The Canary Museum: from transnational trade of human remains to the visual representations of race (1879-1900)

INTRODUCTION

The Museo Canario was founded in 1879, largely on the initiative of Doctor Gregorio Chil y Naranjo (1831-1901), known for his part in controversies around Darwinism (Glick, 2010Glick, T. F. (2010) Darwin en España. Valencia: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Valencia.; Betancor Gómez, 2019Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2019) “Gregorio Chil y Naranjo: las claves transnacionales de un evolucionista escasamente darwiniano.” In: M. Sarmiento, R. Ruíz Gutiérrez, M. C. Naranjo, M. J. Betancor, J. A. Uribe, eds., Reflexiones sobre darwinismo desde las Islas Canarias. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, pp. 81-97.) and a prominent member of the regional cultural and scientific elite. Currently, the Museum is a private institution that holds an impressive collection of items from the pre-Hispanic past of the Canaries. The Museo Canario was not the only institution interested in the pre-Hispanic past of the archipelago (FariñaFariña González, M. J., and Tejera Gaspar, A. (1998) La memoria recuperada. La colección «Casilda» de Tacoronte en el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (Argentina). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Caja Regional de Ahorros de Canarias., and Tejera, 1998Tejera, G. A. (1998) La memoria recuperada. La colección «Casilda» de Tacoronte en el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (Argentina). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Caja Regional de Ahorros de Canarias.; Ortiz 2005Ortiz, C. (2005) “La Sociedad Cosmológica de la isla de La Palma. Localismo y ciencia positiva.” In: A. Viera, coord., As Ilhas e a Ciéncia. Historia da Ciéncia e das Técnicas. Funchal: Centro de Estudios de Historia do Atlántico, pp. 207-230.). However, its rich collection (Herrera, 1990Herrera Piqué, A. (1990) Tesoros del Museo Canario. Madrid: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria y Editorial Rueda.) and the general approach that it originally adopted, in line with Paul Broca’s (1824-1880) raciologist school, made it a peculiar institution in the region from the moment of its foundation.

Although at first, the Museum hosted a natural history collection, which Chil believed to have much room for improvement (Chil y Naranjo, 1899, p. 23Chil y Naranjo, G. (1899) “Discurso del Sr. Director del Museo Dr. D. Gregorio Chil y Naranjo” El Museo Canario, VII (1), pp. 20-24.), its main object was, and is, to study the origin of the population of the Islands before the Castilian conquest in the 15^th century. It is a museum, but also an important library and archive. Archaeological items - leather, ceramics, millstones, etc. - were important, but it can generally be argued that biology was given priority over culture. From the start, the Museum focused on human remains and physical anthropology (Padilla, 1881, p. 333Padilla, J. (1881) “Los Museos.” El Museo Canario, 23, pp. 327-334.).

Strictly speaking, the Museo Canario was not a local institution. The role played by Broca’s École de Anthropologie in its foundation is well known. Although some have suggested that its relationship with France was nothing short of colonial (Farrujia de la Rosa, 2013Farrujia de la Rosa, J. (2013) “Le colonialisme et le « Collège Invisible » dans l’émergence de l’archélogie des Îlles Canaries au XIXe siècle.” Bullètin de Musée d’anthropologie préhistorique de Monaco, 53, pp. 53-61.), Museum members were able to weave an exchange network that went far beyond this bilateral relationship with Paris. In this regard, the human remains of pre-Hispanic aborigines, which were highly coveted for their rarity, were one of the Museum’s main assets. This allowed the Museum to draw surprising links, which in turn contributed to increasing its international prestige.

This interest in pre-Hispanic human remains, especially skulls, reflected the mysterious origin of these human groups, and is at the same time related to two not incompatible processes: first, the construction in Europe of political-scientific discourses that sought national roots in ancestral and biological phenomena; national discourses which, paradoxically, had to be slotted into wider, transnational frameworks of racial classification (McMahon, 2019a, p. 12McMahon, R. (2019a) “Introduction. Political Identities and Transnational Science.” In: R. McMahon, ed., National Races. Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1-29.; Reynaud-Paligot, 2011 pp. 65-72Reynaud-Paligot, C. (2011) De l’Identíté nationale. Science, race et politique en Europe et aux États-Unis XIX-XX siècle. Paris: PUF.); and second, the colonial expansion of Europeans, especially the French in the Maghreb, which was dressed with a legitimising discourse: the mission civilisatrice. As we shall see, some of the most prominent French anthropologists argued for a sort of racial link between primitive European populations, the Amazigh, and Canarian aborigines. A third factor also needs to be taken into consideration: the explicit attempt by some members of the Museo Canario to build a regional, if not national race. These Canarian scholars adopted the raciological framework to build a narrative of origin different from that of other Spaniards, and to link this biological past with that of superior races.

This article focuses on the material dimension of these processes. Skulls and mummies were not only exchanged but also displayed in the Museo Canario in a way that demonstrated the position of Canarian aborigines on the top tiers of the racial scale. Although much remains to be investigated about the effect of these items on different audiences, there is evidence that they had some effect in shaping views. Skulls arranged in a certain way helped to see human diversity through a racialised lens; Canarian skulls were represented in racial atlases to support the thesis of the racial filiation of pre-Hispanic Canarians with European fossil roots. Moreover, the Museum’s activity was not limited to its displays, but also sponsored expeditions in the Islands, not only to find archaeological objects, but living specimens of the Canarian type. Ethnographic drawing became a privileged vehicle for its representation. However, there is no evidence that the Museum used ethnographic photography at this moment. This notwithstanding, a photographer with close links with the institution, Luís Ojeda Pérez (1874-1914), played a relevant role in fixating the visual expression of the Canarian type.

REMOTE ISLANDS, CENTRES, AND PERIPHERIES. FROM PRIVATE COLLECTION TO GLOBAL MUSEUM

One of the most outstanding features of the Museo Canario was its ability to enter transnational networks. Some factors helped. Las Palmas has an excellent harbour, which makes for easy sea routes to Europe, Africa, and America, and sea traffic increased substantially in the final decades of the 19^th century.¹The number of steamers entering Las Palmas went from 149 in 1878, to 236 in 1883 and 1180 in 1889 (Martín, 1984, p. 193) . Despite this, the history of the Museum is marked by its lack of national links. Although the institution was in contact with naturalists and anthropologists in the Iberian Peninsula (Naranjo Santana, 2019a, pp. 122-125Naranjo Santana, M. C. (2019a) “Gregorio Chil y Naranjo. Aproximación biobibliográfica y su relación con la Sociedad Española de Historia Natural.” Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, 113, pp. 117-131.), and Pedro González de Velasco even donated eight “Basque” skulls to the Museum (Martínez de Escobar, 1881, p. 208Martínez de Escobar, A. (1881) “Memoria leída por el Secretario de General de «El Museo Canario», Lic. D. Amaranto Martínez de Escobar.” El Museo Canario, 31-33, pp. 204-209.), the fact is that the relationship between the Museo Canario and institutions in the Iberian Peninsula was always lukewarm. This is unsurprising, as harbours act as relatively autonomous trade hubs (Jorgensen, 2017, p. 556Jorgensen, C.M. (2017) “Nineteenth-century Transnational Urban History”. Urban History, 44 (3), pp. 544-563.). In fact, most of the doctors that led the way in the Museum had studied in France, as their families preferred to send them there than to the Iberian Peninsula (Betancor Gómez, 2001, pp. 62-63Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2001) “La obra del doctor Chil y la historia de la medicina en Canarias.” El Museo Canario, 56, pp. 61-86.). According to Fernando Estévez, this is explained by the dependence of the Canarian economy on European centres (Estévez, 1987, pp. 137-138Estévez, F. (1987) Indigenismo, raza y evolución. El pensamiento antropológico canario (1750-1900). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo de Tenerife.) Is this enough to refer to a colonial relationship concerning the Museo Canario? Should we return to centre-periphery arguments? Recently, Richard McMahon, argued in favour of this, at least when referring to racial classifications. According to him, the core or publication on racial sciences was in northwest Europe, and racial taxonomists in peripheral regions resisted their marginal position. They were simply treated as suppliers of data and raw materials (McMahon, 2019b, pp. 40-42McMahon, R. (2019b) “Transnational Network, Transnational Narratives. Scientific Race Classifications and National Identities.” In: R. McMahon, ed., National Races. Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 31-68.). The truth is that the set of Paris-based institutions that Paul Broca grouped together under the name of Paris Anthropological Institute (Conklin, 2013, p. 28Conklin, A. L. (2013) In the Museum of Man. Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.), played a crucial role for the Museo Canario. This could support the idea that the Museum was a colonial station, a mere supplier of information and objects.

