In West-Indien. 257

Title

In West-Indien. 257

The picture shows the ceremony of the deceased of the Indians (for example of the Macushi tribe) in Venezuela at the river Orinoco.

ca. 1620

Artist

Bry, de - Merian (1528-1598)

In 1631, Matthäus Merian and Johann Ludwig Gottfried published Historia Antipodum, a heavily abridged, single-volume version of Theodor De Bry’s 14-part America series. After De Bry’s death, his sons continued the project. Merian, a skilled engraver, later married De Bry’s daughter and collaborated with Gottfried. The Historia Antipodum reorganized numerous travel accounts into three chapters covering nature, exploration, and recent colonial developments. Merian and Gottfried significantly reworked the content, merging reports and integrating illustrations into the text. Their depiction of the natural world and Indigenous cultures—drawing in part on José de Acosta’s writings—was particularly influential. The book stands as one of the most ambitious works of early modern travel literature.

Historical Description

In pre-Columbian times, Indian groups, nomadic hunters and gatherers as well as fishermen and farmers lived in Venezuela. Christopher Columbus reached the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498 and landed at the mouth of the Orinoco River. It was the first time that he and his team had entered mainland America. On August 24, 1499, an expedition by Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci followed, which supposedly gave the country the name Venezuela (Little Venice) because of the frequent use of stilt houses. The first permanent settlement of the Spaniards called Nueva Cadiz was founded in 1522. From 1528 to 1545, the province of Venezuela was pledged by Charles V to the Welser family, who ran the Little Venice colony during this period. The current capital, Caracas, was founded in 1567, and in 1577 the Spanish crown appointed a governor to administer it.The colony was rather neglected by the Spaniards in the 16th and 17th centuries, since they concentrated on gold from other parts of America. The cultivation of cocoa, sugar, tobacco, coffee and cotton resulted in a large number of slaves being brought to Venezuela, which, after much of the native culture had been largely destroyed, influenced the culture in Venezuela. From 1797 to 1821 there were repeated attempts to detach New Granada, whose sub-region was Venezuela, from Spanish rule. In 1821 Simón Bolívar managed to bring the wars of independence to a victorious end in Venezuela.