Abstract
Our history texts tell us much about Europeans’ first impressions of America and American Indians. From Christopher Columbus’s first meeting with native people in the Caribbean, European travelers penned descriptions of the land and peoples they encountered. But Europeans knew little of what had happened in North America before they arrived, and they often cared even less, dismissing thousands of years of history as a static prelude to European colonization.
“We Human Beings are the first, and we are the eldest and the greatest. These parts and countries were inhabited and trod upon by the Human Beings before there were any Axe-Makers [Europeans].”
—Onondaga orator Sadekanaktie, message to Governor Frontenac, 16941
The things that seldom happen bring astonishment. Think, then, what must be the effect on me and mine, the sight of you and your people, whom we have at no time seen, astride the fierce brutes, your horses, entering with such speed and fury into my country, that we had no tidings of your coming.
—Southeastern Indian chief to Hernando De Soto, 15402
Brothers, these people from the unknown world will cut down our groves, spoil our hunting and planting grounds, and drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers, and our council fires, and enslave our women and children.
—Speech attributed to Metacomet (King Philip) in 1675 by William Apess, a Pequot Indian in 18363
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Notes
Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 184.
Edward G. Bourne, ed., Narrative of De Soto (New York: Allerton Book Co., 1904), 1:55.
Barry O’Connell, ed., On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 295.
Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896–1901), 5:119–21.
For similar traditions see William S. Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620–1984 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), chap. 4.
Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 1:247, 2:175.
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© 1994 Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press
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Calloway, C.G. (1994). Voices from the Shore. In: Calloway, C.G. (eds) The World Turned Upside Down. The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09058-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09058-4_2
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