the past changes the future

Just as the Europeans couldn't help comparing the native people they encountered in the Americas to their own home societies, we also see everything we encounter through a filter of past experience. For example, as we were discussing the story of Gaqka and how such stories sought to explain why stories are told with markers and as part of a ritual, it was pointed out that there are set methods or words that go into starting or telling a story. When this was brought up, I immediately thought of the habit or joke of beginning a story with "This one time, at band camp..." Incidentally, I myself have quite a few stories that begin this way, and this past personal history influenced how I reacted to the lecture, just as the Europeans' prior lives shaped how they saw the new cultures they encountered. This method of comparison I believe is common to all people regardless of time period or age, and is a switch that cannot be turned off.

And occassionally, this reference to your personal past and endeavors takes precedence over practically everything else. Such was the case within much of The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith I read this week. Keeping in my mind that speaking in the third person, regardless of time period, simply makes you sound like a jerkoff,

we can just write off Smith's use of it to a combination to poetic license and rhetorical purposes and move on. However, Smith's pure self-promotion gets a bit extensive with passages such as,

"... committed the managing of all things abroad to Captaine Smith: who by his owne example, good words, and faire promises, set some to mow, others to binde thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himselfe alwayes bearing the greatest task of his owne share,..."

Now while it is definitely possible that this recollection is the truth, the way in which it was written leaves the reader wary of the man so intently singing his own praises.

John Smith's narrative is quite similar to the other contact literature we read this week, both in reasons as to why they were written, and in a tendency to exagerrate findings. The Europeans arriving in the Americas in the seventeenth century were eager for their countrymen to follow them and migrate to this "New World" as well. For this purpose, the was they crafted descriptions of what they saw created an image of new Eden (sometimes literally, as with De Bry's engraving), devoid of sin and the hardship people were accostomed to. Where Columbus reported of "The harbours of the sea here are such as cannot be believed to exist unless they have been seen..." Smith told of "... the rivers became so convered with swans, geese, duckes, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good bread,..." However, when explorers like Columbus and de Vaca would leave their descriptions with just the embellishments, Smith went on to include some harsher realities. After he characterizes the rivers as a free-for-all of poultry he writes, "But our Comaedies never endured long without a Tragedie;..." He goes on in his narrative to tell of his captivity, including his very real fear of death at he hands of the Native Americans. And while this is certainly an interesting story and would sell books, I would not think it is not the best way to convince other people to follow in your footsteps, if those footsteps might just lead to angry people with arrows who do not want you there.

These contact narratives, despite individual motives, lead to the mass migration across the Atlantic, and in this way they are vitally important to modern history of America. And while they are being absorbed critically, the reader is responding to them through their own considerations and past, just as people have for centuries.

On a completely different, non-academic note, when I saw the portrait of John Smith on page 107, just one thought immediately came to mind...

Disney might have taken some liberties.