Difference between revisions of "Week 2 Questions/Comments"
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Out of curiosity, (at least, I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet) what did everyone think of the Chinook tale at the end of the Woloch readings? It describes what the Indians saw when the Europeans approached which is a different point of view than most historians are used to. Thoughts? -- Kelly Wuyscik | Out of curiosity, (at least, I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet) what did everyone think of the Chinook tale at the end of the Woloch readings? It describes what the Indians saw when the Europeans approached which is a different point of view than most historians are used to. Thoughts? -- Kelly Wuyscik | ||
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| + | I found this weeks readings to be strikingly similar to those I covered in Prof. Poska's Gender and Empire course last semester. We spent most of the semester discussing how the different nations, particullary England, France, Spain, Portugal and the Danes, encountered the Natives of the New World, as well as the gendered social structures of some of the native tribes. The lecture of this week, as well as the reading, does a wonderful job of providing a detailed overview of some of the ideas from the course last semester, particullary the idea that all encounters with the natives were influenced by baises and preconceptions that the european's had about the natives and native culture, as well as european gender constructs. Taking the idea that almost all interactions with the natives were colored by social and gender preconceptions, how much should we trust what the english are writing about, and how much of it should we be leary about using as 'historical fact' and do the documents tell us just about the natives or could they also be used as a way to explore european preconceptions and social/gender expectations? --Katelynn V. | ||
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| + | Does anyone else wonder what happened to the two Europeans at the end of the Chinook Story, The First Ship? --Katelynn V. | ||
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| + | I think the section from Roger Williams is extremely interesting because the words he choose to document tells a lot of English society and what was imporant to the English in marriage and relationships. For example: the english seemed to be concerned about the amount of wives the natives had because he mentions the words for 1,2,3,4...wifes. This makes sense since the english believed that it was proper to only take one wife as stated in the Bible. Also, in that same section Williams lists the characteristics of a traditionally proper and English wife, loving, proper, sober and chast, ect. This seems to point out that in attempting to make sense of the native lifestyle, williams was looking for similarities between the natives and the english through the use of language. As, this type of rudementary dictionary could have been used as a means of converting the natives by explaining how they were expected to act. Maybe, but more likely it was used as a way to simply try and understand the natvies and their culture in terms that the englsih were familiar with. --Katelynn V. | ||
