If You re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow (2008)

Transcription

1 If You re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow (2008) Rae-Dupree, Janet. If You re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow. New York Times. 6 July Web. 10 July < WHY do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don t? After three decades of painstaking research, the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck believes that the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they re ever going to have approach life with what she calls a fixed mindset. Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a growth mindset. Guess which ones prove to be most innovative over time. Society is obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and people who are naturals with innate ability, says Ms. Dweck, who is known for research that crosses the boundaries of personal, social and developmental psychology. People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them. In this case, nurture wins out over nature just about every time. While some managers apply these principles every day, too many others instead believe that hiring the best and the brightest from top-flight schools guarantees corporate success. The problem is that, having been identified as geniuses, the anointed become fearful of falling from grace. It s hard to move forward creatively and especially to foster teamwork if each person is trying to look like the biggest star in the constellation, Ms. Dweck says. In her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she shows how adopting either a fixed or growth attitude toward talent can profoundly affect all aspects of a person s life, from parenting and romantic relationships to success at school and on the job. She attributes the success of several high-profile chief executives to their growth mind-set, citing an ability to energize a work force. These include John F. Welch Jr. of General Electric, who valued teamwork over individual genius; Louis V. Gerstner Jr. of I.B.M., who dedicated his book about I.B.M. s turnaround to the thousands of I.B.M. ers who never gave up on their company ; and Anne M. Mulcahy of Xerox, who focused on morale and development of her people even as she implemented painful cuts. But Ms. Dweck does not suggest that recruiters ignore innate talent. Instead, she suggests looking for both talent and a growth mind-set in prospective hires people with a passion for learning who thrive on challenge and change. After reading her book, Scott Forstall, senior vice president of Apple in charge of iphone software, contacted Ms. Dweck to talk about his experience putting together the iphone development team. Mr. Forstall told her that he identified a number of superstars within various departments at Apple and asked them in for a chat. At the beginning of each interview, he warned the recruit that he couldn t reveal details of the project he was working on. But he promised the opportunity, Ms. Dweck says, to make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we ll remember the rest of our lives. Only people who immediately jumped at the challenge ended up on the team. It was his intuition that he wanted people who valued stretching themselves over being king of their particular hill, she says. People with a growth mind-set tend to demonstrate the kind of perseverance and resilience required to convert life s setbacks into future successes. That ability to learn from experience was cited as the No. 1 ingredient for creative achievement in a poll of 143 creativity researchers cited in Handbook of Creativity in Which leads one to ask: Is it possible to shift from a fixed mind-set to a growth mind-set? Absolutely, according to Ms. Dweck. But, it s not easy to just let go of something that has felt like your self for many years, she writes. Still, she says, nothing is better than seeing people find their way to things they value. 4 If You re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

2 from A People's History of the United States (1980) Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. History is a Weapon. Web. 10 July 2014 < from Beginnings to Prentice Hall Literature: The American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., Print. More than a century after European explorers discovered North America, there were no permanent settlements in the New World north of St. Augustine, Florida. By 1607, however, a small group of English settlers was struggling to survive on a marshy island in the James River in the present state of Virginia. In 1611, Thomas Dale, governor of the colony, wrote a report to the king expressing the colonist s determination to succeed. Despite disease and starvation, Jamestown did survive. The first settlers were entranced by the presence and, to them, the strangeness of the native inhabitants. They did not at first realize that these earlier Americans, like Europeans, had cultural values and literary traditions of their own. The literature was entirely oral, for the tribes of North America had not yet developed writing systems. This extensive oral tradition, along with the first written works of the colonists forms the beginning of the American literary heritage. When Christopher Columbus reached North America in 1492, the continent was already populated, though sparsely, by several hundred Native American tribes. Europeans did not encounter these tribes all at one time. Explorers from different nations came into contact with them at different times. As we now know, these widely dispersed tribes of Native Americans differed greatly from one another in language, government, social organization, customs, housing and methods of survival. [ ] What we do know is that the Native Americans usually, but by no means always, greeted the earliest Europeans as friends. They instructed the newcomers in New World agriculture and woodcraft, introduced them to maize, beans, squash, maple sugar, snow shoes, toboggans and birch bark canoes. Indeed, many more of the European settlers would have succumbed to the bitter Northeastern winters had it not been for the help of these first Americans. [ ] Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, And Human Progress Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were wellbuilt, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus. Columbus wrote: As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? [ ] Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything. [ ] It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Now they saw branches and sticks floating in the water. They saw flocks of birds. These were signs of land. [ ] So, approaching land, they were met by the Arawak Indians, who swam out to greet them. The Arawaks lived A People s History of the United States 5

