1673 Engraving of Taíno Dancers Welcoming a Spaniard on Hispaniola
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of a Taíno welcome on Hispaniola appears in this excerpted leaf from the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
Beneath a steep, wooded mountain and a fringe of palms, a procession of Taíno women dances with palm fronds raised, while at right a Spaniard in a plumed hat is led forward by a feathered cacique and his spear-bearing attendants. The scene appears to show the reception given to Bartholomew Columbus at Xaragua in 1496, when the women of the cacique Behechio's household came out to meet him singing and waving palm branches. Below the image, two columns of blackletter text carry the narrative forward to the revolt of the cacique Guarionex and Columbus's departure on his third voyage in 1498. The reverse continues with a description of Angra on Terceira and the fleet's arrival at Paria, where the Spaniards traded a broken dish and a rusty knife for strings of pearls.
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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