Volume 48, April 2015, Pages 26–35
Particularizing the Columbian exchange: Old World biota to Peru
Highlights
- •
- Reconstructing past movement of an organism benefits from a diverse range of data.
- •
- Transfer and introduction, two different processes, embody failures and successes.
- •
- Human agency governs the transfer of domesticates, weeds, pests and parasites.
- •
- Implantation of Spanish agriculture in Peru involved a lag time of four decades.
- •
- Expanding and correcting a narrative for each biotic introduction offers a path to progress.
Abstract
The
sixteenth-century transfer and establishment of plants and animals from
Spain to Peru represents one segment of the Columbian exchange that
transformed landscapes, diets, economies, and demographic profiles in
the New World. Despite the importance of this historic movement,
scholars have revealed few details of the how, when, where and why the
organisms first transfer to, and then, in a separate process, their
successful establishment in Western South America. Specifics are covered
for the transfer and establishment of seven domesticates (wheat, broad
bean, grapevine, banana, sheep, chicken, and honeybee), one commensal
species, the black rat, and the epizootic pathogen Plasmodium.
Focusing on these two processes to the Central Andean realm checks the
temptation to overgeneralize transoceanic movement and adoption
involving motley elements, discrepant pathways and dissimilar
destinations. Harvesting particularized information acknowledges the
complexity of the Columbian exchange, the evidence for which goes beyond
archival documents. Most organisms came to Peru by way of the
Panamanian Isthmus following a route that involved two ship voyages
separated by a land crossing made on flatboat and/or mule carriage. Four
of the nine items were most probably picked up in intermediate
locations where Spaniards had settled or from where slaves were taken.
Once in Peru, plants and animals underwent a decades-long process of
acceptance that for most organisms had concluded by 1575. In both
processes of transfer and introduction, the documentary record is vastly
incomplete. To advance inquiry on this topic, the article proposes for
each plant and animal retrieval of complementary knowledge and
suppositions about the organisms, places, cultures and journeys that
combine with the documentary record.
Keywords
- Andes;
- Biotic introduction;
- Columbian exchange;
- Peru;
- Spain
Introduction
The
movement of plants and animals between the Old and New Worlds has had
enduring effects, but the detailed and difficult questions about the
Columbian exchange have scarcely been asked and certainly not answered.
Whether an organism succeeded is easy enough to determine after the
fact, but the specific processes of biotic transfers and their patterns
of acceptance remain largely unexamined.1
An understanding of the intercontinental biotic movements primarily in
the sixteenth century requires elucidating the routes taken, the time of
transfer, and the biological, ecological, cultural and economic factors
that allowed some plants and animals to become introductions and others
not.
Alfred Crosby's
much-cited study broke new ground in its broad conceptualization of the
Atlantic exchange as a two-way process. However, Crosby's work did not
provide information about timing, direction of movement of specific
biotic material or the difference between intent and success.2
In Crosby's account, only the destination, not the journey, mattered.
That transfer may or may not have succeeded or may or may not have led
to introduction, that is, acceptance and reproduction, should be part of
the exchange narrative. How a successful transfer becomes a bona fide
introduction poses a distinct question in the diffusion puzzle. Part of
the transfer did not involve human volition even though human action was
involved. The movement and expansion of commensals, adventives and
pathogens were inadvertent and their numbers far surpassed any human
effort to control them. The temptation to view the Columbian exchange as
a form of ‘ecological imperialism’ or, more extremely, as biological
determinism, is lessened when all of the biotic movement included in the
Columbian exchange is assessed in terms of human agency.3
As Sureka Davies stated, ‘… understanding of human agency and
historical contingency slips through Crosby's fingers like so many
grains of sand.’4
J.R. McNeill posited the Columbian exchange as one of the six major turning points in environmental history.5
Considering its importance, remarkably few details are actually known
about the Columbian exchange. Intimidating gaps in the historical record
of the sixteenth century hinder the reconstruction of how, when and
where biotic organisms were moved or established. Much of what is known
comes from the published colonial chronicles, not unpublished archival
documents.6
Substantiation of the twinned processes that start with diffusion and
end with adoption cannot rely exclusively, or in some cases even
primarily, on this elusive documentary trail. Information about plants,
animals and diseases is never recorded with the same detail as that of
people and precious metals. However crucial they were in establishing
Spanish life in the New World, seeds and live beasts were in many cases
not deemed worthy of mention. Few colonists of farming background, much
less African slaves, had the ability to write their experiences or
personal inventories.
Sparse
documentary evidence requires the use of other kinds of information if
one is to better understand the compelling story of biotic transfer and
establishment. The behavior and tolerances of biological organisms can
sometimes account for the difficulties of movement and the failure of
the organisms to gain acceptance. Although the historian Collingwood
argued that knowledge of nature is not history, that knowledge is often
relevant to the human experience as it relates to the Columbian
exchange.7
Molecular genetic analysis provides the possibility of identifying the
immediate and ultimate origins of an introduced organism.8
An understanding of both the donor and recipient cultures, and the
donor and recipient regions, gives insight into how and why a plant or
animal was accepted or not.
Different
plants and animals followed different oceanic trajectories. Therefore
biotic exchange is most appropriately analyzed in discrete regional
segments and in one direction at a time. Seven major donor/recipient
pairs of regions can be identified; the donor was the source of people,
plants and animals and the recipient accepted them. These
historical-geographical dyads, based on their importance as sources of
biotic material, are as follows: Spain/Mexico, Spain/Peru, Spain/Chile,
Spain/Rio de la Plata, Portugal/Brazilian Coast, and Africa/Northeast
Brazil. This paper emphasizes biotic elements sent to Peru from Spain
and, more peripherally, from West Africa. As a colonial destination Peru
stands out for its images of wealth, its temperate environments that
shared certain similarities with the Iberian homeland, and the
difficulty of reaching it from the eastern Atlantic shore. It was a
two-way flow, for the conquerors also moved a number of Andean elements
in the opposite direction. It is the Spanish and African flow to Peru
and its impact on Peru on which this narrative focuses. The flow of
biota to Peru had a historical geography different from elsewhere in the
New World. Beginning three decades after the death of Columbus meant
that a colonization protocol had more or less been worked out. But,
compared to the Caribbean or even Mexico, the journey was excruciatingly
long and difficult. Peru represented a notable insertion into a densely
populated land of indigenous civilization, but one that, unlike Mexico,
had before the Conquest been incorporated into just one polity, the
Inca Empire.
