#malitzin

Video on Sacagawea^

Sacagawea’s story reminds me in some ways of what happened in Mexico with Malitzin (her being captured and/or some say betrayed by indigenous peoples and sold/married off to colonizers. And how, in a position of servitude-slavery-concubine, separation from their home tribes, and illness, they played a monumental role in translating, navigating land and water, caretaking, showing colonizers the landscape to be mapped for conquest—and then dying at an unnaturally young age for Native Americans on average, sacrificing their lives almost against their will as a result of their predicament and helping settlers with, in hindsight, obviously ulterior motive$).

NYHistory.org (link) on Malitzin: “throughout the conquest, no matter how much power she seemed to have, Malintzin was enslaved. She had to serve the interests of her enslaver, or risk death at his hands. She may have had very little affection for the society that had enslaved and ruthlessly exploited her since childhood. It is impossible to know for certain what Malintzin’s motivations were. She left no written record. But when considering her story, it is important to keep all the circumstances of her life in mind.”