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ABSTRACT
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) wrote letters for depicting his four sea voyages to the Americas,
thus ‘the New World’: he talked about the primitiveness of the natives, the animals specific to
the region, and the plants that were used as foods or medicines by the natives in his letters to
traders, politicians, family members, and navigators. Besides, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
talked about different natives from some tropical regions in his work entitled Tristes tropiques
(1955; A World on the Wane); moreover, he wrote Le Totémisme aujourd’hui (1962; Totemism)
and Mythologiques in four volumes: Le Cru et le cuit (1964; The Raw and the Cooked), Du miel
aux cendres (1966; From Honey to Ashes), L’Origine des manières de table (1968; The Origin of
Table Manners), and L’Homme nu (1971; The Naked Man). As Vespucci depicted naked natives,
their lack of a legal system, cures, totems, and eating habits as well as the status of native women
in their societies, just like Lévi-Strauss, he might seem to have influenced Lévi-Strauss and the
formation of structural anthropology. Consequently, this paper will compare Vespucci’s sixteenth
century popular ethnographic descriptions to Lévi-Strauss’s twentieth century structural anthro-
pological analyses.
Derya AGİŞ
Ph.D. student, Ankara University, Institute of Socal Sciences, Western Lan-
guages and Literatures, Department of Italian Language and Literature,
e-mail. fdagis@ankara.edu.tr & deryaagis@gmail.com
AMERIGO VESPUCCI CLAUDE
LÉVI-STRAUSS’A KARŞI: KİM EN İYİ DENİZ
DÜNYASI ANTROPOLOĞU?
AMERIGO VESPUCCI VERSUS CLAUDE
LÉVI-STRAUSS: WHO IS THE BEST SEA WORLD
ANTHROPOLOGIST?
Keywords:
Environmen-
tal humanities,
ecological history,
Amerigo Vespucci,
structural anthro-
pology, Claude Lé-
vi-Strauss, South
America
Anahtar kelimeler:
Çevreci beşerî bil-
imler, ekolojik tarih,
Amerigo Vespucci,
yapısal antropoloji,
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Güney Amerika
ÖZ
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) ‘Yeni Dünya’ olarak bilinen Amerika kıtasına dört deniz yolculuğu
gerçekleştirmiştir. Bu yolculuklar hakkında tüccarlara, politikacılara, aile üyelerine ve denizcil-
ere mektuplar yazmıştır. Bu mektuplarda yerlilerin ilkellliklerinden, Amerika kıtasına özgü hay-
vanlardan ve bu kıtada yaşayan yerlilerin yemek ya da ilaç olarak kullandıkları bitkilerden söz
etmiştir. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) ise Tristes tropiques (1955; [Üzgün Tropikler]) adlı es-
erinde tropikal bölgelerde yaşamakta olan yerlileri tasvir etmiştir. Lévi-Strauss’un Le Totémisme
aujourd’hui (1962; [Günümüzde Totemizm]) ve Mythologiques adlı iki adet kitabı da vardır. My-
thologiques adlı eseri dört farklı seriden oluşur: Le Cru et le cuit (1964; [Ham ve Pişmiş]), Du
miel aux cendres (1966; [Baldan Küllere]), L’Origine des manières de table (1968; [Sofra Adabının
Kökeni]) ve L’Homme nu (1971; [Çıplak Adam]). Lévi-Strauss gibi Vespucci de yerlilerin giysiler-
inin ve hukuki sistemlerinin olmayışını, kadınların yerliler arasındaki konumunu, yerlilerin il-
açlarını, totemlerini ve yemek yeme alışkanlıklarını anlattığından Lévi-Strauss’u ve yapısal antro-
polojinin oluşumunu etkilemiş gibi görünebilir. Bu çalışma, Vespucci’nin 16. yüzyılda kaleme
aldığı popüler etnografik tasvirlerini Lévi-Strauss’un 20. yüzyılda yaptığı yapısal antropolojik
analizleri ile kıyaslar.
