Religion in the New World: America as “Virgin Land”

Sources

Origins of an Idea. The idea that the Americas were “virgin lands,” untouched and sequestered from the crowding, disease, and other problems plaguing Europe, may be said to have originated with Christopher Columbus. He compiled a book of sayings, opinions, and prophecies using biblical texts that stressed the urgency of recovering Mount Zion and Jerusalem and of converting native peoples in the Indies. Columbus tried to show that the discovery of the Indies was an important step in liberating Jerusalem from Muslim control and would usher in the days of salvation. He also assigned himself a prominent role in these events. In a letter written to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain from Jamaica in 1503, Columbus noted: “Jerusalem and Mt. Zion will be rebuilt by a Christian; God tells who it will be through the mouth of the Prophet in the fourteenth psalm. The abbot Joachim said that this person would come from Spain.”

Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh also emphasized the idea of America as virgin land. He organized an expedition to Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast in 1584. This failed, but he organized and led a second expedition to the Orinoco River in South America. To Raleigh, America held the promise of being an innocent, pure, and virtuous land, but those virtues might be ruined by the explorers coming to take advantage of the land’s beauties and resources. Raleigh described the land in both material and sexual terms: Of Guiana, he wrote, “The Ingas [Incas] had a garden of pleasure in an yland... where they went to recreat themselves, when they would take the aire of the sea, which had all kinde of garden-hearbs, flowers, and trees of gold and silver.” The image took a firm hold in the minds of Europeans. Later generations of English settlers, especially

the Puritans who went to New England in the seventeenth century, were no doubt influenced by Columbus and Raleigh. The Puritans regarded New England as a virgin land perfect for creating the New Israel.

Sources

Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975);

The Book of Prophecies edited by Christopher Columbus, edited by Roberto Rusconi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).