From A Short Narrative of My Life

Daniely Modesto
48A
Samson Occom



“I used to wish I was capable of instructing my poor Kindred. I used to think, If I Could once Learn to Read I would instruct the poor Children to Reading” (Norton 441)

“This proved to be quite a successful trip, as he [Occum] raised nearly $50,000, but the Native school that Occum worked so hard to create, would never be build with these founds.” www.sachem-uncas.com/occum.html

In “From a Short Narrative of My Life” Samson Occom writes about the injustice he suffered in his minister and teacher career. Occum explains that when he was sixteen he heard for the first time the words of God by the English Ministers.
Occom explains that those Preaches did not only come to them, but they had their own places, a church for their meetings. Occum did not know how to read but even though he could “read” the bible. Occom later felt an amaizing disere to serve God and to spread his words to his people. He explains that Mr. Weelock was the one who taught him how to read, who gave him new clothes and who supported him teaching Indians in New England, and he became a Christian ministers to his own people.


Occum eventually got married and had kids; he dedicated much of his early life to promoting Wheelock's missions and projects. Doing so, he had to leave his family for a while and he trusted Mr. Weelock to take care of them. When he returned, his family was sick and poor. Mr. Weelock was using the money from his missions and projects to build a college that the focus was not the Native American students anymore.

His narrative is about the injustice he suffered and how his spirituality and his Indian identity provided him the strength to continue with his missions.
It is sad to realize that injustice initiated hundreds of years ago, and we learned how to leave with it instead of try to fix the problem. We often hear parents telling their kids that “life is not fair” you got to move one. Unfortunately, as Dennis Wholey says: “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.”

The Iroquois Creation Story

Daniely Modesto
48 A
David Cusick- The Iroquois Creation Story


“Among the ancients there were two worlds in existence. The lower world was in great darkness; - the possession of the great monster, but the upper world was inhabited by mankind;” (Norton 18)

David Cusick was born around 1780, probably on the Oneida reservation in upstate New York. His father, Nicholas Cusick, was a Revolutionary War veteran and an interpreter for the Congregationalist mission to the Seneca. David's younger brother, Dennis Cusick was a watercolor painter, and together the two brothers help establish the early Iroquois Realist Style of painting. Wikipedia.

In “The Iroquois Creation Story” is the story of the beginning o f the world and how good and evil started in the earth. In the story David Cusick describes an island and people who used to live there, the island was up on the sky and according to Cusick the sun and moon were not created yet. The woman, who was pregnant of twin curiosity falls into down into the dark worls, which is the earth and animals, helped her.

By this time, only animals and plants used to live in the earth, and the woman with her twins started our generation. The woman gave birth to the Twins who were named Enigorio and Enigonhahetgea. There grew up fast and they both started to fill the earth with their creations. The story explains how the animals, rivers and the seasons were created. According to Cusick, the brothers were different from each other, Enigorio was good and he created many useful things for the earth; good and strong animals for people, rivers and plants that people could eat. Enigonhahetgea on the other hand was always trying to destroy what his brother had produced and creating monsters, thorns and volcanoes.

Eventually, they decide to fight, and the good wins, making Enigonhahetgea live up on the sky, and becomes a evil spirit, far from the earth. I thought that this is a very interesting story, Cusick does a good job describing the earth and how it begins. But the most interesting part is the twins being related to “good and evil”, which remains me the biblical passage about Cain and Able, who were also brothers and represented “good and evil”.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

“My only remaining duty is to transmit what I saw and heard in the nine years I wandered lost and miserable over many remote lands. I hope in some measure to convey to Your Majesty not merely a report of positions and distance, flora and fauna, but of the customs of the numerous barbarous people I talked with and dwelt among, as well as any other matters I could hear of or observe” (Norton 41)

Cabeza de Vaca was one of the survivors of the expedition to Florida by Narvaez. Cabeza de Vaca spends eight years with the native’s tribes of Texas –Northern Mexico, learning their customs and language. In “From The Relation of Alvaz Nunez Cabeza de Vaca”, De Vaca writes to the King to explain that those people are smart, with their own culture and rules. They are human being not animals, and they should not be enslaved. De Vaca goes on and explains how the natives treated them and helped them with food and accommodation: “they also brought whatever else they had; but we wished only a meal…” (Norton 47).

