Cultural Differences Between English And Native Americans

The arrival of Europeans to the Americas signaled a clash of the Old World and the New World. The profiteering Spanish had made their impression upon the Natives of these continents with bloody conquest and exploitation. The English crossed over the Atlantic with similar hopes of profit and contempt for Spanish expansionism. How these Englishmen conducted themselves would lay some of the groundwork for a future nation, the United States of America. This particular nation would be born at the expense of countless others. Common ground might have been found and accepted with enough hard work, but English preconceptions of what constituted a proper way of living prevailed over an egalitarian approach to diplomacy with the Native Americans. If

The first and most obvious difference would come in the form of appearances. The Natives did not have a European sense of fashion. They were not always completely clothed, and sometimes they were completely nude. They also utilized body modification techniques such as tattooing, and the English would have seen this as a defilement of the body (Figure 3-9). Native practices would also prove problematic for any Englishman trying to maintain a humanitarian outlook. Theodor DeBry depicted a Native couple enjoying a meal together, but a “civilized” Englishman would notice that they are eating off the ground and not at a table, a practice frowned upon even to this day (Figure 3-12). A more critical difference would be found in the practice of religion. The Natives viewed nature and the spiritual realm as one and the same, and they did not confine their worship to buildings that separated them from the greater outdoors (Algonquian Indian Village). The Europeans, on the other hand, believed in a total separation of the spiritual and natural world, and they believed that the natural world was corrupted by sin. The means by which the Natives worshipped would also appear boisterous, strange, and almost orgiastic to those used to services full of quiet reverence (Figure 3-3). Europeans would deem the appearance of devilishness in Native customs as a proper

Hypocrisy was manifested in the fact that many colonists had faired the seas seeking religious tolerance and an end to persecution for themselves, but they could not seem to, for the most part, extend this tolerance to other groups. Furthermore, the Christian religion, at least as it is presented in the Bible, condemns the use of violence and a self-serving love of riches. There were certainly examples of great men like William Penn who displayed a sense of shared humanity with the Natives and a truly democratic plan of government, which I myself would have advocated, that would have been useful in building a multi-cultural nation, but such men were few and far between. This is further complicated by economic considerations that many colonists had. That the United States could become a superpower with a completely humanitarian outlook, assuming it needed to become a superpower (which it did not), is a near impossibility. To become a superpower one first needs a strong economy. To build a strong economy requires a great number of resources. The gathering of so many resources requires either complete cooperation or varying degrees of force. Eventually those resources diminish, and then expansion is required. It is highly unlikely that all of the Native Americans would give up their precious way of life, and the land it required,