National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Contact: First Impressions
English, Spanish, and Portuguese maps and letters of about the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Portuguese explorer, Gaspar Corte Real, which describe impressions of the lands explored.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Response, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five literary responses to exploration and discovery-poems, fictional accounts, a play, and journal entries-that reflect European desire, frustration, and enchantment with the New World.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Atlantic Coast, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Primary resources for U.S. history and literature offer a French and a Norse account of the earliest documented exploration on the Atlantic coast of North America and encounters with native peoples. Includes questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indians' Accounts, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Four accounts by Native Americans of their complex responses to and reactions toward European explorers near present-day Canada and Mexico.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Conquest, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A series of illustrations and accounts of Spanish conquest of Indians that reflect the fascination with and the brutality directed against native cultures.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Exploration, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Thirty two primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the expectations and the realities of European exploration of the New World.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Spanish, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two maps and four accounts of the Spanish exploration of North America that reflect the goals of the conquistadors and fascination with the land they examined-and the brutality of their treatment of native peoples.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The French, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three maps reflecting French exploration along rivers in North America and three French explorers' accounts of the astonishing hardships they endured and the possibilities for trade with natives they opened.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The English, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Six poems written by navigators and included by George Peckham, and Richard Hakluyt's argument to promote British settlement in North America. Both documents were directed to Queen Elizabeth I in an effort to promote British involvement...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Failed Colonies, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three European accounts of the disappointments, challenges, and outright failures to establish early successful colonial outposts in North America.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Settlement, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Thirty primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore motivations, visions, patterns, goals, challenges, and relationships with indigenous peoples offered by Europeans in their settlement of the New...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: First Arrivals, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Numerous visual images of artifacts from English settlements at Jamestown and at Plymouth, and from Spanish settlement in Hispaniola, and three original accounts of each of those early settlements that describe the possibilities and the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Hardships, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three English, a French, and a Spanish primary account of the staggering losses, misery, and deprivation that characterized early European settlement as well as the resilience needed to overcome those challenges.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Questions & Answers, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
An online exhibition of images of European settlement to accompany two English, a French, and a Dutch set of promotional accounts that offer advice, encouragement, and occasional warning to prospective immigrants to newly settled areas...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Instructions, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three maps of European settlement in Virginia, the Pacific Northwest, and the Spanish New World, and the accompanying official instructions from lenders and monarchs about the obligations, opportunities, and hopes that those...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Missions, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A Spanish Franciscan and a French Jesuit report on the reciprocal relationship between natives and Catholic missionaries as Europeans settled New France and New Spain.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Go Ahead, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A Spanish, an English, and a French account of the enormous challenges in maintaining a colonial presence in North America and of the potential national loss-of pride, wealth, and possibility for expansion-if nations abandoned these...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Permanence, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Forty-two primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the complex and interrelated factors that led to a permanent European presence in the New World.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Cities & Towns, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Four accounts of the visits to and growth of colonial cities in Spanish, British, and French New World settlements that demonstrate why certain communities developed successfully.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Servitude, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two examples of indenture contracts and three accounts of indentured servitude, including positive as well as admonitory views, in the Chesapeake English colonies.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry I, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Eleven documents and two maps detailing the almost two hundred year struggle between England and Spain for hegemony in the Caribbean.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two eighteenth-century maps and four accounts of the mutual perceptions, suspicions, and observations between Spanish and French explorers on the Gulf Coast.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry Iii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two maps of English and French rivalries in North America, and two side-by-side accounts of the English and French perspectives on King William's war over power, trade, and economic dominance of the continent.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indian Relations, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
One modern historical assessment and several original accounts of the mistrust, negotiations, alliances, trading, and disease transmission between European colonizers and native peoples in North America.