The first encounters between the Spaniards and the Native Americans occurred in 1492 when Christopher Columbus arrived at the shores of North America thinking that it was India. In his writings, which I have chosen as the primary focus, he described the Native Americans and the first encounter with them. After he had learned that they had not produced iron weapons, had worn almost no clothes, and had overall been less developed than the Europeans, he decided to find out about their treasures and sent them as slaves to Europe. He also wanted them to be converted to Christianity (Levine 36). On the other hand, Bartolomé de las Casas, fifty years after Columbus’s voyage, began advocating for stopping the atrocities that were being committed by the colonizers against the indigenous people of America. He was against the enslavement and cruelty against them and claimed that their treasures must not have been the reason for them. However, being a bishop, he shared Columbus’s opinion about making the Native Americans Christian; moreover, because they did not have any religion at all, but only their creation theories (Levine 41). Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was also against the cruelty towards the Native Americans. In fact, he was a true explorer who described different tribes of the Native Americans in detail and performed a faith healing practice there (Levine 47).
Thus, there are two main Native American creation theories, namely Salinan creation myths and Cherokee creation myths. The former is rather simple and claims that the Bald Eagle created a man out of clay and a woman out of a feather and made them alive, whereas the latter claims that the world was suspended on four cords from the sky where all animals lived who once decided to create people on the ground below them (Levine 22). In general, the essence of these two theories is the same, namely the deification of animals and plants and regarding them as people’s creators. Certainly, these theories would not have been taken seriously by the Europeans in general and these three explorers in particular, as they totally contradicted the stories written in the Bible which were overwhelmingly significant in the late medieval period. Therefore, all three explorers of the American continent would have agreed on this particular point and wanted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity (Levine 33).
Work Cited
Levine, Robert S. et al. The Norton Anthology American Literature. 9th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.