The biotic transfer process: Old World to Peru
The
stage was set for the transfer and introduction of Old World plants and
animals to Peru four decades before the Conquest of 1532. In that
period of colonization of the Indies since Columbus, Spaniards gained
knowledge and experience that was then applied to colonizing Peru, which
has a sharply differentiated configuration of coast and highland that
corresponds to climatic differences. Within the highlands, each valley
holds numerous thermal environments. On the eve of the Spanish invasion,
Peru had achieved a productive, sustainable agriculture based on a wide
inventory of crops and several domesticated animals. Irrigation had
been developed to a fine art well beyond what was known in Europe. The
native people of the Central Andes had an unusually strong attachment to
their material culture that to a considerable extent survives up to the
present.9
Direct
overseas transfer of people and organisms from Spain and other parts of
the Atlantic world to Peru involved a three-step movement. Vessels
sailed from Spain to the Panamanian Isthmus. A water and land trip
across that strip conveyed people and goods to the Pacific port of
Panama. From there, ships made the third leg to the port of Callao far
to the south. Successful biotic transfer had to surmount the challenges
of the sheer length of the voyage, movement across a hot, humid and
hostile strip of land, and a second sea voyage. In that
sea-to-land-to-sea-to-land trajectory, seeds, cuttings, and live animals
confronted cramped conditions, environments unfavorable to survival,
predation and theft. Those transfers are better appreciated and
understood by examining how, when and where biotic elements arrived in
Peru.
The sea voyage of biota and their human carriers
Between
1530 and 1560, the small size of sailing ships headed for Peru
restricted the diversity and quantity of transported objects. Caravels,
weighing between 80 and 200 tons with rounded hulls and lateen sails on
the mizzen, carried approximately 60 passengers and 15 crew members.10
A larger three-mast vessel, the nao, had room for about 100 paying
passengers and 20 crew members. Having more cargo space than the
caravels, the nao was preferred for transporting goods. Later in the
sixteenth century ship size increased rapidly with the construction of
galleons of 600 tons. They carried ten times as much freight as did a
nao and many more passengers. Outfitted with canons, galleons had a
major defensive capacity. Whereas caravel and nao sailed from Seville,
69 km up the Guadalquivir River from the coast, their deeper draft
forced the galleons to begin their trips at the Atlantic port of Cádiz.
The nao played a major role in the first biotic transfers. By 1600,
plants and animals had reproduced in Peru to such an extent that biotic
material that was sent on consignment, by definition merchandise of low
value, no longer found space onboard.
Organizing
of biotic material for shipment to the Indies was one of the
responsibilities of the royal trading monopoly known as the Casa de la
Contratación, founded in 1503 in Seville.11 Livestock breeding pairs and seeds in sealed containers were put on board ship at Seville. Merchant guilds (consulados)
and religious orders also sponsored shipments of agropastoral species.
Individual colonists who bought passage brought seeds stuffed in their
pockets and knapsacks. Limited space on a nao prevented individuals from
carrying most domestic animals and large quantities of planting
material. Since passengers were responsible for bringing and cooking
their own food (though not the firewood with which to cook it), the
materials they placed on board ship were primarily the food they would
need to survive the long trip. 12
Space on board was at such a premium that passengers struggled to find
on deck enough room to lie down and sleep. Colonists could not bring to
Peru all that they needed to start a new life in farming, constraining
transfer and explaining at least some of the lags in introductions. Crew
members had some advantages in that they each had the right to a sea
chest in which discretionary items could be secured. In the earliest
years after the Conquest of Peru, the crew could sell at a profit the
seeds of crops they brought with them. Transfer failures also occurred
when animals brought on board died for lack of feed or water or when
individuals destroyed or stole reproductive material.
Panama as the key convergence point
Lying on the shortest route from Cádiz to Callao, the Panamanian Isthmus became the vital link in the passage to Peru (Fig. 1).
First called by the Spaniards Tierra Firme and then Castilla de Oro,
the isthmus at its narrowest point offered the least onerous option to
reach Callao. Alternative pathways elsewhere were, by comparison, so
impractical that the Spanish Crown mandated isthmian passage as the only
approved route on which people and goods moved to Peru. Cartagena de
Indias, lying 400 km to the east, had an excellent harbor and defenses
against corsairs, but the enormous distances and rough terrain of
western South America that separated Cartagena and Peru foreclosed the
overland movement of goods and people between the two places. A second
way to get to Peru was the circuitous sea route through the Straits of
Magellan or around Tierra del Fuego and up the west coast. Not only did
it involve huge distances, sailing through a desolate, windswept zone of
the earth was risky.13
- Fig. 1.Two routes crossed the isthmus to Peru: one by land using mules, the other by boat along the coast and up the Rio Chagre (also spelled Chagres) and from Cruces by mule.
Spaniards
first saw the Pacific Ocean, called by Balboa the Mar del Sur, in 1513.
