerrillo and his son Leoncico. Described as an ugly dog, who may have had both mastiff and greyhound ancestry, Becerrillo was known as a “perro sabio,” or wise, sapient dog, who could readily distinguish between friend and foe, reserving his brutal ferocity for Amerindians whom the Spaniards wished maimed or killed. According to Bartolomé de las Casas, Becerrillo was able to discern hostile from peaceful Amerindians “as if he were a person” (“cognoscía los indios de guerra y los que no eran como si fuera una persona”).15 When, in 1514, Becerrillo was finally slain by a Carib poison arrow in defense of his last master Sancho de Aragón, the Spaniards tried to save him as they would any other valued fellow warrior. Indeed, a 1589 epic account of his death described him as first mangling into pieces the Amerindian who had dealt him a fatal wound and then seeking aid as though he possessed human reason 14 ╇ Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 43-44. 15 ╇ Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), 2: 389.

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(“Como si de razón uso tuviera”).16 When he died, he was mourned by his fellow conquistadores and secretly buried with reverence, so that Amerindians would not learn too quickly that he was dead.17 As late as 1601-1615, with the publication in two parts of his Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas wrote that the death of Becerrillo “was much felt by the Castilians” (“fué muy sentida de los castellanos”).18 Becerrillo had become the stuff of sentimental legend among hardened Spaniards from the Castilian heartland, and this legacy also lived on through his son. Like his father, the “little lion” Leoncico (also known as Leoncillo) is described in Spanish documents as a remarkable dog who, in his life, exhibited great sorrow at human tragedy. In turn, Leoncico was mourned by his master Francisco de Balboa, after the dog died from poison administered by a rival Spaniard.19 Though it is true that conquistadores may have projected some small inkling of remorse and their own sorrow at human tragedy onto their dogs, they had to rely on canine intelligence and social commitment on the battlefield again and again. They were in a fair position to learn just how much a social animal of a different species could learn, feel emotions and perhaps even choose. In turn, mental boundaries were crossed, and the dogs of the conquistadores sometimes became fellow warriors who tragically could be mourned more than conspecific Amerindian victims. Becerrillo and Leoncico were more than livestock. They were members of the pack.20 Becerrillo and Leoncico were privileged. Not all of the conquistadores’ dogs were elevated to the status of comrades. Some remained 16 ╇ Juan de Castellanos, Elegía vi, canto vi, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 4: Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1944), 66. 17 ╇ John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, Dogs of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), 26-28; Castellanos, Elegía vi, canto vi, p.€67. 18 ╇ Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y tierrafirme del mar Oceano o “Decadas”, ed. Mariano Cuesta Domingo, 4 vols. (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1991), Decada primera, Libro 10, capítulo 10 in vol. 1:€624. 19 ╇ Varner and Varner, 37, 53. 20 ╇ Garry Marvin has noted that foxhounds may be shot when too old, rather than retired, but this does not prevent contemporary English hound masters from mourning the loss of a trusted “mate,” a member of their human-created “wild” pack. See Garry Marvin, “Disciplined Affections: the Making of an English Pack of Foxhounds,” in Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies, ed. John Knight (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 61-63, 69, 75-76.

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property in the minds and writings of the time. In his account of Hernando de Soto’s 1539 expedition to Florida, Garcilaso de la Vega wrote of a greyhound (“lebrel”) named Bruto. Bruto, like Becerrillo, savagely tore Amerindians to pieces before he was finally killed by more than fifty arrows while pursuing a group of intended victims across a river. Dying like Becerrillo, Bruto’s achievements were compared to those of Becerrillo and his son Leoncico, but Garcilaso de la Vega also wrote that he was grieved by de Soto and his men because he “was (a) very rare thing and very necessary for the conquest” (“era pieza rarísima y muy necesaria para la conquista”).21 Of course, early modern Spaniards also could consider their fellow humans to be profitable objects, and slaves coming to the Americas were mistreated as things and tallied as piezas de India.22 Both people and dogs might be cherished or used as they were “valued.” However, the dogs of Spain not only included Juan Mateos’ underfed hunting hounds and esteemed fellow warriors like Becerrillo and Leoncico. They also included pampered pets. Son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega catalogued animals that were introduced to colonial Peru by the Spaniards. He wrote that his mother’s people were able to build an elaborate civilization without horses, mules, cows, oxen, sheep, goats or pigs. Likewise, they did not have “pedigree dogs for hunting, such as greyhounds, beagles, retrievers, setters, pointers, spaniels, whippets, or mastiffs to guard their flocks, or even the pretty little creatures called lap dogs (‘ni gozquillos de los muy bonitos que llaman perrillos de falda’). There were a great many of what in Spain are called curs, large and small.”23 Little curs or mongrels (“gozquillos”) 21 ╇ Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, La Florida del Inca, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 132: Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Tomo 1, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 299-301 (Bk. 2, pt. 1, chaps. 17-18). Also Varner and Varner, 106-107. 22 ╇ “A pieza de India was a measure of potential labor, not of individuals. For a slave to qualify as a pieza, he had to be a young adult male meeting certain specifications as to size, physical condition, and health. The very young, the old, and females were defined for commercial purposes as fractional parts of a pieza de India.” Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 22. 23 ╇ Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, trans. Harold V. Livermore, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 1: 579; Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Primera Parte de los comentarios reales de los Incas, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 133: Obras completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Tomo 2, ed. P. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 4 vols.

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were set apart by Garcilaso de la Vega as “very pretty” when serving Spaniards as “lap dogs” or “perrillos de falda.” Whatever Garcilaso’s true sentiments regarding pretty little lap dogs, the Spaniards kept them and other pets in their homes, even as they worked with canine comrades in pastures and on the battlefield. The visual art of the early modern Spanish world clearly illustrates the keeping of pets at home, and these household pets seem to have been kept by families of different social ranks. From Las Meninas (Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1656), Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez’s painting of the court life of Philip IV’s daughter Princess Margarita, to Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s The Holy Family with the Bird (Madrid, Museo del Prado, c. 1645-1650), dogs were painted as comfortably present in the homes of rich and poor alike. Velázquez’s Princess Margarita stands accompanied by dwarves, maids of honor and a very relaxed mastiff being wakened by a dwarf’s prodding foot. In Animals and Men, Kenneth Clark observed that Velázquez’s dogs generally exuded independence and perspective on court life: “‘Whoever is meant to be impressed by these royal personages,’ they seem to say, ‘we are not.’”24 (See figure 2) In Murillo’s painting, the Christian Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are shown taken with a little white dog at Jesus’ feet and a finch in the child Jesus’ hand. Murillo specialized in the painting of common people, and his Mary, not yet the queen of heaven, is a peasant woman, who takes time out from working a ball of yarn to watch her son and the animals. (See figure 3) Of course, well kept dogs abound in court paintings, and they are not just the hunting dogs of Velázquez’s Philip IV as a Hunter (Madrid, Museo del Prado, c. 1634-1636) and the young Prince Baltasar Carlos as a Hunter (Madrid, Museo del Prado, c. 1634-1636). In his painting of Prince Don Felipe Próspero (Vienna, KunstÂ� historisches Museum, 1659), Velázquez shows us one of those pretty little lap dogs discussed by Garcilaso de la Vega. Bearing all the soft, rounded puppy-like features that humans have selected for in such (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963), 356. The reference to lap dogs is in Comentarios reales, Part 1, Book 9, chapter 16. 24 ╇ Kenneth Clark, Animals and Men: Their Relationship as Reflected in Western Art from Prehistory to the Present Day (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977), 185. Also see Matthew Senior, “The Animal Witness,” in A Cultural History of Animals, ed. Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl, Vol. 4: A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Matthew Senior (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 4-7, 19.

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Figure 2. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, La Familia de Felipe IV, o Las Meninas, 1656. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

dogs, this lap dog is lying contentedly in the prince’s chair. (See figure 4) A friskier lap dog in turn makes an appearance playing with a little boy in José Antolínez’s Portrait of the Danish Ambassador Cornelius Pedersen Lerche and His Friends (Copenhagen, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, c. 1662), while the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the tradition of painting both hunting dogs and lap dogs continued in the work of Francisco Goya (1746-1828). In

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Figure 3. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Sagrada Familia del Pajarito, c. 1645-1650. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Â� keeping their perrillos de falda, their pretty little lap dogs, Spanish elites were only reflecting general European trends in an era that gave us the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, loved and popularized by King Charles II of England (r. 1660-1685) himself. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, there were certainly dogs who lived what we consider the life of a pampered pet.25 25 ╇ Nina Ayala Mallory, El Greco to Murillo: Spanish Painting in the Golden Age, 1556-1700 (New York: Harper Collins Icon Editions, 1990), 177-81, 224-25, 170-71, 184, 276; Dale Brown and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The World of Velásquez, 1599-1660 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1969), 168-70, 176-85, 100-101, 123, 164; Jonathan Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (PrinceÂ� ton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 87-110; Dawson W. Carr, et al., Velázquez (London: National Gallery Company, 2006), 48, 193-97, 240-41. On the quest for infantilized features artificially selected for in the adult dogs we have bred, see Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs: Canine Consciousness and Capabilities (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 38-39; Serpell, 81-83. For the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, see Coren, 192. For more on hunting dogs as symbols of obedience to royal authority in Velázquez and Goya, see Olivia Nicole Miller, The Spanish Royal Hunting Portrait from Velázquez to Goya (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009), 2-3.

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Figure 4. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, Don Felipe Próspero, 1659. Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna..

Goya’s classic “king with hunting dog” portraits are his Carlos III in Hunting Costume (Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1786-1788) and Carlos IV in Hunting Clothes (Madrid, Palacio Real, 1799). For examples of his lap dogs, see: El Quitasol or The Parasol (Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1777); María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga (Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, National Gallery of Art, 1783); María Teresa Cayetana de Silva, Duchess of Alba (Madrid, Colección Casa de Alba, 1793); and The Letter or The Young Ones (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts, c. 1812-1814). All these paintings are reproduced and discussed in Robert Hughes, Goya (New

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There were pets throughout the Spanish empire, and not all of them were kept by Spaniards. With five caged canaries at the time of his death, the mestizo Garcilaso de la Vega seemingly enjoyed the company of singing birds.26 In his history of the Incas, he wrote of parrots who were brought to Spain and “kept in cages for the enjoyment of their talking.” But they were also kept in Peru, where one parrot reputedly could identify the provinces that Amerindian men and women came from while calling out to them.27 Bird-keeping for reasons other than sustenance obviously existed among Amerindians, and the Mexican Florentine Codex identified the common house finch (molotl) as: … a warbler, a talker. It is capable of domestication; it is teachable; it can be bred…. They domesticate it. I domesticate it; I teach it. It sings, it sings constantly.28

Likewise, according to the Codex, great-tailed grackles were brought to central Mexico to please the Aztec ruler Ahuitzotl (r. 14861502). They were fed until they were everywhere, and even then, York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 53-54, 146-47, 88-89, 113-14, 158-62, 348-49. Goya also ridiculed the affection that people obviously must have had for their lap dogs. Among the sketches of his Madrid Album (1796-1797) is one in which a lady weeps for her constipated lap dog, while an elderly woman fingers a rosary and a man is shown observing the scene (Madrid #91). Hughes, 175. Where pet-keeping in the early modern Spanish empire is concerned, the historian Zeb Tortorici currently is working on eighteenth-century New Spain. See Zeb Tortorici, “‘In the Name of the Father and the Mother of All Dogs’: Canine Baptisms, Weddings, and Funerals in Bourbon Mexico,” in Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming). 26 ╇ John Grier Varner, El Inca: the Life and Times of Garcilaso de la Vega (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 350. 27 ╇ Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Part 1, Bk. 8, chap.€21. For the English see Livermore, 1: 525. For the Spanish, Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 133: 322. On parrots and canaries as pets in eighteenth-century Paris, and French interest in parrots as pets as early as the sixteenth century, see Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 9-12, 124-30. For more on a parrot’s ability to distinguish, label and request objects using human speech, see Irene Maxine Pepperberg, The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities in Grey Parrots (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 197-208. 28 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 11: Earthly Things, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, 1963), chap.€2:€48.

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“no one might throw stones at them.”29 When the Spaniards arrived, Ahuitzotl’s successor and nephew, Motecuhzoma II kept an aviary and even a temple menagerie fed human flesh from the priests’ sacrifices.30 In 2008, an archaeological team led by Leonardo López Luján discovered the skeleton of an interred female dog or wolf who may have been one of these privileged imperial animals. Buried some five hundred years ago in the precincts of the Templo Mayor of Aztec Tenochtitlan, this “Aristo-Canine” was elderly and bedecked with a jade-bead collar, turquoise ear plugs and anklets with gold bells. Whether she was a royal pet or sacred embodiment of imperial power, or both, she was not food like other dogs who were bred by the Aztecs.31 Aztec emperors and their people clearly privileged some animals. As already demonstrated by James Serpell, the indigenous people of the Americas have always been more than capable of creating a category for privileged animals, for “pets,” and, after the Spanish conquest, the Andean nobleman Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (fl. 1613) quite casually included two dogs among his traveling companions when he wrote and illustrated his First New Chronicle and Good Government. In an illustration that shows the author and his son traveling to Lima, both are accompanied by a horse named Quisiputo and two dogs named Lautaro and Amigo.32 That the Amerindian author took the time to include the names of his animal 29 ╇ Ibid., 50. “The Great-tailed Grackle was considered conspecific with the Boattailed Grackle (Quiscalus major) as late as 1957, but the 2 species are now thought to be reproductively isolated.” Kristine Johnson and Brian D. Peer, “Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus),” in The Birds of North America Online, ed. A. Poole (Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2001), available from http://bna.birds.cornell. edu/bna/species/576doi:10.2173/bna.576; accessed January 28, 2011. 30 ╇ Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, ed. Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1944), 1: 347-49; Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 228-30. 31 ╇Robert Draper, “Unburying the Aztec,” National Geographic 218: 5 (November 2010): 110-35. For Aztec domesticated dogs identified as favored companions who amused with their wagging tails, see Florentine Codex, Book 11: Earthly Things, chap.€1:€16. For dogs as food, see Sophie D. Coe, America’s First Cuisines (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 96-97. Mesoamerican dogs were used in multiple capacities, from assisting in the hunt to being eaten themselves. Richard E. W. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, revised ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 37. 32 ╇ Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. and ed. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 350. Also see Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobi-

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Figure 5. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 1105, Courtesy of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Royal Library, Copenhagen

companions alludes to their status being more ambivalent than that of mere laboring property providing transportation and protection on the road. That one was named “Amigo” is also somewhat telling. It is true that Lautaro was probably named after a Mapuche leader who resisted the Spaniards in Chile, but to name a dog “friend” broke with patterns set by conquistadores, who named their dogs “Little Bull” (Becerrillo), “Little Lion.” (Leoncico, Leoncillo) or “Beast” erno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 1105. For Amerindian pet-keeping in general, see Serpell, 60-64, 70-71.

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(Bruto). “Amigo” exudes domestic companionship, and both dogs are wearing collars, while Lautaro is shown looking up at Guaman Poma’s son as any dog might look at his boy. (see figure 5) Individuals in the Spanish empire engaged in interactive relationships with other animals. Some tame animals, through behaviors of theirs that were observed, led some in the empire to reflect on their own status as a particular type of animal, simultaneously a part of nature and set apart from the rest of nature. Today we might note that this is a truism applicable to any animal species, but for early moderns of the Spanish empire, there was always the specter of the immortal soul that fundamentally separated humans from the rest of the natural world in ways that other animals were not. Good and Clever Animals in the Spanish Empire Published in 1590, the Natural and Moral History of the Indies by the Jesuit priest José de Acosta was one man’s appreciative relación of the Americas. Though by his own admission he covered his topics rather briefly, Acosta took time to write of monkeys, whose “agility and cleverness” amazed him—and of one pet monkey in particular: The pranks, antics, and capers performed by these animals would be a long time in the telling; the skills they can acquire when they are trained seem worthy of human intelligence rather than of brute animals. I saw one in Cartagena, in the governor’s house, about whom they told me things that were scarcely credible, such as sending him to the tavern for wine and putting the money in one hand and the jug in the other, and that there was no way he would relinquish the money until they gave him the jug with wine in it. If on the way boys shouted at him or threw stones, he would set the jug aside and take up stones and throw them at the boys until he saw that the coast was clear, and then he would carry his jug again. And, in addition, although he was a very good imbiber (as I saw him drink it, with his master pouring it from above), he would not touch the pitcher unless he was given it or was given permission. They also told me that if he saw women with their faces painted he would go and pluck at their headdresses and pull them about and ill treat them. There may be some exaggeration in this, for I did not see it; but I do believe that there is no animal that understands and adapts to human company as well as this breed of monkeys.33 33 ╇ José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. Jane E. Mangan, trans. Frances López-Morillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 241. Also José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 73: Obras del P. José de Acosta de la Compañia de Jesús, ed. P. Fran-

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In our day, when videos of Japanese macaques providing hot towels and drinks for soy bean tips in restaurants are easily accessible on the internet, Acosta’s account of an American monkey’s running errands seems less exaggerated than it may have to some in his sixteenth-century European audience.34 Today, American capuchin monkeys, who use tools in the wild, are used to retrieve objects for quadriplegics.35 Acosta, with some personal experience of monkeys, was far more willing to blur human-animal categories than fellow Jesuits, like Francisco Suárez, who never traveled in the Americas. The skills of Acosta’s monkeys “seem worthy of human intelligence,” and he genuinely seemed to like monkeys, not because they might help Spaniards to win on the battlefield, but because of the joy and wonder brought about by being in their presence. Still a Jesuit priest of his age, Acosta ended his account of wondrous monkeys by reminding his readers of human dominion over the rest of the natural world: “… I will merely bless the Author of all creatures for having made, simply for men’s enjoyment and wholesome entertainment, a kind of animal whose entire purpose is to laugh or make others laugh.”36 In Acosta’s cosmic vision, the purpose of animals remained service to humanity, but masters readily shared their wine with their companion animals, and, in turn, monkeys provided “wholesome entertainment.” While other Europeans sometimes saw a Satanic cisco Mateos (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1954), Bk. 4, chap.€39:€134. Velázquez painted a pet monkey in his Three Musicians (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, c. 16161617). See Carr, et al., 116-17. For the discussion of an eighteenth-century Parisian monkey’s applying perfume, rouge and beauty spots and just how such pets provided early modern naturalists with study subjects before the establishment of laboratories, see Robbins, 131, 149. 34 ╇ “Monkeys Work in Japanese Restaurant,” BBC News (6 October 2008): available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7654267.stm; accessed March 22, 2009. Also Daily Mail Reporter, “The Amazing Monkey Waiters that Serve Tables in a Japanese Restaurant,” Daily Mail (7 October 2008); available from http://www. dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1071289/Pictured-The-amazing-monkeywaiters-serve-tables-Japanese-restaurant.html; accessed April 5, 2009. For monkeys and other exotic pets in eighteenth-century Paris, see Robbins, 130-49. 35 ╇ Deborah Blumenthal, “Monkeys as Helpers to Quadriplegics at Home,” The New York Times (June 17, 1987); available from http://www.nytimes.com/1987/ 06/17/garden/monkeys-as-helpers-to-quadriplegics-at-home.html?sec=health; accessed March 22, 2009. Also see the website Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled; available from http://www.monkeyhelpers.org/; accessed March 22, 2009. On the skill capuchins demonstrate with tools, see I. C. Waga et al., “Spontaneous Tool Use by Wild Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus libidinosus) in the Cerrado,” Folia Primatologica 77: 5 (2006): 337-44. 36 ╇ Ibid. Acosta, Bk. 4, chap.€39:€134; López-Morillas translation, 241.

