1.

The Discoveries of America

1) some 16,000 years ago emigrants from Asia crossed the land bridge that is now the Bering Strait 2) Recent archaeological evidence suggests that early in the 11th century A.D. the Vikings set up campsites in Newfoundland and made a few unsuccessful attempts at colonization. (the Vinland sagas - these are written versions of older oral histories that recount the temporary settlement of an area to the west of Greenland, called Vinland, led by a Norse explorer, Leif Erikson. It is possible that Vinland may have been Newfoundland) 3) It is also highly probable that English fishing vessels routinely coasted Canadian shores a decade or so before Christopher Columbus set out on his momentous journey. 4) On October 12, 1492, Columbus undeniably made the first recorded discovery of America. 5) Credit for the discovery of America as a distinctly new region of earth is often, though not without controversy, awarded to the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus - wanted to discover a route, not a region. He ventured out with the hope of finding a convenient passage to the Orient, a trade route that would give Spain commercial access to the opulent world Marco Polo described so vividly in his famous 13th century account of an overland journey to the court of Kublai Khan. - He was so convinced throughout the 4 voyages he made to the New World between 1492 and 1502 he saw and interpreted everything--every plant, animal, mineral, place, and person he encountered--within the context of his having successfully reached Asia. - the ships: Nina, Punta and Santa Maria Amerigo Vespucci - In 1501, sailing to Brazil under the Portuguese flag Vespucci noted that "we arrived at a new land which. . . we observed to be a continent." When his Mundus Novus (New World) appeared in 1503, it received far wider circulation than anything Columbus had written. Vespucci was imbued with a deeper spirit of the Renaissance than Columbus, whose views in many respects resembled the views of such medieval travellers as Marco Polo. Martin Waldseemuller - When a German geographer, Martin Waldseemuller, came across Vespucci's work while preparing an edition of Ptolomey, he decided that this new land ought to bear the name of its founder: "[Europe, Africa, and Asia] have been more widely explored, and another, fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vesputius, land of Americus as it were, after its discoverer Americus, a man of acute genius, or America, inasmuch as both Europe and Asia have received their names from women." - The geographer then took the liberty of writing the word America across the new territory on his 1507 world map. Despite numerous objections (the Spanish and Portuguese continued to refer to the New World as "the Indies" until the 18th century), and despite Waldseemuller's own change of mind, the name stuck. 1. Maize 2. Tomato 3. Potato 4. Vanilla 5. rubber tree 6. Cacao 7. Tobacco

The Origins of American Myths

America and the Pastoral Ideal 1) Literary pastoral had long symbolized the European dream of a Golden Age, and with the discovery of the New World that dream seemed for a brief moment in history to have come true. It seemed, at last, that an actual physical world did indeed exist uncorrupted by man and resembling the original state of nature. Columbus on his third voyage thought that he had literally come near to the Terrestrial Paradise. Later explorers, possessing a less biblical sense of geography would see the primeval American landscape as offering the possibility for another earthly paradise. This view dominated most descriptions of the new land. 2) For nearly all the early explorers, the vision of the Golden Age was also a vision of actual gold. All other motives for exploration--the investigation of new regions, the religious conversion of native populations, the discovery of previously unknown natural phenomena--were secondary compared to the acquisition of gold and silver. "We came here to serve God", said the conquistador Bernal Diaz, "and also to get rich." Columbus never ceased quizzing the native chieftains about gold, and the repeated failure of all the first explorers to find precious metals severely dampened the initial European enthusiasm for the new land. The pastoral vs. the wilderness - During the period of inland exploration, the pastoral ideal had little to do with what we now think of as the wilderness. - For the first explorers and settlers, wilderness had highly pejorative connotations. The word conjured up medieval images of bestiality, malevolence, and the horrors of hell. Nonetheless, by the end of the 18th century, the wilderness came to possess a decidedly positive value. By the era of Cooper and Thoreau, it would replace the cultivated garden as the ideal American landscape. The New American Hero - Survival in the wilderness--the central action of so many exploration narratives-would become a recurring theme of both popular and classic American literature. Out of the confrontation with the wilderness emerged a new type of hero: tough, selfreliant, experienced, in contact with life at its most elemental levels. We can trace the origins of this new heroic personality in such early exploration texts as The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1542) one of the great documents in the literature of human endurance. Captain John Smith - The connection between physical survival and spiritual rebirth is best expressed by the explorer who more than any other typified the new American hero--Captain John Smith. "It is a happy thing to be born to strength, wealth and honor," wrote Smith, "but that which is got by prowess is the truest luster; and those can best distinguish content, that have escaped most honorable dangers; as if, out of every extremity, he found himself now born to a new life." - In Smith's vigorous writing, the idea of experience takes on new significance. Experience is important not only as a method of testing a theory but also as a supreme value in and for itself. Experiences become cumulative and hierarchical. The hero has many experiences--the more extreme the better. Though Smith's numerous accounts of the New World contain a few Edenic overtones, his Arcadia is mainly a utilitarian utopia.

