Garcı ́a was very familiar with both Zaltieri’s map and Maldonado’s descrip-
tion of the straits; he referenced both in his narrative. Perhaps he also was
attracted by the comment on the “rapid” tides that governed them, which
may have struck him as a possible allusion to the River Sambatyon’s mythic
behavior. Using Ortelius’s map, which places Arzareth on the Asian side of
the straits, he was able to come up with a plausible trajectory leading the ten
tribes all the way to New Spain. The path he proposed also explains some of
the American Indians’ rites and customs. On their way from Arzareth to the
kingdom of Anian, the ten tribes, he asserts, “picked up some customs and rites
observed in that kingdom and province.” Careful to provide a complete picture
of the possible paths to America, Garcı ́a also discusses the Greenland routes,
providing a review of several suggestions put forth by other scholars, among
them Ge ́nebrard, who “[m]aintains that Arzareth is [in] Grand Tartary... that
as it is said in Esdras it is across the river Euphrates. [The ten tribes] went
to the deserts of Tartary and from there to that land towards the Island
of Greenland, because in that part it is said that America is not surrounded
by sea and in other parts it is enclosed by the sea and is almost an island.”^130
Thus, we have at least three paths the ten tribes could have taken to
America: Atlantis, the Straits of Anian, and Greenland. In toto, Garcı ́a’s
argumentation is an illustration of the various exercises in global geography
that the ten tribes triggered. They involved early modern geography as well as
scripture. Once one sought to establish the existence of the ten tribes in
America, one had to deal with the question of their route there. Simply saying
that God, or an angel, or Jesus performed some miracles en route was not
enough. With the existence of “accurate” maps and a growing scientific/
geographic culture, one had to sketch the trajectory as clearly as possible. As
geographical knowledge of the world expanded and was recorded on increas-
ingly accurate maps, the exercise had to make geographical sense.
This mode of argumentation peaked in 1681 with Diego Andre ́’s Rocha, a
physician from Lima who had served in different capacities in Spanish Ameri-
ca. Rocha’s lengthyTratado U ́nico y Singular del Origen de los Indiosis indeed
unique and singular—covering all peoples from “Santa Fe” in the north
through “Mexico and Peru to Chile.” Rocha, “an ardent Spanish patriot,” as
his nineteenth-century editor dubbed him, makes the argument that the
Americans’ ancestors were descendants of “ancient inhabitants of Spain in
the first place, and of the Israelites and Tartars in the second.”^131
Rocha’s problem was how to explain differences among the Native Amer-
icans, particularly differences that made some “very valiant” while others were
not. His solution was simple: the “valiant” Native Americans were descendants
of the ancient Iberians; the others were either Tartars or Israelites.^132 Following
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