Theodor De Bry’s Representations of the Americas and Indigenous Agency: A Reframing of Timucua Medical Practice

Abstract

Theodor De Bry produced popular engravings of the Americas, Asia, and Africa for his published accounts of faraway places, constituting some of the earliest European ethnographic accounts. It has long been established that early ethnographic writing often portrays non-Europeans through a colonialist lens, adding fabricated feature such as cannibalism. At the same time, the early modern world was contending with new disease vectors and new treatments for those diseases. This paper reframes De Bry’s images of the Timucua peoples of modern-day Florida and their medical practice, which had theatrical and othering features, to capture an Indigenous perspective of medical care. Prints and accompanying inscriptions of the Timucua are then compared to De Bry’s satirical images of European medical care. De Bry’s visual and textual depictions of the Timucua are intended to render the Timucua legible to his European audiences but based on early modern accounts of the Timucua and other known Indigenous medical practices, there are aspects of De Bry’s representation that map to actual Timucua medical cultures. Although contemporary viewers must be aware that De Bry intervened in the accounts and some of it is fantastic, it is nevertheless worthwhile to recapture some of the actual historical conditions of the Timucua as represented in De Bry’s work.

Theodor De Bry a réalisé des gravures populaires des Amériques, de l’Asie et de l’Afrique pour les récits qu’il publiait sur les contrées lointaines, constituant ainsi certains des premiers récits ethnographiques européens. Il est établi depuis longtemps que les premiers écrits ethnographiques dépeignent souvent les non-Européens à travers un prisme colonialiste, en ajoutant des éléments fabriqués de toutes pièces, comme le cannibalisme. Dans le même temps, le monde moderne était confronté à de nouveaux vecteurs de maladies et à de nouveaux traitements pour ces maladies. Cet article recadre les images de De Bry sur les peuples Timucua de l’actuelle Floride et leur pratique médicale, qui présentait des caractéristiques théâtrales et d’aliénation, afin de saisir une perspective indigène des soins médicaux. Les gravures des Timucua et les inscriptions qui les accompagnent sont ensuite comparées aux images satiriques de De Bry sur les soins médicaux européens. Les représentations visuelles et textuelles de De Bry visent à rendre le Timucua lisible pour son public européen, mais si l’on se base sur les premiers récits modernes du Timucua et sur d’autres pratiques médicales indigènes connues, certains aspects de la représentation de De Bry correspondent aux cultures médicales réelles du Timucua. Bien que les spectateurs contemporains doivent être conscients que De Bry est intervenu dans les récits et que certains d’entre eux sont fantastiques, il est néanmoins intéressant de retrouver certaines des conditions historiques réelles des Timucua telles qu’elles sont représentées dans l’œuvre de De Bry. Si l’on compare les impressions sardoniques de De Bry sur les cultures médicales européennes, il apparaît clairement qu’il n’a pas entièrement inventé son ethnographie, mais plutôt que les Timucuas et d’autres non-Européens ont influencé De Bry, en exerçant leur pouvoir alors même qu’ils étaient colonisés.

KEYWORDS:

• Thedor de Bry
• Timucua
• Florida
• Indigeneity
• Early Modern Medicine
• Early Modern Prints

MOTS CLÉS::

• Thedor de Bry
• Timucua
• Floride
• Indigénéité
• Médecine du début de l’ére moderne
• Tirages du début de l’ére moderne

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ John F. Moffitt and Sebastián Santiago, O Brave New People : The European Invention of the American Indian (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 1–9.

² Ernst van den Boogaart, “Heathendom and civility in the Historia Indiae Orientalis: The adaptation by Johan Theodor and Johan Israel de Bry of the edifying series of plates from Linschoten’s Itinerario,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (NKJ)/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art Vol. 53 (2002), 70–105.

³ This is a recurrent theme of this paper. In particular, see John Slater, Maríaluz López-Terrada,and José Pardo-Tomás, “Introduction,” in Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire (Farnham: Taylor & Francis Group, 2014): 1–20.

⁴ Mary Sheriff, Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art Since the Age of Exploration (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 12.

⁵ Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, second edition (London; New York: Routledge, 2008): 2–5.

⁶ Slater, López-Terrada, and Pardo-Tomás, “Introduction,” 2–3.

⁷ David Korostyshevsky, “Corrupting the Body and Mind: Distilled Spirits, Drunkenness and Disease in Early Modern England and the British Atlantic World,” in Alcohol, Psychiatry and Society, ed. Waltraud Ernst Thomas Müller (United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 2022):, 37–38; Bruce Thomas Boehrer, “Early Modern Syphilis,” Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol.1, No. 2 (1990): 197–214.

