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Raiders and Natives: Cross-Cultural Relations in the Age of Buccaneers
Throughout the seventeenth century Dutch, French, and English freebooters launched numerous assaults on Spanish targets all over Central America. Many people have heard of Henry Morgan and François L’Olonnais, who led a series of successful raids, but few know that the famous buccaneers often operated in regions inhabited and controlled by Native Americans rather than Spaniards.
Arne Bialuschewski explores the cross-cultural relations that emerged when greedy marauders encountered local populations in various parts of the Spanish empire. Natives, as it turned out, played a crucial role in the outcome of many of those raids. Depending on their own needs and assessment of the situation, indigenous people sometimes chose to support the colonial authorities and sometimes aided the intruders instead. Freebooters used native guides, relied on expertise and supplies obtained from local communities, and captured and enslaved many natives they encountered on their way. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous groups or individuals participated in the often-romanticized history of buccaneering.
Building on extensive archival research, Bialuschewski untangles the wide variety of forms that cross-cultural relations took. By placing these encounters at the center of Raiders and Natives , the author changes our understanding of the early modern Atlantic World and the role that native populations played in the international conflicts of the seventeenth century.
Arne Bialuschewski explores the cross-cultural relations that emerged when greedy marauders encountered local populations in various parts of the Spanish empire. Natives, as it turned out, played a crucial role in the outcome of many of those raids. Depending on their own needs and assessment of the situation, indigenous people sometimes chose to support the colonial authorities and sometimes aided the intruders instead. Freebooters used native guides, relied on expertise and supplies obtained from local communities, and captured and enslaved many natives they encountered on their way. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous groups or individuals participated in the often-romanticized history of buccaneering.
Building on extensive archival research, Bialuschewski untangles the wide variety of forms that cross-cultural relations took. By placing these encounters at the center of Raiders and Natives , the author changes our understanding of the early modern Atlantic World and the role that native populations played in the international conflicts of the seventeenth century.
- GenresNonfiction
194 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 21, 2023
This book examines something that not only have most of us not thought about, but that is almost counterintuitive. Caribbean pirates depended on the land, not the sea, for survival.
Pirates needed bases where they could repair; forests for wood; markets to sell plunder; workshops to purchase or repair weapons. Pirates also needed stores of wealth to plunder - i.e., towns - because there's a one-in-a-million shot that they'd happen to stumble upon an unguarded treasure ship. Most pirating took place on land along the port towns of the Spanish Main.
This brings us to a corollary - the success or failure of pirate expeditions largely depended on the Native populations in some way.
Natives could serve as guides. Natives taught Europeans how to carve and use dugout canoes, which were far more navigable in American rivers. Natives even provided the inspiration for buccaneer by instructing in a new manner of preserving meat that does not require salt. Natives could be outright longterm allies such as the Miskitu, or even use the buccaneers for their own agenda like the Kunas. Natives Maya informants, interpreters, and slaves were not uncommon on pirate fleets.
Contrariwise, Natives were also the backbone of Spanish defense. The Spanish recruited huge numbers of indigenous auxiliaries to defend the coastal settlements under siege. Indigenous communities that supported the Spanish could be rewarded with weapons and tools; while those that supported pirates could be punished or forced to flee into the hinterland.
And - again counterintuitively - it was indigenous peoples who suffered the most from piracy. Pirates who needed supplies were not above simply plundering native villages, which could be reduced to starvation (p. 37). And as native peoples were responsible for corvee labor and the basis of the colonial economy, they inevitably paid in either time or labor to clean everything up (p. 109). Unfortunate natives could even be captured and sold into slavery, as indigenous slavery was legal in the English Caribbean.
The author explores the dimensions of pirate and indigenous interactions across several fronts. The chapters focus on buccaneer origins in the Caribbean, incursions into Maya lands, incursions into Granada Nicaragua, future incursions across Central America, the alliance with the Miskitu of Nicaragua, the Kunas of Panama, and expeditions along the South Sea (i.e. the Pacific shoreline).
I was surprised to learn that the French were the greatest threat to Spanish hegemony (p.16), and yet that is true upon reflection. We are so accustomed to English pirates, that it's easy to forget that the first pirate attacks came from France in the 1500s. France wrested western Hispaniola from Spain in 1655 (p. 23), and it was the French, after all, who were indirectly responsible for dismantling the Spanish Empire in America.
