Home > Colonial America > "The Coming of the First White Man"

Told by George R. Betts and translated by Nora Dauenhauer

Reprinted in American Literature: A Prentice Hall Anthology

Published in 1987

Edited by Emory Elliot

"Next/They told everything./After that,/they all went out on their canoes./This was the very first time the white man came ashore,/through Lituya Bay;"

According to some scholars, native peoples arrived in North America from Asia via the Bering Sea Land Bridge around 30,000 B.C. In about A.D. 986 the Thule Inuit in Greenland were the first Native Americans to come in contact with Europeans. Inuit hunters encountered the Norse (inhabitants of presentday Scandinavia; also called Vikings) expedition led by Eric the Red, who founded a settlement in Greenland. Inuit, Beothuk, and Micmac...