Cultural Conflicts, Contests, and Confluences

Abstract

The European invasion of America produced a collision of worldviews. Indians and Europeans endeavored to deal with each other across gulfs of misunderstanding, and Europeans sought to achieve cultural and religious dominance, as well as military, political, and economic control in their “new world.” Missionaries, teachers, and others labored to convert American Indians into “civilized” Christians, but conversion proved to be not a simple task.

Since that you are heere strangers and come into our Countrey, you should rather confine yourselves to the Customes of our Countrey, than impose yours upon us.

—Wicomesse Indian to the governor of Maryland, 1633¹

You tell us fine stories, and there is nothing in what you say that may not be true; but that is good for you who come across the seas. Do you not see that, as we inhabit a world so different from yours, there must be another heaven for us, and another road to reach it?

—Huron Indian to Jesuit missionary Jean de Brebeuf, 1635²

We love you more than you love us; for when we take any prisoners from you, we treat them as our own children.

—Delaware Indians to Moravian ambassador Christian Frederick Post, 1758³