Description | In the spring of 1712, two Swedish brothers from Dalarna landed on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay after months at sea. One was a pastor, sent by his bishop to minister to the congregations that remained after the dissolution of New Sweden in 1655; the other was an aspiring painter, who would become the first portraitist in the Middle Colonies. The pastor wrote a diary, in which he recorded his observations of the astonishing natural environment of the Delaware River Valley: skunks, hummingbirds, cicadas, peaches, possums. He also described the customs, clothing, medical knowledge, and spiritual beliefs of the Lenape people, the "true American Nation," as he called them. The artist painted the dignitaries of Philadelphia, the administrators, theologians, merchants, and two Lenape negotiators. Her paper concerns their encounter with a new natural environment and the Native people who knew the environment best. Employing an ecocritical approach, she examine what it means to inhabit a "new world," and how Swedish settler colonists responded to Native culture. |
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