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By portraying the natives as both magnificent and less than human, Europeans tried to pretend that their brutal mission of conquest was somehow righteous and heroic.

This quote comes from Chapter 4: Dead Reckoning, after Grann explains that the Spanish gave Patagonia its name because of the supposedly large feet of its inhabitants. Here, Grann shows how European explorers and colonists disparage and dehumanize the subjects of their conquests to justify their rule. Importantly, Grann also highlights the contrasting qualities European explorers attribute to the people they conquer. They regard them as both mythical and as less than human, two descriptions at opposite ends of a value scale that are nonetheless equally dehumanizing through the lens of European empires’ xenophobia, prejudice, arrogance, and greed.

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