1673 Engraving of an Indigenous Brazilian Ritual Dance
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of an Indigenous ritual dance with three feathered priests appears in this excerpted leaf from the Brazil section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a man in a cloak and skirt of feathers stands on a low wooden crate with one foot raised, holding a feather-crowned rattle aloft with his other hand on his hip. Two more men in feathered cloaks flank him, each raising a rattle and holding a long pipe. Around them, men bend forward in a loose ring with tufts of feathers bound behind them and cloths knotted at their hips, some with a hand lowered toward the ground and others with a hand tucked behind the feathers. Behind them, a palisade and a roofed gateway stand before long arched thatched houses and palms.
The scene follows a dance described in the text below, which attributes it to the Tapuya. Eighteen, twenty, or more dancers are said to have formed a ring, each with a many-colored plume tied over the buttocks "like a Turkish turban" by a band passing over the left shoulder. Each leaned forward with the left hand hanging down and the right tucked between the plume and the body, stamping the right foot while all sang, much as the dancers seen here do. The songs are described as opening with a mournful account of a great flood that swept away their ancestors before turning to the praise of their heroes. The same page tells how the Brazilians dried tobacco and smoked it in pipes made from a reed and a hollowed nut. The reverse names the three central figures as priests, each holding an image of the idol Maraka, which the text likens to an ostrich egg crowned with feathers much like the rattles raised here. The middle priest is said to have lifted his left foot from the ground again and again, while the other two blew tobacco smoke from twisted pipes and called out "Receive the spirit of manly strength." The reverse goes on to Brazilian bows, clubs, and trumpets made from human leg bones, and to the Brazilian grammar the Jesuit José de Anchieta published at Coimbra in 1595.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and Die Unbekante Neue Welt, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.
CONDITION
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