3 in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They could spin and weave, but they had no horses or work animals. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears. This was to have enormous consequences: it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. [ ] On Hispaniola, out of timbers from the Santa Maria, which had run aground, Columbus built a fort, the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere. He called it Navidad (Christmas) and left thirty-nine crewmembers there, with instructions to find and store the gold. He took more Indian prisoners and put them aboard his two remaining ships. At one part of the island he got into a fight with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted. Two were run through with swords and bled to death. Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail for the Azores and Spain. When the weather turned cold, the Indian prisoners began to die. [ ] The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone..." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities." Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. [ ] Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. [ ] But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. [ ] When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island. The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. Las Casas transcribed Columbus's journal and, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies. In it, he describes the Indians. They are agile, he says, and can swim long distances, especially the women. They are not completely peaceful, because they do battle from time to time with other tribes, but their casualties seem small, and they fight when they are individually moved to do so because of some grievance, not on the orders of captains or kings. [ ] In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length: Endless testimonies... prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians... Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings." Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." [ ] While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants. 6 A People s History of the United States

4 Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation... in this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write.... [ ] In the North American English colonies, the pattern was set early, as Columbus had set it in the islands of the Bahamas. In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village. Jamestown itself was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his people's land, but did not attack, maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their "starving time" in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with "noe other than prowde and disdaynefull Answers." Some soldiers were therefore sent out "to take Revenge." They fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard "and shoteinge owit their Braynes in the water." The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death. Twelve years later, the Indians, alarmed as the English settlements kept growing in numbers, apparently decided to try to wipe them out for good. They went on a rampage and massacred 347 men, women, and children. From then on it was total war. [ ] In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it: I have seen two generations of my people die... I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must die soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-i wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a "vacuum." The Indians, he said, had not "subdued" 1 the land, and therefore had only a "natural" right to it, but not a "civil right." A "natural right" did not have legal standing. The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." [ ] So, the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy. [ ] William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Mason's raid on the Pequot village: Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the 1 subdue: to bring under control, esp. by force A People s History of the United States 7

5 streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie. [ ] When the English first settled Martha's Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one. Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples. Roger Williams said it was a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish. Was all this bloodshed and deceit-from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro, the Puritans-a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? [ ] If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre 1 the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death? What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas? For a brief period in history, there was the glory of a Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere. As Hans Koning sums it up in his book Columbus: His Enterprise: For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving 1 pyre: a heap of combustible material, esp. one for burning a corpse 8 A People s History of the United States population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class. Beyond all that, how certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior? Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, [ ] who peered out of the forests at the first white settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts? [ ] From the Adirondacks to the Great Lakes, in what is now Pennsylvania and upper New York, lived the most powerful of the northeastern tribes, [ ] thousands of people bound together by a common Iroquois language. In the vision of the Mohawk chief Iliawatha, the legendary Dekaniwidah spoke to the Iroquois: "We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each other's hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness." In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: "No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers.... Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common." Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives' families. Each extended family lived in a "long house." When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door. Families were grouped in clans, and a dozen or more clans might make up a village. The senior women in the village named the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils. They also named the fortynine chiefs who were the ruling council for the Five Nation confederacy of the Iroquois. The women attended clan meetings, stood behind the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they strayed too far from the wishes of the women. The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: "Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society." Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were

6 also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. They were taught equality in status and the sharing of possessions. The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children; they did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn self-care. [ ] Gary Nash describes Iroquois culture: No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails-the apparatus of authority in European societies-were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong... He who stole another's food or acted invalourously in war was "shamed" by his people and ostracized from their company until he had atoned for his actions and demonstrated to their satisfaction that he had morally purified himself. Not only the Iroquois but other Indian tribes behaved the same way. In 1635, Maryland Indians responded to the governor's demand that if any of them killed an Englishman, the guilty one should be delivered up for punishment according to English law. The Indians said: It is the manner amongst us Indians, that if any such accident happen, wee doe redeeme the life of a man that is so slaine, with a 100 armes length of Beades and since that you are heere strangers, and come into our Countrey, you should rather conform yourselves to the Customes of our Countrey, than impose yours upon us... So, Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europe's, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature. John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: "Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace." [ ] A People s History of the United States 9

