Territorial v Hegemonic Empires
“Territorial empires directly occupy territories with their armies, throw out the old rulers, and annex the land. In hegemonic empires, the internal affairs of conquered areas remain in the hands of their original rulers, who become vassals. Territorial empires are tightly controlled but costly to maintain; hegemonic empires are inexpensive to maintain because the original local rulers incur the costs of administration, but the loose tie between master and vassal encourage rebellion. ” p 78
On the Impact of Small Pox
“The empire’s population may well have been halved during this epidemic.”
“The human and social costs are beyond measure. Such overwhelming traumas tear at the bonds that hold cultures together.”
“The Inka… were not defeated by steel and horses but by disease and factionalism.”
“When the Europeans actually arrived, the battered, fragmented cultures could not unite to resist the incursion. Instead one party, believing that it was about to lose the struggle for dominance, allied with the invaders to improve its position. The alliance was often successful, in that the party gained the desired advantage. But its success was usually temporary and the culture as a whole always lost.”
“The first whites to explore many parts of the Americas therefore would have encountered places that were already depopulated.” … “…calculated that in the first 130 years of contact about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died.” … “the epidemics killed about 1 out of every 5 people on earth.” 105
On the Size of the Americas
“When Columbus landed, Cook and Borah concluded, the central Mexican plateau alone had a population of 25.2 million. By contrast, Spain and Portugal together had fewer than 10 million inhabitants. Central Mexico…was the most densely populated place on earth, with more than twice as many people per square mile than China or India.” 104
“Dobyns argued that the Indian population in 1491 was between 90 and 112 million; Another way of saying this is that when Columbus sailed more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.” 104
Indian Activists reject low-number estimates: “The smaller the number of Indians, the easier it is to regard the continent as empty and hence up for grabs. ‘Its perfectly acceptable to move into unoccupied land,’ Stiffarm told me. ‘And land with only a few savages is the next best thing.'” 106
On the Inka Royal Deceased
“Because the royal mummies were not considered dead, their successors obviously could not inherit their wealth. Each Inka’s panaqa retained all of his possessions forever, including his palaces, residences, and shrines; all of his remaining clothes, eating utensils, fingernail pairings, and hair clippings; and the tribute from the land he had conquered. In consequence, the greater part of the people, treasure, expenses, and vices, were under the control of the dead. The mummies spoke through female mediums who represented the panaqa’s surviving courtiers or their descendants.”
On Disease
“We had no belief that one Man could give a disease to another… any more than a wounded Man could give his wound to another.” – Blackfoot raider. p122
“Rare is the human spirit that remains buoyant in a holocaust.” p122
On Religious Leadership
From a conversation between the Franciscan Missionaries and the Mexica clerics: “We have a function: providing comfort and meaning to the common folk. To disavow their faith, the Mexica say, would tear apart their lives.”
On Government Formats
[In the Americas] government was an invention. Everywhere else it was inherited or borrowed. People were born into societies with governments or saw their neighbor’ governments and copied the idea. Here, people came up with it thsemlves. p 206
“All states can be parceled into four types: Pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having moral legitimacy; populist, in which government is viewed as an expression of the people’s will; ‘Great Beast’ in which the rulers’ power depends on using force to keep the populace cowed; and ‘Great Fraud’, in which the elite uses smoke and mirrors to convince the people of its inherent authority. Every state is a mix of all of these elements.” p 257
The Inka would select the most qualified son. Operated as a hegemony. p88
The Mexica: “A council of clan elders chose the overall ruler. Or, rather, the overall rulers–The Mexica divided authority between a tlatoani (literally: Speaker), a diplomatic and military commander who controlled relations with other groups, and a cihuacoatl (literally: Female Serpant) who supervised internal affairs.” p130
The Triple Alliance: A patchwork of satrapies, not a unified state.
The Five Nations: No woman could be a war chief, no man could lead a clan. The female-led clan councils set the agenda of the League… Women, who held title to all the land and its produce, could vote down decisions by the male leaders of the League and demand that an issue be reconsidered. p 373
On Death
Many if not most tlamatinime saw existance as Nabokov feared: “a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
From the Nahuatl canon:
“Not forever on earth; on a little while here.
Be it jade, it shatters.
Be it gold, it breaks.
Be it a quetzal feather, it tears apart.
Not forever on earth; on a little white here.”
[p134]
Verse by Nezahualcoyotl:
“Like a painting, we will be erased.
Like a flower, we will dry up here on earth.
Like plumed vestments of the precious bird,
That precious bird with the agile neck,
We will come to an end.”
[p134]
Because we human beings are transitory, our lives as ephemeral as dreams, the tlamatinime suggested that immutable truth is by its nature beyond human experience. … Time and time again, the wrestled with “How can beings of hte moment grasp the perduring? It would be like asking a stone to understand mortality.”
On Art & Truth
“Ayocuan was suggesting that there is a time when humankind can touch the enduring truths that underlie our fleeting lives. That time is at the moment of artistic creation. “From whence come the flowers that enrapture man? The song that intoxicate, the lovely songs? Only from HIs home do they come, from the innermost part of heaven. “
Through art alone can human beings approach the real.
p137
On Combat
“The Mexica did not view the goal of warfare as wiping out enemies to the last man; they did not hunt down the last spaniards.” p 141
On Guilt & Responsibility
“The invaders caused huge numbers of deaths, and knew that they had done it. “Those who carried the microbes across the Atlantic were responsible, but not guilty,” Salomon concluded. Guilt is not readily passed down generations, but responsibility can be. A first step toward satisfying that responsibility for Europeans and their descendants in North and South America would be to treat indigenous people today with respect–something that, alas, cannot yet be taken for granted. Recognizing and obeying past treaties wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”
On Farming and the Milpa
“A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash adn bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama, amarnth, and mucana.”
“Because agricultural fields are less diverse than natural ecosystems, they cannot perform all their functions. As a result, farm soils can rapidly become exhausted. … The milpa by contrast has a long record of success.” p 221
On The Future
“Native Amreicans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nationas must do the same. If they want to return as much of hte landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have ot create the worlds largest gardens.
Gardens are fashioned for many purposes with many different tools, but all are collaborations with natural forces. Rarely do their makers claim to be restoring or rebuilding anything from the past; and they are never in full control of the results. Instead, using the best tools they have and all the knowledge that they can gather, they work to create future environments.
If there is a lesson it is that to think like the original inhabitants of these lands we should not set our sights on rebuilding an environment from the past but concentrate on shaping a world to live in for the future.” – p 266
Other Random Quotes
“Ambition succeeds best when disguised by virtue.” p131
His word, his breath; Truth. p 136
Writing begins with counting. When a culture grows big enough, it aquires an elite, which needs to monitor the things it considers important: money, stored goods, births and deaths, the progression of time.” p 238
“The sense that anyone is as good as anyone else fuels entrepreneurial self-reliance, but also can lead to what outsiders view as political know-nothingism.” p 370
