Of pre-columbian and columbian periods
The overall goal is to study historical background and literary works primarily about Amerindians as a part of American literature during Pre-Columbian and Columbian periods.
It should be stated that during the period of American exploration we primarily deal with travel literature, i.e. writings that describe either the author’s journey to a distant and alien place, or writings which discuss the customs, habits, and wildlife of a distant place – ethnological literature. Travel literature comprises such genres as: diaries[21], letters[22], travel journals[23], ships’ logs[24], reports[25], records[26], etc.
Thus, during the Pre-Columbian and Columbian periods we pay our attention to literature about Amerindians of the ethnological kind, written mostly by Europeans.
Had history taken a different turn, the United States easily could have been a part of the great Spanish or French overseas empires. Its present inhabitants might speak Spanish and form one nation with Mexico, or speak French and be joined with Canadian Francophone Quebec and Montreal. Yet the earliest explorers of America were not English, Spanish, or French. There are different versions on this point.
In the centuries after 1492 stories and legends grew up about some adventurous seamen having reached the New World long before Columbus. One legend tells how a Buddhist monk named Hoei-Shin sailed from China to Mexico in AD 459. Another claims that an Irish monk named Brendan the Bold landed in America in AD 551. But nevertheless the first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga[27] recounts how the adventurous Leif Ericson “Lucky Leif”, a Viking sailor from Iceland, and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of America – probably Nova Scotia, in Canada – in the first decade of the 11th century, almost 400 years before the next recorded European discovery of the New World. As recently as 1953 a plaque was set up at Mobile Bay in the modern American state of Alabama which reads “In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language”. Modern scholars have found firm evidence to support this version.
Thus, in 1960s archeologists uncovered traces of Viking settlements in both Newfoundland and New England. In Newfoundland the archeologists found the foundations of huts built in Viking style, iron nails and the weight, or “whorl”, from a spindle. These objects were important pieces of evidence that the Viking had indeed reached America, as until the arrival of Europeans none of the Amerindian tribes knew how to make iron, and the spindle whorl was exactly like those used in known Viking lands such as Iceland.
Being a sea-going people from Scandinavia in northern Europe, the Vikings were proud of their warriors and explorers and told stories called “sagas” about them. The saga of Leif Ericson tells how he sailed from Greenland to the eastern coast of North America in about the years AD 1000. When he found vines with grapes on them growing there, he named the place where he landed “Vinland the Good”. Other Vikings followed Leif to Vinland. But the settlements they made there did not last. The hostility of the local Amerindians and the dangers of the northern seas combined to make them give up their attempt to colonize Vinland. The Vikings sailed away and their discovery of Vinland was forgotten except by their storytellers.
It was the Spanish who began the lasting European occupation of America. So, the first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), funded by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. Born into a family of wool workers near the once supreme Mediterranean port of Genoa, Christopher Columbus followed that rather sedentary trade for a time, but by his early adulthood he had left wool, Genoa, and land itself behind, venturing onto the broad Atlantic, north to England and perhaps beyond, and south along the African shore as far as the Gold Coast. During this time he began to develop a plan to find a new, commercially viable route to Asia by sailing west across the ocean. For eight years he sought support for such a journey. Then, in 1492, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, having just defeated the last of Spain’s Moorish rulers at Granada, finally agreed to back Columbus’s “enterprise of the Indies”. On the whole Ch. Columbus undertook four voyages (1492, 1498, 1498, 1502). During the first one he met “some naked people”, the Taino Indians, who he found to be “of a very acute intelligence”, a people “so guileless and so generous” that although naturally timid they approached the strangers and gave them anything they had. Columbus’s journal in his “Epistola,” printed in 1493, recounts the trip’s drama – the terror of the men, who feared monsters and thought they might fall off the edge of the world; the near mutiny; how Columbus faked the ships’ logs so the men would not know how much farther they had travelled than anyone had gone before; and the first sighting of land as they neared America.