However, the academic work undertaken by the founder of the Museum, Gregorio Chil, does not exactly fit this model. Chil was cited with respect in anthropology journals, often attended international conferences (Chil y Naranjo, 1880, pp. 235-236Chil y Naranjo, G. (1880) Estudios Históricos, Climatológicos y Patológicos de las Islas Canarias. Primera parte. Historia. Tomo Segundo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Imprenta de La Atlántida.; Betancor Gómez, 2019, pp. 84-85Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2019) “Gregorio Chil y Naranjo: las claves transnacionales de un evolucionista escasamente darwiniano.” In: M. Sarmiento, R. Ruíz Gutiérrez, M. C. Naranjo, M. J. Betancor, J. A. Uribe, eds., Reflexiones sobre darwinismo desde las Islas Canarias. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, pp. 81-97.), and, especially, was co-opted by Broca’s group. He was not simply seen as a source of data and raw items. On the other hand, the Museo Canario exchanged items, human remains, and all sorts of information with the Parisian institutions. The relationship may have been unequal, but it ran both ways. In addition, the Museo Canario drew productive links with American institutions, which to an extent escaped the control of major European scientific societies and museums. And it was not all about connections. One of the Museum’s foundational aims was to preserve an archaeological heritage that had been plundered of old. The Museum’s first regulations (1879) reflect its aim to preserve objects that embody the “history of the people that inhabited this land, which is today dispersed in strange hands and foreign museums.” It was imperative to “keep what little we have left” (Reglamento… 1879, p. 4Reglamento de la Sociedad de El Museo Canario. Las Palmas: Imprenta de La Atlántida. 1879.). The threat was real, and any traveller could witness acts of plunder. In 1884, John Harris Stone decried that tombs situated a few kilometres from Las Palmas were being broken into because of the “great demand for Guanche skulls.”²Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette [BCWG], “The Guanches, Canary Islands,” 10 January 1884, p. 3.

In fact, the human remains of pre-Hispanic Canarians were a common sight in European cabinets of curiosities. The mysterious origins of these people only made them more interesting. At first, mummies were the main target of collectors (Ortiz, 2016Ortiz, C. (2016) “Antigüedades guanchinescas. Comercio y coleccionismo de restos arqueológicos canarios.” Culture & History Digital Journal, 5(2), pp. 1-23. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2016.017 ) but from the mid-19^th century skulls became a sought-after commercial commodity. Most French anthropologists were convinced that the physical features, especially in the skull, were key for the taxonomic division of human races (Dias, 2012, p. 333Dias, N. (2012) “Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones.” Nuncius, 27, pp. 330-347. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-02702006 ). Anthropology must cease being a speculative discipline and fully embrace the principles of anatomy, and the importance of having a large number of observations with wide samples was emphasised, spurring global competition among collectors and museums. The colonial expansion of European countries (Roque, 2010Roque, R. (2010) Headhunting and Colonialism. Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 1870-1930. London: Palgrave Macmillan) and of emerging nations like the United States (Redman, 2016Redman, S. J. (2016) Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.) filled museum halls. Human remains became an object of trade globally (Roque, 2014Roque, R. (2014) “Race and the Mobility of Humans as Things.” Science, Technology, & Human Values, 39 (4), pp. 607-617. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243913517146 ), and the Museo Canario actively participated in this. It had privileged access to a valuable asset: human remains from a probably extinct population of unknown origin.

It is advisable not to take this ideal of the hegemony of major metropolitan institutions to extremes. The central role played by the Paris-based hub of French anthropologists (Reynaud-Paligot, 2006, p. 133Reynaud-Paligot, C. (2006) La République Raciale. Paris: PUF.) does not mean that other local museums elsewhere in Europe did not also play their part. In Germany, for instance, regional museums were a key factor in the development of anthropology (Bunzl and Penny, 2003, p. 15Bunzl, M., and Penny, H. G. (2003) “Introduction: Rethinking German Anthropology, Colonialism and Race.” In: M. Bunzl, and H. G. Penny, eds., Worldly Provincialism. German Anthropology in the Age of Empire. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 1-30.). Distinctions between global and local must, in any case, be handled with caution. The geographical division of racial taxonomists established by McMahon rests on an implicit assumption: that science happened at the local level, and only then was made to circulate globally. This causes a problem when we abandon a rigid distinction between local and global. A city of science like Paris was, among other things, the product of the French Empire, which included regions in Africa, America, and the Pacific. James Poskett’s notion that local contexts are from the start global (Poskett, 2019, p. 252Poskett, J. (2019) Materials of the Mind. Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.) is particularly suitable to places like Las Palmas, which had been extraordinarily well connected since the First Globalisation. This said, challenging the centre-periphery narrative does not imply neglecting the uneven relations in the equation. Gregorio Chil and his associates had to deal with regional, national, and colonial dynamics in which they were often the weakest link.

All these dynamics are present in the transition from private collection to local museum with global ambitions. The private collection that the doctor Gregorio Chil began amassing in the early 1860s was the original core of the Museo Canario. Although also interested in natural history, from the start Chil gave priority to archaeological and anthropological material related to the earliest inhabitants of the Islands. Chil attributed this to Paul Broca’s advice. Their personal relationship probably began in 1848, when Chil travelled to Paris, where Broca taught at the university,³Chil y Naranjo, Gregorio. Estudios Históricos, Climatológicos y Patológicos de las Islas Canarias, Archivo del Museo Canario, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0008, pp. 1509-1510. to study medicine. Broca’s letters to Chil express personal affection and intellectual respect (a respect greased by all sorts of transactions). They show that Chil was part of his close circle.⁴Paul Broca to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 30 December 1874, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0149. Chil was not the only Spaniard on good terms with Broca, as other Spanish anthropologists, such as Pedro González de Velasco, also kept a productive relationship with him (Sánchez Gómez, 2020, pp. 94-99Sánchez Gómez, L. A. (2020) Entre cadáveres. Una biografía apasionada del doctor Pedro González de Velasco (1815-1882). Madrid: CSIC.), but the truth is that Chil and Broca were old friends, and that this relationship only became stronger over the years.

Gregorio Chil displayed part of his private collection in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, in which the Spain delegation held a prominent position (Sánchez Gómez, 2006, p. 258Sánchez Gómez, L. A. (2006) “Glorias efímeras: España en la Exposición Universal de París de 1878.” Historia Contemporánea, 32, pp. 257-283.). Chil’s collection did not go unnoticed to European museum collectors.⁵Fedor Jagor to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 20 September 1878, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0321. Significantly, Chil’s already solid position in Broca’s network caused some friction with the Sociedad Española de Antropología, especially Francisco María Tubino (1833-1888).⁶Paul Broca to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter 8 April 1880, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0365. One of the reasons for this was a bitter discussion about the ownership of the skulls displayed by Chil in the Exhibition,⁷Pedro González de Velasco to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 28 January 1879, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0330. and the other the fact that Chil felt more at home among French than Spanish anthropologists. But this careful work of public relations brought Chil rich returns; Paul Broca not only helped Chil to focus his miscellaneous collection on the origin of pre-Hispanic Canarians but also encouraged the foundation of a museum. Chil himself credited Broca with the existence of the Museo Canario:

Problems soon emerged, however. Not all Parisian partners were as trustworthy. Although the Museum’s relations with Broca and his circle were good, this was not the case with the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie of the Museúm d’Histoire Naturelle, especially concerning René Verneau (1852-1938), a disciple of Armand de Quatrefages. The first curator of the Museo Canario, Victor Grau-Bassas (1847-1918), was suspicious that Verneau was plundering Canarian archaeological items (Betancor, 2018, pp. 203-204Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2018) “Discutibles periferias: Víctor Grau-Bassas (1847-1918) y la infraestructura transnacional. Darwinismo entre Las Palmas y La Plata.” In: G. Vallejo, M. Miranda, R. Ruíz Gutiérrez and M. A. Puig-Samper, eds., Darwin y el darwinismo desde el sur del sur. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, pp. 195-210.), and the tensions reached Paris when Verneau claimed a Canarian skeleton that Chil had given Broca as a gift. In this case, Chil’s and Broca’s interest were totally aligned,⁸Paul Broca to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter 8 April 1880, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0365. which clearly reveals Chil’s alliances and underlying conflict between different Parisian institutions. Unfortunately for the Museo Canario, their main Parisian ally, Paul Broca, died in 1880; worse, his main disciple, Paul Topinard (1830-1911), fell in disgrace at the Paris Anthropometric School in 1886. It was an event closely connected with the crisis that anthropometry was undergoing at the time. Topinard was expelled for good in 1889 (Conklin, 2013, p. 48Conklin, A. L. (2013) In the Museum of Man. Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.; Blanckaert, 2001, p. 126Blanckaert, C. (2001) “La crise de l’Anthropométrie: Des arts anthropotechniques aux dérives militantes (1860-1920).” In: C. Blanckaert, dir., Les politiques de l’Anthropologie. Discours et pratiques en France (1860-1940). Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 95-172.; Topinard, 1890, p. 1Topinard, P. (1890) A la mémoire de Broca. La Sociéte, l´École, le Laboratoire et la Musée Broca. Paris: Typ. G. Chamerot.).

