Amerigo Vespucci’s Description of The Native Americans

“They live one hundred and fifty years, and rarely fall ill, and if they do fall victims to any disease, they cure themselves with certain roots and herbs.” page 35

In the Amerigo Vespucci reading i found the ways in which the natives were explained and described to be extremely interesting and informative. An example would the quote stated above about how he believed that the natives lived one hundred and fifty years and rarely fell ill to diseases. He also described the physical appearance of the natives as having square-built bodies, being well formed and proportional in the quote “They have indeed large square-built bodies, well formed and proportioned, and in color verging upon reddish.”(page 34). These ways he described the natives are of interest because he describes them as being like other Europeans,  going as far as to say the native women’s bodies are tolerably beautiful and cleanly in the quote “The women as I have said go about naked and are very libidinous; yet they have bodies which are tolerably beautiful and cleanly.”(page 35). Amerigo also tells about a custom that involves the biting of a males genitals from a poisonous animal to achieve larger genitals for the pleasure of the females. He clearly disproves of this declaring it to be shameful, beyond human belief, and stating that after this custom the genitalia was deformed and disgusting, this is from the quote “They have another custom, very shameful and beyond all human belief. For their women, being very lustful, cause the private parts of their husbands to swell up to such a huge size that they appear deformed and disgusting; and this is accomplished by a certain device of theirs, the biting of certain poisonous animals.”(page 35).I found the ways in which he described the Native Americans to be fairly respectable, not making them out to be animals or monsters but stating there bodies were attractive, only finding problems with some of the natives customs.

One thought on “Amerigo Vespucci’s Description of The Native Americans

  1. Yes I feel as though he was very nice in describing the natives, unlike the other writers and other explorers who compare the natives to animals. It was very nice of him to describe these women as beautiful. But I found it contradictory of him to go around and judge the Indians and their practices. I found it to be a backhanded compliment. That is because he calls them beautiful and comparable to their own; only to then state how disgusted he is in their cannibalism and and the private parts of the males. I feel as though this only further confuses the outsider, or Europeans who are reading this and are unable to see it for themselves. Without photography or cinema to depict the reality, the basis of the public’s interpretation is with what these explorers use.

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