Canaria, wrote that “there was not even a single trace of Hebrew, or custom, or
rite, or idiom” that would support the theory that the tribes ever landed in the
islands.^96 In the case of the earlier instance, not only sophisticated ethnogra-
phy, but also plain geography helps de Galindo’s refutation:
Although Esdras says that [the] ten tribes went to distant regions after
being deported, one must consider what he also says namely, that the
journey took a year and a half. If we compute the leagues from the city
of Nineveh, which was the principal and metropolitan [center] of the
Assyrians, to these islands of the Canaries, there are 1435 leagues, or a
bit more or less. Now, counting seven league[s] of journey for each day,
there are 250 days of journey that one has to do in this respect from
the city of Nineveh to the Canary Islands. However, Esdras says that
the journey took a year and a half which means that they went much
farther [than the Canaries].... in this we have for sure a proof that
Israelites who were deported are Indians that were discovered in New
Spain and all over that land and not those [natives] of these Canaries.^97
Here, in the strict demand that geography fit prophetic text, we have
perhaps the clearest example of theology and geographical imagination at
work. The Canary Islands were not the land of the ten lost tribes. They are
simply too close to Nineveh.
Speculations about a possible relationship between the Canaries and
the missing tribes surfaced as soon as the Spanish began colonizing them,
before Columbus’s voyages farther into the Atlantic and before the discovery of
the Americas. From early in the Age of Discovery, the possibility of finding the
tribes loomed large. De Galindo’s commentary on the length of the journey
from Nineveh to the Canary Islands related to the big questions: was this they,
and were the Americas their home? An affirmative answer in turn raised
another: what had led the ten tribes to leave their traditional locations in Asia
and eastern Africa and migrate to the Americas?
The theory of Canary Islanders as ten tribers was ultimately abandoned
not only for the absence of supporting evidence, but also because a better
candidate was discovered—American Indians. Unlike the natives of the Canar-
ies, the “Mexican Indians” were said to have many traces of Hebrew and
Israelite ritual, and the Mexican language had many Hebrew words. Many
Indians practiced circumcision, and like the Jews, they often bathed in rivers.
The Indians also held to “many other Jewish rites and ceremonies.” Even the
existence of sorcerers among them was marshaled as evidence: “we know from
sacred scripture that the Israelites had many sorcerers who worshipped the
idol of the Baal.” De Galindo even offered an explanation as to why America,