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mockery of human behavior in the intelligence of monkeys—and Satan was often called “God’s ape” or “God’s monkey” by Europeans— Acosta saw animals blessed by his god to resemble humanity.37 For José de Acosta, as for Claude Lévi-Strauss, “animals are good to think.” For the Jesuit, they might even lead one to thinking about God. A Jesuit, as well as a natural historian and philosopher, Acosta’s thoughts about monkeys were necessarily subordinated to his focus on the “greater glory of God,” as the Jesuit motto (“Ad maiorem Dei gloriam”) would have things. The monkeys, or micos, of “all the mountains of the islands and the continent and the Andes” were recognized as being different species, or having different lineages, with some black or gray, others reddish-brown or spotted. Acosta took some interest in observation, and he personally attested to having seen a monkey in the Isthmus of Panama “jump from one tree to another that was on the other side of the river,” but he then went on to report that monkeys form a chain to cross wider rivers, though he did not attest explicitly to having seen this personally.38 This mythic monkey chain has not been confirmed today, nor has it been photographed.39 Thus, Acosta demonstrated more care in determining a teleological purpose for monkeys than he did in trying to confirm all the stories—including all the antics of the imbibing monkey—that he heard and recorded. In doing this, he resembled Sabuco, as they both resembled Aristotle and Pliny before them. Obviously, the cultural concerns and perceptions of the early modern Spanish empire were not exactly the same as ours. Some things weighed more heavily than now, but if a natural philosopher then had to grapple with the divine plan to be accepted, there are still those who seek design and purpose in the evolutionary process today.40 Even though there were those Spaniards who saw animals as only leading one to an encounter with things Satanic, there were also Spaniards who looked to animals to 37 ╇ H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1952), 19-22. 38 ╇ Acosta, Bk. 4, chap.€39: 134; López-Morillas translation, 240-41. 39 ╇E. W. Gudger, “The Myth of the Monkey Chain,” Natural History 19:2 (February 1919): 216-21. 40 ╇ For examples, see Amir D. Aczel, The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), 19395, 224; David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders (Vancouver: Regent, 1984), 140-45; Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: the Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Morgan Road, 2005), 99, 111.

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help them in encountering the divine. In Spanish culture, animals other than humans might be either cursed or blessed. While a nonhuman animal could not be a saint in the eyes of the institutional Catholic Church, animals could be instruments of God, just as demonic familiars might be instruments of the Devil. In the thirteenth century, the Dominican Stephen of Bourbon fought heresy by attacking the peasant cult associated with St. Guinefort, a greyhound identified with the protection of children and prayed to as a full-fledged saint. 41 In seventeenth-century Catalonia, another Dominican named Narciso Camós wrote of animals who received no prayers themselves, but, instead, led humans to the appropriate veneration of Mary, Mother of God. Camós noted that of 182 Marian shrines that he visited, 62 foundational legends involved animals indicating the place where an image of the Virgin Mary was to be found. When animals weren’t directly involved in finding the holy image, then herders were. Of 95 human intermediaries, 67 were male herders and 10 female herders. William A. Christian, in his thorough analysis of these Catalonian incidents, has already argued that the herders and animals served as intermediaries between human culture and nature, with Mary, Queen of Heaven, also taking on the role of Mother Nature. The images of Mary found by animals were discovered in caves and trees, or they were dug up from the ground.42 In turn, a few of them were associated with bringing rain, healing sick animals or helping women who experienced difficult pregnancies.43 Fertile nature was identified with Mary, whom Camós even described as a fruit-bearing tree—his 1657 published account of the Marian shrines being entitled Jardín de María plantado en el principado de Cataluña, or Mary’s Garden Planted in the Principality of Catalonia.44 Metaphor and symbolism abounded in the Dominican’s book, and animals, perceived by Camós as instruments of God and exemplars for humanity, certainly were used metaphorically by his culture. Camós explicitly wrote that an ox who discovered the image of 41 ╇ Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Martin Thom (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1983). 42 ╇ William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 15-19. 43 ╇ Narciso Camós, Jardín de María plantado en el principado de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1657; reprinted Barcelona: Editorial Orbis, 1949), 45, 57, 79, 107, 240-41, 350, 359. 44 ╇ Ibid., 189.

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Nuestra Señora de Monguri was made to acknowledge his lord Christ, just as the ox at Bethlehem had.45 A fierce bull, tamed by God, who discovered the effigy of Nuestra Señora del Hospitalet, was an instrument of heaven like the peaceful ox at the Bethlehem manger.46 Camós consciously used animals for theological ends. That they could be employed in this fashion however, speaks to animals having a place blessed by God in the order of the universe. They were not meant to be instruments of Satan’s rebellion, but servants of God, like the humans who herded and heeded them. Indeed, miraculous animal instruments were not always domesticated in Jardín de María. During a drought, boars digging for water uncovered the holy fountain at the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Tallat.47 Likewise, a deer escaping a huntsman led a shepherd to discover the imagen of Nuestra Señora de Cérvado, and a rabbit fleeing down a hole caused a knight and his son to find the effigy of Nuestra Señora de la Caza.48 Nature, domesticated or otherwise, was subject to divine dominion, just as tamed animals submitted to humans in a muted reflection of God’s lordship. In anecdotes, the Dominican author of Jardín de María revealed a range of Spanish attitudes toward other animals, whether they were hunted, or whether they labored for human lords like the drowning mule who was rescued by a miraculous appearance of Mary herself.49 In the complexity of that range, kneeling and bellowing oxen and bulls, as well as the occasional wandering hen or sheep, served as instruments of God—what a priest like Camós himself was meant to aspire to in his culture.50 That animals, in the midst of all their activities, could be associated with holiness and goodness helps to explain the saintliness of Martín de Porres, a Dominican friar who associated with animals. San Martín de Porres and His Animal Associates The testimony taken at the 1660 process of beatification for Fray Martín de Porres (1579-1639) is consistent in identifying him as a man who cared lovingly for the sick and poor regardless of race or ╇ Ibid., 323. ╇ Ibid., 475. 47 ╇ Ibid., 62. 48 ╇ Ibid., 490-91, 75. 49 ╇ Ibid., 299. 50 ╇ Ibid. 45 46

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species. Again and again, witnesses said he cared for Blacks, Spaniards and Amerindians, and that animals came to him to be cured “as though they had reason.”51 Francisco Ortiz testified that Fray Martín, on one occasion, walked beside a vicious fighting bull without being attacked.52 In the testimony, Martín de Porres was presented as an individual who developed peaceful interactive associations with other animal species, as well as with the needy of his own species. The witnesses also said that he disciplined his body in the approved manner of the day, sleeping without a real bed, refusing to eat meat, and whipping himself. Baltasar de la Torre Menasalvas, vecino, or householder, of Lima, then called Ciudad de los Reyes, said that he once saw Fray Martín whipping himself while repeating the words “perro mulato,” or “mulatto dog.”53 Martín de Porres (seventeenth-century documents usually spelled his name “Martín de Porras”) was the illegitimate son of the Spanish hidalgo Juan de Porras and a free black woman named Ana Velásquez.54 At the age of twelve his father provided him with an 51 ╇ Testimony of Fray Cristóbal de San Juan, O. P. (17 June 1660), in Proceso de beatificación de fray Martín de Porres, vol. 1: Proceso diocesano años 1660, 1664, 1671 (Palencia: Secretariado “Martín de Porres,” 1960), 100. In the same volume, also see the following testimonies: Fray Francisco de Paredes, O. P. (18 June 1660), 105; Padre Fernando Aragonés, O. P. (19 June 1660), 125-29; Marcelo de Ribera, surgeon (19 June 1660), 139; Baltasar de la Torre Menasalvas (25 June 1660), 194-95; Andrés López de Ortega (25 June 1660), 201; Padre Antonio de Estrada, O. P. (25 June 1660), 206; Padre Francisco de Arce, O. P. (26 June 1660), 228; Padre Gerónimo Baptista de Barnuy, O. P. (26 June 1660), 245; Padre Fernando del Aguila, O. P. (28 June 1660), 249; Joseph Pizarro (28 June 1660), 252; Fray Francisco Guerrero, O. P. (30 June 1660), 275; Fray Antonio Gutiérrrez, O. P. (1 July 1660), 291-93; Capitán Juan de Guarnido (1 July 1660), 310-11; Fray Francisco de Santa Fe, O. P. (3 July 1660), 318. 52 ╇ Testimony of Francisco Ortiz (18 June 1660), in Proceso de beatificación, 121. 53 ╇ Testimony of Padre Gaspar de Saldaña, O. P. (17 June 1660), in Proceso de beatificación, 98; Marcelo de Ribera, surgeon (19 June 1660), 136; Baltasar de la Torre Menasalvas (25 June 1660), 193; Gaspar Calderón (1 July 1660), 299. 54 ╇ In her son’s seventeenth-century beatification process, Francisco de Arce identified Ana Velásquez as “negra libre,” while Andrés Marcos de Miranda identified her as “morena libre.” A seventeenth-century biography by the Dominican Bernardo Medina called her “una morena libre.” The terms “moreno” and “morena” were used somewhat interchangeably with “negro” and “negra” to describe dark people of African ancestry, but “moreno” and “morena” were deemed more polite. Testimony of Padre Francisco de Arce, O. P. (26 June 1660), in Proceso de beatificación, 230-31; Andrés Marcos de Miranda (26 June 1660), 235. Also Bernardo Medina, San Martín de Porres: biografía del siglo XVII (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1964), 26; Del Busto, 35-36. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, facsimile ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1963-1964), 2: 607; Ildefonso Gutiérrez Azopardo, “Los

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apprenticeship to a barber-surgeon, and this allowed him by sixteen to become a professed servant, or donado, of the order of St. Dominic at Ciudad de los Reyes’ Convento de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, where he worked as a healer.55 In that capacity, he tended the sick, rich and poor alike, regardless of their race or lineage, and, according to one witness, he focused on his own casta status—his own biracial and boundary-challenging status as a mulato—while praying and whipping himself.56 Used to refer to the lineages of dogs and horses as well as people of mixed ethnicity, the term “casta” demonstrated the extent to which many elite Spaniards could compare their subjects to other animals while reserving special status for themselves. 57 Whether the “perro mulato” incident occurred or not, Martín’s charitable acts, testified to by many witnesses, illustrate a man who shared food, medicine and love regardless of how the prejudicial in his society judged the so-called purity of one’s blood, or limpieza de sangre. Or how, likewise, they might have judged the status of those humans denigrated as “mulatos” and thereby compared to mules.58 Of course, there were a number of Spaniards who could readily value Fray Martín’s actions as the appropriate and moral thing to do. Martín’s fellow Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) and the judge Alonso de Zorita (1512-1585) were not the only ones who embraced a common humanity regardless of “race.”59 To some Fray Martín’s actions and his very being might have been transgressive, but to those around him, who later testified on his behalf at his 1660 beatification process, he was admired and saintly because of his Libros de registro de pardos y morenos en los archivos parroquiales de Cartagena de Indias,” Revista española de antropología americana 13 (1983): 129. 55 ╇ Del Busto, 65-68. 56 ╇ During Martín de Porres’ own lifetime, the castas—racial lineages and mixtures that derived from Amerindians, Africans and Europeans—came to be an increasingly significant challenge to a Spanish American Empire that initially saw itself as divided into a república de los indios and a república de los españoles. See J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 170. 57 ╇ The 1726 Diccionario de autoridades illustrated “casta” through horse lineages and a reference to a “caballero de tan gran casta,” among other things. Generically meaning lineage, “casta” was much more commonly applied to horses and biracial individuals than knights (caballeros) and other nobles however. Diccionario de autoridades, 1: 219-20. 58 ╇ The Diccionario de autoridades explicitly says that early modern Spaniards derogatorily compared the generation of a “mulato” to the generation of a mule. Diccionario de autoridades, 2: 628. Also Elliott, 171. 59 ╇Elliott, 64, 81-82, 170-72.

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behavior, with his humility and lack of arrogance always being mentioned in this context. Hence, it was important to Baltasar de la Torre Menasalvas that he was heard denigrating his own Afro-European status while whipping himself. Martín de Porres failed to challenge the overall structure of the hierarchy directly, though he did take a stand in favor of the weak and subjugated within the hierarchy. By being a food-sharer and healer within the Spanish empire, he helped to illustrate and maintain one of the empire’s justifications for its very existence: that it provided aid and comfort for those in need, and that though there were ranks, there also was sharing among the ranks, with charity trying to minimize suffering.60 By his humility and service, he gained status, respect and perhaps even the liberty for an occasional criticism in actions or words, using the Spanish ideal of Christian love to restrain more brutal aspects of Spanish imperial culture. In this, and in his wearing the habit of a Dominican donado (as already noted by Celia Langdeau Cussen), Martín was different from hechiceros (“wizards”) like the nanahualtin who were identified by Ruiz de Alarcón as trying to use demonically channeled animal power to do harm to Spaniards, thereby attacking the entire Spanish imperial hierarchy.61 In attempting to decapitate the Spanish imperial body politic, the nanahualtin were rebels, while San Martín remained a reformer. Rather than attempting to disrupt the social organism’s hierarchy, he tried to improve the body’s functioning by appealing to the Spanish head. In fact, San Martín obviously subordinated the needs of his beloved nonhuman animals to those of humans when, according to Bernardo de Medina, he used the blood of a black chicken in one of his cures.62 While chicken blood is used in the healing rituals of Afro-Catholic religious traditions commonly dubbed Voodoo or Santería, rooster ╇ For efforts to balance hierarchy and reciprocity in the Spanish imperial world, see Abel Athouguia Alves, “The Christian Social Organism and Social Welfare: The Case of Vives, Calvin and Loyola,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 20: 1 (Spring 1989): 3-21; A. A. Alves (with contributions by Carol Blakney), “The Alpha Factor and the Conquest of Mexico: a Study in Ethological History,” International Journal of Anthropology 17: 2 (2002): 59-75. 61 ╇ “… [Q]uite literally protected by the walls surrounding the Dominican convent of El Rosario” and “sheltered by his habit… following the convent rules to the letter, Martín de Porres was able to access supernatural power without raising clerical suspicions.” Langdeau Cussen, 162-63. Langdeau Cussen also noted that many of his miracles resembled those of casta hechiceros—of wizards. Langdeau Cussen, 16061. 62 ╇ Medina, 154. 60

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blood was also prescribed to stop “the flow of blood from the membranes of the brain” in early modern European medical practice.63 Thus, Fray Martín’s use of such blood both demonstrated his willingness to use animals to enhance human wellbeing and his ability to walk in a boundary-challenging shadow land between Afro-Catholic magical practice and the approved European natural philosophy, medicine and religion of his day. Medina, a Dominican priest himself, wrote that Martín learned the chicken blood cure while miraculously, rather than magically, transported by God to Bayonne, France. In reality, he might have learned it from any number of European barber-surgeons. Likewise, Yoruba culture also prescribed birds as medicine and sacrificed roosters and hens for human wellbeing.64 Remnants of those traditions would have been found among AfroPeruvians, including slaves who were owned by San Martín’s convent, and he could have learned the cure from them. With the vast majority of African slaves in the Americas being taken from Senegambia to Angola on the Atlantic Coast, there was cultural diversity among the views of Africans regarding animals, as there was among Amerindians and Europeans.65 However, yet again, some general recurring themes were to be found. Animals were food, but they were other things too. Prior to their interaction with Europeans, the Yoruba of the Oyo empire developed cavalry forces in the savannah lands of western Nigeria, while African elites in more forested zones like Benin rode horses to show status.66 Some animals were beasts of burden in Africa, and wandering village dogs warned of danger and hunted with human beings. Given names by the 63 ╇ Ulisse Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on Chickens: the Ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600) Volume II, Book XIV, trans. L. R. Lind (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 189. 64 ╇ J. Omosade Awolalu, Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites (London: Longman, 1979), 72-73, 163; Karen McCarthy Brown, “Systematic Remembering, Systematic Forgetting: Ogou in Haiti,” in Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New, ed. Sandra T. Barnes, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 83. 65 ╇ Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 151-52; David Eltis, “Slave Trade: Trans-Atlantic Trade,” in Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. A Historical Guide to World Slavery (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 373; Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 96-116. 66 ╇ Sandra T. Barnes and Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, “Ogun, the Empire Builder,” in Africa’s Ogun, 45-47; Robin Law, “A West African Cavalry State: the Kingdom of Oyo,” Journal of African History 16: 1 (1975): 1-15; E. J. Alagoa, “Fon and Yoruba: the Niger Delta and the Cameroon,” in General History of Africa, vol. 5: Africa from

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Yoruba, dogs traditionally have been representative of both sexual promiscuity and faithful companionship.67 Nonhuman animals were also culturally acceptable conduits to another world, and the individuals of African ancestry who were healed by San Martín, including slaves owned by his convent, may have seen him in a syncretic light. Surrounded by nonhuman animals in the extant accounts we have of him, Martín embodied a particular definition of the sacred that crossed European and African cultural boundaries. In the mid-seventeenth century, from the Gold Coast to Mbundu in Angola, European observers noted that Africans read bird cries and the behavior of dogs, foxes and rabbits. Animals might be possessed by spirits from the other world to do their bidding, so that in Sierra Leone, possessed leopards were held in awe, and possessed snakes, elephants and lions were likewise messengers from the spirit world in the Kongo Kingdom.68 John Thornton writes that in the region now known as the country of Angola, “Shortly after the death of Queen Njinga in 1663, for example, the people of Matamba were troubled by rogue leopards, who they believed were possessed by the dead queen’s soul….”69 In Africa, as in the Americas and Europe, animals were good to think as well as eat. They were laden with symbolic meaning, and the overarching willingness of African cultural traditions to find religious meaning in animals was not so different from Native American traditions, and even from some traditions that were muted, yet still quite present, in European culture. In the Spanish empire, African perspectives blended with European and Amerindian traditions. To the present day in Cuban Santería, a syncretic blend of multiple African religious traditions and other the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, ed. B. A. Ogot (Oxford, Berkeley, Paris: Heinemann, University of California Press, UNESCO, 1992), 440-42. The horses of Oyo came from the north, with Hausa merchants apparently the source. Horses traded by the Portuguese were never brought in large enough numbers to provide for cavalry forces. Despite the difficulties in maintaining horses in tsetse fly country, this was an African horse culture. See Law, 4; John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 113. 67 ╇ Adésolá Olátéjú, “The Yorùbá Animal Metaphors: Analysis and Interpretation,” Nordic Journal of African Studies 14: 3 (2005): 369, 371, 378, 380-81. Also Ajibade George Olusola, “Animals in the Traditional Worldview of the Yorùbá,” Electronic Journal of Folklore 30 (2005): 155-172; available from http://www.folklore .ee/folklore/vol30/olusala.pdf; accessed November 29, 2010. 68 ╇ Thornton, 240, 245. 69 ╇ Ibid., 245.

