Critical analysis in academic research and practice

¶ … Colonies

The historical period in the New World when the first colonies were being set up in what is now the United States of America can be viewed from many different perspectives. The motives, purposes, and even actual achievements of the people in the early part of the seventeenth century are not always -- or ever -- entirely clear, and even their primary accounts cast leave much room for doubt and interpretation. Some of the colonists were in search of freedom from religious persecution, yet the government they set up was just as persecutory. The great majority of the colonies, perhaps all of them, had a hypocritical reliance on the Native Americans whom they considered savages, while at the same time they were brave pioneers who left behind the comfort and familiarity of their homes to start a new life in a strange land. Even during the time period and amongst the people who lived in and ran these early colonies, many of the motives and goals were often very different. An examination of three primary sources -- Captain John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown, William Bradford's description of the early days of the Plymouth colony, and John Winthrop's 1630 outline of the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- reveals a common spirit of perseverance and a dedication to democracy that ran amongst the three men and their visions for their colonies, but it also reveals many personal differences that were to have a huge and unpredictable impact on not only the course of history, but also in how it is viewed.

Captain John Smith's tales of the early days of Jamestown are written in the third person, though he still makes himself the lead character. He mentions democracy in describing the election of the first president of the council, but he also seems to distrust such government by the people as it led to his imprisonment for what he claims were baseless political accusations. In addition, he was bared from joining the council for some time. According to his account, he managed to gain favor with his fellow colonists again first through his incredible demeanor while imprisoned, and second for his ability to handle a problem common to the early colonies -- a strange and seemingly vicious native population. More than either of the other two authors, Smith recounts his own personal involvement in every situation, and he seems to have single-handedly won the favor of a large and war-like Native American population. He does not shy away from the harsher details of the account -- many deaths from disease and hunger, and several murders by Native Americans -- but it should be noted that he is not personally responsible in any way for any of the negatives he brings up. He seems to think, from his closing remarks, that the colony had little purpose in those early days beyond mere survival, which would have been impossible without him.

William Bradford also wrote is account of the Plymouth landing and the colony founded thereabouts in the third person, but he is not nearly as self-aggrandizing as Smith. His account is not exactly humble though, but rather speaks with a certain religious authority that comes perhaps in part from the years between the actual events and Bradford's writing about them. The purpose for the colony, as he seems to see it, was to establish a place where God would receive due reverence. That had been their purpose in leaving Europe, after all, and he counts misfortunes as trials from God and good events as signs of God's blessing. He, too, lists the difficult times that were encountered by the colonists upon landing; there was no readily available food but what they had brought with them, and the weather was not welcoming in December, either. Bradford also relates the colonists issues with the Native Americans, though his tale is far less adventurous than Smith's, and does not contain the same action-hero quality. Instead, Bradford notes the signing of a treaty and the helpfulness and wisdom of Squanto, their translator, reflecting the colony's purpose of establishing a place of wisdom and grace in what they saw as a savage new world.