ABSTRACT
Ascertaining the motivations of European actors can be difficult enough; trying to perceive the Indigenous and African peoples with whom they interacted with equal clarity can be likened to looking at the world around readers through scratched glasses with distorting lenses. While the peoples might have been misperceived, they were nonetheless central to the arguments for empire made by English writers. Francis Drake’s interactions with Panamá’s rebel slaves are instructive in providing a picture of the kind of empire that expansionists believed they were bringing into being. European interpretations of these peoples could have transformative power. Spanish chroniclers to some extent had the power to conjure up the cimarrones for their readers, and English writers went on to Anglicize them into the symerons.