⁸ Boehrer, “Early Modern Syphilis,” 202–206

⁹ Slater, López-Terrada,and Pardo-Tomás, “Introduction,” 3.

¹⁰ Basil A. Reid, Myths and Realities of Caribbean History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 111–116.

¹¹ Martha Robinson, “New Worlds, New Medicines: Indian Remedies and English Medicine in Early America.” Early American Studies 3, no. 1 (2005): 94–96.

¹² Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville (United Kingdom: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 44–45.

¹³ Paul Slack, “Responses to Plague in Early Modern Europe: The Implications of Public Health,” Social Research vol. 55, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 434–435.

¹⁴ Slack, “Responses to Plague in Early Modern Europe: The Implications of Public Health,” 435.

¹⁵ Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville, 46.

¹⁶ Angélica Morales Sarabia, “The Culture of Peyote: Between Divination and Disease in Early Modern New Spain,” Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire, ed. John Slater, Maríaluz López-Terrada,and José Pardo-Tomás (Farnham:Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 21–23.

¹⁷ Morales Sarabia, “The Culture of Peyote: Between Divination and Disease in Early Modern New Spain,” 23–24.

¹⁸ Boehrer, “Early Modern Syphilis,” 201–202.

¹⁹ Robinson, “New Worlds, New Medicines: Indian Remedies and English Medicine in Early America,” 94–96.

²⁰ Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 8–12.

²¹ Van den Boogaart, “Heathendom and civility in the Historia Indiae Orientalis: The adaptation by Johan Theodor and Johan Israel de Bry of the edifying series of plates from Linschoten’s Itinerario,” 70–105.

²² Michael Gaudio, “The Space of Idolatry: Reformation, Incarnation, and the Ethnographic Image,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics No. 41 (Spring, 2002): 74–77; Michiel van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 23.

²³ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 16.

²⁴ Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage : The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), xiv.

²⁵ Stephanie Leitch, Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 101.

²⁶ Gaudio, Engraving the Savage : The New World and Techniques of Civilization, xi.

²⁷ Abigail Tucker, “Brave New World: The Watercolors That John White Produced in 1585 Gave England Its First Startling Glimpse of America,” Smithsonian vol. 39 (2008): 48–53.

²⁸ Gaudio, “The Space of Idolatry: Reformation, Incarnation, and the Ethnographic Image,” 74–77.

²⁹ Sheriff, Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art Since the Age of Exploration, 15.

³⁰ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 21–23

³¹ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 23.

³² Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 79–83.

³³ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 12.

³⁴ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 12.

³⁵ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 15–22.

³⁶ Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions, 326–328; see also The Peach State Archaeological Society, “Timucua,” accessed March 10th, 2024, https://www.peachstatearchaeologicalsociety.org/index.php/11-culture-historic/392-timucua-indians

³⁷ Tamara Shircliff Spike, “Sucking, Blood, and Fire: Timucuan Healing Practices in Spanish Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly vol. 94, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 143–168.

³⁸ John H. Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (Gainesville: The University of Florida Press, Hann, 1996), 327.

³⁹ E. Barrie Kavasch and Karen Baar, American Indian Healing Arts (New York: Bantam, 1999), 2–3.

⁴⁰ Spike, “Sucking, Blood, and Fire: Timucuan Healing Practices in Spanish Florida,” 143–168.

⁴¹ Robert C. Galgano, Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 24–27.

⁴² R. Murray Thomas, Manitou and God: North-American Indian Religions and Christian Culture (Westport; London: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 27–29.

⁴³ Brent Richards Weisman, Like Beads on a String: A Culture History of the Seminole Indians in North Peninsular Florida (Tuscaloosa; London: The University of Alabama Press, 1989), 19–20.

⁴⁴ Angela Herren Rajagopalan, Portraying the Aztec Past: The Codices Boturini, Azcatitlan, and Aubin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019), 3–4.

⁴⁵ Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 25.

⁴⁶ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, 7

⁴⁷ Van Groesen, Imagining the Americas in Print : Books Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World, 32–33; 41–43.

⁴⁸ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, 15; 23–27.

⁴⁹ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, 14.

⁵⁰ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, 14.

⁵¹ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, 23.

⁵² Moffitt and Santiago, O Brave New People : The European Invention of the American Indian, 88.

