Literature Study Guide
Encounters and Foundations to 1800
Native American Myths
Terms and People to Know – Define the following terms:
Puritans The Puritan Legacy Mayflower Compact Age of Reason
Rationalism Smallpox Plague Deism Self-made Americans Cotton Mather
Benjamin Franklin Cabeza de Vaca encomienda conquistadors Oral Tradition
Salem Witch Trials Iroquois Confederacy archetype Rationalists myth
Vocabulary:
persecuted reborn afflicted expeditions compact tinkerers
inoculations contradictory fuel
Encounters and Foundations to 1800
I. First European Explorers (Spanish) set foot on land in our hemisphere
A. Took place about five hundred years ago.
B. Were not the first to tread on American soil
1. American Indians had lived here for thousands of years before Europeans stumbled across what they called the New World.
II. Forming New Relationships
A. first interactions between Europeans and American Indians involved trading near harbors and rivers of North America.
B. As English began to establish colonies on new shores, they relied on American Indians to teach them survival skills
1. making canoes and shelters
2. fashioning clothes from buckskin
3. planting crops
C. At the same time, American Indians were Eager to acquire European items
1. firearms
2. textiles
3. tools
D. In early years of European Settlement, American Indians vastly outnumbered colonists.
1. In 1600 total American Indian population was from 70,000 to 100,000 people.
III. Battling New Diseases
A. Settler unknowingly exposed Native Americans to deadly diseases
1. sometimes killed the population of an entire village
2. Some Native Americans managed to survive the epidemics
3. Most were eventually forced to vacate their home and land by settlers who no longer needed Native Americans’ friendship and guidance.
IV. Explorers’ Writings
A. French and Spanish explorers were first Europeans to write in detail about the new continent.
B. Christopher Columbus, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and many others wrote letters, books, and journals expressing their dreams and desires about the New World.
C. Hoping for funding for more expeditions, these men pointed to abundant resources, peaceful natives, and fantastic amounts of gold in America.
1. Cabeza De Vaca landed on coast of Florida in 1528.
2. He and others left ship to explore inland
3. A year later, when they had not returned, ships that brought them to America gave them up for dead and set sail for Mexico.
4. Lost in the Texas Gulf area, Cabeza de Vaca and companions spent eight years trying to find other Europeans who would help them to get home.
5. His journal is a firsthand adventure story which includes the first account of some animals and plants the Europeans had not seen before.
V. The Puritan Legacy
A. Puritanism began in England
B. Original Puritans were Protestants who wanted to “purify” the Church of England.
C. Puritans wanted a simpler religious experience
D. Believed that the clergy or government should not dictate how the individual related to God.
E. In England, many Puritans were persecuted
1. Some were prosecuted.
2. Some were jailed.
3. Some escaped to Holland.
4. In 1620, a small group of Puritans set sail for the New World to build a new society based on God’s word.
VI. Puritan Beliefs: Sinners All?
A. believed that Adam and Eve’s disobedience doomed all to Hell.
B. Believed that God had sent Jesus Christ to save some people from this fate.
C. Believed that you could feel God’s saving grace arriving in your soul
D. Spent much time examining lives for signs of grace.
E. Relied on themselves and hard work – the very qualities needed for building a new society.
VII. Puritan Politics: Government by Contract
A. believed that God and humankind were bound together by a covenant or contract.
B. Onboard the ship Mayflower, the Puritans wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact.
1. It stated how the group would be governed once they landed.
2. This idea of a government by contract was later adopted in the American Constitution.
C. Puritans were not Democratic.
1. They believed that individuals who were saved should govern those who were not saved and protect the community from evil.
2. In 1692, the people of Salem, Massachusetts grew convinced that witches lived among them.
a. Afraid that the morals of the town were weakening, they accused one hundred fifty of the townspeople of witchcraft
b. Nineteen were hanged for the crime.
VIII. The Bible in America.
A. The Bible was a guidebook for each Puritan’s spiritual journey.
B. Bible was literal word of God.
C. It was important to read the Bible and follow religious debates.
D. Puritans valued education
1. Harvard College was founded in 1636 as school for ministers.
2. Three years later, the first printing press in the American Colonies was set up.
IX. Characteristics of Puritan Writing
A. The Bible was the model for Puritan Writing
B. Puritans saw connections between biblical events in their own lives.
C. Diaries and histories were the most common forms of Puritan writing
D. Puritans favored a plain, clear writing style.
X. The Age of Reason: Tinkerers and Experimenters
A. began in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s
B. Certain thinkers known as Rationalists believed that human beings could use their reason to find truth
C. Puritans saw God as active in human affairs; the rationalists saw God differently.
1. The English rationalist, Sir Isaac Newton compared God to a clockmaker; having created the universe, God left it to run on its own.