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1. INTRODUCTION
This paper deals with the letters Amerigo Ves-
pucci (1454-1512) wrote for depicting his voyages to
the Americas and compares the descriptions of Indians
in them to those in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss
(1908-2009). Vespucci was a Florentine trader; Lorenzo
the Magnificient used to be the ruler of Florence be-
tween 1469 and 1492, the year in which he passed away
(Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 14). The Medici family was
so sacred to be associated with the “astrologer-kings
who followed Christ’s star to Bethlehem” (Fernán-
dez-Armesto, 2007: 14). Amerigo had an extended Ital-
ian family (Fernández-Armesto, 2007 15). Lorenzo dei
Medici’s brother Giuliano dei Medici was supposed to
be in love with his cousin-in-law Simonetta Vespucci
(Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 16). Therefore, Amerigo Ves-
pucci’s family had well-known, prosperous, and rich
connections. Amerigo Vespucci’s father and his oldest
brother were notaries; Amerigo received his education
and instruction from his uncle, called Giorgio Antonio:
he was trained in poetry, history, philosophy, astrono-
my, and astrology (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 20). Flo-
rentines had learned about geography through Ptole-
my’s work titled Geography since approximately 1397;
Amerigo Vespucci’s interest in geography derives from
this book (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 21).
Regarding his voyages, he departed twice on be-
half of Spain, and twice on behalf of Portugal: “on May
10, 1497, he embarked on his first journey, departing
from Cadiz with a fleet of Spanish ships … the ships
sailed through the West Indies and made their way to
the mainland of Central America within approximately
five weeks”; he might have discovered Venezuela and
returned to Cadiz in October 1498 (“Amerigo Vespuc-
ci,” 2017).
In May 1499, he passed through the equator, saw
Guyana, and explored the Brazilian coasts by discover-
ing the Amazon River and Cape St. Augustine (“Amer-
igo Vespucci,” 2017).
On May 14, 1501, Amerigo Vespucci went to Cape
Verde for Portugal; he visited South America by sailing
“from Cape São Roque to Patagonia” (“Amerigo Ves-
pucci,” 2017). Accordingly, he found Rio de Janeiro and
Rio de la Plata (“Amerigo Vespucci,” 2017).
On June 10, 1503, Amerigo Vespucci and Gonzal
Coelho traveled again to Brazil; Amerigo Vespucci dis-
covered Bahia and the island of South Georgia during
this voyage (“Amerigo Vespucci,” 2017).
Besides, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a
“French social anthropologist” who inserted structural-
ism into the field of anthropology for analyzing “cultur-
al systems (e.g., kinship and mythical systems) in terms
of the structural relations among their elements” (The
Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016). He studied
philosophy and law at the University of Paris, was a
teacher in a secondary school, worked as a professor
of sociology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil from
1934 through 1937, while conducting fieldwork with the
Brazilian Indians; he became the chair of the social an-
thropology department at the Collège de France in 1959
(The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016).
The data of this research are from the following
works by Amerigo Vespucci and Claude Lévi-Strauss:
on the one hand, Amerigo Vespucci wrote nine letters
-about his voyages to the Americas and to the Brazilian
coasts- that can be found in the following book:
Vespucci, Amerigo. Cronache Epistolari: Lettere
1476-1508. Compiler: Leandro Perini. Florence: Firenze
University Press, 2013.
Amerigo Vespucci’s letters in the book are listed
below:
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to his father Mr. Anasta-
gio Vespucci in Florence from Trebbio del Mugello writ-
ten on October 19, 1476 (pages: 3-4);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to the commissar of the
duke of Mantua in Genova from Seville written on De-
cember 30, 1492 (page 87);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Lorenzo di Pierfran-
cesco dei Medici from Seville written on July 28, 1500
(pages: 88-101);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Lorenzo di Piefrance-
sco dei Medici from Capo Verde on June 4, 1501 (pages:
102-108);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Lorenzo di Pierfran-
cesco dei Medici from Lisbon written in 1502 (pages:
109-113);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter written probably in
1502 to an anonymous Florentine (pages: 114-119);
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Lorenzo di Pierfran-
cesco dei Medici from Lisbon in 1502-1503. This letter is
recognized as “Mundus Novus” [New World] (pages:
120-135);
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Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Pier Soderini from
Lisbon on September 4, 1504 (pages: 136-165); and
Amerigo Vespucci’s letter to Cardinal Francisco
Jiménez de Cisneros from Seville on December 9, 1508
(pages: 166-168).
