f historicalaccounts. The “contact zone” she studies is that of the Puritans and Indians. Every text that Tompkins reads tells a different story about the conflictsbetween the two groups. One author, Miller, does not pay attention to thepresence of the Indians. Tompkins assumes this because Miller states thatwhat amazed him most was the ‘massive narrative of the movement ofEuropean culture into the vacant wilderness of America’ (620). How can thewilderness of America be vacant when the Indians inhabit this area? On theother hand, the view of Jennings is that the Puritans are cruel, while theIndians are superior to them, the Puritans. So this “contact zone” between thePuritans and the Indians is viewed differently by each author. Unlike Prattwho reads both an “autoethnographic text” and an “ethnographic text” tounderstand the historical relationship better, Tompkins reads only“ethnographic texts.” This enables Tompkins to only get one main view, that isof the superior being, the Puritans.The conclusions Tompkins comes to about facts and perspectives inhistory apply to Pratt’s way at looking at historical texts. According toTompkins,[t]he statement implied that in order to make a moral judgmentabout something, you have to know something else first-namely,the facts of the case you’re being call upon to judge. My complaintwas that their perspectival nature would disqualify any facts I mightencounter and therefore I couldn’t judge(631).Tompkins states that to know the full story, one has to know the facts before onecan form an opinion. But Tompkins finds out that the differences in the textsthat she has read is due to the “perspectival nature” of the authors. So, [t]he seeing of the story as a cause for alarm rather than a drollanecdote or a piece of curious information is evidence of values wealready hold, of judgments already ma...
