Thus, the ten tribes’ road to America that culminated with Ge ́nebrard was
long and involved a mixture of geographical logic, early modern cartography,
theology, and mysticism. In Ge ́nebrard’s speculations, we see how all con-
verged, forcing searchers to ponder the physical shape of the world itself. Like
Ge ́nebrard, others suggested specific paths based on actual maps. In the
American context as well, this feature of the ten tribes’ geography would
become more pronounced in the debates about their route to America.
First Contact: The Canary Islands
The first encounter with the ten tribes begins not with America, but with an
earlier sighting of the Canary Islands, some 200 miles west of Africa, well
before Columbus’s journeys. The Spanish pondered if they had found the ten
tribes. The Canary Islands were not exactly a discovery (Europeans knew of
them at least since 1339 ), but they were certainly the first colonies of the
Spaniards. The Spanish conquest of the Canaries, which began in 1402 , took
a long time. Hugely significant in the development of Spanish maritime
activity, they provided a deep-water harbor in the Atlantic from which Spanish
ships sailed west. Their position within the Atlantic wind system was vital for
sailing. All of Columbus’s voyages began there.^93 In many respects, the people
of the Canaries were the Spaniards’ “first encounter” and Europe’s first “New
World,” or first “other world.”
A rare early history of the conquest of the Canaries, written before the end
of the sixteenth century by Friar Juan de Abreu de Galindo (b. 1535 ?), reports on
debates concerning the people of the Canaries and the ten lost tribes that took
place after the islands’ discovery. Opinions holding that the ten tribes came to
the Canaries have not survived, but are expressed in de Galindo’s history, where
they are refuted. According to one opinion, the ten tribes had been exiled to the
islands. The basis for this theory lies in Esdras’s prophecies, says de Galindo,
who reasons that, after their initial deportation, the captives received God’s
permission to go “much farther to a land never inhabited by people.” The
islands were chosen because they were not populated at the time. The tribes
came in order to populate them and to remain “concealed.”^94 In this regard, the
island fit the prophecy that, it is clear, de Galindo accepts as truth, though for
other reasons (the absence of traces of Hebrew language and customs), he
rejects them as home to the tribes.^95
Another history of the conquest of the Canaries, published much later (in
1772 ), suggests that the question of the ten tribes in the Canaries kept torment-
ing scholars. Jose ́de Viera y Clavijo ( 1731 – 1813 ), a botanist who settled in Gran