Early North American literature

Colonial beginnings
 The General history of Virginia
• The Kecoughtan village was where the English
explorers received their first welcome in 1607.
The tribe remained generally friendly to them
until the summer of 1609, when president
John Smith sent Captain Martin to forcibly
take over the island
 Relations with Native Americans
• In 1993, the U.S. Congress devoted an
entire resolution to apologizing to Native
Hawaiians for overthrowing their kingdom in
1893.
• But a U.S. apology to Native Americans took
until 2009 and came stealthily hidden in an
unrelated spending bill
 Relations with Native Americans
• In 2009, the president B. Obama apologised

“on behalf of the people of the United States

to all Native Peoples for the many instances of
violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted
on Native Peoples by citizens of the United
States.”
• the veterans stood in solidarity during the protests in
2016: asking for forgiveness for the long brutal history
between the United States and Native Americans:

"Many of us, me particularly, are from the units that have

hurt you over the many years. We came. We fought you.
We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke.
We stole minerals from your sacred hills. We blasted the
faces of our presidents onto your sacred mountain.
When we took still more land and then we took your
children and then we tried to make your language and
we tried to eliminate your language that God gave you,
and the Creator gave you. We didn’t respect you, we
polluted your Earth, we’ve hurt you in so many ways but
we’ve come to say that we are sorry. We are at your
service and we beg for your forgiveness."
North Dakota pipeline
 Thomas Granger
• one of the first people hanged in the Plymouth
Colony and the first known juvenile to be
sentenced to death and executed in the territory
of today's United States
• convicted of "buggery with a mare, a cow, two
goats, divers sheepe, two calves, and a turkey",
according to court records of 7 September 1642.
(Granger's crime represents the colonies' first
recorded act of bestiality)
The Wonders of the Invisible World
• Cotton Mather
• 1693
• Justification of the witch hunt conducted
in Salem, Massachusetts
• Mather believed that witches were tools of
the devil in Satan's battle to "overturn this
poor plantation, the Puritan colony", and
prosecution of witches as a way to secure
God's blessings for the colony
 Poor Richard’s Almanac
• Written by Benjamin Franklin under a
pseudonym, published continuously 1732-
1758
• It contained a mixture of seasonal weather
forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles,
and other amusement
• Sold exceptionally well, Napoleon considered
the Almanack significant enough to translate
it into Italian,
• Letters from an American Farmer; Describing
Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and
Customs not Generally Known; and Conveying
Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior
Circumstances of the British Colonies in North
America
• twelve letters cover a wide range of topics,
from the emergence of an American identity
to the slave trade
• told from the viewpoint of a fictional narrator
in correspondence with an English gentleman
 The New England Primer
• the first reading primer designed for
the American Colonies.
• became the most successful
educational textbook published in 17th
century colonial United
The New England Primer