To the Land of the Mistogoches: American Indians Traveling to Europe in the Age of Exploration

[T]hey had observed that there were men amongst us, full and gorged with all kinds of good things, and that their [compatriots] were begging at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty; and that they thought it strange how these have-nots could suffer such injustice,and that they did not seize the others by the throat or set fires to their houses." -Montaigne writing about the observations of Tupinambh visiting Rouen, 1562 By the time English Pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower landed on the shore of Massachusetts in 1620, perhaps as many as two thousand American Indians had already made the passage to Western Europe. About two-thirds went as captives, usually sold as slaves, but, of these unfortunates, almost all went to Europe before 1500 A.D. Although Indian slaving continued afterwards, few of the subsequent transatlantic voyages with Indians on board involved people destined for the slave markets of Spain and Portugal. Indeed, the vast majority of the voyages after 1500 A.D. were made by American Indians who traveled for other reasons-as adventurers, envoys, sightseers, or performers. As far as we know, they did not write down their observations. However, the Europeans with whom they had contact sometimes did. On the basis of ships' logs, merchant reports, travel accounts, and other historical records, we can usually determine their ethnic identities