Villains
We used to play Explorers.
I remember walking along the rock wall in my friend Luke’s backyard. In Cummington Massachusetts, everybody’s yard has these walls behind them. The walls are very old. I think they’re from early colonial times. In New England we have a lot of ancient stuff like that. Especially in the “Hilltowns” like Cummington. The Hilltowns are what people in Western Massachusetts call the country. We also call it “The Woods”. Well, those of us who don’t live in The Woods call it that. I grew up there, but I live in the more urban parts of Western Mass now. I’m starting to call The Hilltowns “The Woods” more and more. It’s not all that developed up in the Hilltowns. Old colonial stuff is pretty conspicuous. Especially the weird rock walls.
They’re only 3 feet high, so I’m not sure what good they would do to keep anything out. Maybe they’re symbolic. Here’s my oldschool colonial impression: “Neighbor, this is my property. Stay you out. And God Bless”. That’s what the walls were supposed to mean. They would have to say “God Bless” at the end because they were all puritans back then. Some people in the Hilltowns still are. A whole lot of them are and don’t say they are.
Luke’s wall was an especially big one. You could walk on top of it all the way up it into the woods behind his house. It was like walking on a really mini Great Wall of China. I think it was late afternoon, and we were going into the woods like we did a lot when we hung out. I’ve known Luke since Kindergarten and we were in 3rd grade then. He was one of the few friends I had in Elementary school. We both lived on the same street and would hang out most days. We’d usually go to the woods and run around, pretending to be different things. Today, we would pretend to be explorers.
“So, I’ll be Magellan. Who will you be?” Luke asked me.
“Ummmm…” I had to think about this. Which explorer did I want to be? We were studying explorers in school. Our history book had a whole chapter of all the great explorers from back in the day. Starting with Marco Polo and going through all the big ones. You know, Columbus, Cortez, Cook, Pizarro, Ponce De Leon. Most of them were white men who went to a country and enslaved people and/or raped them and/or killed them, took gold and colonized. Yep, those guys. But, Luke and I (and I guess our whole class) didn’t know this about the explorers a.k.a conquistadors we were studying. To us, they were like heroes. Our 3rd grade history book told us all about how great these explorers were. How they had adventures and fought in cool battles. We even celebrate Columbus’ birthday, so he must be a hero, right? Just like Martin Luther King?
“Well, Columbus is off limits. Just so you know.” Said Luke. It’s true; it would be unfair of me to be Columbus. He was the ultimate explorer. He discovered America, after all. And he had three cool boats. What other Explorers had 3 boats that were named? It was like he had 3 Batmobiles. Or 3 Millennium Falcons. Most heroes only have one cool vehicle. And we don’t celebrate Batman Day or Han Solo Day. Playing Columbus would be akin to playing god.
“And, Evan’s already taken Cortez. So you can’t be him.” Evan is another friend of mine who wasn’t there that day. Luke and Evan had played Explorers one day without me. And he had taken Ferdinand Cortez I guess. This was news to me. I thought today would be the very first game of Explorers. Oh well.
“Hm.” I looked up at Luke. “I guess I’ll be Drake.”
Sir Francis Drake was a British explorer and also an Admiral in the Navy in the late 1500s. Spain and England didn’t like each other much then. They were the two major imperial forces in Europe, and they just kept on locking horns. A lot of what Drake did was raids on Spanish ships, basically like a pirate. In fact, there’s a book about Drake by a man named Harry Kelsey called The Queen’s Pirate. In it, Kelsey says this about one of the raids: “Drake and his men lay in wait…picking off a dozen or so riverboats…the amount of loot was so massive that the pirates could not carry it away in their own ships” (Kelsey 48). Drake took a lot from Spain, and Spain hated him for it.
Of course, Francis was an explorer, too. He was the first Englishman to sail around the entire world. When he did that, he actually landed on the West Coast of America, probably near what’s now San Francisco. They don’t know for sure, but if he did land there, what’s funny about that is he called wherever he landed Nova Albion. It means New England, in Latin: “Drake claimed the land for England, marked his claim with an engraved brass plate, and that very same brass plate was found near San Francisco” (Kelsey 188-89) So, somehow New England switched from the West Coast to the East Coast. Probably because the English didn’t stay on the West Coast for long. But, originally, “New England” was the Bay Area.
