Mermaids and Monstrous Fishes in the Historia general del reino de Chile, Flandes Indiano (1674), by Diego de Rosales

Abstract

The chronicle Historia general del reino de Chile, Flandes Indiano (1674), written by Jesuit Diego de Rosales, provides an interesting catalogue of real and fabulous marine beings. One of them, the Pincoy, not only has features that relate it to the mermaid, but in a certain sense it seems like an American version of the Nicolao fish, known in European tradition. This reinforces the survival of the medieval heritage during the first stage of the America’s conquest, which continued well into the 17th century. The timid emergence of a precarious scientific method in this pre-Enlightenment era is not enough to eliminate problematic cases such as those presented in this work. On the other hand, European humanists tended to situate the setting for fabulous beings at the limits of the known world, and Chile, with its distance from the metropolis, its geographical isolation, and its proximity to terra incognita, was an extremely attractive territory for the location of this type of fabulous beings.