Searching Buddha

Early American: Prose to 1700

Period Concerns: clash of cultures (Old World vs. New World), violence, war, slavery (Native American and African), mistreatment and abuse of indigenous peoples (in both European and Native writings), god, gold, glory
Orature – Native American oral tradition – creation tales, trickster tales
Puritanism and the Pilgrims – wanted to purify Christianity from the corruption of Anglicanism & Catholicism, followed predetermination (the two groups merged by 1691), Pilgrims were Separatists from the Church of England, believed that God formed a covenant with each believer based on God’s covenant with Adam
“city on a hill” – religious utopianism, religious themes in general
travelogues and personal narratives (particularly of culture clash) common, “Indian captivity” narratives

Likely Authors and Works:

Native American Creation Stories (p. 21-27) – tell the stories of how the world came to be, vary widely between tribes, some reference a flood similar to the Biblical flood

Native American Trickster Tales (p.120-155) – the trickster figure is a mischevious, sexual figure (generally male, but can switch at will), selfish, amoral, foolish and destructive, a threat to order, but also a culture hero and transformer that helps give the world order

Bartolome de las Casas – a Spanish colonist that renounced slavery and wrote and petitioned the Spanish crown about the European devastation of the indigenous populations
Hispaniola, The Coast of Pearls, Paria and the Island of Trinidad (p 38-41)

John Smith – “one of the most colorful of all the Englishmen ever involved in America” – crucial role in the establishment of Jamestown (governor), also explored and named New England
The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (p.105) -- travelogue

William Bradford - Pilgrim, governor of Plymouth, Mass., interested in recording the history of the colony, self-educated, deeply committed to Puritanism
Of Plymouth Plantation (pp. 156-195) – a history of the Plymouth colony

John Winthrop – wished to reform Anglicanism (remove Popery), but when Charles I (Catholic sympathizer) came to the throne, he requested permission to emigrate. Governor of Massachusetts Bay, Cotton Mather’s ideal of “the perfect earthly ruler”
A Model of Christian Charity (pp.205-217) – sermon setting out the ideals of harmonious Christian community, reminding those on board his ship that they were role models, religious utopianism

Thomas Morton – morally questionable, Anglican, set up trade post near Plymouth, arrested by the Puritans and returned to England for arming the Nauset tribe, but he spent his time there trying to get the Puritans arrested and returning to Plymouth periodically to antagonize them
New England Canaan (pp. 195-204) – travelogue written after his second return to New England

Roger Williams – banished from Massachusetts Bay for religious ideas, fled to Rhode Island, first colony of religious freedom, wanted to separate church & state, very sympathetic to Native Americans
A Key into the Language of America (pp.226-237) – culture and language guide for the Narrangansetts tribe

Mary Rowlandson – spent 11 weeks as a captive of the Wampanoags during King Phillip’s War (settlers vs. Wampanoags), wife of the minister of Lancaster
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (pp. 308-340) – “Indian captivity” narrative, autobiographical, piety, heroism

Cotton Mather – wrote biographies of ministers, treatises on the proper behavior of servants towards their masters, the “well-ordered family” and the spiritual risks run by seamen, significant because he was widely read – creating a popular literary culture in America
Worried about the loss of Puritan culture to secularism
Pillars of Salt (pp. 417-424) – a venture into criminal biography with religious origins
Magnalia Christi Americana – ecclesiastical history of New England (7 volumes!)

Jonathon Dickenson – white Creole (Jamaica) Quaker merchant shipwrecked in Florida, settled in Philadelphia after a harrowing journey with much physical abuse from his captors, became mayor of Philadelphia several times
God’s Protecting Providence – autobiography of shipwreck & Indian captivity in southern Florida. Piety, adventure, exoticism
Thomas Maule – outspoken Quaker in Boston that ran into trouble with the authorities for his religious beliefs, criticized the Salem Witch trials
New England’s Prosecuters Mauled With Their Own Weapons – dissenting Quaker tract, later referenced by Hawthorne in The House of Seven Gables

Samuel Sewall – judge and merchant in Boston, well-educated, wealthy, involved in the Salem Witch Trials, but later regretted it
The Diary of Samuel Sewall (pp. 371-386)
The Selling of Joseph (387-389) – one of the earliest antislavery tracts

Works Cited
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Literature to 1820, Volume A,
Sixth Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2003.

“Dickinson, Jonathan”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Dickinson

Maule, James Edward. Better That 100 Witches Should Live. Boston: JEMBook Publishing
Company, 1995.