The Impact of the American Indian on American Culture

Abstract

H E global expansion of European peoples, beginning in the fifteenth cenT tury, initiated a series of events whose fateful character for modern history scarcely can be overestimated. Among other things, the historical setting was provided in which Europeans came into contact with the primitive cultures of the world, which led, in time, to the accumulation of the kind of empirical knowledge on which a science of man could be soundly based. If we look at anthropology today, we find increasing attention being paid to the changes taking place in the primitive cultures which still flourish in the contemporary world. What we now observe are later stages in processes that began during the great age of exploration and colonization. As cultural anthropologists we have been concerned with only one side of this continuing process of social interaction, cultural readjustment, and transformation. For the most part we have ignored what happened to European culture as a consequence of contacts with primitive cultures. Attention has been focused on the effects upon them of contact with Europeans. Yet we know that Europe itself was profoundly affected by the discoveries overseas, particularly by the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World. Besides new dreams of wealth and power there were many other effects: new food plants, new drugs, new dyes, tobacco, unheard-of languages, novel modes of life that provoked moral and political disputation and challenged the authority of old traditions, fresh subject matter for original themes in literature. Yet a comprehensive history and appraisal of the total effects of this impact upon European culture, in all its aspects, remains to be written. Only a few highly specialized studies of selected topics by a handful of scholars come to mind.' Across the ocean in the Americas, where Europeans met the Indians face to face and direct social interaction took place, a more complex cul ture-historical situation developed. Settlement and conquest did not eliminate the indigenous populations. They remained as potential sources of influence during the period when the nations of the Americas were achieving political maturity and differentiation. Aboriginal populations varying in racial composition and in the retention of native languages and cultures have persisted down to the present in almost all the nations of the New World. What, then, have been the cultural consequences in the Americas of both the initial and the continuing presence of these native populations upon the European cultural tradition in the New World? How have these influences varied from nation to nation? Can we explain the differential effects? The picture presented is complex, but an unusual opportunity is afforded for the analysis of the impact of the New World aborigines upon the European heritage transplanted here because so many phases of it can be documented from written sources. 201