Message #29602

[Bianca]

The first disputes were personally bitter and poetically violent, in the style of academic contention that was to endure until the early 1900’s. Since those original arguments, only a few others have analyzed the account, argued over it, and tried to prove—or to disprove—that the land of Fu Sang was the present southwest United States and Mexico.



 The Chisos Mountains in the Big Bend, c. 1937
Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-60


Some of the story fits. The men with dog heads could be Native Americans. Wolf masks are still worn. Certainly the Indians look somewhat Chinese, although their language is different, as the priest noted. The multi-use Fu-Sang plant—source of fiber, thread, food, and drink—is possibly the maguey, a variety of the “century” plant. The red, pear-shaped fruit could be either early American corn, such as has been found in abandoned storage pits, or the tuna of the nopal—the fruit of the prickly pear cactus—still a common food.

The circular houses were common in the Mogollon culture of the southwestern United States about C.E. 350 and later. (33) The social customs match fairly well—or can be made to match—much that is known about pre-Aztec Indians of central Mexico and the southwestern Indians of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

The journey itself—via the Aleutian current or along the coast—is a plausible one. (34) Even ships without crews can drift to the California coast, as evidenced by many a Japanese wreck, particularly in the favorable autumn winds. (35) What the priest describes along the way also matches the culture of some former Siberian and Alaskan peoples, as far as they are known today. And the geographical sites he mentions, including descriptions of places hard to miss, such as the La Brea tar pits of California, seem to fit.