Sayre's interdisciplinary approach draws on anthropology, cultural studies, and literary methodologies. He cautions against dismissing these colonial texts as purveyors of ethnocentric stereotypes, asserting that they offer insights into Native American cultures. Furthermore, early accounts of American Indians reveal Europeans' serious examination of their own customs and values: Sayre demonstrates how encounters with natives' wampum belts, tattoos, and pelt garments, for example, forced colonists to question the nature of money, writing, and clothing; and how the Indians' techniques of warfare and practice of adopting prisoners led to new concepts of cultural identity and inspired key themes in the European enlightenment and American individualism.
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Book Description
Algonquian and Iroquois natives of the American Northeast were described in great detail by colonial explorers who ventured into the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the writings of John Smith and Samuel de Champlain, Gordon Sayre analyzes French and English accounts of Native Americans to reveal the rhetorical codes by which their cultures were represented and the influence that these images of Indians had on colonial and modern American society. By emphasizing the work of Pierre François-Xavier Charlevoix, Joseph-François Lafitau, and Baron de Lahontan, among others, Sayre highlights the important contribution that French explorers and ethnographers made to colonial literature.
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An important addition to any library.
Religious Studies Review
Makes a profound contribution to our understanding of New World natural history.
Reviews in American History
Importantly enriches our understanding of colonial texts and the manner in which such documents record cultural information.
American Literature
[A] significant contribution to American literary history, one that asks us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions.
Christianity and Literature
A thought-provoking analysis of some previously little-considered aspects of early European-Amerindian relations.
Olive Patricia Dickason, William and Mary Quarterly
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First Sentence:
Thoreau often wished to create the impression that he spent more time in the woods than in the library, and perhaps it is because the opposite was true that he characterizes these obscure works as a forest, a surrogate wilderness. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
exploration narrative, des sauvages, colonial explorers, colonial writers, les sauvages, wampum belts, praying towns, captivity narratives, travel narrative, exploration literature, leurs ennemis Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New France, New England, North America, Native American, American Indians, John Smith, New World, Jesuit Relations, John Lawson, Samuel de Champlain, United States, Roger Williams, Nouvelle France, Bacqueville de La Potherie, Gabriel Sagard, Generall Historie, Hudson Bay, Louis Hennepin, Mary Rowlandson, Baron de Lahontan, William Wood, Cadwallader Colden, James Axtell, John White, King Philip's War New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Thoreau often wished to create the impression that he spent more time in the woods than in the library, and perhaps it is because the opposite was true that he characterizes these obscure works as a forest, a surrogate wilderness. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
exploration narrative, des sauvages, colonial explorers, colonial writers, les sauvages, wampum belts, praying towns, captivity narratives, travel narrative, exploration literature, leurs ennemis Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New France, New England, North America, Native American, American Indians, John Smith, New World, Jesuit Relations, John Lawson, Samuel de Champlain, United States, Roger Williams, Nouvelle France, Bacqueville de La Potherie, Gabriel Sagard, Generall Historie, Hudson Bay, Louis Hennepin, Mary Rowlandson, Baron de Lahontan, William Wood, Cadwallader Colden, James Axtell, John White, King Philip's War New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
See all 100 books this book cites
4
books
cite this book:
- New France (The Discovering Canada Series) by Robert Livesey on 12 pages
- Cape Cod (Penguin Nature Library) by Henry David Thoreau on 4 pages
- Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. The Clarendon Lectures and the Carpenter Lectures 1988: The Clarendon Lectures and the Carpenter Lectures, 1988 (Clarendon Paperbacks) by Stephen J. Greenblatt on 4 pages
- France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third by Francis Parkman on 4 pages
- Merchant Princes (Company of Adventurers) by Peter C. Newman on 4 pages
See all 100 books this book cites
- Spiraling Webs of Relation: Movements Toward an Indigenist Criticism (Indigenous Peoples and Politics) by Joanne DiNova in Back Matter
- The Cambridge Introduction to Early American Literature (Cambridge Introductions to Literature) by Emory Elliott in Back Matter
- Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America by David Dixon in Back Matter
- Writing Race Across the Atlantic World: Medieval to Modern by Phillip Beidler on page 49
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