Hacker News Reader

Comment by moultano | Hacker News Reader

Its purpose is to show the world from Tisquantum's perspective, not positive and negative. You can find an abundance of writing about Plymouth colony from other perspectives. That doesn't make either of them wrong.

View on HN

The main protagonists are shown to have negative views of the immigrants. The Indians are presented as racists and judging people on superficial characteristics. That's probably the author's feelings being projected onto the subjects of his story. Yes, it makes it wrong if it's more historical imagination.

I guess I'm coming from a foreigner's perspective where I never read any of that writing from the pilgrim's perspective. All I see about Indians presents them as noble savages.

The intent isn't to present them as noble savages at all, but as real people with their own complicated motivations. The author is a white American and knows that he doesn't have to put any work in to humanize the European colonists. We do that by default. What requires work is to see them as the native people saw them, and to see native people not as caricatures or plot devices, but as agents themselves.

It's probably my different perspective not being an American. I haven't read those textbooks he mentions and all I hear about Indians is these blogs which present the same general picture. I understand now that Americans will have been exposed to different material at school so this could appear as a novel viewpoint.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com