Old World Discovers the New World

Although we imagine a handful of Native Americans and Europeans cozying up to a Thanksgiving feast

it only bridges some of their differences

-in actuality, cultural overlap was minimal

Native Americans and their European counterparts

representatives of immensely different cultures

Just a Fantasy

labeling of Native Americans as one group and Europeans as another group suggests harmony within the separate cultures

Considered the beginning of America

country of diverse populations with strong views and a willingness to live or die for them

New World versus Old World

conflict between the indigenous people of the New World and the explorers and settlers of the Old World sprang due to...

-lack of information
-from misinformation
-stubborn tendency of the great nations of Europe to see the world through their own lenses

-included imagined, exaggerated rights of ownership

-designation of a new and an old world reveals a European bias

-New World was not new, and in comparison, the Old World was not old. The New World was only new to Europe

Anthropologists suggest

Native America populations significantly predated the settlement of Western Europe by Indo-European speakers

Europeans arrived in America

native populations numbered in the millions and belonged to hundreds of tribes

-individual traditions
-economies
-languages
-accomplishments

Mayans

have been likened to the ancient Greeks in their accomplishments

Pueblo Indian tribes had developed the skill of crop irrigation

Aztecs
easily conquered by Hernán Cortés, were fierce warriors with an unfriendly tradition of human sacrifice

Differing Cultures

classify all such people as the same culture would have been as misguided as to think of all Europeans as a single people

principle colonizing European nations

Spain, France, and England

-saw themselves as quite distinct
-separate languages, cultures, and goals

willingness to form alliances with each other mirrored the Native Americans' reluctance

did so, only as it suited the purposes of their separate nations

despite the individuality of different tribes...

-commonality of tradition among Native American people
-contrasted sharply with European culture

Native Americans were polytheistic

gods that individual tribes worshipped varied from tribe to tribe and reflected their concerns

Europeans worshipped a patriarchal, Judeo-Christian god

Native American legends thought of earth as mother and envisioned civilization as emerging from her womb

Coalescing with this belief, they celebrated fertility and harmony with the natural world

European theology

-suggested that God had granted man dominion over the creatures of the earth
-European man thought in terms of taming and ownership

UPCOMING...

• Read Christopher Columbus all Letters
• Bartolome de Las Casas all Writings
• Alvar Nun͂ez Cabeza de Vaca all writings
• First Encounters: Early European Accounts of Native America
• Complete question(s) before class

References

Lauter, P. (Ed.). (2006). The Heath anthology of American literature (5th ed., Vol. A): Colonial Period to 1800. Boston, MA: Houghton.

Weinstein, A., Rubel, D. (2002). The story of America: Freedom and crisis from settlement to superpower. New York, NY: DK Publishing,Inc.