Native North American Imagery in English Travel Writing of late 16th and early 17th centuries.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus did not come to India and the world changed in the most dramatic way. For European countries experiencing a crisis of trade through the Arab countries to the east, an attempt to find alternative routes to India and China was natural and inevitable. Columbus, believing in the sphericity of the planet, made one of the most successful mistakes in the history of Europe. The study of the influence of the discovery of the New World for Europe (and for the Americas as well) is far from a new topic in historiography. However, in this work, I use new approaches to the study of English sources left by travelers and settlers who visited Virginia and New England. I analyze the sources of the most significant personalities in the context of comprehending the colonization of the New World, the intellectual development of the Other, as well as transmitting and forming the image of an ideal colonist, based on the languages of self-description and self-representation of the authors. The sources I have chosen had a tremendous impact on the English colonization of North America. Thomas Harriot, for example, was the first scientist to visit Virginia and compile a detailed report that laid the foundation for the formation of the image of the Other. It can be argued that, to a certain extent, Harriot's reflections on how the colonization and development of Virginia should proceed, influenced the colonization projects of Jamestown - one of the most successful English colonies in America. The works of Captain John Smith, undoubtedly inheriting some specificity from his predecessor, complement and reveal the image of the Other from the most amazing angles, while his transmits of ideas about what a colonist should be is echoed in the book “Mourt`s Relation”, written by the pilgrims. This book tells the story of the first and almost the most brutal year of religious refugees from the Old World. The most significant difference in the formation of the image of the Other is the principle of good neighborliness, which the pilgrims were forced to follow. Proceeding from all this, questions arise about the nature of the dynamics of the development of these images. How did the perception and construction of the other change? What were the factors behind these changes? How did these people see themselves and how did they see their followers in mastering this terra nova? I answer these and other questions in this work by using the methods of studying the languages of the description of the Other.