In America, our society is defined as a “melting pot”. A “melting pot” refers to the blend or melting of cultures, or a combination of several of cultures in a society. Explorers to the “New World” such as Cabeza de Vaca and William Bradford are significantly important in history and in literature. Both explorers traveled to the “New World” for different reasons. Cabeza de Vaca went on an exploration to gain more wealth, gold, learn about the land, and culture. On the other hand, Bradford moved to the Americas for religious freedom, and away from English rule. Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford both were important, remember able explorers to the New World, and both their stories tell their experience, especially their encounters with different communities. Cabeza de Vaca 's piece Castaways is a conversion and inversion narrative about this experiences especially with the Native Americans, while William Bradford 's Of Plymouth Planation is classified as providential narrative, which focuses on the God 's future plans than the interaction with different communities.
Cabeza de Vaca stories is a conversion narrative, which the conversion is the between Cabeza de Vaca 's thoughts of the Native Americans. In the beginning of Castaways, Cabeza de Vaca did not interact with the natives as much as he does later in his story. In chapter three of his book, Castaways, he says that the Indians and his group, Spaniards did not get along. Once his group reached Florida he states:
“on the following day the Indians from the village came to see us, and though they spoke to us we did not understand them, for we had no interpreter, but they made many signs and threatening gestures, and we thought they were telling us to leave their land; and on this the...
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...adford is appeared to have a prideful attitude about himself and his faithful. Thus, he does not have interest in cultural hybridity with the Natives.
Cabeza de Vaca and Bradford shared their experiences in the “New World”, and focused on their encounters with their interaction with different cultural communities. However, both of these authors have do not share their views with cultural hybridity, and results with Cabeza de Vaca’s story as a conversion and inversion narrative; while Bradford’s story is a providential narrative. Cabeza de Vaca explored the “New World” to gain riches, or gold, and gain more knowledge about the land and people. Bradford came to the America to get away from English religion prosecution. Similar to the idea of a “melting pot” cultural hybridity is the interaction of cultures, which Cabeza de Vaca demonstrated, unlike William Bradford.
Professor and poet Deborah A. Miranda, pieces together the past and uncovers and presents us with a story--a Californian story--in her memoir, “Bad Indians.” Her use of the Christian Novena, “Novena to Bad Indians,” illustrates the irony of using the form of her oppressors as a call out for help, not to God, but to her past ancestors. We tend to think of religion as a form of salvation and redemption of our lives here on Earth, in which we bare down and ask for forgiveness. But by challenging this common discourse using theological allegories and satirical terminology, Miranda turns her attention away from a Deity to call the reader out for help. It is crucial to recognize the struggles that the Native community currently face. Californian Indians are often not given recognition for their identity and their heritage, and are also repeatedly stereotyped as abusive, alcoholic, uncivilized, and “freeloaders” of the United States government. Such generalizations root back from European colonization, nevertheless still linger in our contemporary society. Miranda has taken the first step forward in characterizing few of these stereotypes in her Novena, but she’s given her story. Now what are we going to do with ours? It’s up to us to create our
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
The article, “Native Reactions to the invasion of America”, is written by a well-known historian, James Axtell to inform the readers about the tragedy that took place in the Native American history. All through the article, Axtell summarizes the life of the Native Americans after Columbus acquainted America to the world. Axtell launches his essay by pointing out how Christopher Columbus’s image changed in the eyes of the public over the past century. In 1892, Columbus’s work and admirations overshadowed the tears and sorrows of the Native Americans. However, in 1992, Columbus’s undeserved limelight shifted to the Native Americans when the society rediscovered the history’s unheard voices and became much more evident about the horrific tragedy of the Natives Indians.
passage: "The courage and resistance shown by the Navajos at Big Mountain, by Polish workers,
of the native tongue is lost , certain holidays may not be celebrated the same , and American born generations feel that they might have lost their identity , making it hard to fit in either cultures . Was is significant about this book is the fact it’s like telling a story to someone about something that happened when they were kid . Anyone can relate because we all have stories from when we were kids . Alvarez presents this method of writing by making it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story about Latin Americans , when
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford and A Description of New England by John Smith are essentially irrelevant to one another in the way that each piece has a very different point of view. The author John Smith was a pilgrim who arrived in the Americas and wrote a description of the new land. William Bradford was also a pilgrim who arrived at Plymouth and wrote more about the realities of his personal journey. The purpose of this essay is to contrast the purposes of the writers, their intended audiences, and how each writer gives out a specific feeling.
