ART on view mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta for centuries, 84 resisted enslavement and domination by the Spanish during the Conquest. At the time of Father Romero’s arrival more than one hundred years later, their communities were still experiencing severe religious and cultural oppression by government and religious officials. After leaving Colombia with the carvings and masks and conveying them to the pope, Romero published Llanto sagrado de la América meridional in Milan in 1693. The book detailed his missionary work among the “Aruacos Nation Indians who live in the mountains of Santa Martha.”5 It included a woodcut (fig. 5) that represents the five works he had taken to the pope. They are clearly recognizable in the print, though at present it is not known if Romero actually obtained them from the same location or even if they had any direct relationship to each other. In his essay, “Destrucción de templos indígenas en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta: siglo XVII,” Carlos Alberto Uribe details the life of Romero, including his ordination as a priest in Lima and subsequent missionary work.6 It includes transcriptions from a notarized document in the Archivo des Indias in Seville, Spain, that reveal important details about Romero’s destruction of ten “marias” (temples) in 1691.7 Religious practices are described and a wide range of objects and offerings in the temples are referenced, including: “idols,” flutes, featherwork, stone carvings, clothing, adornments, gold, silver, and “instruments of idolatry.”8 At the first temple, it was reported that the missionaries removed three wooden “idols”—two of unknown figures and one with a face unrecognizable in form (de formas no conocidas) before they destroyed the structure.9 This description could relate to the zoomorphic wooden supports and figure now in the Vatican. They might have been significant to Romero as the first works—or at least among the few— he obtained in the foray. As word spread about Romero’s advancing party, it was recorded that he found no “idols” in some of the other temples when he arrived.10 Other works continued to be added to the collection of the Propaganda Fide over time. Among these was a wampum belt (fig. 7) attributed to the mission community of the Lake of Two Mountains region in Quebec, Canada, and given in 1831 to Pope Gregory XVI (r.1831–1846). Almost ten thousand wampum (small purple and white tubular beads made from quahog shells) were woven on a weft of fiber and warps of fine leather strips to create this belt. From the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, wampum beads, bands, and belts were used as important ceremonial and diplothe pope’s gift by the Lake of Two Mountains mission. Written records do not provide details about this object’s maker or specific cultural affiliation. In the nineteenth century, the Lake of the Two Mountains region was a community of Christian converts from numerous Native American language and cultural groups. Several of these were associated with the belt when it arrived in Rome, including the Algonquin, Nipissing, and Iroquois.13 Despite the related documentation, according to Father Mapelli, the iconography of this belt and its provenance are disputed, making it one of the most studied objects in the Vatican’s ethnological collection.14 The Micmac Nation of Canada attributes the belt to a seventeenth century treaty with the Holy See.15 The specific meaning of the belt’s designs is not recorded. However, Becker identifies the Vatican belt as the last in a series of religious wampum belts that date back to the 1650s.16 As Catholic missions became established globally, religious artworks and cultural objects from convert communities were sent to the Propaganda Fide in greater numbers as testaments of complete religious conversion to Catholicism and the success of the missions and of individual missionaries. In many places, objects were deliberately saved for this purpose from the fires that consumed pantheons of gods and ancestors in material form. Three such images from the Gambier Islands in the middle of the South Pacific are among the most well- FIG. 7: Detail of wampum belt with two figures, probably a missionary and a Native American. Culture uncertain, Lake of Two Mountains, Quebec, Canada. Before 1831. Shell, cotton, leather. Conveyed to Pope Gregory XVI in 1831. Ethnological Museum, Vatican, inv. #107525. Photo by Scott McCue. FIG. 8 (near right): Figure of the god Tu. Mangareva Island, Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Before 1836. Wood. Conveyed by Fr. François Caret to the Order of Picpus Mission in 1836, from there to the Vatican Universal Missionary Exhibition of 1925. Ethnological Museum, Vatican, inv. #100189. FIG. 9 (far right): Eketea for evoking the god Tu. Akamaru Island, Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Before 1836. Wood. Conveyed by Fr. François Caret to the Order of Picpus Mission in 1836, from there to the Vatican Universal Missionary Exhibition of 1925. Ethnological Museum, Vatican, inv. #100183. matic gifts by indigenous Americans of the Northeast. Fewer than 300 wampum bands and belts created before 1835 are now extant.11 The Vatican example is extremely long and represents a significant investment of time and resources in the form of the manufacture of shell beads, whether by hand or rudimentary machine.12 An extensive study of the belt by Marshall Joseph Becker utilizing early nineteenth-century records from the Diario di Roma compiled by Dr. Giovanni Pizzorusso details the arrival of the belt in Rome, Pope Gregory XVI’s reciprocal gift sent in response, and acknowledgement of
I-IVCoverT68 E_CoverF Vuvi
To see the actual publication please follow the link above