Guide to American Culture

Guide to American Culture

by William P. Lazarus, M.A.

Published by Bold Venture Press

boldventurepress.com

Copyright 2017 by Willam P. Lazarus, M.A. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

1. History

2. Politics

3. Communication

4. Education

5. Law

6. Race

7. Religion

8. American West

9. War 1700s to 1900s

10. War 1900s to current

11. Folk Heroes

12. Major Sports

13. Other Sports

14. Entertainment

15. Arts

16. Daily Life

About the Author

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Introduction

While teaching ESL classes, I realized how little my students knew about the United States. To help them understand culture, I devised games, like football that can be played with a couple of sheets of paper. That way, they learned the vocabulary and something about the game that held so much interest among their American colleagues. In addition, my students read about American holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, which were either unknown or misunderstood. They heard American music, met some of the finest writers via excerpts and were introduced to much of American culture.

I also took them on a trip each month – to a restaurant, gun store, state park, baseball game or other cultural highlight.

This book grew out of those classroom experiences.

Although many of my students had learned about America before traveling here, they often found themselves lost and completely confused by idioms, references and events that we take for granted. The beginnings of my classes were often spent in discussions of these odd terms and ideas that my students heard and didn’t understand. I kept notes on their questions to help future classes.

In 2012, I asked Rich Nicols, then the director at the Embry-Riddle Language Institute, where I had been teaching full time since 2006, if I could develop a class on American culture to fill in the gaps of the students’ education. Rich agreed. However, I couldn’t find any book that would provide the necessary information for the students at their level. So, I took my notes and compiled one. My doctoral work at Case Western Reserve (OH) University in American Studies came in very handy.

The book served as a base for discussion about American music, art, history and related topics. I would augment discussions with appropriate music, such as The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton for a lesson of how the U.S. evolved into a world power. A look at American art naturally included images from the internet. Students could watch actual plays from sporting events while reading about an unfamiliar game like American football.

I ended up looking at art, music, politics, sports, religion and racism in a wide-ranging book written on an easier level for ESL students. I designed it so a student could pick and choose areas of interest, leading to some minor duplication.

The class became very popular, and I taught it until my retirement in 2014. Students repeatedly asked for copies so friends and family back home could easily learn about American culture before visiting this country rather than trying to pick up facts in classes typically taught by local teachers with little to no contact with anything more than the English language.

At the same time, friends who learned about the book asked to read an electronic copy to remind themselves of American history or other topic. I was surprised by that, but probably shouldn’t be. Education has become so specialized that Americans often learn aspects of a single topic and miss out on so many other parts of our culture. Although the text is simplified, that didn’t seem to bother anyone.

So many people asked for copies, the only real solution was to get the book published.

I freely realized that the book does not cover all aspects of American culture or delve deeply into any subject. It is intended as an overview, which will either introduce readers to our sprawling, diverse culture that has absorbed so much from the rest of the world or will remind Americans of just how we arrived at our present state.

Bill Lazarus, M.A.

April 2017

I. History

The United States has a long and complicated history, but one that begins long after people had spread through Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Humans originated in Africa and moved from there. However, no one went to North America. They couldn’t.

For thousands of years, most of what is now Canada and the United States was covered by snow and ice. While humans found new homes across Asia and Europe, most of this continent was buried under huge glaciers that were many kilometers thick. Nothing could live here.

Because so much water was frozen, the level of the oceans was lower. In some places, that created paths that don’t exist anymore. One of those natural roads connected the tip of Asia with what is now Alaska. Animals were the first to use the land bridge to cross from what is now Russia to what is now Alaska. They were looking for food.

At some point, maybe 40,000 years ago, humans followed them. They were hunters and would have traveled along the coast, heading south toward warmer climates. Over time, more people followed. They left evidence in graves, campfires and trash heaps. Only a few people survived, however, because the weather was so cold.

As the glaciers began to melt around 11,000 years ago, more people came. These early visitors found open land with plenty of animals. They spread out across the continent, forming into tribes and creating civilizations like the Aztecs and the Mayans in Central America and the Inca in what is now Peru in South America.

These people built homes and developed languages. They even had pyramids, similar to the ones in the Middle East. They carved statues and left many records behind that help us understand how they lived.

Historians have long debated how humans came here. The land bridge between Asia and North America seemed the best way, but it has been under water for thousands of years and cannot be checked for evidence. Today, some historians believe people from Polynesia floated to North America on rafts, while others walked over the land bridge.

DNA taken from Native Americans show they are related to Asians.

A few Europeans made the dangerous trip across the Atlantic Ocean, including Greeks, Irish, Norwegians and Phoenicians. They had small boats and probably came by accident since they did not have instruments to guide them. It is unlikely many of them could sail home. They left graves, markings on walls and, in the case of Norwegians, deserted settlements.

