patrick.net

From Amerigo Vespucci's account of arriving on the coast of Venezuela, to his patrons the Medicis. Venezuela has that name because he called it "Little Venice".

https://archive.org/details/amerigo-vespucci-mundus-novus-letter.-text-and-translation./page/3/mode/2up

I say further: they themselves wonder why we do not eat our enemies and do not use as food their flesh which they say is most savory. Their weapons are bows and arrows, and when they advance to war they cover no part of their bodies for the sake of protection, so like beasts are they in this matter. We endeavored to the extent of our power to dissuade them and persuade them to desist from these depraved customs, and they did promise us that they would leave off. The women as I have said go about naked and are very libidinous; yet they have bodies which are tolerably beautiful and cleanly. Nor are they so unsightly as one perchance might imagine; for, inasmuch as they are plump, their ugliness is the less apparent, which indeed is for the most part concealed by the excellence of their bodily structure. lt was to us a matter of astonishment that none was to be seen among them who had a flabby breast, and those who had borne children were not to be distinguished from virgins by the shape and shrinking of the womb; and in the other parts of the body similar things were seen of which in the interest of modesty I make no mention. When they had the opportunity of copulating with Christians, urged by excessive lust, they defiled and prostituted themselves. They - live one hundred and fifty years, and rarely fall ill, and if they do fall victims to any disease, they cure themselves with certain roots and herbs. These are the most noteworthy things I know about them. The climate there was very temperate and good, and as I was able to learn from their accounts, there was never there any pest or epidemic caused by corruption of the air; and unless they die a violent death they live long.

I have to wonder if some of the Spanish enthusiasm for colonizing the New World was the promise of free sex as well as gold and land.

Sex is never really free, though it might be 'available' and even 'cheap'. There is always a physical and emotional conveyance involved, and the flow of resources tends inevitably towards the female, no matter what her role as ostensible subservient.

Of course, some of that physical conveyance can appear in the form of disease.

I wonder if they had 'roots and herbs' for the clap.

He was brave, when everyone would kill you if you claimed world is round, he decided to go to Asia from other side of the hypothetical round world..

All started when Barbary pirates killed off route from india n china to Europe. When Europeans had to eat bland food without asian spices, they wanted faster route compare to going around Africa. He thought he landed in india , called natives indians :).