6 Accounts of contemporary historians that describe Chinese in the New World

Accounts of contemporary historians that describe Chinese in the New World

Accounts of contemporary historians
(a) Descriptions of Chinese – worldwide

(b) Chinese already in the New World when the first Europeans arrived:
Key Bibliography – Additional to that contained in 1421

Recent findings (Feb. 2005 – )

The Records of the Virginia Company of London, compiled by Susan Myra Kingsbury, in four volumes, Washington, 1906-1935. Volume III, pages 547, 548 contain information extracted from letters sent to the Company by the Governor and Treasurer at the Virginia Colony in March, 1621.  The following portion is provided verbatim (with substitution of j for I and v for u where appropriate): “… Furthermore they write that in a voyage made by Lieutenant Marmaduke Parkinson, and other English Gentlemen, up the River of Patomack they saw a China Boxe at one of the Kings houses where they were: Being demanded where he had it, made answer, That it was sent him from a King that dwelt in the West, over the great Hills, some tenne dayes journey, whose Countrey is near a great Sea, hee having the Boxe, from a people as he said, that came thither in ships, that weare cloaths, crooked swords, & somewhat like our men, dwelt in houses and were called Acamack-China: and he offered our people, that he would send his Brother along with them to that King, which offer the Governor purposed not to refuse; and the rather, by reason of the continued constant relations of all those Savages in VIRGINIA, of a Sea, and the way to it West, they affirming that the heads of all those seven goodly Rivers, (the least whereof is greater then the River of Thames, and navigable above an hundred and fifty miles, and not above sixe or eight miles one from another) which fall all into one great Bay, have the rising out of a ridge of hills, that runnes all along South and North; Whereby they doubt not but to find a safe, easie, and good passage to the South Sea, part by water, and part by land, esteeming it not above an hundred and fifty miles from the head of the Falls, where we are now planted; the Discovery whereof will bring forth a most rich trade to Cathay, China, Japan, and those other of the East Indies, to the inestimable benefit of this Kingdom..”. This seems to be tantalizing evidence of North American Indian contact with Chinese explorers – Aleck Loker

We are keen to study accounts of Jewish travellers from the fifteenth century. Large deposits of Chinese porcelain and other objects have been found at Ardebil in modern Iran which date back to the Sassanid period and earlier. There has been a documented Jewish presence in Iran/Persia for centuries. It is therefore logical to assume that even before Jews actually settled in China proper that Chinese traders would have encountered Jews. Jews have lived in China for centuries. The centre of Jewish life and culture in medieval China was the city of Kaifeng, which was apparently settled by Persian Jews. Towards the end of the 19th Century many Chinese Jewish manuscripts were found there by Western scholars. These writings were in medieval Persian and Judeo-Persian (similar in linguistic function, although not in structure, grammar, or etymology, to Yiddish among Western European Jews until the early 18th Century and among Central and Eastern European Jews until 1933-45). A large collection of these Sino-Jewish materials from Kaifeng are (or were) in the library of the Jerusalem Campus of the Hebrew Union College. We are keen to hear if anyone has studied these texts for reference to Chinese voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century? – Ron Lahav

Descriptions of men who fought in colonial days described as having “yellow complexions” – Melungeon research – Helen Campbell

Northern Nigeria – we have had our attention drawn to “the tribe with Chinese names”. Like many minor tribes they had no written culture of their own. However their names when written in English would look perfectly normal in Hong Kong; the spelling is identical because many Nigerian languages are tonal like Chinese. Like every tribe in Nigeria there was folklore about their peculiar cultural habits. Most shocking to most Nigerians was that they ate dogs, a custom which was absolutely taboo to most Nigerians. Also whereas most Nigerians eat food which is highly spiced with chilli, this tribe used ginger – Bob Chard

Hispaniola –  When Columbus first landed in Hispaniola, he confronted a tradition about cannibals that had arrived on the island and sought slaves to capture. They were said to belong to the rule of “el Gran Can”, in Spanish, or “the Great Kahn”, who is now considered by historians simply to be a mythical king invented by the natives. The reader wonders if this could be a reference to the Chinese landing at the same place in 1421/2, since they might still have called the Chinese Emperor the Great Kahn as an hereditary title even though, by then, the Mongol dynasty (from whence the title “Kahn” comes) had been replaced by the Ming? (Professor Peter L.P. Simpson)

Nova Scotia – According to Walsingham’s record of David Ingram’s account of his experiences: Ingram had sailed with John Hawkins in 1567 on Hawkins’ third expedition privateering for Queen Elizabteh (and himself) in the New World. His ships were surprised by a Spanish fleet off Veracruz and lost all but two ships. The survivors were picked up but after a few days Hawkins decided the ships were dangerously overcrowded and he put “some” men ashore on the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico, saying he’d come back for them next year.

