Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

The Birth of American Literature:The Altering of the Early American MindbyJohn WulsinAcknowledging that the stories of Native American culture havebeen rich for ages, the fact that Sequoyah, in the mid-1820s, first created aNative American alphabet (Cherokee) means that written stories emerge as“Native American Literature” primarily in the twentieth century. While NativeAmerican culture has influenced “European/American” culture moresubtly than most people realize, this exploration will focus on the emergenceof a stream of literature in America.When one thinks of Spanish settling in Saint Augustine, Florida, inthe 1580s, and of the English pilgrims settling in Plymouth, Massachusetts,in the 1620s, it is perhaps astonishing to find little literature in America inthe 1600s. While an image such as Governor Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill”(from his lay sermon) certainly dominated the imaginations of the earlyPuritans, the poet Anne Bradstreet, writing in Boston in the 1640s and 1650s,was an exception.The Flesh and the SpiritIn secret place where once I stoodClose by the banks of lacrim flood,I heard two sisters reason onThings that are past and things to come.One Flesh was called, who had her eyeOn worldly wealth and vanity;The other Spirit, who did rearHer thoughts unto a higher sphere. 1148