On the other hand, Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote
the following books about Brazilian Indians: a) Tristes
tropiques (1955; A World on the Wane); b) Le Totémisme
aujourd’hui (1962; Totemism), and c) Mythologiques in
four volumes: 1) Le Cru et le cuit (1964; The Raw and the
Cooked), 2) Du miel aux cendres (1966; From Honey to
Ashes), 3) L’Origine des manières de table (1968; The Or-
igin of Table Manners), and 4) L’Homme nu (1971; The
Naked Man).
This study differs from my previous study: Agiş,
Fazıla Derya. “Peace Education, Environmentalism, and
Amerigo Vespucci”. İdil 6.38 (2017): 2673-2684, since it
compares descriptions of the Indians in Amerigo Ves-
pucci’s letters to those in the works written by Claude
Lévi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist within the fra-
mework of structuralism, thus structural anthropology.
2. Method and Theoretical Framework: Structu-
ral Anthropology
The theory of structural anthroropology devel-
oped by Claude Lévi-Strauss is chosen for analyz-
ing both Amerigo Vespucci’s letters and the works of
Claude Lévi-Strauss. This theory posits that cultural
practices constitute systems among which one can cite
narrating mythologies, forming kinship structures,
cooking and serving food, and using languages; these
systems are based on mental stuctures, or patterns, thus
on ways of thinking of populations that can be universal
(The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014). Accord-
ingly, structuralism derives from Gestalt psychology
(Gestaltism) where patterns, thus parts of an object are
smaller than the whole object, which should be taken
into account totally (Briggs and Meyer, 2009). In linguis-
tics, as Ferdinand de Sausssure suggested in the late
1920s, there are grammatical rules that the speakers of
these languages employ implicitly; these rules form the
whole language from a Gestalt-like perspective (Briggs
and Meyer, 2009). In anthropology, similarly, certain
cultural practices that certain populations are used to
are parts of an entire culture that shall be depicted via
binary oppositions, such as “hot-cold, male-female, cul-
ture-nature, and raw-cooked” (Briggs and Meyer, 2009).
Structural anthropologists intend to conceive
the symbolic meanings of cultural practices that are so
implicit and learned that they can be regarded as cul-
ture-specific, as Claude Lévi-Strauss proposed in his
book titled Structuralism and Ecology, which was pub-
lished in 1972 (Briggs and Meyer, 2009).
Therefore, in this study, Amerigo Vespucci’s nar-
rations about Indians will be analyzed in terms of bina-
ry oppositions as suggested by Claude Lévi-Strauss.
3. Research Problem
This study investigates the letters of Amerigo Ves-
pucci and compares them to what Claude Lévi-Strauss
suggested in terms of structural anthropology for an-
swering the question if Amerigo Vespucci should be re-
garded as an ethnographer, or anthropologist alongside
a voyager, geographer, and trader just like Claude Lévi-
Strauss.
4. Findings
4. 1. Healthy Life Conditions, Eating Habits, Herb-
al Cures, and Meals: Raw-Cooked and Hot-Cold
Amerigo Vespucci narrated us that the Indians
were extremely healthy in his letter to Lorenzo di Pier-
francsco dei Medici from Lisbon in 1502, talking about
the freshness of air in South America:
“Regarding the suitability of the land, I say that
this land is very pleasant, tepid, and healthy, because
we went on our ways on this land during those weather
conditions, and 10 months passed; none of us died, and
few of us became ill. As I said before, the people live a
very long time here, they do not become ill; they never
catch plague; nor do they suffer from respiratority dis-
orders; they die just for natural reasons, or for drown-
ing” (Vespucci, 2013: 113; my translation).
