1673 Engraving of Indigenous Brazilian Daily Life
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Indigenous Brazilian daily life appears in this excerpted leaf from the Brazil section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
Beneath a steep peak, two Brazilians meet in the foreground. On the left, a porter in a cloth cap carries a large woven basket slung from a strap across the forehead and a tray of produce in both hands; on the right, a man in a feathered headdress gestures toward the porter with one hand on his hip. Behind them, a seated man rests beside a quiver of arrows, another with a spear stands by a palisade, and figures lounge in a hammock slung between palms. The engraving appears to illustrate the text below on the Brazilians' "form and manner," as its margin note puts it, which claims they grow tall early, age slowly and never go gray or bald, and that several households share a single palm-thatched hut shaped almost like an upturned club. The other column describes the mountainous interior, where thistles with hollow leaves hold dew and rain for the inhabitants to drink. The reverse turns to food and daily life: manioc flour tossed into the mouth with three fingers so that not a crumb falls, hammocks tied between two posts with a fire kept burning beside them, and drinks brewed from maize and pineapple.
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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