All of this likely encouraged the Museo Canario to seek new partners. This was made easier by the large British community in Gran Canaria, as well as by the increasing presence of British tourists there (González Lumus, 2007González Lumus, N. (2007) Clima y medicina: los orígenes del turismo en Canarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Idea.). All sorts of British travellers visited the Museo Canario. Many of them wanted to meet Gregorio Chil personally. Some wished to inspect or even acquire human remains, sometimes with success (Thompson, 1887-1888, pp. 125-126Thompson, I. C. (1887-1888) “Notes of a visit to Madeira and the Canary Islands.” Proceedings of the Liverpool Biological Society, II, pp. 117-129.). Some of these acted on behalf of known academic institutions, such as Sir Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland (1815-1900),⁹Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, unknown date, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0689. a physician with connections with the University of Oxford.

However, the museum’s relations with America were especially close, notably with the Museo de La Plata (Argentina). Its director, Francisco Moreno (1852-1919), expressed his wish to make exchanges with the Museo Canario, mostly concerning human remains. This interest betrays Moreno’s eagerness to prove his belief in the connection between ancient European races, Canarians, and some Amerindian groups.¹⁰Francisco Pascasio Moreno a Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 15 October 1887, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0565. The relationship became even closer when some scientific personnel relocated from Gran Canaria to La Plata (Betancor Gómez, 2017, pp. 142-153Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2017) “Una biografía científica atravesando tres ciudades: Víctor Grau-Bassas en Barcelona, Las Palmas y La Plata.” In: A. Girón; O. Hochadel; G. Vallejo, eds., Saberes trasatlánticos: Barcelona y Buenos Aires: conexiones, confluencias, comparaciones (1850-1940). Madrid: Doce Calles, pp. 133-157. ; Farro, 2016, pp. 126-127Farro, M. (2016) “Natural History Museums in Argentina, 1862-1906.” Museum History Journal, 9 (1), pp. 121-134. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2015.1118257 ; Naranjo, 2019b, pp. 99-118Naranjo Santana, M. C. (2019b) “Gran Canaria-La Plata: relaciones y pláticas en torno al museo.” Cartas Diferentes, Revista Canaria de Patrimonio Documental, 15, pp. 85-124.).

The Museum’s new links also reached North America. In early January 1883, the Smithsonian Institution contacted Chil through Professor Mason, probably Otis Tufton Mason (1838-1908), Curator at the Smithsonian Institution, who was interested in Chil’s work on the Guanches. This interest was not limited to the literature, as he also expressed interest in possessing skulls and specimens of ancient Canarian aborigines.¹¹Spencer Beart to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 5 January1883, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0437. However, Canadians appeared to be even more interested,¹²Haucton to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, 24 July 1882, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-0423; M. Dawson to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, 23 May 1892, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-1393. as the Peter Redpath Museum, McGill University (Montreal), held an important collection of pre-Hispanic Canarians (Dawson, n.d.Dawson, W. J. (n.d.) On Specimens in The Peter Redpath Museum of McGill University, Illustrating the Physical Characters and Affinities of the Guanches or Extinct People of the Canary Islands. London: G. Robertson, Co.). Again, they were trying to demonstrate the similarity between Canarian and American aboriginal skulls.

THE CANARY ISLANDS: DEEP PAST, COLONIAL AMBITIONS, IDENTITY, AND RACE

From the start, identity and raciological theories were intertwined. Chil and the Museum committee were interested in the construction of a regional, if not national, race, which allegedly represented the transhistorical essence of the archipelago’s population (Estevez, 2001Estévez, F. (2001) “Determinar la raza, imaginar la nación: el paradigma raciológico en la obra de Chil y Naranjo.” El Museo Canario, 56, pp. 329-348.; Ortiz, 2006Ortiz, C. (2006) “Guanchismo y nacionalismo en las sociedades científicas canarias de fines del siglo XIX.” Revista de estudios generales de la Isla de La Palma, 2, pp. 379-394.). This needs to be framed within a wider context. As pointed out by Gil Hernández, the racialization of the archipelago’s aborigines, and of their modern population, was a direct appeal to Canarian identity self-reflection, as expressed in the political and literary works of the period. This included mentions to the “imaginary of the race” to exalt “national awareness” and support anticolonialism (Gil Hernández, 2020, p. 6Gil Hernández, R. (2020) “El Siglo de la Raza. Hacia una genealogía descolonial del pensamiento antropológico canario del siglo XIX.” ACL. Revista de la Academia Canaria de la Lengua, 1, pp. 1-8.). It is risky, however, to slot the Museum’s activity into a single political script. Regional identity based on race is compatible with praise for the internal diversity of the Spanish people, and very different from using race to legitimise the construction of a new nation-state. It seems difficult to link Gregorio Chil, an apparatchik of the Spanish Liberal Party, with the latter view.

These debates occurred against a much wider background: the construction of political-scientific discourses that sought the roots of the nation in ancestral and biological phenomena. In the new racial map, pre-Hispanic Canarians and Basques were often described as missing links in Europe’s deep past. On the other hand, the island on which the Museo Canario was situated was not far from the African coast, where national and colonial spheres had been interacting for a long time. This is not without implications. Richard McMahon has challenged the fundamentally colonial nature of late 19^th-century anthropology. According to him, the focus was on European races and anthropometric research outside Europe was limited in scope (McMahon, 2016, p. 23McMahon, R. (2016) The Races of Europe. Construction of National Identities and the Social Sciences. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.). However, the case posed by the Canaries betrays the artificial character of the separation between colony and nation. There were reasons beyond scientific curiosity, such as the European expansion in the Maghreb and its justifications. Speculation about the possible relationship of Amazighs and hypothetic primitive Europeans openly sought to legitimise the civilising mission of colonial powers (Effros, 2017Effros, B. (2017) “Berber genealogy and the politics of prehistoric archaeology and craniology in French Algeria (1860s-1880s).” British Journal for the History of Science, 50(1), pp. 1-21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087417000024 ).

The idea that pre-Hispanic Canarians could be related to the Amazigh had been doing the rounds for some time and it is the most widely accepted hypothesis today (Farrujia de la Rosa, 2014Farrujia de la Rosa, J. (2014) An Archaeology of the Margins. Colonialism, Amazighty and Heritage Management in the Canary Islands. New York: Springer.). The issue was extensively and intensively researched by a Tenerife-based French naturalist, Sabin Berthelot (1794-1880) (Le Brun, 2016, pp. 253-263 y 524-534Le Brun, N. (2016) Un francés entre guanches, Sabino Berthelot y las Islas Canarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: LeCanarien ediciones.), who thought that blond Canarians were related to that Berber group, which also presents this feature. Towards the end of his life, he ended up assuming a thesis that was becoming increasingly popular in French academia: the relation of ancestral Canarians with the Cro-Magnon race. He admitted the influence of successive waves of races and the racial heterogeneity of the Canaries but thought that this quaternary race still marked the Islands’ modern inhabitants. He used a metaphor: different invasive races sat on a “primordial core,” as the rocky shells of the secondary age sat on the granite of the Atlas.¹³Sabin Berthelot to Agustín Millares Torres, letter, 31 August 1878, AMC, Cartas de Sabino Berthelot a Agustín Millares Torres, I-E-18.