As well, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1961: 96) talked
about South American Brazilian Amazon forests, in a
section titled “The New World”:
“The forest differs from our own by reason of
the contrast between trunks and foliage. The leafage
is darker and its nuances of green seem related rather
to the mineral than to the vegetable world, and among
minerals nearer to jade and tourmalin than to emerald
and chrysolite. On the other hand, the trunks, white or
grey in tone, stand out like dried bones against the dark
background of the leaves. Too near to grasp the forest
as a whole, I concentrated on details. Plants were more
abundant than those we know in Europe. Leaves and
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stalks seemed to have been cut out of sheet metal, so
majestic was their bearing, so impervious, as it seemed,
the splendid development of their forms. Seen from out-
side, it was as if Nature in those regions was of a differ-
ent order from the Nature we know: more absolute in its
presence and its permanence.”
Amerigo Vespucci seems to be the precursor of
Claude Lévi-Strauss, as he talked about a perfect nature
and the warmish weather South America: warmish, or
tepid weather conditions are healthy enough for human
beings who may not bear the cold or hot weather. The
nature is a resource for long healthy lives according to
Amerigo Vespucci and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Sometimes
Amerigo Vespucci mentioned the freshness of weather
in South America in his letters; as did he in his letter
to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei Medici written between
1502 - 1503 from Lisbon:
“The weather there is very tepid and nice; as I
learned from what they had narrated me, plague and
illnesses caused by polluted air do not exist there; if
people do not die due to violence, they live a very long
time: the reason for this is the fact that the winds always
blow from the South there, and the wind we call Eurus
is similar to Aquilon for us” (Vespucci, 2013: 132 – 133,
my translation).
Eurus is the wind blowing from the Southeast,
whereas Aquilon is the wind blowing from the North
(see Perini in Vespucci, 2013: 124). Moreover, the women
could live until they would have become onehundred-
fifty years old, rarely caught any illnesses, and used
herbal cures for recovering from some illnesses in these
South American coastal zones (Vespucci, 2013: 132).
Heat was a way to recovery from common cold accord-
ing to Amerigo Vespucci’s Indians, as they would wash
a person who had high fever with cold water and try
to heal him by turning him around hot fire; they would
not have eaten for three days, if they had been suffering
from irregularities related to their blood flows, and they
would use certain herbs to vomit in accordance with the
letter that Amerigo Vespucci wrote to Pier Soderini on
September 4, 1504 from Lisbon. Similarly, Claude Lévi-
Strauss (1961: 156) underlined that Indian doctors would
use “round stool, a head-dress of straw, a gourd-rattle
covered with a cotton net, and an ostrich-feather … to
capture the tefos, or evil spirits, which were the cause of
all illness” in the twentieth century, as he witnessed this.
Additionally, Claude Lévi-Strauss discussed the
uses of some fruits for taking revenge by Brazilian
Bororo populations, who would eat raw fruits as well
as cooked fish; Vespucci’s Indians would eat raw herbs
and cooked meat, as they would cook strange animals
that were looking like snakes (Vespucci, 2013: 145): see
also the story narrated by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1964:
102 - 103):
“The fishing by the Bororo is a competition be-
tween men and women: as men could not catch any fish,
women went fishing and got help from an otter; they
were returning home with a lot of fish; men decided to
take their revenge: they spied the women by the help of
a bird, and they strangled all the otters; also the wom-
en took revenge by offering these men some hot drink
made with piqui fruits.”
As in Lévi-Strauss, one sees binary oppositions
between men and women and hot and cold objects;
animals are assistants to human beings, and fruits are
nutrional resources. Some hot drink serves as some
dangerous liquid in places where revenges exist be-
tween Indians. Therefore, the contrast between “being
raw and cooked” is associated with the binary opposi-
tion between “nature and culture,” since civilized peo-
ple prefer cooked food to that raw one (Bullard, 1974:
74). The South Americans were aware of honey and
tobacco before the Europeans (Lévi-Strauss, 1966: 13).
