The starting point for this investigation is the iconographic and literary motif of the killing of hundreds of indigenous people ordered in 1513 by the Spaniard Núñez de Balboa in the region of present-day Panama. Through the study of illustrated books of the 16th to 18th centuries, we observe how the concept of “man-woman” was displaced and transferred from “the ancient to the exotic” so as to understand a gender reality that was unknown to the settlers. After an analysis of Theodore de Bry’s sixteenth-century portrayal of the massacre, we address critical considerations and the comparative analysis of Joseph-François Lafitau, who, in the eighteenth century, brought the man-woman into the realm of religion.