Their interest in Panama vacillated until the Conquest of Peru suddenly
altered the logistical significance of the isthmus. From then on,
transshipment of goods and people between Spain and Callao became the
primary economic activity of both sides of the strip. The isthmian
landscape, an anthropogenic savanna, was then not the tropical
rainforest to which the area later reverted.14 In 1514, Spaniards, using slave labor, laid out the first trail, known as the camino real,
80 km from end to end across the isthmus. During the rainy season, the
trail became a quagmire, requiring that pack mules, rather than
oxen-pulled carts, transported people and goods. Not until the
eighteenth century was the trail inlaid with fieldstones and at no time
did bridges span the rivers. An isthmian crossing between the ports of
Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean side and Panama on the Pacific side took
four days, except when high water in the streams forced delays. 15
Nombre de Dios was a shambolic and unhealthy town built around a
roadstead. Panama developed as a port only after Spaniards began
constructing ships in Guayaquil, Realejo (in Nicaragua) and Panama
itself. A second isthmian crossing route that required 15 days of travel
took shape between 1524 and 1527. Slave laborers moved flat boats from
Nombre de Dios westward along the coast and then up the Rio Chagre. At
Cruces, boat traffic ended and mules carried people and goods to Panama,
30 km distant. High value imports could bear the higher cost of the
mule trains on the camino real, whereas goods of more modest value,
which included plant material and live animals, took the longer
water/land route. Exact provenience of biotic material for Peru can not
be stated. Nombre de Dios cast a wide geographical net for provisioning
its food needs and it is distinctly possible that the goats, pigs,
chickens, bananas, rice, sugar cane, taken to Peru actually had, most
directly, come from Colombia or Central America. 16
The
isthmian crossing thwarted many attempts to carry biotic material to
Peru. People and living objects had to contend with sweltering heat and
humidity, infectious diseases, and human and animal predators. Seeds
sprouted, vegetative material mildewed and pullulating insects damaged
all organic matter waiting to be moved across the isthmus. On the trail,
jaguars and vampire bats attacked livestock, but human predators were
the most troublesome. Indians stole goods, rogue slaves (cimarrones)
assaulted the mule trains and, along the coast, corsairs plundered
boats before they entered the Rio Chagre. Disease contracted at Nombre
de Dios killed people who carried biotic material, which then was likely
to have been discarded. Considered at the time to be the most egregious
hellhole in the Indies, that wretched settlement with its name invoking
divinity became a graveyard for tens of thousands of people who
contracted malaria and yellow fever. The Pacific versant, though
receiving only one third of the 5000 mm of rainfall of the Atlantic
coast, also had a reputation as being unhealthy. 17
The
ocean trips posed many challenges to biotic transfer as well. Between
Spain and Peru the crossing required a minimum of 120 days and the
possibility of as many as 200 days. Passengers spent a minimum of 70 of
those days sailing the 8,000 km between Seville and the Caribbean side
of Panama in crowded, filthy conditions. Once in Nombre de Dios,
travelers typically had to wait a period of time before they could cross
the isthmus. In Panama, often additional weeks went by before a vessel
materialized to carry them to Peru. That second sea voyage, 2,500 km
from Panama to Callao, was problematical for the ten-month period from
March to December when southerly winds made the voyage difficult and
dilatory. Rather than three weeks, completing this segment most of the
year often took several months. Lack of ship board food and fodder
sometimes forced Spaniards and livestock to disembark at the port of
Paita in northern Peru and walk the distance to Lima.18
For that reason, much shipping to Peru from Panama occurred in January
and February. On a journey totaling 10,500 km, a certain percentage of
the travelers, as well as the animals, seeds or cuttings put onboard at
the point of origin, never made it to Peru.
Process of introduction to Peru
Transfer
of the agropastoral inventory of the Iberian Peninsula to a different
place in the world was a matter of subsistence security for Spaniards.
To recreate a familiar livelihood depended upon skills learned from
experience and knowledge of what could be expected to reproduce. More
than indigenous Andean folk, Europeans sought to develop a trading
system that elevated domestic economy above simple subsistence. The
prospect of profit from commerce motivated many of them.
Successful
biotic transfer to Peru, which in the early colonial period included
present-day Bolivia, preceded the next phase, that of reproduction and
integration. Ecological factors were important in determining whether a
plant or animal became an introduction. Cultural factors also controlled
acceptance. Spaniards sought Old World plants and animals to recreate
their modes of farming and livestock husbandry. Indians, forced to
deliver to their conquerors certain Old World crops as tribute, later
started to cultivate them for themselves. African slaves depended most
on manioc and bananas. Most plant and animal transfers to Peru arrived
at Callao, the port closest to Ciudad de los Reyes, later called Lima.
Founded in 1535 as the political seat of the Viceroyalty, Lima, only ten
kilometers inland from Callao, rapidly became a town with a quasi-urban
character. By the 1550s, Lima had an estimated 8,000 Spaniards, a
certain percentage of whom constituted a floating population of
colonists on their way to settle elsewhere. Its tightly circumscribed
agricultural hinterland irrigated from the Rimac River resembled a
Spanish-style huerta. The cold Peru Current offshore created a
relatively moderate annual temperature average of 19.7 °C that
accommodates a wide range of Old and New World crops. Since temperatures
do not fall below 11 °C, many tropical species as well as selected
middle latitude crops grew there. Bananas and wheat grew side by side.
Such an abundance encouraged Spanish colonists disembarking in Callao to
buy or trade plants and animals in Lima before dispersing to other
coastal valleys or moving into the highlands. European livestock also
were raised and already by 1537, were numerous enough to cause conflict
when they trespassed in crop fields.19
Lima functioned as a clearing house for all manner of information about
where to settle, what to cultivate, and how to get there. The Inca
roads already in place in the north and south connected all the coastal
valleys with the highlands, facilitating movement of reproductive
material. In the early years of colonization, Spaniards drove European
livestock on these roads and llamas and Indians carried seeds,
vegetative material, and small animals on their backs.
As
information about the range of settlement possibilities beyond Lima
gradually spread in Spain, colonists with farming backgrounds learned
that highland valleys between 2600 and 3600 m asl had, like the Iberian
Peninsula, a temperate climate. Whereas the rain in Spain came mainly in
the winter, in Highland Peru the precipitation came in the high sun
period from October to April.
Timing and biology: unsuccessful introductions to Peru
Although
Spanish chroniclers sometimes recorded a plant or animal transfer date,
it is always uncertain if that year actually represented the founding
population from which the organism multiplied and spread, thus becoming a
bona fide introduction. In a cultural-historical sense, transfer
becomes introduction only if an organism multiplies enabling it to
spread. A case in point are three animals—horses, dogs and swine—that
Francisco Pizarro brought on his 1531 expedition from Panama to Tumbes
on the north coast of Peru as part of his conquest plan. Horses were
critical for Spanish mobility and had the added advantages of
intimidating the indigenous population, and becoming food to stave off
starvation. During the conquest years a total of 182 horses arrived on
four different shiploads from Panama.20 The mastiffs brought with Pizarro from Panama were specifically taken to terrorize the native people.21
Pigs placed on board ship as an ambulatory food supply for the
expedition reflected Pizarro's penchant from his early years in
Extremadura for herding swine as meat-on-the-hoof. No indication exists
that any of these three animals provided a founding population that
facilitated the colonization of Peru. Logically, the tumult of the
Conquest made any attention to breeding unlikely. Later colonization
began and horses and pigs arrived and successfully reproduced.