Christopher Columbus

Daniely Modesto
Engl 48A
Christopher Columbus


“I did not sail upon this voyage to gain honor or wealthy; this is certain, for already all hope of that was dead. I came to Your Highnesses that if it plea God to bring me forth from this place…” (Norton 35)

“After five centuries, Columbus remains a mysterious and controversial figure who has been variously described as one of the greatest mariners in history, a visionary genius, a mystic, a national hero, a failed administrator, a naive entrepreneur, and a ruthless and greedy imperialist” columbusnavigation.com

Columbus in “from letter to Luis de Santagel regarding the first voyage” writes a letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to describe the place he “found”. In this letter we can see that he starts writing about the beauty of the place and how fortunate there were to find this great island: “ All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes” (Norton 333) making sure that the King and Queen were happy with this expedition.
However, later on he starts to describe and express his feeling about what he really sees in the place: “…found an infinity of small hamlets and people without number, but nothing of importance” (Norton 33) as if Columbus was trying to sell the idea of his expedition being great, but deep inside he was just hoping that they would find something there. But not yet…I also found very selfish of him to just get in the place that he does not know, and just name them (rename as he says)and just take it by putting their flag on the sand. As if there was a rule to steal lands with flags.

Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford

Daniely Modesto
Eng 48A
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford

He was indeed a person of a well-tempered spirit, or else it had been scarce possible for him to have kept the affairs of Plymouth in so good a temper for thirty-seven years together... The leader of a people in a wilderness had need be a Moses; and if a Moses had not led the people of Plymouth Colony, when this worthy person was their governour, the people had never with so much unanimity and importunity still called him to lead them. -- Cotton Mather

"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element." (norton 115)

In the book Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford describes all the difficulty many puritans suffered, but because they believe that everything that was happening was God’ will they accept the events with pleasure.

Most of them believe that everything was happening for a reason and they all should learn from the pain and grown stronger. When they made to Cape Harbor safely, Puritans believed that it was God helping them to overcome the obstacles. Bradford also explains that many people were dying from horrible diseases, but nobody was panicking because that was just what God wanted from them.

Anne Bradstreet Poems

Daniely Modesto
Engl 48A
Anne Bradstreet Poems

Anne Bradstreet was born in England and since very young her father gave her a superior education to what most woman at that time. Bradstreet was very intelligent and self-educated; she was the first woman poet to publish her poems in colonial America. She married at the age of 16 to Simon Bradstreet and they both sailed with her family to America in 1630.

Bradstreet’s poems were written for her family, friends, she never meant to publish them. They were almost a way that she found to express her feelings of loneliness and strangeness in America. In 1650, her brother in law secretly brought her collection to London and published them, later called The Tenth Muse.



“Although she may have seemed to some a strange aberration of womanhood at the time, she evidently took herself very seriously as an intellectual and a poet. She read widely in history, science, and literature, especially the works of Guillame du Bartas, studying her craft and gradually developing a confident poetic voice.” www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bradstreet

In “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Bradstreet writes about her maternal love, but it also shows her fear of dying “How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend” as if she was trying to explain to her daughter that death is part of everybody’s life.

"The Prologue," is also a very beautiful poem, which she writes about being a woman in a Puritan society. She writes about women inferiority “For my mean pen are too superior things” as if women were not meant to speak their mind or have strong opinions. Bradstreet argues that women can be as intellectual as men, “Men can do best, and women know it well”.


Another very powerful poem is “To My Dear and Loving Husband” which she describes the love between her husband and her. Bradstreet in this poem uses simple but very touching words to describe the love that she claims to be forever: “Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere/ that when we live no more, we may live ever” Bradstreet’s love and affection for her husband is intense and she believes that they will be together even after death.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards

Daniely Modesto
Engl 48A
Jonathan Edwards



“ And you, children, who are unconverted, do not you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God, who is now angry with you every day and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the king of kings?” (Norton 436)

"Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian," and one of America's greatest intellectuals." Wikipedia.org



Jonathan Edwards in his essay “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” uses of many strong and horrifying words to describe the place sinners will eternal live if they do not take care of their “unsaved souls”. I liked the way Edward uses of figures of speech to describe the power and kindness of God over the people, such as when he compares the sinners to spiders and serpents, which are creatures repulsive by humans just as sinners are to God.




“He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but He can most easily do it”. (Norton 426)Edward creates the image that God is holding the sinners by a thin thread, just to warn them and give them some time to redeem themselves while God constantly offers help from the sin state that people live.

I really enjoyed this reading, I could almost hear Edwards talking directly to me- it is a very beautiful and at the same time scary sermon.