7 from The General History of Virginia (1607) Smith, John. The General History of Virginia. Prentice Hall Literature: The American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., Print. John Smith ( ) earned a reputation as one of England s most famous explorers by helping lead a group of colonists across the Atlantic to establish the first successful settlement in the New World. The group landed in Virginia in 1607 and founded Jamestown. Stories of his adventures, often embellished by his own pen, fascinated readers of his day and continue to provide details about the early exploration of the Americas. Book II: What happed till the final supply Being thus left to our fortunes [fate], it fortuned [happened] that within ten days scarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extreme weakness and sickness oppressed us. And thereat non need marvel, if they consider the cause and reason, which was this: While the ships stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered by a daily proportion of biscuit, which the sailors would pilfer [steal] to sell, give, or exchange with us, for money, sassafras, furs, or love. But when they departed, there remained neither tavern, beerhouse, nor place of relief, but the common kettle. Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony 1 and drunkenness we might have been canonized for saints; but our President 2 would never have been admitted for engrossing to his private 3 oatmeal, sack, oil, aquavitæ; beef, eggs, or what not, but the kettle; that indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat, and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, and this having fried some twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many worms as grains; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran than corn. Our drink was water, our lodgings castles in the air. With this lodging and diet, our extreme toil 4 in bearing and planting palisades 5 so strained and bruised us, and our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause to have made us as miserable in our native country or any other place in the world. From May to September, those that escaped lived upon sturgeon, and sea crabs. Fifty in this time we buried; the rest seeing the President's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace [ship] by flight (who all this time had neither felt want nor sickness) no moved our dead spirits, as we deposed him and established Ratcliffe in his place 1 gluttony: habitual greed or excess in eating 2 President: Wingfield, the leader of the colony 3 engrossing for his private: taking for his own use 4 toil: exhausting physical labor 5 palisades: large pointed stakes set in the ground to form a fence But now was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all helps abandoned, each hour expecting the fury of the savages; when God, the patron of all good endeavors, in that desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages, that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision, as no man wanted. And now where some affirmed it was ill done of the Council to send forth men so badly provided, this incontradictable reason will show them plainly they are too ill advised to nourish such ill conceits; first, the fault of our going was our own, what could be thought fitting or necessary we had; but what we should find, or want, or where we should be, we were all ignorant, and supposing to make our passage in two months, with victual to live, and the advantage of the spring to work; we were at sea five months, where we both spent our victual and lost the opportunity of the time and season to plant, by the unskillful presumption of our ignorant transporters, that understood not at all what they undertook. Such actions have ever since the world's beginning been subject to such accidents, and everything of worth is found full of difficulties: but nothing so difficult as to establish a commonwealth so far remote from men and means, and where men's minds are so untoward [stubborn] as neither do well themselves, nor suffer others. But to proceed. The new President, and Martin, being little beloved, of weak judgment in dangers, and less industry in peace, committed the managing of all things abroad to Captain Smith, who by his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himself always bearing the greatest task for his own share, so that in short time, he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for himself. This done, seeing the savages' superfluity [excess] begin to decrease, (with some of his workmen) [he] shipped himself in the shallop [boat] to search the country for trade. The want of the language, knowledge to manage boat without sails, the want of a sufficient power (knowing the multide of the savages), apparel for his men, and other necessaries, were infinite impediments [hindrances] yet no discouragement. Being but six or seven in company we went down the river to Kecoughtan, where at first they scorned him, as a famished man, and would in derision offer him a handful of corn, a piece of bread, for their swords and muskets, and such like proportions also for their apparel. But seeing by trade and courtesy there was nothing to be had, he made bold to try such conclusions as necessity enforced, though contrary to his commission: let fly his 10 The General History of Virginia

