What is syncretism, and what role did it play in the cultural development of South American versus North American colonies?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Syncretism
1. the combining of different, often seemingly contradictory beliefs,
while melding practices of variousschools of thought
2. involves the merger andanalogizingof several originally
discrete traditions
3. the theology and mythology of religion
B. Syncretism in South America
1. Spanish and Portuguese worked with the Native population
2. European communities relied on native collaboration for food or allies
3. marriages between Native population and Spanish
4. Spanish friars were amazingly successful in making themselves
useful as holy men, healers, arbiters of disputes, and protectors
against secular exploiters
5. stranger-effect—the tendency some peoples have to esteem and
defer to strangers, whose usefulness as arbitrators of disputes,
dispensers of justice, and preservers of peace, arises from the
objectivity that their foreign origins confer
C. Syncretism in North America
1. felt that native peoples got in the way and genocide seemed the
best means to deal with them
2. massacre and destruction of Native American populations
a. New England Pequots
b. Nathaniel Bacon, launched war with the explicit aim of
destroying all Native Americans, friendly and hostile alike