SC - Chinese in the New World

[Decker, Terry D.]

Here is what I've pulled together.  Enjoy.

Bear


Pre-Columbian Oriental Trade with the New World?

The discovery of Chinese type anchors off Palos Verdes on the California
coast was reported in the Anthropological Journal of Canada with a
speculation on pre-Columbian Chinese and Japanese trade with the New World.
The speculation combined Indian legend of  "houses" in Pacific waters,
Chinese accounts of voyages to Fusang, Japanese steel blades in Alaska,
Japanese pottery in Ecuador and Spanish documents describing oriental ships
off the Mexican coast in 1576.

(Pierson, Larry J., and Moriarty, James R,; "Stone Anchors: Asiatic
Shipwrecks off the California Coast," Anthropological Journal of Canada,
18:17, 1980.)


Pierson and Moriarty were rebutted by F.J. Frost, who pointed out Gustaaf
Schlegel had demonstrated Chinese cartographers knew Fusang was an island
just off the northeast Asian coast and an attempt to duplicate a Chinese
voyage to the New World by a junk using the Kuroshio current had failed.  He
also demonstrated that the type of anchor found was still in use in the
modern period and were probably lost by modern Chinese emigrants to the New
World who applied traditional techniques to the local fishing industry.  

He did point out that two grooved stone columns over a meter long with
drilled holes and a large stone sphere with a groove around it's middle do
represent a genuine archeological puzzle.

(Frost, Frank J.; "The Palos Verdes Chinese Anchor Mystery," Archaeology,
35:23, January/February 1982.) 

A cache of Chinese coins and artifacts found by miners in British Columbia
in 1882 might represent a pre-Columbian contact, but the artifacts have
disappeared, there is no accurate description of them, and no record was
made of the context of the find.  

(Larson, Robert; "Was America the Wonderful Land of Fusang," American
Heritage, Vol. 17, April, 1966, pp. 42-45&106-109.)


The legend of Fusang comes from a narrative of the voyage (circa 499) of
Hoei-Shin, a Buddhist monk who reported finding  a land 20,000 Chinese li
(7,500 miles) to the east.  He named the land Fusang after a succulent plant
which grew a large red fruit from which the natives got food, wine, and
fibers for textiles, rope, paper and thatch.  The plant was tentatively
identified as the Mexican maguey , Agave americana.  Unfortunately for the
identification, the maguey does not bear such fruit.

Hoei-Shin also said the inhabitants had extensive copper sources, but no
iron, an abundance of gold and silver, a type of writing, a lack of walled
cities, and punishment by burial ashes, observations which mesh reasonably
with Itza culture.

He also included references to grapes, horses and carts, which would not
have been found in the New World and to a race of hair covered women who
reach maturity in 4 years.

Fusang was a fable long before Hoei-Shin and it still is fabulous with
staunch Diffusionists claiming it was Mexico and most skeptics claiming it
was Sakhalin Island.

(Boland, Charles Micheal,. They All Discovered America., Doubleday & Co.,
Garden City, New York, 1961)
(Jackson, Donald Dale. "Who the heck did discover the New World",.
Smithsonian., February, 1991 pp.77-85.)
(Leland, C.G., Fusang; or, The Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist
Priests in the Fifth Century. New York: Barnes & Noble,  1973.)

Similarities in artistic style and lacquer work suggest a Chinese or
Japanese influence and the rise of  Michoacan  lacquer work between the 8th
and 12th Centuries.  Celia Heil makes an interesting case for the influence,
but her argument does not negate the possibilities of converging technology
and art or introduction of lacquer work by castaways rather than traders.

Betty Meggers of the Smithsoniam National Museum of Natural History was
called upon to evaluate a 5,000 year old pottery find on the coast of
Ecuador in 1956.  There were 20 design similarities with pottery of
approximately the same age in Kyushu, Japan.   As there was no evidence of
pottery elsewhere in Ecuador, Meggers postulated that the pottery had been
brought from Japan.  

As with Heil's work there is no verified supporting evidence for Chinese or
Japanese in Pre-columbian America.  

(Heil, Celia, "The Pre-Columbian Lacquer of West Mexico", NEARA Journal,
Volume XXX, No. 1&2, Summer/Fall 1995,
http://hawk.hama-med.ac.jp/dbk/lacquer.html.)
(Jackson, Donald Dale. "Who the heck did discover the New World",.
Smithsonian., February, 1991 pp.77-85.)


The argument for Pre-Columbian Chinese or Japanese trade with the New World
is shaky.  Other than technology and cultural similarities which can be
explained by societal convergence, there is little hard evidence.

If Chinese or Japanese came to the west coast of Mexico, before Columbus, it
is more likely they were storm blown castaways who introduced some of their
skills to the local population.  This is a strong possibility, considering
de Anza reported a wrecked ship near Monterey which could have been a junk
(1774) and the USS Forrester's rescue of 3 survivors from a Japanese ship
off Santa Barbara in 1815 (Perry's mission to Japan was in 1853).

I have yet to find the reference to the tomato seeds and the mummy.  

The evidence suggests the possibility of contact between China and the
Americas, but seems to rule out extensive trade, limiting the possibility of
transferred food stuffs.