Michael: Everything you learned about Columbus is probably a sanitized myth. The 'Age of Discovery' wasn't about brave explorers finding a new world. It was about a new world discovering just how savage Europe could be. And it all started with a kidnapping. Kevin: Whoa, okay. That’s a heavy opening. A kidnapping? I thought it was all about trade, spices, and a new route to India. Michael: That’s the story we’re told. But the reality on the ground, from the very first day, was much darker. And that's the explosive premise of the book we're diving into today: On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock. Kevin: Okay, that title alone is a statement. On Savage Shores. It completely flips the perspective. Who is this author? This feels like a bold claim to make. Michael: It is! And she has the credentials to back it up. Pennock is a highly respected historian at the University of Sheffield, and she's actually the UK's only Aztec specialist. She spent years digging through archives and realized this massive part of the story—the reverse voyage of Indigenous people going to Europe—was almost completely ignored. Kevin: So it’s not just a contrarian take, it’s based on a huge historical blind spot. Michael: Exactly. The book has been widely acclaimed for this, named a Best Book of the Year by places like the Smithsonian and The Economist. It forces us to confront a history that’s been hidden in plain sight. And it begins with Columbus himself.

Michael: On October 11, 1492, the day he first sights land in the Bahamas, Columbus writes in his diary. And what he writes is chilling. He notes the Taíno people are intelligent and handsome, and then immediately concludes they "ought to make good slaves." Kevin: Wait, on day one? Before any real interaction, his mind goes straight to enslavement? Michael: Instantly. And he acts on it just as fast. A month later, his crew "detains" five young Taíno men who had paddled out to his flagship. Then they go ashore and forcibly abduct seven women and three children from their homes. His justification? He needed them to "learn to speak" so they could be interpreters. Kevin: That is just… brutal. It’s not a misunderstanding or an accident of history. It’s a deliberate strategy from the very beginning. Michael: It's the business plan. And the journey itself was horrific. These people were crammed onto ships for a months-long voyage across an ocean they couldn't comprehend. The book quotes a Spanish judge from a later voyage, Eugenio de Salazar, who described his own cabin as a "tiny burial vault." He was a high-ranking official. Now imagine being an enslaved person chained in the hold. Kevin: It’s unimaginable. How many people are we even talking about? Was this just a few isolated incidents? Michael: That’s the most shocking part. This wasn't an anomaly; it was the start of a massive, forgotten slave trade. On his second voyage, Columbus sent 500 enslaved Taíno to Spain. Only about 300 survived the journey. The historian Andrés Reséndez, whose work Pennock builds on, estimates that between two and five million Indigenous Americans were enslaved between 1492 and 1900. This is what he calls "the other slavery." Kevin: Millions? That’s a staggering number. We hear so much about the transatlantic slave trade from Africa, but this… this is an entire parallel tragedy that’s been almost completely erased from the popular narrative. Michael: Exactly. And these people weren't just numbers. They were individuals who arrived on European shores and had to navigate a world that was utterly alien. A world of staggering inequality, strange customs, and a relentless obsession with accumulating "sad leaves," as one Indigenous chief would later call money. For them, Europe was the savage shore. Kevin: It’s easy to just see them as victims in this story, crushed by the colonial machine. But the book argues they had agency, right? They weren't just passively swept away. Michael: Absolutely. And that brings us to one of the most fascinating parts of this hidden history: the individuals who learned to navigate this new world, the people who lived in the in-between.

Michael: The Europeans desperately needed interpreters. You can't conquer or trade with people you can't speak to. So they kidnapped people to train them. But what they didn't count on was that these individuals would become so much more than just mouthpieces. They became what the Nahua people called nepantleras—those who live in the nepantla, the "in-between space." Kevin: Nepantla. I like that. It sounds like a place of tension, but also of power. Michael: Precisely. And there’s no better example than the story of two men, Manteo and Wanchese. They were from the coast of what is now North Carolina, and in 1584 they were brought to London by English explorers working for Sir Walter Ralegh. Kevin: So they’re taken to Elizabethan England. What happens to them? Michael: They become a sensation. They live in Ralegh's household, they're presented to Queen Elizabeth I. And while there, Manteo works closely with an English scholar named Thomas Hariot. Together, they create the first-ever written alphabet for an Algonquian language. We even have the document, and in the corner, Manteo scrawled his own signature: "MATEOROIDN," which scholars believe means "Manteo, king, has done this." Kevin: Wow. So he’s not just a source, he’s claiming authorship. He’s an intellectual collaborator. Michael: He’s asserting his agency. But here's where it gets complicated. When they return to their homeland a year later, their paths diverge dramatically. The English ship runs aground, damaging their supplies and making them dependent on Indigenous help. Wanchese, having seen enough of the English, becomes deeply distrustful. He leaves them and becomes a key leader of the Indigenous resistance against the colonists. Kevin: And Manteo? Michael: Manteo stays loyal to the English. He continues to act as their interpreter and guide. For his "faithfull service," he's eventually baptized and Ralegh grants him the title "Lord of Roanoke." Kevin: So two men, same experience of being taken to London, and they come back with completely different conclusions. One becomes a resistor, the other a collaborator and an English "Lord." That says so much about individual choice and the complexity of these situations. Michael: It shatters the idea that Indigenous people responded in one single way. They were strategists, making calculated decisions based on what they saw. Wanchese saw a threat; Manteo perhaps saw an opportunity, or a powerful new ally. And this complexity is even more pronounced in the most famous go-between of all: Malintzin, or La Malinche. Kevin: Cortés's interpreter. She has such a controversial legacy—seen as both a traitor and the mother of modern Mexico. Michael: And Pennock shows why. Malintzin was a Nahua noblewoman who had been enslaved by the Maya. She spoke multiple languages and quickly learned Spanish. She wasn't just translating words for Cortés; she was translating entire cultures, political situations, and military strategies. She was a diplomat and advisor. Without her, the conquest of the Aztec Empire is almost unimaginable. She navigated that nepantla space with incredible skill, for reasons we can only guess at—survival, ambition, revenge. These weren't passive victims; they were agents of history.

