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Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest; Conquest and Catastrophe: Changing Rio Grande Pueblo Settlement Patterns in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and... Book Reviews For example, how an event was depicted in colonial texts such as Gaspar de Villagrá’s account of the Acoma massacre of 1599 in Historia de la Nueva México could contribute to the culture of conquest. Through different rhetorical strategies, these texts create such a distance between those who suffered at the hands of conquistadors and missionaries and those who read accounts of their suffering that they prevent the audience from empathizing with indigenous peoples. Audiences might even derive pleasure from extreme accounts of violence, because the materiality of pain is never conveyed and colonial authors employed ‘‘a whole series of epic topoi’’ to draw the reader’s attention away from human suffering (such as portraying the vanquished as impotent, thus justifying violence against them by more ‘‘virile’’ forces) (145). Rabasa’s argument that texts have material effects is a provocative one. I wondered, however, about audience: Wouldn’t texts like Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México have to be widely read to shape, in a sense, the collective consciousness of colonizers in such a way that violence toward native populations was the result? Who in the New World read Villagrá at the time of its publication? It seems that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Ethnohistory Duke University Press

Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest; Conquest and Catastrophe: Changing Rio Grande Pueblo Settlement Patterns in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Ethnohistory , Volume 51 (3) – Jul 1, 2004

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2004 by American Society for Ethnohistory
ISSN
0014-1801
eISSN
1527-5477
DOI
10.1215/00141801-51-3-649
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Book Reviews For example, how an event was depicted in colonial texts such as Gaspar de Villagrá’s account of the Acoma massacre of 1599 in Historia de la Nueva México could contribute to the culture of conquest. Through different rhetorical strategies, these texts create such a distance between those who suffered at the hands of conquistadors and missionaries and those who read accounts of their suffering that they prevent the audience from empathizing with indigenous peoples. Audiences might even derive pleasure from extreme accounts of violence, because the materiality of pain is never conveyed and colonial authors employed ‘‘a whole series of epic topoi’’ to draw the reader’s attention away from human suffering (such as portraying the vanquished as impotent, thus justifying violence against them by more ‘‘virile’’ forces) (145). Rabasa’s argument that texts have material effects is a provocative one. I wondered, however, about audience: Wouldn’t texts like Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México have to be widely read to shape, in a sense, the collective consciousness of colonizers in such a way that violence toward native populations was the result? Who in the New World read Villagrá at the time of its publication? It seems that

Journal

EthnohistoryDuke University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2004

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