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(2017
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2017 (Index to # 1 samples) #1: Long Essay: learning, challenges, issues |
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Cynthia Cleveland
October 25, 2017
The Old World
“Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492…”, this is the song we
are taught to sing as children—an ode to the man who “discovered” a vast and
wild America, uncultivated and ready for the taking. Our ancestral founders
braved the wilderness of the New World, to make new lives for themselves—only to
be met with force of the native population. Most of what we are taught tends to
insert a very specific bias, one that suggests that we were merely innocent
bystanders, caught in a firestorm of resistance while simply trying to live. The
consideration that those founders were encroaching on already inhabited
territory seems to be lost in the annals of history for primary education
purposes. Much of this fact may be attributed to the lack of literature, as the
natives had no established mode of writing, whereas the Pilgrims and colonizers
had plenty. We only have those narratives of those who came to America to give
us an idea of those early years of colonization and exploration. This presents
us with a very serious problem, a problem of sifting through the bias of those
romantic narratives to come closer to the bigger picture—that instead of a New
World, those explorers found an Old World, one with an already present culture,
which they had essentially buried and replaced with their own values.
One of the greatest concerns in these narratives of discovery is the
imposition of religion on the native population. Those who sought to explore and
colonize the New World brought with them their established religion and merely
viewed those natives as “savages”, and viewed their spirituality with disdain.
Their primary objective, as shown in the narratives of Christopher Columbus and
even Cabeza de Vaca—the latter of which had the most generous view of the
natives, as far as explorers are concerned—sought to convert those uncivilized
people to the comforts of their God in the name of their royal patrons. There
exists very little appreciation of their way of life in these narratives and
explicitly rejects the idea of syncretism in relation to the Native Americans.
The presence of their spirituality is rejected and essentially replaced with the
European religion, and fades into the abstract.
Christopher Columbus expressed his surprise at the generosity of the Native
Americans, referring to them as a “timid people” regarding this fact, unaware of
their cultural inclinations towards communal living and hospitality. John Smith
also observed this fact, when his people were near starving, the Native
Americans were generous and gifted them food and supplies to help see them
through the season. John Smith attributed this kindness to the mercy of God who
“so changed the hearts of the savages”, rather than appreciating the hospitality
and kindness of the natives, as is their wont. Much of these narratives spend a
great deal of time rationalizing that kindness to that of divine intervention,
rather than a lesson in cultural difference. An outside perspective can
appreciate the generosity of the natives without leaning any significance to
their God, but it seems largely unheard of in common history texts.
Converse to this seemingly uncivilized way of life, Benjamin Franklin’s
narrative “Remarks concerning the Savages of North America” serves to better
understand and appreciate the culture of the Native Americans. His narrative
challenges the notion of referring to them as “savages” simply because their way
of life differs from the colonists’. It seems to be the most generous view of
the Native American culture present in early colonial literature and provides an
insight into their way of life. Most notable is his observation of their public
council meetings, in which each member is heard and uninterrupted, as opposed to
the Europeans, who he points out consistently argue amongst each other. He finds
this fascinating and essentially disproves this notion of their lack of
civility.
Turning to a more recent piece of literature, Simon J. Ortiz’s “A New
Story”, shows much of the issue with what we are taught of Native American
culture today. A woman needs an Indian for a parade, so she calls him, but to
her, it doesn’t matter what tribe he descends from, he’s an “Indian”, so it
works in her interest. She describes a spectacle of the Indian in “feathers and
paint” and “maybe even a medicine man”, with little regard to cultural accuracy.
This particular piece speaks to our inherent lack of cultural syncretism
regarding Literature and history.
History classes spend so much time telling us about our founders and
those who explored the New World, but they forget the Old World—the one that was
already here when those explorers landed. We learn of the trials and hardships
they faced and we are presented with a narrative, in which the Europeans
dominated and tamed an uncivilized land. This notion must be remedied. There
were already people here and a dominant culture, but those seem to be forgotten
by those who write our history. A lack of literature is a sincere issue, but it
is important to extrapolate the culture and values of the natives from what
narratives we have to give us a better understanding of our country. America is
known as a melting pot—only recently so, since the industrial revolution coined
the term, but it has always been so and that should be reflected in our earlier
lessons in history.
