1673 Engraving of Indigenous People of the Strait of Magellan
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Indigenous people at the Strait of Magellan appears in this excerpted leaf from the Magellanica chapter of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
Beneath a broad palm, a man gripping a bow stands beside a woman holding up a bird, a small child at her side and a cloaked figure before them. In the distance, warriors with bows and spears fall upon a group of figures near a cluster of conical huts while a boat of rowers crosses the water. The figures follow the book's description, printed just below, of the people of Tierra del Fuego, who painted their bodies in many colors and wore cords about their necks. The same page recounts the fate of Pedro Sarmiento's settlements on the Strait of Magellan, abandoned to starvation. The reverse continues with the voyages of Olivier van Noort and of Schouten and Le Maire, whose expedition charted Cape Horn and the strait that bears Le Maire's name, along with a report of giants said to stand eleven feet tall.
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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