When Ch. Columbus returned to Spain he took back with him some golden jewelry that he had obtained in America. In the next fifty years thousands of treasure-hungry Spanish adventurers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to search for more of the precious metal. It was a lust for gold that led some of them even to conquer some Amerindian tribes.
The first contacts between Europeans and Indian people seem the most famous and important events in the history. Most of these can recite the names of Christopher Columbus’s ships, they first landed in the New World and how he mistakenly called the people he found there – Indians. But few of these names are of people who criticized Columbus for much about the life they led. How did they greet the strangers? Were they treated like gods? Were they feared? Were they attacked? Or were they treated as a new and exotic treating partner by people who had a long history of dealing with other seafaring cultures? The first meeting between the European and American worlds would print two different cultures and the conflict. Let’s look first of all at the Caribbean 1492 where the rough contact began and continued with a clash of cultures. December of 1492 three ships under the command of Ch. Columbus approached the second largest island in the Caribbean. For eight weeks Columbus travelled from the Bahamas to Cuba, finally reaching the sight of the modern day Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the island he would name “Española”.
The island was populated then by people who were called as the Taino. One region was controlled by the paramount chief, Guacanagarí. On Christmas Eve, when coasting along the shore, Columbus’s flagships the Santa Maria ran aground. When Guacanagarí learnt the news, he sent all his people from the town with very large canoes to unload everything from the ship. So great was the care and diligence which that king exercised. And he himself was as diligent unloading the ship as in guiding what was taken to land. He ordered that everything would be cared for. Grateful for the island leader’s help, Columbus accepted his invitation to come ashore. The admiral left to dine on a shore and arrived on the time when five kings had come all subject to the one who was called Guacanagarí. Guacanagarí came to receive the Admiral as soon as he had reached the land and took him by the arm. Columbus was immediately struck by the beauty of Taino life. “The King[28] observes a very wonderful estate in such a dignified manner that it is a pleasure to see. Neither better people nor land can there be. The houses and villages are so pretty. They love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest speech in the world and they are gentle and they are always laughing” (Columbus, www).
As a token of gratitude for the rescue of his men and supplies Columbus presented Guacanagarí with a red key a prestigious item among the Taino elite. In return Guacanagarí gave Columbus a golden tiara, he wore on his head. To Guacanagarí it was a fair exchange, a gesture of mutual respect and recognition, the opening of trade between equals. To Columbus it was a crown, a symbol of authority; Guacanagarí was surrendering his lands and people to Spain. But Columbus was not simply looking to rule people; he saw something much more valuable to his future: he saw gold. The price he could take back to response his security. There was wealth to be had. And to the Europeans of that time wealth alone those strong enough to take it. “Now I have ordered my men to build a tower and a fort. Not that I believe it to be necessary for it is obvious that with these men that I bring, I could subdue all of this island, since the people are naked and without arms. But it is right that this tower be made so that with love and fear they will obey” (Columbus, 1493). Leaving behind a contingent of men and a fort built from the timbers of the Santa Maria, Columbus set sail for Europe. With him he would carry the news of a New World, gold and a dozen of island natives. Guacanagarí and the Taino had no way of knowing what was about to happen to their original way of life.
The Tainos’ ancestors were part of a series of migration of South American Indian people dating back over 2,000 years. They farmed the land and harvested the wealth of the sea. Taino traders travelled in huge ocean-going canoes capable of caring up to 150 men. Outslaiden with feathers, gold, wood, beautiful birds, corn, fabric, food. Island nations were evolving together by trade. Trade was a communication system in which nations knew one another, maintained peace. Some trading partners even exchanged their names to create lasting bounds between their communities. By the time of contact there were well over 1,000 000 people living in Caribbean. Local community leaders were subject to power regional leaders like Guacanagarí who controlled trade with large personal fleets and warehouses of commodities.
Into this world Columbus returned in November 1493 with a military flotilla of 17 ships. Under his command were armor-clad soldiers, cavalry, attacked dogs and guns. The Spanish conquest of the Caribbean began. Gold mines were opened and the Taino were enslaved, forced to mine the ore.
A Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566) who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage spoke out against the cruel treatment of the Taino people: “It is not possible to recount the hundredth part what I have seen with my own eyes. A man have need to have a body of iron to undergo the labor they had to do in getting gold out of the mines. They must delve and search a hundred times over in the inner parts of the mountains till they dig them down from top to bottom. They must work the very rocks hollow”.
Epidemics and famines swept the island. Yet the Spanish continued to demand that the Taino supplied them with both food and labor. Garrisons were strong across the island to fortify the gold fields. When resistance sprang up Columbus set out military units to terrorize towns to submission… (Christopher Columbus Arrival, www).
It should be mentioned that besides Ch. Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas is also the richest source of information about the early contact between Amerindians and Europeans. As a young priest he helped conquer Cuba. He transcribed Columbus’s journal, and late in life wrote a long, vivid “History of the Indians”criticizing their enslavement by the Spanish.
A Spanish adventurer, de las Casas became a plantation owner under the economedia system introduced by Columbus. Disgusted and horrified by the brutality of his countrymen, de las Casas freed his slaves, and immersed himself in the priesthood. Through his unflagging efforts, Spain passed laws that outlawed the enslavement of Native Americans. Although these laws were routinely ignored and ineffective, they stand in stark contrast to the actions of Columbus.
Bartolomé de las Casas, as a contemporary of Columbus, perhaps is best qualified to remark on the legacy of "The Olde Navigator". His observation of Columbus and his legacy is as follows: "How much damage, how many calamities, disruptions and devastations of kingdoms have there been? How many souls have perished in the West Indies over the years and how unjustly? How many unforgivable sins have been committed? <…> What we committed in the West Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind…" (cit.: Loewen, www).
Where Columbus saw opportunity and riches to be plundered, de las Casas recognized the humanity and dignity of the Taino People, describing them as follows: "God created these simple people without evil and without guile. They are most obedient and faithful to their natural lords and to the Christians whom they serve. Nor are they quarrelsome, rancorous, querulous, or vengeful… They neither possess nor desire to possess worldly wealth. Surely these people would be the most blessed in the world…” (cit.: Hurst, www). Where Columbus lusted after gold, power, and privilege, Bartolome de las Casas fought for the downtrodden and the oppressed.
So, lust for gold led a number of Spaniards to conquer Amerindian tribes. For example, in the 1520s Hernán Cortés tried to conquer the Aztecs, who were a wealthy, city-building Amerindian people and lived in what is today Mexico.
In the 1530s the same lust for gold caused Fransisco Pizarro to attack the equally wealthy empire of the Incas of Peru. A stream of looted treasure began to flow across the Atlantic to Spain from a new empire built up by such conquerors – “conquistadores” – in Central and South America.
In the years that followed, other Spanish conquistadores took the search for gold to North America. Between 1539 and 1543 Hernando de Soto and Fransisco Coronado, working separately, explored mush of the southern part of what is now the United States. De Soto landed in Florida from Cuba. He led his expedition westward, discovering the Mississippi River and traveling beyond it into Texas and Oklahoma. Coronado traveled north from Mexico searching for the “Seven Cities of Gold” that Amerindian legends said lay hidden somewhere in the desert. He never found them. But he and his men became the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River and they journeyed as far east as Kansas before returning to Mexico.
The journeys of men such as de Soto and Coronado gave Spain a claim to a large amount of land in North America. They also led to the founding of some os the earliest permanent European settlements there. In 1565 Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine on the coast of present-day Florida. In 1609 other settlers founded Santa Fe in New Mexico.
The growing wealth of Spain made other European nations envious. They became eager to share the riches of the New World. In 1497 King Henry VII of England hired an Italian seaman named John Cabot to explore the new lands and to look again for a passage to Asia. Cabot sailed far to the north of the route Columbus had followed. Eventually he reached the rocky coast of Newfoudland. At first Cabot thought that this was China. A year later he made a second westward crossing of the Atlantic. This time he sailed south along the coast of North America as far as Chesapeake Bay. Cabot found no gold and no passage to the East. But his voyages were valuable for the English. In later years English governments used them to support their claims to own most of the east coast of North America.
