Christopher Columbus’s letter describing what he discovered during his voyage across the Atlantic was published in Barcelona in April 1493. Columbus’s descriptions were soon reprinted in other languages, with news of his discoveries spreading across Europe by 1500.
Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano led voyages to the New World for France.
The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 moved the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese lands in the New World. The line of demarcation established a year earlier by the pope’s papal bull Inter Caetera shifted 1,000 miles westward, with the result that Brazil (when it was discovered) came under Portuguese control.
Hernando de Soto became the first European to document the Mississippi River.
Mississippian culture grew in the southern Mississippi River Valley. The Mississippian American Indians were farmers and mound builders, and the culture spread along rivers through modern-day central and eastern North America. Some aspects of Mississippian life grew out of earlier regional cultures, but the Mississippians were also largely influenced by contact with Mayan and Zapotec traders.
The Powhatan Confederacy was formed, ca. 1550.
Following the founding of Quebec City, Samuel de Champlain entered into an alliance with the Huron Indians. The alliance created a lasting trade parternship between the French and Hurons and helped strengthen both groups against the Iroquois.
Hohokam culture of prehistoric American Indians developed in the Southwest, ca. 600. Hohokam culture grew along the Gila and Salt Rivers, and Hohokam people created irrigation canals that allowed for major agricultural development.
Humans migrated from Asia into Beringia—a region of land now covered by seas between present day Siberia and Alaska. Humans probably moved through Beringia and into North America in three phases of migration during low sea levels over thousands of years between ca. 70,000 BC and ca. 8,000 BC.
The Iroquois Confederacy, or Iroquois League, was founded as a cooperative and peacekeeping organization among the Five Nations of the Iroquois—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onandagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. In the early eighteenth century the Tuscaroras joined the confederation.