Beginning
in 1535, colonization brought Spanish ships carrying reproductive
material. Also in that third decade, plants arrived in Peru, that did
not thrive. One of those crops was rye (Secale cereale), which in Spain occupied a well-established cool, wet niche. Though transferred to Peru, rye did not gain acceptance. 22
On the basis of temperature alone, rye might have been expected to
thrive in the Andes above 3500 m asl. But rye had a major hindrance: it
was a long-day plant and Peru, being in low latitude, has short days.
Not until 1920 when the photoperiodism of plants was discovered were the
constraints imposed by different latitudes on certain crops which are
sensitive to daylight length understood. Many mid-latitude European
weeds and ruderals not affected by that factor spread in the Andean
Highlands. Rye disappeared in the Andes; other biota may have arrived
that later also vanished. Two possible African elements that could have
come in slave ships were African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and guinea fowl (Numida meleagris). 23
No historic record is available for either of them, but that void does
not mean that Africans did not bring them. That they were not recorded
may suggest that the eye often sees only what the mind is prepared to
comprehend. On the other hand, the presence of other plants associated
with Africans offer some grounds for useful speculation. 24
Narratives of diverse organisms
I
address here the transfer and introduction of nine different organisms
that are indicative of relatively unexplored processes and explore the
range of issues implied by the biological diversity of the Columbian
exchange. Seven species are from the domesticated inventory, one is a
commensal and another a pathogen. Two crop plants, wheat and the
grapevine, carried heavy symbolic weight. The banana has clearly more
African than European associations, though is not native to either
continent. The diversity represented by these nine organisms makes it
difficult to generalize their transfer and introduction, which is
precisely how the Columbian exchange must be viewed. If some organisms
were more important than others, all of them explain how biotic baggage,
willingly carried or not, must be considered in their specificities.
Wheat (Triticum spp.)
Since
wheat scarcely produces in hot humid environments, it is little wonder
that seeds of this grain sent to Hispaniola on Columbus's second voyage
did not successfully yield.25 For the same reason, the wheat brought in 1514 to Tierra Firme failed to produce a harvest.26
These unsuccessful attempts indicate how little Spaniards knew at the
time about crop ecology. Only by trial and error did they sort out the
agronomic limitations of unfamiliar environments. Since the Antilles and
Panama proved to have unsuitable climates for growing wheat, it is
reasonable to posit that wheat seed from Peru came directly from Spain.
To Spaniards bread was the major element of their culinary cultural
identity. They expended more concern and effort on wheat introduction
than on other crops. Cobo's account of the introduction story suggests
how important bread was to Spaniards.27
A Spanish woman, Inés Muñoz, sister-in-law of Francisco Pizarro, is
said to have carefully separated wheat seeds that she had found in a
barrel of rice, sowing them in pots over the next four years, and the
yield of those few individual plants, she sowed in a field. She did this
every year for the next four, with the result that the total harvest
was finally large enough to grind and make bread. Aside from the
question of whether this is a factual account, it suggests the high
value Spaniards in Peru placed on wheat. In 1539 the first grist mill
made flour and, in 1541, came the first major harvest. In 1543, the
price of wheat dropped significantly suggesting the sharp rise in
production.28
How many failed wheat plantings occurred before that is not part of any
documentary record retrieved so far. Daylight sensitive wheat cultivars
brought from Spain would not have yielded in Peru, for their long-day
requirement prevented flowering in the short days of tropical latitudes.
Though their names have not come down to us, the successful cultivars
of Triticum in Peru would most likely have been day-length neutral.
Wheat
was an important crop around Lima and several coastal oases to the
north and south for about a century. Average temperatures of 19–20 °C on
the central coast were suitable for its production under irrigation.
Agricultural tools could be duplicated from memory, though one part of
the Mediterranean scratch plow, the metal plowshare (reja), was imported from Spain into the seventeenth century. 29
The tribulum, a kind of threshing sled pulled by equines, never gained
acceptance in Peru. In its place, the hooves of animals triturated the
wheat. To grind the grain, Spaniards established ten water-driven grist
mills in Lima and in nearby valleys of the central coast. 30 In the mid-seventeenth century, coastal wheat production fell greatly when a stem rust (Puccinia graminis tritica) appeared. 31
Spread of this pathogen eventually made uneconomical the cultivation of
wheat anywhere in the coastal valleys. In the highlands, which were not
affected by stem rust until the twentieth century, this essential grain
has been cultivated much longer than on the coast. Wheat growing began
in earnest in the 1550s, a function of the time Spaniards needed in
order to get established on the land and to increase cattle population
sufficiently to provide non-reproducing oxen for pulling the plows. 32
Wheat growing was very much dependent on the plow and oxen without
which Spaniards would not have grown it at all. Unlike in Spain, wheat
grown in the Andes depended largely on rains. High-sun rainfall required
substituting soft wheat for the preferred hard wheat which makes better
bread. 33 The wheat cultivars that were successful in the highlands belonged to Triticum turgidum, a low-gluten tetraploid soft wheat species known as durum or trigo chumpi in the Highlands. Other kinds of wheat did not thrive. The hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), though the most desirable for its panifactory properties, did not fit well into the climatic regime. Spelt (Triticum spelta) was grown to a small degree, but emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and einkorn (Triticum monococcum), if introduced at all, did not survive.
Broad bean (Vicia faba)
This
leguminous plant of Near Eastern origin, also known as fava, was an
important staple food in Spain. With its cool requirement, broad bean on
the Iberian Peninsula was a winter crop. In dried form, this legume was
a common provision of the Atlantic crossing, boiled in pots on the many
small stoves set up on the deck.34
Being ubiquitous onboard ship, leftover broad beans would have been
carried off by disembarking passengers. Taken to the Antilles, Spaniards
soon learned that this crop did not grow in hot tropical climates.
