European colonial imagination mapped its Moorish fears onto Native Americans before meaningful contact.

Evidence

During the conquest of the Americas, Europeans claimed to observe all manner of monsters, some that resembled Plinian beasts and others that were described as devil-worshippers. The American Indians were described as Moors and their cities as New Cairo, evidence of the Maurophilia that occupied the European imagination. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 33

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core inquiry into the Muslim monster as manufactured projection; connects to their ‘fear without an object’ thesis in that the Moorish template was applied to a wholly separate people. — connects to: Tools of racecraft honed on Blacks and Native Americans get retargeted at Muslims — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 41; Britain borrowed demonization of Native Americans and applied it to Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 111; Anti-Ottoman crusader attitudes were transferred onto Native Americans by English colonists — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 206 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: What is the specific evidence of cities being named ‘New Cairo’ in European colonial writing about America, and how prevalent was this naming practice?