To begin, I should make it clear what it means that the Seneca had an oral tradition. This means that the Seneca had no written language. Information was not passed from individual to individual and from generation to generation through literacy. Writing down stories was entirely alien to the Seneca. For them, stories were told and shared. According to their traditions, stories had a life and power of their own. They did not exist within the confines of t

Superficially, this is a poem about a storm that rolled in from the sea. Steere begins the poem by writing "All round the Horizon black Cloud appear; A Storm is near" (556, line 1). He sets the scene for his poem with this image. It is a straightforward image, not one that is heavily layered with symbolic meaning. He goes on to reinforce the image of the seaside storm when he writes, "To make a Storm had all their forces joyn'd" (557, line 16). In this case, Steere is reiterating the point that a series of natural forces-the wind, the waves, lightning-had come together to form a powerful storm. As readers, it might even be possible to leave our analysis at this. We could assume that Steere simply wasn't that sophisticated a poet.

Finally, consider the pouch that Gaqka is given by his new wife and which he fills with a great number of trophies, each of which represent a different story that the rock tells him (53). These trophies are the symbols for the countless stories that make up the Seneca oral tradition. This is a crucial symbol because it explains where the tribe's oral tradition came from in the first place. It literally makes this tale the story to explain all other stories. The pouch that Gaqka carries back with him to his original people is the figurative representation of the whole of the oral tradition of the Seneca. It is little wonder, then, that this symbolic pouch afford our hero so much prestige upon his return.

Richard Steere was born in 1643 in England but soon relocated to the New World when his political beliefs came under attack by the king, Charles II. Steere seems to have had continuous issues with oppression by those in power. Shortly after arriving in the New World, Steere moved more Connecticut Long Island to protest the local persecution of Quakers. Some of his poetry is also staunchly anti-Catholic, still the dominant religious tradition in those days (556). Steere was not simply a poet in the sense that we might think of it today. He was also a political activist and someone who obviously held deep-seated religious beliefs, even if they were anti-Catholic.

Steere, then, obviously had mixed feelings about the content of this poem. It seems evident that he believed in what he was writing, that these powerful images indicate a deeper religious conflict than is evident from his biographical information. "On a Sea-Storm nigh the Coast" is a symbolic representation of the battle between good and evil in Christian religious tra

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1670
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)