Drake’s real “hero moment” was when he beat the Spanish Armada. Spain and England eventually got to hating each other so much, that they went to all-out war. Now, the thing is, Spain had a much bigger Navy than England. I mean, it must’ve been big. England didn’t get to call their Navy something badass like “Armada”. But, Drake beat the big bad Armada in a pretty awesome way.
He set unmanned ships on fire and sent them straight at Armada ships: “Vessels packed with combustibles, and their guns loaded, ready to fire when the flames reached the touchhole…In something approaching panic, the Spanish Ships simply cut their mooring lines and sailed off. They accomplished their purpose” (Kelsey 333). This victory was a big deal, too, because it really solidified England as a power in the world. And, that allowed England to become the major imperialist force it was.
Luke and I thought Drake was a hero, but like I said, he wasn’t really a good guy.
What our history books didn’t tell us was that he was a slave trader. Drake and his cousin John were actually instrumental in starting up the slave trade. Slaves were being traded at the time, but these two really kicked it into gear as a business. In the 1560s, Francis and John would go to Africa and raid villages, destroying stuff and kidnapping people they could sell as slaves: “ For Hawkins and his partners the main consideration seemed to be profit…Forty ducadoes per slave, and the costs in Africa were low…the slaves were crammed into the holds of the ships…sanitation simply did not exist” (Kelsey 16). This was a business that not many people were doing at the time, but it was hugely successful for Drake and his Cousin. They were some of the first guys to kidnap and sell slaves.
***
“I have seen no natives, Magellan.” I said.
“Aye, Sir.” Said Luke, “But there might be some. They could be hidden! We should be alert! They might be waiting to do an ambush on us.”
“Well, if they do, I have my trusty sword. It was a gift. From the Queen. It can cut through a Dragon’s thick scales!” I said.
“That’s nothing!” Said Luke, “I have two pistols that were given to me by the Emperor Fu Manchu. You know, the Chinese, they invented fireworks. They made me two pistols that shoot fireworks so strong they could blow up a tank.”
This place is so strange, Lu—Magellan.” I said. I decided to change the subject. I hadn’t intended to start a weapons race with my sword line. “The woods, they’re not like anything I’ve seen on all my vast travels.” We had seen all these woods before, but never through the eyes of Sir Francis Drake and Ferdinand Magellan. And, like the rock wall, I was exploring the ground with my feet, too. I was barefoot. I had left my shoes in Luke’s house. I really don’t like wearing shoes, and I was even more adamant about this back then. That day I had decided to go up into the woods without shoes on. This was partially a conscious decision I made. And, partially because I was just so excited to play explorers I forgot to put shoes on. We were running out the back door of his house, through the playroom. Past the ping-pong table where Luke would always beat me at ping pong, and he stopped. Luke had noticed my barefeet. He said:
“Nick, do you want to put shoes on?” And I looked down at my feet, then back up at Luke. I shrugged. I was starting to think I shouldn’t have done that shrug, because the forest ground was a lot spikier than I had anticipated. But, there was no turning back now. We were explorers in this strange new place. Two old adventurers on a mission. Sir Francis Drake would never complain about hurting feet. Especially not in front of Magellan. They were both brave soldiers and heroes.
Actually, Magellan and Drake never knew each other. Magellan died in 1521. And that was 20 years before Drake was even born. That fact didn’t matter to us at the time.
***
Magellan was the first ever European to sail around the entire world. So, Drake would probably look up to him. Magellan was Portuguese, but he worked for the Spanish government. They hired him to sail to Indonesia in the early 1500s because they wanted to set up trading. According to Webchron, a history database run by Dr. David Koeller, a history professor at North Park university in Chicago: “Magellan convinced the king that this voyage would be useful to show that the Spice Islands were property of Spain… King Charles I saw this as an opportunity to gain status and wealth for his country and gave Magellan his funding” Magellan is credited for circumnavigating the world, but in reality, it was his boat that did it, not him. Magellan’s journey stopped with his death in the Philippines.
For some reason, when Magellan got to the Philippines, he really felt the need to convert the country to Christianity. He was able to convert a lot of people in the Cebu region of the Philippines, but he came up against some serious resistance when he tried converting the nearby island Mactan. Lapu-Lapu, the king of Mactan, strongly resisted conversion. In the book The Life of Ferdinand Magellan, and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe, Francis Henry Hill Guillemard says Lapu-Lapu: “Was defiant enough [he said] ‘If the Spaniards had lances then so also did they. Reeds and stakes hardened by fire’. They were ready for them” (Guillemard 248). So, Mactan would stand up to Magellan and his crew.
