Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment provides access to 1,482 authors and over 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs, maps and more than 1,200 images highlighting the relationships among people in North America from 1534-1850.
The collection includes oral accounts written down by Europeans that came into contact with Indians, speeches, correspondence, and publications produced by Indians, such as Cusick's Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations and Copway’s Life, History and Travels.
Also included in the collection are hundreds of source texts with accounts of early explorations of the colonies at Roanoke and Plimoth (Plymouth); the Cherokee and the Creek; works by Captain Smith, Gosnold, Hakluyt, Hudson, and others; collected accounts of the Americas published in Europe by de Bry (including Alexander Street’s first-ever translation of a volume of de Bry); descriptions of landscapes from William Byrd and Mark Catesby; in-depth studies of missions; extensive accounts by fur traders; detailed descriptions of pioneer settlements; works by Cartier, Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, Hennepin, Radisson, Des Groseilliers, La Salle, Tonti, Bourgmont, the Vérendryes brothers; The Jesuit Relations in their original languages and also translated; the Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, Wichita, and Shosoni; the original journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition; the distinct cultures of California; the Apache, Yuma, and Navaho; works by de Vaca, Coronado; the expeditions of Ayala, Quadra, Drake, and others along the Coast of California and the Spanish interior; explorations by Father Kino, de Anza, and Garcés; the surveys of Simpson and Sitgreaves; the explorations of Mackenzie, Pike, and Long; the environmental and cultural impact of the California Gold Rush; and much more.