8 muskets, ran his boat on shore, whereat they all fled into the woods. So marching toward their houses, they might see great heaps of corn; much ado he had to restrain his hungry soldiers from present taking it, expecting as it happened that the savages would assault them, as not long after they did with most hideous noise. Sixty or seventy of them, some black, some red, some white, some particoloured, came in a square order, singing and dancing out of the woods, with their Okee (which was an idol 1 made of skins, stuffed with moss, all painted and hung with chains and copper) borne before them; and in this manner, being well armed with clubs, targets, bows, and arrows, they charged the English, that so kindly received them with their muskets loaded with pistol shot, that down fell their God, and divers lay sprawling on the ground; the rest fled again to the woods, and ere [before] long sent one of their Quiyoughkasoucks to offer peace and redeem their Okee. Smith told them, if only six of them would come unarmed and load his boat, he would not only be their friend but restore them their Okee, and give them beads, copper, and hatchets besides, which on both sides was to their contents performed; and then they brought him venison, turkies, wild fowl, bread, and what they had singing and dancing in sign of friendship till they departed.... The next voyage he proceeded so far that with much labor by cutting of trees asunder he made his passage; but when his barge [boat] could pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of shot, commanding none should go ashore till his return: himself with two English and two savages went up higher in a canoe, but he was not long absent, but his men went ashore, whose want of government, gave both occasion and opportunity to the savages to surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not to have cut off the boat and all the rest. Smith little dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at the river's head, twenty miles in the desert, had his two men slain (as is supposed) sleeping by the canoe, whilst himself by fowling sought them victual [food] who finding he was beset with 200 savages, two of them he slew, still defending himself, with the aid of a savage his guid[e], whom he bound to him with his garters, and used him as a buckler [shield], yet he was shot in his thigh a little, and had many arrows that stuck in his clothes but no great hurt, till at last they took him prisoner. When this news came to Jamestown, much was their sorrow for his loss, few expecting what ensued. Six or seven weeks those barbarians kept him [magic spells] prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeaned himself amongst them, as he not only diverted them from surprising the fort, but procured his own liberty, and got hill and his company such estimation amongst them, that those 1 idol: an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship savages admired him more than their own Quiyoughkasoucks. The manner how they used and delivered him is as followeth. The savages having drawn from George Cassen whether Captain Smith was gone, prosecuting that opportunity they followed him with 300 bowmen, conducted by the King of Pamaunkee, who in divisions searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Emry by the fireside; those they shot full of arrows and slew. Then finding the Captain, as is said, that used the savage that was his guide as his shield (three of them being slain and divers other so galled [wounded] ), all the rest would not come near him. Thinking thus to have returned to his boat, regarding them, as he marched, more than his way, [Smith] slipped up to the middle in an oozy creek and his savage with him, yet durst [dare] they not come to him till being near dead with cold, he threw away his arms. Then according to their composition they drew him forth and led him to the fire, where his men were slain. Diligently they chafed his benumbed limbs. He demanding for their captain, they showed him Opechankanough, King of Pamaunkee, to whom he gave a round ivory double compass dial. Much they marveled at the playing of the fly and needle, which they could see plainly, and yet not touch it, because of the glass that covered them. But when he demonstrated by that globelike jewel, the roundness of the earth and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, and stars, and how the sun did chase the night round about the world continually; the greatness of the land and sea, the diversity of nations, variety of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes, and many other such like matters, they all stood as amazed with admiration. Notwithstanding, within an hour after they tied him to a tree, and as many as could stand about him prepared to shoot him, but the King holding up the compass in his hand, they all laid down their bows and arrows, and in a triumphant manner led him to Orapaks, where he was after their manner kindly feasted, and well used.... At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan, their emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had been a monster till Powhatan and his train had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe made of rarowcun skins, and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house, two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds, but every one with something, and a great chain of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands and another brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a towel, to dry them. Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held; but the conclusion The General History of Virginia 11

