The Nature of Exploration: Interactions of Dogs, Horses, and Humans in The General History of the Things of New Spain

In the 1570s, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún and his Indigenous American coauthors completed their exploration of Nahua culture and interactions with the natural world known as the Florentine Codex. Dogs and horses make multiple appearances in the work, and not just as objects to be understood through Nahua and Spanish cultural filters. They are also identified as sentient agents, exploring the world around them, as in Book 12, Chapter 15 of the codex, when Spanish dogs are noted for "sniffing at things"—exploring as canids do and reading the present and past of the environment through olfaction. This article engages the natural roots of human exploration by looking at human reflections on the exploratory behaviors of dogs and horses. The experiences of both Nahua and Spanish observers will be used in an effort to understand how sixteenth-century humans in a Transatlantic world tried to grasp the nature of that world and the animals who served them and even add to their anthropocentric experiences through the exploration dogs and horses performed.