Andrew Rowen - Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold

All Persons Press
New York, New York
First published in 2017 by All Persons Press

Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold
Copyright 2017 Andrew Rowen
All rights reserved.
Interior Maps and Illustrations by David Atkinson.

Permissions and Credits noted in List of Maps and Illustrations and Sources.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911346
ISBN13: 978-0-9991961-1-3

Cover and Book Design by Glen Edelstein, Hudson Valley Book Design
Cover Illustration by Robert Hunt

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To my late mother, who taught me to listen to the voice and soul of each person, and my father, who taught me to make up my own mind.

All maps and illustrations are from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries other than those designated by an asterisk, which have been drawn by David Atkinson.

This novel dramatizes the history leading to Columbuss first encounters with Native Americans from a bicultural perspective, fictionalizing Native American beliefs, thoughts, and actions side by side with those of Europeans. The history is presented through short stories alternating among three historic chieftains of the Tano peoples of the Caribbean and a Tano captive and comparable stories of Columbus and Spains Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. The narrative portrays the life experiences each protagonist brought to the encounters and then his or her astonishment, fears, and objectives in 1492 and 1493. The focus extends beyond Columbuss voyage of discovery to depict the entirety of the encounters from the Native American perspective, including the Tano discovery of Europe, when Columbus brings the captive and other Tanos back to Spain, as well as the chieftains reactions to the abusive garrison of seamen Columbus then leaves behind in the Caribbean. I seek to explore how and why Tanos and Europeans each made decisions and to avoid the traditional Columbus- and European-centric focus of most histories of the events, including those critical of Columbus and colonialism. The Tano protagonists are neither merely victims nor statistics, but personalities and actors just as the Europeans.

The outcome we know was uncertain or indiscernible to the participants, and I have tried to present their thoughts and actions from youth through 1493 as they would have lived them day to day, often enveloped in confusion or chaos, without imposing the historical conclusions of a history written with hindsight or inventing an overarching story plot typical of traditional fiction. Throughout, I have sought historical validity and considered first primary sources written by those who witnessed the events, knew the participants, or lived in the sixteenth century. Each participants thoughts and actions are presented consistent with my interpretation of the historical record to the extent one exists or fictionalized in a manner I believe likely could have occurred, with the methodology noted below.

The Tanos had no written history, and the only contemporaneous written accounts of the encounters are by the conquering Europeans, reflecting the conquerors knowledge and perspective and sometimes lacking credibility. The pre-1492 stories of the Tano chieftainsCaonab, Guacanagar, and Guarionexand the Tano captive depict the few events known to have occurred, including the rulers ascensions to power, their marriages, and a religious prophecy of genocide. Within this framework, the stories are fictionalized based on descriptions of Tano culture in the writings of contemporary Europeans (such as Peter Martyr dAnghera, Bartolom de Las Casas, Gonzalo Fernndez de Oviedo, Ramn Pan, and Columbus himself) and twenty-first-century anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists. Commencing October 12, 1492, the stories are constructed by extrapolating from the conquerors day-to-day accounts of the encounter (to the extent credible), including Columbuss Journal, the biography written by his son Ferdinand, and Las Casass Historia de las Indias, what the Tanos then experiencedfictionalizing the conquereds account to mirror the conquerors.

With respect to the Europeans, vastly more is known, but the historical record is incomplete and, as to youth, sparse. The stories of Isabellas youth and Columbuss youth and early adulthood are almost as fictional as the pre-1492 Tano stories and are similarly constructed on the basis of what is known of contemporaneous Castilian, Genoese, and Portuguese society. The passages regarding Columbuss pre-1492 ocean-sailing experience are founded in but a few sentences in primary sources, the validity of which historians debate, and are fictionalized in part based on other sources indicating the conditions and purposes for which similar voyages occurred in the fifteenth century. Following youth, the stories of Isabella and Ferdinand reflect the record provided by court chroniclers and official documents, as do the Columbus stories commencing with his voyage, but events and thoughts are fictionalized with a specificity that far exceeds this record.

The novel also seeks a rounded presentation of European history by portraying both the larger Atlantic world into which the participants were born and how the European sovereigns ruled over their very own subjects and subjugated other Old World peoples, closely prelude to encountering Native Americans. A prologue introduces Old World seaborne commerce, based on the European merchants own account. Stories depict Isabella and Ferdinands subjugation and Christianization of the Canary Islands, establishment of the Inquisition, conquest of the Islamic kingdom of Grenada, and expulsion of the Jews from Spain, as well as the Portuguese establishment of African trading colonies as they sought to reach the Indies first by circumventing Africa. These and other stories explore the European justifications for conquest and enslavement of other peoples and forced religious conversion of them and religious minorities. They also illustrate the threats to European Christian civilization posed by Islams spread and chronicle the expansion of European geographic knowledge and dominion. As a result, the novel includes more pre-encounter European stories than Tano.

I have tried to dramatize thoughts from the participants perspectives in the fifteenth century, including those of rulers and common subjects, masters and servants, slaves, and concubines. For both Tanos and Europeans, religion was central to the individuals identity and understanding of the world, and the stories present spirits, God, and saints as ever present. Tano and European societies were both organized by social caste and defined different roles for men and women, and the Europeans practiced slavery. While many of the thoughts related are readily understood as improper and wrong in a modern perspective, frequently it is clear many participants perceived otherwise. Columbuss unspoken thoughts presented during the encounters embody the concepts underlying the European subjugation of Native Americans over the next centuries. I have sought to fictionalize thoughts accurately as I believe they would have been, to avoidundoubtedly imperfectlymy own embellishment of hero or villain beyond that, and to leave moral and historical judgments regarding Columbus and others as so fictionalized for the reader.