9 was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the King's dearest daughter, when no entreaty [plea] could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death, whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper, for they thought him as well of all occupations as themselves. For the King himself will make his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots; plant, hunt, or do any thing so well as the rest. [ ] Two days after, Powhatan, having disguised himself in the most fearfulest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after, from behind a mat that divided the house, was made the most dolefulest noise he ever heard; then Powhatan, more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as himself, came unto him and told him now they were friends, and presently he should go to Jamestown to send him two great guns, and a grindstone, for which he would give him the country of Capahowosick, and for ever esteem him as his son Nantaquoud. So to Jamestown with 12 guides Powhatan sent him. That night they quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this long time of his imprisonment) every hour to be put to one death or other, for all their feasting. But almighty God (by his divine providence 1 ) had mollified [calmed] the hearts of those stern barbarians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the fort, where Smith, having used the savages with what kindness he could, he showed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demiculverings [cannons] and a millstone to carry Powhatan. They found them somewhat too heavy, but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with icicles, the ice and branches came so tumbling down that the poor savages ran away half dead with fear. But at last we regained some conference with them, and gave them such toys; and sent to Powhatan, his women, and children such presents, as gave them in general full content. Now in Jamestown they were all in combustion [disorder], the strongest preparing once more to run away with the pinnace [boat] ; which with the hazard of his life, with Sakre falcon [cannon] and musket shot, Smith forced now the third time to stay or sink. Some, no better then they should be, had plotted with the President, the next day to have put him to death by the Levitical law, for the lives of and Robinson and Emry, pretending the fault was his that had led them to their ends: but he quickly took such order with such lawyers, that he laid them by the heels till he sent some of them prisoners for England. Now every once in four or five days, Pochontas, with her attendants, brought him so much provision [supplies] that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger. His relation of the plenty he had seen, especially at Werowocomoco, and of the state and bounty of Powhatan (which till that time was unknown), so revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahontas) as all men s fear was abandoned. Thus you may see what difficulties still crossed any good endeavor; and the good success of the business being thus oft brought to the very period of destruction; yet you see by what strange means God hath still delivered it. 1 providence: the protective care of God or of nature spiritual power 12 The General History of Virginia

10 Puritanism in New England (1997) Campbell, Donna M. Puritanism in New England. Literary Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University. 10 July < from Beginnings to Prentice Hall Literature: The American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., Print. [ ] A small group of Europeans sailed from England on the Mayflower in The passengers were religious reformers, who were critical of the Church of England. Having given up on purifying the church from within, they chose instead to withdraw from the church. This action earned them the name Separatists. We know them as Pilgrims. They established a settlement at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Eventually, it was engulfed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the much larger settlement to the north. Like the Plymouth Colony, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was also founded by religious reformers. These reformers, however, did not withdraw from the Church of England. Unlike the Separatists, they were Puritans who intended instead to reform the Church from within. In America, the Puritans hoped to establish what John Winthrop, governor of the colony, called a city upon a hill, a model community guided in all aspects by the Bible. Their form of government would be a theocracy, a state under the immediate guidance of God. Religion affected every aspect of Puritan life, although the Puritans were not always as stern and otherworldly as they are sometimes pictured. Their writings occasionally reveal a sense of humor, and the hardships of daily life forced them to be practical. In one sense, the Puritans were radical, since they demanded fundamental changes in the Church of England. In another sense, however, they were conservative. They preached a plain, unadorned Christianity that contrasted sharply with the cathedrals, vestments, ceremony and hierarchy of the Church of England. What exactly did the Puritans believe? Their beliefs were far from simple, but they agreed that human beings exist for the glory of God and the Bible is the sole expression of God s will. They believed in predestination John Calvin s doctrine that God has already decided who will achieve salvation and who will not. The elect, or saints, who are to be saved, cannot take election for granted, however. Because of that, all devout Puritans searched their soul with great rigor and frequency for signs of grace. The Puritans believed in original sin and felt that they could accomplish good only through continual hard work and self-discipline. When people speak of the Puritan ethic, that is what they mean. [ ] Puritanism made a lasting impression on American attitudes. Its ideas of hard work, frugality, selfimprovement and self-reliance are still regarded as basic American virtues. The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional Anglicans [of the Church of England] to those who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church of England. Although the word is often applied loosely, "Puritan" refers to two distinct groups: "separating" Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists, who believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it; and nonseparating Puritans, such as the colonists who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but not separation. Most Massachusetts colonists were nonseparating Puritans who wished to reform the established church, largely Congregationalists who believed in forming [self-governing] churches through voluntary compacts. The idea of compacts or covenants [agreements] was central to the Puritans' conception of social, political, and religious organizations. Beliefs Puritanism in New England Several beliefs differentiated Puritans from other Christians. The first was their belief in predestination. Puritans believed that belief in Jesus and participation in the sacraments [religious ceremonies] could not alone effect one's salvation [deliverance from sin] ; one cannot choose salvation, for that is the privilege of God alone. All features of salvation are determined by God's sovereignty [authority], including choosing those who will be saved and those who will receive God's irresistible grace. The Puritans distinguished between "justification," or the gift of God's grace given to the elect [chosen], and "sanctification," the holy behavior that supposedly resulted when an individual had been saved; according to The English Literatures of America, "Sanctification is evidence of salvation, but does not cause it" (434). When William Laud, an avowed Arminian, became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, the Church of England began to embrace beliefs abhorrent [hateful] to Puritans: a focus on the individual's 13

