When contrasting the differences between John White’s watercolor drawings and De Bry’s engraving, De Bry changed the pictures by portraying more friendly Indian people and safe village in America. Therefore, America would be acceptable to European and motivate European to move here. In the following passages, I will analyze Indian Woman and Young Girl and Village of Pomeiooc to show the changes, reasons and implications.
In the first set Indian Woman and Young Girl, there are many changes between watercolor drawings and engraving. First, appearances of the woman and the young girl are a little different. Their hairs are longer and without the headband and their faces also look clearer in engraving. Second, there is no tattoo on the woman’s forehead and the skin painting is also unclear. Third, the woman wears a single row of brown beads and the girl wears a single row of red beads in the White’s picture, but the woman wears several rows of pearls and the girl wears two strings of small beads in the engraving. Fourth, position of the
…show more content…
According to the reading material, “Christians had trouble understanding how Indians could exist at all, as the Bible never mentioned them.” (LEP, 17) On the one hand, America was still a mysterious land for most of people in Europe. They had no idea what the land looked like and who lived there. On the other hand, Indian is the only native race in America, but their culture is totally different from European culture. Therefore, In order to avoid cultural misunderstanding, De Bry changed appearance and position, removed their tattoos and added background and decorations. He tried to depict that Indian is kind and common, rather than savage and weird in his engraving to Europe. Therefore, changing some details facilitates European to understand Indian and