Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775)

Little has been written about the colonists sent by Spanish authorities to settle the northern frontier of New Spain, to stake Spain's claim and serve as a buffer against encroaching French explorers. "Los Paisanos," they were called - simple country people who lived by their own labor, isolated, threatened by hostile Indians, and restricted by law from seeking opportunity elsewhere. They built their homes, worked their fields, and became permanent residents - the forebears of United States citizens - as they developed their own society and culture, much of which survives today.

This is the story of a legendary expedition across four thousand miles of the future United States, led by an explorer searching for an illusionary empire of gold. Formerly the second-in-command in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Incas in 1531, Hernando de Soto arrived in the country he called La Florida in 1539, leading a glittering, armored Renaissance-era army of six hundred men on the first major exploration of North America. Obsessed with finding a second Inca empire, he instead encountered the Mississippians, a sophisticated culture of mound and city builders, warriors, artisans,...

In August 1680 the Pueblo Indians of northern New Mexico arose in fury to slay their Spanish colonial overlords and drive any survivors from the land. Andrew Knaut explores eight decades of New Mexican history leading up to the revolt, explaining how the newcomers had disrupted Pueblo life in far-reaching ways - they commandeered the Indians' food stores, exposed the Pueblos to new diseases, interrupted long-established trading relationships, and sparked increasing raids by surrounding Athapaskan nomads. The Pueblo Indians' violent success stemmed from an almost unprecedented unity of...

John L. Kessell's Spain in the Southwest presents a fast-paced, abundantly illustrated history of the Spanish colonies that became the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. With an eye for human interest, Kessell tells the story of New Spain's vast frontier--today's American Southwest and Mexican North--which for two centuries served as a dynamic yet disjoined periphery of the Spanish empire.

Chronicling the period of Hispanic activity from the time of Columbus to Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, Kessell traces the three great swells of Hispanic...

In this penetrating study, Carl Brasseaux looks beyond long-standing mythology to provide a critical account of early Acadian culture in Louisiana and the reasons for its survival. He convincingly dispels many received notions about the routes Acadians traveled from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, their original settlement sites, and the patterns of their subsequent migrations within the state, and closely examines the relations of Louisiana's Acadians with their black, Spanish, Indian, and Creole neighbors.

In adapting to subtropical Louisiana, with its turmoil of alternating French and...

Paul E. Hoffman's groundbreaking book focuses on a neglected area of colonial history -- southeastern North America during the sixteenth-century. Hoffman describes expeditions to the region, efforts at colonization, and rivalries between the French, Spanish, and English. He reveals the ways in which the explorers' expectations -- fueled by legends -- crumbled in the face of difficulties encountered along the southeastern coast. The first book to link the earliest voyages with the explorations of the sixteenth century and the settlement of later colonies, Hoffman's work is an important...

In this sweeping biography, Elaine G. Breslaw examines the life of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712--1756), a highly educated Scottish physician who immigrated to Maryland in 1738. From an elite European family, Hamilton was immediately confronted with the relatively primitive social milieu of the New World. He faced unfamiliar and challenging social institutions: the labor system that relied on black slaves, extraordinarily fluid social statuses, distasteful business methods, unpleasant conversational quirks, as well as variant habits of dress, food, and drink that required accommodation and,...