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trans-Atlantic customs, animals are sacrificed to Yoruba gods identified with Catholic saints, and the blacksmith-warrior god Ogun’s dog is identified with St. John the Baptist’s ram, even as he and St. John are sometimes one.70 Martín’s association with other animals, especially dogs, might have earned him a magical and sacred patina in the eyes of those Afro-Peruvians who remembered Yoruba spiritual traditions in some form. In Cuba, the cosmic warrior and hunter Ogun protected slaves fleeing into the forest, and Ogun was also associated with dog companions (who were sometimes sacrificed to him) and medicinal cures. The healer Martín cared for slaves and dogs.71 In the Dominican priest Bernardo de Medina’s seventeenth-century biography of Martín de Porres, this “rare man” was presented yet again as a healer who would cure the visiting Archbishop of Mexico as he would cure Amerindians and the Dominicans’ laboring black slaves at the hacienda of Limatambo—a place he frequently visited, interacting with people of African ancestry like himself, and where he gardened and successfully planted fine fig trees as well.72 In the eyes of some Martín de Porres may have blended African customs sometimes labeled witchcraft with Catholic practice and saintly behavior. He was successful because, in his Dominican habit, he reminded Spaniards that a Christianizing mission was a main justification of their imperialism, and that the gospels often spoke of forgiveness, love and charity. Though Martín, like Christ, might render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s (Luke 20:25) and not challenge the fact that hierarchy and the poor were likely to remain in the world as it is (John 12: 8), he also showed those who testified on his behalf in the seventeenth-century beatification process that there was a way of being in the world without being of the world (John 17: 14-18). To Martín, that included the demonstration of ranked Â�fraternity across species—with mutual aid, rather than the pursuit of power, being the common nexus in the animal kingdom. This man, who offered food and care to poor humans, not only failed to offend animals, he also offered them food and comfort in need, frequently tending sick stray dogs, and according to his fellow Dominican Fernando Aragonés: 70 ╇ George Eaton Simpson, Black Religions in the New World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 86-87. 71 ╇ This line of inquiry might be pursued further by someone well versed in AfroCatholic religious traditions. See John Mason, “Ògún: Builder of the Lùkùmí’s House,” in Africa’s Ogun, 359, 361. 72 ╇ Medina, 24, 112-15, 56, 88, 92, 83.

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chapter five It appears as though the animals obeyed through divine privilege, as evidenced by way of an exemplary and prodigious event that this witness saw; and it was the case that in a cellar that is below the infirmary in the aforesaid convent a dog and a cat gave birth. And as it appeared to the aforementioned servant of God that the mothers and children could die of hunger, everyday he took them a dish of soups, and while they ate he told them: “Eat and remain calm and don’t fight.” And so… they appeared to be of one species in their conformity.73

Celia Langdeau Cussen and Alex García-Rivera posit that this scene of a dog and cat eating together (and they would eventually be joined by a mouse as well) meant much to Spaniards as a metaphor of peaceful and harmonious interaction regardless of race or ethnicity. However, it is also extremely important that so many witnesses spoke of Martín engaging in such loving care of nonhuman animals.74 There is a great deal of corroboration that he was constantly found among nonhuman animals. While his Dominican order was associated primarily with preaching the word of God to humanity so as to eliminate heresy, Martín became a Francis of Assisi for the Americas. By grace of God, according to Fernando Aragonés, he was able to eliminate aggression and animosity across species, and to make a cat and dog behave in conformity as though they were of “one species.” The ascetic Martín, who was never seen eating meat (“jamás le vieron comer carne”), ran a hospital for sick animals at his sister’s home, while also caring for the sick oxen at the Limatambo hacienda.75 Animals followed him everywhere and licked the clothing of this 73 ╇ The Spanish word “hijos” can refer to human children or the young of animals. In my translation, I have chosen “children” rather than “young” or “offspring” to demonstrate this interesting Spanish usage. “Soups” or “sopas” refers to bread soaked in soup, milk or coffee. The original reads: “Parece que los animales le obedecían por particular privilegio de Dios, como se verá por un exemplo y suceso prodigioso que este testigo vió, y fue el caso que debaxo de un sótano que está debaxo de la enfermería del dicho convento parieron una perra y una gata. Y pareciéndole al dicho siervo de Dios podrían morirse de hambre madres e hijos, cuidaba todos los días de llevarles un plato de sopas, y mientras las comían les decía: ‘Coman y callen y no riñan’. Y así… parecían de una especie en la conformidad.” Testimony of Padre Fernando Aragonés, O.P. (21 June 1660), in Proceso de beatificación, 158. The story was retold in the 1663 biography written by the Dominican priest Bernardo Medina. For the story in a reprinting of the 1675 Madrid edition of this work originally entitled Vida prodigiosa del venerable siervo de Dios Fray Martín de Porras, de la Tercera Orden de N. Glorioso P. Santo Domingo, see Medina, San Martín de Porres: biografía del siglo XVII, 98. 74 ╇ Langdeau Cussen, 141, 150-51, 172, 246; García-Rivera, 4-5. 75 ╇ Medina, 55, 103-104.

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humble man, who apparently only spoke out against a superior when one of these beloved animals was wronged.76 Medina wrote that Martín rebuked the Dominican in charge of the food (Procurador de la comida del Convento) for having his smelly, old dog killed after years of loyal service. Challenging the man’s lack of charity toward his loyal dog, Martín still addressed him respectfully as “Padre” (“¿Padre, cómo ha tenido tan poca piedad con aquel bruto, después de haberle servido tantos años?”). After a night in San Martín’s cell, the dog was restored to life and cured of his ill health and odor according to Medina. His soars and foul smell were gone, and his new protector, Martín de Porres, told his “brother” to avoid his ungrateful former master’s pantry, which the dog did for the rest of his life (“hermano, no vaya a la despensa donde está su amo desagradecido”).77 Far from being San Martín’s only companion, this resurrected dog joined the future saint’s multi-racial and multi-species community. While the animals who associated with Martín de Porres might be used for theological and socio-political purposes by diverse religious authorities and perspectives, they were also the saint’s companion animals or “pets.” This form of tame and morally directed cross-species association was in fact possible in the early modern Spanish empire, even as it remains possible and might even be growing in prevalence today. San Martín, like Catalina de Charles with her little doe, showed Spaniards the way in which similarity and difference, compassionate dominion, might be lived between human animals with heightened rationality and morality and their animal brethren who resembled them. Indeed, Martín’s example resonated with his fellow Dominicans, who bore laudatory witness on his behalf after his death. If they recognized the Christ-like compassion in his interaction with diverse species, they also may have remembered that their ascetic founder St. Dominic was symbolically associated with the loyalty and vigilance of a black and white dog who foretold his birth in a dream his mother had. Officially the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, like other preachers before them, were referred to as keen watch dogs, protecting God’s sheep from wolf-like heretics. While other Dominicans were professors, public preachers and “hounds” associated with one nonhuman animal species and the inquisitorial pursuit of heretics, Martín de Porres illustrated the 76 77

╇ Ibid., 107. ╇ Ibid., 106-107.

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peace of hearth and home, and the comfort that companion animals, like those pretty little lap dogs, might provide. 78 He also embraced animal species beyond the totemic Dominican dog with his cat, mouse, toro bravo and oxen. As the Salamanca professor Francisco Suárez would have it, humans and other animals, despite their real differences, were broadly the same in their common “animality.” With heightened reflective abilities, or what Suárez called “rationality,” humans became responsible for determining duties and boundaries. Whereas Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón assumed that the pursuit of power and aggression are the universals that drag humanity “down to the level of animals” (a position that remains with us today), Martín de Porres lived altruism as a more appropriate means of demonstrating the relationship of humans to other animals. Today’s ethology presents cases of altruistic behavior in our evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee, while even less closely related primates like capuchin monkeys have demonstrated a conception of justice in experiments. If one capuchin is generous with a piece of cucumber, Frans de Waal has found that a second capuchin is more likely to share a piece of apple.79 A primatologist like de Waal can write a book entitled Good Natured to remind us that social animals do cooperate as well as compete, and nature is not only “red in tooth and claw.”80 Already in the early seventeenth century, Martín de Porres was demonstrating to his world a pattern of behavior that might earn respect without focusing on the aggressive pursuit of power. He also demonstrated that community might be built thereby, and that his community could include other animals as well as humans of different ranks. He was not able to discuss this or demonstrate this using the evidence of evolutionary biology, where species are far from hermetically sealed, but he lived in a world that had its ╇ Pierre Mandonnet, O. P., “Domini Canes,” in St. Dominic and His Work, trans. Mary Benedicta Larkin, O. P. (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Company, 1948), 447-59; William A. Hinnebusch, O.P., The History of the Dominican Order, Vol. 1: Origins and Growth to 1500 (Staten Island, N. Y.: Alba House, 1966), 55; Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: an Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 138. 79 ╇ Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: a Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 205. 80 ╇ Frans de Waal, Good Natured: the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 148. For examples of cooperation across animal species, see Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, Wild Justice: the Moral Lives of Animals (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 55-84. 78

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own ways of discussing these principles. As Afro-Peruvians might have focused on Yoruba traditions regarding the dog, a number of the Dominicans around him would have been well aware of Biblical passages envisioning perfect peace through the wolf’s dwelling with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6) and calls for communal harmony through all humans playing their roles to the common good in the mystical body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12) and feeding and clothing the least of Christ’s brethren (Matthew 25:35-40).81 Martín de Porres reminded those around him that they could engage in what ethologists today would describe as food-sharing behavior and de Waal’s Peacemaking among Primates.82 Aggression and violence, dominance and brutality, were really not the only things Spaniards and others in the early modern world embraced. Their vision of a well-functioning body politic called for charitable donations of food to be dispensed from hospitals, and Cortés, the conqueror of New Spain provided a legacy for the hospital he founded, the Hospital de la Limpia y Pura Concepción de Nuestra Señora y Jesús Nazareno, in his last will and testament.83 While those deemed witches were seen as challenging authorities with aggression, and transgressing boundaries between their species and other species as a result, Martín negotiated across species barriers in a culturally and morally approved way. On one level, San Martín de Porres’ approved identification with other animals, including his refusal to eat meat, was fairly typical of the lives of many saints. His vegetarianism, after all, was blessed by the dicta of his Dominican order.84 As already stated, Catholic fasting 81 ╇ There is also a Biblical call to show kindness toward laboring animals in Proverbs 12:10—“A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Also see Serpell, 151; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 151. 82 ╇ Felix Warneken et al., “Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children,” Public Library of Science Biology, 5: 7 (July 2007): e184; available from http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/5/7/pdf/10.1371_journal .pbio.0050184-L.pdf; accessed May 30, 2008. Also see Frans de Waal, Peacemaking among Primates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 83 ╇ “Descripción. Hospitales de la Ciudad de México (16 Henero 1570),” Papeles de Nueva España, ed. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, 7 vols. (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1905), 3: 23; Josefina Muriel, Hospitales de la Nueva España, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1956-60), 1: 40-43; Abel A. Alves, Brutality and Benevolence: Human Ethology, Culture, and the Birth of Mexico (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 183-211. 84 ╇ Colin Spencer, The Heretic’s Feast: a History of Vegetarianism (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), 167-72; John Berkman, “The Consumption of Animals and the Catho-

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could lead to the avoidance of meat for life in the strictest observances of priests, nuns and brothers, unless meat was seen as required to maintain or restore health. Thus, San Martín’s Dominicans, the Order of Preachers founded by St. Dominic in the early thirteenth century to fight heresy, including the vegetarian-leaning Cathars, abstained from meat in accordance with the general guidelines of the Church. The Constitutions of the order allowed no meat at all in the refectories of Dominican convents. The sick were permitted meat in a special “meat room,” and traveling friars were allowed to eat food that had been cooked with meat so as not to insult their hosts, but Martín’s abstinence would have brought more admiration than suspicion in his religious community.85 When an ascetically driven Dominican like San Martín de Porres always refrained from meat, there was solid precedent, and his Dominican brothers would have understood and approved. That he so actively linked his abstinence to a sense of brotherhood with nonhuman animals made him special and nuanced his ascetic message. San Martín practiced strict personal asceticism, while also showing both humans and other animals great compassion. No doubt this helped to make his path more acceptable, but in this he was not alone.

lic Tradition,” Logos 7: 1 (Winter 2004): 174-90; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 38, 82, 94-95; André Vauchez, La Sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen age (Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1981), 216, 392-93. Fish, however, was often used by those in religious orders as a permissible substitute for terrestrial meat. Catholic ascetic vegetarianism was usually piscatarian vegetarianism. See Spencer, 177-79; Stuart, 152. It is difficult to ascertain, given traditional Spanish usage of “carne” for terrestrial meat, whether San Martín de Porres abstained from fish. In Spanish today, the expression “No ser ni carne ni pescado” (“Neither meat nor fish”) is the equivalent of the English “Neither fish nor fowl.” See “carne” in Gran Diccionario Oxford/ The Oxford Spanish Dictionary, ed. Beatriz Galimberti Jarman et al., 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 141. The eighteenth-century Diccionario de autoridades includes this expression (“Ni es carne, ni pescado”) and “Carne, carne cría, y peces agua fría.” The dictionary then elaborates upon the latter statement by saying that it teaches metaphorically that more appropriate things must be pursued in life just as meat is more appropriate food for people than fish. Diccionario de autoridades, 1: 186-87. Of course, the term “vegetarian” is a flexible nineteenth-century term that can run the gamut from vegan to ovolactarians and piscatarian vegetarians. See Alan Davidson, The Penguin Companion to Food (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 989. 85 ╇ Hinnebusch, 358-59.

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A Peruvian contemporary of his who failed to be either beatified or canonized, the mestizo priest Martín de Ayala, is described by his Amerindian half-brother Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala as “a great, saintly man” who “remained his whole life, with the poor people in the hospital of the city of Huamanga (aka Guamanga) where he was their chaplain.” Bearing some similarity to San Martín de Porres, Martín de Ayala: [P]erformed much penitence… had only a woven straw mat for a blanket and mattress…. He often scourged his flesh: he wore a hair shirt his whole life…. He gave great alms and charity, showing his fear of God and his love for his fellow men. He never said a bad word to men or women, nor to any creature. He never allowed an animal to be killed; he did not want people to kill so much as a louse.86

In this portrait of Martín de Ayala, his more famous half-brother Guaman Poma, master of the dog “Amigo,” used standard saintly imagery. However, the description of Martín de Ayala also reflected what Guman Poma considered appropriate behavior at the foundation of good government. Thus, his idealized Spanish viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, was “a friend of the poor” who “performed good works and a great deal of charity.”87 In his own lifetime, the bad government that Guaman Poma saw around him was epitomized by the punishments meted out to his Amerindian noble disciple don Cristóbal de León, a man described as “fond of defending the poor.”88 Evil Spanish and Amerindian authorities, on the other hand, were described metaphorically as untamed animals preying upon Amerindian victims. While local Crown officials called corregidores were described as “worse than serpents,” the Spaniard who collected labor tribute, the encomendero, was a lion who “never lets go” of his indio prey. As “wily men of letters,” the doctrina priests were described by Guaman Poma as being like foxes towards their Native American charges, while notaries and itinerant Spaniards were 86 ╇ Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. and ed. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 11. Also see Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, ed. Rolena Adorno (Copenhagen: Royal Library Digital Facsimile, 2002), 18; Rolena Adorno, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 126-30, 51. 87 ╇ New Chronicle and Good Government, 143-44; Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, 439 88 ╇ New Chronicle and Good Government, 169; Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, 499.

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Â�likened to different types of predatory cats, and abusive Amerindian nobles were mice who stole their subjects’ goods day and night, while also serving as prey to Spanish predators.89 Thus, in one document, Guaman Poma’s First New Chronicle and Good Government drew linkages between the beneficence to be practiced toward “lesser” animals and “lesser” humans, while it also demonstrated how dominance displays and violent acts among humans might be likened to aggression and predatory behavior in the broader animal world. As exemplified by humans and other animals in the writing of Guaman Poma, nature was both benevolent and brutal. Humans had the capacity to reflect morally on the natural path they might take, and their cross-species reflections and associations might teach them appropriate and even saintly behavior. Humans as a Part of Nature, or Set Apart from Nature? A reading of cross-species interaction in the early modern Spanish empire helps us to realize that the Spanish imperium and early moderns were not so rigid that they could not see shades of grey. In the early modern Spanish empire, animals were used as labor for humans, and they were used as food and metaphors to elucidate an understanding of human society, but animals were also seen as intrinsically related to humans in their pursuit of dominance and in their more peaceful behaviors. It was common parlance among intellectuals to see humans as possessing an animal faculty, and while nanahualtin fearfully reminded Spaniards in authority of the human lust to dominate, Fray Martín de Porres and his animals reminded them to care for those in need. Martín could make different species conform to peaceful interaction as though they were one species. He worked for peaceful cooperation among different but related species—and across the human estates and castas as well. Both the themes of humans and other animals being a part of nature and of humans standing entirely apart from animals and nature were there before and during the early modern period, and they have persisted with varying degrees of emphasis to the present day. As we encounter other animals we are forced to ask the extent to which we are like them. Today, the desire to transcend nature can ╇ New Chronicle and Good Government, 225-27; Nueva Corónica y buen gobierno, 709. 89

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be embedded in transhuman quests to “enhance” our very being through mechanical implants, genetic engineering and computer interfacing. Like Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, many among us have been extremely conflicted over our animal natures, while others have shown a greater degree of comfort. Even as philosophers have asked the degree to which we are a part of nature or set apart from nature, individuals in their everyday lives, like San Martín de Porres, have lived this tension. Any inhabitant of the Spanish empire who associated with a clever lap dog, commanded a mastiff or saw a wine-besotted monkey would be confronted with questions of similarities and differences. Our interactions with companion animals necessarily lead us to reflect on what it means to be a human animal. Whether among cultural elites or at the level of popular culture, animals are “good to think.”

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CHAPTER SIX

THE ANIMALS OF SPAIN: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE History would not be written by the human species if it were not for its dialectic of continuity and change. The past would be intuitively immediate to us all if there were no change, and it would be incomprehensible if we failed to perceive experiences comparable to ours today. The eighteenth century witnessed noticeable changes in the Spanish empire, but there were also significant continuities. Though interpretive emphases might shift culturally with new monarchs and new learning, nonhuman animals continued to provide labor, food, clothing, entertainment and companionship. And humans continued to reflect on the animality inherent in their humanity. In 1700, Philip V (r. 1700-1746), a French Bourbon king, ascended the imperial Spanish throne, and increasingly throughout the century a small group of intellectuals tried to inject Enlightenment notions into Spanish culture and policy, but the animals of Spain remained a physical reality who had to be considered, even as Spanish imperial culture was not completely overturned by an Enlightenment revolution. The Material Limits of Enlightenment In the midst of ongoing and increasingly expensive wars, Bourbon policies attempted to make the Spanish empire less poor. UnforÂ� tunately, Spain itself experienced demographic increase from some 7.6 million people in 1717 to 10.5 or 11.5 million people in 1797.1 Human population exceeded the generation of new employment opportunities in manufacturing, and the traditional balance between 1 ╇ John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 196-98. Another estimate places the Spanish population at 7.4 million in 1700 and 10.6 million in 1800. Massimo Livi Bacci, The Population of Europe: a History, trans. Cynthia De Nardi Ipsen and Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 8, table 1.1. For the high estimate of 11.5 million, see David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the “Spanish Miracle,” 1700-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),€72, table 3.3.