11 acceptance or rejection of grace; a toleration of diverse religious beliefs; and an acceptance of "high church" rituals and symbols. According to Samuel Eliot Morison's Oxford History of the American People, the Puritans "were deeply impressed by a story that their favorite church father, St. Augustine, told in his Confessions. He heard a voice saying, tolle et lege, 'Pick up and read.' Opening the Bible, his eyes lit on Romans xiii:12-14: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in debauchery and lust, not in strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts therof'" (62). Covenant, or Federal Theology, and the New England Way The concept of a covenant or contract between God and his elect pervaded Puritan theology [the study of God] and social relationships. In religious terms, several types of covenants were central to Puritan thought. Covenant of Works The covenant of works held that God promised Adam and his progeny [decedents] eternal life if they obeyed moral law. After Adam broke this covenant, God made a new Covenant of Grace with Abraham (Genesis 18-19). Covenant of Grace This covenant requires an active faith, and, as such, it softens the doctrine of predestination. Although God still chooses the elect, the relationship becomes one of contract in which punishment for sins is a judicially proper response to disobedience. During the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards later repudiated Covenant Theology to get back to orthodox Calvinism. Those bound by the covenant considered themselves to be charged with a mission from God. Covenant of Redemption The Covenant of Redemption was assumed to be preexistent to the Covenant of Grace. It held that Christ, who freely chose to sacrifice himself for fallen man, bound God to accept him as man's representative. Having accepted this pact, God is then committed to carrying out the Covenant of Grace. According to Perry Miller, as one contemporary source put it, "God covenanted with Christ that if he would pay the full price for the redemption of beleevers, they should be discharged. Christ hath paid the price, God must be unjust, or else hee must set thee free from all iniquitie [immoral behavior] " (New England Mind 406). The New England Way The concept of the covenant also provided a practical means of organizing churches. Since the state did not control the church, the Puritans reasoned, there must be an alternate method of establishing authority. According to Harry S. Stout, "For God's Word to function freely, and for each member to feel an integral part of the church's operations, each congregation must be self-sufficient, containing within itself all the offices and powers necessary for self-regulation. New England's official apologist, John Cotton, termed this form of church government 'Congregational,' meaning that all authority would be located within particular congregations" (The New England Soul 17). Cotton's sermon at Salem in 1636 described the basic elements of this system in which people covenanting themselves to each other and pledging to obey the word of God might become a self-governing church. Checks and balances in this self-governing model included the requirement that members testify to their experience of grace (to ensure the purity of the church and its members) and the election of church officials to ensure the appropriate distribution of power, with a pastor to preach, a teacher to "attend to doctrine [teachings]," elders to oversee the "acts of spiritual Rule," and a deacon [rank below priest] to manage the everyday tasks of church organization and caring for the poor (Stout 19). The system of interlocking covenants that bound households to each other and to their ministers in an autonomous [self-governing], self-ruling congregation was mirrored in the organization of towns. In each town, male church members could vote to elect "selectmen" to run the town's day-to-day affairs, although town meetings were held to vote on legislation. Thus the ultimate authority in both political and religious spheres was God's word, but the commitments made to congregation and community through voluntary obedience to covenants ensured order and a functional system of religious and political governance. This system came to be called the Congregational or "New England Way." According to Stout, "By locating power in the particular towns and defining institutions in terms of local covenants and mutual commitments, the dangers of mobility and atomism 1 --the chief threats to stability in the New World--were minimized.... As churches came into being only by means of a local covenant, so individual members could be released from their sacred oath only with the concurrence of the local body.... Persons leaving without the consent of the body sacrificed not only church membership but also property title, which was contingent on local residence. Through measures like these, which combined economic and spiritual restraints, New England towns achieved extraordinarily high levels of persistence and social cohesion [unity] " (23). 14 Puritanism in New England 1 atomism: a theoretical approach that regards something as interpretable through analysis into distinct, separable, and independent elementary components.