They met some early Americans, affecting their culture. The Aztecs in what is now Mexico even had a story about a white god who visited them, promising to return. There’s some evidence that the Chinese sailed to this part of the world because they had maps in the 1400s that showed an outline of what is now the United States.

One of the famed explorers was Leif Ericson. Around 1000, he was living in Greenland, which had been founded by his Norwegian father, Eric the Red. He and some men were probably fishing when they drifted to an area they called Vinland because of the many grape vines they saw.

Some Norwegians traveled into what is now the United States. Their writing (runes) has been found in the Midwest. A professional football team, the Minnesota Vikings, takes its name from these explorers.

None of these early travelers like Ericson attracted much attention from their countrymen. No country had the kind of ships needed to either make regular ocean journeys or the technology to return home easily.

That changed in the 1400s with the development of a sextant, which helped a sailor find his location on the vast ocean by aligning his ship with the stars. That meant a sailor could know how he went somewhere and how to return home.

For years, however, sailors traveled carefully along the coast because they did not know what dangers the ocean held. They imagined sea monsters or a sudden fall off the end of the earth.

In 1492, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus used his sextant to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean. He was looking for gold and spices. In his day, sailors would sail around Africa toward the Far East to buy spices like pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. They would sail back the same way. Despite the long trip, which often took years, they would make a lot of money selling the spices.

Columbus figured that by sailing west, eventually he would come to the Far East. He thought the trip would be shorter and faster.

His timing was excellent. By his day, ships had been improved. They could survive long trips on the ocean. In addition, with his sextant, Columbus could not only sail west, he could return back to Spain to report what he found.

We don’t know much about Christopher Columbus. He was thought to be Italian. However, he never wrote in Italian. He wrote in Spanish. His son’s DNA showed that he was a native of Spain.

However, in his will, Columbus asked that his family’s neighbor in Italy should be paid some money. He also used many Italians to help him get supplies for the long trip.

Some scholars think Columbus fought in a war against the Spanish king and queen, and didn’t want them to know his real name. Others think he may have been Jewish, although he wrote that he was going west in hopes of introducing the Roman Catholic religion to the Chinese.

We may never know the real truth about him.

Instead of finding China, however, Columbus led three ships into the Caribbean Sea and bumped into some islands there.

He found people living in the hot climate. They did not wear clothes. Columbus called them people in God. In Spanish, that is in dios. The word, in English, became Indians. These Native Americas did not have guns, large hunting dogs and horses as the Spanish did, and were easily overcome by the new weapons and diseases.

When Columbus returned home with a few Indians, native animals and plants, he excited everyone. Stories of Columbus’ success spread quickly, inspiring many others to sail toward the New World. This time became known as the Age of Exploration.

Other explorers include:

Vasco de Gama who sailed around Africa and discovered the ocean route to the Far East.

Vasco Balboa, who was the first European to cross what is now Panama from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

Juan Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida and named it for the flowers ("flora’) he saw there.

John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, who explored the eastern part of what is now Canada.

Henry Hudson, who also explored North America.

Ferdinand Magellan, who was the first to sail around the world. He was killed by natives in the Far East, but his crew continued the voyage.

Normally, the new land would be named after the person who found it. However, the land Columbus reached was called America by a German mapmaker who talked to one of Columbus’ crew members, Amerigo Vespucci, and gave the land his name.

***

The Spanish conquest of Mexico shows how the Europeans were able to overcome a strong civilization. In 1519, a Spanish military leader, Hernan Cortés, brought a small band of soldiers, called conquistadors, to Mexico. He marched across the land to the capital city of the Aztecs, which is now Mexico City.

The Aztecs had a white god based apparently on an earlier European visitor. Cortez was thought to be the god who had returned. He was greeted as a god and treated like one, even given a building filled with gold. However, many of the Aztecs began to get suspicious after their king was seized by the Spanish. They killed the king, and attacked Cortes and his men.

Cortes was forced to retreat. He returned to the shore to defeat Spanish soldiers sent to arrest him for attacking the Aztecs without official orders. He then marched back with Indian allies and beat the Aztecs through the use of superior weapons, horses and disease.

Some of the Spanish horses were later released into the wild. They were captured by an Indian tribe known as Comanche, who quickly developed into some of the finest horsemen in the world. The Indians later prevented the Spanish from moving into much of the American Southwest.

Eager to share in the riches of this new world, countries like England, Netherlands, France and Portugal sent boats across the Atlantic Ocean. Each settled in different places in the Western Hemisphere:

Portugal took over land in South America and called it Brazil, after a native tree.

The Dutch settled in North America in what is now New York. They called it New Amsterdam, after their capital city. A Dutch leader bought Manhattan Island, now the heart of New York City, from the Indians for a few beads.