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grazing and cultivation faced increased pressure for readjustment.2 Humans grew in numbers, but the quality of life did not necessarily increase with population. Spanish life expectancy at birth remained well within the early modern average, failing to surpass twenty-seven years.3 A Mesta shepherd might have his basic subsistence needs cared for with daily allotments of bread for himself and his dog in addition to oil, tallow and a salary, but laboring peasants’ wages at the beginning of the eighteenth century were commonly 5 or 6 reales a day, with bread costing 5.5 reales.4 In the province of Madrid in 1754, peasant day laborers earned only 5 reales and local non-Mesta shepherds earned a meager 4 reales.5 Life was hard for a growing rural population in Spain, with day laborers accounting for 44% of the peasant population and only 19% of the peasantry owning their own farms according to the census of 1797.6 Sheep and the Mesta received some of the blame for the general misery in 1766 when riots protesting the high price and paucity of bread spread throughout Spain. In a reversal of Caxa de Leruela’s praise of Pan and pastoralism, don Pedro Manuel Sáenz de Pedroso y Ximeno, the procurador general of the Council of Castile, wrote that herding was being privileged at the expense of settled agriculture, and just as Cain, Adam’s first born, had been driven to conflict with Abel the shepherd, bloody conflict between Spain’s desperate farmers and herders might erupt.7 Don Pedro argued that the Mesta’s privileges had to end to satisfy the hunger of the Spanish people, and policies under don Pedro’s monarch Charles III certainly worked to that effect. During his reign lasting from 1759 to 1788, Charles III ╇Ringrose, 8, 173-75. ╇ Between 1541 and 1871, English life expectancy averaged 35.5. The Japanese also seem to have had a high average. However, in France from 1740 to 1790, the male life expectancy hovered between 24 and 28, while female life expectancy ranged from 26 to 30 years—quite comparable to the life expectancy in eighteenth-century Spain. James C. Riley writes, “Across the globe in 1800 it seems unlikely that the average life lasted 30 years; indeed it may not have lasted 25 years. A few people lived to be old, but many died in infancy or early childhood.” James C. Riley, Rising Life Expectancy: a Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32-33. 4 ╇ Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Sociedad y estado en el siglo XVIII español (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1984), 30; Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 237. 5 ╇ Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 238; Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr., Spain’s Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 103104. 6 ╇ Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 236. 7 ╇ Phillips and Phillips, 77. 2 3

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and his ministers whittled away at Mesta privilege.8 Taxes increased and access to fallow land declined. Yet the Mesta continued to number its flocks at over 4 million and the flocks’ owners at 46,000 at the end of the eighteenth century. Though there may have been approximately 14 million sheep and several hundred thousand owners outside the Mesta in the mid-1700s, Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Jr. think that it was these individuals who were first forced to retreat as cropland expanded, and their difficulties may have generated anti-Mesta sentiment among them.9 Times and attitudes were changing in the face of human demographic growth and hunger, but the Mesta persisted until it was permanently abolished by the Spanish Crown in 1836. The tragedy of Spain was that the growing, impoverished human population desperately made claims to marginal lands best suited to the maintenance of transhumant herds. A growing human population encouraged a resource grab that defied Spain’s traditions, and the commercialization of wheat agriculture grew to such an extent that, a frequent importer of grain in the early modern period, Spain became an exporter of wheat and flour after 1820.10 The land that had once been imbued with the spirit of Pan and the Mother of God was now commercialized by the era of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and this would have its complicated effect on the animals of Spain as well. Indeed, the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment was itself a complex movement that directly impacted only a few educated individuals but had a ripple effect throughout the entire continent and its imperial possessions abroad as a result of key positions held by some of these Enlightenment-inspired intellectuals. In general terms, Enlightenment thinkers, called “ilustrados” in Spanish, embraced the notion that human experience and reason could solve problems, thereby leading to the growth of material prosperity. Inspired by the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers posited that orderly laws for human politics and society would be discovered just as Sir Isaac 8 ╇Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 117-18; Ringrose, 166, 282-83. 9 ╇ Phillips and Phillips, 277, 278. 10 ╇Ringrose, 283. This lasted until about 1880. Ringrose writes, “Farming continued to rely on traditional methods, small farmers, and tenant farmers. Consequently, output grew primarily by applying traditional methods to land previously used for forests, commons, or grazing.” Ringrose, 284.

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Newton (1642-1727) had provided the world with his mathematical understanding of gravity, inertia and other physical forces.11 And just as that broad-ranging Newtonian understanding led to improvement in the capturing of steam to do work and other engineering feats of the early Industrial Revolution, so too a better understanding of human social law and principle would lead to a more orderly and prosperous humanity.12 Given the Enlightenment’s commitment to some form of freedom of thought and expression to allow for debate over the best solutions to particular problems, differences of opinion naturally arose. While the Enlightenment shot the rapids with radical thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) embracing republicanism and a rejection of traditional Christianity, the Spanish Enlightenment and its ilustrados were generally far more moderate in their goals and aspirations—with moderation being judged by the cultural standards of the day.13 Spanish ilustrados supported their monarchy and their church, but fought for increased economic, political and intellectual interaction with the broader world. Though the Spanish Inquisition persisted, officially banning a number of the books that Spanish ilustrados nonetheless read, its caseload and ferocity declined. The Inquisitorial Tribunal of Toledo had only three to four cases a year in the late 1700s, and only 10% of the 4,000 cases brought before the Supreme Council of the Inquisition dealt with secret Judaism or Protestantism—the so-called “errors” most likely to be punished with extreme severity. In his survey of Bourbon Spain, the historian John Lynch noted that the eighteenth-century Inquisition only used the death penalty four times in 1714, 1725, 1763 and 1781.14 By the end of the eighteenth century, an Anglican clergyman, Joseph Townsend, not only toured Spain freely. He was welcomed by tolerant Catholic clergy.15 The spirit of the Enlightenment ╇ I. Bernard Cohen, The Birth of a New Physics, revised ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1985), 124, 154, 164-74, 222-23, 234-39. 12 ╇ Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 102, 105-111. 13 ╇ Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 528-40; Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya in the Twilight of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 18. 14 ╇ Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 287-88; Jean-Pierre Dedieu, “Les quatre temps de l’Inquisition,” in L’Inquisition espagnole XVe-XIXe siècle, ed. Bartolomé Bennassar (Paris: Hachette, 1979), 23, 26. 15 ╇ Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787, with Particular Attention to the Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, Population, Taxes, 11

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brought change to the culture constructed by the human animals of Spain, but what about the Enlightenment and the nonhuman animals of the Spanish empire? Like humans, the other animals of Spain experienced continuity and change in the eighteenth century. Sheep and dogs, like their shepherds, continued to labor for a beset Mesta. Horses continued to die on the battlefield, and in the arena with bulls. Pets continued to be kept. And the sentience and awareness of nonhuman animals continued to be debated. However, all this was now done in the midst of some Enlightenment notions blended into a Catholic and Aristotelian substrate. In the cultural environment that humans had constructed for them, the nonhuman animals of Spain experienced tremors but no full scale earthquakes. They continued to generate facets of human-dominated culture themselves, and their defenders continued to appear, led by Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro (1676-1764), the Benedictine monk who just happened to be the leading progenitor of the Spanish Enlightenment. An admirer of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the experimental method of English natural philosophers, Feijóo also continued to agree with Aristotle, when his own experience corroborated the views of the ancient Greek. The monk’s adversaries were those who would kill the vitality and agency he saw inherent in nature.16 His self-proclaimed intellectual opponents were the sixteenth-century Spaniard Gómez Pereira and the seventeenth-century Frenchman René Descartes. In his collection of essays published as the Teatro Crítico Universal (1726-1739) and the Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas (1742-1760), Feijóo argued that nonhuman animals possess feelings, memory and a degree of reflective discernment. To perceive them as stimulusresponse machines, like Gómez Pereira and Descartes, was to ignore the evidence. Feijóo agreed with Thomas Aquinas that nonhuman animals lacked full-fledged human free will and reason, but their movement and operation was not purely passive like that of a timepiece or arrow.17 Feijóo stated that a cat will pause and deliberate and Revenue of that Country, and Remarks in Passing through a Part of France, 3 vols. (London: C. Dilly, in the Poultry, 1791), 2: 1-9. 16 ╇ Arturo Ardao, La Filosofía polémica de Feijóo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1962), 56-57, 83-84; Israel, 534-36. 17 ╇ Benito Feijóo, “Racionalidad de los brutos,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 56: Obras escogidas del Padre Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, Tomo 1, ed. Vicente de la Fuente, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1952), 136. The essay originally appeared in volume 3 of the Teatro Crítico.

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about the best path to take to get a hard-to-reach piece of meat, and that he knew a young ass who escaped every Thursday to avoid a postal route he was scheduled to service. The Benedictine posited that humans are not the only animals to measure, count and know the days of the week.18 Other animals can also learn and change behaviors accordingly, as evidenced by a bull, who surviving one corrida, will return to the arena with “much greater malice and prescience.”19 Likewise, cats and dogs will refrain from taking food that is to their liking in front of their owners if they are punished for doing so, and they will show hesitancy before fighting each other.20 Nonhuman animals pursue their objectives “like children and the insane,” and Descartes was wrong to reduce “all their movements to pure mechanism,” while Gómez Pereira was wrong to attribute those movements to “sympathies and antipathies” the animals automatically have with objects, resembling iron when it is attracted to a magnet.21 According to Feijóo, humans are called rational animals because other animals have inferior reason. Still, their inferior reason allows them a type of physical liberty to pursue material pleasures and avoid pain and punishment. They lack the ability to discern moral and spiritual goods, and therefore cannot be faulted for only pursuing earthly pleasures. While humanity is fallen, other animals do not sin. Explicitly stating that he saw more merit in arguments for animal reflection than in mechanistic explanations of animal behavior, Feijóo also admitted that he turned his head when in the presence of chickens and sheep being slaughtered.22 They felt, and he felt for them, worrying with Plutarch that the slaughter of animals and meateating was a sign of human insensitivity intrinsically related to this fully rational being’s capacity to kill conspecifics.23 Feeling for the ╇ Ibid. ╇ Ibid., 137. 20 ╇ Ibid., 137-38. 21 ╇ Ibid., 138, 131. 22 ╇ Feijóo, “Compasión con los irracionales,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 56: Obras escogidas, 560. The letter originally appeared in volume 3 of the Cartas Eruditas. 23 ╇ Ibid., 561. Feijóo cited Plutarch’s argument that humans turned to meat-eating gradually, first eating dangerous wild animals, then eventually turning to harmless sheep, and finally to the slaughter of other humans and the waging of war, having been desensitized first by the killing of nonhuman animals. See Plutarch, “Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer,” in Plutarch’s Moralia in Fifteen Volumes, trans. Harold Cherniss and William C. Helmbold (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1958), vol. 12: 328-33. 18 19

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animals who served humanity because it was convenient that they should do so, Feijóo wrote that he never used spurs when riding, and that every time he saw a boy throw a stone at a dog without motive or cause, he felt a strong need to punish the boy physically (“Siempre que veo un muchacho herir, si que ni por qué, á un perro con una piedra, quisiera estar cerca de él para castigar con dos bofétadas su travesura.”).24 Like Montaigne and Cervantes before him, Benito Feijóo felt for nonhuman animals suffering at the hands of humans. Though he saw people as a part of nature, Feijóo also saw humanity as holding a unique place in the natural world. Fully spiritual and rational, Feijóo’s humans were capable of applying abstract universals to particular circumstances and metaphysical questions. Other animals possessed souls that were neither matter nor spirit, but responsive to matter alone and thereby “material.” They reflected on and responded to immediate material problems before them and to memories of past circumstances. Though Feijóo described their reason as “very inferior” when compared to that of humanity’s (“El discurso del bruto es muy inferior al del hombre….”), he granted them reason nonetheless. For Feijóo, the animals of Spain existed on a continuum, differing in degree rather than kind, with individual variations showing up within all species themselves.25 They were not solely commodities to be tallied on a balance sheet side by side with land and wheat. They were animate and sentient. But, of course, his was not the only position to be had in the eighteenth-century Spanish empire. Navigating a middle course between his Catholicism and his admiration for Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, Feijóo avoided inquisitorial condemnation—the fate of the Spanish Cartesian Matheo Diego Zapata (c. 1665-1745) in 1725.26 Condemning Cartesianism himself, Feijóo found a way to revive Spain’s traditional Scholastic and Humanist thought through his reading of the Enlightenment, just as Thomas Aquinas had nuanced Medieval Christian theology through his reading of Aristotle.

24 ╇ Feijóo, “Compasión con los irracionales,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 56: Obras escogidas, 560. 25 ╇ Feijóo, “Racionalidad de los brutos,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 56: Obras escogidas, 137-39. For the eighteenth-century definition of “discurso” as discernment and critical reason, see Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, facsimile ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1963-1964), 2: 300. 26 ╇ Israel, 533.

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Historian Jonathan Israel notes that “José Elizalde, a former rector of the University of Mexico, appointed censor of the sixth volume of the Teatro Crítico, in 1734, observed that Feijóo’s volumes had fundamentally transformed thinking not only in Spain itself but in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru and even as far afield as the distant Philippines.”27 On June 23, 1750, King Ferdinand VI (r. 17461759) even proclaimed in an edict that Feijóo’s works and all works like his had royal approval and were no longer to be attacked in print. While the Cartesian Zapata had been tortured and proclaimed a crypto-Jew by the Inquisition, Israel writes, “Feijóo’s Enlightenment had effectively become the official ideology of the State.”28 This meant that Spanish intellectuals would be aware of Newtonian physics, but it did not mean that every particular position held by Feijóo would be fully embraced by all. Despite the rather official condemnation of Cartesianism in Spain’s empire, there were individuals who still saw animals, and even some humans, as mere machines. Even though he became Spain’s new Aquinas, Feijóo’s compassion for nonhuman animals was not necessarily accepted by all. The Bourbon Imperial Machine and the Survival of Dominance Displays in the Midst of Sentiment In the early seventeenth century, the Spanish Habsburg monarchs Philip III (r. 1598-1621) and Philip IV (r. 1621-1665) hunted boar from horseback with a lance, jousting with a worthy opponent, and displaying their bravery and military prowess before their followers. In the late eighteenth century, the Bourbon monarch Charles III displayed his power by presiding over hundreds of laborers in hunting operations organized with mechanical precision. According to the Anglican clergyman Joseph Townsend, who visited Spain in 1786 and 1787, Charles III went into the field every day, except for two days during Passion Week. Lightning, hail, rain or snow failed to deter the king. He even went out when one of his sons was dying. His passion lay in dispatching prey, not the pursuit, and Townsend wrote, “The king spends most of his time in shooting.”29 Charles ╇ Ibid., 534. ╇ Ibid., 540. 29 ╇ Townsend, 2: 123. Also Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 247-49; Robert Hughes, Goya (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 53-55; Olivia Nicole Miller, The Spanish Royal 27 28

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would typically travel some twenty to thirty miles from the Escorial palace with his heir the Prince of Asturias, his physician, his surgeon, the captain of the guard, master of the horse and royal groom all traveling with him in five carriages pulled by six mules at twelve miles an hour. A sixth supply carriage accompanied them, and they would be met by two hundred men who served as beaters and drivers. Any prey was driven to the king, who would then fire at the animals as they passed before him. Rather than a hunt or a joust, Charles III presided over a shooting gallery, with its own sort of industrialized division of labor and assembly line processes. With animals driven into the king’s sight, Townsend described Charles’ shooting of deer for a quarter of an hour as “carnage.”30 His was the mechanized hunt, with the flintlock rifle replacing the lance and driven animals the objects of his shooting in an outdoor slaughterhouse. Production numbers, and sentient animals reduced to ciphers on a tally sheet, replaced the wild boar as noble opponent. Townsend wrote that the king was “… peculiarly flattered with the idea of delivering the country from wolves, of which he keeps an exact account; and when he was at the Escurial (sic), the number he had shot was eight hundred and eighteen.”31 In the seventeenth century, Juan Mateos romanticized and idealized the slaughter of the hunt, sometimes even paying careful attention to the behavior of lupine opponents. His wolves were often sentient, independent agents in a bloody competition. Charles III focused on production tallies, and his wolves were objects to be Â�processed by the flintlock. Sixteen hundred to two thousand people were dispatched to track any wolf who was spotted within reasonable distance of the king. Townsend saw this as a frivolous expense, since Charles paid six reales to each tracker, and double that amount if he shot the wolf as a result of the tracker’s report.32 In effect, it was a rural employment opportunity, but one wonders whether Juan Mateos would have considered Charles III a hunter. Though the Hunting Portrait from Velázquez to Goya (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009), 17-21. 30 ╇ Townsend, 2: 123-28. Charles III did however show some affection where his hunting dogs were concerned. A painting by Luis Paret shows them hovering around the king’s table as he eats lunch. See Luis Paret y Alcazar, Carlos III Lunching Before His Court (Madrid, Museo del Prado, c. 1770), reproduced in Hughes, 53. Also see Miller, 3. 31 ╇ Ibid., 125. 32 ╇ Ibid.

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kings of Mateos’ day used firearms as well as the lance, hunting activity was varied for the Habsburgs. Philip III and Philip IV were accompanied by dogs and well armed huntsmen on horseback and on foot, and animals were driven to impatient royal hunters, with makeshift arenas sometimes being constructed in the countryside, but the epitome of the hunt remained the image of Habsburg monarchs pursuing boars on horseback with a lance.33 According to Townsend, Charles III’s hunt was uniform and mechanical. The mechanical hunt was a reflection of the court and policy of Charles III. He is judged the most capable of Bourbon monarchs for his ability to foster the growth of manufacturing in Spain, increase revenues from the Americas and generally avoid the governmental insolvency of many of his predecessors, even while engaging in expensive wars against Britain.34 Manufacturing so increased during his reign that Valencia had some 3500 to 5000 silk looms in 1787, as contrasted to 3195 in 1769 and 800 in 1718; in Barcelona in the 1780s, cotton manufacturers, organized as the Compañía de FabriÂ� cantes de Hilados, kept 2162 looms busy in sixty factories, with a minimum of twenty other factories and 350 looms operating outside the organization; and in the Basque city of Bilbao, total raw iron production stood at 7000 tons in 1777, with 4000 tons of finished iron products exported to Spanish America in 1790.35 Despite what Townsend wrote about the expensive nature of his shooting expeditions, Charles III kept a better economic tally sheet for the empire than other Spanish monarchs before him. However, just as he reduced nonhuman animals to numbers on a balance sheet, he 33 ╇ Juan Mateos, Origen y dignidad de la caza, ed. Amalio Huarte y Echenique (Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1928), 37, 39-40, 90-91,103. Also Miller, 9-10, 50-52. 34 ╇ Historians Burkholder and Johnson have written, “Charles III died in late 1788, leaving Spain and the empire peaceful and reasonably prosperous. The Crown’s normal income was nearly adequate for routine expenditures, and the royal debt was modest.” Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 7th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 358-59. J. H. Elliott has written that under Charles III, Spanish America “was self-sustaining,” and provided 15-20% of the Crown’s annual revenues, as in the “Golden Age” of Philip II. J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 303-304, 353, 355, 408. Also see Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World: the Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 93; Herr, 140; Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 222-24, 247, 261; Domínguez Ortiz, 304-307. 35 ╇ Herr, 134, 136, 141.

