An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians: A New Edition, with an Introductory Study, Notes, and Appendices by José Juan Arrom

by Ramón Pané, José Juan Arrom (Editor), Susan C. Griswold (Translator)

Accompanying Columbus on his second voyage to the New World in 1494 was a young Spanish friar named Ramón Pané. The friar’s assignment was to live among the “Indians” whom Columbus had “discovered” on the island of Hispaniola (today the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), to learn their language, and to write a record of their lives and beliefs. While the culture of these indigenous people—who came to be known as the Taíno—is now extinct, the written record completed by Pané around 1498 has survived. This volume makes Pané’s landmark Account—the first book written in a European language on American soil—available in an annotated English edition.

Edited by the noted Hispanist José Juan Arrom, Pané’s report is the only surviving direct source of information about the myths, ceremonies, and lives of the New World inhabitants whom Columbus first encountered. The friar’s text contains many linguistic and cultural observations, including descriptions of the Taíno people’s healing rituals and their beliefs about their souls after death. Pané provides the first known description of the use of the hallucinogen cohoba, and he recounts the use of idols in ritual ceremonies. The names, functions, and attributes of native gods; the mythological origin of the aboriginal people’s attitudes toward sex and gender; and their rich stories of creation are described as well.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Indigenous, Spanish Literature

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1498

Reviews

[Eneas Núñez]

Unfortunately, this is a book everyone from the Caribbean/South America should read. I say unfortunately because this is an account of a 15th century Catholic Friar about the religion of the aborigines and it goes exactly how you would expect. He mixes the names of different fruits and herbs and constantly confuses the fauna of the Island. He refers to the Tainos as ignorant, heathens and discards their religious belief in every chapter. However, this book contains a lot of very interesting elements of their gods and legends that are alive thanks to him so it's a mixed bag that will make you love more the Tainos and hate Columbus, if you haven't hate him already.

[Luis]

3.5 - interesting narration of the Taíno from Hispaniola with a few mentions of other islands. Sadly, there aren’t much details about the rites/rituals or other traditions of the Taíno recorded by fray Ramón Pané; however, at least there are some details gathered from those times.

[Thomaz Amancio]

Deve ser só o jeito que eu aprendi, mas sinto que existe um senso comum que trata a história como algo já-escrito, já-definido. O passado não tem nada de novo a dizer ou mostrar e não há nada de novo a ser dito sobre o passado. Se a história se baseia em documentos e já foi escrita, então o único jeito de dizer algo novo é encontrando um novo documento, porque os que já foram encontrados já foram também lidos e não tem como eles dizerem nada de diferente... Ou tem?

A Relación é um dos documentos mais curiosos e difíceis da colonização da América, o primeiro tratado escrito sobre um povo ameríndio, uma espécie de modelo de tudo que veio depois: evangelização, escravidão, mestiçagem, antropologia... Como outros dos documentos da conquista, muito já foi dito sobre ele. Como todo texto, sempre existe a possibilidade de encontrar um caminho pouco explorado, de fazer perguntas diferentes.

[Oswald]

This is about a guy who lived among the Natives of Hispaniola. His account is very interesting and can help one understand the Natives, but I wish there was more to his journal.

[Cosette]

I really enjoyed this book, although “enjoyed” feels like a slightly strange word for something I also found a little sad.

Ramón Pané’s An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, written around 1498 after Pané had lived among Hispaniola’s Indigenous people, is the only surviving direct early source on their myths and religious ceremonies. He recorded creation stories, zemis, cohoba, healing practices, ideas about the dead, and other aspects of Taíno life that might otherwise have disappeared almost completely.

José Juan Arrom’s scholarship makes this edition invaluable. The original manuscript is lost, and what survives has passed through translations and garbled transcriptions. Arrom works through them carefully.

A lot of personality survives in these fragments. The zemis are far more interesting than the simple category of “idols” suggests: they have names, histories, relationships, powers and agency. The myths can likewise be funny, strange, violent, and puzzling, fragments of a living religious world caught mid-disruption.

That’s where it turned painful. By the mid-sixteenth century, Taíno society had largely collapsed due to conquest and disease. As a descendant of Indigenous Cubans, I felt everything left unrecorded.

This book left me grateful it survived, fascinated by what it reveals, and grieving somewhat for what didn’t.

[Carla]

Fray Ramón Pané fue un misionero de la orden de San Jerónimo, y será quién escribe el primer escrito acerca de los indígenas.
Viajará junto con Cristóbal Colón a la Isla Española y en este manuescripto anotará mitos correspondientes sobre las creencias de los indios taínos.
De esa forma sabremos más de los indígenas taínos, los diferentes nombres que atribuyen muchas objetos o profesiones, por ejemplo “Cohoba” como una sustancia alucinógena, “Behiques” que eran los sacerdotes taínos que realizaban ceremonias y curaciones, “Guabonito” que era alguna forma de escritura, “Tona”asi se la llamaba a las ranas, entre otras palabras.