The ancestors of
the populations that the Europeans found settled in America came there in waves
from Siberia through the strait of Bering and took thousands of years to reach the southern end.
The information that we have about the
footwear worn by these peoples originates from the study of archeological finds:
sculptures, paintings, vases and also from organic materials that, buried in the
tombs, are still in a good state due to the very dry climate in these areas.
THE OLMECOS (abt. 5.000 BCE - 800 C E) It's the
oldest documented Amerindian civilization and all the other mes-American pre-Columbian
cultures derive from it.
It was settled on the southern coasts of the Gulf of
Mexico and in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, but it has also left traces
in Guatemala and Salvador.
The people portrayed in some statuettes discovered in
a necropolis excavated near the village of Xochiapa in Mexico wear a helmet, a loincloth and a kind of boot and some anthropologists think
that these clothes are typical of ball players.
THE MAYAN (abt. 2.000 BCE - 1.546 CE) They, undoubtedly,
were the most civilized people among those pre-Columbian as they knew the scripture, they had worked out a very complex numerical
system, they were extraordinary builders and their calendar vas very exact.
Unfortunately we know very little about their origins
and little is known to us of their artistic and literary production owing to the destructive fury of the Spanish who destroyed a large number of their works
for being pagan.
They lived in Guatemala and in Yucatan and it seems
that they did not tan the hides with which they made their footwear above all sandals with a leather sole laced to the leg with
small hemp ropes which were often decorated with skins, plumes and gold.
THE AZTECS (abt. 1.000 CE - 1.525 CE) They were
warlike people coming from the south west areas of the current U.S.A. that went into Mexico driven out by stronger tribes; there
the tribe of the Mexicas settled on some islands on Texcoco lake, there founded their capital Tenochtitlan in about 1.325 CE and
were able to conquer vast territories after battles followed by the ritual sacrifice of the prisoners of
war.
When they came into contact with the Spanish of H.Cortez,
they were
defeated, their capital were occupied and the king Montezuma II was captured and died in captivity.
The little that we know about their tanning technique has been handed
down from the Spanish bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas in his "History of the conquest of the Indies" in which he reveals how the
Aztecs tanned the hides better than the Spanish and how they knew how to dye them with various colors; it is believed that they
used vegetables dyes like indigo or quebracho and animal dyes like cochineal.
Also for them footwear was a symbol of social prestige;
the poor habitually walked barefoot, but the notables wore sandals
with soles of leather or interlaced vegetable fibers such as yucca, called "Coatli"
(see picture n.°39).
The "Coatli" of the rich and the king had
solid gold, feather and stained skin appliqués decorations.
The warriors used the "Cozehuatl",
sandals joined to a kind of legging that protected the knee; this was
justified by the fact that the Aztec warriors in battle did not aim to kill
their enemies but take them prisoner after crippling them by
hitting them on the legs so they could them sacrifice to their
bloodthirsty gods.
THE INCAS (abt.
1.200 CE - 1.532.CE) They were a small tribe situated in the area of Cuzco (Perù)
that, in the course of a few generations, were able to conquer a territory that
spread from Colombia to Chile, bounded to the east by the Andes range.
Their decline began in 1.532 when the Spanish, led by
Francisco Pizarro, disembarked at Tumbes in the north of Perù and on reaching the resort of Caxamarca, managed to take prisoner, by trickery, the
king, the Inca Atahualpa who in 1.533 was executed by them not before having extorted an enormous ransom
in gold and precious stones.
We don't know much about tanning and the dyeing of leathers used
for shoe making since the Incas did not know scripture.
They prevalently used sandals (see picture n.°40) with
interlaced agave fiber soles and llama skin uppers and a kind of boot, which covered the knee, with an llama skin upper.
The women from the royal family also used gold
ankle boots.
THE PATAGONIANS They
were people who, at the arrival of the Spanish, occupied the entire southern part
of Argentine, but, at present, are reduced to a few individuals; they bravely
resisted to all the attempts to subject them and had rare contact with the Europeans.
They are very tall and were in the habit of
wrapping their feet with guanaco hides to protect them from the cold, so
the Spanish, seeing their footprints in the snow and deducing that they were
gigantic men, named them "Patagones" = " with big feet".
Magellan, during his round-the-world voyage, in 1.520
sheltered with his fleet in a bay of Patagonia where he met a native who
Pigafetta described in his journal asserting that he wore "Albarde" a
kind of footwear similar to the "Ciocie".
Darwin affirmed that they wore moccasins filled with grass
as an insulator from the cold and De Bougainville, in his round -the world
voyage of 1.768, wrote that they wore horse skin ankle boots open at the
heel.
39
40
in order to know something else about native peoples of Mexico and the south of
America....
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