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Â� contributed to growing dissatisfaction in Spain’s trans-Atlantic possessions by means of his successful struggles against the localized economic interests and political power of American-born elites of Spanish ancestry.36 Those Spaniards born in the Americas, the criollos, would generate the leaders of Spanish America’s independence movements in the early nineteenth century. Quite successful with his own immediate “bottom line” pursuits, Charles III was less successful at recognizing the desire for independent agency in other sentient beings. Shooting on the day that one of his sons died, a mechanized routine was apparently rather important to this Bourbon monarch. In contrast to the mechanized order and “productivity” of Charles III’s shooting parties, the bullfight was utter chaos. In 1770, Charles ordered the Council of Castile to set regulations for the corrida. Magistrates, with the assistance of two constables and mounted men, were to watch over the plaza de toros, making sure that no spectators rushed into the arena to participate and that no disorder in general occurred.37 It was the overflowing of emotions and energy misspent in arena and stands alike that seems to have driven Charles III from the bullfight. He obviously did not disapprove of a more methodical killing of animals. In 1773, a group of Charles’ Enlightenment-inÂ� fluenced ministers proposed to ban all bullfights by 1775. This never came to be, but in 1785 Charles prohibited bullfights in which the bull died, with the exception of those that had received expressed permission in the past to raise money for socially and religiously useful purposes. However, despite the gradualist efforts of Charles and his ilustrados, including another prohibitory decree in 1786, bulls continued to be tormented and killed in plazas throughout Castile.38

36 ╇ John Lynch, The Spanish-American Revolutions, 1808-1826 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973), 5-24. 37 ╇ Garry Marvin, Bullfight (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 64. 38 ╇ Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: a History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 153. María Justina Sarabia Viejo has studied how Bourbon officials launched similar efforts to end cockfighting in New Spain. The main motivations were once again the human vices and chaotic behaviors (e.g., gambling, idleness, thievery) that cockfighting encouraged. Total bans, first recommended by seventeenth-century clerical officials like Archbishop Francisco Aguiar y Seijas in 1687, failed and eventually gave way to regulatory and revenue-raising efforts. Throughout all this, the cruel use made of fighting cocks was not the motivation. María Justina Sarabia Viejo, El Juego de gallos en Nueva España (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos de Sevilla, 1972), 14-24, 36, 63.

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The new Enlightenment-inspired attitude regarding the bullfight was summarized at the end of the century by the ilustrado Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811). Like nineteenth-century Catalan nationalists after him, this Asturian argued that the bullfight was a regional occurrence in Spain and could not be called a national pastime.39 Praising Charles III for the measures he took against the corrida,40 he stated succinctly that the bull arena made for unruly subjects and a chaotic society, exciting the “innocent youth” and “unwary damsel” to engage in tumultuous, rude and lascivious behavior.41 While the arena’s defenders continued to say that the spectacle made for valiant warriors, Jovellanos noted that the rest of Europe called Spaniards “bárbaros” for their fiestas de toros.42 The plaza de toros actually only taught a ferocity no longer needed in an eighteenth-century Europe where military professionals were divided off from other men who could serve their state better in peaceful industry and commerce. The violence and indolence of the arena did not educate artisans, nor did it train soldiers. Jovellanos argued, “At present, only agility and obedience are required of the soldier, and these two qualities are not learned in the plaza de toros.”43 An enemy of the Mesta who blamed Spain’s commitment to livestock on the barbarous and lazy Visigoths who overran the Iberian Peninsula with the fall of the western Roman empire, Jovellanos dreamt of a Spain replete with croplands, looms and foundries. The arena chaotically spoke to the most brutal behaviors shared by humans and other animals, not to the order of a productive machine. Jovellanos, like his idealized Charles III, fought against the bullfight, but it was not for the sake of bulls or horses, of nonhuman animals or animality in general. Dominance was to be maintained by means of flintlock, cannon and factory, not a bloody lance made all the more deadly by a 39 ╇ Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, “Al Teniente de Navío don José Vargas Ponce en que le propone… una disertacion… contra las fiestas de toros,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 50: Obras publicadas e inéditas de don Gaspar de Jovellanos, Tomo 2, ed. Candido Nocedal, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1952), 264. On Catalans and the bullfight, see Shubert, 165. 40 ╇ Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, “Memoria para el arreglo de la policía de los espectáculos y diversiones públicas, y sobre el su orígen en España,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 46: Obras publicadas e inéditas de don Gaspar de Jovellanos, Tomo 1, ed. Candido Nocedal, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963), 486. 41 ╇ Jovellanos, “Al Teniente de Navío don José Vargas Ponce,” 265; Shubert, 149. 42 ╇ Jovellanos, “Al Teniente de Navío don José Vargas Ponce,” 264. 43 ╇ Ibid., 265.

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horse’s powerful muscles. Chaos was to be avoided in the Bourbon reconstitution of the Spanish empire and the animals of Spain, but this did not mean that all abided by these policies and visions. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827) served as a minor royal official in the Taxco-Acapulco region of New Spain when Napoleon’s forces invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 and popular insurgency broke out in New Spain in 1810. While Napoleon BonaÂ� parte placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, a government in exile established itself in Cádiz under the protection of British forces. The ensuing chaos on the Iberian Peninsula provided a window of opportunity for those discontented with Spanish rule to rise up in the Americas. In New Spain, the legendary priest-rebels Miguel Hidalgo (1753-1811) and José María Morelos (1765-1815) may have fought to end racial distinctions and to redistribute land to indigenous communities, but in many instances, rural communities, guided by local elites and sometimes by criminals and malcontents, fought to establish their own localized hierarchies and to settle parochial “scores.”44 In this chaos, Lizardi tried to maintain relations with both the insurgents fighting for independence and loyal royalist forces. On one occasion he turned the Taxco armory over to the insurgents, while he also reported their movements to the viceroy’s forces. When he was arrested by royalists in 1811 for supporting the insurgency, he argued that he only turned over the Taxco armory to protect the city’s inhabitants from harm. He lost his property and position as a result of his duplicity and turned to writing to support his family. In 1812, when the government of New Spain reluctantly published a decree from Cádiz that granted limited freedom of the press to colonials, Lizardi tried to make his living as a journalist, publishing the newspaper El Pensador Mexicano until 1814. In it, he presented positions derived from Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot. Then, with the defeat of Napoleon, the Cádiz government in exile was replaced by a restored, ultraconservative Bourbon monarchy under Ferdinand VII (r. 18141833). An end to limited freedom of expression was joined to the Bourbon restoration’s display of what it deemed appropriate Spanish tradition. In contradistinction to earlier Bourbon policies, Ferdinand 44 ╇Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 33, 141-42, 163, 179, 494, 500, 505-507.

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embraced the bullfight and rejected public statements of the Enlightenment, leaving intellectuals like Lizardi in a precarious position.45 Under the influence of an 1805 ban issued by Ferdinand’s own father Charles IV, bullfights had been rare in Mexico City between 1805 and 1814, with only two seasons on record. With the restoraÂ�tion of Ferdinand VII and the bullfight, Lizardi launched a salvo against the corrida as part of his now evident general support of Enlightenment principle. In 1815, in the spirit of Jovellanos, he published two articles attacking bullfights as cruel and barbarous entertainment.46 In “The Conference of a Bull and a Horse”—a piece resembling Cervantes’ Colloquy of the Dogs in its use of nonhuman animals to critique human behavior—Lizardi decried the irrationality of supposedly rational humans, killing bulls for entertainment when they would be of more benefit to humanity in agriculture. Indeed, he noted that bulls were kept alive after running with them in the agrarian countryside, while they were killed in urban arenas.47 A year later, Lizardi turned to serialized fiction as a means of presenting veiled criticism in a New Spain under more repressive Spanish rule. In novel form, his critique of the bullfight actually escalated to include pronounced levels of compassion for the nonhuman animals involved. The Mangy Parrot, sold in installments in 1816, was Lizardi’s first novel.48 In the tradition of Spanish picaresque fiction like Lazarillo de Tormes, this tale allowed Lizardi to criticize his highly stratified society through the misadventures of a rogue named Pedro Sarmiento, and nicknamed Periquillo Sarniento—the “Mangy” or “Itchy” Parrot. The novel was so popular that after its original 1816 serialization, it ╇ Before Ferdinand’s restoration, Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain already reauthorized bullfights in 1811. Shubert, 156-57, 195-96; Nicolás Rangel, Historia del toreo en México, epoca colonial [1529-1821] (Mexico City: Manuel León Sánchez, 1924), 349-51. 46 ╇ “Charles IV’s 1805 prohibition on bullfights was strictly enforced in Mexico City until the Napoleonic armies invaded Spain.” Then, it was ignored, but “Even so, there were few bullfights in Mexico City before 1815.” Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Pemissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, trans. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Â�Sergio Rivera Ayala (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1999), 22. For Lizardi, see 23-24. 47 ╇Rangel, 356-59. 48 ╇ David Frye, “Translator’s Note,” in José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, The Mangy Parrot: the Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento, Written for His Children, trans. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004), xxxvi-xxxvii. 45

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was reprinted a number of times after Mexico gained its independence in 1821.49 Among other social ills catalogued, The Mangy Parrot included a critique of the bullfight that explicitly demonstrated compassion for the bull as a fellow sentient being, while lambasting the motivations of human males in the arena. While speaking with a devout, yet Enlightenment-influenced Catholic priest, Pedro Sarmiento is forced to recognize the inhumanity of the bullfight “… which consists in hurting poor animals and exposing men to the blows they give in revenge—something they deserve, in my judgment, on account of their wicked inclination and barbarity.”50 The dialogue continues with the curate saying that at the great urban bullfights, one can “… all too frequently see horse intestines wrapped around bullhorns, men severely wounded, and a few deaths.” Pedro and the priest agree that the bullfight shows a lack of compassion for men and other animals, and the priest concludes by identifying the bullfight as “repugnant to Nature” and “to the enlightenment of the century in which we live.”51 And all is well and good until Pedro, 49 ╇ Nancy Vogeley, “Introduction: Satire and Decolonization,” in The Mangy Parrot, xxii. 50 ╇ José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, El Periquillo Sarniento, ed. Jefferson Rea Spell, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1949), 1: 123-24. For the English translation above, see David Frye, trans., Mangy Parrot, 58. 51 ╇ Lizardi, El Periquillo Sarniento, 1: 124; Frye, trans., Mangy Parrot, 58. In Spain itself, the crowd’s proclivity for “pan y toros” was ridiculed as the Spanish version of Roman mass escapism or “bread and circuses.” Herr, 334-35. An “aficionado” of the bullfight, Francisco Goya, near the very end of his life (1824), painted a gruesome scene of a horse, intestines dangling, still bearing a rider and confronting the bull. Indeed, he produced eight paintings on tin and an entire series of etchings known as the Tauromaquia. In the oil on tin series (1793-1794), he also painted a disemboweled, dying horse—this time expiring in the dirt of the arena. Though Kenneth Clark saw some ambivalence in Goya’s portrayal of the bullfight, with often “brutal and ugly” men confronting an “always noble” bull, Robert Hughes argues that Goya’s representation of the corrida was a “remorselessly bloodthirsty and objectively cruel” portrayal of the human struggle to dominate and control nature. Hughes also recognizes that in Goya’s day, “there was no shortage of liberal, enlightened Spaniards,” who, like Jovellanos and Lizardi, saw the bullfight as the epitome of backwardness and barbarism. According to Hughes, Goya was not one of them. Janis A. Tomlinson, however, argues that Goya was the ambivalent recorder of life, death and Spanish culture all around him. See Francisco Goya, Suerte de Varas (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1824), reproduced in Hughes, 353; The Death of the Picador (Private Collection, 1793), reproduced in Hughes, 133. Also see Hughes, 350-65; Kenneth Clark, Animals and Men: Their Relationship as Reflected in Western Art from Prehistory to the Present Day (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977), 220-21; Linda Kalof, Looking at Animals in Human History (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), 157-60; Nigel Glendinning,

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rogue that he is, decides to enter a training arena and fight a yearling bullock in order to impress his wayward friend Januario. To display his prowess before his friend, Pedro disregards the “horror that the sport first inspired.” He is paid for his abandonment of compassion and enlightenment by being thrown “higher than the orbit of the moon” by the young bull.52 He suffers retribution for forgetting that other animals suffer too. To the very end of its existence, the Spanish empire continued to live its debate regarding the nature of animals, including the human animal, witnessing continuity and change in attitudes. Concern for animal sentience and agency continued, even as other animals and humans continued to be reduced to objects. The Benedictine ilustrado Benito Feijóo wrote variations on themes set by intellectuals before him. At the very least, he perceived nonhuman animals as sentient agents capable of feeling pleasure and pain. Then, he went further to discuss just how much their capacity for discernment resembled human reason, and how other animals’ souls might be connected to the material world without being purely constituted by matter. Feijóo continued the tradition of Sabuco and Cervantes, and he continued to marginalize Gómez Pereira’s mechanical perception of life. However, Charles III, through his actions, illustrated the fact that a mechanical vision of animal life still existed in the Spanish empire, even as it had been articulated by Gómez Pereira and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The king also demonstrated a nuanced interpretation of the hunt when juxtaposed to Juan Mateos. Rather than pursuing game, Charles III engaged in mechanized shooting. And Spaniards on the ground in the Americas demonstrated that reducing sentient life to a series of mechanical actions could be extended to human animals in particular as well as other animals in general. In Venezuela, Amerindians explicitly were called “automata” rather than the fully rational humans identified by Francisco de Vitoria. In 1814, during the wars for independence and the last days of the Spanish empire in South America, the royal official José María Aurrecoechea assessed conditions in Venezuela, imitating the style and format of the relaciones geográficas of old. Geography, defense, “A New View of Goya’s Tauromaquia,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24: 1/2 (January-June 1961): 120-27; Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828 (London: Phaidon Press, 1994), 222-29, 275-77; Tomlinson, Twilight of Enlightenment, ix, 174-76. 52 ╇ Lizardi, El Periquillo Sarniento, 141; Frye, trans., Mangy Parrot, 66.

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commerce, agriculture and pastoral activities were all discussed. While nonhuman animals only appeared as profitable objects, as “ganado,” the Amerindians of Venezuela were reduced to “una especie de autómatas.”53 Some sixty-seven years before the composition of the Aurrecoechea document, the Frenchman Julien Offray de La Mettrie, in L’Homme Machine (1747), rather equitably reduced the whole of humanity to the mechanical status that the Cartesians had ascribed other animals.54 Then, in 1761, the widely read French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), invidiously focused on Amerindians alone as “une espèce de automate impuissant” (“a species of impotent automaton”).55 Like Buffon, Aurrecoechea developed 53 ╇ “Memoria del Departimiento de Venezuela, por José María Aurrecoechea,” in Relaciones geográficas de Venezuela, ed. Antonio Arellano Moreno (Caracas: Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1964), 544, 547; David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 263. 54 ╇ La Mettrie cleverly used mechanical metaphors for nature to express his feeling of oneness with the natural world. Though Feijóo believed in God and La Mettrie demonstrated little interest in the concept, the monk and the cynic agreed that the difference between humans and other animals was one of degree rather than kind. Feijóo merely multiplied the degrees to include the metaphysical. La Mettrie remained entirely in the physical realm when he compared humans and other animals in matters of learning and feeling such things as shame and gratitude: “The transition from animals to man is not violent, as true philosophers will admit.” Despite his use of mechanical metaphors to describe all of nature, La Mettrie could still wax poetic, writing, “… nature is no stupid workman…. Her power shines forth equally in creating the lowliest insect and in creating the most highly developed man….” He differed from Feijóo in his cold, unfeeling use of decapitated kittens and puppies and the bodies of executed criminals to compare involuntary muscle response in all animal machines, human or otherwise. Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine, trans. Gertrude Carman Bussey et al. (La Salle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1953), 100-101, 103, 115, 130-31, 145. See€28-31, 43-44, 58-59, 77 for the French. Also see Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: the History of a Polemic, 1750-1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle, revised ed. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), 18; Hester Hastings, Man and Beast in French Thought of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press and Oxford University Press, 1936), 94-108. 55 ╇ Given the fact that Buffon’s Natural History was being discussed by Spanish Enlightenment thinkers like Jovellanos, and that the Gazeta de Madrid, governmentally supervised periodical that it was, made references to Buffon in the late eighteenth century, there is a real possibility that Aurrecoechea may have appropriated his derogatory description of Amerindians from reading Buffon. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, “Animaux comuns aux deux continens,” in Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, 15 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1749-1767), 9: 103-104; available from Buffon et l’histoire Â�naturelle: l’édition en ligne, http://www.buffon.cnrs.fr/ice/ice_page_detail.php?lang =fr&type=text&bdd=buffon&tabl...; accessed October 26, 2010. Also see Louise E.

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a prejudicial system in which Amerindians were automata, but Europeans were not. Amerindians, according to Aurrecoechea, were to be “uplifted” with care by “rational” Europeans through selective breeding strategies. He wrote that “cross-bred with whites” and with people of other “colors,” Amerindians participated in the propagation of “new species, all of men of more robustness, of greater sagacity, of customary conduct (de general trato)… less confused and indifferent….”56 The old chauvinistic notions that had been discussed by means of terms like “pieza” and “casta” had been readjusted for the eighteenth century—nuanced by the Cartesian interpretation of “lesser beings” as automata. Organic metaphors mixed with mechanical ones. Through mestisaje with Europeans and the procreation of “zambos” and “zambuaigos” with Africans a more robust “species” would be generated from Amerindian stock. Since, unlike the more equitable La Mettrie, Aurrecoechea did not discuss Europeans as automata in his report, but as individuals living well beyond the earliest stages of civilization, his prejudice cannot be denied, even though he did have Africans participating with Europeans in the “uplifting” of Amerindians. Like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda before him, Aurrecoechea emphasized a hierarchical vision of the universe that placed imperial Spaniards at the top and closer to God. Aurrecoechea’s imaginings of European superiority over Africans and Amerindians, in that order, thereby justified European imperial conquests and acts of domination. Among curious intellectuals and explorers in the latter days of the Spanish imperium, things could be far more complicated. Other human cultures and nonhuman animals alike might sometimes still be valued in ways other than the “bottom line” and the improvement of breeding stock and imperial order. Coda and Reprise: Cataloguing Valued Animals from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century As evidenced by the previous chapters, describing and cataloguing nonhuman animals was not the exclusive interest of eighteenthcentury inhabitants of the Spanish empire. In the sixteenth century, Â�Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 201; Herr, 46, 361, 373. 56 ╇ Aurrecoechea, “Memoria,” 545.