The Magellan guys, armed to the teeth, went in and started busting up the place. They actually burnt down civilian houses: “The captain-general sent some men to burn their houses in order to terrify them” (Guillemard 250). But, this battle did not work out so well for Ferdinand. He got shot by a poison arrow, and then when he was weak, Lapu-Lapu’s guys (for lack of a better phrase) stabbed the shit out of him: “One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass…they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears” (Guillemard 251). And, with Magellan’s death, that was the end of the battle.
Lapu-Lapu is regarded as a hero in the Philippines, but we weren’t taught anything about him in 3rd grade. We were basically taught that Magellan was massacred by crazy natives. I don’t know if they were crazy or not, but it seems to me like they were in the right that day. They were just defending their home. Magellan and his whole band of outsiders just came in trying to force a weird religion on them, and when they didn’t accept him, he fought dirty against them and burned their houses down. I’m with the Philippines on this one.
***
When we found the Brain-Sucker, Luke and I didn’t have to stay in character to act like it was new to us. It wasn’t just new to Ferdinand and Sir Francis. It was something Luke and Nick hadn’t encountered before. There was a thunderstorm since we were last up in Luke’s wood. The wind had knocked down some of the smaller trees, split some in half. The bigger trees were strong enough to resist the storm, and had only lost some branches. I was trying pretty damn hard not to step on these, but it wasn’t easy. Fallen branches were all over the ground and were not being nice to my feet.
“Woah! Look at that tree, Drake!”
“Which tree?” My eyes darted around the woods for a moment, and then I found it. The biggest tree that the storm had wrecked. It was dark black and gnarly. I didn’t know it at the time, but thinking back (and applying 11th grade Environmental Science knowledge) this tree was probably old and dead before the storm even took it out. The wind had had split the tree in half, the entire middle was splintered. There was a stump, and right behind it, lying on the ground was the top of the tree. One giant spike stuck out of the top of the tree.
“No,” Said Luke, “That is no tree. I was wrong. It’s a Brain-Sucker!”
“Huh?”
Luke sat down on the stump and leaned his head back a bit. The spike coming out the downed top of the tree poked the back of his head a bit. “See,” said Luke, “You put your victims in the chair here, and then the needle,” Luke patted the spike behind him that was jabbing his head. “The needle goes into their brain. Then, you pull this lever…” Luke put his other hand on one of the tree’s big roots that was sticking straight up out of the ground. “And it sucks their brains out. Then, they’re your slave, Drake. What a discovery!”
“Yeah.” I said. I walked over to Luke. He stood up. I put my hand on the brain-suck lever, then on the brain-suck needle. I poked the tip of the needle with my index finger. “What a discovery.” I backed away from the Brain-Sucker. I put my hand up to my chin like I’d seen supervillains do on Saturday mornings when they were formulating a plan. “We could take over the world with this, Luke. I mean, Magellan. Magellan, We could brainwash everyone.”
***
Sir Francis Drake and Ferdinand Magellan were not Heroes like we thought. In reality, the two explorers/conquistadors were closer to villains. They raped, pillaged, stole, killed, enslaved and indoctrinated people to religion all in an effort to colonize and expand empires. To conquer the world just like Luke and I wanted to do with the Brain-Sucker.
Right when Luke said: “Yeah!” and agreed to my plan, I think we both realized this. We had realized the true nature of the characters we were playing that day. The villainous nature that all humans have. The drive to succeed at the cost of anyone or anything that gets in your way. The conquistadors are just one example of this, of course. In our fantasy plans for world domination via mass brain-sucking, Luke and I were channeling the drive to conquer that all the explorers we studied in 3rd grade represent. The fact that our first thought was to use the Brain-Sucker for “evil” is interesting, too. We didn’t just tap into conquistador villainy, but into the basic villainy that all humans have. I think most people, if given the opportunity to take over the world or save it, will chose to take it over. It’s just cooler, to.
***
“But, uh, can we come back another time?”
“Huh?” Said Luke.
“ I think I need to go back to your house,” I said.
“Why?”
“My feet are bleeding.”
Works Cited
Guillemard, Francis Henry Hill. The Life of Ferdinand Magellan, and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe. London: George Phillip & Son, 1890.
Kelsey, Harry. Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Koeller, David. “First Circumnavigation of the Globe by Magellan: 1519-1522”.Webchron. 2005. North Park University. http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/WestEurope/Magellan.html