Berthelot was only assuming ideas endorsed by the Paris Museúm d’Histoire Naturelle, following a research avenue opened by Ernest Hamy (1842-1908) (Blanckaert, 2022, p. 95Blanckaert, C. (2022) “« Un autre monde ethnique » : L’homme de Cro-Magnon, l’idée de progrès et les dialectiques de la modernité en préhistoire.” Revue d’histoire des sciences, 75 (1), pp. 71-104. doi: https://doi.org/10.3917/rhs.751.0071 ) and followed by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages (1810-1892). According to Quatrefages, the skeletal remains found in the rocky shelter of Cro-Magnon were deposited at the Museúm d’Histoire Naturelle, where they were subject to different analyses. Some of the most remarkable were Ernest Hamy’s, who pointed out “l’extréme ressemblance existant entre la téte osseouse de cette race quaternaire et celle des rares spécimens de Guanches existant alors a Paris (1871-1873).” Hamy also found the same human type in other populations, including in the Kabilia (Quatrefages, 1887, pp. 559-560Quatrefages, J. A. (1887) “Rapport sur les résultats anthropologiques de la mission de M. le Docteur Verneau dans l’Archipiel des Canaries.” Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires, Series 3, XIII, pp. 557-568.). The dissemination of this fossil race from southern Europe to North Africa, and from there to the Canaries, was possible because of the glaciations. Like some mammals migrated, so did humans. This explained its presence, “erratique et par atavisme en Europe, son existence plus fréquente, plus franchement accusée dans le nord-ouest de l’Afrique et dans les iles où s’est trouvé à l’abri du mètissage” (Quatrefages and Hamy, 1874, pp. 265-266Quatrefages, J. A. and Hamy, E. (1874) “La race de Cro-Magnon dans l’espace et dans le temps.” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Session of 2 of September 1874, pp. 260-266.). Travellers such as Arthur Jean-Philibert Grasset began seeing the inhabitants of the Canaries under this light. According to him, the inhabitants of Güimar (Tenerife), presented “dans les traits et la conformation du crane, des ressemblances très marquees avec la race dite de Cro-Magnon, don’t les Guanches semblent parents” (Grasset, 2021, p. 319Grasset, A. J. P. (2021) Apuntes de viajes. Excursiones en las costas de Marruecos y las islas Canarias, durante los años 1877, 1878, 1879 y 1881. San Cristóbal de La Laguna: Instituto de Estudios Canarios.).

The Canarians saw the issue through the lens of their own interests, looking at compared human remains from a set point of view, focusing on the physical aspect of pre-Hispanic Canarians, and establishing their racial filiation, preferably by seeking their European roots. In this regard, one of the main debates was whether there was racial unity among all the pre-Hispanic peoples of the archipelago. This was the source of one of the rare disagreements between Gregorio Chil and Paul Broca:

The issue was hotly debated. Nobody defended the plurality of races in the archipelago prior to the Castilian conquest more than René Verneau. He began pushing this argument in 1878, soon after he began the exploration of the Islands. For Verneau, the Guanches, who were linked to the alleged European fossil race, were limited to Tenerife, while in Gran Canaria the “Semitic” element was significant (Verneau, 1878, pp. 430-432Verneau, R. (1878) “De la pluralité des races anciennes de l’archipel cannarien.” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Session 21 of september, 1878, pp. 429-436.). In the years that followed, Verneau openly sought to create controversy with this. He made modern authors responsible for the ongoing confusion in Canarian anthropology, for applying the term Guanches to all the inhabitants of the archipelago.

His aim, really, was to question Chil’s scientific credentials. Verneau not only disagreed with Chil about the blond element that dominated the Islands before the arrival of Castilians, but also mocked his ideas about the “de belle prestance, de physionomie agreable” of ancient Guanches, arguing that he had not found in his work (referring to Estudios históricos) a single measure to support such a statement. When he came to analyse the skulls, his conclusion was blunt: “Nous ne discuteron pas les asertions, à notre sens erronées, que l’on recontre à chaque page de son livre” (Verneau, 1887, pp. 579, 584 and 588-589Verneau, R. (1887) “Rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l’Archipel Cannarien.” Archives des missions scientifiques et litteraires, Serie 3, XIII, pp. 569-817.). In any case, independently from Verneau’s low intellectual opinion of Chil, the latter’s visceral rejection of the plurality of races went beyond a personal component. Racial diversity undermined his idea of a single ethnic element structuring the deep past of the Canaries, which was the cornerstone of his vision of Canarian identity.

This was not the only debate on the table. The other great issue was whether there were still physical and moral features of the old population to be found in the archipelago. On the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Sociedad El Museo Canario, Chil expressed his opinion openly. For him, miscegenation had a very relative value. Real aborigines belonged to the Cro-Magnon race, adding that osteology “the only reliable document of historical fact of race” proves it. What is more, the ancestral race had survived in such a way that the modern population was “almost entirely” constituted by the aboriginal element. Their customs also survived, as “it is impossible to eliminate the vestiges of the primitive element that belongs to race” (Chil and Naranjo, 1900a, pp. 111-113Chil y Naranjo, G. (1900a) “Discurso del Director del Museo Dr. D. Gregorio Chil, en el 10º aniversario de dicha Sociedad (1890).” El Museo Canario, IX (4), pp. 110-116. ).

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM: THE ABORIGINAL RACE, DISPLAYED AND REPRESENTED

Although the core of the anthropological collection was the remains of ancient Canarians, the Museum tried to collect skulls from the remotest corners of the globe, including New Zealand.¹⁴The traffic in human remains faced logistic challenges and murky legal issues. There were obvious caveats to this circulation, including police enquiries. “The doctor of the Nautilus left me with a crate with three skulls for you: one of them of Mori-ori, an extinct race from New Zealand; our doctor believed that given that I live in San Fernando it would be easy for me to send you this crate, but I have encountered serious difficulties. They do not want to regard them as archaeological remains, but human remains, and make me follow all the protocol, civil government, health authorities (…), that you are aware of, and which makes this a veritable pilgrimage…” José Miranda to Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, letter, unknown date, AMC, Fondo Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, ES 35001 AMC/GCh-1012. This was complemented by reproductions, 30 ethnic busts representing “fifteen or twenty different races,” supplied by Diego Ripoche (Ortiz, 2019, p. 118Ortiz, C. (2019) “Localismo e internacionalismo: Diego Ripoche y Torrens, y el patrimonio canario.” In: M. Sarmiento, R. Ruiz Gutiérrez, M. C. Naranjo, M. J. Betancor and J. A. Uribe, eds., Reflexiones sobre darwinismo desde las Islas Canarias. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, pp. 99-127.). Human remains were problematic, and not only because displaying human remains in museums was a transgression of the order of the living and the death in societies exposed to colonial exploitation, but also because storing and displaying human remains in museums was a symbolic violation of deep-set western funerary beliefs (Roque, 2016, p. 268Roque, R. (2016) “Human Skulls, Dangerous Wanderers.” In: M. K. Abonnenc, L. Ardnt and C. Lozano, eds., Crawling Doubles. Colonial Collecting and Affect. Paris: Éditions B 42.). Exhibiting them in display cases implies a desacralisation of the human body that is hard to reconcile with religious orthodoxy. Nélia Dias claims that French anthropological collections not only had to do with the declared aim of illustrating racial differences objectively but revealed the rejection of cultural conventions concerning human remains (Dias, 2012, p. 346Dias, N. (2012) “Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones.” Nuncius, 27, pp. 330-347. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-02702006 ). It is thus important to examine how the Museo Canario handled this issue. It must be recalled that skulls and mummies were displayed in the top floor of the Council House,¹⁵Libro primero de Actas de la Junta Directiva de El Museo Canario, Session of September 2, 1879, nº 1, p. 23, AMC, ES35001 AMC/AMC-4914. barely a few metres from the Cathedral, and that the Museum’s committee sought to include an even number of progressives and conservatives, trying to avoid conflict with the religious authorities.

What reasons compelled them to take this sort of risk? The first was the wish to have a world-leading collection. The Museum secretary, Amaranto Martínez de Escobar, said in 1882 that he was “sure that soon, if it is not already, our anthropological museum will be the best in the Spanish nation” (Martínez de Escobar, 1882, p. 204Martínez de Escobar, A. (1882) “Memoria leída por el Lic. D. Amaranto Martínez de Escobar. Secretario General de «El Museo Canario».” El Museo Canario, 55, pp. 201-208.). Also, having skulls from other regions of the world was not an inconsiderable feat. It was no longer a matter of determining the geographical origin of the Islands’ ancient inhabitants, or even of doing so based on material facts, going beyond what Chil regarded as “historical and philosophical speculation” that “ignores biological studies” (Chil, 1880, p. 238Chil y Naranjo, G. (1880) Estudios Históricos, Climatológicos y Patológicos de las Islas Canarias. Primera parte. Historia. Tomo Segundo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Imprenta de La Atlántida.). It was about clarifying the ethnic parentage of ancient Canarians and finding their place on the racial scale. Based on this, in the 1884 annual report, Amaranto emphasised the crucial role played by local museums “in which, like in ours, valuable treasures are being gathered for study” so that “comparisons can be made and the relationship between different races can be established” (Martínez de Escobar, 1899, p. 106Martínez de Escobar, A. (1899), “Museo retrospectivo.” El Museo Canario, 64, pp. 104-107. ).