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the relaciones geográficas not only mentioned valuable domestic animals. They also listed “wild” native animals, often forcing them into “Old World” categories with which the Spanish observers were already familiar. Thus, jaguars became “tigers,” pumas became “lions,” and coyotes occasionally became “jackals.” Still, an astute and interested observer like José de Acosta or Garcilaso de la Vega sometimes spent time describing the particular behaviors of American animals like monkeys and parrots. This proto-ethological descriptive and analytical cataloguing contrasted with the often interminable listing of the relaciones. In New Spain, for example, the relación for the mines of Tasco (aka Taxco) merely reported, “The wild animals that inhabit this land (que se crian en esta tierra) are lions, tigers, wolves, foxes, coyotes, deer, rabbits, armadillos and opossums (tlaquaçes)….”57 Coatepec stated that in the mountains and wilderness there were tigers, lions, wolves, jackals (“adibes”), foxes, deer, rabbits, hares, and a number of birds. Eastern hemisphere categories were facilely applied, with coyotes becoming jackals. Only a little added interest was given peccaries with their dorsal scent glands. The scent gland was misconstrued, and the Coatepec relación described western hemisphere peccaries (“puercos monteses”) as “wild pigs that have navels on their backs, above their loins.”58 A rare bureaucratic effort at description became misinterpretation. The mostly non-descriptive lists for New Spain were replicated in the viceroyalty of Peru, where Quito, for example, listed wild pigs, bears, foxes, deer and big cats labeled “tigres” and “leones pardos.”59 57 ╇ “Las Minas de Tasco (1 de Henero 1581),” in Papeles de Nueva España, ed. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, 7 vols. (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1905), 6: 280. The word used for “opossums” is “tlaquaçes,” a hispanicized variant of the Nahuatl for “opossum” (in Nahuatl, sing. Tlaquatl; pl. tlaquaton or tlatlaquaton). In Mexico today, the opossum is still called “tlacuache,” and an early modern Italian source, for example, used the hispanicized variant “tlaquace,” while also going on to describe the opossum’s pouch for its offspring. See Giovanni Lorenzo D’Anania, L’Universale Fabrica del mundo, overo cosmografia (Venice: Ad Instantia di Aniello San Vito di Napoli, 1576), 308. 58 ╇ “Coatepec (16 de Nobiembre 1579),” in PNE 6: 62. For how peccaries came to be called “puercos monteses,” see R. A. Donkin, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 75, pt. 5: The Peccary—with Observations on the Introduction of Pigs to the New World (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1985), 12, 16, 39, 44. “Puercos salvajes” referred to both feral pigs and peccaries. Also see Victoria Schlesinger, Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya: a Guide (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 158. 59 ╇ “La Cibdad de Sant Francisco del Quito.—1573,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 184: Relaciones geográficas de Indias.—Perú, Tomo 2, ed. Marcos

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For nonhuman animals to be truly noticed by the bureaucrats who wrote the relaciones, they usually had to demonstrate some potential use value where humans were concerned or be a potential threat to livestock or crops. La Paz reported “lions, tigers and bears and deer” in the mountainous regions surrounding the city, a limited number of parrots, and large numbers of camelid vicuñas and guanacos on the plains and plateaus “from which are extracted the bezoar stones that… are produced in the entrails amidst the dung.”60 Used in early modern medicine, the mineral deposits known as bezoar stones were valued for healing, thereby making wild “vicuñas y guanacos” noticeable.61 In the colonial province of Pacaxes (Pacajes), now in the country of Bolivia, vicuñas and guanacos were once again noted for their production of bezoar stones, while lions and foxes were highlighted as destroyers of “ganado.”62 The willingness to learn valuable behaviors from the coyote or jaguar, the lesson to be taught the Mexican nahualli by nature, was not usually a concern for the average Spanish bureaucrat, though the relación for the mines of Temazcaltepec in New Spain was somewhat unique for the amount of attention it gave to some very solid description. In addition to jaguarondis (“lehonçillos pardos”), coyotes, foxes and badgers that might threaten chickens, the Temazcaltepec relación described “other little wild animals that are named ‘ayotoche,’ that are armadillos that have some coverings all over their bodies in the manner of small breastplates.” In the Temazcaltepec relación, the benefits and costs of wild animals were linked to a curiosity that led the author—Gaspar de Cobarrubias, alcalde mayor of the mines and corregidor of the province of Tuçantla—to include the drawing of an armadillo and discuss its consumption of ants, as well as its providing a good and savory food eaten by Amerindians and Spaniards. The Jiménez de la Espada, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 213. 60 ╇ “Descripción y relación de la ciudad de La Paz,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 183: Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 349. 61 ╇ For more on the medicinal value ascribed bezoar stones—as protection against poison, melancholy and heart disease, among other things—see José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Frances López-Morillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 246-49; José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. 73: Obras del P. José de Acosta de la Compañia de Jesús, ed. P. Francisco Mateos (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1954), Bk. 4, chap.€42:€137-39. 62 ╇ “Relación de la provincia de Los Pacajes,” in Relaciones geográficas—Perú, Tomo 1, 340.

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account was even accurate in elaborating on how armadillos will roll up into a ball when threatened.63 Then Cobarrubias went on to give a somewhat faulty, somewhat accurate, proto-ethological description of the opossum: (The wilderness) produces other small animals that are called tlaquaçint, which means “big eater,” for it eats chickens. (It) goes about the wilderness, has on the sides of its chest some breast-cavities where it has six or seven teats with which it nourishes its children (“hijos”), and when it hears some noise or is pursued, (it) opens the pouches that are those breast-cavities and, with a shriek, goes to the rescue of its little children (“hijuelos”), and putting them in (its pouches), flees with all of them….64

All of the reporting bureaucrats for the relaciones were real individuals with their own interests, and Cobarrubias demonstrated more interest than most in undomesticated animals. In fact, he showed as much interest in the opossum as Bernardino de Sahagún’s Nahua interlocutors in the Florentine Codex. Like Cobarrubias, they described the tlaquatl, or opossum, as having “a pouch at its belly” where “it inserts its young.” However, the Nahua informants chose to portray a “harmless” animal capable of weeping like humans “when it is taken with its young.”65 Cobarrubias worried about his Spanish chickens as the potential prey of this animal. ╇ “Las Minas de Temazcaltepec (1 Diciembre 1579- 1 Enero 1580),” in PNE 7: 25. After centuries of observation, these behaviors continue to be referenced in the average field guide. The nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) “roots for insects and snuffs about in vegetation for ants and invertebrates…. escapes by running away or rolling into a ball to protect its vulnerable belly…. Its meat tastes somewhat like pork….” John O. Whitaker, Jr., The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals, 7th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 340. 64 ╇ “Las Minas de Temazcaltepec,” in PNE 7: 25-26. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals describes the opossum as quite omnivorous, eating birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, worms, carrion, maize, fruits and berries. With a gestation period of only twelve to thirteen days, the opossum’s offspring, described as “living embryos,” will “climb up through the hair of the female and enter the vertical opening of her pouch.” They will remain attached to their mother for two months, feeding from one of her eleven to thirteen nipples. When confronted, the opossum is described as either rolling over with its tongue dangling (“playing possum”), or “More often, it tries to bluff its attacker by hissing, salivating, and opening its mouth wide to show all of its 50 teeth.” Whitaker, 275-76. 65 ╇ Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 11: Earthly Things, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe: The School of American Research and the University of Utah, Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, 1963), chap.€1:€11-12. 63

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Curious enough to take an interest in the behavior of armadillos and how another culture might name and describe nonhuman animals, Cobarrubias was still a Spaniard who tried to order nature in the Americas through the language he used and the decrees he issued. This desire to catalogue and control other animals persisted into the eighteenth century, but a few individuals in the Spanish empire became a bit more self-conscious of the process, as demonstrated by Fernández de Lizardi’s critique of the use made of bulls in the arena and the Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero’s spirited defense of the animals of the Americas. Eighteenth-century authors like the Comte de Buffon and Cornelius de Pauw (1739-1799) argued that the climate and environments of the western hemisphere produced fewer, smaller and less clever animals than those found in the eastern hemisphere. Humanity’s animal body was seen as no exception to the rule, and the argument was extended, especially by de Pauw, to encompass human intelligence and cultural achievement in a type of Eurocentric leveling of the prejudicially selected humans and nonhuman animals of the western hemisphere.66 The attacks of Buffon and de Pauw produced defenders of the Americas, from Thomas Jefferson (17431826), with his Notes on the State of Virginia, to Francisco Javier Clavijero (1731-1787), who, in a number of ways, replicated the earlier work of his fellow Jesuit José de Acosta.67 Unlike Acosta, who reviewed nature, including human cultures, in all of Spanish America, Clavijero focused on his native New Spain, writing his Historia Antigua de México after being exiled from his homeland with other members of the Jesuit order in 1767. With the Jesuit order officially disbanded by the pope in 1773, he went on to live the life of an 66 ╇ Gerbi, 3-34, 52-79; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 45-46. While Buffon, on occasion, stressed all of humanity’s radical difference from other animals, “… in other passages… the savage at least is subject to grievous limitations just like the other animals, and sometimes even more so.” Gerbi, 27. Also see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 165. 67 ╇Elliott, 328; Cañizares-Esguerra, New World, 60-62, 235-49; Thomas F. Glick, “Science and Independence in Latin America (with Special Reference to New Granada),” The Hispanic American Historical Review 71: 2 (May 1991): 311-12; Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513-1830 (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1990), 105-116.

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Â� itinerant priest and scholar in Italy, but it appears that his thoughts and heart remained in a land that he, like Father Miguel Hidalgo and the revolutionaries of 1810, called “México” after the ethnically Nahua Mexica tribe that lived in Tenochtitlan and dominated the Aztec empire. Clavijero’s Mexico and the Americas in general were lands filled with natural wonders and human achievements. He took offense at European claims that humans and other animals degenerated in the Americas. He also challenged nascent European systems of biological classification, pointing out that Buffon missed entire species of American animals and collapsed categories in such a way that fewer were created for the animals of the “New World” than the “Old.”68 The Jesuit found that he could distinguish, at the very least, six species of bee in Mexico: the European honey bee, who did not diminish in size or productivity in the Americas, and five others, including the indigenous “stingless” honey bee of the Yucatan.69 Not only did Clavijero then point out the indigenous bison, reindeer, bears and guanacos of the Americas as large animals, he also demanded that Europeans measure the hides of bulls that arrived in Cádiz and Lisbon to see if “Old World” animals diminished in stature upon being taken to the Americas.70 If the priest demonstrated any prejudice against inhabitants of the Americas, it was unfortunately against Amerindians. He wrote that the Mexicans of his day could not be compared to their PreColumbian ancestors, just as modern Greeks failed to resemble “those who existed in the times of Plato and Pericles.” Rather than being diminished by the physical environment of the Americas, Mexico’s Amerindians had experienced decline with the eradication of their pre-conquest “political constitution and religion” since these factors “have disproportionate influence on the spirit of a nation.” The “souls” of ancient Mexicans “possessed more fire and were more influenced by ideas of honor.” They “were more intrepid, intellectually keener, more industrious and more active, but (they were also) 68 ╇ Francisco Javier Clavijero, Historia antigua de México, ed. Mariano Cuevas, 8th ed. (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1987), Bk. 10, Diss. 4:€475, 479, 502. 69 ╇ Ibid., Bk. 1, chap.€16:€39-40. Stingless honey bees “… have vestiges of a stinger, which they may try to poke you with, having forgotten that their stinger and venom dried up long ago. Their true defense is flying into your nose and ears and hair and, if really angry, pinching you with their tiny front teeth.” Schlesinger, 247. 70 ╇ Clavijero, Bk. 10, Diss. 4: 480, 491, 493.

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more superstitious and more inhumane.”71 Clavijero, in becoming a cultural determinist for humanity, drew a fairly typical boundary line between humans and other animals. Human intellect and reason created distinction for him. As a priest, it was natural that the individual human soul became the “image of God” for him. But “national souls” might be shaped by the social institutions constructed by progenitors, and by the collapse of those institutions. Though his bias against the eighteenth-century Amerindians of Mexico was clear, his explanation also implied that his Spanish ancestors bore some of the blame for destroying Aztec achievement, even if Pre-Columbian Americans were “more superstitious and crueler” than their descendents. Among the Pre-Columbian Mexican achievements admired by Clavijero was the information gathered on nonhuman animals. Clavijero noted that the ancient Mexicans took great pleasure in raising all manner of animals, and that though they did not have shepherds, they hunted and raised domestic turkeys, dogs and ducks for meat, and the nobility had access to fish, deer, rabbits and a diversity of birds in their gardens.72 Many nonhuman animals, as well as humans, were sacrificed to the deities. 73 And all this interaction between Amerindians and the nonhumans around them led to a system of cataloguing that Clavijero referenced in his work.74 Indeed, he had criticism for the Spaniards who first renamed the nonhuman animals of the Americas. Clavijero faulted these early Spaniards for what he specifically called their “errors” and their willingness to place animals into the same categories based solely upon the color of their pelts or other superficialities. They were “more practiced in the art of war than in natural history,” and “instead of retaining the names that the Mexicans gave to the animals native to their land, they named them tigers, bears, wolves, dogs, squirrels, etc.”75 Like so many others in the eighteenth century, including Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) himself, Clavijero was searching for a new, more accurate system of classification. Seeing species as fixed under God in a hierarchy of being, Clavijero paradoxically pointed to just how fluid the qualities selected to demarcate and distinguish could be.

╇ Ibid., Bk. 1, chap.€17:€47. ╇ Ibid., Bk. 1, chap.€14:€35 and Bk. 7, chap.€32:€232-33. 73 ╇ Ibid., Bk. 6, chap.€21:€173. 74 ╇ Ibid., Bk. 10, chap.€2:€497-502. 75 ╇ Ibid., Bk. 1, chap.€12:€21. 71 72

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As demonstrated by Londa Schiebinger, Clavijero was not the only individual in the Spanish empire to challenge the Eurocentric Linnaean system of classification with one that borrowed more extensively from Amerindian experiences with animal life in the western hemisphere. As early as the seventeenth century, the University of Lima recommended that physicians learn Quechua since it was said that plants were identified by their medical benefits in that language. Like Clavijero himself, Martín Sessé y Lacasta, who directed the royal botanical expedition to New Spain (1787-1803), argued that Nahuatl would reveal more about plants found in Mexico than superimposed Latin binominal nomenclature. There was nothing sacred yet about Linnaeus’ system of categorizing animals and plants, and Spanish Enlightenment thinkers participated in a debate and discussion that recognized the power and wealth inherent in the use of natural philosophy and nature defined as “natural resources” by empire.76 Science was the transformative “magic” that actually worked by providing observable results in the material world, and Spaniards, through their own cultural prism, were a part of this process in every form that it took. In fact, a number of eighteenth-century inhabitants of the Spanish empire participated in the gathering of observations and experiences that characterized the basis of Enlightenment natural history. They also went on to demonstrate the Enlightenment’s dedication to critical analysis. There was a Spanish Enlightenment, but its moderate nature meant that continuity with the medieval European past was far more discernible in Spanish writings than in the work of other Enlightenment thinkers in other lands. Cataloguing itself had been done since the time of Aristotle and Pliny. It was only that the Enlightenment looked to new categories. Spanish intellectuals who wrote about nature often tried to blend new sensibilities with the old, just as Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection with Charles Darwin, would still believe in God while fully embracing evolution.77 A collector of specimens who 76 ╇ Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 197, 225. Likewise, “Spanish creoles in New Spain, such as the priest and botanist José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, complained that the Linnaean system obscured crucial information about a plant’s location, environment, and flowering season, along with the soil characteristics required for cultivation.” Schiebinger, 223. 77 ╇ Alfred Russel Wallace, The World of Life: a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ulitmate Purpose, new ed. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1914),

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traveled in South America, as well as the Pacific, Wallace was part of an English tradition that included the specimen gathering of Joseph Banks (1744-1820) and Linnaeus’ student Daniel Solander (17321782) with Captain James Cook’s Endeavour (1768-1771); Darwin’s five-year mission with the H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836); and T. H. Huxley’s voyage on the H.M.S. Rattlesnake (1846-1850).78 Londa Schiebinger, in Plants and Empire, has written that “science followed trade routes,” and the director of the Madrid Botanical Garden even argued that a few naturalists scattered throughout the Spanish empire would be of greater service in accumulating wealth than a hundred thousand fighting men conquering new lands.79 Specimen collecting and cataloguing transformed living, breathing, sentient animals into deadened “natural resources,” but it also lay the groundwork for increased appreciation of our close relationship to other animals. Though one may think of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English as dominant in the scientific cataloguing of nature for empire, there were some inhabitants of the Spanish empire who also participated in this enterprise.80 Are nonhuman animals “natural resources” or sentient agents in nature? Beneath the cultural changes of human history this question persists, and it manifested itself in the eighteenth-century Spanish empire as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the animals of Spain continued to be valued for their profitability. The cataloguing and classification of humans and other animals could fascinate a profit-oriented merchant like Pedro Alonso O’Crouley (1740-1817), who, in describing New Spain, took pride in “ranches that have a thousand bulls, as many as a hundred thousand sheep, and enormous herds of horses.”81 He also reviewed the ethnic mixing of the human castas and the 393; Abel Alves, “Humanity’s Place in Nature, 1863-1928: Horror, Curiosity and the Expeditions of Huxley, Wallace, Blavatsky and Lovecraft,” Theology and Science 6: 1 (February 2008): 77. 78 ╇ Jane Camerini, “Remains of the Day: Early Victorians in the Field,” in Victorian Science in Context, ed. Bernard Lightman (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 354-77. 79 ╇ Schiebinger, 10, 7. 80 ╇ Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 14-63. 81 ╇ Pedro Alonso O’Crouley, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. Seán Galvin (San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1972), 26.