⁵³ The Harn Museum of Art identifies the artist as Johann Theodor De Bry, which would indicate one of Theodor De Bry’s sons, but Frank Lestringant asserts that the elder Theodor De Bry was the artist of the engravings, though plausibly his son(s) could have worked on it with him. See the Harn Museum of Art, “Treatment of the Sick (from ‘Brief Narration of Europeans in Florida’),” accessed February 22nd, , https://harn.emuseum.com/objects/6156/treatment-of-the-sick-from-brief-narration-of-europeans-in?ctx=53b93e68399ac232ef82d052b1724ecd2807c34c&idx=4 and Frank Lestringant, “Theatrum Floridae : la mise en scène de la rencontre entre Français et Timucua dans l’iconographie de Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1591),” Image et voyage : Représentations iconographiques du voyage, de la Méditerranée aux Indes orientales et occidentales, de la fin du Moyen Âge au XIXe siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2012). Accessed February 2nd, 2024, DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pup.2183.

⁵⁴ Lestringant, “Theatrum Floridae : la mise en scène de la rencontre entre Français et Timucua dans l’iconographie de Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1591)”

⁵⁵ Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions, 22–23.

⁵⁶ Lestringant, “Theatrum Floridae : la mise en scène de la rencontre entre Français et Timucua dans l’iconographie de Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1591)”

⁵⁷ Michael Alexander and Theodor De Bry, Discovering the New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 37.

⁵⁸ Alexander and De Bry, Discovering the New World, 37.

⁵⁹ Spike, “Sucking, Blood, and Fire: Timucuan Healing Practices in Spanish Florida,” 143–168.

⁶⁰ Alexander and De Bry, Discovering the New World, 34.

⁶¹ Spike, “Sucking, Blood, and Fire: Timucuan Healing Practices in Spanish Florida,” 144–145; 152–153.

⁶² Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 20–23.

⁶³ Boehrer, “Early Modern Syphilis,” 201–202.

⁶⁴ Boehrer, “Early Modern Syphilis,” 197–202.

⁶⁵ The Getty Research Institute, “The Art of Alchemy: The Doctor of Fools,” accessed February 22nd, 2024, https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/alchemy/tour/aa-13.html

⁶⁶ E.P.C., “Paracentesis and Distillation: A caricature by Theodor De Bry (1528–1598). New Haven, Yale Medical Library, Clements C. Fry Collection,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 3 (July, 1964), 295. JSTOR identifies the author of this work only as “E.P.C.,” and indeed the end of the article is signed “E.P.C.” However, the National Library of Medicine database provides W. P. Bennet as the author. The author of this short article remains somewhat mysterious and I have been unable to track down further information. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14196300/

⁶⁷ E.P.C., “Paracentesis and Distillation: A caricature by Theodor De Bry (1528–1598). New Haven, Yale Medical Library, Clements C. Fry Collection,” 295.

⁶⁸ E.P.C., “Paracentesis and Distillation: A caricature by Theodor De Bry (1528–1598). New Haven, Yale Medical Library, Clements C. Fry Collection,” 295.

⁶⁹ E.P.C., “Paracentesis and Distillation: A caricature by Theodor De Bry (1528–1598). New Haven, Yale Medical Library, Clements C. Fry Collection,” 295.

⁷⁰ Alexander and De Bry, Discovering the New World, 37.

⁷¹ Alexander and De Bry, Discovering the New World, 37.

⁷² Kate Kelly, “The Impact of the New World on Medicine,” Scientific Revolution and Medicine (United States: Infobase Learning, 2009), 106.

⁷³ Evelyn Jane Collen, Angad Singh Johar, João C. Teixeira, and Bastien Llamas, “The immunogenetic impact of European colonization in the Americas,” Frontiers in Genetics 13 (2022): 918227.

⁷⁴ Stephen J. Kunitz, Disease and Social Diversity : The European Impact on the Health of Non-Europeans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5.

⁷⁵ Kelly, “The Impact of the New World on Medicine,” 108–109.

⁷⁶ Kelly, “The Impact of the New World on Medicine,” 111–112.

⁷⁷ Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s Great Voyages, trans. Basia Miller Gulati (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981): xiv.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cortney Anne Berg

Cortney Anne Berg holds a master’s degree from Arizona State University, a double bachelor’s degree from California State University at Chico, and she is a PhD Candidate at the City University of New York Graduate Center, focusing on the art history of medieval and early modern Europe. She works primarily with late medieval manuscripts and manuscript culture, and early modern printed books, examining text and image relationships, sex and gender, maps and exploration, and issues of monstrosity. She is currently writing her dissertation, which concerns Arthurian Romance of the late medieval and early modern period, with emphasis on identity, agency, and materiality.