The French also sent explorers to North America. In 1524 the French king, Francis I, sent an Italian sailor named Giovanni Verrazano for the same purpose as Columbus and Cabot – to find lands rich in gold and a new sea route to Asia. Verrazano sailed the full length of the east coast of America, but found neither. However, he anchored his ship in what is now the harbor of New York. Today a bridge which carries his name, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, is one of the city’s most impressive sights.
Ten years later another French explorer, a fisherman from Normandy named Jacques Cartier, discovered the St. Lawrence River. He returned to France and reported that the forests lining the river’s shores were full of fur-bearing animals and that its waters were full of fish. The next year he sailed further up the river, reaching the site of the present-day city of Montreal. Cartier failed to find the way to Asia that he was looking for, but he gave France a claim to what would later become Canada.
Claiming that you owned land in the New World was one thing. Actually making it yours was something quite different. Europeans could only do this by establishing settlements of their own people. By the seventeenth century plenty of people in Europe were ready to settle in America. Some hoped to become rich by doing so. Others hoped to find safety from religious or political persecution. In the hundred years after 1600, Europeans set up many colonies in North America for reasons like these.
PROJECT TASKS
1. Answer the following questions:
· What is travel literature? What genres does it comprise?
· Who is considered to be the first explorer of America in Pre-Columbian period?
· What information of Amerindians do we get from the Old Norse Saga?
· What are the main reasons for American exploration during the Columbian period?
· How is the first American travel literature during the Columbian period characterized and what kind of information does it provide us with?
2. Prepare the following topics, summarizing the given information:
· American literature of the Pre-Columbian Period: its representatives, peculiar features, genres.
· American literature of the Columbian Period: its representatives, peculiar features, genres.
Fulfill Test №2.
Test №2
The test consists of 8 tasks. It requires 3 minutes to solve it. Choose the right answer and tick it in the blank form.
| 1. Northwest Passage was believed to connect: | |
| a) Spanish and British colonies in America | b) Northern Europe and Greenland |
| c) Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America | d) Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Central America |
| 2. John Cabot was hired by the king of England to find Northwest Passage in: | |
| a) 1492 | b) 1497 |
| c) 1524 | d) 1609 |
| 3. Italian explorer Giovanni Verrazano was hired by France to find Northwest Passage in: | |
| a) 1492 | b) 1497 |
| c) 1524 | d) 1609 |
| 4. What valuable discovery did John Cabot make sailing southeast of Newfoundland? | |
| a) Waters extremely rich with fish | b) Northwest Passage |
| c) Gold | d) Oil |
| 5. Verrazano explored what now is called: | |
| a) New York Harbor and the mouth of the Hudson river | b) Newfoundland |
| c) Virginia | d) Hudson Bay |
| 6. "Allies" means: | |
| a) Business partners | b) Close friends |
| c) political and military partners | d) relatives |
| 7. What are the genres of Christopher Columbus’ works? | |
| a) journals | b) accounts |
| c) diaries | d) sagas |
| 8. What is Bartolome de las Casas’ attitude towards Europeans’ treatment of the Taino? | |
| a) critical | b) neither critical nor approved |
| c) approved | d) he did not write about the Taino |
Literature
1. Baldick C. Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
2. Croft S., Cross H. Literature, Criticism, and Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
3. Loewen J.W. Lies My Teacher Told Me // http://www.brotherhooddays.com/forgottenheroes.html.
4. O’Callaghan B. An Illustrated History of the USA. Edinburg Gate, Harlow, 2006.
5. The Old Navigator, Christopher Columbus // http://www.brotherhooddays.com/HEROES.html.
6. Thomas D.H. Skull Wars // http://www.brotherhooddays.com/forgottenheroes.html.
7. VanSpanckeren K. Outline of American Literature. Revised Edition // http://usinfo.state.gov.
8. VanSpanckeren K. U.S.A. Literature in Brief // http://usinfo.state.gov/.
MODULE 3
AMERICAN LITERATURE
OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD
MODULE 3