The American Centaur: The Afterlives of a Modern Myth

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In brief:

This article presents a broadly researched and intellectually engaging argument about the long-standing claim that Indigenous Americans mistook Spanish horsemen for centaurs. The piece is well-written in accessible prose, and brings together an impressive range of sources from Classical antiquity to early modern and colonial Spanish texts. (and beyond). I recommend publication with the following significant revisions.

Indigenous perspectives on the Conquest

Given the number and diversity of sources represented, I am very surprised by the lack of direct (or as close as possible) indigenous perspectives. The author should consult at a minimum, Miguel León-Portilla's Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista, Sahagún's Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, and Guamán Poma's Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. We have very little information about indigenous experiences of the conquest and these are some of the most important sources. They are all mediated to some extent, but will still give a more rounded picture of Indigenous cosmologies, religious and cultural antecedents, flora and fauna, etc.  The quotation from Titu Cusi Yupanqui is an example of possible mediation, as the book's translator suggests that other mentions of horses in the text may have been inserted by Spanish clergy; see note 57.

Another area to think about, though it may be beyond the author's scope, is pre-Columbian beliefs about hybrid man-animal beings, for which I find little evidence.

Spanish horses and horsemanship

The Spanish were incredible horsemen whose war-horses were extremely strong and nimble. Some consideration of the caballo andaluz, a product of the eight-century Moorish occupation, seems warranted. Garcilaso mentions “caballos de España, particularmente de Andalucía.” Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel has a segment on the jineta equestrian tradition. (Cortés only had 16 horses for the first half of the Aztec conquest -- he took some more off Pánfilo de Narváez in 1520)

Double-check Greek term teras
The author should double-check the statement: “Greek teras, can also mean a prodigy or a marvel communicating ‘the portentous and the unlucky’”--this does not conform with my understanding. Aristotle believed that teratological births are unexpected but not portentous. The Greeks did believe in omens and portents, usually in the form of catastrophic weather events or weird animal behavior, less often in the form of malformed or monstrous births.

Monstrosity in the Iberian Mindset
If part of the argument is that the Spanish had “monsters on the brain” during the Conquest, the author should certainly look directly at what Columbus said about monsters in the Letter to Santángel. They shouldn't rely only on secondary sources here. 

The conclusion

The conclusion seems ancillary and doesn't add value beyond the main argument. It might be either rewritten as a summary of the main argument or deleted. The same advice goes for the discussions of Robert Graves etc.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

The recommendations to look into Indigenous sources more in-depth was one I took to heart, realizing that I’d spent too many pages and words on examining ancient Greek sources. The authors I selected are reacting with, and to, León-Portilla’s treatment of the Nahua texts in Visión de los vencidos.

Re: little evidence for pre-Columbian beliefs about human-animal hybrids: yes, I’m in total agreement. I was sorely tempted to do a short lit review on American societies’ perception of animals as parallel communities possessing consciousness and agency.

Re: Columbus: I cut out this section in the rewrite.

Re: Iberian horses and horsemanship: Iberian horse breeds’ heat tolerance, and how this preselected them to spread rapidly across much of the tropical and subtropical Americas, is something I wanted to work in.

Re: teras: I do have more sources for this but cut back the section re: ancient Greek thought on centaurs, horses, and horsemen.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have no suggestions for improvement. This is a wonderful article - I found it refreshing (using data spanning from the ancients to contemporary computer games to decolonise European readings of themselves through their fictions of Mesoamerican views of themselves), meticulously researched, engagingly written, and intellectually stimulating.

I found one type-stting issue in lines 496 and 497: herdersñ & 1550s)ñ

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer #2:

Thanks for the kind word. I corrected the typesetting issues.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This wide-ranging essay brings together two historical moments: Classical Greece and the Spanish invasion of the Americas, examining the prevalence of myths about the centaur in both times and places. The essay begins with citations of numerous Spanish sources that claim that Indigenous people confused riders on horseback with mythical creatures, then traces the history of centaurs and scholarly theories about them from Classical Greece to the 20^th century, before returning to the Americas to examine both Spanish beliefs in monsters and marvels and Indigenous tactics of warfare and resistance against armed horsemen. The essay concludes with modern citations of the myth that people were awestruck by their first view of horseback riders. The essay is written with flair and assurance, poses an intriguing question, and brings together literatures that are often kept separate, but in its wide sweep, it sometimes sacrifices depth and detail for a more diffuse form of argument, and in the end, it does not quite deliver on the promise that the figure of the centaur was a device for criticizing empire.

In general, the balance between the Americas and Classical Greece in the essay feels a little off: the title and introduction suggest that the focus will be on the Americas, but the majority of the essay is taken up with the classical centaur. The article is also notable for neglecting visual evidence, like the murals of Ixmiquilpan, where Indigenous artists did depict centaurs; visual evidence also seems relevant to the Classical Greek section.

I will also note that the essay needs a more rigorous copy-edit; there are numerous inconsistencies about punctuation, especially in footnotes and quotations; some citations are also insufficiently or improperly specified.

Specific comments:

1. 1, Cintla is on the Gulf Coast; the Caribbean coast is the eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula
2. 1, it’s strange to begin with a mid-sentence citation to two secondary sources; why not cite the eyewitness accounts of the battle?
3. 5, by this point, the focus is rather fully on the Greek imagination, which is not what this reader expected, given the framing. Is it possible to signpost this shift more effectively?
4. 7, primary as well as secondary sources would be appreciated in this discussion of Thessaly
5. 11, I was under the impression that there was more consensus around Muisca investiture ceremonies involving gold dust, even if the practice is distorted in the El Dorado myth
6. 11 n 63, the locus classicus for this is Edmundo O’Gorman’s The Invention of America
7. 13, isn’t there also a bit in the Florentine Codex Book 12 about unhorsing riders?
8. 14, James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, has more about words for horses in Nahuatl
9. 14, n. 84, isn’t it Historia de LAS INDIAS de la Nueva España? This edition is also not in the bibliography, but we do know that Diego Durán is the author of this text.
10. 16, some random #s on ll. 496-497
11. 17-18, the list of pop culture references in the conclusion means that the 16^th century Indigenous resistance is never really effectively summarized or theorized, and thus, the conclusion seems a little glib
12. 19, bibliography, please give full title for Las Casas; it’s also very strange that the Bernardino de Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España (also known as the Florentine Codex) is not listed. Another helpful source might be Lupher, David A. Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Author Response

Reviewer #3:

“…in its wide sweep, it sometimes sacrifices depth and detail for a more diffuse form of argument, and in the end, it does not quite deliver on the promise that the figure of the centaur was a device for criticizing empire.” Guilty as charged—I feel like this article is a bit of a monstrous hybrid itself (mismatched parts loosely connected)

“the murals of Ixmiquilpan, where Indigenous artists did depict centaurs” – again, guilty as charged. I’ll get right on it.

“Why not cite the eyewitness accounts of the battle?” I was unsure as to whether to put a large bloc quote from Francisco López de Gómara in, but if it solidifies my argument I’ll put that into the revisions.

Re: Florentine Codex Book 12 (unhorsing riders): I’ll cite in the revisions

Re: the abbreviation of Historia de las Indias de la Nueva España – I’ll correct in revisions