2. God’s special gift to people was reason
3. Reason enabled each person to direct his or her own life.
D. While the rationalist theory took shape in Europe, scientific experimenting thrived in the American Colonies.
E. From the earliest days, Americans had to be tinkerers; they had to make do with what they had, and they had to achieve results.
XI. The Smallpox Plague
A. In April 1721, a ship from the West Indies docked in Boston Harbor.
1. Along with sugar and molasses, it carried the disease of smallpox.
a. The disease spread rapidly and often killed its victims.
b. When it began to spread through Boston, Cotton Mather spoke up.
2. Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister and also a scientist.
a. He promoted the use of inoculation to combat the disease
b. Inoculation had been discovered and developed by a physician in Turkey.
c. Boston doctors opposed the idea of inoculation, especially since it came from a Muslim.
d. A debate raged for years over its use.
e. Tempers flared and Mather’s house was bombed.
f. Nevertheless, Mather inoculated nearly three hundred people; only six died proving that inoculation worked.
3. The smallpox conflict shows that Americans could be contradictory
a. Mather, for example, was a devout Puritan, but also a practical scientist.
b. Mather’s willingness to experiment was necessary to the public welfare.
XII. Deism: Are People Basically Good?
A. Rationalists saw God in the natural world just as the Puritans did.
B. Unlike Puritans, they believed that all people at all times could discover God’s natural laws.
1. This outlook, called deism, was shared by many thinkers.
2. Unlike Puritans, deists viewed people as basically good.
3. They believed people could use reason to perfect themselves and society.
4. The best way to worship God was to do good for others.
5. Deism made concern for the common good one of the nation’s highest goals.
6. These rationalist ideas helped fuel the American struggle for Independence.
7. They also helped to shape the Declaration of Independence.
XIII. The Rationalist World View
A. People find truth through reason.
B. God created the universe but is not active in it.
C. The natural world follows God’s laws, which can be discovered through reason.
D. People are basically good.
E. The best form of worship is helping others.
F. Humans show progress toward greater perfection.
XIV. Self-made Americans
A. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is a masterpiece of the American Age of Reason.
1. For his autobiography, Franklin used a popular form of Puritan writing – writing about oneself.
2. Franklin’s work was not religious.
3. His story of a self-made American would become the model for some classic American literature and for many bestsellers today.
Native American Myths
I. The Sun Still Rises in the Same Sky: Native American Literature
A. Rooted in Oral Tradition
1. Passed on from generation to generation
a. preserve historical continuity
2. Reflects view of natural world
3. Use stories to teach moral lessons
a. Story of Guskabe
1.) Catches all the game animals
2.) Told by grandmother to return animals to woods
3.) They will die if kept in his bag.
4.) If they die, there will be no game left for future people.
5.) In this brief tale, important life-sustaining lessons about greed, the wisdom of elders, and game management are told.
B. Cultures
1. show a keen awareness of the power of metaphor.
2. songs and chants can make things happen.
a. call game animals
b. bring rain
c. cure the sick
d. destroy the enemy
3. Native American ceremonies repeated year after year
a. Lakota People – Sun Dance
1.) for three to four days, dancers gather around a central pole topped with a buffalo skull
2.) pole represents the east/west axis of world
3.) ceremony celebrates the concept of sacrifice by having dancers endure a ritual ordeal.
4.) Today the ceremonial sacrifice is fasting.
C. “The Sky Tree”
1. Creation Myth
a. Aataentsic cuts down the Sky Tree because her ailing husband, the chief of Skyland, asks for the tree’s healing fruit.
b. When the Sky Tree falls through a hole in the sky, she throws herself after it.
c. Animals on the water-covered earth hurry to build an island upon Turtle’s back, where Aataentsic and the Sky Tree can come to rest.
d. Eventually, the Sky Tree takes root in the new earth.
1.) symbolizes rebirth in that the tree will grow again, and life will end.
e. The nature of existence is cyclical.
D. “The Earth Only”
1. a poem that celebrates the performance of the natural world and the wisdom of those who recognize that truth.
2. The old men speak the truth and are respected.
3. Humans will not endure.
E. Coyote Finishes His Work
1. Nez Perce (means pierced nose) myth
a. relates how the trickster Coyote created the Indians.
1.) The trickster is an archetype that is especially important in the Native American Storytelling tradition.
a.) often is a coyote, but can be a fox, badger, raven, or rabbit.
b.) Sometimes the trickster is just naughty, sometimes creative and even helpful to a group of people.
c.) Can be masters at lying
d.) Often rebel against authority
2.) Old Man is also an archetype
b. Coyote taught them how to live but plays tricks on them.
c. When the Great Spirit decides that Coyote’s work on Earth is completed, he sends Coyote to a resting place, but tells people that one day he and Coyote will return.