Todorov’s Question Expanded

In analyzing Todorov’s question as to whether the Spaniards defeated the Indians by “signs”, the reader notes that he emphasizes the importance of the different methods of communication between these two cultures. At the beginning of the text, Todorov brought up the example of Columbus having laid some of the background for the Spanish conquest of the Americas which often involved the different perceptions of language.

Columbus's acts were a part of the formal, tradition of conquest that had already been in place in the Spanish empire. The Spanish presence in America got its authority from language acts--this included taking possession of an object and naming it; and it justified its domination to Columbus by the fact that the Native Americans did not have any religion, and were new to this method of conversion. I argue, however, that the Indians through their oral tradition were able to maintain much of their collective knowledge-- even to this day.

Just as the name “America” was foreign at that time (as was the term “Indian”), the use of the word Indian was utilized by the Spanish to name all the people on this new island. The Spaniards continued to ignore the natives’ own beliefs and customs about how they identify with one another. The trend of naming people or things is an example we have today of a strong Spanish bias in our history books because the Europeans, for the majority, were a large portion of the people writing about these historical encounters. History is recorded as seen by their European world view.

Another factor which resulted in the Spaniards “defeating” the Indians was the fact that the Spanish were not adept at writing and communicating about Indian history because they were not familiar with the culture enough to know what to talk about, what was important, or how to organize this information. The Spanish were in control of the means of printing, which gave them the ability to control which histories could be presented to the world. However, this does not mean that the Spanish history replaced the Indians’ actual historical events, rather the Spanish shaped how the Indians and their history were perceived to the world as seen through the eyes of their European culture.

Despite the dominance of a European viewpoint in historical references for several years, the true Indian traditions and history were still able to be preserved. This was due largely to the oral communication of traditions thanks to the Indians’ knowledge of history, sciences, religion, and culture which had been preserved for centuries because of their own form of communication. It was not that the Indians lacked a writing system, as the Spaniards believed; it was that their writing system was just culturally different from the form to which the Europeans were accustomed. Both the Maya and the Aztec empire, for example, at the time of the Spanish conquest used functional writing systems as well as scientific knowledge to serve administrative purposes. Even thought the Spanish were successful to a certain extent in defeating the Indians’ vision of the history of the conquest of their people, one true belief still arguably remains the same. That is that even though the Spaniards defeated the Indians through their dominance in governance over the newly discovered territory, the Spaniards did not succeed in erasing the memories of the indigenous people which were maintained though a strong oral tradition which is still alive today.

Sources: The Conquest of America, by Tzvetan Todorov (University of Oklahoma Press, 1999),