Transcript NORTH AMERICA - C. W. Thayer

NORTH AMERICA
PRIOR TO 1750
FIRST ENCOUNTERs
• 1492- Native Americans first encountered
European settlers.
• Did you know that Christopher Columbus
actually landed in the Bahamas?
Who really “discovered” America?
• In 1515 Juan Ponce de Leon landed on
the Florida Peninsula
• Surprisingly, the first
permanent English
settlement didn’t happen
until 1607, in
Jamestown, Virginia.
Actually, Vikings first settled in the Americas in AD 1000.
THE FIRST “AMERICANS”
• Native American tribes inhabited North
America from 12,000 to 70,000 years ago.
•Even if it has “only”
been 12,000 years,
that is still THIRTY
TIMES longer than the
Europeans, who didn’t
arrive until the late
1500’s.
“SAVAGES?”
• Contrary to the popular impression of early
Native Americans, they usually greeted the
earliest European settlers as friends.
They taught the
settlers about
agriculture and
woodcraft.Many
settlers survived only
because of assistance
and instruction from
the Native Americans.
Many Nations
• There were several hundred tribes of Native
Americans by the 1490’s.
• They differed from one another in language,
government, customs, housing, etc.
NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
• Not much is known about the Native Americans,
prior to their encounters with Europeans,
because they did not keep written records.
Most Native American Lit is
considered folklore, stories
that generally legends about
heroes, migration, and the
creation.
Stories were passed on
orally and would vary
depending on who was
telling them.
…AND THEN THE PURITANS
CRASHED THE PARTY
• In 1620, the Mayflower carried a group of
religious reformists from England.
They were called “Puritans”
because they attempted to
“purify” the church from
within. When this failed, they
decided to take their ideas
and beliefs elsewhere.
They were also called
“Separatists.”
Puritans, continued.
• They landed in what is now Plymouth,
Massachussetts.
• Eventually the Plymouth colony was
absorbed by the larger Massachussetts
Bay Colony.
• Their government was a Theocracy, a
state under the immediate guidance of
God.
Puritan Beliefs
• Human beings existed solely for the glory of God.
• The Bible is the sole expression of God’s will.
They also believed in
predestination, or the idea that
God has already decided who
will achieve salvation and who
will be condemned to hell.
-However, the “saved” didn’t
know who they were, so they
had to constantly strive to do
good, just in case they were
one of the “chosen ones.”
Puritan Beliefs, continued.
• The Puritans felt that they
could accomplish good
only through continual
hard work and selfdiscipline.
• When people today
speak of the “Puritan
work ethic,” they are
basically speaking about
the idea that hard work
will bring you rewards.
The Great Awakening
• Puritanism began to lose steam in the
early 1700’s. More liberal Protestant
congregations began to gain followers and
converts.
• The Great Awakening was a movement in
reaction to the movement toward less
moral constraints.
The Great Awakening continued.
• Ministers, like Jonathan
Edwards, began
preaching “Fire and
Brimstone” sermons,
which threatened their
congregations with the
fires of hell and
damnation if they strayed
from the church and its
practices.
More Fire and Brimstone
• Though the churches gained thousands of
new converts, old-school Puritanism all but
died out.
• However, the Puritan ideals of selfdiscipline, self-reliance, frugality and hard
work.
Puritan Writing
• Because they believed that their every
action was to be for the glory of God,
virtually all of their writing was either
religious or self-reflective about how they
could grow spiritually.
• They did not write fiction nor drama,
because they considered both to be sinful.
• They did write poetry, but they were
almost always religious in nature.
The Puritan Legacy
• Puritans founded Harvard College, one of
today’s most prestigious schools.
• They set up the first printing press in North
America
Also, free public
schools were
established by
the Puritans in
1647.
Puritan Writers
• Cotton Mather, a
Puritan writer,
produced more than
400 books (some
about witchcraft
which played a part
in the Salem
Witchcraft Trials- but
we’ll come back to
that later).
Big, Big Business
• Large plantations began to spring up in the
southern colonies.
•As many as 1,000
people (many of
them slaves) could
live on and work a
single plantations.
Plantations
• The first black slaves were brought to
Virginia in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth.
Hand in Hand
• The plantation system and slavery
seemed were closely connected, though
slavery existed in all of the colonies.
• Ironically, slave owners were typically
Church of England members
(Protestants), and held to many of the
hard working ideals of the Puritans.
(Seriously, did they think Jesus would
have slaves??? What the???)