A History of American Literature

2 The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

Columbus along with other early European explorers observed, “these they call by

the name of tabacos.” “They draw the smoke by sucking, this causes a drowsiness

and sort of intoxication,” but, he concluded, “I do not see what relish or benefit they

could find in them.” More seriously, they were “without any religion that could be

discovered.” An “inoffensive, unwarlike people,” “without the knowledge of iniq-

uity,” they were nevertheless strangers to the blessings of religion. This, however,

was a problem ripe for the solving, since the “gentle race” in the New World could

surely be introduced to the truths of the Old. “They very quickly learn such prayers

as we repeat to them,” Columbus reported, “and also to make the sign of the cross.”

So, he advised his royal masters, “Your Highnesses should adopt the resolution of

converting them to Christianity.” Such a project, he explained without any trace of

irony, “would suffice to gain to our holy faith multitudes of people, and to Spain

great riches and immense dominion.”

Conversion was one strategy Columbus and other early Europeans had for deal-

ing with America and the Americans they encountered. Comparison was another:

the New World could be understood, perhaps, by discovering likeness with the Old.

“Everything looked as green as in April in Andalusia,” reported Columbus of what

he thought was India but was, in fact, Cuba. “The days here are hot, and the nights

mild like May in Andalusia,” he added, and “the isle is full of pleasant mountains

after the manner of Sicily.” Naming was another ploy: Columbus was not the first

nor the last to believe that the strange could be familiarized by being given a familiar

label. The strange people he met seemed less strange once he had convinced himself

they were “Indians”; the strange places he visited became more understandable once

they were given the names of saints. To map the New World meant either to deny its

newness, by coming up with a name or a comparison associated with the Old, or to

see that newness as precisely what had to be changed. “I have no doubt, most serene

Princes,” Columbus reported,

that were proper devout and religious persons to come among the natives and learn

their language, it would be an easy matter to convert them all to Christianity, and

I hope in our Lord that your Highnesses will ... bring into the church so many

multitudes, inasmuch as you have exterminated those who refused to confess the

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Fundamental to this project of mapping the New World was the myth of Eden,

according to which the European settlers were faced not so much with another

(^) culture as with nature, and not really encountering a possible future but, on the
contrary, returning to an imagined past. “These people go naked,” Columbus
observed, “except that the women wear a very slight covering at the loins”; and, while
he was willing to confess that “their manners are very decent,” he could see this only
as a sign of their aboriginal innocence. Stripped of culture, as well as clothes and
Christianity, they were primitives, a recollection of natural man. In this, Columbus
was not unusual; the only difference, if any, between him and many other early
European explorers and settlers was that he eventually took the dream of Eden to its
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