Two Sides of a Coin in Colonial America

Picture it, freedom reigning in the hearts of citizens of a new nation, America. A new world has opened up to the people with new freedoms. They all have clean slates, both body and mind. For the Americans, English and Natives alike, come new opportunities and struggles. As in all cultures there are two sides of the metaphorical coin, in this case an Englishmen by the name of Benjamin Franklin and a Native American named Samsom Occum and the lives they lived with their individual similarities and differences.

Animal skin drums beat out rhythms around a fire as a young Samsom Occum sits at his elders’ feet, as do other children of the Mohegan tribe. Occum was born in 1723 to what he described as “Heathenistic” parents near the town of New London in Connecticut who raised him in “Heathenism” (Belasco 2). Around the time Occum was brought into this world the established English were influencing the Mohegan tribe in more ways than one, such as the way they treated their elders, alcohol consumption, and other cultural customs (Eden), as well as the ever-shrinking territory the tribe once traveled and the diseases that the Europeans brought with them which the Indians had no immunity for greatly diminished the population of many different tribes of the time (Belasco 2). As a Native American, his tribe relied on hunting, fishing, and foraging for food and, being a nomadic tribe they moved when they ran out of wood and resources in an area. Some Europeans would venture out to the tribes and try to teach the students the English alphabet, known as “letters” to the Native Americans. The next one finds in his short autobiography and other resources available is that he was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening, 1735-45, at ...

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...tist, politician, and his philosophical thoughts, all of these are included and more. Though this book is never completed by him, there have been editors that have helped reassemble and finish the book in Franklin’s absence over the years to give a complete view of Franklin’s life.

Wood, Gordon S. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print. In this in-depth, critical look at Franklin’s life, we see the folklore of Franklin and the somewhat unknown truths about him uncovered in a way that can be understood by modern Americans. Through Wood’s writings, he fills in the spaces that Franklin’s autobiography has missed. In a way, this entire book is a literary criticism on Franklin’s autobiography. By digging deeper into the man, Franklin, readers begin to understand him, his choices, and his influences on the newly budding nation as a whole.