What happened to most of them is unknown. Ingram and two others headed north together, convinced they wouldn’t survive where they were. They were trying to get to the NE of mainland America where they probably knew Brit and European ships were exploring and trading. They walked for 11 months through one Indian tribe after another, finally reaching Nova Scotia and a French ship, which took them back to Emgland. Walsingham’s account was included by Hakluyt in his ‘Voyages’, but H. removed it from later editions apparently because he thought Ingram had fabricated some things that were ‘incredible.’ But for 1421 purposes, Ingram’s relevant assertion is made more likely true by Walsingham’s, as you’ll see; and Walsingham’s is supported by a log from one of Coronado’s captains.

At the end of his account, Walsingham says that, when Ingram finally reached the sea (the Atlantic), probably not too far from Nova Scotia, Indians there indicated they had seen big ships along that coast; they drew a picture of the outline of the ship. W’ham doesn’t say what the ship looked like, but his next words make it clear. (And remember, the overwhelming interest of the northern European countries at this time was to find a Northwest Passage through to China and the Spice Islands.)

He says that the kind of ship Ingram recognized from the drawing was proof that there actually was a NW Passage, because “It was agreeable to the experience of Vasquez de Coronado, which found a shippe of China…upon the northwest of America.” That is, in the general area where one would expect to find the east end of a NW Passage, the Indian had seen and drawn what Ingram recognized as a Chinese junk. And in 1540, a Spaniard in Coronado’s fleet had seen a Chinese ship about where the west end of the Passage should be. Therefore, according to W’ham’s logic, the Chinese ship spotted on the east coast obviously got there by sailing through the Passage from the west coast, rather than sailing around the world to get there, and the presence of the Chinese ship at about the same latitude on the west coast was just further evidence of the Passage.

This indicates that not only were the Chinese familiar with both coasts of the US, but also that despite the Emperor’s (or eunuchs’) edict suspending all foreign trade after Zheng He’s voyage, there were still some junks doing some trading in places he or others had found before.

The log that recorded  the junk sighting is mentioned on  page 238 of the paperback edition; Hernando de Alarcon. It may be that Alarcon’s log no longer exists: the citation is by Walsingham, Elizabeth’s ‘Director of Central Intelligence,’ and he had agents buying every voyage account he could, especially Spanish and Portuguese. So he may have seen a document that no longer exists. (Rob Schwab)

California – A reader, anon, talks of Donald Cutter’s The California Coast. At the end, Document 19, there is mention of a journal by Father Crespi about a Spanish sailing ship going up the California coast, trying to land to get water in the vicinity of Monterey. The ship was stuck offshore due to unfavourable breezes and poor visibility caused by fog. The journal, written in 1774, on dates July 20-22, gives a lengthy description of people who canoed over to the ship. Among other things mentioned, these people wore copper and iron rings. Their hats were conical, and brimmed. They brought fine woven mats like those the sailors had seen in China and the Philippines over to the ship and some of them had beards.

Europe
In a book entitled Crónica o llibre dels feits del rei en Jacme (Book of the acts of King James (1208 – 1276)) there is an account of the king having received an Embassy from the Great Khan in 1267. An excerpt from Chapter 457 reads:
“… And, when we were come from Montpelier we went to Perpinyà… and arrived in this same day a message from the King of the Tartars. And we say that about this we were very honoured, because in that day had been come letter of the highest king of the world with a lot of love…” It appears that this diplomatic contact was made at the initiative of Kubilai Khan. All this information is confirmed in several documents and chronicles. One of them is Jerónimo Zurita in his Anales de Aragón, written in 1562, in the Book III, Chapter LXXI and LXXIV. In the last Chapter he explains: “… In the history of the king [James I] it seems that several times he received embassies of the Tartars; and in the year 1260 he has wanted to pass with his navy to that parts against the people of the Tartars, when I conjecture, because the wars that there were within this nation and his king, been requested for the Great Khan…”

Zurita explains after that James I collected 15.000 marks of silver to pay for this expedition to help Kubilai Khan in this revolt. But he does not say if this expedition actually went ahead. Does this mean that there were normal and relatively frequent diplomatic contacts between Kubilai Khan, and James I of Catalonia and perhaps with his predecessors also? Translation and research courtesy of Carles Camp i Perez

Ireland
In Giles Milton’s The Riddle and the Knight; In Search of Sir John Mandeville from page 219 a reader quotes: “Columbus… when he heard that two oriental sailors had been washed up from a shipwreck on the coast of Ireland, he scribbled into the margin of one of his books: ‘men have come eastward from Cathay. We have seen many a remarkable thing, and particularly in Galway, in Ireland, two persons hanging on to two wreck planks, a man and a woman…’” – Raymond Bowen