These debates were held with more than words. The alleged racial similarities and differences were displayed, visualised, illustrated, and, therefore, demonstrated (Dias, 1998, p. 45Dias, N. (1998) “The Visibility of Difference: Nineteenth-Century French Anthropological Collections.” In: S. MacDonald, ed., The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture. London and New York: Routledge.). It was not only a matter of displaying the European parentage of ancient Canarians in the display cases, but also of emphasising the chasm that separated them from other, supposedly inferior, human groups. When Chil described the collection, he pointed to the “display cases where we have set up long bones and the casts of Cro-magnon with the skulls found in this island, in Guayadeque, which makes their relation obvious and the gradual difference with the Basque, the Parisian, and the African” (Chil, 1900b, p. 245Chil y Naranjo, G. (1900b) “Museo retrospectivo. Discurso leído en el X aniversario de la fundación de esta Sociedad por el Sr. Director Dr. D. Gregorio Chil.” El Museo Canario IX (8), pp. 239-246.).

We may wonder if this display of kinship and racial hierarchy was, in a way, inspired by evolutionism, which would be in line with the arguments presented by Chil’s Estudios históricos (1876). From the 1860s, as European colonial empires expanded, evolutionism gave a new life to racial hierarchies, which had remained static since the early 19^th century, assuming a progression from anthropoid ancestors to savage tribes and from there to western civilised man. Although Chil’s evolutionist beliefs cannot be doubted, and although the Museum’s journal defended Darwinism openly, albeit cautiously (Millares, 1881Millares, A. (1881) “Darwinismo y espiritualismo.” El Museo Canario, 39, pp. 70-74.), some elements call for caution. First, the publication of Estudios in 1876 had triggered a fairly violent response from the Church. The Museum was not keen to add fuel to the fire, and Amaranto Martínez de Escobar even said that anthropology did not oppose “beliefs, dogma, or religion” (Martínez de Escobar, 1899, p. 106Martínez de Escobar, A. (1899), “Museo retrospectivo.” El Museo Canario, 64, pp. 104-107. ). Second, Chil, like his mentor Broca, defended evolutionism but found some of its basic premises hard to digest. This was because transformism undermined their belief in the fixity of races. The Darwinist tenet of the common descent, in addition, ran against their polygenist view of races as separate humanities (McMahon, 2016, p. 116McMahon, R. (2016) The Races of Europe. Construction of National Identities and the Social Sciences. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.; Staum, 2011, p. 48Staum, M. S. (2011) Nature and Nurture in French Social Sciences, 1859-1914 and Beyond. Montreal: Mc Gill. Queen’s University Press.; Blanckaert, 2009, pp. 319-357Blanckaert, C. (2009) De la race à l’évolution. Paul Broca et l’anthropologie française (1850-1900). Paris : L’Harmattan.; Betancor, 2019, p. 91Betancor Gómez, M. J. (2019) “Gregorio Chil y Naranjo: las claves transnacionales de un evolucionista escasamente darwiniano.” In: M. Sarmiento, R. Ruíz Gutiérrez, M. C. Naranjo, M. J. Betancor, J. A. Uribe, eds., Reflexiones sobre darwinismo desde las Islas Canarias. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, pp. 81-97.). The display of parentage and racial hierarchy did not necessarily mean accepting Darwinian evolutionism.

Showing that Canarian aborigines belonged to the top tiers of racial hierarchy was important. But human remains were also displayed for other purposes. The Museum was trying to recover some sense of sacrality. The Museum secretary saw the institution as an identity artefact, a space of memory:

Be it as a mausoleum or as an expositive display that presented the racial parentage of Canarian aborigines, there is some evidence that the collection was arranged to train the eye of their visitors. Seeing the remains of the dead invited a different gaze on the living within and outside the Islands. A letter sent from Rabat by Doctor Víctor Perez González (1827-1892),¹⁶Víctor Pérez González, born in the island of La Palma, studied medicine in Paris at the same time as Chil y Naranjo. There they became lifelong friends (Betancor Gómez, 2001, pp. 62-63). He was appointed correspondent partner of Museo Canario on 2 May 1881. a friend and collaborator of Chil’s, to the Museo Canario journal, expresses this graphically. In the letter, Pérez declared to be under the spell of the ideas inspired by the “rich collection of skulls” in the Museum. Not only because this collection allowed him to “penetrate” the true knowledge of the history of “our Guanches” and “the modern inhabitants of the islands,” but also because they allowed comparisons to be made. Specifically, referring to the Moroccan coast, he admitted that he could not “dispense” with observing, on arrival to the different harbours, “the variable shape of the heads of this people, and compare them with those of our Guanches and even modern Canarians.” This was grounded on blind faith in the method and the material evidence provided by human remains. He thought that there was much that could be “glimpsed in the past and the present, comparing the types held by a museum such as ours and those that surround us in modern society.” For him, neither “history nor any other discipline” had such “a palpable and demonstrative value” (Pérez, 1881, pp. 330-331Pérez, V. (1881) “Carta del Dr. Pérez.” El Museo Canario, 35, pp. 330-331.).

The remains of ancient Canarians were not only displayed but also represented in allegedly objective lithographs and photographs. They often featured in racial atlases inspired, directly or indirectly, by George Morton’s famous Crania Americana de (1839) (Poskett, 2015Poskett, J. (2015) “National types: The transatlantic publication and reception of Crania Americana (1839).” History of Science, 53, pp. 264-295. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275315580955 ). These racial atlases were part of a wider genre, that of scientific atlases, which, as argued by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, were veritable dictionaries for the eyes. Their images, in fact, educated the “disciplinary eye,” they were the visual foundation on which many observational disciplines rested. They also contributed to the public dissemination of otherwise inaccessible information (Danston and Galison, 2007, pp. 22, 48 and 63Danston, L., and Galison, P. (2007) Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.). Ethnic atlases, in addition to training the eye with racial lenses, were an essential complement to the circulation of human remains. It was not easy to have direct access to a display case with a Guanche skull inside, let alone compare it with others.

One of the most ambitious racial atlases was Crania ethnica (1882), carried out by Armand de Quatrefages and Ernest-Théodore Hamy, whose plates were etched from the “original” by H. Formant. They contain lithographs of some pre-Hispanic skulls in French collections. These drawings were not innocent representations, but the graphic illustration of the geographical spread of the fossil race that linked Europe, the Maghreb, and the Canaries. In this way, Hamy and Quatrefages, certified that the similarities “affinités vaguement établies autrefois” by ethnologists between the “Basques d’Espagne et les habitants du nord de l’Afrique,” had been “confirmées par les études anatomiques détaillées.” In this context, the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Canaries were particularly valuable, because “c’est parmi les Guanches des Canaries que s’est conserveé le mieux le type ethnique de Cro-Magnon.” The plates were not chosen at random. The frontal and profile representation of subject 9 from Barranco Hondo (Tenerife), came from a set collected by Bounglival in this funerary cave (Fig. 1). Quatrefages and Hamy thought that this assemblage was especially “curieuse” because of the “ressemblances étroitres que présentent les sujets qui la composent avec les Troglodytes de Cro-Magnon, Langerie, Menton, etc.” (Quatrefages and Hamy, 1882, pp. 95-97 y 511Quatrefages, J. A. and Hamy, E. (1882) Crania ethnica : les crânes des races humaines : décrits et figurés d’après les collections du Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris, de la Société d›anthropologie de Paris et les principales collections de la France et de l›étranger. Paris: Librairie J. B. Baillière et Fils.).

The European connection of ancient Canarians was not the only matter of debate. As noted, the racial unity or plurality of pre-Hispanic Canarians was another hot topic. In this controversy, René Verneau made use of a powerful visual apparatus to defend racial diversity. His “Rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l’Archipel Cannarien” (1887) includes several lithographs, with their corresponding captions, that illustrate the distinctive features of the different Islands (Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and La Palma) with frontal views and profiles. Verneau was trying to demonstrate visually that the closest skulls to the Cro-Magnon were, essentially, limited to Tenerife, while the remaining Islands were dominated by mixed types (Fig. 2) that could hardly be assimilated to pure types of the fossil race (Verneau, 1887, pp. 813-817Verneau, R. (1887) “Rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l’Archipel Cannarien.” Archives des missions scientifiques et litteraires, Serie 3, XIII, pp. 569-817.).