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characteristics of some of the nonhuman animals peculiar to Mexico.82 He made a point of stating that the “American lion, or rather puma… is very different from the African lion.” With no mane or powerful forepaws, O’Crouley noted that the puma hunted foals or calves like a jaguar.83 In his unofficial eighteenth-century relación, for all its brevity, this merchant of Irish descent therefore took the time to record some significant behaviors. In the Spanish empire’s voyages of exploration, nonhuman animals would also be noticed and catalogued. The Enlightenment would influence the approach of naturalists and ships’ captains in their descriptions and definitions, but the primary categories would very much remain those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the persistent human ascription of other animals to categories based on their usefulness as food, sources of clothing, laborers, entertainers and frames of reference for defining our own humanity. Unsurprisingly, naval voyages of exploration showed a proclivity toward the gathering of “useful” information, and that included information on both humans and other animals. With the Bourbon monarchs concerned about the economic productivity of their empire, the reports of naval officers stressed the relationship of sentient life to the “bottom line.” Still, on occasion, interest in animal behavior for its own sake might shine through, expressing the same sense of wonder found in animal life that one finds in the writings of José de Acosta—who also took an interest in living animals as well as in their hides after death. The strategic focus of naval journals could not entirely repress a human sense of awe, joy and wonderment in the presence of nature and other animals. The writings and records associated with the voyage of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, which lasted from 1735 to 1746, and the expedition of Alejandro Malaspina in 1789-1794 were both resource catalogues and immersion in a world much broader than the human alone. Commissioned by Philip V to supervise a French scientific expedition that aimed at contributing to our knowledge of the shape and size of the earth by measuring a degree of the meridian near the equator, the Jorge Juan (1713-1773) and Antonio de Ulloa (1716╇ Ibid., 19-28. ╇ Ibid., 26. He also wrote that the “amphibious alligator” attacked both men and cattle: “It loves dog flesh. When a dog has to cross a river where there are alligators, instinct prompts a trick—to bark in order to attract attention to that place, then run to cross the river at a point much further down.” Ibid., 27. 82 83

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1795) expedition also provided an opportunity to report on economic and strategic conditions in the Americas.84 Later in the century, the Italian Alejandro Malaspina (1754-1810) sailed for Spain to test the achievements of England’s James Cook (1728-1779) in determining longitude with the ocean-going chronometer and keeping sailors healthy with a diet that combated scurvy. He also charted remote regions of the Americas and the Pacific and collected information on the commerce and productivity of places that he visited.85 Both expeditions were intrinsically tied to the Enlightenment milieu that sought material progress and improvement through the application of critical reason to experience. In gathering experiential information, nonhuman animals could not be ignored, but they were usually reduced to ciphers on a balance sheet—with some notable exceptions. There is no doubt that these eighteenth-century ships’ captains first approached nonhuman animals as “natural resources” to be used by the human subjects of the Spanish empire, including their crews. Thus, Antonio de Ulloa made careful note of the fat cattle, sheep and goats of Concepción in Chile; the vital contribution of mules to commercial transport where Lima, Quito and Panama were concerned; and the inexpensive cost of buying a horse or cow in Buenos Aires. In the last instance, he noted that the livestock around Buenos Aires were so abundant that one could purchase a horse for only one peso and a cow for four reales.86 As a ship’s master and commander, holding the rank of lieutenant in the Spanish navy, it was imperative that Ulloa appreciate livestock costs since ships re-provisioned their meat stores when they could. If later in the century, another captain, Malaspina, demonstrated concern over sailors from the United States devastating the Malvinas’ seal population it was only because seals provided fresh meat to Spanish mariners. It was not because of any intrinsic value that he assigned the seals.87 Use value was central to 84 ╇ John J. TePaske, “Introduction,” in Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru, trans. John J. TePaske and Besse A. Clement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 3. 85 ╇ John Kendrick, Alejandro Malaspina: Portrait of a Visionary (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1999), 34. 86 ╇ Antonio de Ulloa, Viaje a la América meridional, ed. Andrés Saumell, 2 vols. (Madrid: Historia 16, 1990), 2: 272,€20, 218. 87 ╇ Alejandro Malaspina, The Malaspina Expedition, 1789-1794: Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina, ed. Andrew David et al., 3 vols. (London: The Â�Hakluyt Society in association with the Museo Naval, Madrid, 2001-2004), 3: 216-18.

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these captains as they managed their vessels as ongoing enterprises. Therefore, Malaspina also made note of his battles with cockroaches to preserve his bread supplies, and the extent to which other living creatures provided entertainment for bored seamen far from land.88 Whether as food or entertainment, nonhuman animals were to be used, and if Malaspina could make a gift of two kittens to the daughter of a South Sea island chieftain, it was because ships kept their cats to deal with mice and rats.89 While sailing the monotonous open waters of the Pacific, Malaspina’s own words spoke volumes. Animals provided diversion and satisfied human bloodlust, as well as hunger: A considerable change in our surroundings, however, was a great concourse of birds and fish which provided an agreeable interruption to the monotony of our situation. There were large numbers of tropicbirds which fluttered away at the sight of the corvettes. Whales, sharks, bonito, and dorado appeared in increasing numbers. Each according to its natural characteristics, a greater or lesser degree of independence from Man, delighting either our eyes, our palates or the love of killing that is almost innate in the mariner.90

In Malaspina’s journal, the love and appreciation of nonhuman animals as beings in their own right only peaked through in the South Pacific’s Vava’u archipelago where the chieftain “Paulajo’s daughter affectionately cuddled the two kittens, a male and a female, that we had given her. When we visited her in her house we usually found her with these two little animals wrapped in her clothing, and she took care not to allow anyone to touch them.”91 Paulajo’s daughter forced Malaspina to recognize that human interaction with other animals can transcend their exploitation as sources of food, clothing, labor and entertainment. In fact, earlier in the century, Antonio de Ulloa seemed to have been more open to this, showing that not all ships’ captains were completely hardened by the need to maintain ships’ stores. While noting that Quito was a place where good meat could be found, Ulloa also noticed that the Amerindians of Quito demonstrated great affection for their dogs, who reciprocated by offering intense loyalty and protection against Spaniards and mestizos who 88 ╇ Ibid., 164, 9, 44. For more on the entertainment that animals provided marinÂ�ers, see Robbins, 32-34. 89 ╇ Ibid., 145. 90 ╇ Ibid., 44. 91 ╇ Ibid., 145.

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might threaten their masters. Ulloa made the interesting observation that Spaniards and mestizos, in turn, taught their dogs to guard against indios, whom they feared.92 In a backhanded way, Ulloa recognized and respected the educative capacity of dogs, even while he also made note of human fears and xenophobia at work. He took some time to reflect on the ways in which humans associated with other animals in Quito, and he wrote that Amerindian women so loved the chickens they raised that they did not eat them and only sold them with great sorrow and regret when they were in dire need.93 A city whose population grew through migration in the sixteenth century, Quito was a locus for the accumulation of diverse Amerindian traditions, and while accumulated evidence points to the Eurasian chicken’s becoming a less desirable substitute for culturally preferred cuy meat among Quechua speakers, there are also sources that tell us of Amerindians who kept chickens as companion animals and suppliers of ornamental feathers.94 Like other humans, AmerÂ� indians both used and loved nonhuman animals, and Ulloa himself demonstrated the human capacity to flit back and forth between viewing other animals as resources or threats on the one hand and showing real interest in their behaviors and lives on the other. While Ulloa understood that caimans competed with humans for the fish of the Guayaquil River, he failed to call for their extermination.95 Whereas the witch-hunting priest Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón saw caimans as the demonic expression of Amerindian vengeance, the supernatural embodiment of nanahualtin shape-shifters, Ulloa saw animals who needed to eat and were sometimes prey themselves. He reported that they sometimes ate people who, asleep in their canoes, allowed limbs to dangle in the water, but he also wrote about the struggle for survival that their young faced as prey to vultures. In ╇ Ulloa, 1: 369, 511-12. ╇ Ibid., 512. 94 ╇ Karen Vieira Powers, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 7-8, 13-43; Edmundo Morales, The Guinea Pig: Healing, Food, and Ritual in the Andes (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1995), 13, 62; Linda J. Seligmann, “The Chicken in Andean History and Myth: The Quechua Concept of Wallpa,” Ethnohistory 34: 2 (Spring 1987): 143; Erland Nordenskiöld, Comparative Ethnographical Studies, Vol. 5: Deductions Suggested by the Geographical Distribution of Some Post-Columbian Words Used by the Indians of S. America, trans. G. E. Fuhrken (Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1922), 9-12. 95 ╇ Ulloa, 1: 272, 275. 92 93

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general, caimans demonstrated fear of humans: “Although there are many vulgar opinions written about this species of animal, what I and all of those in our company experienced is that they flee from people on land, and as soon as they sense any person, they hurl themselves into the water.”96 Ulloa appreciated other animals’ patterns of behavior, even as he appraised their value as “resources.” Near Cartagena, the armadillo’s effective means of defense and overall appearance led him to write more about these qualities than the one line that he dedicated to the tastiness of armadillo flesh.97 He then went on to write about the monkeys near Cartagena and of the numerous birds who demonstrated different aspects of nature’s beauty, with some possessing exceptionally lovely plumages and others possessing beautiful songs.98 Only nineteen when he departed Spain in 1735, Antonio de Ulloa combined a sense of imperial mission with a real interest in nature and nonhuman animals. Though he would serve the empire as regional governor of Huancavelica in Peru and as governor of Louisiana between 1757 and 1768, and he would twice command naval squadrons in the 1770s, Ulloa spent much of his long life after his voyage in scholarly pursuits and quiet contemplation. He even published on a 1748 solar eclipse in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London and was an invited speaker before the Academy of Science in Paris.99 Joseph Townsend, who visited with Ulloa in his old age, described him as “perfectly the philosopher, sensible and well informed, lively in his conversation, free and easy in his manners.”100 Ulloa was quite capable of measuring and quantifying natural phenomena, but he also sometimes reported on the agency and diversity of his fellow human beings and other animals alike.

╇ Ibid., 270. Also 271, 273. For caiman hatchlings as the prey of jabiru storks in Venezuela, see Gustavo A. Romero, “Distress Call Saves a Caiman c. crocodilus Hatchling in the Venezuelan Llanos,” Biotropica 15: 1 (March 1983): 71. For caiman avoidance of humans, see Santiago R. Ron, Andrés Vallejo, and Eduardo Asanza, “Human Influence on the Wariness of Melanosuchus niger and Caiman crocodilus in Cuyabeno, Ecuador,” Journal of Herpetology 32: 3 (September 1998): 320-24. 97 ╇ Ulloa, 1: 107. 98 ╇ Ibid., 107-108. 99 ╇ TePaske, “Introduction,” 11-16. 100 ╇ Townsend, 2: 411. For different perspectives on Ulloa as an observer of nature, see Cañizares-Esguerra, New World, 21, 30, 37, 251. 96

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chapter six The Imperial Organism

Peggy Liss has written that the conquering Spanish empire was itself subjected to a “mania for seeking or imposing order,” and the generation and maintenance of territorial integrity and material wealth definitely were goals of the empire.101 However, sentient and animate beings are never programmed as readily as machines. Humans and other animals express variation in their life histories, and the Spanish empire recognized the need to allow for some variation in order to adapt to changing circumstances. Viceroys, the high ranking governors of colonial kingdoms like New Spain and Peru, could refuse to enforce a royal edict that they saw as untenable. By stating “Obedezco, pero no cumplo,” they swore their obedience to the Crown, while also showing individual agency by refusing to comply on a particular issue. Of course, they would be subjected to strict review for such an action, but condemnation and punishment were never the inevitable outcomes of such a review.102 Allowing for agency, flexibility and choice, the Spanish empire in the Americas survived as a huge entity for some three centuries, and even after the vast majority of the territories were lost in the early nineteenth century, Spanish customs and influences continued to replicate themselves, even as they were altered by new circumstances.103 Expressing three central tenets of natural selection—variation, adaptation and reproduction—the Spanish empire metaphorically resembled an organic entity more than a machine. The empire was itself made up of the interactions of organic entities. Even when we speak of ourselves today as “cogs in a machine,” the feelings associated with such metaphorical language are not comforting ones. As organic entities confronting the challenges posed by transhumanist aspirations and realities, we still find comfort in associating with our companion dogs and cats who are not always predictable. We feel joy, and sometimes frustration, in interaction with other sentient agents who can return our gaze in such a way that we 101 ╇ Peggy Liss, Mexico under Spain, 1521-1556: Society and the Origins of Nationality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), 10. Also see Laura A. Lewis’ discussion of this topic in Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 36. 102 ╇ MacLachlan, 22; Elliott, 131-32. 103 ╇ Spain retained Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1826. Burkholder and Johnson, 388, 401-402.

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feel their consciousness.104 This, indeed, is one of the common elements we share with the human and nonhuman inhabitants of the old Spanish empire. We can interpret the way the collared Lautaro looks at Guaman Poma’s son as the affection of a dog for his boy. We can embrace the anger and frustration that San Martín de Porres and Benito Feijóo felt when confronted by human ingratitude and outright cruelty toward other animals. We can understand the efforts of Francisco Suárez and Oliva Sabuco to define exactly who we are in relation to other animals. Conscious flesh speaks to us across the centuries. The debates concerning the status and welfare of other animals continue to speak to us as well. In June 2008, the environmental committee of the lower house of the Spanish legislature approved a resolution supporting the Great Ape Project’s extension of human rights to apes.105 At the time that this conclusion was being written in 2010, the entire Spanish legislature had still failed to vote on this measure. Among other things, members of the hierarchy of the Spanish Catholic Church, like the Archbishop of Pamplona, took umbrage at the efforts of some Spanish legislators to extend limited human rights to the great apes. Resembling a Cartesian priest like Malebranche more than San Martín or Feijóo, the Archbishop of Pamplona continues to represent one side of the debate on whether humans are different in kind or degree from other animals. The debate regarding our relationship and duties to other animals persists. The debate is a universal one, 104 ╇ Thus Martin Buber contemplated the eloquent, independent and unique glance of a house cat as the true reflection of a continuum in animal agency, with that capacity to “become,” for him, epitomized in humanity: “The eyes of an animal have the capacity of a great language. Independent, without any need of the assistance of sounds and gestures, most eloquent when they rest entirely in their glance, they express… the anxiety of becoming…. the stirring of the creature between the realms of plantlike security and spiritual risk. This language is the stammering of nature under the initial grasp of spirit, before language yields to spirit’s cosmic risk which we call man. But no speech will ever repeat what the stammer is able to communicate.” Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 144-45. 105 ╇ Lisa Abend, “In Spain, Human Rights for Apes,” Time (July 18, 2008); available from http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1824206,00.html; accessed FebÂ�ruary 4, 2010. For the “Declaration on Great Apes” of the Great Ape Project, see Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds., The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond Humanity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 4-7. The declaration demands “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans.” Specifically this involves the extension of the “right to life,” the “protection of individual liberty” and the “prohibition of torture.”

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and it remains a Spanish one today. Confronted by politico-religious opposition and a sense that this sort of legislation is somehow frivolous in a time of financial crisis and rampant unemployment, the resolution on the status of great apes has been relegated to limbo according to Spain’s chapter of the Great Ape Project.106 Humans have once again chosen to put their resource needs before the interests of other animals. With the human population approaching seven billion in 2010, and the definition of individual “needs” continuing to expand to include all sorts of new machines in consumer societies, the ability of other animals to merely live seems increasingly threatened.107 Hope remains, however, in that some humans truly cannot conceive of living without other animals, domesticated or not. Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer of the Great Ape Project remind us that not too long ago many humans denied human agency to people whom they labeled “slaves.”108 Obviously, as we have seen, the potentates of the Spanish empire were among those guilty of trying to transform their fellow human beings into implements. The definition of “humanity” was not always extended to include all people. Today, we struggle with the commonalities that bind us to other animals. This intellectual struggle did not arise after all people were finally considered full-fledged “humans” by most of their conspecifics. The question of our animality existed even while we were keeping other humans as slaves. Given the propensity for individual variation in all species, we are never so culturally constructed that analogies and homologies with other species have been completely ignored— even in a culture that taught that humans were created in the image of God.109 Animals have always shown us who we are. They have 106 ╇ Pedro Pozas Terrados, “El Gobierno español veta la ley de los grandes simios,” Proyecto Gran Simio (3 de octubre 2010); available from http://proyectogransimio .blogspot.com/2010/10/el-gibierno-espanol-veta-la-ley-de-los.html; accessed October 31, 2010. For the Spanish economic crisis, see “Spain in 2010: Will Unemployment Prolong the Economic Crisis?” UniversiaKnowledge@Wharton, Finanzas e Inversión; available from http://www.wharton.universia.net/index.cfm?fa=printArti cle&ID=1830&language=English; accessed April 3, 2010. 107 ╇ The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the earth’s human population in June 2010 at some 6.8 billion. International Programs, U.S. Census Bureau, “World POPClock Projection”; available from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html; accessed June 13, 2010. 108 ╇ Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, “The Great Ape Project—and Beyond,” in The Great Ape Project, 304-306. 109 ╇ There are theologians today who ask whether apes may participate in the imago Dei. See Nancy R. Howell, “The Importance of Being Chimpanzee,” Theology

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always been good to think. If we sometimes deny our relationship to other animals, it should not come as a surprise however. Ants herd aphids, and chimpanzees hunt and eat red colobus monkeys. We construct our hierarchies of being and struggle for survival, even as other animals do. The virtual realities of Don Quixote may satisfy for a time, but they certainly could not maintain a Spanish empire that suffered from the realities of resource-draining wars and growing populations in need of sustenance. Spaniards did not live on some immaterial plane, even as we continue to live in the material world. In their own culturally constructed categories, those of Spanish Scholasticism, they were generically the same as other animals, while remaining specifically different. Humans too were animals of Spain. Together with the nonhuman animals of the Spanish empire, they continue to teach us about our own animal condition and about other animals as well.

and Science 1: 2 (October 2003): 188; Nancy R. Howell, “Embodied Transcendence: Bonobos and Humans in Community,” Zygon 44: 3 (September 2009): 601-612; Â�Oliver Putz, “Moral Apes, Human Uniqueness, and the Image of God,” Zygon 44: 3 (September 2009): 613-24. Also see Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 45-47.

index

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INDEX Acosta, Cristobal. See Costa, Cristóvâo da Acosta, José de, 12-13, 54-56, 111, 114, 165-67, 203, 206, 211 Aelian, 49 affection and attachment, 6, 19, 31-32, 53, 60-61, 122, 141 n. 102, 150, 15456, 162 n. 25, 193 n. 30, 213, 217 Africans, 81, 87-88, 100 n. 89, 104, 147, 173-75, 202 agriculture, 18, 23-24, 29, 74, 76 n. 17, 106, 186-87, 198, 200-201 Ahuitzotl, 162-63 Albertus Magnus, 125 altruism, 27-28, 38, 51, 54, 147, 178 Amigo (dog), 163-65 Anderson, Virginia DeJohn, 16, 17 n. 40, 134-35, 155 Andes, 11-12, 24, 134-35, 146, 167 animals: abuse of, 6, 13, 27, 59, 84, 90, 94-95, 112, 135, 191; as companions, 141, 150, 154-55, 157-60, 163-65, 166, 174, 175, 177-78, 213, 214; as entertainment, 10-13, 54, 57, 62, 89-91, 165-66, 195-96, 198-200, 213; as food, 4-6, 10-12, 24, 79, 98-99, 102, 104-106, 109 n. 119, 134, 151-54, 163, 180, 190 n. 23, 204, 205 n. 63, 208, 211-14; as labor, 5-6, 10, 11-12, 60, 63, 71, 77-78, 83, 85-86, 104, 151, 164, 169, 179 n. 81, 189, 193; and metaphor, 5, 42, 54-56, 60 n. 103, 62, 78, 133, 168, 174, 176, 181; in medicine, 98 n. 83, 172-73, 175, 204; proper care of, 84-85, 177; and the sacred, 11, 82, 104-105, 112, 134, 145, 163, 168, 175, 177 anthropomorphism, 54-57, 86-87 Aqunias, Thomas, 5-6, 38, 40-41, 50, 95, 125, 189, 191 Aristotle, 5, 13-14, 33-34, 36, 38-39, 41-42, 51, 127, 167, 189, 191, 209 armadillos, 203-206, 215 Augustine of Hippo, 125, 126 n. 48 Aurrecoechea, José María, 200-202 automata, 31, 112, 200-202

