What is culture? Is it a way of life? Is it the social make-up of a certain type of people from various regions? Is it influenced by communication over many years? Humanity is divided by ethnicity, religious status, age, gender and occupation. Perhaps it is symbols and patterns that a group of people with certain beliefs, values, meanings, religions have passed on to generations and claim these certain ways to be “traditions.” If a person is of mixed “cultures”, how does that make them different from someone with a single nationality? In his article, Williams, Eliot & American Tradition Stephen Fredman writes “From sociological perspective, tradition is an indisputable ingredient in every aspect of our lives” (Fredman). He means to ask: “Who are we without tradition?” It is the very foundation of our individual ways of life.
Historians have said that ever since the fifteenth century when Europeans landed on and inhabited the East Coast, there has constantly been a clashing of Native Americans (who originally had occupied this land) and white cultures. The Native Americans were living peacefully on their own, had their own culture and took pride in their ancestral traditions like music and art. Special ceremonies like pow-wows offered prayer to the Great Spirit to bring them rain or good luck in hunting. Over the years, with the contrast of the two cultures, disagreements in traditions and the warring to win over possession of the land, the Europeans began to overtake the Native Americans’ territories to set up farms and homes. They came with new diseases that spread rapidly. Since the Native Americans didn’t have any immunity, let alone medicine to treat these diseases, thousands died. These new settlers in the New World looked down upon the natives as savages because they didn’t understand the Native American culture. They did not realize that the Indians had been living totally off the land they respected, and completely used their own traditions and...