Another important issue in terms of identity was whether the aborigines had been totally exterminated. Were there physical, mental, and moral features of ancient pre-Hispanic populations still present in late 19^th-century Canarians? As previously noted, Gregorio Chil argued that the modern Canarian population was virtually entirely made up of the aboriginal element, and therefore of a type that could be fully assimilated to the Cro-Magnon race. For his part, Víctor Grau-Bassas, curator of the Museum in the mid-1880s and one of the institution’s most outstanding figures, agreed with Verneau in this issue. In his opinion, the island of Gran Canaria housed four races: Semitic, Berber, Canarian, and a “small-skulled one” yet to be identified. However, despite the repeated influx of racial waves, it was still possible to find vestiges of the true ancestral race, the Canarian type, in remote corners of the Island:

Put differently, there was a possibility to pass from an abstract discussion about the survival of the ancestral race to documenting its existence. The opportunity to reconstruct the Canarian type sprung from a serious personal problem. Owing to some legal issues, Grau decided in 1884 to hide in remote parts of the Island, where he made the most of his time while keeping his lines of communication with the Museum open. During his escape, between 1884 and 1889, he undertook several archaeological expeditions, which he documented in several manuscript notebooks, including many drawings, as prescribed in article 4 of Reglamento conforme al cual habrán de llevarse a efecto las exploraciones y rebuscas (1886), inspired by Grau himself. Significantly, ethnographic observations were prescribed to play a central role. Explorers must keep notes in which “the most exact observations of the items, find a spot, and provenance must be made, with as much geographical information as possible,” as well as “making drawings of the locals” (Alzola, 1980, p. 59Alzola, J. M. (1980) Victor Grau Bassas, primer conservador del Museo Canario. Madrid: El Museo Canario.).

In Grau’s case, the result was a series of profusely illustrated albums, including maps, croquis, drawings of archaeological sites, and, as the Reglamento prescribed, drawings of people. These notebooks and the “artistic drawings” within them were, in Gregorio Chil’s opinion, one of the Museum’s treasures (Chil and Naranjo, 1899, p. 23Chil y Naranjo, G. (1899) “Discurso del Sr. Director del Museo Dr. D. Gregorio Chil y Naranjo” El Museo Canario, VII (1), pp. 20-24.). It must be recalled that Grau, who had studied drawing with Silvestre Bello as a child, was a well-known artist and teacher (Alzola, 1980, pp. 14-15Alzola, J. M. (1980) Victor Grau Bassas, primer conservador del Museo Canario. Madrid: El Museo Canario.). Grau combined the scientific authority of the physician and Museum curator and the technical skill of the drawer. This made his drawings more plausible to expert eyes.¹⁸Scientific authority and artistic skill were regarded as fundamental variables for the credibility of a drawing (Prodger, 2009, p. XXII). In any case, it is hard to say if Grau fully bought into the scientific ideal that nature must be left to speak for itself, which is arguably in contradiction with the artistic quality of his drawings (praised by Chil). Mechanical objectivity, in fact, pulled in the opposite direction, that of avoiding the scientist imposing their own projections upon nature, subjectivity, and “aesthetic temptations” (Danston and Galison, 2007, pp. 131 and 150Danston, L., and Galison, P. (2007) Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.).

The fact is that René Verneau wanted Grau’s drawings, which caused an acrimonious dispute down the line. The Museum steering committee authorised Verneau to buy some of Grau’s material, on condition that, should he publish it, the author, and the album itself must be credited (AJD, 15 June 1886). Everything suggests that Verneau did not keep his word. These drawings were important ways to disseminate information, especially because they represented remains only found in extremely remote areas, and often were the base of the plates used in published works. It is unsurprising, therefore, that in 1877, while preparing his Antiquités canariennes (1879), the old Sabin Berthelot made use of croquis and drawings provided by Agustín Millares Torres,¹⁹Sabin Berthelot to Agustín Millares Torres, letter, 23 September 1877, AMC, Cartas de Sabino Berthelot a Agustín Millares Torres, I-E-18. later to become one of the Museo Canario’s most prominent members. As such, these drawings did not always circulate freely, and this explains René Verneau’s zeal to protect his own intellectual property. When Berthelot asked him to see one of his drawings, he refused, with the pretext that all his papers were already packed up.²⁰Sabin Berthelot to Agustín Millares Torres, letter, 12 September 1878, AMC, Cartas de Sabino Berthelot a Agustín Millares Torres, I-E-18.

Grau’s drawings were not only archaeological. Ethnography played an important role. He did not operate in a vacuum. As noted by Carmen Ascanio, the earliest representation of indigenous Canarians are some drawings attributed to the engineer Leonardo Torriani (late 16^th century), but it was later, with the scientific and exploration voyages of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, that depictions of the Canaries became more frequent. Grau’s contribution was part of a wider process of “self-representation,” which began in the late 19^th century (Ascanio Sánchez, 2008, pp. 1931-1932Ascanio Sánchez, C. (2008) “La representación visual y la construcción de estereotipos culturales. El ejemplo de La Atalaya de Santa Brígida (Gran Canaria).” In: XVII Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana. V Centenario de la muerte de Cristóbal Colón. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo de Gran Canaria, pp. 1928-1947. Available at: https://coloquioscanariasamerica.casadecolon.com/index.php/CHCA/article/view/8898 [accessed 20 Sep. 2022].). Grau’s manuscript notebook Usos y costumbres de la población campesina de Gran Canaria (1885­1888), published in 1981, contains 41 drawings of clothing, agricultural tools, games, etc. The notebook inaugurated ethnographic drawing in the Canaries (Ascanio, Naranjo and Santana, 1992-1994Ascanio Sánchez, C., Naranjo Santana, N., and Santana Godoy, J. R. (1992-1994) “Grau-Bassas recuperado. Aportes a la Historia de la Antropología Canaria.” El Museo Canario, 49, pp. 109­124.).

But Grau did not limit himself to ethnographic drawing in the sense of documenting customs, practices, and material culture. He was interested in using his drawings to generate graphic information about the physical characteristics of a species on the road to extinction: the Canarian type, and for this reason he sought the best specimens, that is, the least mixed.²¹The combination of different human groups and cultures in the years that followed the conquest led to a population that saw itself as mixed. However, for reasons that are debated, no categories were created to classify the people racially, as was done in America (Estévez Hernández, 2021). This is reflected in Carpeta de dibujos. Libro 4, which, for Chil and Naranjo, was one of the Museo Canario’s greatest treasures. The first problem for Grau was to find sufficiently representative specimens, according to predefined criteria, those who were the closest to the ideal type defined above. This was not easy, and Grau expressed his frustration. Only a woman, María Rodríguez, from the village of Tasarte, was “fully” satisfactory: “low face, short and broad nose, long and straight mouth, notable greater diameters, blue eyes, brown hair, and toasted skin colour.” Another woman, “María,” from the hamlet of San Nicolás, was also close to the ideal, “having many features of the Canarian type”²²Víctor Grau-Bassas, Carpeta de dibujos, Libro 4, p. 25, AMC, Fondo Víctor Grau-Bassas. (Fig. 3). The Museum curator was trying to strike a very fine balance: aiming to represent the selected individuals as faithfully as possible, while openly seeking them to fit an abstract archetype, which had been convincingly proven by racial atlases to be racially connected with southern Europe through the Cro-Magnon.

There were many ways to draw the Canarian type, but Grau’s eye was well trained, owing to his work as a curator, and the assimilation of Broca’s group’s racial theories. This is again the dialectic of the dead and the living. In 1880, Grau published an article about Canarian-Guanche skulls in the journal of the Museo Canario. In addition to presenting a series of measurements taken from the Museum’s skull collection, in the style of his Parisian mentors, he argued that “the main features of a race can be safely inferred from a skull collection” (Grau-Bassas, 1880, p. 283Grau-Bassas, V. (1880) “Datos para el estudio de los cráneos guanches canarios.” El Museo Canario, 9, pp. 283-288.).

