Join us as Elise Milburn shares a chapter, “Plagues, Pests, and Place-Markers: Characterizing Ant Behavior in Sixteenth Century New Spain and the Caribbean,” to be workshopped for an edited collection.

In the past twenty years, insects and the tangible impact that these non-human actors had on the processes of conquest and colonization have become a point of interest in the literature of New Spain and the Spanish Caribbean. Often, insects are studied through the dichotomy of pest (locust, mosquito) or producer (cochineal), creating a clear uncharismatic/charismatic binary in the historiography. However, ants, which few scholars have seriously considered, challenge this binary. This study examines three separate accounts of ants written by both Indigenous and Spanish observers to examine how ants shaped the colonial landscapes of their observers, and how their presence was understood by onlookers. I consider the 1518 and 1519 ant plagues on the island of Hispaniola as described in the essay “Plague of Ants” by Bartolomé de las Casas, the descriptions of Mesoamerican ant populations in the Relación de Tancitaro (1580), and the appearance of ants in the Indigenous-authored Badianus Manuscript (1552).

Milburn shows that the former two accounts, which were written by Spanish authors, depict the ant population as plagues and pests, focusing on the negative damage that these ant populations had on their agricultural projects rather than the impact that importing non-native Spanish plants had on the local ecosystems. She argues that, in these accounts, Spanish authors used ants to reconcile their inability to completely conquer the natural environment of the New World. In contrast, the Badianus Manuscript — a medicinal herbal that details herbal recipes to treat certain ailments, accompanied by visual depictions of many of the plants — depicts ants both as place-markers to find medicinal herbs and as live medical components. Its Mexica authors understood the relationship between plants and insects, which helped them to find otherwise hard-to-locate plants. Thus, in sixteenth-century New Spain, ants’ depiction as plagues, pests, place-markers, and/or medicines depended on the cultural background of the observer. While historians often reduce ants to pests, Indigenous authors in sixteenth-century New Spain broaden our understanding of ants as meaningful non-human actors.

Milburn is the 2026 Richards Center research assistant and a Ph.D. student in the Department of History.