Ayala, Martín de, 181 Aztecs, 16, 23-25, 67, 95, 99, 117, 129, 131, 162-63, 207-208 Bacon, Roger,14 Bajío, 97, 103 Balboa, Francisco de, 156 Barcelona, 28 n. 65, 140 n. 98, 194 Bary, René, 14 Barrenechea, Graziana de, 142 Basques, 27, 114, 118, 127, 130-31, 13839, 142, 194 bats, 20, 129, 130, 145 bears, 11, 144, 146, 203-204, 207, 208 Becerrillo (dog), 155-57, 164 bellwethers (encencerrados), 85 Berganza (fictional dog), 56-57, 83, 84 bezoar stones, 204 Bible, 5-6, 40, 179 birds, 13, 20, 42-43, 46, 48, 54, 78, 99, 101, 120, 124, 138, 145-46, 158, 162, 173, 174, 203, 208, 213, 215. Also see chickens; eagles; great-tailed grackles; house finches; mourning doves; parrots; quails; turkeys boar, 63-67, 169, 192-94 Boas, George, 9 Bodin, Jean, 115 Bourbon monarchy, 185-86, 188, 19297, 211 Boyle, Robert, 8, 191 Bruto (dog), 157, 164-65 Buber, Martin, 217 n. 104 Buenos Aires, 212 Buffon, Comte de, 201, 206, 207 bullfight, 10-11, 13, 28, 57, 63, 89-91, 190, 195-96, 198-99 Bulliet, Richard W., 18-19, 81-82 bulls, 15, 79, 89-90, 107, 151, 169, 170, 190, 207, 210 Cádiz, 197, 207 caimans, 129-30, 149, 214-15 “Camacha” (Leonor Rodríguez), 57, 140-41 Camós, Narciso, 82-83, 104, 112, 168-69

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index

Carguachuqui, Francisca, 134-35 Carlos, heir to the Spanish throne (don Carlos), 27, 71, 92-95, 112 Cartagena, 12, 165, 215 Caruachin, Hernando, 134 casta: animal, 67,87-88, 171; human, 87-88, 171, 182, 202, 210 Castañega, Martín de, 124 Castaño de Sosa, Gaspar, 151-54 Castile, 23, 28 n. 65, 63, 195; Council of, 186, 195 Catalonia, 15, 23, 28 n. 65, 82, 168, 196 cats, 31, 42, 56, 118, 124, 137, 149, 190, 213, 176 Caxa de Leruela, Miguel, 77-80, 83, 186 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 13, 34, 56, 67, 68, 71, 81, 83, 84, 114, 119, 130, 143-44, 155, 191, 200; Colloquy of the Dogs, 27, 56-57, 83, 141, 198; Don Quixote, 58-63, 86-87, 219 Charles III, 74, 186, 192-96, 200 Charles IV, 198 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (Charles I of Spain), 10 Charles, Catalina de, 154-55, 177 chickens, 10, 12, 60, 98 n. 83, 172-73, 190, 204, 205; adoption by AmerinÂ� dians, 100-101, 103, 105, 108, 214 Chile, 10, 28, 104, 146, 164, 212 chimpanzees, 20-22, 31-32, 51, 68, 89, 90 n. 60, 91 n. 65, 153, 178, 219 choice, and nonhuman animals, 31-35, 40-54, 61, 86, 123, 130, 189-90 cimarrón, 87-88 Cipión (fictional dog), 56, 57 n. 93 Ciruelo, Pedro, 124 Ciudad de los Reyes. See Lima Clavijero, Francisco Javier, 206-209 Coatepec, 203 Cobarrubias, Gaspar de, 204-206 Cobo, Bernabé, 11 Colloquy of the Dogs, 27, 56-57, 83, 141, 198 Columbian Exchange, 1, 5 n. 8, 95-111 communication, interspecies, 48, 85-86 compassion, 36, 41, 45-46, 50, 51, 54, 58, 68, 95, 150, 151, 177, 180, 191, 192, 198-200. Also see sympathy Cordoba, 140-41 corrida. See bullfight Cortés, Hernán, 10, 23, 67, 103 n. 102, 109 n. 119, 179

Costa, Cristóvâo da (Acosta, Cristobal), 2, 49-50, 52-53 cows, 10, 77, 79, 84, 87, 98, 99, 107, 110, 121, 151, 157, 212; adoption by Amerindians, 99, 100, 105, 106 coyotes, 25, 117, 203-204 crocodiles, 46, 48 Crosby, Alfred W., 1, 5 n. 8, 11, 96 Cuba, 28, 174-75 curiosity, 33 n. 8, 204; and learning, 6, 54-55 currency, Spanish, 106-107, 107 n. 113, 114 n. 6. Also see prices cuy. See guinea pig Darwin, Charles, 18, 31-33, 210 deer, 64-65, 67, 99, 145 n. 111, 152, 15455, 169, 193, 203-204, 208 Descartes, René, 7-9, 14, 16, 18, 58, 114, 129, 189-90 Devil. See Satan display behavior, 10-11, 21, 57, 57-58 n. 95, 63-64, 67-68, 68 n. 134, 88-89, 95, 111, 182, 192, 200 dogs, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15-16, 24, 28, 31-32, 79, 96, 99, 104, 109 n. 119, 110, 114, 117, 119, 126, 133, 138, 145, 149, 157, 163-65, 171, 173-79, 183, 191, 208, 213-14, 216-17; in fiction, 27, 56-57, 83, 141, 198; in hunting, 14, 65, 67, 157, 158, 160-61 n. 25, 194; intelligence of, 14, 123, 190; lap dogs (perrillos de falda), 12, 157-60, 161-62 n. 25, 177-78, 183; sheepdogs, 76, 84-85, 95, 186; in warfare, 150, 155-57 dolphins, 36-38, 48, 51, 54, 148 domestication, 18-19, 27, 82, 99, 105106, 112, 114, 135, 154, 162, 165, 169 Don Quixote, 13, 58-63, 86-87, 219 donkeys, 110, 118, 127, 137, 190; el rucio (Sancho Panza’s donkey), 58-62, 71, 151 Durán, Diego, 109 n. 119 eagles, 24, 25 n. 60, 117, 133, 145, 146 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus, 32 elephants, 2, 20, 36, 46, 47, 49-54, 94, 148, 174 emotions, in animals, 7-8, 25, 31-33, 35-37, 46-48, 54, 122-23, 156; anger, 46; fear, 16; joy, 45; love, 31-34,

index 37-38, 45-46, 48, 61, 123; sorrow, 37, 46, 156 Enlightenment, 2 n. 2, 185, 187-89, 19192, 195-201, 209, 211, 212 Espejo, Antonio de, 151 ethology, 22-23, 31-33, 36-38, 51, 57, 80, 123, 148, 178, 179, 203, 205 evolution, 2, 19-23, 26-27, 31-33, 167, 178 Extremadura, 103 n. 102 farming. See agriculture fasting (Catholic), 152-53, 179-80 Feijóo y Montenegro, Benito, 189-92, 200, 217 Ferdinand VI, 192 Ferdinand VII, 197-98 Florentine Codex, 25-26, 95-97, 102, 111, 130-31, 133, 162, 205 foxes, 67, 203-204; cunning of, 55, 14445, 181; in magic and witchcraft, 25, 124, 128, 130, 134, 149, 174 Francis of Assisi, 18, 149, 176 friendship. See affection and attachment frogs and toads, 25, 99, 135, 136, 141, 142, 145, 147 ganado, 73, 81, 201, 204 goats, 10, 61, 73, 78-80, 85-87, 115 n. 7, 157, 212; adoption by Amerindians, 105, 107 n. 113 Gracián, Baltasar, 55 Great Ape Project, 217 great-tailed grackles, 162-63 Grial, Juan de, 120, 123 Goya, Francisco, 159, 161-62 n. 25, 199 n. 51 Guadalajara, 98 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, 25, 135, 146, 163-65, 181-82, 217 guanacos, 25 n. 61, 204, 207 Guatemala, 5, 129 guinea pig, 11-12, 24, 108, 214 Guinefort, Saint (dog), 168 hierarchy, 67, 81, 92, 126, 133, 135-36, 146, 152-53, 172, 175, 208, 216, 21819; and inversion, 27, 113, 115-16, 118-19, 123, 125, 127, 129, 133, 14243 The Holy Family with the Bird (Murillo painting), 158, 160

223

horses, 2, 10-11, 43-44, 76, 79, 88 n. 56, 94, 96, 105, 110, 120, 133, 137, 157, 163, 171, 173, 174 n. 66; and attachment, 37, 60, 122; and the bullfight, 63, 89, 90, 196, 198-99, 210, 212; in fiction, 58-62, 68; in hunting, 63-64; intelligence of, 62; war horses, 9, 112 house finches, 162 huaca, 11, 134-35, 144-47 Huamanga (Guamanga), 108, 181 Humanism, 6-7, 35-36, 56, 191 humanity, defined in relation to other animals, 2-9, 43-44, 201-202, 207208, 217-19 hunting, 4, 9, 14, 18, 21, 41, 52, 63-68, 91, 93, 153, 157, 158-59, 169, 173, 175, 192-94, 200, 208 hybrids, 117, 121, 136, 144, 147 ilustrados. See Enlightenment Incas, 11-12, 16, 24-25, 104-105, 144, 146-47, 157, 162 inquisition, 6, 114-16, 119, 131-33, 13940, 143, 147, 188, 192 Isabella of Castile, 91 Isidore of Seville, 120-23, 125, 126 n. 48, 136 jaguarondis, 204 jaguars, 11, 24, 25 n. 60, 117, 131, 13334, 211; called tigre or tiger, 130, 132, 203 James I of England, 14, 115, 123 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de, 196, 198 Juan, Jorge, 211 Juana Inés de la Cruz, 35 Kongo Kingdom, 174 La Mettrie, Julien Offray, 201-202 La Paz, 106, 108, 204 Lautaro (dog), 163-65, 217 Leibniz, Gottfried W. F. von, 15-16 Leoncico (dog), 155, 156, 157, 164 Leoncillo (dog). See Leoncico Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 4, 167 Lima (Ciudad de los Reyes), 134, 163, 170-71, 209, 212 limpieza de sangre, 67, 145, 147, 171 lions, 15, 42, 43, 55-56, 131, 174, 203204, 211

224

index

Lizardi, José Joaquín Fernández de, 197200, 206 llamas, 25, 104-106, 111 “Lobera” (Ana María García), 143, 148 magic, 125, 136. Also see witchcraft Malaspina, Alejandro, 211-13 Malebranche, Nicolas, 8, 10, 17, 31, 42, 129, 217 The Mangy Parrot (El Periquillo Sarniento), 198-200 manufacturing, 185, 194; in obrajes, 141 Mary, Mother of God, and animals, 15, 82-83, 104-105, 112, 158, 168-69 Matamba, 174 Mateos, Juan, 63-68, 71, 89, 102, 157, 193-94, 200 Maya, 26 mayoral, 76, 143 meat. See animals as food memory, 7, 15-16, 43, 46, 47, 49-50, 18990 Las Meninas (Velázquez painting), 15859 Mesta,74-77, 84, 95, 186-87, 189, 196 mestizos, 144, 147, 162, 181, 213-14 Mexico, 10, 24-27, 95-103, 109-10, 119, 124,€127-28,€130-33,€162-63,€179, 192, 198-200, 203-211 Mexico City, 34, 39, 97-98, 100-101, 198 mice and rats, 42, 118, 149, 176, 213 Michoacan, 88 monkeys, 12-13, 21, 22, 26, 48, 54, 62, 68, 111, 136, 137, 145, 165-67, 178, 183, 203, 215, 219 Montaigne, Michel de, 9-10, 13, 58, 67, 68, 145, 151, 155, 191 Montemayor, Jorge de, 71-72 n. 2, 80, 83 More, Henry, 8, 118 More, Thomas, 1, 75 n. 15 Moss, Cynthia, 51-54 Motecuhzoma II, 163 mourning doves, 26 mulatos, 170-71 mules, 63, 73, 78 n. 21, 120-21, 137, 157, 171, 193, 212 Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, 158, 160 Muslims, 81, 116, 140 n. 98 nahualli (pl: nanahualtin), 128-29, 13233, 143, 149, 172, 182, 204, 214 Nahuas, 23, 96, 128, 130, 132-34

New Galicia, 98 New Mexico, 151-55 New Spain, 78, 95, 97, 102-103, 105-107, 110-11, 127-28, 131-35, 147, 179, 192, 195 n. 38, 197-200, 203-211, 216 nuns, 35, 78, 153, 180 Oaxaca, 101-102, 109 n. 119, 110 O’Crouley, Pedro Alonso, 210-11 Ogun, 175 Olmos, Andrés de, 124 opossums, 203, 205 Otavalo, 10, 88, 106, 108 oxen, 15, 29, 73, 77, 82-83, 105, 151, 157, 169, 176, 178 Pan, 78-81 Panama, 104, 167, 212 parrots, 12, 137-38, 162, 203, 204 pastoralism, 71-88, 91 peccaries, 203 Pereira, Gómez, 7-8, 42-43, 45, 189-90, 200 perrillo de falda. See dogs perro sabio, 155 Peru, 11-12, 13, 76 n. 17, 104-108, 111, 134, 144-45, 149, 157, 162-65, 16982, 192, 203, 212, 215, 216 pets, 8, 9, 11-13, 141, 150-51, 157-66, 177, 213-14 Philip II, 27, 71, 91-94, 112, 131 Philip III, 63, 192, 194 Philip IV, 63-64, 112, 158, 192, 194 Philip V, 185, 211 pieza de India, 87, 157 n. 22 pigs, 10, 73, 79, 81, 87, 96, 107 n. 113, 114, 121, 137, 157; adoption by AmeÂ� rindians, 10, 98 n. 83, 99, 100, 101, 105, 108 Plato, 34, 125, 207 Pliny the Elder, 36-37, 46-51, 60, 167, 209 Plutarch, 79 n. 25, 190 Polo, Gaspar Gil, 72 n. 2, 80, 83 Popol Vuh, 26 Porres, Martín de, 28, 68, 149-50, 153, 169-83, 217; and African tradition, 172-75; and altruism, 178-79; and St. Dominic, 177-78 Portugal, 2, 44, 94

index prices, 97-98, 107-108. Also see currency, Spanish Prince Don Felipe Próspero (Velázquez painting), 158, 161 Privado, el (horse), 94 prudence. See restraint pumas (mountain lions), 11, 133, 144, 146, 203, 211 quails, 24, 99 Quisiputo (horse), 163 Quito, 10, 105-108, 203, 212-14 rabadán, 76; King Philip II as gran rabadán, 91 rabbits and hares, 93, 95, 99, 105 n. 109, 138, 169, 174, 203, 208 reason, in animals, 8-9, 14-16, 33 n. 8, 45-54, 61, 66, 117, 137, 155-56, 170, 190-91, 200 rebaño, 76 relaciones geográficas, 10, 27, 44, 88, 98-102, 105-108, 200, 203-205 religion. See animals, and the sacred restraint, 34, 45, 47, 49-54, 90, 91, 147, 190 Rio, Manuel del, 85 Rio, Martín del, 27, 136-38 Rocinante (fictional horse), 58-62 Ruiz de Alarcón, Hernando, 15, 27, 12730, 132, 136, 138, 149, 172, 178, 183, 214 Saavedra Fajardo, Diego de, 55 Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Oliva, 27, 34, 55, 59, 60, 68, 80, 114, 119, 130, 147, 148, 200; and choice in animals, 47-54; and emotions in animals, 35-38, 45-46 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 24, 25, 95, 130, 131, 205 Salazar Frías, Alonso de, 138-39 Santería, 172, 174 Satan, 14, 24, 78-79, 113-15, 118, 124-29, 137-39, 142, 144, 166-69 Scholasticism, 5-8, 13, 16, 27, 34, 38, 43, 68, 125, 191, 219 Scientific Revolution (experimental natural philosophy), 5-6, 8, 36, 187, 189, 208-209 seals, 212

225

sentience, 2, 27, 34, 38, 41, 43-44, 45, 61, 69, 86-87, 88, 114, 191, 200, 210, 216 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 41-43, 45, 200, 202 Serpell, James, 3, 9, 117, 151, 163 shape-shifting. See transmutation sheep, 1, 62-63, 72-77, 79-81, 83-85, 88-89, 95-99, 106-107, 143, 157, 169, 186-87, 189, 190, 210, 212; adoption by Amerindians, 10, 98 n. 83, 100, 102-107, 109 shepherds, 27, 46, 65, 71-72, 75-78, 80-85, 111-12, 143, 169, 186, 189 slavery, 39, 40-41, 49, 71, 87, 100 n. 89, 157, 173-74, 175, 218 snakes, 11, 25, 78, 93, 99, 133-35, 145, 147, 174, 181 Soto, Hernando de, 157 soul, animal, 7, 13, 16, 34-35, 37, 42-47, 49, 122, 191 Súarez, Francisco, 5, 34, 39, 43-46, 50, 114, 120, 137, 166, 178, 217 sympathy, 46, 58, 61. Also see compassion Tacatetl, 132 Tasco (Taxco), 100-101, 197, 203 Temazcaltepec, 204-205 temperance. See restraint Tenochtitlan, 163, 207 Teresa of Avila, 78 Thomas, Keith, 3, 9, 141 tigers. See jaguars Tlaxcala, 101, 107 n. 113 Toledo, 143, 188 toro bravo, 29, 89, 95, 178. Also see bulls Townsend, Joseph, 188, 192-94, 215 transhumanism, 3, 20, 121, 138 transmutation, 15, 27, 113, 115, 117-22, 125-27, 133, 136-39, 146 turkeys, 24, 25, 99, 100-101, 208 Ucelo, Martín, 132, 148 Ulloa, Antonio de, 76 n. 17, 211-15 Valdivia, Pedro de, 10 Valencia, 90, 140 n. 98 Valle del Mezquital, 102-103 Varro, 125 Vega, Garcilaso de la, 12-13, 55, 107, 124, 144-47, 157-58, 162, 203 vegetarianism, 28-29, 41, 179-80

226

index

Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y, 158-59, 161, 166 n. 33 Venezuela, 12, 200-201 vicuñas, 25 n. 61, 204 Villanueva, Tomás de, 90 Vitoria, Francisco de, 5, 6, 34, 39-43, 45, 49, 54, 125-27, 130, 136, 137, 144 warfare, 9, 11, 24, 39, 63,65, 67, 83, 117, 131, 144, 175, 185, 194, 196, 208, 219; and dogs, 155-57; and horses, 112 witchcraft, 113-15, 118-21, 124-27, 13644; and Amerindians, 128-35; in fiction, 56-57; witch trials, 118. Also see magic

wolves, 32, 65, 66 n. 129, 83, 85, 117, 120, 123, 125, 133, 137, 143, 163, 179, 193, 203, 208 women, 13-14, 58 n. 95, 75, 78-79, 86-87, 94, 113 n. 1, 119 n. 25, 129-30, 141-42, 154, 165, 168, 214 xenophobia, 214 Yoruba, 173-75, 179 Zacatecas, 98 Zugarramurdi, 138-39, 142 Zumárraga, Juan de, 131-33