Already in 1495, an Italian on Hispaniola reported that ‘wheat,
chickpeas and broad beans grow a span in 10 days; then they wilt and
shrivel up.’35 The fava taken to Panama failed for the same reason.36
Its success thus had much to do with growing it in the right thermal
environment. It was not photo-sensitive nor did its pollination require
the same species of bee (Eucera numida) as is found in Southern Europe. Fava did not yield well on the Peruvian coast, and its cultivation was abandoned there.
In
the Highlands, however, temperatures were conducive to its production.
Broad bean germinates between 7 and 10 °C, flowers between 13 and 15 °C.
and sets pods between 16 and 18 °C.37
As a mature plant, mildew appears if temperatures surpass 27 °C. So
successful was broad bean in the Andes, that it largely displaced the
native legume known as tarwi or chocho (Lupinus mutabilis)
between 3000 and 3700 m asl. Unlike domesticated lupin, which contains a
bitter alkaloid, broad bean required no processing of its seed and so
was preferred to the former. Furthermore, broad beans are good in stews,
an important form of preparation in the Highlands. Part of its history
of success in the Central Andes comes from its resistance to chocolate
spot disease (Botrytis fabae), its most common and widespread pathogen.
Grapevine (Vitis vinifera)
Columbus
brought the grape to Hispaniola in 1493 on his second voyage. Planted
and protected, some vines produced some grapes, but not enough to make
into wine.38
Spaniards soon realized that the grapevine was not viable in the
Caribbean climate. Although not then identified as such, the lack of a
dormant period in the tropics negatively affected fruit formation.
Another check to production was Pierce's disease; caused by a bacterium,
it suppressed all or part of the grape production. It is logical to
assume that because viticulture failed in the Antilles, the reproductive
material sent to Peru came directly from Spain. Unlike in North
America, no wild grapes grow in South America and only the European
grape, V.vinifera, has ever been part of Peruvian
viniculture. Though recognized as an inferior form of reproduction,
grape seed was still used in Spain in that period. 39
As material carried on board ship, grape seed had the advantages of
smallness of size and high rate of germination. Evidence for
reproduction by seed is suggested by some ancient grape varieties that
appear to be crosses between V. vinifera cultivars. 40
Some of those crosses proved suitable to the environmental conditions
of Peru. However, grapevines grown from seed are typically inferior, for
recombination cannot maintain the quality of the parent. Thus the
development of a vinicultural industry depends upon planting clonal
material that duplicates the parent variety. To meet that requirement,
vine stock, though relatively bulky, arrived in succeeding decades
directly from Spain.
Cobo dated the first grape harvest in Peru to the year 1551.41
If that is correct, a first successful transfer of reproductive
material would have had to occur before 1545. Diffusion of the grapevine
beyond Lima owed much to the religious orders who established vineyards
in many of the places where they established convents. Both on the
coast and in highland valleys, Spaniards grew the grapevine under
irrigation which allowed for the withdrawal of water to force the plant
into a dormant phase, important for the regular production of fruit.
Vineyards were an early component of the Rimac huerta around Lima, but
that zone lost its viniculture to valleys to the south, most notably
around Ica. Hot but dry highland valleys at elevations between 1900 and
2400 m asl also acquired irrigated vineyards.42
Wine was a strong part of Spanish identity, a beverage for
socialization and essential for Eucharistic rites. Indians became wine
consumers though rarely did they cultivate vines on their own
properties. The Spanish Crown wanted the Indies to be a market for
Spanish wine and issued a series of edicts prohibiting vineyards there.
Few could afford imported Spanish wine and these injunctions were
largely ignored.43
Banana (Musa sapientum)
Estimated
dates for the transfer of the banana from the Canary Islands to the
Antilles range from 1493, the second voyage of Columbus, to 1516.44
The discrepancy between those two dates may be a question of what
constitutes introduction. Those intervening 23 years may reflect the
time needed for the banana to become established as an important crop.
The concept or definition of biotic introduction has been perceived in
different ways. By 1523, the Caribbean side of the Panamanian isthmus
had received the banana.45
Although not part of an historical record, Africans plausibly brought
bananas on board the slave ships to the Antilles and Tierra Firme. Since
the banana was an important food in Africa, slaves were the logical
carriers of it from the Atlantic to the Pacific side of Panama. Unlike
most useful plants, however, the edible part of the banana is not the
reproducible part; therefore, its spread involved more calculation and
less chance. As a sterile triploid with no seeds, moving the
reproductive part of this parthenogenic clone—an underground stem,
called a corm, with roots intact—was cumbersome.
An argument that the banana came to South America in the pre-Columbian period has not yet been generally accepted.46
The banana's arrival in Peru via the Atlantic route is unrecorded, but
by the mid-sixteenth century, it had become an important food plant on
the coast. According to Cobo, a second kind of banana (‘guineo’)
came to Lima in 1605 and he recorded it as having come from Guinea
(that is, West Africa) and being dark green with soft, sweet and
aromatic pulp. 47 Slave ships from Africa would most logically have brought that cultivar.
Sheep (Ovis aries)
The
sheep was the most important livestock species in sixteenth century
Spain. Placed on board as food for the trip, Spaniards carried sheep to
the Indies as part of the baggage of colonization. In 1493, Columbus
picked up ovines on the island of Gomera during his second voyage to
Hispaniola where they multiplied. Carried to other Antillean islands,
their rapid increase is suggested by a herd of 200 sheep transported in
1512 from Jamaica to Castilla de Oro.48
Another load of sheep came directly from Spain to the isthmus in 1515.
The strong Spanish affinity for this notoriously timid beast overruled
its poor adaptation to hot, humid climate. Given ovine defenselessness,
safe passage across the isthmus plausibly required them to be carried in
large baskets on the backs of mules, rather than being herded.
