Explorers imposed the medieval Muslim-monster template onto the Americas before any real knowledge

Evidence

In his journals, Columbus claims to have witnessed, “men with one eye only, and others with faces that were man-eaters, accustomed upon taking a prisoner to cut his throat, drink his blood and dismember him.” This landscape was occupied with Plinian monsters, demon-worshippers, Amazons, a race of humanoid creatures with tails, and dragons. A dragon was reportedly killed by a gallant (explorer) knight in one of numerous tales about the Americas that was modeled upon medieval romances, which are stories, as we well know, populated with Muslim monsters. The importance of chivalry is reflected in the journals of numerous explorers, an example of the medieval episteme that framed colonial adventures. Giants, another type of monster featured in medieval tales of chivalry, were spotted in Brazil and Patagonia during the sixteenth century. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 581

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s guiding question: the image (Plinian monsters, chivalric Muslim monsters) preceding contact. Also connects to Said’s orientalism-as-projection strain.
• SEED: The moment of conquest as genre fiction — exploring how chivalric romance functioned as pre-contact ‘reporting’ template would make a strong essay on narrative-as-episteme.