First encounters of Europeans and Africans with Native Americans in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: White woman, black prince and noble savages

Resumen

A curious episode of the first encounter with Native Americans out of Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave (1688) is reconsidered, using various types of interpretation, such as the structural, philosophical and historical. Special attention is paid to the position and configuration of the episode: all the participants are others to each other. This episode may be interpreted as a model of the first contact between different folks, as well as a story of the origins of religion. In the context of seventeenth-century colonial policy it may be seen as a non-violent way of colonizing America.