Animals may eat raw food, whereas humans cooked
food (Lévi-Strauss, 1966: 15). According to the Bororo
myth, fruits appear as raw nutrional resources versus
fish to be cooked before being eaten (Lévi-Struss, 1964:
102 - 103). Some North American Indians practiced
“individual totemism” during which a person would
try to make peace with the nature (Lévi-Strauss, 1991:
17). Indians respected the nature for being the main
resource for their survival; as did Vespucci (2013: 111)
narrate to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei Medici in 1502
from Lisbon, underlining that Indians did not have
neither laws nor regulations for living “according to
the nature,” they would eat their meals, sitting on the
land, these meals consisted of roots of herbs, fruits, sea
products among which one could cite fish, sea urchins,
crabs, oysters, shrimps, et cetera. Lévi-Strauss agreed
with what Vespucci told by explaining that Indians had
no laws as polygamy was acceptable among the Klam-
ath tribe whose members got married to those whom
they had met during family visits in exchange of gifts
(Lévi-Strauss, 1971): Klamath people were commercial
warriors, and were exchanging slaves and products for
horses, whereas Modocs had civil chiefs and war chiefs
as their governors (Lévi-Strauss, 1971). However, Ves-
pucci (2013: 140) defended that Indians had not appre-
ciated any commercial goods, and they had not got any
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governors, women were better at swimming than men
as in Lévi-Strauss’s story on fishing, they were taking
revenge of previous events in wars, they had no kings,
when a person had killed another, the oldest person in
the tribe delivered a revenge speech, inviting others to
take the revenge of the murder; however, there were not
any judges to punish culpable people among the Indi-
ans. Amerigo Vespucci depicted all of the above in a let-
ter he wrote to Pier Soderini on September 4, 1504 from
Lisbon.
Consequently, both Claude Lévi-Strauss and
Amerigo Vespucci referred to binary oppositions, such
as ‘male-female’ and ‘raw-cooked’ in their descriptions
of the populations in South America regardless of the
different centuries in which they lived.
4. 2. Nakedness and Primitiveness: Rich-Poor
and Uneducated-Educated
Vespucci believed that the South American popu-
lations were primitive enough to be naked, by leading
to two binary oppositions: ‘rich-poor’ and ‘uneducat-
ed-educated.’ The Indians’ lands were rich, but they did
not have any technological equipment to raise crops,
trade gold, or establish farms where they could raise
cattles; thus, he wrote a letter to Pier Soderini from Lis-
bon on September 4, 1504 and titled it “The New World”
by saying that the Indians were afraid of the Europe-
ans, since the Europeans had clothes (Vespucci, 2013:
138). These Indians appreciated bells, mirrors, belts,
and many other small objects that had no financial val-
ue according to the Europeans, trying to discover new
trade routes; after having seen some Indian women and
children, Vespucci and his peers got astonished on this
same land of the Canary Islands (Vespucci, 2013: 139).
Moreover, Vespucci (2013: 152) saw that many In-
dians had prepared many young men as meals by cas-
trating them, and on his way, he witnessed that there
were “about 400 men and numerous women” and tried
to pass them to his and his friends’ ship through a canoé,
but these people escaped; this act was primitive for him.
In fact, he was aiming at formulating a way of excuse for
using and trading the natural resources of the popula-
tions of the lands he had discovered.
Furthermore, after having left these cannibal pop-
ulations who would eat human meat, Amerigo Vespucci
met friendly people, and thought that the people had
exchanged onehundredfifty pearls for a small amount
of gold, as commerce was a symbol of development and
welfare for Vespucci, who also said, “additionally, we
saw that they would drink wine made with fruits and
seeds from which they make beer” (Vespucci, 2013: 153).
