Prose-Short+Selections

The ways that the different cultures of the time period looked at and interacted with what would later become the United States of America can be seen in the literature of the period. The attitudes of each people group, the natives, the colonists, the Puritans, towards this "new land" can be seen not only in the text of the literature that they wrote, but the types of literature that they wrote. What evolves from a reading of the selections in our literature book is a complex division between the way that the natives, with their reverance for the land, and the new arrivals, who mostly saw the land as something to be exploited for their diverse purposes, approached their relationship with America.



Each of the following sections reveals a different attitude toward the land, reveals different things about the attitudes and expectations of the people who would come to call this place their home.

Meeting of Cultures Narrative Accounts The Puritan Influence