| Chapter 1: | Romantic Antiquarian Literature |
Origins of Romantic Antiquarian Theories
Soon after Columbus visited the New World, theories emerged to explain the existence of the indigenous peoples the explorers encountered. Beginning in the sixteenth century, books and treatises were printed on the subject—most were Spanish and attempted to account for the presence of hitherto-unknown peoples in the context of Christian belief. These discussions, which centered on racial and ethnic origin, had significant ideological ramifications. For instance, the European authors debated whether or not indigenous peoples had souls. These musings manifested themselves in the very practical realm of policy concerning the treatment of the native inhabitants: Slavery was institutionalized. An emphasis on racial ideology persisted in the writing of nineteenth-century antiquarians. The obsession with the creation of racial stratification systems in the United States is explored in William Stanton’s perennial classic The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America 1815–59, which examines the interplay among biblical, scholarly, and antiquarian views.
Fanciful theories proliferated as the Americas were colonized and more indigenous cultures encountered. Of particular importance to this book is the fact that among the early New England clergy, the notion that Native Americans were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel took hold and produced numerous narrative variants. This belief was made popular by a tract the chief rabbi of Amsterdam issued in 1650 that “testified to the existence of an enclave of Jews found in Peru in 1641” (Boewe xii). The evolution of antiquarian narratives about Old World colonization pertaining to Mesoamerica (especially in the eighteenth century) and their relationship to the rise of similar narratives later in the United States is traced in R. Tripp Evans’s book Romancing the Maya.