My single favorite page of the book is p. 59, where in late 1667 a largely French crew set up shop in Belize for a few weeks to repair their ships. They traded metal tools and weapons for foodstuffs, and received contacts from several Maya communities. One of these - a group of Maya from Tipu in western Belize - approached the pirates for a possible alliance. Not against the Spanish, or the English - no, against the Itza Maya! Conflicts between Maya polities sometimes persisted for centuries, and it would not be hard to write a history of the Yucatan and Belize from the perspective of colonial Maya manipulating outsiders to assist in these conflicts. In retrospect this may not have been the best use of strategy, but it speaks to the resilience of Maya polities that two centuries after Columbus sailed the ocean blue they were still able to play the French and the Spanish off against their enemies.
This book also fills a huge gap in the literature which is colonial Central American history that is NOT Guatemala. There's a comparative bounty of books about colonial Guatemala; everybody else gets crickets. Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize all play a huge role in this book, and this is one of the few books I've read in English that dedicates entire chapters to any of those countries.
This book is short (122 pages of text), it is fascinating (Pirates and Native Americans), it is about a region that usually doesn't get a lot of love in historical literature, and it covers a lot of ground for what dealing with pirates was actually like. If you want a quick read about pirates - and let's be honest, who doesn't - go get this book.
Pirates needed bases where they could repair; forests for wood; markets to sell plunder; workshops to purchase or repair weapons. Pirates also needed stores of wealth to plunder - i.e., towns - because there's a one-in-a-million shot that they'd happen to stumble upon an unguarded treasure ship. Most pirating took place on land along the port towns of the Spanish Main.
This brings us to a corollary - the success or failure of pirate expeditions largely depended on the Native populations in some way.
Natives could serve as guides. Natives taught Europeans how to carve and use dugout canoes, which were far more navigable in American rivers. Natives even provided the inspiration for buccaneer by instructing in a new manner of preserving meat that does not require salt. Natives could be outright longterm allies such as the Miskitu, or even use the buccaneers for their own agenda like the Kunas. Natives Maya informants, interpreters, and slaves were not uncommon on pirate fleets.
Contrariwise, Natives were also the backbone of Spanish defense. The Spanish recruited huge numbers of indigenous auxiliaries to defend the coastal settlements under siege. Indigenous communities that supported the Spanish could be rewarded with weapons and tools; while those that supported pirates could be punished or forced to flee into the hinterland.
And - again counterintuitively - it was indigenous peoples who suffered the most from piracy. Pirates who needed supplies were not above simply plundering native villages, which could be reduced to starvation (p. 37). And as native peoples were responsible for corvee labor and the basis of the colonial economy, they inevitably paid in either time or labor to clean everything up (p. 109). Unfortunate natives could even be captured and sold into slavery, as indigenous slavery was legal in the English Caribbean.
The author explores the dimensions of pirate and indigenous interactions across several fronts. The chapters focus on buccaneer origins in the Caribbean, incursions into Maya lands, incursions into Granada Nicaragua, future incursions across Central America, the alliance with the Miskitu of Nicaragua, the Kunas of Panama, and expeditions along the South Sea (i.e. the Pacific shoreline).
I was surprised to learn that the French were the greatest threat to Spanish hegemony (p.16), and yet that is true upon reflection. We are so accustomed to English pirates, that it's easy to forget that the first pirate attacks came from France in the 1500s. France wrested western Hispaniola from Spain in 1655 (p. 23), and it was the French, after all, who were indirectly responsible for dismantling the Spanish Empire in America.
My single favorite page of the book is p. 59, where in late 1667 a largely French crew set up shop in Belize for a few weeks to repair their ships. They traded metal tools and weapons for foodstuffs, and received contacts from several Maya communities. One of these - a group of Maya from Tipu in western Belize - approached the pirates for a possible alliance. Not against the Spanish, or the English - no, against the Itza Maya! Conflicts between Maya polities sometimes persisted for centuries, and it would not be hard to write a history of the Yucatan and Belize from the perspective of colonial Maya manipulating outsiders to assist in these conflicts. In retrospect this may not have been the best use of strategy, but it speaks to the resilience of Maya polities that two centuries after Columbus sailed the ocean blue they were still able to play the French and the Spanish off against their enemies.
This book also fills a huge gap in the literature which is colonial Central American history that is NOT Guatemala. There's a comparative bounty of books about colonial Guatemala; everybody else gets crickets. Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize all play a huge role in this book, and this is one of the few books I've read in English that dedicates entire chapters to any of those countries.
This book is short (122 pages of text), it is fascinating (Pirates and Native Americans), it is about a region that usually doesn't get a lot of love in historical literature, and it covers a lot of ground for what dealing with pirates was actually like. If you want a quick read about pirates - and let's be honest, who doesn't - go get this book.
