The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560–1945

Extract

The Unsettlement of America is a literary assemblage of approaches and interpretations surrounding an account of the titular Don Luis de Velasco: a sixteenth-century Native American from Ajacán, the Chesapeake, who traveled to Spain, Cuba, the Floridas, and Mexico (in the 1570–1571 period) before leading a native rebellion or “unsettling” against Jesuit settlers in his own country. Anna Brickhouse argues that the concept of “unsetttlement” offers a counterview to narratives of European conquest and/or settlement (whichever term you prefer) and the subjugation of indigenous peoples. This accomplished book continually questions sources and modes of interpretation, and provides substantial grist for the historian's intellectual mill but is of limited use as a secondary source on sixteenth-century Atlantic history.

For the historian, Brickhouse's critical approach to primary sources, notably letters, located in Part 1, “The Methods and the Story,” bears the most fruit as she seeks out Don Luis's voice as a native translator in Spanish accounts. She shows that Don Luis's story foregrounds “the geopolitics of knowledge in the sixteenth-century Americas,” as the authorial rights of these documents are challenged and their contents interpreted against the grain to suggest Don Luis was not simply “a heroic figure of native agency” but also a producer and transmitter of knowledge (pp. 9, 8).