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Travel essay examples
native americans during the colonial era
Travel essay examples
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Travel writers or adventurers all write pieces that deal with the same premise: the discovery and experience of the New World. However, in their writing, it is evident that there is an ulterior motive in mind. These motives or purposes can be classified in two broad categories: to persuade people to come to the new world and to warn people of the dangers they may encounter in the new world. It is easy to explore these themes by paying particular attention a couple of notorious writers: Christopher Columbus, Bartolome De Las Casas, and John Smith.
When reading pieces by writers involved in the exploration and settlement on the new world, it is important to keep in mind the audience they were targeting. These pieces were not published in America, but rather were transmitted in Europe, published and read by a widespread European audience. Additionally, these travelers were paid by the government to propagandize the new world and entice readers to want to visit or settle there. With that in place, it is easy to understand how a major purpose for travel writers would be to advertise the new world.
Christopher Columbus's letters were considered one of the first reports of the New World. Columbus landed in the West Indies but thought that he was in India. He portrays his surroundings with a conquistador mentality, in that he says the people are savages, and he has taken command of them and they admire him greatly. In "Letter to Luis de Santagel Regarding the First Voyage", he talks about the richness and beauty of the New World using very descriptive imagery and planting the picture of natural abundance in the readers mind. He describes the land, the mountains, the terrain, the animals, birds, and people in such a mann...
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... the Christian against the native. His writing reads as a preaching, making it seem like propaganda.
Adventurers and travel writers all wrote works with differences in focus, theme and scope, but in the case of Smith, Columbus, and De Las Casas, the themes were similar, even if the purpose behind the argument was different.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, Inc, 2003.
Columbus, Christopher. "Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage
(February 15, 1493)." Baym 34-36.
Las Casas, Bartolome. "The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies." Baym
39-40.
Smith, John. "A Description of New England." Baym 114-118.
Smith, John. "The General history of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles."
Baym 105-114.
Columbus was describing in his letter how beautiful this land "the mountains and hills, and plains, and fields, and land, so beautiful and rich for planting and sowing....", and he was also describing the people who lived there.Columbus’s letter meant to be private, but it became public to people later because of Columbus discovered. Columbus was trying to impressed Luis de Sant’ Angel of things that he saw in the land. Columbus was trying to be persuasive by describing and writing what he observed.
Two of the readings assigned that stuck out to me were the detailed journals of famous European explorers Christopher Columbus and Samuel de Champlain. These writings discuss their observations and experiences during their explorations to the New World. “Letters of Columbus, Describing the Results of his First Voyage” by Columbus and “From the Voyages of Samuel de Champlain” by Champlain both contrast in their opinion of the worth of the New World’s lands as well as their interactions with the Natives that these explorers came across.
After becoming educated in the ways of a page and squire and helping his country rid itself of the Moors, Leon became restless and searched for his next adventure. His next adventure came when Christopher Columbus needed volunteers to outfit his second expedition to the New World. Leon had heard the stories Columbus brought back with him and saw the a...
From the prologue through chapter one in “Wilderness and the American Mind”, the author emphasizes the affect wilderness had on the Europeans during the colonization of America. In today’s society, we are familiar with the concept of wilderness but few of us have experienced the feeling of being encapsulated in the unfamiliar territory. Today we long for wilderness, crave it even. We use it as an outlet to escape the pace of life. However, we have a sense of safety that the Europeans did not. We are not isolated in the unfamiliar, help is usually a phone call away. Though we now view the wilderness as an oasis because we enter at our own terms, in the early colonial and national periods, the wilderness was an unknown environment that was viewed as evil and dangerous.
Thru history studies in grade school and secondary school students are taught of the great explorer who discovered America, Christopher Columbus. Tales of his many voyages and the names of his ships the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria are engrained into the minds of children through rhyme and song. For many years the history written in text books have been regard as fact however information provided by Howard Zinn excerpt has shed new light on the shadowy past of Christopher Columbus.
The Letter to Santangel by Christopher Columbus proved to be invaluable in many respects because of its description and detailed account of Columbus's discoveries. This letter written after a monumental time in history was rare but provided information that delved into Columbus's intentions, his audience, his beliefs, and his expectations of the New World. Lastly, the letter is also useful as a primary source in history to contextualize Columbus's discovery in 1492 though bias, it is valuable to read from the individual himself.
