Chapter 2 The Literature of the New World

2.1 The Native American Oral Literature

The terms applied to refer to the native peoples in North America include“Indians”(first used by Columbus to refer to the people he encountered in the Bahamas in 1492),“American Indians”(used by many indigenous Americans to refer to themselves) and“Native Americans”(applied by ethnographers today to call the people who were in North America before the European settlement).The choice here is the last.Among the indigenous cultures in the pre-Columbian era, Native Americans had highly developed two civilizations—the Maya and the Aztecs—by the time the Spanish arrived.Although the Maya civilization had invented systems of writing,mathematics and a calendar,the majority of the Native American cultures were sustained through the oral tradition.Historical records indicate that these ancient civilizations were either seriously destroyed by the Spanish explorers or extensively altered by the European settlers like the English,the French and the Dutch.

Oral narratives were part and parcel of the early Native American literature.They were chiefly stories about the origin of the world and records of the tribal history or legendary figures, crucial to Native Americans.The origin stories—including the Earth-Diver story, the emergence story and the emanation-of-the-creator's-thoughts story—dramatize tribal interpretations of how the earth originated or of how people established relationships with plants, animals and the cosmos.The Earth-Diver story,like the biblical tale of Noah and the flood, tells of a great flood that once submerged the earth and made earth beings float on the huge expanse of water.Failing to find land,they were rescued by an animal that brought mud from under the water to create,magically,the earth.Unlike the biblical tale,the Creator here takes the animal form.The emergence story was common among the agricultural tribes.It is about the origin of human beings—how humans originated in the womb of the Earth Mother and were called out into the light by the Sun Father,and how life evolved from darkness to light,from chaos to order,from vague forms to distinct human forms.In the story that explains the world as an emanation of the creator's thoughts,the Creator is a Thought Woman (sometimes a Man) whose thoughts become words and things.For the Native Americans believing this myth,thinking—preceding words—was sacred,and silence was sign of the sacred in that it indicated the presence of thoughts.The historical narratives are diverse in kinds.Some are tribal records of historical events, including those recounting European colonization from the perspective of Native Americans;many others narrate stories about the legendary figures that move in the recognizable historical settings.In these narratives, the actual events are invariably intertwined with the tribal beliefs.Besides,there were trickster tales characterized by humor, which feature trickster characters—people in the form of animals such as Coyote,Raven,Blue jay,Mink,or Rabbit.The trickster figures are in essence half animal and half human just like the Monkey King (i.e., Sun Wukong) in the Chinese literature.They,clever and resourceful,willingly make attempts to violate the established rules and customs,and therefore live in a marginalized world.

2.2 The European Exploration Writings

Pluralism,characteristic of the American culture and literature, is rooted in the diverse origin of the Americans,which is attributed to waves of immigrants from different continents of the world.The European explorers, compared to the Native Americans and the immigrants from the other continents,made much more contributions to the multi-cultural heritages in American literature and implanted adventure and exploration in the American spirit.Among those early contributors,Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci are probably best-known to the world and well worth mentioning here.

Christopher Columbus (c.1451-1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator and colonizer who discovered America in 1492.Although he, preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson (c.970—c.1020) in the 11th century,was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas,it was Columbus’voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American Continent and the first lasting European contact with the Americas,inaugurating a period of European exploration,conquest and colonization that lasted for several centuries.They had, therefore, an enormous impact in the historical development of the modern Western world.Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Christian religion.

Columbus never admitted that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans but believed that he had reached Asia,the East Indies he had set out for.His refusal to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia might explain,in part,why the American Continent was named after Amerigo Vespucci instead of Columbus.In fact,Columbus was so convinced that he had reached the Orient,land of Kublai Khan that,in his four voyages between 1492 and 1503,he produced some writings recording his voyages and interpreting everything he saw according to his pre-established view of what Asia or Asians should look like.

Columbus’letter on the first voyage is the first known document recording his 1492 voyage to the Americas.It was written on February 15,1493,while Columbus was still at sea on the return leg of his voyage.Then he added a post-script on March 4,1493 when he arrived in Lisbon,probably from where he dispatched two copies of his letter to the Spanish court.The letter was instrumental in spreading word of Columbus' finding new lands throughout Europe.Almost immediately after Columbus' arrival in Spain,there appeared such printed versions of the letter as the Spanish version printed in Barcelona by early April 1493, and the Latin version published in Rome about a month later (c.May 1493),swiftly disseminated and reprinted in many other places.

In his letter,Columbus claimed that he and his crew had discovered and occupied a series of islands on the edge of the Indian Ocean in Asia.He not simply described and exaggerated the size and wealth of the islands and suggested that mainland China probably lay nearby, but described the natives (whom he called“Indians”) and emphasized their docility and amenability as well.Meanwhile,in the letter,Columbus urged the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to sponsor a second,larger expedition to the Indies,promising to bring back immense riches,although the letter provides very few details of the oceanic voyage itself.

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512),an Italian navigator,sailed to Brazil in 1501.In about 1502,he proved that Brazil and the West Indies, not Asia's eastern outskirts as Columbus had conjectured, constituted an entirely separate landmass,colloquially referred to as the New World, which was unknown to people of the Old World up till then.Two letters attributed to Vespucci were published during his lifetime.Mundus Novus(The New World) is a Latin translation of a lost Italian letter sent from Lisbon,describing a voyage to South America between 1501 and 1502.The letter was published in late 1502 or early 1503 and soon reprinted and distributed in numerous European countries.It was more widely circulated than anything written by Columbus.Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi(Letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the isles newly discovered on his four voyages),known as Lettera al Soderini or just Lettera,is also an Italian letter, addressed to an Italian statesman.Printed in 1504 or 1505,it claimed to be an account of four voyages to the Americas made by Vespucci between 1497 and 1504.

In 1507,Martin Waldseemüller(c.1470-1520),a German geographer,produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after Amerigo,Vespucci's first name.However,as an explorer,Vespucci is also controversial in that he fabricated the tale that he had made a 1497 voyage during which he found the Southern American continent.Anyway,it was Vespucci's writings and Waldseemüller's map that made Europeans aware of the“fourth part”of the world,America.