so deals with the various writings of historical accounts. The “contact zone” she studies is that of the Puritans and Indians. Every text that Tompkins reads tells a different story about the conflicts between the two groups. One author, Miller, does not pay attention to the presence of the Indians. Tompkins assumes this because Miller states that what amazed him most was the ‘massive narrative of the movement of European culture into the vacant wilderness of America’ (620). How can the wilderness of America be vacant when the Indians inhabit this area? On the other hand, the view of Jennings is that the Puritans are cruel, while the Indians are superior to them, the Puritans. So this “contact zone” between the Puritans and the Indians is viewed differently by each author. Unlike Pratt who reads both an “autoethnographic text” and an “ethnographic text” to understand the historical relationship better, Tompkins reads only “ethnographic texts.” This enables Tompkins to only get one main view, that is of the superior being, the Puritans. The conclusions Tompkins comes to about facts and perspectives in history apply to Pratt’s way at looking at historical texts. According to Tompkins, [t]he statement implied that in order to make a moral judgment about something, you have to know something else first-namely, the facts of the case you’re being call upon to judge. My complaint was that their perspectival nature would disqualify any facts I might encounter and therefore I couldn’t judge(631). Tompkins states that to know the full story, one has to know the facts before one can form an opinion. But Tompkins finds out that the differences in the texts that 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 droll anecdote or a piece of curious information is evidence...
