Imaging A Distant World Chapter Summary
Facing East provides snapshots into American Indian lives, actions, and thoughts. The first chapter, titled "Imaging a Distant World," relies heavily on an estimation drawing on actual known facts about initial encounters but filling in the blanks with imagined possible scenarios. The view east begins at Cahokia, the metropolis located across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis that flourished around 1100 A.D, and Richter employs its story to remind "us that the great changes occurring in Native American life during the sixteenth century and before, were not primarily set in motion by Europeans. Richter speculates about Indian perceptions of initial contacts with Europeans such as Hernando De Soto and Jacques Cartier. Chapter
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Richter eagerly debunks the myths surrounding these three individuals and urges the reader to consider their perspectives in dealing with Europeans. , Richter demonstrates the common historical landscape they inhabited and highlight the similar pressures they confronted and the paths they chose. In chapter 4, Richter reproduces Indian texts from New England Indians' conversion narratives and the political speech of a Mohawk Iroquois orator as represented in the Albany meeting of 1679 between the Iroquois and British colonial leaders. Richter finds Indians asking their European counterparts to unite across the cultural barrier using the power of the spoken word to articulate a distinctive vision of “cultural coexistence on Indian terms” in the interest of a mutually-beneficial collaboration. Chapter 5 discusses the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans and how they fought in imperial wars, engaged in international trade and began seeing the world in a racialized "red" versus "white" manner. Richter argues that for much of the eighteenth century Indian and Euro-American histories "moved along parallel paths." The balance between parallel paths broke down when France left the continent in 1763 and the imperial contest between that country and Britain
Richter eagerly debunks the myths surrounding these three individuals and urges the reader to consider their perspectives in dealing with Europeans. , Richter demonstrates the common historical landscape they inhabited and highlight the similar pressures they confronted and the paths they chose. In chapter 4, Richter reproduces Indian texts from New England Indians' conversion narratives and the political speech of a Mohawk Iroquois orator as represented in the Albany meeting of 1679 between the Iroquois and British colonial leaders. Richter finds Indians asking their European counterparts to unite across the cultural barrier using the power of the spoken word to articulate a distinctive vision of “cultural coexistence on Indian terms” in the interest of a mutually-beneficial collaboration. Chapter 5 discusses the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans and how they fought in imperial wars, engaged in international trade and began seeing the world in a racialized "red" versus "white" manner. Richter argues that for much of the eighteenth century Indian and Euro-American histories "moved along parallel paths." The balance between parallel paths broke down when France left the continent in 1763 and the imperial contest between that country and Britain