The first voyage to the New World was met with success and the beginnings of Spanish colonization. Landing on Hispaniola and meeting a local tribe that greeted him with friendship, Columbus sought wealth,
“Paradise Found and Lost” from Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Discoverers, embodies Columbus’ emotions, ideas, and hopes. Boorstin, a former Librarian of Congress, leads the reader through one man’s struggles as he tries to find a Western Passage to the wealth of the East. After reading “Paradise Found and Lost,” I was enlightened about Columbus’ tenacious spirit as he repeatedly fails to find the passage to Asia. Boorstin title of this essay is quite apropos because Columbus discovers a paradise but is unable to see what is before him for his vision is too jaded by his ambition.
Reading both passages of the two explorers, Christopher Columbus and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, gives a great description of how the world was back in the 1500s. Now, although both were Spaniard explorers, each had different experiences and discoveries. One of the differences is how they approached exploring the new world. For instance, Columbus went to find new land in the west, while Cabeza de Vaca went as an expedition to already found lands. In addition, Columbus had a lot of success, while Cabeza de Vaca since the beginning, because of Narváez, “endured many disasters” (Baym, et al., 2013, p. 28). Furthermore, Christopher Columbus considered most important to find more land, and especially the route to reach Asia.
After reading the two letters written by Christopher Columbus in the midst of his many voyages, I have found many similarities and differences between the two. The first letter was written to Luis de Santangel on February 15, 1493 at sea. Ten years later, the second letter was written to Ferdinand and Isabella. This letter, regarding his fourth voyage, was written on July 7, 1503. The tone in this letter compared to the first letter was abysmal. Some did not believe it was written by the same person. This makes what happened in that ten year gap become very important. It is what happened during that time that will lead one to discover the changes in attitude made by Columbus between the two letters he wrote.
The “presence” of the North American Continent had been known to the persons living there for centuries before arrival. But Columbus, and those who followed him, recognized the significance of the New World; in this sense they certainly deserve credit for having “discovered” America.
European exploration brought many new ideas and practices to the world. Europeans exploration discoveries brought negative and positive impacts to the society they were building. The explorations was a success for many countries, but it also was a loss for a lot of Native Americans people. The exploration started a new mankind, it gave countries and people items they never had. The discovery of new world was a big impacts from the European exploration. Countries were now fighting over lands and the resources that were on the land. Slavery and the Columbian change were also big impacts from the exploration. The world changed because of these three big impacts of the European explorations. There
In 1492, Christopher Columbus was a self-made man who worked his way up to being the Captain of a merchant vessel. He gained the support of the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, for an expedition to the Indies. With the support of the Spanish monarchy, he set off to find a new and faster trade route to the Indies. Upon the arrival of his first voyage, Columbus wrote a letter to Luis de Santangel, a “royal official and an early supporter of his venture,” in February 1493 (35). The epistle, letter, entitled “Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage” was copied and then distributed in Spain before being translated and spread throughout Europe. The Letter is held in such regard with the people as it is considered the first printed description of the new world. Through his description of the nature of the islands, Columbus decided the future fate of the islands. His description of the vast beauty of the nature around him, declares both the economic and nationalistic motivations for colonizing the new world.
In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for Asia, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea, which he confidently thought was Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land, but he had found the greatest riches of them all, undiscovered land, America. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, achieve more than what they planned on achieving. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters achieve more when they learn about life, survival and patience, by understanding religion, tackling their fears, associating with nature, and encountering other characters from whom they learn something. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his “Personal Legend” by the help of a man who claims to be...
This is an analysis of Christopher Columbus’s Letter on His First Voyage on page 381. Christopher Columbus wrote a letter to his King and Queen of Spain, while he was in the West Indies. He wrote this letter in February 1493 reflecting on his voyage across the Atlantic in 1492. After reading this letter, I can tell that Columbus felt like he was better than the native people of the different islands he journeyed and that a lot of things they did were very strange to him. I can also tell that the world was a lot different to him and to people in 1492, than it is to people in 2014 because he referred to the native people of the various islands he traveled to as Indians, whereas most people in 2014 know that India and Latin American are not the