{
  "id": "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-1607",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo (1607)",
  "summary": "A Dominican who had lived nine years in Peru and afterwards in New Spain took one question — where the peoples of the Americas came from — and answered it by a method rather than a thesis. He collected every opinion he could find, argued each in the voice of its own author, printed the objections against it, and for a long time refused to give a verdict of his own. Pressed by learned readers, he gave one that no single-origin theory allowed: many nations, many routes, many arrivals, many times.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "books",
    "ethnography",
    "anthropology",
    "peru",
    "new-spain",
    "method",
    "printing",
    "americas"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acosta-historia-natural-y-moral-1590"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "inca-garcilaso-de-la-vega"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oviedo-historia-general-y-natural-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "clavijero-disertaciones-1780"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "munoz-historia-del-nuevo-mundo-1793"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "landa-relacion-de-las-cosas-de-yucatan"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "lopez-de-velasco-descripcion-de-las-indias-1574"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "perez-de-ribas-triunfos-de-nuestra-santa-fee-1645"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mendoza-historia-del-gran-reyno-de-la-china-1585"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pane-relacion-de-las-antiguedades-de-los-indios"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who wrote the first systematic survey of theories about the origin of the American peoples?",
    "What did Gregorio Garcia conclude about where the Indians came from?",
    "How did Spanish writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries argue about the peopling of the Americas?",
    "What is the Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The volume read here is the second impression, printed at Madrid by Francisco Martinez Abad in 1729 under the title \"ORIGEN DE LOS INDIOS DE EL NUEVO MUNDO, E INDIAS OCCIDENTALES, AVERIGUADO CON DISCURSO DE OPINIONES por el Padre Presentado FR. GREGORIO GARCIA, de la Orden de Predicadores\", dedicated to Thomas Aquinas and issued \"CON PRIVILEGIO REAL\". The work first appeared at Valencia in 1607.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "That printing states its own distance from the first. The title page calls it \"SEGUNDA IMPRESION. ENMENDADA, Y AnADIDA DE ALGUNAS OPINIONES, o cosas notables, en maior prueba de lo que contiene\", and its margins carry references to authors who wrote long after the author's death. The 1607 edition was not seen for this object, so every wording below is attributed to the sheets of 1729 and not to 1607.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The author's standing rests on residence, and he says so plainly: \"Yo, aunque indigno de ser contado entre Autores tan graves, i honrados, estuve tambien en aquellas Partes; vivi en el Peru nueve Anos, adonde todo este Tiempo tuve grande curiosidad en ver, preguntar, oir, i saber casi infinitas cosas, que en aquella Tierra ai.\"",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Three questions had held him in particular: which kings governed Peru and what wars and events they had until the Spaniards came in; from what part the first settlers went to those lands; and whether the Gospel had been preached there in the time of the Apostles. He meant three books in one volume, began on the first, and after coming to New Spain and gathering spoken and written information found the material grown past one volume, so on reaching Spain he printed the second intention first.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The method is stated as a procedure, not a claim: \"Refiero muchas opiniones, con sus fundamentos, i racones, i pongo las objeciones, i dudas, que contra ellas se pueden ofrecer, con su respuesta, i solucion.\" He adds that where an opinion has a real author who held it, he has himself supplied further foundations, doubts, solutions and replies out of what he saw in Peru, New Spain, Tierra Firme and the islands.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The evidence he names is of three kinds: printed books; \"Relaciones escritas de mano\" treating those parts, China and the West Indies; and \"la Relacion vocal que tuve de los Indios, i Espanoles, asi Seculares, como Religiosos, i Clerigos, que viven en aquellas Tierras, i doctrinan a los Indios\". Oral testimony from Indians is entered as a source alongside the books.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The device that makes the book unusual is declared: \"en cada Opinion hablo en Nombre de su Autor, acomodandome a aquel parecer, i fortificandolo, como si fuera mio proprio\". Each hypothesis is put at its strongest by an advocate before it is attacked, and the author's own sentence is placed after all of them.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "He long refused to give that sentence, and the fourth of his reasons is an epistemic principle rather than modesty: the motive for holding an opinion true \"ha de proceder de racones, i fundamentos probables, i no de la autoridad de quien la tiene\", so that his own declaration would be an idle act — \"aunque Yo lo diga, no por eso sere creido, si las racones, i fundamentos no convencen\". The chapter closes the point with \"Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.\"",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "His first reason casts the reader, not the author, as the deciding party: as a court reporter sets out the process made by both litigating and contrary parties so that the judge may determine which has justice, so he had thought his obligation discharged by setting out the opinions \"para que el Lector, que ha de ser Juez de esta causa, juzgue qual le parece verdadera, i qual debe ser condenada por falsa\".",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "He relented under criticism, and records it: having communicated the book to learned men of good understanding, \"me dixeron, que esas racones que para mi tenian fuerca, para ellos eran de ninguna\", and they advised him to declare what he felt. A further reason given is that the work would otherwise stand \"imperfecta, informe, i manca\".",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The verdict, in chapter XXV of the fourth book, is plural: the Indians now in the West Indies and New World \"ni proceden de una Nacion, i Gente, ni a aquellas Partes fueron de sola una de las del Mundo Viejo, ni tampoco caminaron, o navegaron para alla los primeros Pobladores por el mismo camino, i viage, ni en un mismo tiempo, ni de una misma manera, sino que realmente proceden de diversas Naciones\" — some driven by storm, some navigating on purpose, some walking by land, some arriving by chance or driven by hunger or by neighbouring enemies, or following the hunt.