Black West

1. Indians and Africans in the Age of Exploration The Africans who sailed with Columbus, Balboa, and the other European expeditions in the "age of exploration" helped change the Americas and the world. In 1513 thirty Africans with Balboa hacked their way through the lush vegetation of Panama and reached the Pacific. His men paused to build the first large European ships on the Pacific coast. Africans were with Ponce de Leon when he reached Florida, and when Cortez conquered Mexico three hundred Africans dragged his huge cannons into battle. One stayed on to plant and harvest the first wheat crop in the New World. Africans marched into Peru with Pizarro, where they carried his murdered body to the cathedral. They were with Amalgro and Valdivia in Chile, Alvarado in Ecuador, and Cabrillo when he reached California. The Europeans destroyed a world, but many Africans peeled away from the devastation to seek a new life. Many found it among Native Americans in Mexico, the Southwest, and elsewhere in the Americas. The first Africans to enter the chronicles of the New World, whom historian Ira Berlin has called "Atlantic Creoles," were men possessed of extraordinary language skills and familiar with life in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. "Fluent in [the Americas'] new languages, and intimate with its trade and cultures, they were cosmopolitan in the fullest sense," Berlin wrote of these intercontinental pioneers. Historian Peter Bakker elaborates on their contributions Especially in the earliest contact period, Africans were highly valued by Europeans as interpreters with the Native Americans. These men of African origins were not slaves but free black men in the employ of various European trading and exploratory ventures. The use of Africans as interpreters in trading and exploratory ventures was initiated by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. Prince Henry the Navigator ordered in 1435 that interpreters be used on all such voyages. Portuguese ships thereafter systematically brought Africans to Lisbon where they would be taught Portuguese so that they could be used to interpret on subsequent voyages to Africa. The Portuguese strategy was imitated by other Europeans. Hired initially as interpreters, negotiators, and ambassadors, many of these Africans settled in the Americas and struck out on their own. In Latin America the Catholic church celebrated their souls, consecrated their marriages, baptized their children, and buried their remains in hallowed ground. In the seventeenth century, from Angola to Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, African settlers formed religious brotherhoods and self-help societies, and by 1650 Havana, Mexico City, and San Salvador had "Atlantic Creole" communities. In North America "both whites and Indians relied heavily on Negro interpreters," writes historian J. Leitch Wright, Jr., and they were considered "among the most versatile in the world." Africans proved highly effective in building peaceful relations with Native Americans. In the Carolinas in the 1710s, Timboe, an African, was "a highly valued interpreter" whose role, historian Peter Woods writes, "is emblematic of the intriguing intermediary position occupied by all Negro slaves during these years." European officials began to call some Africans impudent and arrogant. They were usually referring to those who successfully advanced their own interests, launched merchant businesses, or became independent career diplomats. Matthieu da Costa, an African, may have visited the site of New York as a translator for the French or Dutch before Henry Hudson'sHalf Moonreached it in 1609. Dutch and French officials battled each other in court for the exclusive right to da Costa's services. In New Amsterdam two years before the Dutch built their first fort, Jan Rodriguez, an African, establisheKatz, William Loren is the author of 'Black West', published 2005 under ISBN 9780767912310 and ISBN 0767912314.