The Marvels of Spain‒and America
“The Marvels of Spain—and America” portion of “Beginnings to 1700” by Wayne Franklin portrays various point of views between the Old and New World. The Natives experienced “a colonial imitation of Europe developing before their eyes, complete with fortresses, horses... and much else that… could have only been found in Europe” while the settlers from Spain saw the land as opportune as they established slavery, tools, textiles, churches, and new foods as a mirror image of their mother country (4). To the Old World, this recently discovered land had the Spaniards in awe as they heard of these “trees of a thousand kinds” that “touch the sky… as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May” (5). Christopher Columbus’s “from Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage” does a perfect job of explaining the conquistadors’ point of view by stating that “this island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. It in there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and …show more content…
The Natives of the New World had no written language. Everything was oral through song, chant, or narrative. To make matters more complicated for the newcomers, there were hundreds of spoken languages belonging to completely different linguistic families. European attempts to translate this oral literature involved using a unique text and format that would attempt to ‘present analogs for the eye of what the ear would have heard–what Dennis Tedlock has called ‘performable text’” (8). Squanto, however, helped the Europeans overcome this obstacle by being an interpreter and “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation”
“The Marvels of Spain—and America” portion of “Beginnings to 1700” by Wayne Franklin portrays various point of views between the Old and New World. The Natives experienced “a colonial imitation of Europe developing before their eyes, complete with fortresses, horses... and much else that… could have only been found in Europe” while the settlers from Spain saw the land as opportune as they established slavery, tools, textiles, churches, and new foods as a mirror image of their mother country (4). To the Old World, this recently discovered land had the Spaniards in awe as they heard of these “trees of a thousand kinds” that “touch the sky… as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May” (5). Christopher Columbus’s “from Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage” does a perfect job of explaining the conquistadors’ point of view by stating that “this island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. It in there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and …show more content…
The Natives of the New World had no written language. Everything was oral through song, chant, or narrative. To make matters more complicated for the newcomers, there were hundreds of spoken languages belonging to completely different linguistic families. European attempts to translate this oral literature involved using a unique text and format that would attempt to ‘present analogs for the eye of what the ear would have heard–what Dennis Tedlock has called ‘performable text’” (8). Squanto, however, helped the Europeans overcome this obstacle by being an interpreter and “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation”