Bernardino de Sahagun: First Anthropologist

It's unfortunate there are no reviews for this important book about an extremely important man in Mexican history.The heading to this review is "Everyone Should Know Sahagun." We know Columbus, Cortes, and others. But Sahagun was more important. Because, they, like other passionate, sometimes bloodthirsty, adventurers and conquerors spent a few years pursuing their goals, had some mundane successes, and became famous. But Sahagun was the real hero, although vilified in his time. Hero, because he was a brilliant, empathetic man. He didn't destroy or conquer the civilization. He tried to preserve it in academic form. Yes, in order to preach Christianity, but to preach in an compassionate way.Many Americans (estado-unidenses) and Mexicans base their ideas of pre-Colombian Mexican culture less on academic work and more on folklore and oral tradition. My understanding of the conquest is that the Spanish either killed or suppressed many of the traditions along with the priests, intellectuals, and leaders. So, it's now difficult to truly know about the Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecas, etc. True, the common folk continued many old customs by syncretizing them with Catholic culture, either openly or clandestinely, but where can we find actual documents on all cultural aspects of the Nahua peoples, that is, the Mexicans? The answer: Sahagun, who lived four hundred fifty years ago.Sahagun came to Mexico (New Spain) just a few years, roughly ten years, after Cortes conquered it. Then he spent 50 years working on the language and culture, a true anthropologist. So, he was there from the beginning, so to speak. And then he dedicated half a century on his scholarship. An amazing person!

Very interesting book with plenty of detail about an era that is very poorly covered in regards to the cultural destruction of the Americas by Europeans. Scholars like Sahagun preserve some of the culture the Conquistedors and their fanatical clerical allies tried to obliterate, and in this regard this is a most welcome book. It is always easier to take anothers land and property and enslave or 'ethnically clense them' after you bad-mouth them enough first and make them out to be sub-humans of some description and not worthy of what they possess. Sahaguns basic humanity and his attempt to preserve some of the culture of our fellow human beings who lived in Pre-Columbian America is most heartening. One little gripe. Viscount Kingsborough, who published the 9 volume Antiquities of Mexico in the 19th century was an Irish aristocrat, not English.