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Back to Native American Voices

Native American Voices

Title   Native Americans Discover Europeans
Author   William Wood
Quotation   “They took the first ship they saw for a walking island”
Annotation   An English colonist who lived in Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1629 to 1633 describes the Indian reaction to the arrival of the first European ships.
Year   1634
Text   These Indians being strangers to arts and sciences, and being unacquainted with the inventions that are common to a civilized people, are ravished with admiration at the first view of any such sight. They took the first ship they saw for a walking island, the mast to be a tree, the sail white clouds, and the discharging of ordnance for lightning and thunder, which did much trouble them, but this thunder being over and this moving-island steadied with an anchor, they manned out their canoes to go and pick strawberries there. But being saluted by the way with a broadside, they cried out, “What much hoggery, so big walk, and so big speak, and by and by kill”; which caused them to turn back, not daring to approach till they were sent for.

Source: William Wood, New England's Prospect (orig. 1634; Boston, 1897).


 

This site was updated on 23-Nov-09.

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