Beginnings to 1820

Notes: (From W.W. Norton)

• Christopher Columbus left Palos, Spain, on August 6, 1492 and sighted the shores of the Bahamian island that he and his crew named San Salvador at two in the morning of October 12. There, he seized seven Taino Indians and took them to Spain, where he renamed them and baptized them as Christians. When Columbus returned to the Americas in November 1493, Diego Colón, one of the Taino Indians, spoke of the “marvels” he had seen in Europe. Four others died during the voyage. Later, other Europeans arrived to colonize the Americas, so that the fortresses, churches, horses, and new foods about which Colón spoke soon became part of the landscape.

• European colonists brought textiles, tools, and institutions of the church and state, such as slavery, to the Americas.
• Native American literatures originated in oral performance, which were offered to audiences as dramatic events in time and language for the ear.
• More than any European nation, Spain aggressively colonized the Americas.
  Columbus’s letter to the court of Luis de Santagel, narrating his voyage to the “West Indies,” became a means to stir individual imaginations and national ambitions in Europe, but “early American writing” by Native Americans and European colonists served numerous other purposes.
• Although English later became a useful lingua franca for the thirteen British colonies and the literary medium of choice, other languages remained actively in use for both mundane and expressive purposes.
• Texts that documented the cross-cultural relations of European colonists and Native Americans were prolific.