First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570 by Jerald T. Milanich

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

What a mess! This is a series of essays with illustrations strung together that have a goal, by way of the title, to depict first encounters by the Spanish explorers. That is generally done. But it’s mighty sketchy as the focus are a handful of explorers and everything is done by practically every writer to paint a picture of nice innocent Spanish explorers who are being brave and finding a new world.

What is nearly completely ignored is the vicious ways of the Spanish explorers. The writers that do indicate some violent tendencies go so far as to excuse them and condemn the indians and French for being violent. What really rots in all this is that as each Spanish tale is unfolded vats of archaeological evidence is given to support the trips…that is, except the evidence that exists to tell the tale of the death spread in the name of Spain and Catholicism by the same Spanish explorers. How can a writer map out so much and leave out so much? How can one part completely brush over what Menendez did to the French…twice? The writer of Menendez spends all kinds of verbiage about the Menendez trip and the archaeological evidence of it all – except the cutting off of French heads. Did the writer find the incident to disturbing to write? Wouldn’t the editors pull the writers chain and point out something was left out? Nope. Again, any indication of violence is brushed aside and pages are written about disease killing off the indians. Suddenly archaeological evidence is not needed about disease and hearsay is warmly embraced.

The last section of this book is the worst. It meanders over artists depictions of the New World and motivations and reasoning behind the artwork. After the other chapters being tied to archaeology suddenly there’s an aesthetic examination of artistic interpretation. There are far better histories out there and this is a waste to be avoided. If politics are the reasons for the white washing of history what else can be trusted in what is written?

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