Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
PRE- AND EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE
3. In Chapter XVI, how do the Indians treat the Spaniards? Why?
4. In Chapter XIX, what does Cabeza de Vaca learn of the people who came
in the boat of Peñalosa and Tellez? What is his attitude toward what he
learns? How do you know?
5. In Chapter XXI, separated from the Indians and his companions, naked
and lost, how does Cabeza de Vaca survive the winter cold? What is his
attitude toward his survival? How do you know?
1.6 THOMAS HARRIOT
(1560–1621)
Thomas Harriot began his professional
life working for Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–
1618) as ship designer, navigational instructor,
and accountant. In 1585, he extended
his professional activities from England to
America, where he served as cartographer
and surveyor for Raleigh’s second expedition
to Virginia which was based at the
ill-fated Roanoke, site of the infamous Lost
Colony. Named after the English sovereign
Queen Elizabeth I, Virginia and Roanoke is
now modern day North Carolina. Harriot
also served as the expedition’s historian,
keeping a remarkably-detailed account he
later published as A Briefe and True Report
of the New Found Land of Virginia. In it,
Image 1.7 | Thomas Harriot
he oered a rsthand account written by an Artist | Unknown
Source | Wikimedia Commons
Englishman for an English audience. He detailed
crops and building materials both as
License | Public Domain
commodities and as means to support colonists. He also oered some details of the
culture and lives of the Native Americans he encountered.
His last stint with Raleigh was as manager of Raleigh’s estates in Waterford,
Ireland. Harriot then worked for Henry Percy, the Ninth Earl of Northumberland
(1564–1632). From Percy, Harriot received extensive lands and a substantial
pension. He devoted the remainder of his life working for himself, so to speak,
conducting experiments with the refraction of light and the trajectory of projectiles.
His astronomical drawings recorded what later become known as Halley’s Comet,
and his invention of the perspective trunk led to the invention of the telescope.
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