In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the rights to settle the Roanoke colony to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh sent a fleet to investigate the area called Virginia that year. The excerpts below come from a longer account of the first voyage of exploration…

In this letter to superiors at the Hague, Pieter Schaghen describes conditions in New Amsterdam, including the purchase of Manhattan from local Indians for goods worth sixty guilders. Scholars have speculated that the Indians who took part in this…

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the rights to settle the Roanoke colony to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh sent a fleet to investigate the area called Virginia that year. A group of colonists, led by Sir Richard Grenville, established a settlement in…

Thomas Hariot was an astronomer and mathematician who traveled to Roanoke Island on one of Sir Walter Raleigh's early expeditions to the New World. Encountering local Indian populations, Harriot learned the Algonquian language and later published an…

In Thomas Hariot's account A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590), he describes the Algonquian village of Secota, accompanied by Theodor de Bry's engraving. After noting the village's impressive agriculture and observing its…

In the 1500s, European powers raced to claim lands in North and South America and establish permanent settlements in the "New World." In 1584, a group of English explorers traveled the southeastern coast of North America to find a suitable location…

Thomas Hariot, cartographer, mathematician, and astronomer, accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh on a 1584-86 expedition of America's eastern coast. The English explored the area of the Carolina Outer Banks, calling it Virginia in honor of Queen Elizabeth,…

This essay outlines the events leading the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, including the role of Ghost Dancers, and the chaotic violence that ensued on December 29, 1890.