Breeding
pairs of sheep already arrived in Peru in 1537, suggesting that they
had priority status. Together with other livestock, sheep also arrived
in Peru in subsequent decades from Central America.49
Ovines first multiplied on the coast, but that was not their real
niche. Three decades passed before this animal reproduced sufficiently
to become established on cool Andean plateaus where they found good
grasses and a native population that appreciated its wool and meat. When
taken to the Andes, the ewes lost the seasonal estrus cycle that they
had in Spain and so reproduced much faster than camelids. Although
Spaniards introduced merino in the early colonial period, over time the
various kinds of sheep interbred to form a mongrol (chusco) type. 50
Light in weight at 20–30 kg and low-yielding in wool and meat, chusco
sheep were nevertheless valued for their adaptability to the high
elevations, steep topography and herbaceous cover of the Andes.
Grazing
sheep fit well into the communal pastures of Indian settlements. They
were useful for their manure, high in nitrogen, their tallow, which
provided the material for making candles and their pelts used by Indians
in lieu of chairs. After disease decimated the camelid population in
the sixteenth century, sheep took on a bigger role in Indian domestic
economy. By the seventeenth century, Indian and non-Indian textiles in
the highlands came largely from the wool of sheep. Wool fibers were
short, but their greasiness was appreciated for its water-repellant
qualities. Using Indian labor, Spaniards set up textile workshops (obrajes) that produced wool cloth (bayeta).
Rat (Rattus rattus)
The
archetypal peri-domestic organism, the black rat came early to the New
World, scampering along hawsers to get onto seafaring vessels docked in
the Guadalquivir River. Its cousin, the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus),
did not arrive in Peru until more than two centuries later. The array
of edibles loaded on vessels to feed the crew and passengers also fed
this omnivorous rodent. Over the course of the long voyage, rat numbers
increased exponentially. 51
The gestation period of only 22 days and litters of six enabled them to
multiply into a swarm. A vessel that left Spain with 30 rats hidden
away arrived at Nombre de Dios with as many as 800.
Riding
the high seas, rats first nabbed discarded food scraps. As the rat
population increased, hunger drove them to invade the ship's stores (matalotaje). Hardtack (bizcocho),
a bread twice-baked to make it indestructible and, dipped in wine or
water to soften it, was the most abundant onboard provision. While
humans tolerated hardtack, rats, grain lovers above all, preferred it.
Gnawing hardtack helped to pare down their constantly growing four front
teeth. Rats gnawed holes in casks of seeds, in that way destroying
reproductive material destined for planting in the Indies. To assuage
their constant thirst, rats gnawed into casks of water where they
sometimes drowned, thus polluting water needed for the voyage. Rodents
on board also threatened the seaworthiness of the ship itself by making
perforations in the wooden hulk.
Together
with mice, cockroaches and lice, every ship headed for the New World
had rats as inevitable passengers. Vessels carrying slaves from West
Africa also always had large rat populations.52
Grim shipboard conditions affected all travelers. Seasickness resulted
in a vomit-strewn deck, which, combined with fetid vapors emanating from
the human and animal wastes in the bilge waters, produced a nauseating
stench. As the weeks turned into months, food became moldy and wormy and
water turned green. In the bedlam of the crossing, rodent commensality
was only one of the inconveniences on board ship that passengers had to
endure. When ships anchored at the roadstead of Nombre de Dios, rodents
managed to decamp onto the lighters that got them to shore. If close
enough, rats could also swim from boat to land. Piles of garbage and
mounds of food supplies were waiting to satisfy their indiscriminate
appetites. By hiding in casks and baskets carried by mules and the
flatboats, rats moved surreptitiously across the isthmus. On his way to
Spain, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega remembered Panamá in the late sixteenth
century as having been overrun with rats.53 In this Pacific port, rats repeated their stowaway act and hitched rides all the way to Callao.
Peru
received shiploads of rats from Panama, but that may not have been the
only source. One ship known to be rat-laden in a fleet of three
commissioned by a Spanish bishop survived the harrowing journey through
the Straits of Magellan to anchor at Callao in 1541.54 Archeology may eventually determine whether the founding population of R. rattus
in Peru dated from that vessel or an earlier one. The black rat
eventually established itself in ports up and down the coast. From time
to time bubonic plague broke out from infected fleas living on the rat.
It was also an agricultural pest with a special affinity for wheat and
sugar cane. 55
Honeybee (Apis mellifera)
Not
until the eighteenth century did the honeybee arrive in Peru, a
tardiness best understood by the challenge of its complicated transfer.
Even though Spain had a tradition of migratory beekeeping, Gabriel
Alonso de Herrera, early in the sixteenth century, referred to the
difficulty of transporting honeybees to the Indies.56
Moving a bee hive, containing 20,000 to 30,000 workers, drones and one
queen, half way around the world was problematical. Workers needed to
forage for nectar to replenish the honey and wax they consumed, yet a
ship at sea offered no such possibility. With a life span of only 20–30
days, a working hive would have gone through five or six generations
between Spain and Nombre de Dios to keep a hive viable. More plausibly,
the bees reached Nombre de Dios in a two-step process. Honeybees from
Spain first arrived in Hispaniola in 1543 and it is there they had an
opportunity to multiply.57
Put on board in Santo Domingo, they would have reached the isthmus with
less difficulty than with a direct Seville-Nombre de Dios sailing.
However,
moving honeybees overland from Nombre de Dios to Panama was fraught
with its own hazards. Swarms of ants and termites stood ready to
decimate any beehive moving across the isthmus. In the torrid climate,
the insects would have endured enormous stress when placed in a covered
basket without aeration on a flat barge, and then days on the back of a
mule. At 38 °C, honeybees become overheated if they have no access to
water to cool the brood.58
The heat would possibly explain why a hive brought across this land
strip in 1846 was, on arrival, found to be full of dead bees.59
Whether
or not the isthmus posed an insurmountable barrier, another possible
route to Peru was by way of Mexico. Geographer Donald Brand avered that
there is evidence that Spaniards introduced the honeybee to Mexico
between 1520 and 1530.60
As the European species of bee multiplied and spread, hives might have
been put on board ship at Acapulco where they could have made the trip
to Callao. However, the undependable wind pattern often made this north
to south route a seven to eight month-long voyage. Any bees on board
would not likely have survived such a long trip. No evidence confirms
the presence of the honeybee in Peru before the nineteenth century.
