34 items
Introduction The conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortez in 1519 is one of the most well-known examples of encounters between Europeans and Americans prior to 1600. Some primary sources that document the event still exist, though...
Study Aid: Cultures of the Americas, 1200 BC–AD 1600
Mound Builders (Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River) Key Groups : Adena (500 BC), Hopewell (100 BC) Religion and Culture : Known as mound builders because they buried the dead in large earth mounds, these groups lived in small...
Early European Imperial Colonization of the New World
Introduction By the early to mid-seventeenth century, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands were all competing for colonies and trade around the world. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, explorers, conquerors, missionaries...
American Indians
If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before Europeans arrived. Historians, however, disagree over...
The Americas to 1620
At the end of the first millennium, most people in the Eastern Hemisphere had a firm sense of how the world was arranged, who occupied it, and how they had come to be where they were. Various sacred texts as well as long-standing folk...
The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together, creating—among other things—a new economy. At the center of that economy was the plantation, an enterprise dedicated to the production of exotic...
Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621
Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
A Voyage Long and Strange
Award-winning author Tony Horwitz discusses the research and writing process for his book A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (2008).
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Europeans and the New World, 1400–1530
Brian DeLay, associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how the backwater of western Europe emerged from the devastation of the fourteenth century to generate the power, wealth, knowledge,...
Nature, Culture, and Native Americans
Daniel Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma and Director of the American Indian Studies Program at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. He discusses the importance of distinguishing between...
Guns, Horses, and the Grass Revolution
In this lecture Elliott West, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, describes how the introduction of Old World phenomena such as guns, horses, and new diseases affected the Native peoples of the New World. Those who...
Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
James F. Brooks, Director of the School of American Research Press, is author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002), which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Bancroft...
Gold, Gospel, and Glory: Motivations for European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas
Professor John Fea of Messiah College discusses the European motivations--gold, gospel, and glory--for exploration in the Americas, taking Europeans from the Crusades to the Spanish conquest and the exploitation of resources in the...
Exchanges of Culture and Conflict in the Southwest
Professor DeLay looks at changes in thought, technology, and outlook that prompted early exploration, and Spain’s late entry into colonial pursuits.
Imperial Rivalries
When Christopher Columbus made his plans to sail westward across the Atlantic, he first set off across Europe to find sponsors. His brother Bartholomew went to the court of the English King Henry VII (who turned him down, much to the...
Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students
Some 40,000 years from now, give or take a few millennia, someone, somewhere in the universe may find and listen to the Golden Record, NASA’s attempt to describe Earth and its peoples to anyone out there who might be interested. There...
The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493
The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands...
Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....
Spain authorizes Coronado's conquest in the Southwest, 1540
This letter, written on behalf of the king of Spain by Francisco Garcia de Loaysa, the president of the Council of the Indies, acknowledges Francisco Coronado’s report of the famous Niza expedition of the previous year and authorizes...
Landing of Columbus, 1492
This engraving depicts Columbus’s first landing in the New World, on the island he called San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. Columbus is surrounded by his men on the beach. Discussing the landing in his journal, Columbus wrote that he...
Landing of Henrick Hudson, 1609
In 1609, Henry Hudson was chosen by the Dutch East India Company to search for a passage to Asia. In September of that year, Hudson landed on the shores of the river that would be named for him and claimed the lands along it for the...
Susan Schulten - "A History of America in 100 Maps"
Susan Schulten is a professor of history at the University of Denver. Order A History of America in 100 Maps at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you...
Carrie Gibson - "El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America"
Carrie Gibson is a historian (University of Cambridge) and journalist. Order El Norte at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our...
Steven A. Steinbach and Maeva Marcus - "With Liberty and Justice for All? The Constitution in the Classroom"
Steven A. Steinbach teaches US history and government at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC and Maeva Marcus is a professor of law at George Washington University. Order With Liberty and Justice for All? at the Gilder...
Nicole Eustace - "Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America"
Nicole Eustace is a professor of history at New York University. Order Covered with Night at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our...
Samantha Seeley - "Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the Early United States"
Samantha Seeley is an assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond. Order Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Diego Javier Luis - "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History"
Diego Javier Luis is an assistant professor of history at Tufts University. Order The First Asians in the Americas at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Amanda Bellows - "The Explorers: A New History of the United States in Ten Expeditions"
Amanda Bellows’s writing has appeared in the New York Times , the Washington Post , and Talking Points Memo . She currently teaches at The New School in New York City. Order The Explorers at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an...
Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns - "Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo"
Dayton Duncan is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker as well as the author of fourteen books. Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Order Blood Memory at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We...
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