This veritable obsession with cranial features also presided over his examination of living persons in the west of Gran Canaria. Rather than ethnographic drawing, we may speak of anthropometric drawing. It is thus not surprising that the head received special attention, and that other parts of the body were often neglected. Although the individuals examined did not fit the pure Canarian type, Grau observed that all of them presented one of the fossil race’s most outstanding features: the parietal depression. The drawings were accompanied by observations on pigmentation and hair colour, as well as head measurements (bizygomatic, bimalar, and biorbitary diameters, as well as face height). But this reduction to comparable measurements faced methodological limitations since the true frame of reference for race were the skulls. Grau was thus forced to warn that “the figures representing the diameters must not be regarded as the true measurement of the skulls, because the thickness of soft tissues must be factored in.”²³Víctor Grau-Bassas, Carpeta de dibujos, Libro 4, p. 28, AMC, Fondo Víctor Grau-Bassas. All the faces were exactly represented frontally and in profile, like the skulls in facial atlases and following Broca’s instructions concerning the representation of nude heads (Broca, 1879, p. 8Broca, P. (1879) Instructions générales pour les recherches anthropologiques à faire sur le vivant. Paris: G. Masson.). Grau’s eye was well disciplined.

Grau’s ethnographic drawings were very different. Individuals were often drawn in full, and special attention went to representing their clothing and their activities. But even in this, the racial lens was important. There was the idea that some human types were associated with different trades, in which vestiges of old aborigines were present. For instance, the drawing of a shepherd from Mogán who, in Grau’s opinion “may have some Canarian in him, at least that is what I think.” Regardless of whether this shepherd was a relic or not, it is interesting that this individual, represented with a “knife in his waist” and a “spear,” soon became a sort of emblematic figure of the typical Canarian Islander, and the model of a series of later engravings, commercial photographs, and postcards. An engraving published in one of René Verneau’s books, signed by the known illustrator Paul Merwart (Castillo, 2022, pp. 14-15Castillo, F. J. (2022) “Notas de literatura de viaje e imagen insular. Las ilustraciones de E. H. Fitchew y Paul Merwart.” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos, 68, pp. 1-22. doi: https://doi.org/10.36980/10791.10382 ), is suspiciously similar to Grau’s original drawing (Fig. 4).

What was the relationship of the Museo Canario with photography during this period? The impact of photography in science is well known, and the technique arrived in the Canaries at an early date (Ascanio, 2008, p. 1932Ascanio Sánchez, C. (2008) “La representación visual y la construcción de estereotipos culturales. El ejemplo de La Atalaya de Santa Brígida (Gran Canaria).” In: XVII Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana. V Centenario de la muerte de Cristóbal Colón. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo de Gran Canaria, pp. 1928-1947. Available at: https://coloquioscanariasamerica.casadecolon.com/index.php/CHCA/article/view/8898 [accessed 20 Sep. 2022].). The interior of the Museo Canario was an early subject of the photographic lens, as a way to document the collection, make it transportable and accessible to other scientists and audiences. The earliest photographs date to 1882. Diego Ripoche, René Verneau’s right-hand man in Gran Canaria, photographed the “most notable objects” in the museum for Paris (Mauricio, 1882, p. 287Mauricio (1882) “Revista quincenal.” El Museo Canario, 56, 287-288. ). This needs to be seen in context; from the 1860s, there was an explosion in the global circulation of anthropological photography (Edwards, 2001, p. 29Edwards, E. (2001) Raw Histories. Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford: Berg.).

As pointed out by Mari Carmen Naranjo, the Museum was greatly interested in transporting the collection photographically. The Museum participated with photographs of its collection in the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology held in Paris in 1900. Years earlier, in 1889, Chil mentioned to the committee the need to appoint an official photographer to disseminate the valuable objects in the collection and create a Museum’s album. The Museum appointed Luís Ojeda Pérez, the most active Canarian photographer during this period, known for his portraits of the archipelago’s oligarchy (Naranjo Santana, 2014, pp. 547-550Naranjo Santana, M. C. (2014) Sociedades culturales y científicas del siglo XIX en Canarias. El Gabinete Literario y el Museo Canario. Tesis doctoral. Sevilla: Universidad Pablo de Olavide.; Betancor Quintana, 2020, pp. 45-49Betancor Quintana, G. (2020) La fotografía en Gran Canaria 1840-1940. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ediciones Remotas.). Although no such album has been found in the Museum’s archives, we have a photograph of a visit by the Dukes of Mecklenburg. Unsurprisingly, the photograph was taken in the Anthropology Hall, the Museum’s jewel of the crown (Fig. 5).

Is there any evidence that the Museum was involved in ethnographic photography at that time? It must be recalled that the period’s photography manuals recommended ethnographers to take photographs before drawing, to avoid European conventions distorting non-European bodies (Danston and Galison, p. 135Danston, L., and Galison, P. (2007) Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.). This sort of concerns was behind attempts to discipline ethnographic photography, making it measurable and comparable, as reflected in Thomas Huxley’s famous project to document the peoples of the British Empire photographically (Prodger, 2009, pp. 71-75Prodger, P. (2009) Darwin’s Camera. Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.; Edwards, 2001, pp. 131-155Edwards, E. (2001) Raw Histories. Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford: Berg.). Significantly, Paul Broca shared this concern to normalise photographs, as succinctly but clearly prescribed in his Instructions générales pour les recherches anthropologiques à faire sur le vivant (Broca, 1879, p. 8Broca, P. (1879) Instructions générales pour les recherches anthropologiques à faire sur le vivant. Paris: G. Masson.).

Considering this general preference for photography over drawing, we may wonder why Grau-Bassas did not make use of it in his expeditions. It is likely that technical limitations, exposure times, and difficulties related to transporting costly equipment through inaccessible ground made photography not a practical option, especially since he was running away from justice. Also, photography, in Broca’s words, was “un art spécial qui exige une éducation spéciale.” Grau was in no position to hire a photographer, although Broca said that all scientific expeditions must have one (Broca, 1879, p. 61Broca, P. (1879) Instructions générales pour les recherches anthropologiques à faire sur le vivant. Paris: G. Masson.). On the other hand, even if the technique of photoengraving made it cheap and fast to reproduce photographs in large quantities, scientific drawing was still very important in the late 19^th century. Also, we are not in this case dealing with a foreign traveller, like Olivia Stone, who was fascinated by the archipelago’s “white dolichol-cephalic” race (Stone, 1889, p. 182Stone, O. (1889) Tenerife and its Six Satellites. London: Marcus Ward.), but of a Canarian who aimed to represent his own people. Perhaps, this proximity ruled out the possible distortions in drawings. Ethnographic photographs, however, reveal that this proximity was more imagined than real.

Luís Ojeda presents a good example of this. In the late 19^th century, whether on his own initiative or on the Museum’s orders it is unclear, he began taking photographs of individuals and groups in which the ethnic element is obvious. It seems, therefore, that Ojeda played a significant role in fixing the Canarian type visually. This was typical of the 19^th century when numerous albums were made in Europe to represent ethnic and racial types. For many, these images were a scientific tool, the real representation of a group (Calvo, 1998, p. 125Calvo, L. (1998) “Fotografía y antropología en España (1839-1936): Entre el estereotipo y la sistemática.” Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares, 53(2), pp. 115-141. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/rdtp.1998.v53.i2.391 ; 2001, p. 10Calvo, L. (2001) “Tipos y estereotipos: más allá de la imagen fotográfica.” In: L. Calvo, ed., Registros o tatuajes. Las fotografías policiales del Archivo de Julián de Zugasti (1870). Barcelona: Publicacions de la Residència d’Investigadors, pp- 9-11.). Broca thought that picturesque photographs of “aborigines” made by local photographers did not have the same value as those taken according to his precise instructions, but still recommended travellers to acquire them, because they were “documents ethnographiques intéressants” (Broca, 1879, p. 8Broca, P. (1879) Instructions générales pour les recherches anthropologiques à faire sur le vivant. Paris: G. Masson.).

It is fairly clear that Ojeda’s photographs, far from seeking mechanical objectivity, represented carefully choreographed scenes, to which he added some artistic touches. For instance, an individual from Gáldar photographed between 1885 and 1890, whom Ojeda identifies as “peasant type.” He carries a club and wears a cachorro (hat) and a Canarian knife (Fig. 6). He is not very different from the shepherd from Mogán drawn years earlier by Grau-Bassas. The preparation of the scene is also obvious in the almost pictorial portrait of a group of peasants (men, women, and children) with the mountain of Gáldar in the background. This mountain was one of the emblems of the Islands’ aboriginal past (Fig. 7). All these types circulated widely outside the archipelago in the form of postcards.

