Notes for Norton Anthology of American Lit

Thanks to men like Christopher Columbus the world became an explorer's oyster. The findings of new created much curiosity in Europe to explore and conquer new lands in order to expand their empire. In the early 1600’s a surge of motivation to explore and settle new colonies came over England. The Result of this was the New England and Chesapeake colonies, who were both settled by immigrants from England. Many people decided they needed to escape England due to religious persecution and poverty. Hundreds of families, men, women, and their children, came in search of a New World where they could have a new start. Despite the striking similarities between the two colonies they grew

Before the Spanish ship that changed it all, which arrived in the “New World” in 1492, there was a vast population of native people who had lived on this land for centuries prior. That ship, skippered by Christopher Columbus, raised arguably one of the most influential turning points in Native American and European history. It sparked the fire of cultural diffusion in the New World which profoundly impacted the Native American peoples and the European settlers.

"The Colonization of North America." In Modern History Sourcebook. April 1999- [cited 17 September 2002] Available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall.mod/modsbook.html., http://curry.eduschool.virginia.edu.

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

Christopher Columbus and Cabeza de Vaca were both well experienced explorers of the New World. They both traveled to the New World to find out what was out there and if what they would find, could help them and their country. In the narratives, “Letter of Discovery” by Christopher Columbus and Castaways by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, they exemplified the overall environment of the New World. Each explorer had quite the experience within the New World and interactions with the natives but they were not quite the same. Columbus’ journey consisted of learning about the new land and obtain resources to bring back to his country. Cabeza de Vaca also wanted to find resources and goods but mainly wanted to explore the land and try to understand if it was possible to create a society alongside the natives. As they went into the New World, they had found new discoveries but their purpose of the journey lead them down paths that would give off two different perspectives.

This decade portrays the exploration of the Europeans to the American colonies which allowed England, France, Holland, Spain, and British to colonize with other lands and obtain power by expanding their territory. Nevertheless, England rose as the country with the dominant colonial power. Throughout this decade, the demand for silver and other valued items influenced trade globally by commercializing and strengthening European trade. In addition, the desire for power and control enriched the economy of the Europeans. The rise of European colonization also shaped cultural globalization since traders established various ethnic societies in foreign regions. European explorers were to stop at nothing in order to achieve success in expanding their

1) The book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann gives readers a deeper insight into the Americas before the age of Columbus, explaining the development and significance of the peoples who came before us. Moreover, Mann’s thesis is such; the civilizations and tribes that developed the Americas prior to the discovery by Europeans arrived much earlier than first presumed, were far greater in number, and were vastly more sophisticated than we had earlier believed. For instance, Mann writes, regarding the loss of Native American culture:

After the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, European Nations competed in a race against one another to claim pieces of the new land. Before Columbus found this land, the sea separating the New World from Europe seemed endless, and mundane. The Europeans were only interested in the land to the East. But with the New World as a new hat thrown into the ring, the Europeans tossed aside their old toy to go play with a new one. This time period of conquest over the New World was known as the Age of Exploration, and by the 1700s, they kept their pickings. A New World meant more land to build homes and plant crops, and more money to be earned by buying out new houses and selling new crops grown in foreign soil. Spain claimed

In the book They Came Before Columbus written by Ivan Van Sertima, chapter twelve, “Mystery of Mu-lan-pi”, there is a reoccurring theme of disproving the notion that Columbus brought over many different things and products from his expeditions to American to the Eastern parts of the world when in reality there is factual evidence that Africans made contact with America far before Columbus did. The author of this book, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, has his undergraduates degree in African languages and literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Van Sertima also worked as a journalist in Great Britain and did broadcasted to the Caribbean and Africa. With and extensive knowledge and work experience in African American Studies it is clear why he chose to wrote this book. The idea that Columbus was the first to bring things like maize from America is widely believed to be true but Van Setima saw that this was false and published They Came Before Columbus to show the facts and evidence that Columbus was not the first person to accomplish this. After writing this book Van Sertima went on to complete a master’s degree in African Studies at Rutgers University and even became a professor of African Studies at the same university. In this essay I will be going deeper into the theme and its relationship to African American history and discussing three other articles that can be related back to chapter twelve of They Came Before Columbus.

For many years, schools have taught us that the Indians were small, uncivilized groups that had little effect on the world before Columbus. Due to unexpected discoveries and evidence that say otherwise, many scholars now question and argue about their time in the Americas before Columbus. In 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Mann uses the latest research, along with his own results from his travels, to provide eye-opening information on the Indians and what they were really like before the Europeans. We learn that they were more culturally advanced and had more of an influence on our world that what is thought.

The swift sandy beaches of the Caribbean were once desolate and unknown rule by the natural habitat of Taino natives whose sole existence revolved around primitive nature. These Virgin Islands would be a critical and strategic discovery for the strengthening Spanish empire during the 15th century under the rule of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile . On October 1492, a man by the name of Christopher Columbus would take the power of the Spanish crown to excellency and great dominion over the new world. The lives of both the natives and the Spaniards would be revolutionized and two completely different worlds would collide for the first time. The discovery of the New World was masked by preconceptions, ancient interpretations of

Europeans dared to the New World for an assortment of reasons–religious flexibility, another begin, to extend the domain of their homeland–but a standout amongst the most well-known reasons was to concentrate assets from the land and take them back to Europe so as to profit. One nation that was exceptionally spurred to investigate the potential outcomes of fiscal pick up in the New World was Spain, and two of Spain's most critical pioneers were Christopher Columbus and Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. Considering the similitudes between the two, it is very fascinating to note one error in their works and recordings of their outings to the new world: their view towards the scene and nature of the New World. When one takes a gander at the works of

Zerubavel would most likely answer the question “did Columbus discover America?” by pointing out that not only did Native Americans live on the continent before Columbus and Europe truly discovered it, but that there are findings of what seemed to be inscriptions, scripts—that infact, are legible—and several different sculptures with pre-Columbian faces on them, and “stone reliefs all over America, that stun puzzled observers with their unmistakably European, Semitic, African, and Oriental feature” (11).

The “discovery” of America was one that introduced a colonial discourse in Europe, which would shape the relationship between the Europeans of the Old World and the indigenous people of the New World. Exoticism, anxiety, and absurd speculation would fuel the European knowledge of the Americas during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The drawing titled America by Jan Van der Straet, is a classic example of how Europeans used outlandish notions about indigenous Americans to distance themselves from these natives and thus, establish European superiority. Ultimately, Jan van der Straet’s image supports and justifies European colonialism by depicting the indigenous people as savage, primordial and in need of the paternal guidance of the

Christopher Columbus was determined to find new trade routes to India and so, in 1492, after gaining permission he set out in order to accomplish this task. However, what Christopher Columbus would actually encounter was not new trades routes to India, but a whole “new” world. What exists, however, when you travel to a new country is the possibility of a language barrier between you and the native individuals. This barrier existed when Christopher Columbus first made contact with the native indigenous inhabitants. Luckily, letters from Columbus’s first voyage have survived, and have offered a look into his encounters with the different languages of the indigenous people. Through his accounts a question arises: how does Christopher Columbus describe language and communication is his late 15th century letters? In this essay, I will discuss how Columbus’s use and description of language and communication was a way to show superiority among those Indigenous people he encountered.