Smith continually emphasized, discipline and hard work to forge out of the raw resources an independent subsistence. Smith wrote his books and pamphlets to attract potential colonists to America. In his books we find the earliest formulations of what would become a prevailing image of America: an open society where someone without the benefit of family connections, inheritance, or formal education can by virtue of hard work alone enjoy a happy, independent, and prosperous life.

The American Dream - The American Dream describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulfilment of human wishes and desires. What these wishes are, were expressed in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence of 1776, where it was stated: - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. - This search for freedom and happiness actually goes back to the very beginning of American civilisation, to the time of the first settlers. The first settlers were all religious refugees who were driven to the New World by persecution. To these people, America represented a new life of freedom, holding a promise of spiritual and material happiness. For those settlers who were not so religiously inclined, America was still a fairyland, a land of great possibilities. - And so the first 13 colonies came into being, amidst the religious and materialistic hopes of the first settlers. Material prosperity and progress kept pace with religious and spiritual goals because the Puritans and the Quakers alike approved of industry and material advancement. For, whereas physical pleasures were evil, hard work and achievements were regarded as indications of inner goodness. - When the Eastern Seaboard, comprising the 13 colonies, became overcrowded, the settlers began to move west. The opening of the Middle and Western States increased the sense of hope and faith. And this looking forward beyond the immediate present, this belief in the future, has become a national characteristic that may partly explain the speed of American advancement in so many areas of activities. The democratic system, first voiced in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776, may be traced to this basic attitude of hope and confidence. - The American Dream, however, originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material improvement. What happened was that the material aspect of the dream was too easily and too quickly achieved, with the result that it soon outpaced and even obliterated the early spiritual ideals. So there emerged a state of material well-being but lacking in spiritual life or purpose. Toward a Pluralistic Culture - it is important to remember that initially the English participated only minimally in the colonization of the New World. French influence extended throughout Canada, the Northeast, and the Midwest. By the mid-18th century, Spain controlled everything west of the Mississippi and south of the Oregon country as well as Florida and territories south of Tennessee. The Dutch, too, made a considerable effort at colonizing the New World, controlling Manhattan Island along with the rich and beautiful Hudson valley. A cultural pluralism characterized the New World from the start, leading to the idea of America as a melting pot. A "City upon a Hill"--New England - the New England colonists first settled a rocky, sandy coastline that reaches into the Atlantic. These Pilgrim and Puritan colonists aspired to a "city upon a hill," as the Massachusetts Puritan governor John Winthrop put it.

