Library of Congress
Loc: Exploring the Early Americas: Competition for Empire
Part of a larger site, the primary sources here deal with the competition among the European countries in establishing a foothold in the New World.
McGraw Hill
Mc Graw Hill Higher Education: Old World, New Worlds
This article from McGraw-Hill Higher Education discusses European exploration in the late 1400s and 1500s and its impact on English colonization hundreds of years later.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1491 1607: Environmental/health Effects in New World
European arrival in the Americas decimated both indigenous people and previously-flourishing ecosystems.
Library of Congress
Loc: Parallel Histories: Coronado
A brief description of Coronado's life and adventures with links to original and related documents, including illustrations and explorer notes.
Bullock Texas State History Museum
Bullock Museum: American Indians
Immerse in the campfire stories of the people who defined Texas. Find out about how the two Americas: the Europeans' version, and the American Indians' version, started changing forever.
Other
Smithsonian Institution: Musica Del Pueblo
Musica del Pueblo is a full-featured resource that explores the traditions of Latino music. Using a colorful mural titled "Song of Unity" as a navigation tool, visitors can watch videos of performances, listen to different varieties of...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: The Columbian Exchange
In this interactive lesson supporting literacy skills, students watch video dramatizations that tell the story of the Spanish explorers who arrived in the Americas with Columbus and introduced European, African, and Asian plants and...
Wikimedia
Wikipedia: History of Honduras
Explore the tremendous amount of information on the history of the Central American country of Honduras ranging from Pre-Columbian times to the present.
Digital Public Library of America
Dpla: American Empire
This exhibition explores the origins, development, and eventual fall of the American empire and maps the diverse and rocky terrain of the American empire to show how it informs contemporary conversations on heritage, citizenship, racism,...
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: The First Europeans
The first Europeans to arrive in North America -- at least the first for whom there is solid evidence -- were Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is...
Curated OER
Inscription Rock, New Mexico
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: 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: 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.
Library of Congress
Loc: Parallel Histories: Atlantic and Gulf Coasts Settlements
Insights, primary and secondary source material and timeline on early exploration and Spanish settlement of Florida and the Atlantic Coast.
Other
Brown Quarterly: Hernando De Soto Expedition
An overview of the career of Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto including a brief analysis of the effects his explorations in the southern portions of North America had on the natives of that region.
Library of Congress
Loc: Parallel Histories: Texas
Spanish and English text on Spanish interest, exploration and settlement of Texas. Includes primary and secondary source material.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.
Other
Texas Bob: The First Europeans in Texas: 1528 1536
One of the first Europeans to penetrate the interior of Texas, read Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's account of his shipwreck and eventual return to the Spanish Court.