Chapter 5

A Meeting of Old and New Worlds: Beginnings to 1750

Native American Origin Stories

•   An interview with Professor Graham Harvey about reconceptualizing animism.

Native American Trickster Stories

•   In “Mythology of the Trickster,” Joseph Campbell discusses the trickster figure and compares him to other deities, such as Yahweh in Judaism.

•   A modern version of a trickster tale and related information.

•   A list of Native American tricksters from various tribes as well as numerous trickster stories.

Iroquois Confederacy, from The Iroquois Constitution

•   An interview at the Massachusetts School of Law in which Tiokasin Ghosthorse discusses the Iroquois influence on the U.S. Constitution.

•   An interview in which Donald Grinde Jr. discusses similarities between the Iroquois Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

•   A useful discussion of wampum and its similarity to other forms of pictographic writing.

•   An in-depth discussion of how wampum was made and its various uses.

Álvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Cabeza de Vaca

•   A detailed map with links to video and audio files that examine specific sites along Cabeza de Vaca’s journey through Mexico and the southwestern United States.

•   An accessible scholarly attempt to specify Cabeza de Vaca’s route across the southwestern United States using archaeological evidence.

Richard Frethorne, Letter to Father and Mother

•   Richard’s Hofstadter’s essay, “White Servitude,” is included here along with an introduction by D. C. Ellison for his history class at Montgomery College.

•   Professor Darius Spearman lectures on slavery and indentured servitude in early America, arguing that both were forms of class oppression which had little to do with the concept of “race” as we conceive of it today.

•   A clip from the PBS documentary Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery discussing indentured servitude in the context of slavery, black history, and the early American tobacco economy.

Anne Bradstreet, The Prologue and The Author to Her Book

•   An essay in which Caitlin Kimball compares and contrasts the poetry of Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, identifying both poets’ lasting appeal.

•   An audio reading of “The Author to Her Book.”

•   A National Public Radio interview with New England poet Charlotte Gordon about the female Puritan experience and Bradstreet’s accomplishments as a poet.

Eavan Boland, Becoming Anne Bradstreet

•   An audio reading of “Becoming Anne Bradstreet.”

Anonymous, Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary (painting)

•   The site Early American Paintings in the Worcester Art Museum provides a biography of the unidentified seventeenth-century artist and a useful timeline of early American painting.

Edward Taylor, Huswifery

•   An audio reading of Huswiferey.

Mary Rowlandson, from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

•   English professor Elaine Showalter discusses the continued relevance of captivity narratives like Rowlandson’s.

•   A site providing information about the captivity-narrative genre and about Mary Rowlandson’s text. It includes discussion questions and links to short video lectures.

•   A concise introduction to captivity narratives, including a list of captivity narratives from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

•   An illustration by Nathaniel Cowerly that was included in Rowlandson’s Narrative.

•   The title page of the first edition of Rowlandson’s Narrative.

Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World: A Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum’d by the Wrath of the Devil

•   An interview with Jesse Walker about his book The United States of Paranoia, in which, making reference to “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” he describes paranoia as a typical American trait.

•   Historian Charles Zika explains the social and religious manipulations behind fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European images of witches and witchcraft, and how they contrast with our contemporary visual representation of witches.

•   An interactive trip through the hysteria that caused the witch hunt in Salem, offered from the perspective of one of the accused.

John Hale, from A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft

•   A photo of the house in which John Hale wrote A Modest Inquiry.

•   Images of the entire original text of Hale’s A Modest Inquiry, hosted by The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.

Conversation | The American Jeremiad

•   Wen Stephenson’s article in the New York Times discusses the American tendency to write jeremiads, not manifestos.

A Collection of Bob Dylan Jeremiads

•   “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

•   “Maggie’s Farm”

•   “Idiot Wind”

Conversation | The Columbus Day Controversy

•   National Public Radio, Wilma Mankiller Reflects on Columbus Day.

Conversation | Pocahontas: A Woman, a Movie, a Myth?

•   Neil Young & Crazy Horse perform “Pocahontas.”

•   Johnny Cash covers Neil Young’s “Pocahontas.”

Additional Resources on Puritanism

•   Musician and artist Jeffrey Lewis sings the narration to his illustrated depiction of the Pilgrims’ journey from England to North America.

•   An introduction to American Puritanism, defining such key ideas as “total depravity” and “predestination.”