Europeans and their Early Encounters with Native Americans
Robert Baker
History 372
Professor Cleary
10 October 2016
When the first Europeans set sail for North America, or the “New World”, they had no
idea what they would encounter, who they would meet, or if they would even survive this
dangerous journey to an unknown land to the rest of the world. However, what they did know
was what they heard and read about from the only explorers to ever see the new world, and their
encounters with what most described as these savage natives. With this biased information as
their prior knowledge the English set out to colonize a new world and expected to encounter and
have to deal with un-civilized savages, that would ultimately have profound repercussions that
both could never begin to imagine. These profound repercussions can be analyzed by looking at
how the different groups Like Puritians in New England, and the Colonists of Carolina Perceived
and described those different from themselves, “the other”, also by analyzing what cultural
beliefs each groups had or their cultural baggage, and by examining how their preconceptions
affected their interactions with each other. By analyzing these three sections of the encounter that