Michael: And that agency was rooted in a completely different way of seeing the world. This is maybe the most profound part of the book—the fundamental clash of values. Europeans arrived with what Cortés himself called "a disease of the heart that could only be cured by gold." Kevin: That’s a surprisingly honest, if cynical, way to put it. Michael: It was a worldview based on extraction, accumulation, and commodification. Everything—land, plants, people—had a price. This was completely alien to most Indigenous worldviews, which were built on reciprocity and balance. Kevin: The idea that you don't own the land, you belong to it. Michael: Exactly. And there's this incredible story from the 1550s that perfectly captures this clash. A French pastor named Jean de Léry was living among the Tupinambá people of Brazil. An elderly Tupinambá man asked him why the French traveled so far, enduring such hardship, just to get brazilwood. Kevin: A reasonable question. Michael: Léry explains that it's not for personal use, but to sell for profit, to amass riches for their children. And the elder’s response is just breathtaking. He says, "I see now that you Frenchmen are great fools. Must you labor so hard to cross the sea... just to amass riches for your children? Will not the earth that nourishes you suffice to nourish them? We have kinsmen and children... and because we are certain that after our death the earth which has nourished us will nourish them, we rest easy." Kevin: Wow. That’s... that gives me chills. In a few sentences, this elder completely dismantles the entire logic of European capitalism. It’s not just a different economic system; it’s a different philosophy of life. One of trust versus one of anxiety. Michael: It’s a profound critique. He sees this endless toil for accumulation not as sophisticated, but as foolish. And this perspective is echoed by other Indigenous voices. A modern Kayapó chief, Raoni Metuktire, calls money piu caprim—"sad leaves"—because it’s a dead thing that only brings harm. Kevin: "Sad leaves." That's so poetic and so damning. It’s the complete opposite of the European view. Michael: And this wasn't just a philosophical difference; it played out in real diplomatic encounters. In 1545, a delegation of Q’eqchi’ Maya lords visited the Spanish court. They came in full regalia, bearing gifts of immense cultural value, like thousands of sacred quetzal feathers. When Prince Philip asked their leader, Aj Pop B’atz’, to bow, he refused. Kevin: He refused to bow to the future King of Spain? Michael: He refused. As his people tell the story today, he said "he couldn’t bow in front of the other king, because he was also a king." He asserted his equal status. He was not a subject; he was a fellow monarch. And incredibly, Prince Philip recognized this and treated him as an equal. In that moment, one value system was forced to acknowledge another.

Kevin: So when you put it all together—the forgotten slave trade, the powerful go-betweens, this profound clash of values—it feels like the book is doing more than just adding new facts to history. It's changing the very lens we use to look at it. Michael: That’s the core of it. On Savage Shores isn't just about recovering lost stories. It's about fundamentally re-reading the entire colonial encounter. The "discovery" was mutual. And from the Indigenous perspective, the "New World" they discovered in Europe was often a place of baffling cruelty, greed, and spiritual emptiness. Kevin: It makes you wonder how many other stories are just... gone. The book mentions so many people who died in Europe, buried in unmarked graves, their names erased from the parish records. Michael: It's a haunting thought. The author, Pennock, ends with a powerful reflection on this. She talks about the ongoing efforts by Indigenous communities to repatriate ancestral remains and sacred objects from European museums—an attempt to heal what they call an "open wound." She urges us, as readers and as people, to "look harder" for these traces and, most importantly, to listen to the voices of their descendants. Kevin: It’s a history that’s not really in the past. It’s still being lived and negotiated today. Michael: Exactly. It’s a call to recognize that these aren't just footnotes in European history. These are central characters in a shared global story that we are only now beginning to understand fully. Kevin: Absolutely. And for our listeners, what’s one story from this book that will stick with you? The Tupinambá elder's wisdom, Manteo's signature, the refusal to bow? Let us know on our socials. We’d love to hear what resonated. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.