Cultural Readings - Viewers and the Viewed

CULTURAL READINGS: Colonization & Print in the Americas

Eye VIEWERS & THE VIEWED
Native Cultures, Ancient Cultures

Some Europeans - those who traveled to the New World and those who did not - were struck by the apparent age and sophistication of Indian civilizations.

Beginning in the 16th century, European intellectuals made serious efforts to assimilate various Indian groups into the lexicon of European culture. Rather than investigating potentially threatening differences between cultures, however, Europeans sought similarities.

Acosta organized the peoples of the world into a trinity, with Europeans at the top; Las Casas and Horn sought to determine the Biblical ancestries of American natives, while Boemus, Guichard, and Picard, among many others, detailed American native cultures for titillated European readers.

Viewers and the Viewed

Early Impressions
Black Legends
The de Bry Engravings
Native Cultures, Ancient Cultures

Exhibition Contents | Introduction | Essays | Bibliography & Links

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	Some Europeans - those who traveled to the New World and those who did not - were struck by the apparent age and sophistication of Indian civilizations.
	Beginning in the 16th century, European intellectuals made serious efforts to assimilate various Indian groups into the lexicon of European culture. Rather than investigating potentially threatening differences between cultures, however, Europeans sought similarities.
	Acosta organized the peoples of the world into a trinity, with Europeans at the top; Las Casas and Horn sought to determine the Biblical ancestries of American natives, while Boemus, Guichard, and Picard, among many others, detailed American native cultures for titillated European readers.