History is written by the winners. That is why we know almost everything about how the Europeans perceived the natives they encountered in North America. It is harder to say something about the views of the Indians about uninvited visitors. Fortunately, several sources have survived. They show that in the eyes of many Native Americans, Europeans were ... brutal and primitive barbarians.
The great explorers and pioneers of ocean travel were not (necessarily) modest. No wonder they always presented themselves in the best light possible when describing their forays to a new continent. For this purpose, they also used the opinions of the natives, choosing from among them only the most favorable ones. Thus, to this day, the legend of Indians accepting Europeans as long-awaited gods has spread.
A floating island and blood drinkers barbarians
I guess some tribes actually linked the arrival of aliens with their own beliefs (though they did not recognize them strictly as gods!), But opinions are so that everyone has their own. The preserved accounts and memories prove that at least as often the Indians looked at Europeans with superiority, disgust and incomprehension as with admiration.
The "floating island" of overseas barbarians.
In 1633, a young Inuit told the Jesuits how his grandmother remembered the first French visit decades earlier. Seeing the gigantic ship, nothing like their own canoes, the Indians decided it must be a moving island .
However, when the other nuns saw the men aboard, they began to prepare lodges for them as was customary. At the same time, their husbands in four canoes set off to greet the strangers. Their first impression was not the best. James Axtell, author of the book “After Columbus. Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America ”, writes:
The French gave them a barrel of the ship's biscuits and I think they gave them wine as well. The natives, however, were terrified of these " blood drinkers and wood eaters " people ” (p. 129) .
French explorer of Canada Jacques Cartier encounters the first Indians ... I don't think he made a very good first impression.
The Mikmaks reacted similarly. They considered the biscuits offered to them birch wood , but they were truly disgusted with the almost cannibal tendencies of uninvited guests:
When offered wine, the natives became convinced that the aliens were " brutal and inhuman creatures " because for their own amusement (...) they drink blood without any resistance. (...) Therefore [the Mikmaks] for some time not only did not accept the treat, but also did not want to have any contacts at all or become acquainted with the people who, in their opinion, lived by blood and violence (p. 130) .
Sometimes there were also more funny misunderstandings. The Odżibwejs, who lived further west, first encountered traces of the presence of Europeans, not of themselves. Seeing a completely cleared forest, they concluded that the place must have been haunted by giant beavers with large, sharp teeth .
Also, Potawatomi and Menomini on Lake Michigan argued that the Europeans are not humans but representatives of some other, unknown species . It was not about clothes or skin color at all, but the fact that the bodies of the newcomers were covered with hair.
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People from the country of poor and murderers
Of course, first impressions can be deceptive. When it became clear to the French that they would stay in North America permanently, they decided to duly impress the Indians:so that they would meekly submit to them, adopting better morals and true religion.
And one more image of the proud ... representative of the people who eat wood and drink blood.
To this end, they sent a few natives to Europe, who, after a specially arranged "trip", were to return to their tribes and tell their fellows about the wonders they encountered. Well, again, things didn't quite turn out as planned.
In 1562, three members of the Tupinambá tribe, taken to the court of the French king Charles IX, first of all drew attention to ... the prevailing in France of social inequality . As Axtell writes: they noticed that among them [i.e. Of the French] people indulging themselves with all things, while the other half of the people ribs at their door, struggling with hunger and poverty (p. 140) . This distribution of wealth seemed to the "savage" of America extremely unfair.
Half a century later, a certain Savignon, an eighteen-year-old Huron sent to France on a similar escapade, had an equally negative impression. He was disgusted by cowardly and truly feminine men's squabbles and great numbers of needy and beggars resulting - in his opinion - from the reluctance of the French to support their neighbors in need.
The Timucuan chief welcomes the French traveler René Goulaine de Laudonnière. I wonder if he was taken for a barbarian too?
However, he was most outraged by the fact that among the French people are flogged, hanged and put to death whether they are at fault or not. Hearing of such atrocities, Savignon's fellow tribesmen refused to send any children to French schools in Quebec.
Primitives and beggars from overseas
The Indians not only despised the morals (or rather indecency) of Europeans, but were also firmly convinced of their own superiority:and this regardless of the many overseas inventions and weapons that they admired.
Savignon, quoted above, had no doubts that the French had been driven to his homeland by poverty and the shortage of basic raw materials. He was not alone in such views. James Axtell explains that Indians - these supposedly savage, poor and illiterate people - had a powerful superiority complex.
For example, when the Mikmaks first encountered the French, they stated that they were better, brave and even richer than them. Over the next 80 years, they did not change their views. The seventeenth-century chief of this tribe put it briefly: There is no Indian , who would not consider himself happier and more powerful than the French (p. 142) .
Source:
- James Axtell, After Columbus:Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America , Oxford University Press, 1988.