HIST 125-002
Fall 2016
Dr. Hooper
Primary Sources, Module 1
All of these sources are available via the primary source collection, Sabin Americana.
* Click on the link and then click on the “eTable of Contents” to find specific chapters
José de Acosta, The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies, trans. (London:
Val. Sims, 1604).
José de Acosta was a Spanish missionary who traveled through Peru and Mexico
during the sixteenth century. He wrote about the natural history of the land and
the people he encountered.
Samuel Purchas, Pvrchas his Pilgrimes… book 6, vol. 4 (London: William Stansby, 1625).
Samuel Purchas, a seventeenth-century English writer, composed a number of travel
books, despite never having traveling beyond England. He wanted to create a
“religious geography” from existing accounts of the newly discovered world.
John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia… (London: Michael Sparkes, 1625).
John Smith was a colonial governor in Virginia. He published an autobiography of his
experiences (The True Travels…). In this account, he describes the challenges in building
a colony in America, home to diseases and hostile indigenous groups. Before he sailed to
Virginia, he spent time fighting the Ottoman Empire as well as traveling through Russia,
Morocco, and in the Mediterranean. Shortly after his arrival in Virginia, Smith was taken
by a local Native American leader, Powhatan, and was reportedly “saved” by the chief’s
daughter, Pocahontas, although historians have a different interpretation of these events.
Bartolomé de las Casas, The Tears of the Indians trans. (London, 1656).
Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish missionary who criticized the exploitation of the
Indians after living in the Spanish colonies in the early sixteenth century. He was a vocal
advocate for the abolition of Indian slavery.
A Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol 2 (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1704).
This volume is a compilation of travel accounts, many of them translated from their
original Dutch or Spanish. Volume 2 contains translated accounts of explorations in
Brazil, Greenland, and the Northwest Passage.
Richard Hakluyt, ed. Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries of the English
Nation, vol. 3 (London: R. H. Evans, 1810).
Richard Hakluyt was a British geographer who compiled several volumes of European
explorations in the Americas. He sought to encourage English imperial efforts around the
world. This volume includes discussions of English voyages to find a “Northwest
Passage” around America to Asia.
The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (New York: Hakluyt Society, 1854).
An English navigator and buccaneer, Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1572-3.
On one of his attacks on Spanish settlements, Drake led a ship into the Pacific to raid
Spanish settlements along the South and Central American coast. He returned to the
Atlantic through the Indian Ocean and then sailing along the African coastline. After his
arrival in England, Queen Elizabeth knighted him. Much of this account was written by
the clergyman on board Drake’s ship, Francis Fletcher and likely edited by John Drake.