Primary Source: José de Acosta, "Historia natural y moral de las Indias" Libro 6, capítulos 4-10, 1590
1590 edition, Benson Latin American Collection: LAC-ZZ Rare Books, GZZ 980.6 AC72H, http://catalog.lib.utexas.edu/record=b3128596~S10
1894 reprint, University of California Libraries, full PDF available online: https://archive.org/details/historianatural02acosrich
In his Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Jesuit theologian, missionary, and intellectual José de Acosta provides one of the first comprehensive investigations of the New World. Acosta’s ethnohistorical chronicle is strikingly broad in scope. Not only does he describe the region’s natural resources, flora and fauna, and terrain, but he also writes in detail about the Amerindians and their religious and political practices. Acosta produced this account by drawing on his own observations as a missionary in Peru and Mexico, as well as from the writings of other missionaries, naturalists, and soldiers who explored the region during the sixteenth century. Acosta's chronicle reveals an effort to incorporate new information into a Christian, Renaissance worldview as he draws from the Bible and various Western philosophers such as Plato, Pliny, and Augustine.
Acosta devoted several chapters in Book 6 of his chronicle to descriptions of Amerindian writing systems, comparing them with alphabetical as well as Chinese writing. Acosta noted how the Nahua and Inca, despite a lack of writing in the traditional European sense, had highly effective and complex systems of communication, record keeping, and recollection. Acosta refers to the quipu when he writes about memory and record keeping in Peru. He begins by noticing the differences between the quipu and other writing systems: “Los indios del Pirú, antes de venir españoles, ningún género de escritura tuvieron, ni por letras ni por caracteres, o cifras o figurillas, como los de la China y los de México; más no por eso conservaron menos la memoria de sus antiguallas, ni tuvieron menos su cuenta para todos los negocios de paz, y guerra y gobierno.”
In his book, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: literacy, territoriality, and colonization, literary theorist Walter D. Mignolo analyzes how Acosta described Amerindian writing systems. Mignolo asserts that as a Renaissance man of letters who thought of letter writing and books as the paradigmatic model for producing meaning and keeping records, Acosta considered the quipu a “valid sign of record keeping but not equivalent to writing since it could not be considered letters, characters, or figures”(Mignolo, 84). According to Mignolo, Acosta’s definition of writing presupposed that graphic signs (letter, character, images) be inscribed on a solid surface (paper, parchment, skin, bark of a tree). A bunch of knotted strings of different colors did not qualify as writing for Acosta; however, when Acosta describes what a quipu is and how it is used, he cannot avoid using the notion of writing. In Acosta’s definition, “Son quipos, unos memoriales o registros hechos de ramales, en que diversos ñudos y diversas [sic] colores, significan diversas cosas” Acosta hesitated between the fact that quipus were not writing or books, although they performed like writing and books. Acosta also establishes an analogy between quipus and alphabetic writing: “Y en cada manojo de éstos, tantos ñudos y ñudicos, y hilillos atados; unos colorados, otros verdes, otros azules, otros blancos, finalmente tantas diferencias que así como nosotros de veinte y cuatro letras guisándolas en diferente maneras sacamos tantas infinidad de vocablos, así estos de sus ñudos y colores, sacaban innumerables significaciones de cosas.” Thus Acosta noted how despite a lack of writing with graphic signs on solid surfaces, the Incas had highly effective and complex systems of communication, record keeping, and recollection.
Acosta’s comparison of Amerindian methods of communication to alphabetic and symbolic writing systems such as those that existed in Europe and China provides invaluable insights into the tensions and intersections of print and nonprint forms of communication between Spaniards and Amerindians during the sixteenth century. For book historical study, Acosta’s account helps to contextualize pre-Hispanic and post-contact Amerindian textual and symbolic practices.