Native ground or tree-dwelling Andean bees belonging to several genera,
especially Melipona and Trigona, also produce honey.
Indians in certain locales collected it from the wild. Molasses made
from sugar cane, was readily available. Beeswax was in demand for
candles, but only for ecclesiastical use. By canon law, church candles
could not be made of tallow, so for part of the colonial period, Spain
provided most of that wax. Though dark and full of impurities, wax from
native bees could have been used in time of need. 61
Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus)
Although
the chronicles make no reference to the chicken as being present in
Peru before Spanish arrival, the bird predated all European or African
voyages to it. DNA and archaeological evidence indicates that chickens
from Polynesia were in South America before Europeans.62 Its Quechua term, wallpa,
owed nothing to European influence, though the importance this fowl
might have had remains a mystery. Clues to the distinctiveness of the
early chicken are the blue eggs and the lack of neck feathers that can
be found sporadically on the birds in the Andes today. Chickens arrived
in Hispaniola on Columbus's second voyage in 1493. 63
After that, the multiple transfers of chickens that occurred in the
sixteenth century from both Europe and Africa had much to do with their
role as shipboard food. 64 European colonists carried them in cages (gallineros) to assure that they were not stolen en route or blown overboard, though rats sometimes got into the cages and killed them. 65
Their vulnerability favored movement across the isthmus in darkened
baskets or bags. It is reasonable to suppose that Africans also brought
chickens to the Antilles and Panama on board slave ships and that some
birds reached Peru in that way.
From whatever source, chickens rapidly gained acceptance in domestic economy in spite of the fact that the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata),
an indigenous domesticate, was already available. A greater rate of
reproduction favored chickens over ducks. Rapid diffusion of the bird
came from hatching eggs rather than eating them. At some point, however,
the egg, a source of protein that did not require killing the bird, was
seen as being a particular advantage of chicken keeping. Spaniards
called them ‘aves de Castilla’ or ‘gallinas de Castilla’ and made them a
tribute item that the colonial authorities required indigenous people
to deliver. Around Cusco in southern Highland Peru, every repartimiento
had on their tribute list a quota of live chickens. 66
The requirement to deliver chickens led to an earlier indigenous
acceptance than otherwise would have been the case. After colonial
tribute disappeared, native people perpetuated that pattern, presenting a
chicken as a traditional gift, known as a camarico. to their Spanish priests.
Malaria parasite (Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae)
Anopheline mosquitoes carrying Plasmodium
pathogens in their guts transmit malaria to humans, but they also
acquire the parasite from infected humans. Three Old World parasites, P. vivax, P. falciparum and P. malariae,
are the cause of this disease in Latin America. Their diffusion to Peru
in the sixteenth century came from the Old World, for although
anthropophilic species of anopheline mosquitoes were widespread, no
pre-Columbian malaria existed anywhere in the Americas. Unlike yellow
fever, malaria transfer involved no overseas vector movement. 67 In Spain before the period of the great discoveries, P.vivax, often called terciana, caused fever every third day in the afflicted individual. 68 A much rarer form of the parasite, P. malariae, had a four-day cycle. Those two pathogens were less lethal than the P. falciparum that arrived on slave ships from Africa. In each case, the three species of Plasmodium
reaching Peru previously had been established in intermediate New World
locations. Infected passengers to the Antilles passed the Plasmodium in their bloodstream to New World anophelines. Hispaniola suffered outbreaks of vivax malaria soon after Columbus's first voyage; the admiral himself got malaria there in 1493. 69
Thus passengers to Peru could have acquired parasites in the Antilles.
Many more uninfected passengers to Peru contracted malaria on the
isthmus. The Caribbean side had acquired malaria as early as 1514. 70 Indeed, it is likely that most travelers passing through notoriously unhealthy Nombre de Dios contracted one of the Plasmodium
parasites. Referring to a 1546 passage, Pedro de la Gasca who was in
the Conquest of Peru noted that both Nombre de Dios and Panama were so
insalubrious that of 100 men only about 20 escaped the disease. 71
Only one bite initiated the sporogenic cycle that 8–30 days later,
triggered the first symptoms. Based on epidemiological knowledge of the
recent past, Anopheles albimanus, a salt-tolerant mosquito species found in permanent water habitats, has been the main vector on the isthmus.
Of
the infected passengers who set out for Peru, some died on board ship,
others arrived sick, and still others, although they carried the
parasite, were still healthy when they disembarked at Callao. People in
those last two categories served as hosts for malarial spread when
anopheline mosquitoes bit them and carried the parasite to others. The
only vector species spreading malaria in Peru outside the rainforest has
been Anopheles pseudopunctipennis, now often understood as a
complex of species. Within three decades of the Conquest, malaria became
endemic in virtually all Peruvian coastal and intermontane valleys
below 2000 m asl. Since high elevations functioned as barriers to
mosquito movement between depressions, a vector population rarely spread
beyond any one valley. Plasmodium diffused widely as pack
beast drivers picked up the pathogen in their bloodstream in one valley
and carried it to another, previously uninfected area. Above 2500 m asl,
low temperatures inhibited both parasite and mosquito reproduction. An
important ecological difference separated the two main parasites. In vivax,
the cycle of sporogeny from infected bite to sporozoites in the
mosquito's salivary gland occurred within a temperature range from 15°
to 30 °C., whereas falciparum has a minimum threshold of 18 °C. 72 Thus, falciparum malaria occurred below 1800 m elevation, whereas vivax was found as high as 2300 m.
Spaniards in Peru suffered from vivax
malaria, but often recovered, whereas native people died from it in
large numbers. With no in-built genetic resistance that had evolved out
of the past, Indians were uncommonly susceptible to the disease.
