Literature of the usa. Colonial period literature

CULTURE OF LOCAL INHABITANTS

But this New World had already been inhabited long before the Europeans came. The Red Indians, the native population, were the real Americans. The question of the origin of the Indians has not yet been settled. No one can decide whether they are Asiatic who had reached the American mainland by way of the frozen Bering Strait or by way of a ridge of land, which since then has disappeared, or whether Neolithic man took the place of Paleolithic man by domestic evolution. But this much seems certain: that there had been no communication between the North-American Indians and the rest of the world for many a thousand years, because their development was at so low a level that they had not yet discovered the use of the wheel. They lived in patriarchal tribes, and engaged in hunting and fishing. They followed the deer through the immense forests and the fish up the streams, which accounts for their wandering habits; most of the tribes were practically unfamiliar with agriculture.

The natives met the first Europeans with hospitality. We are told that they were eager to trade with the pale-faces, as they called the white men. But when the Indians were cheated and plundered and driven off their hunting-grounds, naturally they answered their enemy with blood and fire. The Europeans could have easily managed to live in American without disturbing the Indians, because there were so few of them in comparison with the enormous space, which the New World offered. Both the North and South Americans and the more densely populated part of Central America did not have a population of more than ten million in all, that is, as many as live in New York today. But the Europeans in their greed for riches were ruthless. The way the Indians were conquered by white race constitutes one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind.

The colonizers who descended upon the Indians were commercial adventurers, wealth-seekers, capitalists and land speculators. The speculators sold land in the southern regions to planters who wanted to raise tobacco, cotton and sugar; and the planters needed field-workers. At first, they tried to capture and use Indians. But the American Indians never made good slaves: in captivity they died like flies. So the colonists started bringing convicts from the prisons of Europe as labour, and also Negroes from Africa. In the year 1619 a Dutch ship, the Treasurer, landed at Jamestown, Virginia, with first black slaves in chains for the planters. Though slavery was legal only in southern colonies, trading companies in the North were very much to blame for developing the slavery trade. Every year ships from Boston, Newport, Bristol, Salem and the other ports sailed off to Africa to obtain this “profitable commodity”. The hard ship the Negroes had to suffer during the voyage to America was terrific. Often more than half of them suffocated in the hold of the ship where they were held during the voyage, and their bodies were thrown overboard.

During the following decades, the black population of America increased rapidly. In the regions where the Blacks far outnumbered their white masters, the latter treated their slaves with utmost cruelty to keep them in subjection. A slave could not think for himself :”… the most be a mere machine without either will or motion other than you impress upon him,” said the rules for slave-holders , otherwise”…an independence of spirit will be acquired that will demand repented punishment to suppress it”. Attempts to escape were not the only means employed by the slaves to free themselves of their oppressors. The intolerable conditions of the Blacks provoked them to no less than 25 rebellions in the colonies before the American War of Independence.

Not only were Negroes bought and sold. The shipping companies also organized the kidnapping of white children twelve and thirteen years of age. In 1627, ships arrived bringing 1,500 children kidnapped by “spirits” in European ports. These were sold as slaves to the planters.

Another type of white slaves imported to America was not poor wretches from the cities and villages of Ireland, Scotland and other countries. These were poor artisans and peasants, unable to pay their passage to America, and ready to risk everything to save their families from starvation. They signed contracts called indentures before leaving the Old World, and became “Indentured servants”. This indenture bound the owner or master of the ship to transport them to the New World, and bound the passenger to serve some master in America a number of masters of the ship sold them for their passage to the highest bidder. If nobody wanted white slaves, the indentured servants were passed over to a class of speculators known as “soul drivers”, who drove them through the country like so many cattle and sold them for what they would bring. This buying and selling of immigrants continued long after the colonies became the United States.