bajalera - 2-27-2007 at 10:26 AM
This is from Chapter 2 of a manuscript on the peninsula's Indians and Jesuit missionaries.
MEN IN BLACK [part 1]
by Bajalera
In some ways the so-called Age of Discovery--extending roughly from 1450 to around 1750--was an age of gullibility. Shortly after Gutenberg invented
movable type, Columbus sailed westward to some islands that were obviously not the East Indies, and these two events interacted to boost the growth of
printing as an industry and reading as entertainment. Books gradually became so common in Europe that they were no longer chained to the shelves of
libraries.
And Europeans were so overwhelmed with accounts of the exotic plants, animals and people to be seen on the "new" continents that even well-educated
individuals temporarily lost the ability to separate fact from fiction.
The Baja Sheep Leap is an example of how common sense occasionally went missing. Indians told Jesuits that the peninsula's desert mountain sheep
sometimes escaped from hunters by fleeing to the top of a high cliff and jumping off--landing on their horns, which took the brunt of the impact.
Unharmed and triumphant, the rams then took to their feet and scampered off--leaving the frustrated hunters with nothing to do but watch helplessly
from above. This may well have served as a "the-dog-ate-my-homework" excuse, devised by hunters who returned to camp empty-handed. ("You wouldn't
believe how those sheep dissed us!")
The Sheep Leap was duly recorded as fact by the Black Robes, however, and the most intellectual and scholarly of them, Miguel del Barco, concluded
that the strength and shape of the head and horns had been a gift of God, enabling the sheep to escape pursuers. [The Sheep Leap is very rare in Baja
California these days, although there are still a few men whose cousin's wife's brother-in-law has a neighbor who once watched a borrego dodge bullets
in this way.)
Several Jesuits who came to the peninsula were competent observers as well as dedicated writers of reports and letters, and their accounts are today
the primary source of information on how the Indians of the Jesuit mission area lived. These writings are often called "ethnographies," but as
geographer Homer Aschmann has pointed out, this is a loose use of that term: "It is hard enough for the most skilled, sensitive and open-minded modern
ethnographer to come to understand what an alien people really believe in a religious and metaphysical sense--and missionaries professionally are not
open-minded."
Ethnographers, whose field didn't gain formal status as a branch of anthropology until the 1920s, are taught how to describe--in matter-of-fact,
non-judgmental terms--the life-ways of people with whom they may have hardly anything in common. But the last thing an ethnographer wants to do in a
report is give the impression that the "others" being studied are stupid folks who have no values and beliefs of any merit.
Missionaries--whatever their religious affiliation may be--have always had exactly the opposite goal: They want to impose their own values and beliefs
on the "others." At the same time, they must satisfy the donors funding their mission that it is worthwhile and should be continued--and the most
effective way to do this is to describe potential converts as lost souls who are in constant need of instruction and supervision.
Nearly all of the men who penned descriptions of the peninsula's natives--not only missionaries, but advanturers, seamen and explorers alike--were
writing while under the influence of a common European belief: that Indians were basically an inferior race. The prevailing prejudice, however, was
sometimes expressed so subtly that it's scarcely noticeable, as in Juan Maria Salvatierra's account of how an Indian trail between Loreto and Mission
San Javier was made wide enough for pack animals.
---To be continued---
[Edited on 2-27-2007 by bajalera]
Lera
Baja Bernie - 2-27-2007 at 10:59 AM
Wondered when! And I thought I wrote with my tongue in cheek.................Wonderful classical study...............Love it!
bajalou - 2-27-2007 at 04:39 PM
Great
bajajudy - 2-27-2007 at 04:43 PM
Lera
Keep em coming!
DENNIS - 2-27-2007 at 05:00 PM
Good , Lera
Well written.
Mas Mas Mas
[Edited on 2-28-2007 by DENNIS]
David K - 2-27-2007 at 06:11 PM
Lee, I look forward to more from your writings... You are sharing with the most appreciative lot, here on Nomad!
Santiago - 2-27-2007 at 08:52 PM
Thanks Lera - got me chuckling and thinking.
Paula - 2-27-2007 at 09:56 PM
Lee, I'll be looking forward to the next installment!
Very well written interesting stuff-------
Barry A. - 2-27-2007 at 10:33 PM
I hope many more to come??? 
bajalera - 3-1-2007 at 08:03 PM
Thanks, y'all, for the encouraging words.
Keep it up
academicanarchist - 3-3-2007 at 04:16 AM
Lee. If you need a critical read of a complete manuscript, feel free to ask.
Crusoe - 3-3-2007 at 11:12 AM
Lera......Thank You for such a good read. The BEST! More- More-More.
bufeo - 3-3-2007 at 11:25 AM
Thank you bajalera.
It's a pleasure to read good prose, especially when it's about a subject one enjoys.
vandenberg - 3-3-2007 at 01:39 PM
Lera,
Days now,and still anxiously awaiting the continuation.
One of your senior moments hasn't kicked in I hope.
Lee
Baja Bernie - 3-3-2007 at 08:12 PM
I won't give you a critical read but I will give you my gut feelings if you care.
bajalera - 3-4-2007 at 11:58 PM
Robert - Thanks for that kind offer. I'm asking, and would certainly be grateful. If you're amenable to one chapter at a time, let me know how to
e-mail you this one.
Bernie - I care about gut feelings, because Nomads are the kind of readers I'm aiming at. I'd be interested in knowing where things seem confusing,
not adequately explained, or whatever.
Van - My schedule is a gimpy one, so don't hold your breath.
[Edited on 3-5-2007 by bajalera]
[Edited on 3-5-2007 by bajalera]
Lee that's fine
academicanarchist - 3-5-2007 at 04:33 PM
academicanarchist@hotmail.com