The Savages Were Courteous?

    In the online link, the Norton Anthology describes people who were irreducibly alien as having a "surprising instability in the Elizabethan Imagination". This may be seen by some as startling initially due to the propaganda-natured writing that was assigned this week. It would appear that nearly all of the writing portrays the Natives in a negative light. However, in a more focused second pass reading it appears that the authors of these discoveries could not help but to feel some form of respect for the natives.
    In George Best’s discourse of “Frobisher’s Voyages”, it is obvious that Best wanted to perceive the native Eskimos in a negative light. The initial thing to notice is that he calls the savages. However, in the first interaction between the “savages” and his own crew, Best explains that “Our men offered them like kindness aboard our ships, but neither admitted or trusted the other’s courtesy” (929). The words to note in this quotation are “likeness and courtesy”. These are two characteristics that one would be tough to attribute to a savage and it appears that Best almost accidentally called the Natives this. Another contradiction made by Best is when he describes the houses of the Eskimos on “Countess’s Island”. He initially labels them as “poor caves and houses” (931) but then concedes that the “whales’ bones... were handsomely compacted in the top together” (931). He admires the Eskimos after he disapproves of them. The most peculiar part of Best’s document is how he decided to end it. Best writes that “when we made him signs that they were slain and eaten, he earnestly denied, and made signs to the contrary” (932). The word to focus on is “earnestly” because it is an adjective that Best did not have to add. He did it to show the seriousness and sincerity that the Eskimo showed. This also puts the Eskimos into a somewhat positive light which could be seen as a conflicting view that Best might have been faced with.
    The accounts of Drakes landing in California also provides a positive light for the natives that were encountered. Although these accounts do not explicitly label the natives as “savages”, the accounts do spend enough time on the topic of sacrificing, that the intent to implicitly call the natives “savages” is clear. However, the text also displays a strong for of respect for the natives. One of the first things that Drake’s account admits is a certain affinity for the natives king, as they describe him as of “goodly stature and comely personage” (933). The accounts also explain the natives initial reaction to Christianity. The text reads that the natives “were greatly affected” by the scriptures of Christianity. It does go on to explain that they restored back to their original religious ways. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as important that the natives were affected by the religion for at least some time because it shows that the natives could someday be “saved”. Although “The Wider World” is ladened with intense propaganda, it should still be noted that there is a form of conflict that spans all of the accounts of travel, in regards to their native counterparts.