Theocracy = government by a person or persons claiming to rule with divine authority

The Religious Background - English religious controversy continued after Henry VIII formed the Church of England, for some people felt that the national church still held a "Romish taint". - the controversy focused on whether such matters as ceremony, vestments, ornament, church governance represented godly tradition or human and demonic corruption. - the nonconformists who worked to rid the church of them were called, scornfully at first, Puritans, for their efforts at purification. Some others, notably the Bradford group who migrated to Plymouth, Massachusetts, despaired of successful reforms and separated from the Church of England altogether. - Since 1608 the Bradford group had lived in Holland, which afforded them religious freedom but "Dutchified" their lives. Fearing the loss of their cultural identity and religious intensity, they persuaded the Virginia Company of London to finance their American colony, and despite delays and mishaps, set sail on the Mayflower on September 16, 1620, with 149 aboard, forty-seven of them crewmen and officers. - Americans cherish their Pilgrims of the tiny Plymouth colony largely because of William Bradford's compelling account of it in Of Plymouth Plantation (c.1620-1647). Puritan Beliefs - The Puritans and Pilgrims believed that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and fell from grace, all their descendents were predestined to eternal punishment--except for an elect group redeemed by the sufferings of Jesus Christ. They spoke of their doctrine in terms of covenants, the binding and solemn agreements made between two parties. - In the Bible they discerned, first, a covenant of works made between God and Adam, who was to enjoy perpetual life in the Garden of Eden in return for total obedience to God. When Adam disobeyed, he committed the first or original sin, broke the covenant, fell from grace, and together with Eve, was cast out of the Garden forever to toil in the world. - Later God made a second covenant, one of grace, with Abraham, whose children he promised to save unconditionally. The Puritans considered themselves descendants of Abraham, redeemed by Jesus Christ who was sent by God to show His mercy. The saved souls, an indeterminate but limited number called the elect, were to be brought to a full consciousness of their condition by the ministry of the biblical word. God extended His irresistible grace to them. Ultimately the elect souls would dwell with God in eternity. - No Puritan, however, felt that any action of one's own could change the unalterable will of God. All Puritans knew that their innate human depravity prevented them from earning salvation through good works or deeds or generous thoughts or any number of prayers or devotions. Yet every Puritan or Pilgrim worked to live an industrious, upright life in a useful trade or profession. The saints, as the regenerate Puritans called themselves, tried to love their neighbors and to obey their civil magistrates. - the conviction that the apocalyptic prophecy of the New Testament Book of Revelation was about to be fulfilled. Within the scheme of Christian history, the Puritans believed, the final events of earthly time were coming to a close. - The ideal of the peaceful kingdom of the millennium set a very high standard for the city on the hill. The new Jerusalem in America would have to be objectified in colonial life just as it was proclaimed in literature. Colonization itself, from felling tress to writing poems was site preparation for the Christian millennium. Though the

definition may have varied over the years, that may have been the first and deepest "American dream." On the basis of biblical authority, Puritanism found one person to be as good as another, no matter what that person's earthly social station. Aristocracy might rule England, but Puritanism argued that the average man and woman might be of God's elect and thus a spiritual aristocrat destined to inherit the heavens and the earth.

A "Vale of Plenty": The South - Southern colonists did not come to America to found a city upon a hill. Their American dream was quite different. Captain John Smith's expression "vale of plenty" captured the essence of the southern response to America. The vale or valley of plenty signified a fruitful garden, even a paradise, that could be attained with human effort. Two centuries of southern colonial writers saw their land as a natural paradise, not a howling wilderness. - The Puritan might write of hardships, but the southerner reports no such discomfort. Southern colonists conceived of the good life in terms of a fertile valley that, industriously cultivated, could realistically become an American dream come true, a "paradise improved". These colonists came from English villages and from cities like London and Bristol. But they brought to America an ideal of English farm life and the Renaissance commitment to exploration and knowledge. - The southern ideal, expressed in literature and the fine arts, was that of country life. It was modeled on English farm life but intended to surpass it in the sylvan New World. Gardens complemented southern colonial living at every socioeconomic level. They ranged from quadrangles of shrubs, flowers, and herbs to elaborate arrangements of terraces, mounds, ponds, lakes modeled on English precedent but adapted to the new environment. The legend of southern gracious living persists in the twentieth century movies and in the remaining 18th century plantation house and grounds open to tourists.