Unit 1: Literature of Early America Beginnings to 1800

American LiteratureSnapshot of the Period

Facts about the period:

In 1492, North America was already populated by several hundred Native American Tribes.

More than 12,000 years before Christopher Columbus reached North America, nomadic peoples had migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia and settled across the continent.

Native Americans spoke different languages and had very different cultures, but the Europeans called them all by one name: “Indians.”

This Unit covers literature in America from before the arrival of Columbus to 1800, a period during which Europeans discovered that the Americas even existed and encountered their original inhabitants.

About the Unit:

Although no original Native American written texts exist, archaeologists have deduced a great deal from artifacts, and folklorists have recorded a rich variety of oral Native American songs, legends, and myths.

Background History

“I come again to greet and thank the League;

I come again to greet and thank the Kindred;

I come again to greet and thank the warriors;

I come again to greet and thank the women.

My forefathers—what they have established—

My forefathers—hearken to them!”

- Iroquios Hymn

Analyze: What does the quotation suggest about the

attitudes of the period?

An Iroquois Hymn

No one knows when or how the first Americans arrived in what is now the United States. It was probably between 12,000 and 70,ooo years ago.

The rich cultural presence of Native Americans tribes spanned the continent, and Native American oral literature—myths, legends, songs—begins our American literary heritage.

The First Americans

In the centuries after Columbus, more and more Europeans ventured to the new world. Among them were:

• Explorers,

• Fortune-seekers,

• Missionaries,

• Those fleeing religious persecution,

• Enslaved Africans who made the journey against their will

Individuals from these groups wrote accounts of their experiences, creating the first written literature of North America.

• Native Americans usually—but not always—greeted the earliest European settlers as friends.

• They instructed the newcomers in their methods of agriculture and woodcraft and introduced them to maize (corn), beans, squash, maple sugar, snowshoes, toboggans, and birch-bark canoes.

• If it had not been for the help of these first Americans, even more Europeans would have succumbed to the bitter northeastern winters.

A Gathering of Voices

Three themes dominate Early American Literature:

• Wilderness

• Community

• Individualism

American literature, naturally, shares the basic characteristics of all literature—characters, plots, settings, images, and themes.

However, American literatures is much more than literary works written by Americans. It also embodies certain ideas, evokes certain places, and tells stories of certain kinds of characters. There are qualities that distinguish American literature and make it a unique cultural expression.

So what makes American Literature American?

Activity: Group Discussion/Collaboration - Using your prior knowledge from American History, what insight might the earliest American writes have revealed about the new world on the following subjects:

A theme is the central idea, message or insight that a literary work reveals. It is not the subject of the work, but rather the insight that the work reveals about the subject.

Subject: Native American perspective

European settlers perspective

Enslaved Africans

Wilderness/Nature:

Community:

Individualism:

About the Bering Strait

Peopling the AmericasDuring the late Wisconsinan glacial episode, so much of the Earth's water supply was locked up in huge ice masses that the sea level fell 280 to 350 feet below today's level, exposing vast areas of land formerly under water. The result here was a continuous land bridge that stretched between Siberia and Alaska. Most archaeologists agree that it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first passed from Asia to populate the Americas.

The First AmericansWhether on land, along Bering Sea coasts or across seasonal ice, humans crossed Beringia from Asia to enter North America about 13,000 or more years ago. Humans were latecomers to this magnificent land mass so widely separated from other continents by vast oceans except near Earth's poles. Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Indonesian Archipelago, and Australia already hosted humans. Well dated finds in both the southwestern United States and South America suggest that humans were in these locations about 12,000 years ago. Much closer to the Bering Land Bridge, the arctic coastline was not peopled year-round until about 4,500 years ago.

Artifacts suggest that people lived in both north and South America by some 12,000 years ago; by the time waters of the Bering Strait had become a significant barrier again. However, similarities between peoples of coastal Siberia and coastal Alaska show that the Bering Strait did not prevent contact between their cultures. Similar languages, shared spiritual practices, hunting tool and traditional dwelling similarities, distinctive fish cleaning methods, and meat preservation by fermentation are but a few examples ethnologists cite.

http://www.pbs.org/beringlandbridge/guide/history.html

http://www.pbs.org/beringlandbridge/guide/history.html

Prentice Hall Literature Georgia: The American Experience. Pearson Educ.

2011. Boston, Mass.

Works Cited