Thus, Indians were rich, but in contrast to this richness,
they were so naked to be regarded as shameless (Ves-
pucci, 2013: 139): here are the oppositions between the
adjectives of rich and poor and uneducated and edu-
cated; as Europeans were educated, they covered their
bodies with clothes and they had instructors who had
taught them geography and commerce alongside good
morals (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 44 - 48). Italians had
the ideology for going to the West, whereas the markets
of the Iberia were famous: Spanish wool was purchased
by Florentines (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 44). Art trade
was common in Europe (Fernández-Armesto, 2007:
45). Seville was full of artistic opportunities (Fernán-
dez-Armesto, 2007: 46). Olive oil, textiles, raw wool, wine,
cereals, cattle, pork products, fish, ironworks, soap, and
Canarian sugar were exported to other countries from
Spain (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 47). Seville tried to
obtain fish from the Atlantic, took gold and slaves from
Sub-Saharan regions, leather from Maghrib, and sugar
from Sus (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 48). Moreover, hu-
manists would study geography: Strabo’s Geography, a
scientific heritage from the first century B.C. was stud-
ied (Fernández-Armesto, 2007: 22). Above all, Ptolemy’s
Geography had been used in Greek and cosmography
lessons since approximately 1397 (Fernández-Armesto,
2007: 21). Meanwhile, Indians were much too primitive
to be naked everywhere for Vespucci (2013: 139).
Additionally, Claude Lévi-Strauss showed that the
tribe of Caduveo had women with painted faces (Lévi-
Strauss, 1961, pictures 4 - 9), and a girl whose whole
body was also painted for a puberty rite (Lévi-Strauss,
1961, picture 10). According to Lévi-Strauss (1961: 156),
“elaborate designs were painted on her shoulders,
arms, and face, and all the necklaces that they could lay
hands on were heaped round her neck” for this puber-
ty celebration. He also took a picture of a naked Bororo
couple (Lévi-Strauss, 1961, picture 12); he also alluded
to the multiple wives of chiefs, such as Kunhatsin, the
chief wife of Taperahi (Lévi-Strauss, 1961, picture 59).
One conceives that Amerigo Vespucci (2013: 110 - 111)
was right, since he defended that the Indians were na-
ked and polygamous in his letter to Lorenzo di Pier-
francesco dei Medici from Lisbon in 1502 by saying that
the Indians were “reasonable animals,” they saw that
populations living in these South American lands were
“completely naked” and had neither laws nor religious
beliefs, men were putting bones and stones as orna-
ments to their piercings for seeming wilder, and men
were getting married to many women.
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Consequently, both Europeans and Indians were
rich: Europeans had the financial resources, whereas In-
dians had mines and natural nutritional resources; how-
ever, these rich Indians did not have any money; for this
reason, they were poor enough not to be able to get ed-
ucation and training from instructors who might have
taught them geography and commerce, whereas Euro-
peans were trained about both social sciences alongside
good morals. The Europeans were educated, whereas
the Indians were uneducated, as they had neither laws
nor religious beliefs. Amerigo Vespucci referred to these
binary oppositions of ‘rich-poor’ and ‘uneducated-edu-
cated,’ but Claude Lévi-Strauss admitted that Europe-
ans ruined the natural resources of these lands, impov-
erishing Indians by the uses of their technological tools
that could be purchased by the rich and the educated so
that nobody could be harmed, but the natural heritage
of the Indians could be devastated, as in Brazil:
“The road from Santos to São Paulo runs through
one of the first territories to be exploited by the colonists.
It has, therefore, the air of an archaeological site in which
a vanished agriculture may be studied. Once-wooded
hills offer their bone-structure for our inspection with,
at most, a thin covering of sickly grass upon it. We can
make out here and there earthworks which mark where
a coffee-plantation once stood; they jut out like atro-
phied breasts through the grassy embankments. In the
valleys the region has, as it were, gone back to Nature;
but not to the noble architecture of the primeval forest.
The capoeira, or secondary forest, is a mere wretched
entanglement of half-hearted trees” (Lévi-Strauss, 1961:
98).
Moreover, Indians still believed that one could
become ill due to evil spirits without any scientific ev-
idence (Lévi-Strauss, 1961: 156). Besides, some women
got married to men out of their tribes, but some had
moral confusions: women would give birth to chil-
dren, being confused about their physical roles, and the
husbands who regarded their wives as food providers
could easily get confused morally (Lévi-Strauss, 1968).