Spaniards of the colonial period interpreted that native vulnerability
as the mortal shock of moving from the higher, colder zones
environments. For a variety of reasons, Indians moved from their home
communities in higher, colder zones to work in mines and sugar estates
at lower, warmer elevations. The stark facts of malaria contraction were
also noted at bridge-building locations in macrothermal gorges where
malaria was endemic. In the late sixteenth century, the location of a
crucial bridge crossing on the main highland road between Cusco and Lima
was a zone of parasite-bearing mosquitoes. Without knowing the link
between mosquitoes and malaria, the bridge was described as a place‘…
hot and diseased and lots of serrano folk who go there die.’ 73
When Spaniards undertook to build a stone structure across that deep
canyon (1850 m asl) 99 km from Cusco, the Indians they brought got
malaria and either died or got so sick they could not work. African
slaves were then enlisted for the project. The money to purchase those
workers came jointly from the royal treasury, cabildo of Cusco, and the
very indigenous communities they replaced. 74
Based on cases such as this one, colonial authorities gradually
recognized that Indians were more vulnerable to malaria than were
Spaniards, mulatos or especially blacks. The chronicler Vázquez de
Espinosa expressed it as an hypsometric imperative: ‘When highland
Indians of these provinces go down to Lima it is certain they will
contract malaria (“mal del valle”) from which very few escape.’ 75
All coastal valleys had that same pattern; one chronicler asserted that
‘these valleys are very unhealthy for the mountain people.’ 76
Immunological resistance to malaria in the form of antigens made Africans resistant to vivax malaria. If Africans carried the sickle cell gene, they also possessed a firewall against falciparum.
More limited mortality allowed Africans to increase their population
rapidly in malarial zones of Peru. In the city of Lima, blacks in the
colonial population proportionally increased over the decades. By the
1560s, Indian mortality and morbidity on the coast created a major
shortage of labor on estates. In spite of the presence of millions of
native people in the adjoining highlands, the Spanish solution was to
import African slaves rather than to continue to commandeer Indians who
soon enough fell ill. Expensive to buy and characteristically
insubordinate, blacks nevertheless supplied the labor for most estates
on the coast and to a lesser extent in the intermontane valleys below
2,300 m asl. 77
Viceroy Juan de Mendoza between 1607 and 1615 issued an edict that
forbad Indian labor in vineyards, olive groves and sugar estates to
protect them from the malaria rampant in those hot places. 78
Although a combination of many diseases caused the high mortality of
native people before 1650, much greater demographic losses occurred in
the coastal valleys than in the highlands. Whereas the highlands had
three to four deaths for every survivor, the death ratio on the desert
coast was an astronomical 58:1. 79
A revealing ecological distinction lay at the heart of that
differential: the great mass of the highland Indian population lived in
malaria-free zones above 2300 m asl. In addition to the suitable coastal
temperatures that allowed the vector to survive, water was available in
that desert that allowed the vector to breed. 80
More specifically, algae mats on the channel margins of the streams
flowing to the Pacific Ocean provided egg-laying habitats for A. pseudopunctipennis.
Malaria in the Andes, above all thermally controlled, followed a
pattern of elevation above sea level. For example, south of Lima a sharp
distinction was noted in the colonial period between disease-ridden
villages located between 500 and 1200 m asl where the population
declined precipitously in the sixteenth century and settlements above
the level of malarial contraction where population declined much less. 81
Disease
historians have focused heavily on epidemics, for such events often
appear in the documentary record much more than mortality from mere
endemicity. The result has been gross under estimation of the importance
of malaria whose mortal effects were, in the aggregate, more endemic
than epidemic.81
The failure to identify malaria as a cause of death has also not been
given its due, as the disease was known by a variety of ambiguous names—fiebre (‘fever’), calenturas (‘fevers’), mal del valle (‘valley disease’) and ictericia
(‘yellow malady’). Malaria symptoms were much less dramatic than those
of smallpox or measles, both of which left perceptible marks on the
faces of all who suffered from it. Although frequently downplayed or
ignored in the colonial period, malaria, year in and year out, typically
killed four to six percent of the people in any community within the
paludic zone. Children were particularly vulnerable and many adults, if
they survived, were debilitated. Accumulated over 20–30 years, that
regular rate of mortality, plus those who fled out of fear of
contraction, caused massive depopulation.
The
malaria diffusion story in Peru is one of both direct and indirect
spread, not of the vector, but of the pathogen from Spain and Africa and
the role of the malignant Panamanian isthmus. Within the Indies, race
and altitude were the two most significant factors in the uneven pattern
of demographic decline. The former explained immunity and non-immunity;
the latter, the presence or absence of parasites and vector.
Conclusion
Biotic
transfer to Peru, involving the carriage of living material across a
vast water body, hostile stretch of land, and then another swath of
another ocean with contrary winds for most of the year was more
complicated than that in any other dyadic Old World–New World segment.
Animals, since they were mobile but could not be easily carried if at
all, represented a greater challenge to transfer than did plants. Once
on land in Peru, however, they were more adaptable to different climates
than were most plants. Of the nine organisms on this list, Plasmodium and Rattus,
both transferred and established without human volition, and spread
more efficiently than did organisms knowingly carried by people. Sheep,
wheat, and broad bean found conditions in the Andes to be more suitable
than those Spaniards encountered in the Antilles. Viewed as a complex,
the Spanish agropastoral inventory became well established in Highland
Peru by 1575. The difficulty of relocating hives of delicate, living
insects best explains the more than two century lag in the transfer and
acceptance of honeybee.
Perhaps
more than ecological adaptation, cultural attitudes and habits were
important in the transfer and introduction of Old World materials to the
New. Honed during the peninsular Reconquest, the cultural mindset of
Spaniards assumed their superiority. In a colonial society in which
indigenous Peruvians far outnumbered Spaniards, the disposition of the
latter to impose their individual and collective will on others had
enormous consequences of all aspects of Andean life.
This
account of movement and integration is based upon the examination of
multiple and diverse conditions, practices and influences. Combining
concrete facts about each organism with suppositions concerning the
difficulties involved in transportation and acceptance of each,
clarifies the temporal and spatial particularities of the Columbian
exchange. In the quest for this knowledge, relevant archival documents
provide the best evidence, but they are incomplete. Informed conjecture,
obtained through field work and interpreting the biological
architecture of introduced organisms, can supplement our reading of
archival materials. Uncertainty and error tolerated under the banner of
‘the truth for now,’ admits that the quest for the full saga continues.
Acknowledgments
A grant held in 1988–1989 from the United States-Spanish Joint Committee for Cultural and Educational Cooperation at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville funded this research.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