Spain held land in North, Central and South America.

The French controlled what is now Canada and the central part of what is now the United States.

Another country, Sweden, briefly set up a small colony in what is now the state of Maryland. The man who bought Manhattan, Peter Minuet, also worked out a deal between the Swedes and the Indians there.

The most successful of all the explorers were the English. In Europe, they were in constant fights with many nearby countries, especially Spain and France. Their differences were economic as well as religious. The English were Protestant, a Christian faith that rejected the Roman Catholic views of their rivals. The resulting wars would affect American ideas about religion.

For decades, the English explored the east coast of Canada and northern United States. They wanted gold, just like the Spanish, as well as overseas colonies that would become markets for English businesses. One captain, Francis Drake, was sent to attack and capture the Spanish ships filled with gold, and ended up sailing around the world. He came ashore in the western United States and Canada, and claimed the land for the English ruler, Queen Elizabeth I.

Virginia

An early attempt failed to set up a colony in Virginia, named for the queen, who never married and was known as the virgin queen. A second attempt in 1607 succeeded after much fighting with the local Indians. The English called the community Jamestown, naming it for James I, the king who followed Queen Elizabeth I. They had come to Jamestown to make money. Not finding any gold, they struggled to earn a living. They finally discovered tobacco in 1619 and began to sell it to England. The income earned the colony enough money to survive.

An Indian princess, named Pocahontas, helped them by learning English and marrying a Virginia planter. She was treated like royalty when she went to England with her husband, but died young before returning to her native country.

Massachusetts

Other English settlers, called Puritans, were upset with the Protestant church in their country and decided to create a new community in the New World. In 1620, they sailed in a boat called the Mayflower from Plymouth, England to Virginia, but the wind pushed them north, and they landed far from their original destination. Before going ashore, they wrote an agreement among themselves, called the Mayflower Compact, which is the first written law in this country. They called their landing site Plymouth. Today, there is a boulder there, called Plymouth Rock, which has a plaque marking their arrival.

Eventually, they called their colony Massachusetts, a name borrowed from a local Indian tribe. The main community was called Boston after a city of the same name in England. Weather there, however, is much colder than Virginia. Many of the pilgrims died that first long winter.

An Indian named Squanto helped the settlers survive. He actually had been in Virginia when the English first came there in 1607. He was taken to England, learned English, came back and then escaped. Amazingly, he fled north only to be in Massachusetts when new English settlers showed up there.

In the fall, the settlers and the Indians celebrated making their first harvest with a big feast, which became the origin of the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

One of the settlers was named Priscilla Mullins. Captain Miles Standish liked her and wanted to marry her. He asked a friend, John Alden, to speak to Priscilla on his behalf. Priscilla, however, said, Why don’t you speak for yourself, John? which has become an American idiom. Priscilla and John got married; Standish went home alone to England.

The story became familiar through an 1858 poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Gradually, more colonies were founded by English settlers, who were eager to start new lives in the New World. Here, there was plenty of land and opportunities. Some people couldn’t afford to sail here and so agreed to work for a business in this country for usually seven years. In return, they were given a place on a ship and were able to come to the New World.

In all, by 1735, there were 13 colonies located along the East Coast of what is now the United States. The two largest were the oldest, Virginia and Massachusetts. The rest were set up for different reasons.

Connecticut, a name drawn from the Indian language, was founded by settlers moving from Massachusetts.

Delaware is named for an English nobleman and was originally settled by the Dutch and Swedes. The English conquered the land in 1664.

Georgia, named for King George I of England, originally was set up for prisoners from English jails.

Maryland was named for English Queen Henrietta Maria, who was better known as Mary. It was founded as a safe home for Roman Catholics.

New Hampshire, named for a county in England, was created by fishermen three years after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

New Jersey, named for an island near England, was set up on land given to a family that remained loyal to King Charles II during a civil war in England.

New York, named for the English king’s brother, was originally the Dutch capital New Amsterdam. The English took control in the 1600s by trading the Dutch for an island in the Far East.

North and South Carolina, named for King Charles IX of France and Charles II of England, were created by settlers moving away from other states. Because the states practiced freedom of religion, they drew colonists from many countries as well. Originally one state, it was divided into two parts in 1729.

Pennsylvania, which means Penn’s Woods, was land purchased by English Prime Minister William Penn and designated for members of a Christian sect called Quakers.

Rhode Island, which was actually the name of an island before the name spread to the entire state, was set up to provide freedom of religion for anyone.

Virginia is the oldest of the 13 original colonies Georgia is the youngest.

English settlers looked to expand to the west where Indians lived. They also looked at Canada to the north. The name Canada comes from an Indian word for village and gradually was used for all of the North American land controlled by France.

The two sides collided in the French & Indian War in the 1750s, which was also fought