Therefore, Indians were regarded as poor hu-
man beings for not knowing anything about sciences
and their moral duties as parents both by Vespucci in
the early sixteenth century and Claude Lévi-Strauss in
the twentieth century. However, Europeans were rich
enough to have technological tools to gather informa-
tion about them again both for Vespucci, who got on
some developed ships to sail and discover the Indians,
and Lévi-Strauss, who could photograph the Indians
for documenting their external aspects. Europeans were
educated enough to wear clothes, but Indians were un-
educated enough to be naked everywhere by lacking
several moral values that Europeans, who had laws and
a religion, had.
4. 3. War Affairs: Primitive-Developed, Strong-
Weak, and Shameful-Shameless
Amerigo Vespucci criticized the populations of
the lands he discovered for being violent and primitive
in his letter to Lorenzo di Piefrancesco dei Medici from
Lisbon in 1502, mentioning the Italian humanist poet
Petrarch (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, XXVIII, 60 as
cited by Perini in Vespucci, 2013: 112):
“Furthermore, they are belligerent people, and
they are cruel between themselves; besides, all of their
arms and blows are against the wind, as does Petrarch
say; they consist of bows, arrows, spears, and stones; on
a side note, they do not carry any shields for protecting
their bodies, because they walk around naked, as if they
had come from their mothers’ wombs” (Vespucci, 2013:
112, my translation).
In addition to that, Vespucci (2013: 112) wrote that
these populations would eat their enemies and fight
cruelly. They would use the teeth of animals and wood
pieces in place of metals for making arms (Vespucci,
2013: 140): Vespucci wrote this in his letter to Pier Sod-
erini from Lisbon on September 4, 1504.
Besides, these populations would never punish
criminals or naughty children: “They do not employ
justice, or they do not punish those who commit crimes:
neither the father nor the mother punishes their off-
springs” (Vespucci, 2013: 140). Amerigo Vespucci (2013:
149) indicated that the proportions of the bodies of In-
dians alluded to their peculiarities as warriors, and the
signs painted on their faces and feathers referred to their
strong wills to fight. As well, Claude Lévi-Strauss talk-
ed about similar facial paintings based on some cultur-
al experiences of Indians; plus, archeological evidence
suggested that the inhabitants of the Americas had a
unique curvilinear style before the arrival of Columbus
and Vespucci there:
“They did undoubtedly appropriate certain
themes: we know of more than, one example of this. In
1857, when a warship, tlie Mwrnanha, made its first ap-
pearance on the Paraguay a party of Indians paid her a
visit; and on the following day they were seen to have
drawn anchors all over their bodies … This only proves
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that die Mbaya were already habitual and accomplished
painters. Their curvilinear style has few counterparts in
pre-Colombian America, but it offers analogies with ar-
chaeological documents which have been discovered in
more than one part of the continent: and some of these
pre-date the discovery by several centuries” (Lévi-
Strauss, 1961: 172).
The Indians might have assumed the Renaissance
art they had learned from the Europeans (Lévi-Strauss,
1961: 173). Additionally, the people of the Bororo tribe
believed that their existence as human beings were
“transitory” (Lévi-Strauss, 1961: 219). However, some
Indians invented hammocks due to their poverty, but
modern people use them in the gardens of luxury hotels
today; moreover, nakedness was a symbol of a pure na-
ture for Lévi-Strauss (1961: 268): “The Indians of tropi-
cal America invented the hammock. Not to know of the
hammock, and not to have any convenience of that kind
for rest or sleep, is for them the very symbol of poverty.