March 15, 2023
The seventeenth century was for Spain an era of imperial overstretch and declining power, particularly in the Antilles and Central America. Not coincidentally, this was also the golden age of Caribbean piracy. Spain’s rivals took advantage of its decline to establish colonies in the West Indies, open illegal trade with the Spanish colonies, and raid Spanish ships and settlements. The impact of this century of conflict on Indigenous Americans is the subject of Arne Bialuschewski’s slim but deeply researched book. “Impacts” is perhaps the better word, since Native American experiences were not identical throughout the region. Most First Peoples, however, found themselves able to use inter-imperial rivalry to their own advantage.
Native groups enjoyed complex and generally advantageous relations with the pirates. The Tupi of Guyana taught buccaneers how to smoke meat and build shelters; the Miskitos taught Dutch and English raiders how to paddle canoes; they and other Indigenous groups, like the Tariacas, Chorotegas, and Cunas, provided supplies or actual military assistance to freebooters raiding Grenada (Nicaragua), Portobello, and other coastal outposts. Raiding and trading with the intruders gave these nations access to valuable imports like firearms, and an opportunity to punish local Spanish officials for excessive taxes and corvees. Miskito communities acquired enough firepower to raid Spanish mission settlements on their own, taking captives and building their own prestige. In at least one cases Spanish authorities grew sufficiently worried to embrace diplomacy: to the Cunas of Darien Spain sent gifts, missionaries, and news of the closure of hated work camps.
Many Indigenous communities, however, proved actively hostile to the pirates. Buccaneers viewed the Indigenous peoples of Yucatan primarily as sources of loot and captives, and the Mayas suffered repeated English and Dutch raids on their coastal settlements. Raiders seeking Native allies thus could rarely find them in southeastern Mexico. On the Pacific, where pirates began operating in the 1670s, Indigenes lived closer to Spanish garrisons and reducciones, and thus tended to avoid the raiders or ally with Spain against them. (One group of Mapuches who sold supplies to foreign pirates were subsequently deported by Spanish authorities.) When Native peoples could not fight hostile pirates they instead took refuge in Spanish communities, where their descendants usually intermarried with the Spanish and other Native groups.
Overall this book offers two conclusions about Indigenous interactions with Caribbean pirates. Virtually “every known raid involved Native Americans in one way or another” (117), and, in the context of these raids, Indigenous peoples proved highly skilled at calculating the balance of power between different European groups and determining which policy would best serve their advantage. The latter point will not greatly surprise students of Native North American history. In the era of European expansion, Indigenous peoples rarely enjoyed the luxury of permanent alliances - they could only try to defend, and perhaps secure, their permanent interests.
Native groups enjoyed complex and generally advantageous relations with the pirates. The Tupi of Guyana taught buccaneers how to smoke meat and build shelters; the Miskitos taught Dutch and English raiders how to paddle canoes; they and other Indigenous groups, like the Tariacas, Chorotegas, and Cunas, provided supplies or actual military assistance to freebooters raiding Grenada (Nicaragua), Portobello, and other coastal outposts. Raiding and trading with the intruders gave these nations access to valuable imports like firearms, and an opportunity to punish local Spanish officials for excessive taxes and corvees. Miskito communities acquired enough firepower to raid Spanish mission settlements on their own, taking captives and building their own prestige. In at least one cases Spanish authorities grew sufficiently worried to embrace diplomacy: to the Cunas of Darien Spain sent gifts, missionaries, and news of the closure of hated work camps.
Many Indigenous communities, however, proved actively hostile to the pirates. Buccaneers viewed the Indigenous peoples of Yucatan primarily as sources of loot and captives, and the Mayas suffered repeated English and Dutch raids on their coastal settlements. Raiders seeking Native allies thus could rarely find them in southeastern Mexico. On the Pacific, where pirates began operating in the 1670s, Indigenes lived closer to Spanish garrisons and reducciones, and thus tended to avoid the raiders or ally with Spain against them. (One group of Mapuches who sold supplies to foreign pirates were subsequently deported by Spanish authorities.) When Native peoples could not fight hostile pirates they instead took refuge in Spanish communities, where their descendants usually intermarried with the Spanish and other Native groups.
Overall this book offers two conclusions about Indigenous interactions with Caribbean pirates. Virtually “every known raid involved Native Americans in one way or another” (117), and, in the context of these raids, Indigenous peoples proved highly skilled at calculating the balance of power between different European groups and determining which policy would best serve their advantage. The latter point will not greatly surprise students of Native North American history. In the era of European expansion, Indigenous peoples rarely enjoyed the luxury of permanent alliances - they could only try to defend, and perhaps secure, their permanent interests.
