Early Native North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations

The approaching quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean is stimulating much discussion about how the native peoples of the New World perceived and reacted to European intruders during the sixteenth century. This occurs as both history and anthropology are being strongly influenced by the resurgence of cultural relativism, which accords to the beliefs transmitted within specific cultures a preeminent role as determinants of human behavior. This view has challenged and largely eclipsed the rationalist claim that human behavior is shaped mainly by calculations of individual self-interest that are uniform from one culture to another. Studies of how native peoples perceived the first Europeans they encountered will probably be strongly influenced by this shift in emphasis. I wish to investigate in this paper whether it is sound to assign cultural relativism a dominant role in the discussion of this issue. To answer that question, I will examine the conflicting claims of cultural relativists and rationalists and the utility of each position for interpreting the historical evidence. I will seek to demonstrate that, while cultural beliefs may have significantly influenced Indian reactions in the early stages of their en-