The Tlingit and the Alien Culture

The Tlingit and the Alien Culture

The Tlingit had preserved in oral tradition an entirely recognizable and accurate account of their first, almost fully peaceable encounter with an alien culture. The account of Cowee, the Tlingit chief, shows that even is a preliterate culture a recognizable account of contact with an advanced civilization can be preserved for generations. If the Earth had been visited hundreds of thousands years ago by an advanced civilization, even if the contacted culture was preliterate, we might well expect to have some recognizable form of the encounter preserved. But there is not a single case in which a legend reliably dated from earlier pretechnological times can be understood only in terms of contacts with an extraterrestrial civilization.

If some day we make contact with a more advanced extraterrestrial civilization, will the encounter be largely peaceable, even if lacking a certain rapport, like that of the French among the Tlingit, or will it follow some more ghastly prototype, where the society that was a little more advanced utterly destroyed the society that was technically more backward?

In the early sixteen century a high civilization flourished in central Mexico. The Aztecs had monumental architecture, elaborate record-keeping, exquisite art and astronomical calendar superior to that of any in Europe. Upon viewing the Aztec artifacts returned by the first Mexican measure ships, the artist Albrecht Durer wrote in August 1520: “I have never seen anything therefore that has so rejoiced my heart. I have seen a sun entirely of gold a whole fathom broad fin fact, the Aztec astronomical calendar; likewise a moon entirely of silver, equally large, also two chambers full of all sorts of weapons, armor and other wonderous arms, all of which is fairer to see than marvels”.

A Gorgeous Elf. Image by Elena

Intellectuals were stunned at the Aztec books, “which, one of them said, almost resemble those of the Egyptians”. Henan Cortez described their capital Tenochtitlan as “one of the most beautiful cities in the world”. The people’s activities and behavior are on almost as high a level as in Spain, and as well-organized and orderly. Considering that these people are barbarous, lacking knowledge of God and communication with other civilized nations, it is remarkable to see all that they have”. Two years after writing these words, Cortes utterly destroyed Tenochtitlan along with the rest of the Aztec civilization.

Here is an Aztec account:

Moctezuma, the Aztec Emperor, was shocked, terrified by what he heard. He was much puzzled by their food, but what made him almost faint away was the telling of how the great Lombard gun, at the Spaniards’ command, expelled the shot which thundered as it went off. The noise weakened one, dizzied one. Something like a stone came out of it in a shower of fire and sparks. The smoke was foul; it had a sickening, fetid smell. As the shot, which stuck a mountain, knocked it to bits – dissolved it. It reduced a tree to sawdust. The tree disappeared as if they had blown it away. When Moctezuma was told all this, he was terror-struck. He felt faint. His heart failed him.