Editing Setebos (section)

== Setebos in the New World ==

In 1519 the Portuguese sailor  Ferdinand Magellan crossed the Atlantic on the first leg of his circumnavigation of the world. Near the southern tip of South America he encountered native people who were described by the Italian who accompanied the expedition, [[Antonio Pigafetta]] (1480–1534), as “Patagoni”.<ref>{{cite book |last=Morison |first=Samuel Eliot |date=1974 |title=The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492-1616 |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=366–369}}</ref> Pigafetta's manuscript account of the voyage is believed lost,<ref name="Torodash">{{cite journal |last1=Torodash |first1=Martin |title= [untitled book review]|date=1970 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/2512332 |journal=The Hispanic American Historical Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |pages=770–772 |doi= 10.2307/2512332|jstor=2512332 |access-date=26 January 2025|url-access=subscription }}</ref> but four other manuscripts from the same time period, one in Italian (known as the "Ambrosian" or "Milan" manuscript) and three in French translation, are extant.<ref name="Torodash"/> The most accurate and complete English translation of Pigafetta's report was published by [[James Alexander Robertson]] in 1906 based on the Ambrosian manuscript.<ref name="Robertson">{{cite book |last=Robertson |first=James Alexander |date=1906 |title=Magellan's Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pegafetta |location=Cleveland |publisher=The Arthur H. Clark Company}}</ref>

The first encounter between the Europeans and the Patagonians took place in May 1520, when the fleet had been anchored for two months at [[Puerto San Julian]]. According to Pigafetta,<ref>All quotations from Pigafetta are taken from the Robertson translation.</ref> "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head."<ref>Robertson, p. 49.</ref> The natives were given gifts and some were invited on board the ships. Two weeks later, four natives appeared and Magellan's crew captured two of them by a ruse: loading their arms with presents and then shackling their legs. "When our men were driving home the cross bolt, the two giants began to suspect something, but the captain assuring them, however, they stood still. When they saw later that they were tricked, they raged like bulls, calling loudly for Setebos to aid them".<ref>Robertson, p. 55.</ref>

Pigafetta also reported on the burial customs of the natives:
<blockquote>
When one of those people die, ten or twelve demons all painted appear to them and dance very joyfully about the corpse. They notice that one of those demons is much taller than the others, and he cries out and rejoices more. They paint themselves exactly in the same manner as the demon appears to them painted. They call the larger demon Setebos, and the others Cheleulle. That giant [native] also told us by signs that he had seen the demons with two horns on their heads, and long hair which hung to the feet belching forth fire from mouth and buttocks.<ref>Robertson, p. 61.</ref>
</blockquote>
Pigafetta relates that another native, who was brought on board one of the ships, was shown a cross and was terrified. "Once I made the sign of the cross, and, showing it to him, kissed it. He immediately cried out “Setebos,” and made me a sign that if I made the sign of the cross again, Setebos would enter into my body and cause it to burst. When that giant was sick, he asked for the cross, and embracing it and kissing it many times, desired to become a Christian before his death".<ref>Roberston, p. 79.</ref>

The Patagonian's god is also mentioned (this time spelled "Settaboth" and also "Settaboh") in a separate account of [[Sir Francis Drake|Sir Francis Drake's]] voyage of circumnavigation (1577–1580), a half-century after Magellan's. Drake followed a similar route to Magellan's along South America's eastern coast, and laid anchor at [[Puerto Deseado]] (121 nautical miles north of Puerto San Julián) for two weeks in May–June 1578. Here the sailors made their first acquaintance with the Patagonians.<ref>S. E. Morison, p. 642.</ref> An encounter is described in a journal<ref name="Fletcher">
{{cite book |last= Fletcher|first=Francis |date=1854 |title=The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake : being his next voyage to that to Nombre de Dios : collated with an unpublished manuscript of Francis Fletcher, chaplain to the expedition : with appendices illustrative of the same voyage, and introduction |url=https://archive.org/details/worldencompassed16drak/page/n109/mode/2up |location=London |publisher= [[Hakluyt Society|The Hakluyt Society]]|access-date=}}</ref>
kept by [[Francis Fletcher]] (c. 1555 – c. 1619), a priest of the [[Church of England]] who accompanied Drake on his voyage. According to Fletcher, the English attempted to trade some trinkets, but the natives were cautious and retreated. "They would have non of our company" wrote Fletcher, "till such tyme they were warranted by oracle from their god Settaboth, that is, the Divell, whom they name their great god". The natives then sent one of their own, a "priest or prophet", to confer with Settaboth:
<blockquote>
[the prophet] departed for the tyme from them into som secret place under the side of the hill, where Settaboh appeared unto him to give him his oracle to bring unto them, that they might know what they should doe, that is, whether they should be acquainted with us or noe. Now when the prophet came to them againe he seemed to be changed in shape, for even as Settaboh appeared vnto him, he in shew and outward apearance came to them, haveing on his head before, standing upright, little hornes, and two long and broad black feathers ... but in a long tyme they would not receave annything out of our hands, except we cast it downe upon the ground.<ref>Fletcher, p. 48.</ref>
</blockquote>

The journals of Pigafetta (Magellan) and Fletcher (Drake) were not published immediately after voyage's end.
Pigafetta returned to Europe in 1522, where he presented a number of kings and queens with extracts from his narrative of Magellan's voyage,<ref>Magellan himself had died the previous year, in the [[Battle of Mactan]].</ref> and from the Seignory of Venice he obtained permission to publish it, but he never did.<ref>S. E. Morison, p. 467.</ref> The first published version of Pigafetta's journal was an Italian translation of a French translation of the lost Italian original. That Italian translation was itself translated into English in abbreviated form by [[Richard Eden (translator)|Richard Eden]] in his ''The Decades of the New Worlde'',<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Arber |editor-first=Edward |year=1885 |title=The First Three English Books on America |publisher=Birmingham |url=https://archive.org/details/firstthreeenglis00arberich/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |access-date=31 January 2025}}</ref> published in London in 1555, and then posthumously reprinted in an augmented version in 1577. It is the 1577 Eden version where Shakespeare is most likely to have come across the name Setebos.<ref name="HulmeSherman">{{cite book |last1=Hulme |first1=Peter |last2=Sherman |first2=William |date=2019 |title=The Tempest: An Authoritative Text, Sources and Contexts, Criticism, Rewritings and Appropriations |url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1057244228 |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=105 |isbn=9780393265422 }}</ref>

Francis Fletcher's account<ref name=Fletcher/> of Drake's voyage of circumnavigation, which also discussed an encounter with the native Patagonians, was not published until 1628, after Shakespeare's death. However textual evidence suggests that Shakespeare may have been familiar with Fletcher's (yet unpublished) account, as discussed in the next section.