LITR 4231 Early American Literature 2012 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning Early American Literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Elizabeth Eagle

05 March 2012

An Introduction to the Beginning

          In the beginning there were Native Americans, various groups of individuals with a culture, religion, and a way of life that benefited their society without destroying another's. Like their own creation stories, there was balance to their way of life that resulted in peaceful societies that found violence scarce and life to generally be as peaceful as their early oral histories. But across the sea there was another beginning, a beginning marked by a culture that prided itself on dominance and discovery and used their creation story as a way to further their own selfish demands for wealth and lands. From these two very different beginnings came an introduction between the two cultures that marked the beginning of America.

          The creation and origin myths and stories of both the Native Americans and the Europeans proved dangerous and ultimately disastrous when the two peoples met. The inherent differences in the two cultures, sprung from their respective early histories would flare up with the first established meetings of the two cultures specifically with the meeting of the Native Americans and Christopher Columbus. In Columbus's letter, he sees the indigenous people as fairly intelligent but finds they are far inferior to him and his men. His letter reads somewhat like his own culture's creation story, he has found a Garden of Eden of sorts and is ready to use that garden to attain his own ends. Like his own creation story, he views the Christian presence as the presence for the Native Americans to emulate. This ideology carries over in much of the other earlier works in American Literature.

          When John Smith arrived, the tensions between the Native Americans and the European presence intensified. It does not help matters that John Smith was in reality a consummate liar. In his story for it is more a story rather than a documentation of fact, Smith turns his interactions with the Native Americans as a romantic tale that has little basis in fact and colored the opinions of Europeans that would follow in Smith's footsteps. Smith's story was detrimental to the Native Americans because it made the Native Americans seem less than human and destroyed any early attempts at reconciling the two cultures since subsequent interactions of the cultures based much of their knowledge of Native Americans on Smith's very false accounts of Native American life.

          In John Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity, it seems there is hope for the Native American population since Winthrop preaches to his congregation a message of what seems to be tolerance and respect not only for one another but for the journey they are about to embark in their New World. While Winthrop does not particularly mention Native Americans, his sermon that the Puritan settlement be “as a city upon a hill” moves the reader to find that Winthrop would do what was necessary to ensure the survival of not only his congregation but of his settlement as well. In this way, the reader can infer that Winthrop would choose to have good relations with the Native Americans despite their inherent differences, even if his only purpose is for the survival of his settlement.

          This plan and ideology is seen in the earlier writings by William Bradford who led the Pilgrims in America. The Pilgrims and Bradford recognized the Native Americans not only as humans but as potential neighbors and maintained good relations with them. Unlike the earlier ideas of Columbus and Smith, Bradford and his Pilgrims were far more relaxed in their cultural views of the Native Americans. These views are epitomized in the story of Squanto and of the first Thanksgiving. By finding good and helpful neighbors in the Native Americans, the Pilgrims were able to survive and thus maintain their hold in America. Their presence set a precedent in America that other settlements did well to follow but the ever increasing European presence on Native American land and the encroachment of those Europeans into Native American territory would lead to disastrous results.

          The results of the Pilgrim and Puritan landings in America culminated in the creation of the captive narrative as Native Americans found it increasingly difficult to live in peace beside their European neighbors. Like many of their creation stories there was a balance to be maintained in their world that was being upset by the European presence. War, attacks, and kidnappings became a way for the Native Americans to reestablish balance within their communities and their religious views by bending their European captives to the will and culture of the tribe. The best examples of these captive narratives are the stories of Mary Jemison and Mary Rowlandson. In both, the struggle to maintain balance between the two cultures and their contrasting views of religion and life are forced into the spotlight. For the modern reader, these stories reveal a wealth of information on early life for settlers and Native Americans alike. However, these stories were not appreciated for their historical and cultural value at the time and thus became a popular genre filled with sensationalist stories that had little to do with the understanding of Native American culture and all to do with the selling of books and the shock value of the captive's stories.

          From the early differences in the creation stories to the misrepresentation of the Native Americans by early explorers to the misunderstandings brought by captive narratives, the clash of cultures in early America would echo throughout the rest of America's early history and into the modern age. The lack of understanding between the two cultures and the sensationalist stories from the edges of the early frontier would delineate how Americans would treat their Native American neighbors for centuries. The mismanagement of relations between these two cultures would ultimately become its own tragic narrative as the Native Americans became the true captives of the quickly evolving, young America.