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "Three foundations are given for that verdict, and the first is linguistic: to find among these Indians \"tanta variedad, i diversidad de Lenguas, de Leies, de Ceremonias, de Ritos, Costumbres, i Trages\"; second, the difficulty of believing that all came from a single part of the Old World by a single mode and manner of voyage; third, that customs, laws, rites and words of many different peoples are found among them.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The counterpoint is on the same page as the conclusion. The diverse nations he names are Carthaginians, the ten tribes that were lost, the people who settled or were sent to settle Ophir, the inhabitants of Plato's Atlantic island, Greeks, Phoenicians, Chinese and Tartars. The plural answer is therefore assembled out of scriptural and classical hypotheses that later evidence discarded; what survived of it is the shape of the argument and the linguistic premise, not the roster.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "He is explicit that on the mechanism he is not original. Of arrival by land, by people hunting for food, he writes \"que este es el discurso que hace el P. Acosta, acerca de este intento. Y asi en esto estamos conformes, i de un parecer\" — the land route that Acosta had argued in 1590 is adopted, not claimed.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c15",
      "text": "The index to the 1729 printing records, under the entry for the author, that he \"trabajo mucho en fundar la Opinion de ser los Indios descendientes de Judios\", that he did not wish to give his verdict on the origin of the Indians and why, and that he was advised to the contrary. The book's own apparatus thus preserves both his investment in a hypothesis and his reluctance to rule.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c16",
      "text": "The proemio carries two observations that belong to the history of natural knowledge rather than to the origin question: that those who went to the Indies found by experience that most of the land under the torrid zone is temperate and healthy, \"contra lo que dixeron, i ensenaron los Filosofos Antiguos\"; and that \"no todos los que han ido a las Indias andaban buscando Oro, i Plata: algunos huvo, que buscaban el Tesoro de la Ciencia\", holding that the greater riches, by the proverb \"Mas vale saber, que haver\".",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c17",
      "text": "The same survey is a witness to books that had not reached print. Of Juan de Betancos, who wrote a history of the origin, descent and succession of the Incas by order of viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, the proemio says \"aunque no salio a luz... Esta Historia tengo en mi poder, la qual me ha aiudado harto para este mi Libro\"; and Garcilaso Inca, \"Viznieto de Topa Inga, Rei legitimo del Peru\", is announced as having written a history of the kings of Peru still to appear.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c18",
      "text": "The enquiry is bounded by the institution that licensed it, and the author sets the boundary himself in the last sentence of the proemio: if any of the opinions should be against what the Church teaches, holds and believes, \"desde luego me sujeto a su correccion, i enmienda\". The free comparison of hypotheses runs inside a submission stated in advance.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-madrid-1729"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Where Garcia is mentioned in English at all, he is a curiosity — the friar who thought the Indians might be Jews, or Carthaginians, or Atlanteans — and the roster of discarded hypotheses is the whole of the story told. The 1729 sheets say something else, and they are opened here. They print the method before the conclusion: each opinion argued by an advocate, the objections printed against it, the author's verdict withheld on the stated ground that an opinion must be held for its reasons and not for the authority of whoever holds it, and the verdict itself plural rather than single. The same pages supply the cost without needing a critic: the plural answer is assembled from Ophir, the lost tribes and Plato's island; the index records how hard the author worked to found the Jewish descent; and the proemio submits every opinion in advance to the correction of the Church. That is a fuller and more interesting object than either the dismissal or a defence.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-10",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/garcia-origen-de-los-indios-1607",
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  "jsonld": {
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    "name": "Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo (1607)",
    "description": "A Dominican who had lived nine years in Peru and afterwards in New Spain took one question — where the peoples of the Americas came from — and answered it by a method rather than a thesis. He collected every opinion he could find, argued each in the voice of its own author, printed the objections against it, and for a long time refused to give a verdict of his own. Pressed by learned readers, he gave one that no single-origin theory allowed: many nations, many routes, many arrivals, many times.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/garcia-origen-de-los-indios-1607",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-10",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Origen de los Indios de el Nuevo Mundo, e Indias Occidentales, averiguado con discurso de opiniones (segunda impresion)",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo (1607)"
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}