The Nambikwara sleep naked on the bare earth” (Lévi-
Strauss, 1961: 268)
Thus, regarding the binary oppositions of ‘prim-
itive-developed,’ ‘strong-weak,’ and ‘shameful-shame-
less,’ the Indians were primitive due to poverty linked
to the lack of instruction and education, whereas Euro-
peans were well-developed; the Indians were stronger
than the Europeans who were weaker in terms of their
body proportions for manual hard work; the Indians
were shameless due to poverty again, as they lacked
clothes; nor did they have the technological tools nec-
essary for making certain clothes, and Europeans who
could get ashamed for being naked were well-devel-
oped: they could stitch for being good at sewing and
embroidery. For the advanced technological tools, they
had, the Europeans could invade the lands of the Indi-
ans for using their natural resources, since this was also
justified by Amerigo Vespucci, who criticized the can-
nibalism of Indians for justifying the conquest of their
lands by the Europeans.
5. Conclusion
To conclude, both Amerigo Vespucci and Claude
Lévi-Strauss visited South America. They saw that In-
dians were living there. Amerigo Vespucci was aiming
at discovering new trade routes and objects to trade: for
this reason, he had to invent an excuse for exploiting
the natural resources of the lands belonging to Indians,
and consequently, he proposed that Indians were canni-
bals. Besides, he argued that Europeans were civilized,
educated, and developed, whereas Indians were unciv-
ilized, uneducated, and primitive: they did not know
anything about navigation, geography, or quality meals
that did not involve cooked human meat.
Similarly, Claude Lévi-Strauss showed that Indi-
ans were almost as naked as those depicted by Vespucci
to be shameless enough to walk around naked, they ate
cooked fish and raw fruits, and were living in harmony
with the nature without looking for international trade
roots. Thus, both Vespucci and Lévi-Strauss posited that
the Indians had healthy lives, herbal cures, and hot and
cold meals, they were rich in natural resources, but poor
in external financial gains, as they did not receive any
commercial training; moreover, according to Vespuc-
ci, the Indians were not monotheistic believers in God,
and for this reason, they were uneducated, whereas the
Europeans were educated enough to have some mor-
als and manners. Regarding war affairs, for Vespucci,
both Indian men and women were strong, women could
swim better than men, but they had primitive arms in
opposition to the developed ones of the Europeans,
strong Indians were athletic, whereas those weak ones
were ill enough to wait for natural cures, and all the In-
dians were shameless enough to be naked most of the
time, while the Europeans had covered themselves with
fashionable clothes. Vespucci did not have any camer-
as, but Lévi-Strauss took the photos of the Indians, still
living in South America in the twentieth century after
the discovery of their ancestors by Vespucci in the ear-
ly sixteenth century. In this case, the binary oppositions
existed between the Indians and the Europeans, whose
life styles were distinct in terms of structural anthropol-
ogy from a Gestalt-like perspective, as both Indians and
Europeans formed parts of the entire world for being
human beings with different traditions, languages, and
cultural practices: members of both groups of people
must have exchanged some knowledge about natural
cures, resources, and trade, since they could reach an
agreement and collaborate for being useful to the entire
world without harming the nature.
Human beings that become citizens of a country
acquire the culture of that country in contrast to what
the nature, i.e., their genetic qualities offer them: there
were laws and regulations based on the European cul-
ture in the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, but the
human nature had to encode the experience and testi-
monies related to these cultural elements so well that
the human beings could learn to control their attitudes
and behavior. Amerigo Vespucci should be regarded as
a navigator, trying to find new natural items to trade
in Europe, inventing the excuse that Indians were can-
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nibals in order to exploit the nature rather than to an-
alyze and understand the social structures of the Indi-
ans. However, Claude Lévi-Strauss is an anthropologist,
trying to decipher the traditions of the Indians without
accusing them for being polygamous, cannibals, and
naked by considering their marriage rules, social orga-
nizations, and kinship systems (Lévi-Strauss, 1963: 76).
Lévi-Strauss (1963: 370) suggested that social anthropol-
ogy should have been studied with “economic and so-
cial history, social psychology, and linguistics,” whereas
“cultural anthropology, with technology, geography,
and prehistory.” Therefore, the observations of Amerigo
Vespucci and Claude Lévi-Strauss about South Ameri-
can Indians complete one another from a socio-cultural
environmental anthropological point of view.
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