History is a powerful weapon usually written from the perspective of the victors and reflected in their image. The losers are rarely given the opportunity to state their side of events, but historians work to change this disparity of information and bring balance. Historians like Inga Clendinnen and Robert Ricard attempt to make sense of Native Americans’ lifestyles base on information provided by European explorers and scholars a well as remnants’ of Indigenous people. While Inga Clendinnen discusses colonial life in the Americas between 1517 to 1570, Robert Ricard focuses on describing Native American life and interactions with Spaniards from 1523 to 1572. Both Clendinnen and Ricard work to describe Native Americans in Latin Americans and …show more content…
In a specific passage, Rcard addresses how Fray Francisco Marin works to humanize the natives and place them moderately on par with the Spaniards. Ricard directly wrote, “He found them a barbarous people; he taught them to dress, feed themselves properly, and live in communities, and he initiated into civilized life” (137). Ricard gives praise to Fray Marin for helping to imposing European standards onto the natives of MesoAmerica. Also, Ricard advocates on the behalf of Fray Marin in discussing native life as unproductive until prior to what he may considers they saviors arriving to put the indigenous people on the right path to salvation. The historian reminds the reader that the native society was primitive through words like “proper”, “civilized”, and “dress” when demonstrating detailed account of interactions between the natives and the Spaniards. Although Ricard believes he is a fair assessment of how life was during the colonial era, he is only reiterating some of the exaggerated myths about past civilizations in the Americas. Clendinnen seeks to bring to light and deconstruct some of the most common assumptions surrounding the pre-colonial era in the
Richter remarkably illustrates large points about the value Indians attached to European goods, and keeps human actors at the forefront of his story. The last two chapters deal with the period between 1700 and 1815. In dealing with the eighteenth century, chapter five takes readers into an emphasized explanation for the racial division.
As the goal of the writer was to educate, the book achieved success in both ways as the reader is left much more informed about early America than when they began reading the novel. The book covers the its main topics in three sections, Discovery, Conquest and Settlement. Each section includes information from various geographical regions in America with information pertaining to one of the specific sections above. Each section gave a comprehensive look at the main topic in a way that was easy to understand as well as
Throughout the seventeenth century, conflict between Europeans and Native Americans was rampant and constant. As more and more Europeans migrated to America, violence became increasingly consistent. This seemingly institutionalized pattern of conflict begs a question: Was conflict between Europeans and Native Americans inevitable? Kevin Kenny and Cynthia J. Van Zandt take opposing sides on the issue. Kevin Kenny asserts that William Penn’s vision for cordial relations with local Native Americans was destined for failure due to European colonists’ demands for privately owned land.
Although Columbus and Sahagún were both Spanish explorers, their goals were widely different. As such, their method of describing the different cultures of the natives were vastly different as well. While Columbus was trying to present the lands he conquered as an idealistic paradise for the monarchy, Sahagún writes his description as one based on the evidence he has obtained through meeting with the people he was trying to detail. Sahagún’s text differs from Columbus because of the different assumptions that informed their process of describing native lands, and the different formats they followed when trying to write an account of the Indigenous people who lived there.
“A Native Defends His Way of Life” is a document written in 1641 by missionary Christien Le Clercq that translates and transcribes the words of a Gapesian man. The audience that the Gapesian intends to address are the French colonizers who are trying to push the European way of life on the natives. In the document, the Gapesian man politely rebukes the French men who were trying to tell him that the European style of living was superior to his people’s way of life. The first point that the Gapesian makes is that his people’s portable wigwams are superior to the European cottages because they can live wherever they like whereas the Europeans must make multiple houses and sometimes must rent in dwellings that they don’t own. He also points out that his people are healthier and more fit due to carrying their dwellings.
Historians differ on what they think about the net result of the European arrival in the New World. Considering that the Columbian Exchange, which refers to “exchange of plants, animals, people, disease, and culture between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas after Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492,” led to possibly tens of millions of deaths on the side of the American Indians, but also enabled agricultural and technological trade (Henretta et al. 42), I cannot help but reflect on whether the effects should be addressed as a historical or a moral question. The impact that European contact had on the indigenous populations of North America should be understood as a moral question because first, treating it as a historical question is difficult due to lack of reliable historical evidence; second, the meaning of compelling historical claims is contestable as the academic historian perspective tends to view the American Indian oral history as invalid; and finally, what happened to the native Indians is morally repulsive and must be discussed as such. The consequences of European contact should be answered as a moral question because historically, it is hard to be historically objective in the absence of valid and dependable historical evidence.
In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures.
In this paper I will argue that European people of the early modern period had an attitude of superiority and righteousness towards the Indigenous people of the Americas due to the differences in culture between the two groups, the religious fanaticism of the time, and the subservient nature of relationships between Spanish explorers and the monarchy. When the Spaniards arrived in the Americas they were met when societies of people with different customs and culture than their own. This simple fact blossomed into the belief that European traditions and values were in some way superior to those of the people already
Historians who practice historiography agree that the writings from the beginning of what is now known as the United States of America can be translated various ways. In James H. Merrell’s “The Indians’ New World,” the initial encounters and relationships between various Native American tribes and Europeans and their African American slaves are explained; based on Merrell’s argument that after the arrival of Europeans to North America in 1492, not only would the Europeans’ lives drastically change, but a new world would be created for the Native Americans’ as their communities and lifestyles slowly intertwined for better or worse. Examples of these changes include: “deadly bacteria, material riches, and [invading] alien people.” (Merrell 53)
This power imbalance and these payments are key in the subjugation of the natives. Furthermore, the paternalism of the Spanish toward the Indigenous peoples is obvious: “Captain [Cortes] stared at him [Cuauhtemoc]…then patted him on the head” (p.117). Post-conquest, and still today, “difficult relations” between the descendants of the Indigenous peoples and the “others” (p.117) still exist. The European view of the natives “as idolatrous savages” or, on the contrary, as “models of natural virtue” (p.175) demonstrate the versatile and often contradictory views held. Similarly, the Aztecs at times saw the Spaniards as gods, and other times as gold-hungry savages who “fingered it like monkeys” (p.51).
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
The arrival of the first Europeans in the Americas is dramatically captured through the many writers who attempted to communicate what they saw, experienced and felt. What is more, the very purposes of their treacherous travel and colonization are clearly seen in their writings; whether it is poetry, history or sermons. Of the many literary pieces available today, William Bradford and John Winthrop’s writings, even though vary because the first is a historical account and the second is a sermon, stand out as presenting a clear trust in God, the rules that would govern them and the reason they have arrived in the Americas. First of all, William Bradford provides an in-depth look into the first moment when the Puritans arrived in the Americas. In fact, he chronicles the hardships they face on their way to Plymouth, yet he includes God’s provision every step of the way.
This letter provided detailed descriptions of Native American land, society, and people from Columbus’ perspective. Columbus wrote about the native societies in a very alienated, foreign, and never-before-seen manner. In his
“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.
A very important benefit writing has provided us with is knowledge. Most of the lessons history has taught us comes from the writings of the historians and people living through the time periods: “That we know so much about the Europeans responded powerfully to that devastation in writing” (12). This main point can be supported by the “First Encounters: Early European Accounts of Native America” section of The Norton Anthology. This section includes conflict in history that needed to be put “into a proper historical context”, supporting the idea of writing being used as a historical benefit