Turks and Indians on the Margins of Europe

Abstract

Knowledge of emerging New World settlements and opportunities was quick to diffuse from the western seaboard of Europe to central and eastern parts of the continent. This article contends that cultural knowledge and perceptions were ethnically filtered by Europeans desirous to include new knowledge in existing paradigms. Diverse aspects of New World society appealed to different communities and news and information was consciously manipulated and re-presented, using stock cliches, to be made more palatable to the target community. Blanket verbal and pictorial representations of 'America' and 'Europe' synthetically emerged to feed the appetite for understanding the New World. It is further suggested that the transfer of cultural cliches from Turk to Native American highlight the complex origins of European perceptions of America. These images had substantial effects on the creation of early American society.