HoW to use tHIs BooK Some boxes contain more detailed information about a particular aspect of a subject The subjects are arranged in roughly chronological order They focus on key events or people There is a full timeline of the period at the back of the book coLonIAL AmeRIcA Each spread contains at least one primary source Look out for Source Explored boxes that explain images from the colonial period and who made them and why There are also As They Saw It boxes that contain quotes from people of the period Some spreads feature a longer extract from a contemporary eyewitness Look for the colored introduction that explains who the writer is and the origin of his or her account These accounts are often accompanied by a related visual primary source 5
Primary Sources in U.S. History Native Americans When Europeans first arrived in America they did not find an empty continent Up to ten million Native Americans lived in 600 tribes from the Pacific Northwest to the desert Southwest and the eastern woodlands Within a century of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492 more than half the Native population had died This was partly due to warfare but mainly because of the introduction of European diseases to which Native peoples had no resistance Spaniards raise a cross left as Christopher Columbus center meets Native Americans in this engraving 6
COLONIAL AMERICA John White painted this Algonquin warrior in 1585 or 1586 Europeans were fascinated by the way Native Americans painted their bodies As tHey sAW It We are unarmed and willing to give you what you ask if you come in a friendly manner I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat sleep comfortably live quietly with my women and children laugh and be merry with the english and being their friend trade for their copper and hatchets than to run away from them Powhatan chief of the Algonquin confederacy addresses english settlers at Werowocomoco Virginia in 1609 souRce exPLoRed John White’s watercolor Indian in Body Paint was painted in 1585 or 1586 White was the artist and mapmaker on an English expedition exploring North Carolina His picture of an Algonquin elder was the first realistic image Europeans saw of a Native American The man wears a deerskin loincloth and carries a quiver of arrows and a six-foot bow so he may be dressed for war or a ritual A puma tail hangs from his waist His chest calves arms and face are painted and he has turkey feathers in his hair His elaborate bracelets earrings and wrist guard are typical of the Southeastern Algonquin The man’s graying hair suggests he is an elder and White painted him with tawny skin 7
Primary Sources in U.S. History THE LOST COLONY Earthen mounds at Fort Raleigh in North Carolina mark the spot of the first English settlement at Roanoke After Christopher Columbus landed in 1492 European rulers sent expeditions to claim this New World The Spanish seized the empires of the Aztec of Mexico and the Inca of Peru in the 1520s and 1530s French explorers arrived in what is now Canada in the middle of the same century The English attempted to found a colony in 1587 The attempt went badly wrong 8
