Caroline Dodds Pennock is the author of the book On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe. She is a senior lecturer in international history at the University of Sheffield, and she lives in Sheffield, UK.
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
A: I started many years ago as a historian of Indigenous Mexico. I wondered why there was so much more about Europeans going West than about Indigenous peoples going East. There were really large numbers starting from 1493, yet that was rarely part of the discussion we had. I wanted to change that with this book.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: Originally it was going to be a specialist book about Central American travelers to Spain. It took time, and as it marinated in my mind, I realized it was a bigger story. I started working on the transnational aspect—the U.S. East Coast, Canada, Brazil.
I am not the first person to do this some of this research, but I went back to primary sources wherever I could. Other scholars had written about some of the Indigenous travellers and knowledge keepers and descendants were aware of them. It was a question of putting things together.
We see not just Indigenous foods, material culture, and wealth going to Europe, but Indigenous people as part of the mobility happening in that period.
It’s important to go to the primary sources and often my work was in piecing together stories people had told separately.
The surprise was in the sheer range of places and roles and numbers. So many Indigenous people were brought to Europe as enslaved people. For example, the wonderful Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade tracks African enslaved people but doesn’t mention Indigenous peoples.
There’s an awareness of a domestic trade in enslaved Indigenous people, but the transatlantic travel is often neglected. Because enslavement was illegal for the majority of people in this period, it’s hard to tell how many came. We know that just Christopher Columbus brought 3,000 legally enslaved Indigenous people, so there must have been many more.
For me, the range of places and spaces you see Indigenous peoples was surprising, including a large number of diplomats at court. We have people like the “Brazilian king” at the Tudor court. People were brought out as so-called “curiosities.” A Tupi village was even set up on the Seine. It was the ubiquity of it that surprised me.
It also surprised me how few people knew about it. With the Brazilian king at the Tudor court, even some specialists were unaware of this. Some stories were buried in the archives, some were published—and still most people don’t know about it.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: My husband came up with the title. He’s good at titles. There’s a side reference to The Fatal Shore. I wanted to flip the perspective.
Savage is a racial slur, so I was very careful to speak to Indigenous friends and colleagues—I felt in the end it was a deliberate way to flip the script: Why have there so often been historical assumptions that Indigenous people were “savages,” which of course they were and are not.
I’m also not arguing that everything in Europe was savage, I’m talking about perspectives. I try not to use the word too much in the book, because of its sensitivity. But Indigenous people came to Europe and were horrified by some of the things they found. They were impressed in some ways. But in some ways—they see children ruling, parents beating children, and enormous inequities of wealth.
I wanted to take on the idea of perspective, why we take on assumptions.
Q: A review of the book in The Guardian by David Olusoga says, “On Savage Shores is a work of historical recovery. It paints these marginalised figures back on to history’s canvas, complicating familiar narratives of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery.’” What do you think of that description?
A: I was very fortunate that David Olusoga was kind enough to review the book. David’s work Black and British writes Black people back into British history—the way Indigenous people are in this book. It’s a project of recovery—putting back into a broader narrative the people whose lives were erased. Then it becomes a bigger canvas. Recovery is where it starts.
Q: Another review, from Kirkus, calls the book a “convincing history of Indigenous peoples’ deep integration into—and surprising influence on—European politics and culture.” How would you describe that integration and influence?
A: It’s often really difficult to track that influence. It’s quite clear when assumptions are made about the intermediaries bringing the culture—but it was the Indigenous people themselves. Walter Ralegh is frequently credited with bringing tobacco and potatoes to England—but we know that tobacco and potatoes were in Europe decades before Ralegh even thought of going to the Americas. I wanted to remove those intermediaries.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: It was a period where Indigenous people were very much a part of the mobility and the new world of contact. They were not only victims but migrants, agents, ambassadors. I hope it would challenge your image of that period in history.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Teaching. I’m between projects. I’m working on the translation of this book into French and Spanish, and also Korean. I’m still communicating about this project. I’m working on an article on Brazilian travelers to Paris a couple of decades later. I’m trying to make this story known on a wider level.
For any Indigenous tribe, library, friendship center or similar organization, my American publisher will give a free copy to any Indigenous group that wants one. I’ve been so lucky to learn from Indigenous scholars. I want to share that knowledge if I can. The American paperback will be out in September.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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