“Quantie’s weak body shuddered from a blast of cold wind. Still, the proud wife of the Cherokee chief John Ross wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders and grabbed the reins.” Leading the final group of Cherokee Indians from their home lands, Chief John Ross thought of an old story that was told by the chiefs before him, of a place where the earth and sky met in the west, this was the place where death awaits. He could not help but fear that this place of death was where his beloved people were being taken after years of persecution and injustice at the hands of white Americans, the proud Indian people were being forced to vacate their lands, leaving behind their homes, businesses and almost everything they owned while traveling to an unknown place and an uncertain future. The Cherokee Indians suffered terrible indignities, sickness and death while being removed to the Indian territories west of the Mississippi, even though they maintained their culture and traditions, rebuilt their numbers and improved their living conditions by developing their own government, economy and social structure, they were never able to return to their previous greatness or escape the injustices of the American people.
The oral history format dictates a first person presentation which, in a religious text, creates an urgency and connection to the events unfolding in the story. The stories combine to present a tale of folly, loss, sin, forgiveness, and resurrection. In the Introduction to Arthur C. Parker’s translation of The Code of Handsome Lake, the influence of Christian mythology becomes evident. The story of “How the White Race Came to America and why the Gaiwiio Became a Necessity” is included in the Introduction. Therein, Handsome Lake explains that post-invasion the “Creator was sorry for his own people [the Native Americans] whom he had molded from the soil of the earth of this Great Island.”8 The sentiment echoes the island from the Iroquois creation myths and the creation of Adam from the earth in the Christian creation
Atiwaneto “Speech Resisting Colonial Expansion 1752”, in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America, ed. Colin G. Calloway (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 127
Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” are two different perspectives based on unique experiences the narrators had with “savages.” Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages…” is a comparison between the ways of the Indians and the ways of the Englishmen along with Franklin’s reason why the Indians should not be defined as savages. “A Narrative of the Captivity…” is a written test of faith about a brutally traumatic experience that a woman faced alone while being held captive by Indians. Mary Rowlandson views the Indians in a negative light due to the traumatizing and inhumane experiences she went through namely, their actions and the way in which they lived went against the religious code to which she is used; contrastingly, Benjamin Franklin sees the Indians as everything but savages-- he believes that they are perfect due to their educated ways and virtuous conduct.
Mann’s biggest point, I believe, is that the Indian settlements he studied were much more civilized than grade school textbooks make them out to be. For instance, in the introduction, ‘Holmberg’s Mistake,’ Mann tells his readers about how Holmberg misinformed the world about the Sirionó being a tribe without history or common sense when they were, in fact, a highly populated tribe that flourished before diseases wiped them out.
The American version of history blames the Native people for their ‘savage ' nature, for their failure to adhere to the ‘civilized norms ' of property ownership and individual rights that Christian people hold, and for their ‘brutality ' in defending themselves against the onslaught of non-Indian settlers. The message to Native people is simple: "If only you had been more like us, things might have been different for you.”
Thomas More’s “Utopia”, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s “Destruction of the Indies”, and Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” have the commonality of discussing mysterious territories which have certain conditions in several aspects of life which their present audience is unaware. The three authors describe foreign places with vastly different values and social standards, but they all describe the treatments or relations of the indigenous people by Europeans and outsiders, as well as the natives’ reaction to these treatments. More, Las Casas, and Montaigne reveal their personal views through descriptions of the different groups of indigenous people, and all suggest that their “advanced” societies are not necessarily better than those with different
Julia Alvarez was an example of how a Latina writer identified herself in a new culture outside of her comfort zone. She, as a Dominican Diaspora, had to reinvent herself as she migrated into a new scenario. Her assimilation into the United States culture allowed her to understand and relate to the reader’s needs and points of interests. After all the effort, Alvarez kept in mind that she could not comfort to all the reality that she lived in, so she re-reinvented herself all over again to process her thoughts and beliefs into her life. She put her perspective on her writing so that the new wave of readers, even if they did not understand, could relate in some way and appreciate the differences. The sole purpose of her writings was for everyone to change their perspective from “walk to the other side of the street in order to avoid sharing the same sidewalk” to “I do not know them, but I do not avoid them because I do not know them”. She instilled in her reader’s mind how ordinary events were viewed differently through other cultures’ eyes. Her story Snow was a great example of how she portrayed her technique.
During the era of maritime exploration and the discovery of the Americas, assumptions were made of the land likening it to not only a paradise, but one that was overrun with cannibalistic natives. These suppositions led to a desire to explore the lands and conquer the savages that posed a threat to man and civilization itself. The consequences of this mass colonization and dehumanization of the natives paved the way for literary pieces that pose as critiques of the era when viewed through a post-colonial lens. When looked at through a post-colonial perspective, a few common themes prevail amongst compared texts. Focusing on the theme of the journey, what it means, and what is at stake, Garcilaso de la Vega’s “The Story of Pedro Serrano” and Juan José Saer’s The Witness both touch on all these themes with great severity, dissecting the purpose of the journey and what it means to be a civilized man.