Ojeda was also the photographer of the spectacular urban growth of Las Palmas after the construction of the new harbour in 1883. As pointed out by Gabriel Betancor, the emergence of albumin copies coincided with the expansion of the capitalist economy. These photographs not only covered the city, but also the surrounding countryside. A specific spot, La Atalaya (Santa Brígida) “captured the imagination of foreigners seeking ‘exotic’ views that they did not find in Europe.” (Betancor Quintana, 2020, p. 54Betancor Quintana, G. (2020) La fotografía en Gran Canaria 1840-1940. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ediciones Remotas.), and thus became one of the most photographed places in the Canaries. The loceras of La Atalaya, specifically, were not only easy to present exotically, but were a good fit for the Islands’ alleged ancestral customs. The so-called talayeras lived in caves, like their supposed ancestors, and made a crude form of hand-formed pottery (Fig. 8). Ojeda was one of the photographers that represented them more often (Ascanio, 2008, p. 1933Ascanio Sánchez, C. (2008) “La representación visual y la construcción de estereotipos culturales. El ejemplo de La Atalaya de Santa Brígida (Gran Canaria).” In: XVII Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana. V Centenario de la muerte de Cristóbal Colón. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo de Gran Canaria, pp. 1928-1947. Available at: https://coloquioscanariasamerica.casadecolon.com/index.php/CHCA/article/view/8898 [accessed 20 Sep. 2022].).

A significant number of these photographs were reproduced in illustrated magazines sold all over the country. One of the publications that featured Ojeda’s photographs most often was La Ilustración Artística (Barcelona). Photographs of talayeras appeared in the cover in 1901, under the significant title “Gran Canaria -La Atalaya- A primitive industry”²⁴La Ilustración Artística [LIA], “Gran Canaria-La Atalaya una industria primitiva- de fotografías de Luís Ojeda Pérez,” 25 June 1900, p. 409. (Fig. 9). Similarly interesting was the article published with the photographs, “Las talayeras,” written by the poet and journalist Francisco González Díaz (1866-1945). The article reflects how far the exoticisation of the rural population had gone. According to González Díaz, the potters from La Atalaya were a sort of symbol. These women, who lived in rooms resembling “primitive caverns,” were an “indomitable race” that rejected culture. They made primitive pottery using tools whose names were full of “Guanche reminiscences.” They were a peasant group “lost in the endless motherly bosom of nature.” They, therefore, harboured an “instinctive hatred for progress.” González thought that the talayeras were a human group in which nature could be observed directly, without the accoutrements of history and culture.²⁵A line not very different from that of German anthropologists who distinguished between natural peoples (Naturvölker) and cultural peoples (Kulturvölker) (Zimmerman, 2001, p. 21). The talayeras, described by González as mountain animals belonged to the former. He also perceived a hidden meaning. The talayera was a symbol of the rebellion of the mountain against the city: “the city has not been able to conquer the mountain.”²⁶La Ilustración Artística [LIA] “Las talayeras,” 25 June 1900, p. 411.

The exotism of the so-called talayeras was also an object of touristic exploitation. The popular interest for the primitive other was in full swing, facilitated by advances in communication (Conklin, 2013, p. 34Conklin, A. L. (2013) In the Museum of Man. Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.). The potential of the talayeras did not go unnoticed by the authorities. An exhibit called Fiesta de las Flores (Flower Festival), which aimed to present the Island’s products and crafts, was held in Las Palmas in 1892. The Museo Canario played a prominent role in this event, and its secretary, Amaranto Martínez de Escobar, presided the steering committee (Naranjo, 2016, pp. 450-453Naranjo Santana, M. C. (2016) Cultura, Ciencia y Sociabilidad en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria en el siglo XIX. El Gabinete Literario y el Museo Canario. Madrid: Mercurio Editorial.). Luis Ojeda took many photographs of the event, focusing especially on the “Furnaces of La Atalaya.” Interestingly, the event was openly performative, and Ojeda’s photographs are strongly reminiscent of the ethnographic performances in fashion at the time (Zimmerman, 2001, pp. 20-37Zimmerman, Andrew (2001) Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). Kilns were installed in the centre of Las Palmas and craftswomen from La Atalaya were brought in to ply their trade. The main event was not a curious local craft, but the native women acting as supposed primitive aborigines for the tourists (Fig. 10):

Although this is not the purpose of this paper, it is interesting to examine what happened after Chil’s death 1901. In 1926, the photographer Teodoro Maisch portrayed Dr. Verneau as he reorganised and classified the skulls in the anthropological section. Maisch was systematically representing the rooms of a museum in which human remains, especially skulls, played a central role. By then, this was to an extent obsolete. The studies of Franz Boas in 1907 and 1910 had made Americans and Europeans challenge the stability of skull features, one of the axioms of physical anthropology (Reynaud-Paligot, 2006, p. 284Reynaud-Paligot, C. (2006) La République Raciale. Paris: PUF.), and a more cultural approach to anthropology was gaining ground rapidly. However, the Museo Canario, and it was not alone in this, still maintained a perspective in which race, in the most physical expression of the term, was still prominent.

CONCLUSION

The history of the Museo Canario during this period is relevant because it challenges simplistic separations between national and colonial. The construction in Europe of political-scientific discourses that sought the roots of the nation in biology was not an isolated process, especially because it demanded connections and comparisons to be made with racial elements all over the world. The idea that the Cro-Magnon race somehow linked southern Europe, northwest Africa, and the Canarian archipelago had an obvious colonial dimension, legitimising France’s mission civilisatrice, but also a regional/colonial side. It allowed Canarians to demand a history different from that of other Spaniards, one more closely linked with Europe’s deep racial past.

All of this had a material dimension. We have seen that the Museo Canario not only accumulated skulls of Canarian aborigines, but also strived to acquire specimens from elsewhere in the world. Supposedly, they helped to determine the geographical origin of pre-Hispanic Canarians, but the main aim was to demonstrate the position of Canarians on the top levels of the racial scale. This accumulation of remains made the Museum part of several transnational networks. Despite the initial contacts with Paul Broca’s circle, the geographical scope of the Museum’s contacts suggests that the Museo Canario was not merely a node in a colonial network woven around Paris. The human remains that travelled these networks changed in meaning as they moved and were appropriated. While for Canarians the skulls expressed beyond doubt the European filiation of pre-Hispanic Canarians, for Canadians in Montreal and Argentinians in La Plata they were food for speculation about alleged contacts between Europe and America.

The analysis of how Canarians were represented reveals the blurred nature of the line that divides the national and colonial gazes. Racial atlases, which in theory represented skulls in European and American collections objectively, were also permeated by narratives. Concerning Canarian aborigines, engravings visually expressed the kinship of Canarians with Cro-Magnon troglodytes. When one of the Museo Canario’s most prominent members, Víctor Grau-Bassas, explored remote areas of the Island, his purpose went beyond ethnography. He aimed to graphically document the last unmixed specimens of the race, that is, the last living Cro-Magnon.

Ethnographic photography expresses something similar. Photographers with close links with the Museum contributed to visually fixing the Canarian type, using for this the inhabitants of rural areas. This representation, however, had a dark side beyond identity matters. Photography contributed to exoticize the peasantry, especially women. These images not only represented the survival of a primitive race, but also the chasm opening between urban and rural populations. The Canarian oligarchy saw unassimilable inhabitants of the Islands with colonial eyes. For a long time, the colonial gaze had not only been applied to remote territories, but also to Europe (Blanckaert, 1988, p. 41Blanckaert, C. (1988) “On the Origins of French Ethnology. William Edwards and the Doctrine of Race.” In: G. Stocking, ed., Bones, Bodies, Behaviour. Essays on Biological Anthropology. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 18-55.).

The survival in the Museo Canario of a display approach in which race played a prominent role, even after Chil’s death and well into the 20^th century, is unsurprising. This was no local eccentricity. Raciology survived the crisis of anthropometry, adopting new scientific claddings: serology, genetics, etc. (Reynaud-Paligot, 2011, p. 224Reynaud-Paligot, C. (2011) De l’Identíté nationale. Science, race et politique en Europe et aux États-Unis XIX-XX siècle. Paris: PUF.). Manuals and popular books held onto a racialised view of diversity for a long time. And, although this may sound contradictory, after the crisis of anthropometry skulls continued being exhibited in museums as reliable indicators of racial divisions. Scientific inertia proved too strong. As pointed out by Alice L. Conklin in her study about the Museum of Man, in Paris, “after a century of naturalization in authoritative collections, race typology had become part of a modern way of seeing (racial) differences, and proof of its existence.” This developed visual regime made it very difficult to challenge the biological truth of race in the interwar period (Conklin, 2013, p. 147Conklin, A. L. (2013) In the Museum of Man. Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.), and the Museo Canario could hardly be an exception.