Ramón Pané's account: the first ethnography of the Americas
Relación de Ramón Pané: la primera etnografía de América
- Date
- c. 1494-1498 · confidence medium
- Place
- Vega Real, La Vega, Dominican Republic
- Credited to
- Friar Ramón Pané, Hieronymite hermit
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Between 1494 and 1498 Pané lived among the Taíno of Hispaniola and learned their language; he wrote an account of their myths, zemis and the cohoba ceremony (inhalation of a hallucinogen). It is the first study of the beliefs of an American people.
The original was lost; it survives in Fernando Columbus's Historia del almirante and in an Italian translation of 1571. Pané's exact location varies between sources (Magdalena, Concepción de la Vega, Vega Real).
What it led to
- an almost unique source on Taíno mythology and religion
- origin of the term 'cohoba' and of descriptions of ritual use of plant substances
- a precedent for the ethnography of American chroniclers