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Knowing little about American History, I feel like everything I read about the “New World” is novel, surprising and fascinating. From the history of the country, the beginning of the nation to the hardship of the pioneers, these stories are actually beyond my knowledge and imagination. 

Iroquois Creation Story

Starting from the Iroquois Creation story, the story, or a legend, of America’s first forming stage. It’s interesting that we are having an indigenous story from the natives. I think these kind of stories can almost serve as first-hand information, to tell us about people’s perception and view of the world. It is how people tell their stories to their descendants and it is the way they passes down their beliefs. Like how I figure out Iroquois people have strong belief in nature, and we can see the story uses a lot of elements of the nature for its character. We can also see the concept of good and bad has already formed in the people’s mind. To me, I feel like the people made up this story have strong respect for the nature, meanwhile, they understood the danger and unpredictable trait of nature’s creation.

Columbus’ Letters

After reading Columbus’s letters, the first impression I have is that, the “self-imagined” supremacy of colonists have may already be somewhere in their culture or in their blood.  Though for most part, Columbus uses a plain narrative to describe what he observed on the islands; however, the way Columbus naming everything he see, saying the natives have no weapon, gives me a sense that he is still having a little bit of superiority in mind. On the other hand, I was shocked by how he was unhappy about the destruction he mentioned in the second letter. Being an explorer, his job is to find a new land, but this sense of preservation on what they have is very interesting for us to see.