March 21, 2023
Phenomenal look into the cross-cultural relations between indigenous groups of the Caribbean and Central America and the Dutch, English, and French mauraders, buccaneers, and freebooters, as well as the Spanish colonizers. Thorough investigation into sources to find the history of these indigenous groups in the seventeen century. I learned so much.
July 16, 2022
Writing an account about buccaneers from a new perspective isn’t an easy task after centuries of books published on the subject. Yet this is exactly what Bialuschewski achieves in Raiders and Natives. From first page to last, this engrossing and unique examination shines an illuminating light on European gentlemen of fortune and native peoples they encountered in their search for riches.
Illustrations and maps are shared throughout seven chapters: The Rise of the Buccaneers, Mayas Besieged, The Granada Raid, Natives and Intruders in Central America, Intercultural Alliances on the Mosquito Coast, Shifting Alliances on Panamá’s Darién Frontier, and South Sea Incursions. Also included are an explanation on terminology used, end notes, and an index.
This study on cross-cultural interactions begins with the 1676 visit to Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast by English and French buccaneers under the command of William Wright, Jean Tristan, and Bartholomew Sharpe. They sought indigenous people willing to guide them 450 miles into the interior to attack Nueva Segovia. These guides would also be instrumental in providing food and assistance with other natives encountered along the way.
Among the other events discussed within the book are Piet Hein’s 1536 attack on the Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Cuba, Jan Janszoon van Hoorn’s raid on Campeche in 1633, an attack on Granada in 1665 in which nine local men took part, and a march across the Isthmus of Panama in 1680. Named buccaneers and natives include David Maarten, Juan Galliardo, François L’Olonnais, Laurens Prins, Joseph Bannister, Lionel Wafer, André de Ibarra, and Richard Sawkins. Also covered are explanations of how the Spanish established their authority over indigenous people.
Trade played an integral role in these interactions, as did the ability to communicate with each other. The buccaneers sought not only riches through robbery, but also the means to survive in a hostile and alien environment. The natives could provide the latter in exchange for better tools that improved their ways of life or enhanced their prestige within their communities.
Time and again, Bialuschewski demonstrates the crucial roles indigenous people played in the buccaneering raids, whether they were allies or sided with the Spanish. Some raids were successful, others not so much. What cannot be denied is that without these cross-cultural dealings, the buccaneers might have been swallowed up in the large swaths of uninhabited jungle and lost to history forever. Equally compelling is how the author demonstrates that these encounters were both beneficial and life changing. He provides an insightful and fascinating account of the complexity of each interaction in this part of the seventeenth-century world.
(Review originally published at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Bialuschew...)
Illustrations and maps are shared throughout seven chapters: The Rise of the Buccaneers, Mayas Besieged, The Granada Raid, Natives and Intruders in Central America, Intercultural Alliances on the Mosquito Coast, Shifting Alliances on Panamá’s Darién Frontier, and South Sea Incursions. Also included are an explanation on terminology used, end notes, and an index.
This study on cross-cultural interactions begins with the 1676 visit to Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast by English and French buccaneers under the command of William Wright, Jean Tristan, and Bartholomew Sharpe. They sought indigenous people willing to guide them 450 miles into the interior to attack Nueva Segovia. These guides would also be instrumental in providing food and assistance with other natives encountered along the way.
Among the other events discussed within the book are Piet Hein’s 1536 attack on the Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Cuba, Jan Janszoon van Hoorn’s raid on Campeche in 1633, an attack on Granada in 1665 in which nine local men took part, and a march across the Isthmus of Panama in 1680. Named buccaneers and natives include David Maarten, Juan Galliardo, François L’Olonnais, Laurens Prins, Joseph Bannister, Lionel Wafer, André de Ibarra, and Richard Sawkins. Also covered are explanations of how the Spanish established their authority over indigenous people.
Trade played an integral role in these interactions, as did the ability to communicate with each other. The buccaneers sought not only riches through robbery, but also the means to survive in a hostile and alien environment. The natives could provide the latter in exchange for better tools that improved their ways of life or enhanced their prestige within their communities.
Time and again, Bialuschewski demonstrates the crucial roles indigenous people played in the buccaneering raids, whether they were allies or sided with the Spanish. Some raids were successful, others not so much. What cannot be denied is that without these cross-cultural dealings, the buccaneers might have been swallowed up in the large swaths of uninhabited jungle and lost to history forever. Equally compelling is how the author demonstrates that these encounters were both beneficial and life changing. He provides an insightful and fascinating account of the complexity of each interaction in this part of the seventeenth-century world.
(Review originally published at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Bialuschew...)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews