American Literature: 15th Century

The Marvels of Spain – And America

In 1494 Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic towards the New World, and discovered many things that grasped the attention of the old world very quickly.
Also in 1494 another man sailed across the ocean, his true name is not known but he was a Taino Indian from the Bahamas, one of seven natives whom Columbus seized and took to Spain. He was renamed Diego Colon after the son of Columbus. Most of the Indians seized by Christopher Columbus were dead by the time they reached Spain or shortly died after reaching Spain. There only remained two Indians and both served as translators for the much larger party of Spaniards.

Of the two men, only Colon is reported by historian Andres Bernaldez, and he was the one that told tales to the other Indians on their way back. Colon was to accompany Columbus on the whole of his voyage and he was much more recognized then the other because he showed himself to be an intelligent man.

Colons story reminds us that discovery is mutual, and even though more Europeans voyaged to the new world then Indians to the old the Indians were discovering many things too. Indians soon had a colonial imitation of Europe developing before their eyes, and on the second voyage Columbus brought wheat, melons, onions, radishes, salad greens, grapevines, sugar cane, and various fruit trees. The social relationships between the Indians and the Europeans was the thing that would make Spain rich, and in the early sixteenth century, Europeans introduced African slaves.

Discovery entailed a many sided process of influence and exchange that ultimately produced the hybrid cultural universe of the Atlantic world, of which the English colonies were one small part. Each people tried to use its traditions to conquer or outwit its opposite numbers, and soon violence developed. The Europeans were at a technological advantage and despite propaganda they were still more serious then the natives when violence was done upon them. The natives were quick to adopting the European tactics and weaponry and often used it in their own disputes or in disputes against other Europeans, these wars were called the Indian Wars.

From 1492, native peoples began to die in large numbers, and the main cause for this was enslavement, brutal mistreatment, despair, and disease. Disease was one of the more insidious forms of “exchange” done and harshly affected the natives more then the Europeans because the Europeans became resistant to the diseases. There were countless smallpox, measles, typhus, and other epidemics. The institutional disease of slavery further decimated the native peoples; hispaniola faced major population loss through the encomienda system. Because of the decline of population in 1501 Spain introduced African slavery.

The Indians also used the Europeans to take down their enemies they had before the Europeans came. The Iroquois had created the league of five nations before European settlement, and made alliances with the Dutch and later the English. With less and less Indians remaining they still showed themselves as resourceful.

Native American Oral Literature

Columbus left behind a number of relatively centralized nation-states with largely agricultural economies. Europe had dozens of languages and most of them related, and they had similar religious belief and a written alphabet had been used to preserve and communicate information for many centuries and Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable type in the mid 1400s had allowed Europe to become a print culture.

Native people spoke hundreds of languages, which were not related, and had different economies, and religious beliefs were diverse too. There were eight different creation ideas, which were different from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

North American peoples did not use a written alphabet, theirs was oral, and often chanted or sung. The phrase oral literature, and some have chosen to call the expressions of the oral tradition orature.

In Europe it was able to clearly see the documented history but if documentation was looked for in North America one could not find anything that would show the various ceremonies various Indian tribes had.

From western perspective the types of native verbal expression could only be considered as literature after that late eighteenth and early nineteenth century revolution in European consciousness known as Romanticism. Literature shifted away from being defined by the medium of expression (all language preserved in letters) to the kind of expression (those texts that emphasized the imaginative and emotional possibilities of language). With this shift native American verbal types could be considered literary.

Native American literatures originate as oral performances and are meant for the ear not the eye, and scholors had tried to figure out the best way to transfer it to paper, for these native performances sometimes sped up or there was sudden gestures or affects, they tried doing so by arrangement and size of the words Many translating ways were controversial, many wondered if they should keep it archaic or make it contemporary, use red English or reservation English, and a few were afraid if it was translated to English it might misrepresent it.

The translating of native expressions were not perfect, reading the words of native oral literature conveys some sense of indigenous literary expression as it may have been before the coming of Europeans.

Voyages of Discovery

Many other Europeans followed Columbus in journeys toward the new world. Giovanni Caboto, or known as John Cabot, and Amerigo Vespucci both crossed the ocean before 1500, as did Pedro Cabral. The settlements stretched far to the North and to the South. Natives tried wiping out settlements but soon better equipped ships arrived and stayed very aggressive. There was great competition to take as much of the land as possible.

Eventually North America, Central America, and South America was found and Europe continued to expand. Spain under the rule of Charles V from 1515 to the 1520s aggressively searched and expanded through South America and as far north as the Tennessee river and Kansas. Within 50 years both continents have been explored and the two greatest empires have fallen, the incas and the Aztecs.

Spain took the move aggressive role in America, England and France were slow at awakening. English explorers were poorly supported and French explorers stopped after they couldn’t find gold. Not until many years later did France and England start to find economic advantages there besides fishing. Richard Hakluyt did many publications of the new world his masterwork, the Principall Navigations brought the literary productions of countless European mariners to the attention of the public. Virginia was faltering greatly and Hakluyt and Shakespeare wrote about it. Under Samuel de Champlain French interest grew once again, and he pushed exploration as far as lake superior.

Literary Consequences of 1492

The new world produced a large and intriguing body of literature, and because of the printing press made a half century before columbus’s expedition and because of the beautiful descriptions of the new world, the printing press became a great source of motivational work to expand into the new world.
Eventhough it was hard to find documentation and the natives preferred memory over mechanical ways to preserve tradition in some Indian tribes written text existed, (shellwork belts, painted animal hides, tepees, and shields) but Europeans still produced much more literary text then natives.