The promised land in the age of discovery

Hey guys. I decided to put an end to the recent string of what I’d like to call “meta-content” with a lengthy essay I wrote for a class on English Literature. The prompt involved “[d]iscuss[ing] the role of religion as a driving force in the exploration of the Americas and as the basis of a particular writer’s perception of his/her life in the new world.” I thought the opinion I present is an interesting one, so please share your thoughts and criticisms in the comments. Thanks!

It’s difficult to imagine being among the first to discover an entirely alien world, filled with mystery and seemingly infinite beauty. What secrets lurk in its lush forests, waiting to be uncovered by an educated eye? What treasures hide beneath its mountains, instantaneous riches for whomever was lucky enough to unearth it? And, perhaps most important and intriguing of all, what spiritual significances attach themselves to this landscape untouched by human hands, transcendental experiences awaiting discovery? The prospects are staggering, and inspire fantastic daydreams in adventuresome imaginations everywhere. This was the stage for Europeans after the Americas were discovered, a mood of adventure and exploration ran rampant during this period, leading young men and women the world around to risk their possessions and their very lives in an effort to make new lives for themselves on the shores of this untainted continent. Among the most important of these explorers’ motivations were the possibilities of new religious discovery and the opportunity for spiritual growth in this new land, giving early explorers and colonists an interestingly theocentric perspective.

The beautiful rain-forests of Central and South America and the vast expanses of unscathed arable land predictably produced comparisons to Genesis’ Garden of Eden from the Biblically-versed European explorers. “For I believe that the earthly Paradise lies here,” writes Columbus in his Narrative of the Third Voyage, “which no one can enter except by God’s leave” 148. Of course, the Christian faith was an integral part of the lives of the early explorers, including Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca of Spain. In a letter to his king following his belated return home, de Vaca attributed both his tragic experience in the New World and his fortunate return home again 159 to the unpredictable and oftentimes unforgiving will of God. Since God and religion were both so fundamentally intertwined with de Vaca’s personal life and his sense of national identity, his formidable explorational efforts in the New World were doubtless attributable at least in part to his Christianity. In fact, throughout his La Relación, de Vaca interestingly refers to other Europeans he encounters not as “white men” or by their country of origin, but rather as “Christians,” as though that were their important unifying quality differentiating them from the Native American “savage” pagans 168–170.

While at first these Native Americans, accidentally labeled “Indians,” may have posed something of a frustration to the conquistadors, before long it dawned on certain clerical authorities back home that these “savages” might prove useful in another form of conquest: that of their souls. “Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and later Jesuit missionaries” from around the world flooded to the Americas, each interested in earning his respective sect a piece of the conversion pie 131. These missionary expeditions, with the Récollets and Jesuits “establish[ing] their missions amid the… woods of the north,” and the Franciscans placing theirs in the southwestern territories of New Mexico, served as some of the first exploratory expeditions into the uncharted American landscape 131, 134. Despite a great deal of Native adversity, their Christianization remained a top priority for the Europeans during their first encounters with the “savages.”

For Christopher Columbus, the first European to survey the New World (which until his death he confused with the East Indies), his mission was a profoundly spiritual one. A firm believer in Old Testament scripture, Columbus, as mentioned before, was convinced that the miraculous new hemisphere he had found housed the fabled Garden of Eden. “Holy Scripture testifies that Our Lord made the earthly Paradise in which he placed the Tree of Life” 148. After summarizing a few of the geological features he’s encountered, Columbus offers that “[a]ll this provides great evidence of the earthly Paradise, because the situation agrees with the beliefs of those holy and wise theologians and all the signs strongly accord with this idea” 149. But what can these theories tell us about Columbus’ mindset, his motivations for exploring this mysterious world he had discovered?

Not only did Columbus believe he had discovered the hiding place of the legendary Garden, but he also considered it his responsibility to fulfill the promise of the Old Testament. Despite misconceptions that Columbus was interested exclusively in treasure and enslaving the exotic peoples he encountered, in reality he considered his voyages to be especially spiritual ventures—in addition to the nationalistic and financial benefits—due to his intense religious faith. As Jim Sullivan explains in his brief biography of Columbus, “From giving each landfall and sighting a Catholic name to compiling religious texts in his ‘Book of Prophesies,’ Columbus frames his explorations not as the opening of a new world but as a Spanish Catholic fulfillment of Old Testament traditions” 138. This passage conclusively shows that Columbus viewed himself and his fellow explorers as participants in some sort of spiritual journey, perhaps best described as an effort to fulfill or renew the broken covenant between God and Man 3: 13–24. While some would argue that his greed remained his primary motivating factor, an awestricken Columbus was so overcome with the natural beauty and promise of this new land that he “concluded that the Orinoco River must lead to the ‘Terrestrial Paradise,’ or Garden of Eden” 138. For Columbus, the New World was the Old Testament made physically manifest, a perspective which ended up casting an undue metaphysical significance upon his every discovery.

Interestingly, for all of Columbus’ intense spirituality, he nonetheless seemed to maintain a few major character flaws which evidenced themselves during his voyages to the Americas. For example, he displayed an interest in enslaving the Natives he encountered, a decision which alienated him from some of his European peers and “undermined his credibility in Spain” 137. It would seem that his religious fervor extended just up until the point when a quick buck made itself readily available, and there his Roman Catholic moral coda collapsed in the face of exploitation and greed. Apparently the innocent and unassuming Taino Indians were Columbus’ kryptonite.

This would be the case for many to come after Columbus, regardless of whether they had initial intentions of achieving spiritual enlightenment. As with the missionaries racing one another to “save” the largest population of Native Americans, it would seem that every man’s religious enthusiasm can be distorted or curbed in the face of great abundance and potential wealth. Religion was an important and, for many, indeed the primary motivation of explorers coming over to the New World, allowing for the rapid acquisition of territory within and knowledge about this mysterious unaltered landscape. But, once they were here, many of them abandoned it in favor of their greed.