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Essential Questions for a Unit on Early American Writing:

• Who owns the land?
• What makes an explorer?
• Are people basically good?
• Who has the right to rule?

For thousands of years, Native Americans regarded themselves as caretakers, not owners, of land. The Europeans who began arriving in North America, however, saw things differently. They laid claim to the land and aggressively defended it from Native Americans--and from one another. In the end, the British claim overpowered all others. Yet, the question remains: What entitles people to claim land as their own?

America's early explorers traveled for many reasons: to gain glory for themselves or their countries, to find gold or other riches, to discover new routes for travel and trade. yet none of these motivators alone seems enough to make the uncertainties of exploration--unknown dangers, unknown destinations--worth the risk. What is it that causes people to seek out the unknown?

Are people basically good? Puritan settlers believed that human beings were sinful creatures doomed to a fiery eternity unless saved by the grace of God. Yet others who came ot North America celebrated the powers of reason and proclaimed the goodness and intrinsic worth of humans. Are people destined always to struggle against their basest instincts? Or are they fundamentally good--and capable of becoming even better?

For centuries, European kings and queens had ruled because it was believed that they had a God-given right to do so. but in the age of enlightenment, people began to question basic assumptions about government. In America, a popular uprising put a new kind of government to the test: democracy. With this experiment, the young American nation was asking: Who really has the right to rule?