Encounters in the New World A History in Documents

by Lepore, Jill

• ISBN13: 9780195154917
• ISBN10: 0195154916
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A collection of primary sources documenting the early clash of cultures in the Americas, Encounters in the New World spans the years from Columbus's voyage in 1492 to the publication of the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, in 1789. Emotional eyewitness accounts-memoirs, private correspondence-as well as formal documents, official reports, and journalistic reportage give body and texture to the historical events described. A special 16-page cartographic section, including maps from Europe and North America, is fascinating not only for the maps' telltale imperfections, but also because they convey information about how their creators saw themselves and the world around them. A Jesuit priest's chronicle of life among his Iroquois captors, Aztec records of forbidding omens, excerpts from Columbus's ship's log, John Smith's account of cannibalism among the British residents of Jamestown, slave auction advertisements, memoirs by several members of Cortes's expedition, the reminiscences of an escaped slave-these are just a few examples of the wealth of primary sources collected here.

Author Biography

Jill Lepore is an Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where she also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for American and New England Studies. Her previous works include A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States (Knopf, 2002) and The Name of War: King Philip's War and American Identity (Knopf, 1998), Winner of the Bancroft Prize, Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Berkshire Prize, and the New England Historical Association Prize, and a selection of the History Book Club.

Table of Contents

What Is A Document?	6	(2)
How To Read A Document	8	(3)
Introduction	11	(1)
On the Turtle's Back	12	(2)
Why Europe?	14	(1)
Dealing with the Documents	15	(2)
Mapping the World	17	(16)
Ptolemy's Revolution	18	(3)
The Christian World	21	(1)
An Expanding World	22	(2)
America Emerges	24	(5)
Vanishing Maps	29	(1)
Lines and Circles	30	(3)
First Encounters	33	(26)
Prophecies, Plans, and Fantasies	34	(5)
First Impressions	39	(5)
Gods? Savages?	44	(5)
Dividing the Sexes	49	(4)
A Catalog of Nature	53	(2)
Indians Abroad	55	(4)
Conquest and Resistance	59	(28)
Montezuma, Quetzalcoatl, and Cortes	61	(7)
An Eight-Year Journey	68	(2)
Invading the Interior	70	(5)
The Great Debate	75	(3)
Missions and Presidios	78	(9)
Furs, Rivers, and Black Robes	87	(20)
The Peoples of the Longhouse	88	(3)
A New France	91	(5)
The Society of Jesus	96	(4)
New Worlds, New Women	100	(3)
Covenants of War and Peace	103	(4)
The English Arrive	107	(18)
Go West	108	(4)
Roanoke, the Lost Colony	112	(3)
Powhatan and His People	115	(1)
Founding Jamestown	116	(5)
Pocahontas and Her Legacy	121	(4)
Africans in America	125	(22)
Kidnapped	130	(2)
Tips for Slave Traders	132	(3)
Ships of Death	135	(2)
For Sale	137	(1)
Africans' New Worlds	138	(4)
Two Views	142	(2)
Runaways and Rebels	144	(3)
Planting New England	147	(17)
Metacom's Rebellion	149	(6)
Manitou and the City on a Hill	155	(3)
Marking the Landscape	158	(2)
Praying Indians	160	(4)
Timeline	164	(3)
Further Reading	167	(2)
Text Credits	169	(2)
Picture Credits	171	(2)
Index	173